Book 7
1.56
For whatever produces an effect is body; and voice, as it proceeds from those who utter it to those who hear it, does produce an effect. Reduced to writing, what was voice becomes a verbal expression, as day; so says Diogenes. A statement or proposition is speech that issues from the mind and signifies something, e.g. It is day. Dialect (διάλεκτος ) means a variety of speech which is stamped on one part of the Greek world as distinct from another, or on the Greeks as distinct from other races; or, again, it means a form peculiar to some particular region, that is to say, it has a certain linguistic quality; e.g. in Attic the word for sea is not θάλασσα but θάλαττα, and in Ionic day is not ἡμέρα but ἡμέρη.
1.56
Elements of language are the four-and-twenty letters. Letter, however, has three meanings: (1) the particular sound or element of speech; (2) its written symbol or character; (3) its name, as Alpha is the name of the sound A.
1.57
Seven of the letters are vowels, a, e, ē i, o, u, ō, and six are mutes, b, g, d, k, p, t. There is a difference between voice and speech; because, while voice may include mere noise, speech is always articulate. Speech again differs from a sentence or statement, because the latter always signifies something, whereas a spoken word, as for example βλίτυρι, may be unintelligible— which a sentence never is. And to frame a sentence is more than mere utterance, for while vocal sounds are uttered, things are meant, that is, are matters of discourse.
1.57
There are, as stated by Diogenesi.e. the Babylonian. in his treatise on Language and by Chrysippus, five parts of speech: proper name, common noun, verb, conjunction, article. To these Antipater in his work On Words and their Meaning adds another part, the mean.Probably adverb.
