On the development of meaning in language

'At first, therefore, word-clans, word families started life on the communal system with a common stock of possible and realised significances and a common right to all of them; thier individuality lay rather in the shades of expression of the same ideas than in any exclusive right of expression of a single idea. The early history of language was a development from this communal life of words to a system of individual property in one or more intellectual significances. The principle of partition was at first fluid, then increased rigidity, until word-families and finally single words are able to start life on thier own account. The last stage of the entirely natural growth of language comes when the life of the word is entirely subjected to the life of the idea which it represeents. For in the first stage of language the word is as living or even more living force than its idea; sound determines sense. In its last state the positions have been reversed; the idea becomes all important the sound secondary.'

- Sri Aurobindo. 'The Philological Method of the Veda.', The Secret of the Veda.