Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.56 — Diogenes Laërtius on the Stoics

Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.56

Reported speech · Diogenes Laërtius on the Stoics

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. 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.