 For Rosenstock-Huessy, speech’s significance was not to describe a litany of factual statements about the world of the sort ‘it is raining’—see “Es Regnet oder die Sprache steht auf dem Kopf” in Die Sprache des Menschengeschlects). Nor is it, as Saussure held, simply a means of A expressing his or her intention to B. Moreover, Rosenstock-Huessy’s interest in speech is restricted to what he calls, in The Origins of Speech, ‘authentic speech’. This is not the kind of speech which has its parallels in the animal kingdom. Authentic speech is the foundation and perpetuation of constitutions and institutions—social acts that reach across generations and establish patterns of social complexity which show us the difference in our self- and world-making and that of animals.