LANGUAGE, human speech; the ex pression of ideas by words or significant articulate sounds, for the communication of thoughts. Language consists in the oral utterance of sounds, which usage has made the representatives of ideas. When two or more persons customarily annex the same sounds to the same ideas, the expression of these sounds by one person communicates his ideas to another. This is the primary sense of language, the use of which is to communicate the thoughts of one person to another through the or gans of hearing. Articulate sounds are represented by letters, marks, or charac ters which form words. Hence, language consists also in words duly arranged in sentences, written, printed, or engraved, and exhibited to the eye.—The speech or expression of ideas peculiar to a particu lar nation. Men had originally one and the same language, but the tribes or families of men, since their dispersion, have distinct languages. Many philolo gists have included all known languages under three great divisions:—!. Lan guages composed of monosyllabic roots without any forms of grammar. To this class belong the Chinese idioms. 2. Lan guages composed of monosyllabic roots, but with a great abundance of grammatical forms, as the Indo-Germanic, Armenian, and other languages. 3. Languages whose verbal roots consist in their present form of two syllables, and require three consonat is tor the expression of their fundamental meaning. This class is limited to the Schemitic languages, including the Arl imean, the Debi-0%v, and Arabic. The Inilo-Germanie languages are divided into--I. The Indian branch, comprising the Sanserit, and its derivatives. 2. The Medo-Persic or Arian branch, at the head of which stands the Send. 3. The Teutonic branch, with the Gothic at its head, and comprising the different Ger man dialects, the Anglo-Saxon, the Iee anilie, Swedish, Danish, &c. 4. The Gra:co-Latin branch, comprising the two ancient classical languages. 5. The Sla vonic branch, including the Lithuanian, the ancient Prussian, the Russian, the Polish, and Bohemian. 6. The Celtic branch, including the Welsh, Cornish, Armorican, th.) Irish or Erse, the Gaelic or Highland Scotch, and the Manx.
The comparative perfection of a lan guage, as an instrument for the commu nication of thought, depends mainly on its copiousness. In order to estimate this, it must be borne in mind that the classes of words employed in a language are all reducible into two, which have been termed by some notional and rela tional. The former express distinct ideas or notions; the latter serve to display the relation, connection, and order of ideas. Nouns and verbs belong to the
first class; prepositions, adverbs, &e., a-nd the signs denoting the inflections of verbs and nouns, to the latter. With respect to the former class, all languages, to be serviceable for the purposes of life, must be sufficiently copious to express all dis tinct notions. But the comparative rich ness of a language is mainly shown by the manner in which this is done. As nations adVil nee from barbarism towards civilization, new notions, and new varie ties of notions, arc constantly requiring utterance. In those in which this can easily be done by composition, (as in Greek and German,) great fileilities are afford ed fiir the easy expression of thought, comparatively with those in which it eon only be effected by the laborious process of borrowing adopting words from the vocabularies of moro advanced no Dens.
But it is in the relational words. or modes in which relations of ideas are expressed, that the genius of different languages most varies. The Chinese, in their sin gular and obscure tongue, seem never to have reached beyond the processor vary ing the collocation of unchangeable roots in the sentence, in order to oxpress varieties of meaning. The next process should appear to be that of using auxin ary words. In many languages (our own among the number) relations are almost wholly expressed in this manner. But in others the auxiliary words have, in course of time, coalesced with the princi pal ; so that many relations are expressed by varying the beginning, termination, &c., of the principal word. This, at least, is the most probable origin of those forms termed in grammar inflection:, or forms of declension and conjugation, in which Greek, Latin, Sanscrit, Gerisoin, and their derivative languages are more or less rich ; the Greek, for example, be ing more copious than the Latin or mod ern German, in having the dual form and additional tenses (the aorists, and the paulo-post futurum.) And sonic lan guages (especially among the American Indians) are so curiously constructed as to carry the power of inflection far beyond this point. A complex idea, which in English would require to be expressed by a pronoun, an adverb, and an auxili ary verb, (or, perhaps, a second auxiliary verb also, e. "I desire," or "I ab stain,") together with the principal verb, would in some American languages be expressed merely by a variety of the form of the principal verb itself.