Concept

Language

Overview

general system which gives humans the ability to communicate

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Language is discussed.

But when two nations came to be mixed with one another, either by conquest or migration, the case would be very different. Each nation, in order to make itself intelligible to those with whom it was under the necessity of conversing, would be obliged to learn the language of the other. The greater part of individuals too, learning the new language, not by art, or by remounting to its rudiments and first principle…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
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The question still remains how the other characteristics of gesture-language, particularly the absence of grammatical categories and a syntax which follows the principle of immediate and perceptual intelligibility, compare with the corresponding characteristics of the relatively primitive spoken languages. These characteristics, indeed, are of incomparably greater importance than the relations of sound and meaning…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
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Moreover, no philologist now supposes that any language has been deliberately invented; it has been slowly and unconsciously developed by many steps. (53. See some good remarks on this head by Prof. Whitney, in his ‘Oriental and Linguistic Studies,’ 1873, p. 354. He observes that the desire of communication between man is the living force, which, in the development of language, “works both consciously and…
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
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Language has been traditionally treated by European scientists as a collection of sounds instead of an expression of something inner and deeper than the vocal apparatus as it should be. The accumulative effect of language-symbols upon one's mental formulation is still an unexploited field. Dividing the world culture of the living races on this basis, one perceives a fundamental difference of its types between the…
Bertrand Russell, The Problem of China
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The subject of language is one which has not been studied with sufficient care in traditional philosophy. It was taken for granted that words exist to express “thoughts,” and generally also that “thoughts” have “objects” which are what the words “mean”.
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy
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