LANGUAGE.

Language, in its most extensive sense, implies those signs by which men and brutes communicate to each other their thoughts, affections, and desires.

Language may be divided, 1. into natural and artificial; 2. into spoken and written.

NATURAL LANGUAGE, consists in the use of those natural signs which different animals employ in communicating their feelings one to another.  The meaning of these signs all perfectly understand by the principles of their nature.  This language is common both to man and brute.  The elements of natural language in man, may be reduced to three kinds; modulations of the voice, gestures, and features.  By means of these, two savages who have no common, artificial language, can communicate their thoughts in a manner quite intelligible:  they can ask and refuse, affirm and deny, threaten and supplicate; they can traffick, enter into contracts, and plight their faith.  The language of brutes consists in the use of those inarticulate sounds by which they express their thoughts and affections.  Thus, the chirping of a bird, the bleating of a lamb, the neighing of a horse, and the growling, whining, and barking of a dog, are the language of those animals, respectively.

ARTIFICIAL LANGUAGE consists in the use of words, by means of which mankind are enabled to communicate their thoughts to one another.—­In order to assist you in comprehending what is meant by the term word, I will endeavor to illustrate the meaning of the term.

Idea.  The notices which we gain by sensation and perception, and which are treasured up in the mind to be the materials of thinking and knowledge, are denominated ideas.  For example, when you place your hand upon a piece of ice, a sensation is excited which we call coldness.  That faculty which notices this sensation or change produced in the mind, is called perception; and the abstract notice itself, or notion you form of this sensation, is denominated an idea.  This being premised, we will now proceed to the consideration of words.

Words are articulate sounds, used by common consent, not as natural, but as artificial, signs of our ideas.  Words have no meaning in themselves.  They are merely the artificial representatives of those ideas affixed to them by compact or agreement among those who use them.  In English, for instance, to a particular kind of metal we assign the name gold; not because there is, in that sound, any peculiar aptness which suggests the idea we wish to convey, but the application of that sound to the idea signified, is an act altogether arbitrary.  Were there any natural connexion between the sound and the thing signified, the word gold would convey the same idea to the people of other countries as it does to ourselves.  But such is not the fact.  Other nations make use of different sounds to signify the same thing.  Thus, aurum denotes the same idea in Latin, and or in French.  Hence it follows, that it is by custom only we learn to annex particular ideas to particular sounds.