CHAPTER V.
LANGUAGE.
Etymologically the word Language means sign-making by means of the tongue, i.e. articulate speech. But in a wider sense the word is habitually used to designate sign-making in general, as when we speak of the “finger-language” of the deaf-and-dumb, the “language of flowers,” &c. Or, as Professor Broca says, “there are several kinds of language; every system of signs which gives expression to ideas in a manner more or less intelligible, more or less perfect, or more or less rapid, is a language in the general sense of the word. Thus speech, gesture, dactylology, writing both hieroglyphic and phonetic, are all so many kinds of language. There is, then, a general faculty of language which presides over all these modes of expression, and which may be defined—the faculty of establishing a constant relation between an idea and a sign, be this a sound, a gesture, a figure, or a drawing of any kind.”
The best classification of the sundry exhibitions of sign-making faculty which I have met with, is one that is given by Mr. Mivart in his Lessons from Nature (p. 83). This classification, therefore, I will render in his own words.
“We may altogether distinguish six different kinds of language:—
“1. Sounds which are neither articulate nor rational, such as cries of pain, or the murmur of a mother to her infant.
“2. Sounds which are articulate but not rational, such as the talk of parrots, or of certain idiots, who will repeat, without comprehending, every phrase they hear.
“3. Sounds which are rational but not articulate, ejaculations by which we sometimes express assent to, or dissent from, given propositions.