The
word, therefore, though it tells us in part how speech is effected,
reveals nothing of that ulterior meaning which is nevertheless
inseparable from any right use of the words either "speech" or
"language." It presents us with what is indeed a very frequent
adjunct of conversation, but the use of written characters, or the
finger-speech of deaf mutes, is enough to show that the word
"language" omits all reference to the most essential characteristics
of the idea, which in practice it nevertheless very sufficiently
presents to us. I hope presently to make it clear to you how and
why it should do so. The word is incomplete in the first place,
because it omits all reference to the ideas which words, speech or
language are intended to convey, and there can be no true word
without its actually or potentially conveying an idea. Secondly, it
makes no allusion to the person or persons to whom the ideas are to
be conveyed. Language is not language unless it not only expresses
fairly definite and coherent ideas, but unless it also conveys these
ideas to some other living intelligent being, either man or brute,
that can understand them.
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