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(PART 1.)

INTRODUCTION.

LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR.

1. Language in General.-In its widest sense, the word language includes every means by which thought or feeling may be made known. Thus, we speak of the "various language" of nature and of the language of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Everything in nature, as well as everything that bears marks of the thought and labor of man, speaks, more or less plainly, a language. The world is full of inanimate things that tell of human hope and purpose and struggle, of achievement and taste and refinement. Such thought and feeling as the lower animals are capable of, they can, more or less intelligibly, make known.

But this dumb and wordless language requires no grammatical treatment, for it makes no use of nouns and verbs, or of words and sentences. It is the language of man alone that is governed by laws, and is, therefore, capable of being reduced to a science.

There are many ways in which man may make his thought known to others; as, for example, by grimace, gesture, the signs of the deaf and dumb, symbols, pictorial writing, and pictures. But better than any or all of these are oral speech and written language. It is chiefly by this faculty of speech that man is distinguished from the lower animals, and this faculty is so far above the power of expression possessed by § 14

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brutes that many people believe human language to have been a gift of divine origin.

ance.

2. Origin of the Word "Language."-The word language is derived from the Latin word lingua, "the tongue"; and, since this is the chief organ used in speech, the word for tongue is employed in many languages to mean oral speech. In the early history of our race, language was spoken, but not written. With the advance of civilization came the need for some form of language more lasting than mere verbal utterThis gave rise to the first attempts to record thought by writing. These, we are told, were at first mere symbols or rude pictures so arranged as to have a meaning more or less plain, and traces of these pictures are said to remain in the letters of our own alphabet. Thus, it is now believed that our letter A has taken its present form from the representation of an eagle by the ancient Egyptians, B from that of a crane, C from the picture of a throne, etc.

The term language denoted at first only spoken thought, but its meaning was extended as explained above. But, for grammatical science, the only kinds of language considered are spoken and written.

Definition.-Language, as treated in grammar, is the body of uttered and written signs employed by men to express and communicate their thoughts.

3. Living Languages. As has been stated, written language was an outgrowth from mere speech; and each language, both spoken and written, continues to grow and to improve as long as the people using it maintain their national existence. Discovery, invention, and change of every kind are constantly bringing many things never before heard of-new articles of manufacture, new processes, new wants and tastes and arts and sciences. These require exact expression, and many new words must be devised. On the other hand, old things pass away, and the words that named them get to be useless and are no longer employed; that is, they become obsolete. So rapid is this process of change that our own tongue as it was written a thousand years ago is as difficult to us now as the Greek, the Latin, or the German. Letters have taken on new forms, words have changed both in their form and their meaning or have passed entirely out of use, and the spelling and pronunciation of those that remain are now very different from what they were some hundreds of years ago.

A language, while it is in its actual use and is undergoing these additions, losses, and changes, is said to be a living language.

4. Dead Languages. It has often happened in the history of the world that entire peoples have lost their country by attack from without. In such events, they have sometimes been driven out by the invaders, reduced to slavery, and gradually destroyed; or, deprived of their political powers and rights, they have been permitted to remain in their country, and by a slow process of absorption, have merged their identity as a people into that of their conquerors. Many examples of such national catastrophes will occur to the student. The Roman Empire was destroyed in this way by the barbarian ancestors of the people that now inhabit Northern Europe. The Latin language was soon no longer spoken in its purity, but was mixed with the speech of the conquerors. In the passing of the centuries, there were thus formed what are known as the Romance languages-the Italian, the French, the Spanish, and the Portuguese. All that remained of the Latin language was what was found in the books that had been written in that tongue before the fall of the Roman Empire. Many of these have been lost during the long period since, but enough remain to show that these people had the richest literature at that time in the world.

But, however great has been the change wrought upon the Latin language by the races that overthrew the people of Rome, many of the books written by great authors of the ruined nation remained unchanged. These still give us in its purity the wonderful language of Rome-the language of Livy and Tacitus, of Cicero and Cæsar, of Virgil and Ovid

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