Remarks on the Subject of Language

Book excerpt: Excerpt from Remarks on the Subject of Language: With Some Observations in the Form of Notes, Illustrative of the Information Which Language May Afford of the History and Opinions of Mankind IT is necessary to remark, with respect to the nature of the evidence which the following pages alford of the conclusions deduced from them, that the question is not whether these conclusions are in every instance correct, or sufficiently borne out; it would be absurd to suppose that they were: with respect to particulars, facts unknown to me may exist which would modify or refute the inference. But the question is with respect to general results, whether such a concurrence in different languages, in different and remote portions of the earth, and at periods of the earliest antiquity, can by possibility be attributed to accident. This is proof, and the only species of proof of which such subjects admit. It has been justly and judiciously remarked by o'brien, the author of the Irish Dictionary, That it is a selfevident position that no language can have words significant of any such things, or modes of things, as the people who speak it never had any sort of knowledge of, by being objects either of their senses or their The very arbitrary and diversified principles on which the languages of the world have been constructed, and the general coincidence in the signs and things signified, evince the distance of the periods to which these common conceptions of things, and the use of the oral signs for them, are to be referred. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.