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A Of all
mankinds manifold creations, language must take
pride of place. Other
inventions
—
the
wheel,
agriculture,
sliced
bread
—
may
have
transformed
our
material existence, but
the advent of language is what made us human.
Compared to
language, all other
inventions pale in significance, since everything
we have ever
achieved depends on
language and originates from it. Without language,
we could never
have
embarked
on
our
ascent
to
unparalleled
power
over
all
other
animals,
and
even
over
nature itself.
B
But language is foremost not just because it came
first. In its own right it is
a tool of
extraordinary
sophistication, yet based
on
an idea of ingenious simplicity:
‘
this marvellous invention
of composing out of twenty-five or thirty sounds
that
infinite
variety
of
expressions
which,
whilst
having
in
themselves
no
likeness
to
what
is in our mind, allow us to disclose to
others its whole secret, and to make known to
those who cannot penetrate it all that
we imagine, and all the various stirrings of
our soul
’
. This
was how, in 1660, the renowned French grammarians
of the Port-Royal
abbey
near
Versailles
distilled
the
essence
of
language,
and
no
one
since
has
celebrated
more eloquently
the magnitude of its achievement. Even so, there
is just one flaw in
all these
hymns of
praise, for the
homage to languages unique
accomplishment
conceals
a
simple
yet
critical
incongruity.
Language
is
mankind
’
s
greatest
invention
—
except,
of
course, that it was never invented. This apparent
paradox is at the core of our
fascination with language, and it holds
many of its secrets.
C Language often seems so
skillfully drafted that one can hardly imagine it
as
anything
other
than
the
perfected
handiwork
of
a
master
craftsman.
How
else
could
this
instrument
make
so
much
out
of
barely
three
dozen
measly
morsels
of
sound?
In
themselves,
these
configurations
of
mouth
—
p,f,b,v,t,d,k,g,sh,a,e
and
so
on
—
amount
to
nothing
more
than
a
few
haphazard
spits
and
splutters,
random
noises
with
no
meaning,
no
ability
to
express,
no
power
to
explain.
But
run
them
through
the
cogs
and
wheels
of
the
language
machine, let it
arrange them in some very special orders, and
there is nothing that
these meaningless
streams of air cannot do: from sighing the
interminable boredom of
existence to
unravelling the fundamental order of the universe.
D
The
most
extraordinary thing about language,
however, is
that one
doesn
’
t have
to be a genius to set its wheels in
motion. The language machine allows just about