Expressive English PDF Download

Excerpt from Expressive English It is often held to be a sufficient description or definition of language to speak of it as "a medium of communication among intelligent beings." Language is that, indeed, and can never be less than that. But that is its lowest office. The hen calls her brood by a glad cluck to a fine bit of grain, or warns them by a terrifying note of the sweep of a hawk. But she has soon gone round the circle of ideas appropriate to her species, and the "medium of communication" has no place in the realm beyond, where for her and hers there is nothing to communicate. In all human beings, however, except the most degraded, there is a demand for communication of thought and feeling from one to another beyond what language as used by them can yet convey. With all mental advance the reach and range and delicacy of thought and feeling evermore outstrip the capacity of words to utter them. Language is under a constant impulsion to express ideas and emotions which are still beyond its power. It is true that a decaying civilization may shrivel up, as it were, within a language, until it has no use for many words and phrases which were full of meaning to men of a nobler day. Such a language is in process of becoming a "dead language," as the Greek and Latin were becoming in Europe five centuries ago. 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.