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"Like the whistle of the winds, the lowing of oxen, and the chirp of birds, words are mere sounds, apart from the signification which they acquire conventionally or otherwise; and to the people of one nation, the unaccustomed language of another nation is still unmeaning sounds. Words, whenever used significantly, must, therefore, signify other words or unverbal things, or both; but so far as words signify other words, I shall not discuss their meaning, how important soever the verbal meaning of words may be; for it constitutes a branch of learning, which has been abundantly cultivated, and I can add nothing thereto. I design to speak of only the unverbal signification of words, --the signification which no explanatory words can reach, it underlying them all. To analyze the meaning of words into verbal and unverbal, is, I suppose, new, and it is as useless as new, unless I am correct in the above assumption; that words are unmeaning sounds when they possess no ultimate signification that is unverbal. As this character of words pervades all I shall say, I bring it prominently into consideration at the commencement of our discussions, that if the assumption is fallacious, the fallacy may be readily and speedily detected. Words have, heretofore, been defined as signs of ideas, and the meaning of words has been sought in the ideas of which the words are said to be the"--Chapter. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Language and languages.