Excerpt from Language for Everybody: What It Is and How to Master It That machine is language - spoken, written, gestural, symbolic. It is language that permits a person to place his thoughts at the disposal of another. Language precedes, accompanies, and follows practically all human endeavor. Without language, ninety-nine percent of human activity would cease. The more we know about an automobile, the better we can take care of it, the better we can use it, the farther and faster we can travel in it. And so with language. What is it? What are its parts? How did it begin and how was it made? What makes it go, and how can we improve it so that it will carry us farther, faster, and more comfortably on the journey of communication? I have written this book to answer these questions simply and helpfully. I have written it as an introduction to lan guage, much as an automotive engineer might take you on a tour that would give you a comprehensive View of how an automobile comes into being. If I may carry the metaphor further, I have planned a tour that will take you to the iron mines of language, through the steel refineries and casting plants, and into the factories, where the parts are made and assembled. I try to tell in a few words what the parts are, and I conduct you to the cutaways, in which you can see the interior machinery in motion. Finally, I take you in a finished car to the proving grounds, where we see what the car can do under all kinds of conditions, and finally to the highway where other cars of all makes and models are streaming past. The car is yours to join with the stream and, whenever you wish, to turn off into the less traveled roads and lanes. 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.