This book aims to give a certain perspective on the subject of language
rather than to assemble facts about it. It has little to say of the
ultimate psychological basis of speech and gives only enough of the
actual descriptive or historical facts of particular languages to
illustrate principles. Its main purpose is to show what we conceive
language to be, what is its variability in place and time, and what are
its relations to other fundamental human interests-the problem of
thought, the nature of the historical process, race, culture, art.