Where languages have rules of etymology and syntax, that differ greatly, which is the case of the Hebrew compared with Greek or Latin, this will become a new source of difformity. For the rules of etymology and syntax determine the application and purport of words in many cases. Agreeably to which we see that children, while yet unacquainted with that propriety of words and phrases which custom establishes, often make new words and constructions, which, though improper according to common usage, are yet very analogous to the tenor of the language in which they speak.
The modern languages of this western part of the world answer better to the Latin, than according to their original Gothic plans, on this account; inasmuch as not only great numbers of words are adopted by all of them from the Latin, but also because the reading Latin authors, and learning the Latin grammar, have disposed learned men and writers to mould their own languages in some measure after the Latin. And, conversely, each nation moulds the Latin after the idiom of its own language, the effect being reciprocal in all such cases.
In learning a new language, the words of it are at first substitutes for those of our native language; i.e. they are associated, by means of these, with the proper objects and ideas. When this association is sufficiently strong, the middle bond is dropped, and the words of the new language become substitutes for, and suggest directly and immediately, objects and ideas; also clusters of other words in the same language.
In learning a new language, it is much easier to translate from it into the native one, than back again; just as young children are much better able to understand the expressions of others, than to express their own conceptions. And the reason is the same in both cases. Young children learn at first to go from the words of others; and those who learn a new language, from the words of that language, to the things signified. And the reverse of this, viz. to go from the things signified to the words, must be difficult for a time, from what is delivered concerning successive associations under the tenth and eleventh propositions. It is to be added here, that the nature and connexions of the things signified often determine the import of sentences, though their grammatical analysis is not understood; and that we suppose the person who attempts to translate from a new language is sufficiently expert in the inverse problem of passing from the things signified to the corresponding words of his own language. The power of association is every where conspicuous in these remarks.
Cor. IV. It follows also from the reasoning of this proposition, that persons who speak the same language cannot always mean the same things by the same words; but must mistake each other’s meaning. This confusion and uncertainty arises from the different associations transferred upon the same words by the
