It’s still holiday season here, S. — well, it is everywhere — and I’m going to indulge in some reading, but in response to your note, I would suggest language invention is wild.

God gave man a mouth, ear, and mind system tied to improvements in survival.

Language is, in essence, a social technology.

At the other end of the spectrum with languages that are adaptable, have bodies of lore (oral tradition) and literature (written tradition), one may work with the machinery — grammar, social grammar, cultural memory, lexicon — toward any number of purposes, practical and technical, poetic and dream forming.

It is within the power of language to both reflect and create perception about the nature of reality.

Few, if any, constituencies on the planet experience both the plasticity of language in many voices and mixed languages and the absolutely dismal consequences of language possessed and exploited by minds both venal and atrocious with ambitions.

It’s impossible to separate cause from effect — a predisposition toward a convenient voice; a voice encouraging a certain disposition — but if it’s in the mind, it’s in the language of the mind, specifically in fragments, phrases, sentences, and in favored chains of thought — or “habits of mind” — or in helpful or damnable invention.

There are many things that separate man from other nature, but of all of them, I would count our language ability, signal to an extraordinary intelligence, imagination, and memory (with many levels, from sound-making to symbol-stabilizing to culture-creating ideas), as our most divine and most destructive technology.

–By the Author, December 30, 2012