Wilhelm von Humboldt: Perbedaan antara revisi

Tahun 1834, Humboldt, dalam buku yang sedang ditulisnya, ''Über die Kawi-Sprache auf der Insel Java'' ("Mengenai [[bahasa Kawi]] di pulau Jawa", 1836-39) menciptakan nama "[[rumpun bahasa Melayu-Polinesia|Melayu-Polinesia]]" untuk menyebut [[rumpun bahasa]] yang bertebar dari pulau [[Madagaskar]] di barat sampai [[pulau Paskah]] di timur.

 

:"... first clearly laid down that the character and structure of a language expresses the inner life and knowledge of its speakers, and that languages must differ from one another in the same way and to the same degree as those who use them. Sounds do not become words until a meaning has been put into them, and this meaning embodies the thought of a community. What Humboldt terms the inner form of a language is just that mode of denoting the relations between the parts of a sentence which reflects the manner in which a particular body of men regards the world about them. It is the task of the morphology of speech to distinguish the various ways in which languages differ from each other as regards their inner form, and to classify and arrange them accordingly." ''[[1911 Encyclopædia Britannica]]''