Otto Jespersen’s Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin (1922) is one of the great early works of modern linguistics. The Danish scholar surveys how languages arise, change, and decay, drawing on a vast knowledge of European tongues to ask how children acquire speech and how grammatical systems evolve over time.
Jespersen rejected the notion that linguistic change is decay, arguing instead that languages tend toward greater efficiency and expressive power. Written with clarity and a generous range of examples, the book influenced generations of linguists and helped establish the discipline on scientific foundations. It remains a classic introduction to the history and theory of human language.