[…] he [man] may be persuaded that the capacities and tendencies which lead man universally and inevitably to the acquisition of speech were implanted in him by the Creator for that end, and only work themselves out to a foreseen and intended result. If language itself were a gift, a faculty, a capacity, it might admit of being regarded as the subject of direct bestowal; being only a result, a historical result, to assert that it sprang into developed being along with man is to assert a miracle […].
- Whitney (1875), a pag.302