Whether it's brusque, convincing, fraught with emotion, or dripping with innuendo, language is fundamentally a tool for conveying meaning -- a uniquely human magic trick in which you vibrate your vocal cords to make your innermost thoughts pop up in someone else's mind. You can use it to talk about all sorts of things -- from your new labradoodle puppy to the expansive gardens at Versailles, from Roger Federer's backhand to things that don't exist...