In the Classical period, it was possible to define the individuality of a language on the basis of several criteria: the proportions of the different sounds employed to form the words (there are languages with a majority of vowels and others with a majority of consonants), the precedence accorded certain categories of words (languages favouring concrete substantives, languages favouring abstract substantives, etc.), the manner of representing relations (by prepositions or by declensions), the preferred order of the words (whether the logical subject is placed first, as in French, or precedence is given to the most important words, as in Latin); in these ways distinctions were made between Northern languages and Mediterranean languages, languages of feeling and languages of need, languages of freedom and languages of slavery, barbarous languages and civilized languages, languages of logical reasoning and languages of rhetorical argumentation; none of these distinctions, however, was concerned with anything but the way in which languages were able to analyse representation, and subsequently to combine its elements.