The Wikipedia writes correctly about what constitutes a scripting language [L1 ]. More on the subject appears on the local page called, "Why Scripting".
RLH - Us high falootin' folks call them "dynamic languages". [L2 ]
Article by Larry Wall on scripting http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2007/12/06/soto-11.html Article by John Ousterhout about scripting [L3 ]
"The State of the Scripting Universe" [L4 ]