Such a language is far below ours in explicitness; but it would suffice for a great deal of successful communication; indeed (as will be shown farther on) there are many languages even now in existence which are little better off. So a look of approval or disgust, a gesture of beckoning or repulsion, a grunt of assent or inquiry, is as significant as a sentence, means a sentence, is translatable into a sentence, and hence may even in a certain way be called a sentence; and in the same way, but only so, the original roots of language may be said to have been sentences. In point of fact, between the holophrastic gesture or uttered sign and the sentence which we can now substitute for it-for example between the sign of beckoning and the equivalent sentence, “ I want you to come here ”-lies the whole history of development of inilective speech.
What has been this history of development, how the first scanty and formless signs have been changed into the immense D¢, ,, ,, ,, ,. variety and fullness of existing speech, it is of course ment of impossible to point out in detail, or by demonstration L'"¥'-'ag' of facts, because nearly the Whole process is hidden in the darkness of an impenetrable past. The only way to cast any light upon it is by careful induction from the change and growth which are seen to have been going on in the recent periods for which we have recorded evidence, or which are going on at the present time. Of some groups of related languages we can read the life for three or four thousand years back, and by comparison can infer it much farther; and the knowledge thus won is what we have to apply to the explanation of periods and languages otherwise unknown. Nothing has a right to be admitted as a factor in language-growth of which the action is not demonstrable in recorded language. Our own family of languages is the one of whose development most is known, by observation and well-warranted inference; and it may be well here to sketch the most important features of its history, by way of general illustration. fi
Apparently the earliest class-distinction traceable in Indo-European speech is that of pronominal roots, or signs of position, d, , from the more general mass of roots. It is not a European formal distinction, marked by a structural difference, SP°°"" but, so far as can be seen, is founded only on the assignment by usage of certain elements to certain offices Formal distinction began with combination, the addition of. one element to another, their fusion into a single word, and the reduction of the one part to a subordinate value, as sign of a certain modification of meaning of the other. Thus, doubtless by endings of pronominal origin, were made the first verb forms, or words used only when predication was intended (since that is all that makes a verb), conveying at first a distinction of persons only, then of persons and numbers, while the further distinctions of tense and mode were by degrees added. To the nouns, which became nouns by the setting up of the separate and special class of verbs, were added in like manner distinctions of case, of number, and of gender. With the separation of noun and verb, and the establishment of their respective inflexion, the creative work of language-making is virtually done; the rest is a matter of differentiation of uses. For the noun (noun substantive) and the adjective (noun adjective) become two parts of speech only by a gradually deepened separation of use; there is no original or formal distinction between them; the pronouns as a rule merely add the noun-inflexion to a special set of stems, adverbs are a part of the same formation as noun cases, prepositions are adverbs with a specialized construction, of secondary growth; conjunctions are the products of a like specialization; articles, where found at all, are merely weakened demonstratives and numerals.
To the process of form-making, as exhibited in this history, belong two parts: the one external, consisting in the addition of one existing element of speech to another and their combination into a single word; the other internal, consisting in the adaptation of the compound to its special use and involving the subordination of one element to the other Both parts appear also abundantly in other departments of language-change, and throughout the whole history of our languages; nothing has to be assumed for the earliest formations which is not plainly illustrated in the latest. For example, the last important addition to the formative apparatus of English is the common adverb-making suffix -ly, coming, as already pointed out, from the independent adjective like. There was nothing at first to distinguish a compound like godly (godlzke) from one like storm-tossed, save that the former was more adaptable than the other to wider uses; resemblance is an idea easily generalized into appurtenance and the like, and the conversion of godlzke to godly is a simple result of the processes of phonetic change described farther on The extension of the same element to combination with adjectives instead of nouns, and its conversion to adverb making value, is a much more striking case of adaptation, and is nearly limited to English among the Germanic languages that have turned like into a suffix. A similar striking case of cornbination and adaptation is seen in the Romanic adverb-making suffix mente or ment, coming from the Latin ablative menle, “ with mind.” So, to make a Romanic future like donneraz, “ I shall give, ” there was needed in the first place the preexisting elements, donner, “ to give, ” and az, “ I have, " and their combination; but this is only a part; the other indispensable part is the gradual adaptation of a phrase meaning “I have something before me] for giving ” to the expression of simple futurity, donabo. So far as the adaptation is concerned the case is quite parallel to that of j'al donné, “I have given, ” &c. (equivalent phrases or combinations are found in many languages), where the expression of possession of something that is acted on has been in like manner modified into the expression of past action. Parallel in both combination and adaptation is the past tense loved, according to a widely accepted theory, from lo-ve-did, while we have again the same adaptation without combination in the equivalent phrase dld love. That these are examples of the process by which the whole inflictive structure of Ind.-European language was built up admits of no reasonable question. Our belief that it is so rests upon the solid foundation that we can demonstrate no other process, and that this one is sufficient. It is true that we can prove such an origin for our formative elements in only a small minority of instances; but this is just what was to be expected, considering what we know of the disguising processes of language-growth. No one would guess in the mere y of ably (for able-ly) the presence of the adjective like, any more than in the altered final of sent and the shortened vowel of led the effect of a did once added to send and lead. The true history of these forms can be shown, because there happen to be other facts left in existence to show it; where such facts are not within reach we are left to infer by analogy from the known to the unknown. The validity of our inference can only be shaken by showing that there are forms incapable of having been made in this Way, or that there are and have been other ways of making forms. Of the former there is evidently but small chance; if a noun-form meaning, “ with mind ” can become the means of conversion of all the adjectives of a language into adverbs, and a verb meaning “ have ” (and, yet earlier, “ seize ”) of signifying both future and past time, there is obviously nothing that is impossible of attainment by such means. As regards the latter, no one appears to have even attempted to demonstrate the genesis of formative elements in any other way during the historical periods of language; it is simply assumed that the early methods of language-making will have been something different from and superior in spontaneity and fruitfulness to the later ones; that certain forms, or forms at certain periods, were made out-and-out, as forms; that signs of formal distinction somehow exuded from roots and stems; that original words were many-membered, and that a formative value settled in some member of them-and the like. Such doctrines are purely fanciful, and so opposed to the teachings both of observation and of sound theory that the epithet absurd is hardly too strong to apply to them. If the later races, of developed intelligence, and trained in the methods of a fuller expression, can only win a new form by a long and gradual process of combination and adaptation, why should the earlier and comparatively untrained generations have been able to do any
