THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE. 99 



plest monosyllables, and that very indistinctly, is able, when a year 

 or two further advanced, to master words of two or three syllables, 

 and to form sentences which are intelligible enough to all hearers. 

 He has still, however, no comprehension of gi-ammar, and dispenses 

 not only with inflections, but usually with pronouns, articles, and the 

 other auxiliary parts of speech. Instead of " Papa, will you tell me 

 a story 1" he says, " Papa, tell Harry story ?" Instead of " the cat 

 scratched me yesterday," he says, "cat scratch Hairy yes'day." In- 

 stead of " I have just seen two pigeons flying overhead," he says, 

 *' Harry just now see two pigeon — pigeon fly high, high." Every 

 parent will recognize this style of speech ; and the philologist will see 

 that, except in the absence of pronouns (and sometimes even in this 

 respect,) it repi-esents the simplest form of agglutinative speech, such 

 as we And in the Malay and JNIanciiu groui)s of languages. Our chil- 

 dren, under the insti-uction of their elders, quickly pass beyond this 

 stage ; but we can readily understand how a group of young people, 

 not endowed with a large measure of the language-making faculty, 

 might, if left entirely to themselves, be satisfied to let their language 

 remain in this stage. 



If, however, in a family of children, such as we have supposed to 

 be left to form a speech for themselves, the elders proved to be en- 

 dowed with a good linguistic faculty, we may feel confident that, long 

 before reaching maturity, they would begin to employ inflections, and 

 that, if this faculty happened to be particularly strong, these inflec- 

 tions would, by the time the children were fully grown, have developed 

 into a complete and elaborate grammatical system. The steps by 

 which this stage would be reached are sufiiciently evident. The most 

 •essential adverbs or adjectives of place and time, number and quality, — 

 here, there, yonder — now, then, soon, yesterday, to-morrow — one, two, 

 three, many, more — -good, bad, much, little, — would first appear. 

 From the adverbs of place would spring both the pronouns and the 

 prepositions. If the language remained in the agglutinative stage, 

 these auxiliary terms would continue isolated, or loosely attached to 

 the principal words, the names of things or of actions. But a stronger 

 language-forming faculty would not be satisfied to rest here. The 

 qualifying particles would presently be incorporated with the nouns 

 and verbs, to form cases, numbers, tenses and moods. The Aryan or 

 the Euscarian speech would thus be developed. Or, perhaps, when 



