THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE. 101 



matical features of the Aryan and Semitic dialects," he observes, " we 

 ■can discover the stamp of one powerful mind, once impressed on the 

 floating materials of human speech, and never to be obliterated again 

 in the course of centuries." " Most words and grammatical forms in 

 these two families," he adds, " seem to have been thrown out but once 

 by the creative powers of an individual mind ; and the ditferences of 

 the various Semitic and Aryan languages, whether ancient or modern, 

 were produced not so much by losses and new creations, as by changes 

 .and corruptions which defaced in various ways the original design of 

 those most primitive works of human art." He affirms that "no 

 new root has been added, no new grammatical form been produced, 

 in any of the Aryan provinces or dependencies, of which the elements 

 were not present at the first foundation of this mighty empire of 

 speech." Thus he regards the Semitic and Aryan languages as "the 

 manifestations and works of two individuals, which it is impossible to 

 derive from one another."* 



The same proposition, of course, must apply to every linguistic 

 family. The grammatical framework of each stock must have been 

 struck out and put together once for all. It does not necessarily 

 follow, however, — nor need we understand Professor Mliller to assert, 

 — that the framer of a new speech must, in all instances, have had a 

 powerful mind or a strong linguistic faculty. On the conti-ary, it is 

 evident enough that certain languages, such as the Chinese, the 

 Thibetan, and the Malay, indicate but a weak development of this 

 faculty. Nor does it seem literally correct to speak of one mind as 

 engaged alone in the formation of a language. Speech implies at 

 least two collocutors. It would be more exact to say that each lingu- 

 istic stock must have originated in a single household. There was an 

 Aryan family-pair, a Semitic family-pair, an Algonkin family-pair. 

 And further, it is clear that the members of each family-pair began 

 to speak together in childhood. No instance was ever known, nor 

 ■can one be reasonably imagined, of two persons, previously speech- 

 less, beginning to speak together in a new language of their own 

 invention, after they had attained maturity. On the other hand, 

 many instances are known (as is shown in the address referred to) 

 in which young children have devised and constantly used such a 

 language. 



* la Bunsen's " Philosophy of Universal History," Vol. I, p. 475. 



