THE WITNESS OF PHILOLOGY. 317 



they bring us within easy distance of the time when there can 

 have been no such forms at all. Even Professor INIax Mliller 

 allows that there are still existing languages "in which there 

 is as yet no outward difference between what we call a root, 

 and a noun or a verb. Remnants of that phase in the growth 

 of language we can detect even in so highly developed a 

 language as Sanskrit." Elsewhere he remarks : — '' A child 

 says, ' I am hungry," without an idea that / is different from 

 Jiungry, and that both are united by an auxiliary verb. . . . 

 A Chinese child would express exactly the same idea by one 

 word, ' Shi,' to cat, or food, &c. The only difference would be 

 that a Chinese child speaks the language of a child, an 

 English child the language of a man." * 



It is no doubt remarkable that the Chinese should so long 

 have retained so primitive a form ; but, as we know, the 

 functions of predication have here been greatly assisted by 

 devices of syntax combined with conventionally significant 

 intonation, which really constitute Chinese a well-developed 

 language of a particular type. Among peoples of a much 

 lower order of mental evolution, however, we are brought into 

 contact with still more rudimentary forms of predication, 

 inasmuch as these devices of syntax and intonation have not 

 been evoh'ed. As previously stated, the most primitive of 

 all actually existing forms of predication where articulate 

 language is concerned, is that wherein the functions of a verb 

 are undertaken by the apposition of a noun with what is 

 equivalent to the genitive case of a pronoun. Thus, in 

 Dayak, if it is desired to say, " Thy father is old," " Thy father 

 looks old," &c., in the absence of verbs it is needful to frame 

 the predication by mere apposition, thus : — " Father-of-thee, 

 age-of-him." Or, to be more accurate, as the .syntax follows 

 that of gesture-language in placing the predicate before the 

 subject, we should translate the proposition into its most 

 exact equivalent by saying, " His age, thy father." SimilarK', 

 if it is required to make such a statement as that "lie is 

 wearing a white jacket," the form of the statement would be, 



* Siicncc of Thoui^ht, [i. 241. 



