ROOTS OF LANGUAGE, 275 



this original material may have been, from the first there 

 must have been a struggle for existence among the really 

 primitive roots— only those surviving which were most fitted 

 to survive as roots, i.e. as the parent stems of subsequent 

 word-formations. Now, it appears to me obvious enough 

 that archaic— though not necessarily aboriginal — words which 

 were expressive of actions, would have stood a better chance 

 of surviving as roots than those which may have been 

 expressive of objects ; first because they were likely to have 

 been more frequently employed, and next because many of 

 them must have lent themselves more readily to metaphorical 

 extension— ^jr/^67.^//;/ under a system of animistic tJionght* 

 And, if these things were so, there is nothing remarkable in 

 words significant of actions having alone survived as roots.f 



The consideration that it is only those words which were 

 successful in the struggle for existence that can have become 

 the progenitors of subsequent language — and therefore the only 



* " It must be borne in mind that primitive man did not distinguish between 

 phenomena and volitions, but included everything under the head of actions, not 

 only the involuntary actions of human beings, such as breathing, but also the 

 movements of inanimate things, the rising and setting of the sun, the wind, 

 the flowing of water, and even such purely inanimate phenomena as fire, 

 electricity, &c. ; in short, all the changing attributes of things were conceived as 

 voluntary actions" (Sweet, IVords^ Logic and Gramvia?-^ p. 4S6). 



t As a matter of fact, and as we shall subsequently see, there is an immense 

 body of purely philological evidence to show that verbs are really a much later 

 product of lingiustic growth than either nouns or pronouns. This is proved by 

 their comparative paucity in many existing languages of low development (their 

 place being taken by pronominal appositions, «S:c.) ; and also by tracing the 

 origin of many of them to other parts of speech. (See especially Garnett's 

 Essays, Pritchard on the Celtic Languages, Quart. Rev., Sept. 1S76; The 

 Derivation of Words from Pronotninal and Prepositional Roots, Proc. Philol. Soc. 

 vol. ii. ; and On the Nature and Analysis of the Verb, ibid., vol. iii.) Later on 

 it will be shown that in the really primitive stages of language-growth there is no 

 assignable distinction between any of the parts of speech. Archdeacon Farrar 

 well remarks, "The invention of a verb requires a greater effort of abstraction 

 than that of a noun. . . . We cannot accept it as even possible that from roots 

 meaning to shifie, to be bright, names were formed for sun, moon, stars. Sec. . , . 

 In some places, indeed, Professor Miiller appears to hold the correct view, that at 

 first ' roots ' stood for any and every part of speech, just as the monosyllabic 

 expressions of children do" (Chapters on Language, pp. 196, 197; see, also, 

 some good remarks on the subject by Sir Graves Haughton, Bengali Grammar^ 

 p. loS). 



