THE WITNESS OF PHILOLOGY, 297 



Again, as Professor Friedrich Miiller says, "the child's 

 word Ba-ba, sleep, does not mean sleep only, as a particular 

 kind of repose, but rather also all the circumstances which 

 appertain to sleep, such as cot, bed, bolster, bed-clothes, &c.* 

 It likewise and indifferently means, sleeping, sleepy, sleeper, 

 &c., and may stand for any variety of propositions, such as 

 " I am sleepy," " I want to go to sleep," "He is asleep," &c. 



Of course innumerable other illustrations might be given ; 

 but these are enough to show what is meant by a " sentence- 

 word." The next thing we have to notice is the manner in 

 which a young child particularizes the meanings of its 

 sentence-words, so as to limit their highly generic significance 

 per sCy and thus to make them convey the special significance 

 intended. Briefly, the one and only means which the child 

 has of doing this is by the employment of tone and gesture. 

 Here the suiting of the action to the word is a necessary 

 condition to semiotic utterance ; the more primitive forms of 

 sign-making are the needful supplements to these commence- 

 ments of higher forms. And not only so ; they are likewise 

 in large part the parents of these higher forms. It is by 

 pointing (i.e. falling back on what I have called the earliest 

 or "indicative stage" of language) that a child is able to 

 signify the place, agent, instrument, &c., to which it requires 

 a sentence-word to apply ; and thus we catch our first 

 glimpse of the highly important fact that the earliest 

 indications of grammar are given by the simultaneous use of 

 sentence-words and gesture-signs. 



It will now be my object to prove, that in the history of 

 the race spoken language began in the form of sentence- 

 words ; that grammar is the child of gesture; and, con- 

 sequently, that predication is but the adult form of the 

 self-same faculty of sign-making, which in its infancy we 

 know as indication. Being myself destitute of authority in 

 matters philological, I will everywhere rely upon the agree- 

 ment of recognized leaders of the science. 



Bunsen, I believe, was the first to point out that in 



• Grund. d, Sprach^viss.^ i., 43. 



