THE WITNESS OF PHILOLOGY, 313 



condition-words. Roughly speaking, this classification corre- 

 sponds with the grammatical nouns, pronouns, adjectives, 

 active verbs, and passive verbs ; but as our regress through 

 the history of language necessitates a total disregard of all 

 grammatical forms, it will conduce to clearness in my 

 exposition if we consent to use the terms suggested. 



The next thing we notice is that the distinction between 

 object-words and attributive-words begins to grow indistinct, 

 and eventually all but disappears: substantives and adjectives 

 are fused in one, and whether the resulting word is to be 

 understood as subject or predicate — as the name of the object 

 or the name of a quality — depends upon its position in the 

 sentence, upon the tone in which it is uttered, or, in still 

 earlier stages, upon the gestures by which it is accompanied. 

 Thus, as Professor Sayce remarks, "the apposition of two 

 substantives [and, a fortiori, of two such partly or wholly 

 undifferentiated words as we are now contemplating] is the 

 germ out of which no less than three grammatical conceptions 

 have developed — those of the genitive, of the predicate, and 

 of the adjective."* 



While this process of fusion is being traced in the case of 

 substantives and adjectives, it becomes at the same time 

 observable that the definition of verbs is gradually growing 

 more and more vague, until it is difficult, and eventually 

 impossible, to distinguish a verb at all as a separate part of 

 speech. 



Thus we are led back by continuous stages, or through 

 greater and greater simplifications of language-structure, to a 

 state of things where words present what naturalists might 

 term so generalized a type as to include, each within itself, all 

 the functions that afterwards severally devolve upon different 

 parts of speech. Like those animalcules which are at the same 

 time but single cells and entire organisms, these are at the 

 same time single words and independent sentences. More- 

 over, as in the one case there is life, in the other case there 

 is meaning; but the meaning, like the life, is vague and 



• Sayce, Introduction, cr'f., i. 415. 



