THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 59 



applied to the ideas is a subject on which philologists 

 are not agreed. One favorite notion has been that 

 the first sounds were imitative of sounds in nature. 

 Some words are manifestly so, as, for example, the 

 word '' cuckoo." But this theory of the origin of the 

 first words has been much disputed, and the evidence 

 for it is not very strong. The spontaneous cries of 

 animals have also been suggested as furnishing a 

 starting point. These emotional cries are recogniz- 

 able in all higher animals, and they clearly indicate 

 two different mental states at least. We may recog- 

 nize among animals that use these cries one indicat- 

 ing a need or desire, and another indicating a warn- 

 ing, a summons, or a threat. Man, with a more effi- 

 cient vocal apparatus, increased these emotional cries 

 by reduplication and intonation until, according to 

 some, they became the starting point of speech. To 

 these latter were added other sounds derived from 

 an attempt to imitate sounds in nature, used first to 

 indicate the object imitated, but from this easily com- 

 ing to refer to the properties of the object. ^Vhat- 

 ever may have been the origin of these first words, 

 whether by imitation or by spontaneous cries, or 

 otherwise, of course all trace of their origin soon dis- 

 appeared as they acquired new and more definite 

 meanings and began to crystallize into language. 



In such a primitive language there were doubtless 

 only a small number of sounds expressive of the gen- 

 eral notions that entered into the life of man. Words 

 were at first whole sentences. Into a village a man 

 runs shouting ''Elephants!" and this one word is 

 enough to announce that he has seen these animals 

 and summons others to join in a plan for hunting 

 them. When these pregnant words were sujople- 



