POWELL] PHILOLOGY CXLV 



the ex})erience of very many generations was necessary to the 

 prodnetion of the apparatus, and without doubt it can be 

 affirmed that oral sjjeech itself was de\"eloped in many of its 

 essential characteristics during the process. 



From study of the speech of birds we are led to conclude 

 that the primitive speech of man was probably exclamatory, 

 and that the first words were designed as warnings, calls, invi- 

 tations to mates, and other simple expressions. To these were 

 then added pronouns which served both demonstrati^'e and 

 personal functions. The /, the you, and the he probably sub- 

 served the purpose of the here, the there of you, and the there 

 of liini, for which specialized cries were developed even as they 

 are among the lower animals. Such cries may best be called 

 exclamations; thus the exclamation is the first part of speech. 

 It is a verb or word of the imperative mode in being an excla- 

 mation, and it is a novm in being a pronoun. In this stage 

 parts of speech are undifferentiated, for every word ser^'es the 

 purpose of all parts of speech. Refined distinctions of thought 

 and refined distinctions of expression were not as yet. 



From observations of child-language and from observations 

 of bird-speech it seems probable that inflections or glides of 

 the voice from higher to lower keys constitute the primitive 

 method of differentiating the meanings of such words. Then, 

 perliaps, adjectives of good and bad were developed, not as 

 adjectives, but as asserters of good and evil. They were thus 

 verbs as adjectives and as asserters. Thus pronominal verbs 

 aiid adjectival verbs may have been made ere the organs of 

 speech were fully developed for the expression of well-differ- 

 entiated sounds. Words of a simple character were made with 

 undifferentiated meanings, of undifferentiated sounds, by 

 undifferentiated organs. Thus far we may legitimately go, 

 guided by the phenomena of bird-speech and child-language. 

 To trace the evolution of oral language beyond this stage we 

 must depend on vestigial jjhenomena. 



To set forth the characteristics of oral speech it will be found 

 advantageous to explain the evolution of its characteristics as 

 found in the higher languages. For this pxu'pose it becomes 

 necessary to explicate the elements of oral speech. These ele- 



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