LANGUAGE. 349 
yet, in our own language, as well as in the Greek, following Mr. 
Horne Tooke, the greater number are derived from nouns : and 
those (of which there are some in the Greek) which may be indif- 
ferently derived from a noun, or a verb, may be referred to the 
former ; because, many of the adnouns from w^hich adverbs are 
derived in the Greek, have been pointed out as disused ; and 
therefore the verbs from which adverbs are exclusively derived, 
are likely to be derived themselves from obsolete adnouns, which 
cannot be recalled ; for it has been philosophically advanced, that 
originally there could have been but one sort of words, that is, 
nouns, or the n?imes of the objects of our sensations and ideas.* 
I consider the absence of adverbs, participles, and prepositions, 
certainly the least indispensible parts of speech, and favouring 
copiousness rather than energy, to be a proof of the almost genuine, 
or primeval simphcity of the Accra and Fantee languages, which 
have not advanced or altered, even in the small degree of their arts 
or manners; for these have only been ameliorated by commercial 
intercourse with strangers, who not understanding their language 
could not have suggested improvements, and from whose languages, 
they being equally uninteUigible, amendments could not have been 
copied. We find Portuguese nouns, and nouns only, adopted in 
the Fantee ; and that, of necessity, as Saxon nouns were adopted 
in the Welsh or Celtic, because they had no words to designate 
novelties they had never before seen or heard of; and, therefore, 
they called them as those did who introduced them. These primi- 
tive languages being, nevertheless, thoroughly adequate to oratory 
* " Every verb consists of a pronoun, expressing an agent, and of a noun, or the sub- 
stitute of a noun, expressing an object. Thus, omg and syoj joined and abbreviated is 
oivoai ; and this term would be sufficient to express / drinic wine, though originally it 
meant only wine I ; association supplying to the speaker and the person addressed the 
intermediate notion of dritiking:'' Jones. 
