For similar reasons I hesitate to accept the current opinion that the earliest form of words is the mono-
Primitive syllabic,
syllabic. Primitive speech must have been mainly emotional or imitative. There seems to be no good reason for excluding polysyllabic forms from the earliest interjections; and it is impossible that sounds, imitations of animals should be other than for the most part polysyllabic. In every case, the length of the word would depend on the nature of the sound to be imitated, or the feeling to be expressed. African languages contain many imitative words in seven syllables. 1 Many of the agglutinated sentences of the Red Race represent an ear- lier stage of language than the monosyllabic. The simplest words may have resulted from analysis, or they may be the scattered debris of complex wholes. In a masterly essay on the Origin of Language, Bleek has developed the state- ment that an interjection was the product of an entire state of mind ; each of these primitive words being a complex of what may be called grammatical germs, which after- wards, by analysis, appear as elements of the sentence, or " parts of speech." It is certainly natural that the mind should at first see things as wholes, and itself act as a whole ; that verb, noun, qualifying particles, subject and object, should all be commingled in each effort at expres- sion. The rude instinct does not act as a body of distinct relations, but in instantaneous flashes of feelings, habits, perceptions, which the later reason cannot analyze. How natural that it should agglutinate the syllables that spring to birth out of the mysterious correspondence which unites the organs of speech with the movements of mind ! Even the more abstract mental processes are involved in this rudimentary period of language : for the crud- Compre _ est gestures and signs are evidently interpreted by hensivness the hearers as expressive of divers classes of emo- 1 Bleek, Origin of Language. 26
