n the struggle
for life, because otherwise men, as yet barely emerged from the animal
stage, would never have made the painful mental efforts necessary
to devise and remember the words. Words which would be distinctly
advantageous in the struggle would be names for the animals and
plants which they ate, and for the animals which ate them. By saying
the name and pointing in any direction, the presence of such animals
or plants in the vicinity would be intimated more quickly and more
accurately than by signs or actions. Such names were then, it may
be supposed, the first words. Animals or plants of which they made
no use nor from which they apprehended any danger, would for long be
simply disregarded, as nothing was to be gained by inventing names for
them. The first words were all nouns and the names of visible objects,
and this state of things probably continued for a long period and
was the cause of many erroneous primitive conceptions and ideas. Some
traces of the earliest form of language can still be discerned. Thus of
Santali Sir G. Grierson states: "Every word can perform the function
of a verb, and every verbal form can, according to circumstances,
be considered as a noun, an adjective or a verb. It is often simply
a matter of convenience which word is considered as a noun and which
as an adjective ... Strictly speaking, in Santali there is no real
verb as distinct from the other classes of words. Every independent
word can perform the function of a verb, and every verbal form can in
its turn be used as a noun or adjective." [107] And of the Dravidian
languages he says: "The genitive of ordinary nouns is in reality an
adjective, and the difference between nouns and adjectives is of no
great importance ... Many cases are both nouns and verbs. Nouns of
agency are very commonly used as verbs." [108] Thus if it be admitted
that nouns preceded verbs as parts of speech, which will hardly be
disputed, these passages show how the semi-abstract adjectives and
verbs were gradually formed from the names of concrete nouns. Of
the language of the now extinct Tasmanian aborigines it is stated:
"Their speech was so imperfectly constituted that there was no settled
order or arrangement of words in the sentence, the sense being eked
out by face, manner and gesture, so that they could scarcely converse
in the dark, and all intercourse had to cease with nightfall. Abstract
forms scarcely existed, and while every gum-tree or wattle-t