nite meaning, though
still at the bottom of the scale of language, the first stepping stones
from the vague cry toward the significant word.

Between this stage and that of human language an immense gap supervenes,
a broad abyss which it seems at first sight impossible to bridge. As the
facts stand, however, it has been largely bridged by man himself. Side
by side with the highly intricate languages which now exist, are
various primitive forms of speech which take us far back toward the
origin of human language. So advanced a people as the Chinese speak a
language practically composed of root words, the higher forms of
expression being attained by simple devices in the combination of these
primitive word forms. The same may be said, in a measure, of ancient
Egyptian speech. We can conceive of an early state of affairs in which
these devices of word compounding were not yet employed, and in which
each word existed as a separate expression, unmodified by association
with any other word. Among the savage races of the earth very crude
forms of language often exist, the methods of associating words into
sentences being of the simplest character, though few surpass the
Chinese in simplicity of system.

But all this represents an advanced stage of language evolution, a
development of thought and its instrument which has taken thousands of
years to complete. We cannot fairly judge from it what the speech of
primitive man may have been, for in every case there has been a long
process of development; aided, no doubt, in many cases, by educative
influences acting from the more advanced upon the speech of the less
advanced races.

If we seek to analyze any of these languages, the most intricate as well
as the least advanced, we find ourselves in most instances able to
isolate the root word as the basic element of speech. From this simple
form all the more developed forms seem to have arisen. Take away their
combining devices, and the root words fall apart like so many beads of
speech, each with a defined significance of its own and fully capable of
existing by itself. The Aryan and the Chinese especially offer
themselves to this analytic method. Strip off the suffixes and affixes
from Aryan words, get down to the germinal forms from which these words
have grown, isolate these germs of speech, and we find ourselves in a
language of root forms, each of which has grown vague and wide in
significance as the modifying elements that l