pointed out certain Australian dialects as originally monosyllabic; and, not content with stating that a great many African tongues are so, adduces the Shemitic to show that such simplest roots usually express the most primitive ideas and relations.^ But these data, so far as they are real, may be explained by the emphasis naturally given to such relations, which would tend to keep these terms apart from others, or more rapidly to concentrate their elements by fusion.
Languages, supposed to represent the monosyllabic stage, are either found fully capable of combining syllables of sound; or their extreme simplicity proves to be a secondary result, instead of an original quality ; or else their monosyllabism, however stiff, is far from belonging to a low stage of linguistic progress.
Evolution of speech a matter of race.
In fact, the steps by which speech shall be evolved Evolution in any people are in many important respects a question of race. A slow and difficult utterance, of confined to articulations incapable of organic relation and devoid of grammar, would prove a race to be endowed only with crude instincts but little above the brute. But such incapacity is hardly to be found in any language; and the Chinese, which has been supposed to approach it most nearly, is, as we shall see, altogether out of the category.
Onomatopœia not the source of words
The derivation of speech from imitative processes alone -has recently been argued ingeniously by Mr. F. W. Farrar. Onomatopœia is offered, in accordance of with Aristotle's dictum that "names are imitations," as the source of all those "sensible images" by which thoughts are named. Certain practical objections to the theory are admitted in his argument, and especially the impossibility of ascertaining what words are originally imitative and what are not; the same animal cry or other
See Benlœw, Aper(7t, &c. , pp. i6, 17.
