The most obvious and easy mode of accomplishing this, would be to retain the radical part of the primitive sound, and by variations or additions, to indicate the precise man ner in which it was to be applied.
We have already observed, that in the complex prime val sounds, the wish or desire of concurrence, which was the chief impelling motive of communication, would be viewed as the predominant part. To this, therefore, the radical sound would be specially appropriated, to intimate such desire, along with the determination to have it gra tified, if that was in the speaker's power. Now, these are precisely the characteristics of the imperative verb. We may therefore consider ourselves as warranted in assuming the imperative verb, denoting in general our desire to ac complish an object, either by direct command, if we con ceive ourselves possessed of power to compel it, or by re quest and supplication, if can only attain it by the per mersioe .f another, as constituting the nucleus or radical part of language, front which not only the other branches of the verb, but also the other classes of words, were gra dually to be formed For the accomplishing any object of desire by the con currence of others, it is absolutely necessary, in the first place, that uo action of some kind or other should be per formed acttoii is, therefore, always implied in the use of the imperai tee stein, whether in the way of command or entreaty. When the person addressed is willing to coin ply and concur for the attainmeet of the desired object, he will naturally sign fy this by repeating the sign by which that wish was signified, bet by repeating it with such a va riation in form, as may at once indicate that he complies with the wish, and thct he is wilting to concur for accom plishing it. Hence, besides the imperative, another branch of the verb, denotieg the willingness to comply, is formed, That intention of compliance may exist in various forms; it may amount to an absolute implied promise or agree ment of concurrence, either instant or future; or it may amount only to an engagement, to be regulated by some intervening event. It is easy to conceive that each of these would soon come to he denoted by variations of one species or other upon the primitive imperative sign. As soon as the action was performed, this too would be com municated, and for that communication another variation would be formed, still referring to the first and radical sign.
In this manner, we can easily conceive how all the parts of the verb gradually arose from the simple imperative sign, merely by following out the communications of thought which the necessity of mutual aid must produce in any society.
Although upon these grounds verbs may, and indeed must be, regarded as the real groundwork, or radical part of language, yet there are other classes of words, also, so necessarily connected with them, that the same principles which formed the different parts of the verb must imme diately suggest the necessity of some farther variations. The subject of language, as already stated, is action. Now, in the conception of every action, it cannot be doubted, that besides the operation itself, there necessarily must he other three component parts—the agent, the subject, and the ef fect produced ; each of these it will soon be requisite to mark by corresponding vocal signs. The subject of the action is what first would assume a separate denorninatiou, formed probably at first by taking, as its radical part, the denomination of that pat ticular action, or class of actions, Most commonly directed upon it, or most generally exhi bited by it. Hence would arise the class of nouns. the names at first of external objects chiefly, the usual sub jects of action, and as such for the most part exciting the emotions and feelings of the mind, afterwards extended to the mental operations themselves, and to the abstract con ceptions suggested by human actions and human con duct.
In regard to any specific action, the agent and the subject are certainly completely distinct ; yet, in the course of hu man affairs, it continually occurs that they, as it were, change places; so that the agent in one operation becomes the subject in another. From this circumstance, it takes i place, that, in language, no separate class of words, in ge neral, has been formed for marking whether an object stands in one relation or the other; yet still the distinction is in most cases attended to, and the relation denoted either by a particular, though minute change in some part of the word, or by such a position in the sentence, as indicates in what relation it is to be held.