Nature taught the members of the animal kingdom to communicate their feelings, one to another, by those expressive cries and gestures which are so descriptive. Afterward, names of objects were invented by slow degrees, in aid of signs. This mode of speaking by natural signs could not be all at once applied, for language, in its infancy, must have been extremely crude, and there certainly was a period in the history of all rude nations when conversation was carried on by the use of a very few words, intermixed with a multitude of exclamations and earnest gestures significant of the meaning intended to be conveyed.
In the early days, the small stock of words which were in use, rendered signs absolutely necessary for explaining the conceptions and rude, uncultivated beings, not having signs at hand, with the few words which they knew it was naturally labor to make themselves understood by varying their tones of voice and accompanying their voices with the most significant gesticulations they could make.
The primitive search was for signs and sounds which bore an analogy to the thing signified. The pronunciation of the earliest sounds of the languages was accompanied with more gesticulations and with more and greater inflections of the voice than we now use. Certainly there was more action in it, and it was conducted upon more of a crying or a singing tone. Necessity first gave rise to this primitive yet admirable way of speaking, and it may be said of it that it was action explanatory of meaning.
Inflections of voice are so natural that to some nations it has appeared easier to express different ideas by varying the tones in which they pronounce the same word than to contrive words for all of their ideas. I instance the Chinese in particular. The number of words in their language is not great, but in speaking they vary each of their words by not less than five different tones, by which they make the same word signify five different things. This gives the appearance of singing, or music, to their speech, so noticeable in their conversation, for these inflections of voice, which, in the infancy of language, were no more than harsh or disconsonant cries, must, as language gradually becomes more polished, pass into smoother and more musical sounds. Hence is formed what is styled the prosody of language.