It is the opinion of some philologists, however, that these demonstrative elements were probably “once full or predicative words, and that if we could penetrate to an earlier stage of language, we should meet with the original forms of which they are the maimed half-obliterated representatives.”[235] But as even these philologists do not question that all originally “predicative words” would be found to have had their predicative value determined by gesture, “if we could penetrate to an earlier stage of language,” the question whether such demonstrative elements as have come down to us were or were not themselves of originally predicative value, is not of vital importance in the present connection. For there is no doubt that pronominal elements which really were aboriginal as such, depended on accompanying gesture-signs for a conveyance of their predicative meaning; and although, as we might expect, there is a necessary absence of proof in particular cases whether these elements have come down to us in a practically aboriginal form, or whether they have done so as the worn-out remnants of independently predicative words, the general principles on which we are now engaged are not really affected by any such philological uncertainties in matters of detail. For even the authority just quoted as doubting whether we have evidence enough to conclude that demonstrative elements which have come down to us were never themselves predicative words, elsewhere says of early predicative utterance in general,—“It is certain that there was a time in the history of speech when the articulate, or semi-articulate, sounds uttered by primitive man were made the significant representatives of thought by the gestures with which they were accompanied; and this complex of sound and gesture—a complex in which, be it remembered, the sound had no meaning apart from the gesture—was the earliest sentence.”[236] And, after giving examples from languages of Further India, he adds,—“But an inflectional language does not permit us to watch the word-making process so clearly as do those savage jargons, in which a couple of sounds, like the Grebo _ni ne_, signify ‘I do it,’ or ‘You do not,’ according to the context and the gestures of the speaker. Here by degrees, with the growth of consciousness and the analysis of thought, the external gesture is replaced by some portion of the uttered sounds which agrees in a number of different instances, and in this way the words by which the relations of grammar are expressed came into being. A similar process has been at work in producing those analogical terminations whereby our Indo-European languages adapt a word to express a new grammatical relation.”