Anything hard was 'like a stone,' anything round 'like the moon,' and so on, the speaker suiting the action to the word, and supplementing the meaning to be understood by some gesture." [109] Here the original concrete form of language can be clearly discerned.

They had a sufficiency of names for all the objects which were of use to them, and apparently verbal ideas were largely conveyed by gesture.

Captain Forsyth states [110] that though the Korkus very seldom wash themselves, there exist in their language eight words for washing, one for washing the face, another for the hands and others for different parts of the body.

Thus we see that the verbal idea of washing was originally conceived not generally, but separately with reference to each concrete object or noun, for which a name existed and to which water was applied.
56.

Concrete nature of primitive ideas.
The primitive languages consisted only of nouns or the names of visible objects, possibly with the subsequent addition of a few names for such conceptions as the wind and the voice, which could be heard, but not seen.