Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/810

PHILOLOGY language, and hence the existence of such a thing as a mixed language. The difference is mainly a verbal one ; but it would seem about as reasonable to deny that a region is inundated so long as the tops of its highest mountains are above water. According to the simple and natural meaning of the term, nearly all languages are mixed, in varying degree and within varying limits, which the circumstances of each case must explain. These are the leading processes of change seen at work in all present speech and in all known past speech, and hence to be regarded as having worked through the whole history of speech. By their operation, every existing tongue has been developed out of its rudimentary radical condition to that in which we now see it. The variety of existing languages is well-nigh infinite, not only in their material but in their degree of development and the kind of resulting structure. Just as the earlier stages in the history of the use of tools are exemplified even at the present day by races which have never advanced beyond them, so is it in regard to language also and, of course, in the latter case as in the former, this state of things strengthens and establishes the theory of a gradual development. There is not an element of linguistic struc- Isolating ture possessed by some languages which is not wanting in an - others ; and there are even tongues which have no formal = es- structure, and which cannot be shown ever to have ad vanced out of the radical stage. The most noted example of such a rudimentary tongue is the Chinese, which in its present condition lacks all formal distinction of the parts of speech, all inflexion, all derivation ; each of its words (all of them monosyllables) is an integral sign, not divisible into parts of separate significance ; and each in general is usable wherever the radical idea is wanted, with the value of one part of speech or another, as determined by the connexion in which it stands : a condition parallel with that in which Aryan speech may be regarded as existing prior to the beginnings of its career of formal development briefly sketched above. And there are other tongues, related and unrelated to Chinese, of which the same description, or one nearly like it, might be given. To call such languages radical is by no means to maintain that they exhibit the primal roots of human speech, unchanged or only phonetically changed, or that they have known nothing of the combination of element with clement. Of some of them, the roots are in greater or less part dissyl labic ; and we do not yet know that all dissyllabism, and even that all complexity of syllable beyond a single con sonant with following vowel, is not the result of combina tion or reduplication. But all combination is not form- making ; it needs a whole class of combinations, with a recognized common element in them producing a recog nized common modification of meaning, to make a form. The same elements which (in Latin, and even to some extent in English also) are of formal value in con-stant and pre-dict lack that character in cost and preach ; the same like which makes adverbs in tru-ly and right-ly is present without any such value in such and which (from so-like and who-like) ; cost and preach, and swh and ivhich, are as purely radical in English as other words of w r hich we do not happen to be able to demonstrate the composite character. And so a Chinese monosyllable or an Egyptian or Poly nesian dissyllable is radical, unless there can be demon strated in some part of it a formative value ; and a lan guage wholly composed of such words is a root-language. Neither is the possibility to be denied that a language like Chinese may have had at some period of its history the weak beginnings of a formal development, since ex tinguished by the same processes of phonetic decay which in English have wiped out so many signs of a formal character, and brought back so considerable a part of the vocabulary to monosyllabism ; but it remains thus far a possibility merely ; and the development would need to have been of the scantiest character to be so totally destroyed by phonetic influences. In languages thus constituted, the only possible external alteration is that phonetic change to which all human speech, from the very beginning of its traditional life, is liable; the only growth is internal, by that multiplication and adaptation and im provement of meanings which is equally an inseparable part of all language-history. This may include the reduc tion of certain elements to the value of auxiliaries, particles, form-words, such as play an important part in analytical tongues like English, and are perhaps also instanced in prehistoric Aryan speech by the class of pronominal roots. Phrases take the place of compounds and of inflexions, and the same element may have an auxiliary value in certain connexions while retaining its full force in others, like, for instance, our own have. It is not easy to define the distinction between such phrase-collocations and the beginnings of agglutination ; yet the distinction itself is in general clearly enough to be drawn (like that in French between donnerai and ai donne), when the whole habit of the language is w^ell understood. Such languages, constituting the small minority of human tongues, are wont to be called " isolating," i.e., using each element by itself, in its integral form. All besides are "agglutinative," or more or less compounded into words containing a formal part, an indicator of class- value. Here the differences, in kind and degree, are very great ; the variety ranges from a scantiness hardly superior to Chinese isolation up to an intricacy compared with which Aryan structure is hardly fuller than Chinese. Some brief characterization of the various families of language in this respect will be given farther on, in connexion with their classification. The attempt is also made to classify the great mass of agglutinating tongues under different heads : those are ranked as simply " agglutinative " in which there is a general conservation of the separate identity of root or stem on the one hand, and of formative element, suffix or prefix, on the other ; while the name " inflective," used in a higher and pregnant sense, is given to those that admit a superior fusion and integration of the two parts, to the disguise and loss of separate identity, and, yet more, with the development of an internal change as auxiliary to or as substitute for the original agglutination. But there is no term in linguistic science so uncertain of meaning, so arbitrary of application, so dependent on the idiosyncrasy of its user, as the term " inflective." Any language ought to have the right to be called inflective that has inflexion : that is, that not merely distinguishes parts of speech and roots and stems formally from one another, but also conjugates its verbs and declines its nouns; and the name is sometimes so used. If, again, it be strictly limited to signify the possession of inner flexion of roots and stems (as if simply agglutinated forms could be called "exflective "), it marks only a difference of degree of agglutination, and should be carefully used as so doing. As describing the fundamental and predominant character of language - structure, it belongs to only one family of languages, the Semitic, where most of the work of gram matical distinction is done by internal changes of vowel, the origin of which thus far eludes all attempts at explana tion. By perhaps the majority of students of language it is, as a generally descriptive title, restricted to that family and one other, the Indo-European or Aryan ; but such a classification is not to be approved, for, in respect to this characteristic, Aryan speech ranks not with Semitic but with the great body of agglutinative tongues. To few of these can the name be altogether denied, since there is hardly a body of related dialects in existence that does Agglu- tinative Inflect- iVL> -