Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 10.djvu/703

INFLECTION. 617 INFLORESCENCE. conji^3.tional terminations were found in the present, perfect, and when a future was devel- oped, in this new tense also; the secondary end- ings were employed in the tenses which denote past time. The older writers on comparative linguistics devoted much attention to the original meanings of intleetional terminations. A deeper research has, however, led to less dogmatic views, and it would seem that, in our present state of knowl- edge, no conclusion as to tlieir primitive force of inflections can be reached. It may be true that s is characteristic of the plural (as Gothic uulfos, wulfans, Sanskrit vrkltiu, irkebhyas, rrlcdis. "wolves" — nom., ace, loc, abl., instr.),but s is also a mark of the nominative masculine and genitive singular (as Latin lupus, 'wolf,' Greek 8<t>tos, "of a serpent'). It is just possible that the case-endings were indeed originally inde- pendent words, which became stereotyped and meaningless terminations. A possible analogue is furnished by the modern Indo-Iranian languages as compared v.ith the ancient, as Hindu i/hOrake, 'of S3, horse,' corresponding to Prakrit gliodaassa kaeche, Sanskrit ghotakasya kakse, 'at the side of a horse,' or Persian sahra, 'for the king,' cor- responding to Old Persian xMyaSiyahyd radiy, ■for the sake of the king.' This, however, is a n.ere hypothesis, a suggestion of a process which may have taken place. In the case of the verbs, repeated endeavors have been made to trace the endings back to the personal pronouns. Thus the terminations of Sanskrit hharumi, bharati, bhardvas, 'I bear,' 'he bears,' 'we two bear,' may be compared with some plausibility with mam, 'me,' tarn, 'him,' dvdm, 'we two,' but the other per- sons of the verb oppose such a hypothesis. It is true that many agglutinative languages seem to bear out the old view; but it is. notwithstanding this, too faulty a theory to be adopted as even plausible, much less probable. Inflection comes only at the end of an Indo- Germanic word, excepting in the reduplication of the aorist and perfect (as Sanskrit njijanam, aorist of ja>i, 'to be born,' tutoda. |M>rfcit of tud, 'to thrust,' Greek 7^01-0, perfect of llyvta6ai, 'to become,' Latin memr/rdi. perfect [aoristj of mordere, 'to bite,' Gothic haihait, preterite of haitan, 'to call'). This reduplica- tion is probably intensive in origin, as is seen in the intensive or frequentative and desidera- live conjugations in Sanskrit. The separable initial letter used regularly in Sanskrit and Greek, and sometimes in Armenian, to denote past time when prefixed to a preterite tense (as Sanskrit nhharain, imperfoct of hhar, 'to bear,' Greek tipepov, imperfect of (pipeiv, 'to l)ear,' Ar- menian ekac beside kac, preterite of kal. 'to stand') docs not properly belong to inflection, and the same exclusion holds true with regard to ablaut (q.v. ). Inflection may. however, be internal and initial as well as final in Semitic. As examples from Arabic, which is the most highly inflected of all the .Semitic dialects, may he cited qntulii.' he kills,' qutila, 'he is killed,' yaqlulu, 'he killed.' yuqtalu, 'he was killed.' uqtul. 'kill!' tuqdtih'nui. 'ye fought.' or tcajaba. 'it is necessary.' ujibu.' I made il necessary,' nastaicjibu, 'we considered it neces- sary for ourselves.' The decay and loss of inflection has been con- stant from the pre-Indo-Germanic period to the present day. The analytic type of language (see Philology) has steadily encroached on the in- flectional, until we have such relatively inflection- less languages as the English and the modern Persian. It is still a moot question whether the growth of the analytic type at the expense of the inflectional marks an advance. Certain scholars, notably Jcspersen in his Progress in Lanyuuye tcith Special Ueference to E nglish (hoodon, 1894), have answered in the affirmative, for in an inflec- tional form, as Latin amaveram, 'X had loved,' we have the attitude of the speaker, the jierson of the speaker, the time of the action, and the verbal force all combined, which may be more elements than are nccessarj- in some instances for the speaker's immediate purpose. On the other hand, the inflectional languages are more compact than the analytic. A fair answer to this problem may be that the surrender of inflection to analy- sis marks a linguistic loss but a psychological gain. Such a conclusion carries with it the im- plication that, as psychological requirements ulti- mately condition all but the mechanical (pho- netic) side of language, the final balance is in favor of the anal.vtic tj^je of speech. Consult Brugmann, Grundriss der vergteichen- dfn Grammatik der indogcrmanischen Sprachen, vol. ii., part 2 ( Strasshurg. 1892). INFLECTION IN LIGHT. See Diffrac- tion .Nii Dll 1 HAITKlN <;r.TI.N'GS. INFLORESCENCE (from Lat. inflorescere, to begin to flower, from ih, in + floresccre, to begin to flower, from florere, to flower, from flos, flower: connected with Olr. blath. OHG. bluoma, Ger. Blume, Goth, bloma. Ice!, blome. flower, and with AS. blostm, Eng. blossom). The manner in v.'hich flowers are arranged in a cluster; or some- times simply a flower-cluster. In many plants the flowers occur singly, either at the end of the s(em or among the leaves; but when a definite IXFLORESCESCE. 1. SpicatP racpme; 2, compound unib«l; 3. pauiele; -U elongated cyme; 5. corymb. region of the plant is set apart for flowers, it is called an inflorescence. 'The arrangement of flowers in such clusters is very diverse, and nu- merous technical terms are employed to designate the different kinds of inflorescence. All kinds, however, are usually reduced to two categories, the indeterminate or botryose, and the detenni- uate or ct/mose.