VIII. General relations between languages and human races. It is generally admitted that human languages may be traced to three fundamental groups; the first, monosyllabic, or isolating languages; the second, agglutinative, or suffix languages; the third, inflectional languages. Thus, there are three linguistic types, as there are also three physical types. It will not be without interest to discover what relations are displayed by the characters drawn from these two orders of considerations.
The monosyllabic languages represent the most rudimentary condition of human language, which, moreover, has only arrived at inflection after passing through the period of agglutination. Considered from this point of view, languages have arrived at perfection by degrees, and it is only natural to inquire if the general degree of elevation of races corresponds with that of the development of language.
From a comparison of the results of philological and physical studies, it is at once evident that this is not the case. Chinese, the most monosyllabic language, is spoken by one of the earliest civilized nations, belonging fundamentally to the yellow type. Tribes holding the lowest place, springing from the Negro type, speak, on the contrary, agglutinative languages, that is to say, have attained the second stage. I have already pointed out this fact, and insisted upon the consequences which arise from it with reference to the relative antiquity of human groups.
Nevertheless, we must remark that the greater number of Whites speak languages which have attained the highest degree of perfection—inflectional languages. Allophylian Whites, alone, are still in the agglutinative stage.
If, after having read the information which is given by philologists upon the distribution of races, we look at the map, we shall again meet with some very interesting general facts.
Monosyllabic languages are only found in Asia, as it were localized, and only occupy a very limited space. They were at one time even restricted to a kind of island, bounded by the sea on the east, and on all other sides by agglutinative languages. It is entirely due to the Aryan conquest that they have been placed in contact with inflectional languages.
The latter, now universally distributed, were for a long time confined to the old continent, of which, moreover, they were far from occupying the greatest part. Their expansion dates from the great modern discoveries.
Languages of intermediate development, the agglutinative languages, occupied before this epoch, as they still do, the larger portion of the surface of the globe. We do not know at what period they lost ground in Europe, but we can already almost assert as a fact, that they predominated there in former times. They probably occupied the whole of this part of the world before the Aryan invasion or infiltration. Perhaps they were spoken by quaternary man. However this may be, before the great and quite recent emigrations of European races, agglutinative languages reigned throughout the greater part of Asia, almost the whole of Africa, and all America and Oceania.
In pointing out approximately the areas occupied by the three fundamental groups of languages, we find that the agglutinative languages alone occupied but a short time ago about 22/25 of the earth’s surface, inflectional languages 3/15, and monosyllabic languages 1/25; or nearly 74/100, 20/100 and 6/100.
Agglutinative languages, again, have the advantage over the others in number. Finally, the number of nations, peoples or tribes, speaking these languages, is also superior to that of the groups which speak monosyllabic or inflectional languages.