But we must not make too much of terminology. Much depends on the relative emphasis laid on this or that feature or point of view. The method of classifying languages here developed has this great advantage, that it can be refined or simplified according to the needs of a particular discussion. The degree of synthesis may be entirely ignored; “fusion” and “symbolism” may often be combined with advantage under the head of “fusion”; even the difference between agglutination and fusion may, if desired, be set aside as either too difficult to draw or as irrelevant to the issue. Languages, after all, are exceedingly complex historical structures. It is of less importance to put each language in a neat pigeon-hole than to have evolved a flexible method which enables us to place it, from two or three independent standpoints, relatively to another language. All this is not to deny that certain linguistic types are more stable and frequently represented than others that are just as possible from a theoretical standpoint. But we are too ill-informed as yet of the structural spirit of great numbers of languages to have the right to frame a classification that is other than flexible and experimental.
The reader will gain a somewhat livelier idea of the possibilities of linguistic morphology by glancing down the subjoined analytical table of selected types. The columns II, III, IV refer to the groups of concepts so numbered in the preceding chapter. The letters a, b, c, d refer respectively to the processes of isolation (position in the sentence), agglutination, fusion, and symbolism. Where more than one technique is employed, they are put in the order of their importance.[113]
| Fundamental Type | I | II | III | Technique | Synthesis | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A (Simple Pure-relational) | — | — | a | Isolating | Analytic | Chinese; Annamite |
| (d) | — | a, b | Isolating (weakly agglutinative) | Analytic | Ewe (Guinea Coast) | |
| (b) | — | a, b, c | Agglutinative (mildly agglutinative-fusional) | Analytic | Modern Tibetan | |
| B (Complex Pure-relational) | b, (d) | — | a | Agglutinative-isolating | Analytic | Polynesian |
| b | — | a, (b) | Agglutinative-isolating | Polysynthetic | Haida | |
| c | — | a | Fusional-isolating | Analytic | Cambodgian | |
| b | — | b | Agglutinative | Synthetic | Turkish | |
| b, d | (b) | b | Agglutinative (symbolic tinge) | Polysynthetic | Yana (N. California) | |
| c, d, (b) | — | a, b | Fusional-agglutinative (symbolic tinge) | Synthetic (mildly) | Classical Tibetan | |
| b | — | c | Agglutinative-fusional | Synthetic (mildly polysynthetic) | Sioux | |
| c | — | c | Fusional | Synthetic | Salinan (S.W. California) | |
| d, c | (d) | d, c, a | Symbolic | Analytic | Shilluk (Upper Nile) | |
| C (Simple Mixed-relational) | (b) | b | — | Agglutinative | Synthetic | Bantu |
| (c) | c, (d) | a | Fusional | Analytic (mildly synthetic) | French[114] | |
| D (Complex Mixed-relational) | b, c, d | b | b | Agglutinative (symbolic tinge) | Polysynthetic | Nootka (Vancouver Island)[115] |
| c, (d) | b | — | Fusional-agglutinative | Polysynthetic (mildly) | Chinook (lower Columbia R.) | |
| c, (d) | c, (d), (b) | — | Fusional | Polysynthetic | Algonkin | |
| c | c, d | a | Fusional | Analytic | English | |
| c, d | c, d | — | Fusional (symbolic tinge) | Synthetic | Latin, Greek, Sanskrit | |
| c, b, d | c, d | (a) | Fusional (strongly symbolic) | Synthetic | Takelma (S.W. Oregon) | |
| d, c | c, d | (a) | Symbolic-fusional | Synthetic | Semitic (Arabic, Hebrew) |
I need hardly point out that these examples are far from exhausting the possibilities of linguistic structure. Nor that the fact that two languages are similarly classified does not necessarily mean that they present a great similarity on the surface. We are here concerned with the most fundamental and generalized features of the spirit, the technique, and the degree of elaboration of a given language. Nevertheless, in numerous instances we may observe this highly suggestive and remarkable fact, that languages that fall into the same class have a way of paralleling each other in many details or in structural features not envisaged by the scheme of classification. Thus, a most interesting parallel could be drawn on structural lines between Takelma and Greek,[116] languages that are as geographically remote from each other and as unconnected in a historical sense as two languages selected at random can well be. Their similarity goes beyond the generalized facts registered in the table. It would almost seem that linguistic features that are easily thinkable apart from each other, that seem to have no necessary connection in theory, have nevertheless a tendency to cluster or to follow together in the wake of some deep, controlling impulse to form that dominates their drift. If, therefore, we can only be sure of the intuitive similarity of two given languages, of their possession of the same submerged form-feeling, we need not be too much surprised to find that they seek and avoid certain linguistic developments in common. We are at present very far from able to define just what these fundamental form intuitions are. We can only feel them rather vaguely at best and must content ourselves for the most part with noting their symptoms. These symptoms are being garnered in our descriptive and historical grammars of diverse languages. Some day, it may be, we shall be able to read from them the great underlying ground-plans.
Such a purely technical classification of languages as the current one into “isolating,” “agglutinative,” and “inflective” (read “fusional”) cannot claim to have great value as an entering wedge into the discovery of the intuitional forms of language. I do not know whether the suggested classification into four conceptual groups is likely to drive deeper or not. My own feeling is that it does, but classifications, neat constructions of the speculative mind, are slippery things. They have to be tested at every possible opportunity before they have the right to cry for acceptance. Meanwhile we may take some encouragement from the application of a rather curious, yet simple, historical test. Languages are in constant process of change, but it is only reasonable to suppose that they tend to preserve longest what is most fundamental in their structure. Now if we take great groups of genetically related languages,[117] we find that as we pass from one to another or trace the course of their development we frequently encounter a gradual change of morphological type. This is not surprising, for there is no reason why a language should remain permanently true to its original form. It is interesting, however, to note that of the three intercrossing classifications represented in our table (conceptual type, technique, and degree of synthesis), it is the degree of synthesis that seems to change most readily, that the technique is modifiable but far less readily so, and that the conceptual type tends to persist the longest of all.
The illustrative material gathered in the table is far too scanty to serve as a real basis of proof, but it is highly suggestive as far as it goes. The only changes of conceptual type within groups of related languages that are to be gleaned from the table are of B to A (Shilluk as contrasted with Ewe;[118] Classical Tibetan as contrasted with Modern Tibetan and Chinese) and of D to C (French as contrasted with Latin[119]). But types A : B and C : D are respectively related to each other as a simple and a complex form of a still more fundamental type (pure-relational, mixed-relational). Of a passage from a pure-relational to a mixed-relational type or vice versa I can give no convincing examples.
The table shows clearly enough how little relative permanence there is in the technical features of language. That highly synthetic languages (Latin; Sanskrit) have frequently broken down into analytic forms (French; Bengali) or that agglutinative languages (Finnish) have in many instances gradually taken on “inflective” features are well-known facts, but the natural inference does not seem to have been often drawn that possibly the contrast between synthetic and analytic or agglutinative and “inflective” (fusional) is not so fundamental after all. Turning to the Indo-Chinese languages, we find that Chinese is as near to being a perfectly isolating language as any example we are likely to find, while Classical Tibetan has not only fusional but strong symbolic features (e.g., g-tong-ba “to give,” past b-tang, future gtang, imperative thong); but both are pure-relational languages. Ewe is either isolating or only barely agglutinative, while Shilluk, though soberly analytic, is one of the most definitely symbolic languages I know; both of these Soudanese languages are pure-relational. The relationship between Polynesian and Cambodgian is remote, though practically certain; while the latter has more markedly fusional features than the former,[120] both conform to the complex pure-relational type. Yana and Salinan are superficially very dissimilar languages. Yana is highly polysynthetic and quite typically agglutinative, Salinan is no more synthetic than and as irregularly and compactly fusional (“inflective”) as Latin; both are pure-relational, Chinook and Takelma, remotely related languages of Oregon, have diverged very far from each other, not only as regards technique and synthesis in general but in almost all the details of their structure; both are complex mixed-relational languages, though in very different ways. Facts such as these seem to lend color to the suspicion that in the contrast of pure-relational and mixed-relational (or concrete-relational) we are confronted by something deeper, more far-reaching, than the contrast of isolating, agglutinative, and fusional.[121]