[ Footnote 113: ] In defining the type to which a language belongs one must be careful not to be misled by structural features which are mere survivals of an older stage, which have no productive life and do not enter into the unconscious patterning of the language. All languages are littered with such petrified bodies. The English -ster of spinster and Webster is an old agentive suffix, but, as far as the feeling of the present English-speaking generation is concerned, it cannot be said to really exist at all; spinster and Webster have been completely disconnected from the etymological group of spin and of weave (web). Similarly, there are hosts of related words in Chinese which differ in the initial consonant, the vowel, the tone, or in the presence or absence of a final consonant. Even where the Chinaman feels the etymological relationship, as in certain cases he can hardly help doing, he can assign no particular function to the phonetic variation as such. Hence it forms no live feature of the language-mechanism and must be ignored in defining the general form of the language. The caution is all the more necessary, as it is precisely the foreigner, who approaches a new language with a certain prying inquisitiveness, that is most apt to see life in vestigial features which the native is either completely unaware of or feels merely as dead form.
[ Footnote 114: ] Might nearly as well have come under D.
[ Footnote 115: ] Very nearly complex pure-relational.
[ Footnote 116: ] Not Greek specifically, of course, but as a typical representative of Indo-European.
[ Footnote 117: ] Such, in other words, as can be shown by documentary or comparative evidence to have been derived from a common source. See Chapter VII.
[ Footnote 118: ] These are far-eastern and far-western representatives of the “Soudan” group recently proposed by D. Westermann. The genetic relationship between Ewe and Shilluk is exceedingly remote at best.
[ Footnote 119: ] This case is doubtful at that. I have put French in C rather than in D with considerable misgivings. Everything depends on how one evaluates elements like -al in national, -té in bonté, or re- in retourner. They are common enough, but are they as alive, as little petrified or bookish, as our English -ness and -ful and un-?
[ Footnote 120: ] In spite of its more isolating cast.
[ Footnote 121: ] In a book of this sort it is naturally impossible to give an adequate idea of linguistic structure in its varying forms. Only a few schematic indications are possible. A separate volume would be needed to breathe life into the scheme. Such a volume would point out the salient structural characteristics of a number of languages, so selected as to give the reader an insight into the formal economy of strikingly divergent types.
[ Footnote 122: ] In so far as they do not fall out of the normal speech group by reason of a marked speech defect or because they are isolated foreigners that have acquired the language late in life.