A fourth class, the infixing or incapsulating languages, are but a variety of the affixing class, for what in Bask or in the polysynthetic dialects of America has the appearance of actual insertion of formative elements into the body of a base can be explained more rationally by the former existence of simpler bases to which modifying suffixes or prefixes have once been added, but not so firmly as to exclude the addition of new suffixes at the end of the base, instead of, as with us, at the end of the compound. If we could say in Greek δείκ-μι-νυ, instead of δείκ-νυ-μι, or in Sanskrit yu-mi-na-j, instead of yu-na-j-mi, we should have a real beginning of so-called incapsulating formations.[9]
A few instances will place the normal progress of language from stratum to stratum more clearly before our eyes. We have seen that in Chinese every word is monosyllabic, every word tells, and there are, as yet, no suffixes by which one word is derived from another, no case-terminations by which the relation of one word to another could be indicated. How, then, does Chinese distinguish between the son of the father, and the father of the son? Simply by position. Fú is father, tzé, son; therefore fú tzé is son of the father, tzé fú, father of the son. This rule admits of no exception but one. If a Chinese wants to say a wine-glass, he puts wine first and glass last, as in English. If he wants to say a glass of wine, he puts glass first and wine last. Thus i-pei thsieou, a cup of wine; thsieou pei, a wine-cup. If, however, it seems desirable to mark the word which is in the genitive more distinctly, the word tchi may be placed after it, and we may say, fú tchi tzé, the son of the father. In the Mandarin dialect this tchi has become ti, and is added so constantly to the governed word, that, to all intents and purposes, it may be treated as what we call the termination of the genitive. Originally this tchi was a relative, or rather a demonstrative, pronoun, and it continues to be used as such in the ancient Chinese.[10]
It is perfectly true that Chinese possesses no derivative suffixes; that it cannot derive, for instance, kingly from a noun, such as king, or adjectives like visible and invisible from a verb videre, to see. Yet the same idea which we express by invisible, is expressed without difficulty in Chinese, only in a different way. They say khan-pu-kien, “I-behold-and-do-not-see,” and this to them conveys the same idea as the English invisible, though more exactly invisible might be rendered by kien, to see, pou-te, one cannot, tí, which.
We cannot in Chinese derive from ferrum, iron, a new substantive ferrarius, a man who works in iron, a blacksmith; ferraria, an iron mine, and again ferrariarius, a man who works in an iron mine. All this is possible in an inflectional language only. But it is not to be supposed that in Chinese there is an independent expression for every single conception, even for those which are clearly secondary and derivative. If an arrow in Chinese is shi, then a maker of arrows (in old French fléchier, in English fletcher) is called an arrow-man, shi-jin. Shui means water, fu, man; hence shui-fu, a water man, a water carrier. The same word shui, water, if followed by sheu, hand, stands for steersman, literally, water-hand. Kin means gold, tsiang, maker; hence kin-tsiang, a goldsmith. Shou means writing, sheu, hand; hence shou-sheu, a writer, a copyist, literally, a writing-hand.
A transition from such compounds to really combinatory speech is extremely easy. Let sheu, in the sense of hand, become obsolete, and be replaced in the ordinary language by another word for hand; and let such names as shu-sheu, author, shui-sheu, boatsman, be retained, and the people who speak this language will soon accustom themselves to look upon sheu as a mere derivative, and use it by a kind of false analogy, even where the original meaning of sheu, hand, would not have been applicable.[11]
We can watch the same process even in comparatively modern languages. In Anglo-Saxon, for instance, hâd means state, order. It is used as an independent word, and continued to be so used as late as Spenser, who wrote:—
“Cuddie, I wote thou kenst little good,
So vainly t’ advaunce thy headlesse hood.”
After a time, however, hâd, as an independent word, was lost, and its place taken by more classical expressions, such as habit, nature, or disposition. But there remained such compounds as man-hâd, the state of man, God-hâd, the nature of God; and in these words the last element, being an empty word and no longer understood, was soon looked upon as a mere suffix. Having lost its vitality, it was all the more exposed to phonetic decay, and became both hood and head.
Or, let us take another instance, The name given to the fox in ancient German poetry was Regin-hart. Regin in Old High German means thought or cunning, hart, the Gothic hardu, means strong. This hart[12] corresponds to the Greek κράτος, which, in its adjectival form of κρατης, forms as many proper names in Greek as hart in German. In Sanskrit the same word exists as kratu, meaning intellectual rather than bodily strength, a shade of meaning which is still perceivable even in the German hart, and in the English hard and hardy. Reginhart, therefore, was originally a compound, meaning “thought-strong,” strong in cunning. Other words formed in the same or a very similar manner are: Peranhart and Bernhart, literally, bear-minded, or bold like a bear; Eburhart, boar-minded; Engil-hart, angel-minded; Gothart, god-minded; Egin-hart, fierce-minded; Hugihart, wise-minded or strong in thought, the English Hogarth. In Low German the second element, hart, lost its h and became ard. This ard ceased to convey any definite meaning, and though in some words which are formed by ard we may still discover its original power, it soon became a mere derivative, and was added promiscuously to form new words. In the Low German name for the fox, Reinaert, neither the first nor the second word tells us any longer anything, and the two words together have become a mere proper name. In other words the first portion retains its meaning, but the second, ard, is nothing but a suffix. Thus we find the Low German dronk-ard, a drunkard; dick-ard, a thick fellow; rik-ard, a rich fellow; gêrard, a miser. In English sweet-ard, originally a very sweet person, has been changed and resuscitated as sweet-heart,[13] by the same process which changed shamefast into shamefaced. But, still more curious, this suffix ard, which had lost all life and meaning in Low German, was taken over as a convenient derivative by the Romance languages. After having borrowed a number of words such as renard, fox, and proper names like Bernard, Richard, Gerard, the framers of the new Romance dialects used the same termination even at the end of Latin words. Thus they formed not only many proper names, like Abeillard, Bayard, Brossard, but appellatives like leccardo, a gourmand, linguardo, a talker, criard, a crier, codardo, Prov. coart, Fr. couard, a coward.[14] That a German word hart, meaning strong, and originally strength, should become a Roman suffix may seem strange; yet we no longer hesitate to use even Hindustani words as English suffixes. In Hindustani válá is used to form many substantives. If Dilli is Delhi, then Dill-vállá is a man of Delhi. Go is cow, go-válá a cow-herd, contracted into gválá. Innumerable words can thus be formed, and as the derivative seemed handy and useful, it was at last added even to English words, for instance in “Competition wallah.”