Here, in order to form a new word, one or more of the vowels of the old word are changed, as in man—men, where an e is substituted for a; ran—run, where u is substituted for a; lead—led, where e, with its proper sound, is substituted for ea with its proper sound. This method is used to a very limited extent in English. When the history of the words in which it occurs is studied it is discovered to be but an instance of the wearing out of the different elements of combined words; but in the Hebrew this method prevails to a very large extent, and scholars have not yet been able to discover its origin in combination as they have in English. It may or may not have been an original grammatic process, but because of its importance in certain languages it has been found necessary to deal with it as a distinct and original process.
[ III.—THE PROCESS BY INTONATION.]
In English, new words are not formed by this method, yet words are intoned for certain purposes, chiefly rhetorical. We use the rising intonation (or inflection, as it is usually called) to indicate that a question is asked, and various effects are given to speech by the various intonations of rhetoric. But this process is used in other languages to form new words with which to express new ideas. In Chinese eight distinct intonations are found, by the use of which one word may be made to express eight different ideas, or perhaps it is better to say that eight words may be made of one.
[ IV.—THE PROCESS BY PLACEMENT.]
The place or position of a word may affect its significant use. Thus in English we say John struck James. By the position of those words to each other we know that John is the actor, and that James receives the action.
By the grammatic processes language is organized. Organization postulates the differentiation of organs and their combination into integers. The integers of language are sentences, and their organs are the parts of speech. Linguistic organization, then, consists in the differentiation of the parts of speech and the integration of the sentence. For example, let us take the words John, father, and love. John is the name of an individual; love is the name of a mental action, and father the name of a person. We put them together, John loves father, and they express a thought; John becomes a noun, and is the subject of the sentence; love becomes a verb, and is the predicant; father a noun, and is the object; and we now have an organized sentence. A sentence requires parts of speech, and parts of speech are such because they are used as the organic elements of a sentence.
The criteria of rank in languages are, first, grade of organization, i.e., the degree to which the grammatic processes and methods are specialized, and the parts of speech differentiated; second, sematologic content, that is, the body of thought which the language is competent to convey.
The grammatic processes may be used for three purposes:
First, for derivation, where a new word to express a new idea is made by combining two or more old words, or by changing the vowel of one word, or by changing the intonation of one word.
Second, for modification, a word may be qualified or defined by the processes of combination, vocalic mutation or intonation.