former has led to; but this may be owing in great measure to the way in which the two have been handled respectively.
The immensely comprehensive order of agglutinative languages is sometimes reduced a little by setting apart from it a polysynthetic or incorporative class, composed of the Basque and the American family. This, however, is rather a subdivision of one of the members of the triple system than the establishment of a new, a quadruple, scheme of classification.
Professor Müller[1] seeks to find a support and explanation of the threefold division of human language which we are now considering by paralleling it with the threefold condition of human society, as patriarchal, nomadic, and political. Monosyllabic or "family languages" are in place, according to him, among the members of a family, whose intimacy, and full knowledge of one another's dispositions and thoughts, make it possible for each to understand the other upon the briefest and most imperfect hints. Agglutinative or "nomadic languages" are required by the circumstances of a wandering and unsettled life; the constantly separating and reassembling tribes could not keep up a mutual intelligence if they did not maintain the integrity of the radical elements of their speech. Inflective or "state languages" are rendered possible by a regulated and stable condition of society, where uninterrupted intercourse and constant tradition facilitate mutual comprehension, notwithstanding the fusion and integration of root and affix. The comparison is ingenious and entertaining, but it is too little favoured by either linguistic philosophy or linguistic history to be entitled to any other praise. It would fain introduce into the processes of linguistic life an element of reflective anticipation, of prevision and deliberate provision, which is altogether foreign to them. That wandering tribes should, in view of their scanty intercourse, their frequent partings to be followed by possible meetings, conclude that they ought to keep their roots unmodified, is quite inconceivable; nor is it
- ↑ In his Letter on the Classification of the Turanian Languages, p. 21 seq.: see also his Lectures, first series.
