Brinton.] oZ4: [March 20, 



languages, he says, possess a remai'kable regularity of structure, 

 and very few anomalies. Their grammar does not present any 

 Adsible traces of corrupting intermixtures.* 



In a later work he returns to the subject when speaking of the 

 Lenape (Algonkin Delaware) dialect, and asks whether the rich 

 imaginative power, of which it bears the evident impress, does 

 not point to some youthful, supple and vigorous era in the life 

 of language in general ? f But he leaves the question unan- 

 swered. 



§ 11. Classification of Languages. 



The lower unit of language is the Word ; the higher is the 

 Sentence. The plans on which languages combine words into 

 sentences are a basic character of their structure, and divide 

 them into classes as, distinct and as decisive of their future, as 

 those of vertebrate and invertebrate animals in natural history. 



These plans are four in number : 



1. By Isolation. 



The words are placed in juxtaposition, without change. Their 

 I'elations are expressed by their location only (placement). The 

 typical example of this is the Chinese. 



2. By Agglutination. 



The sentence is formed hj suffixing to the word expressive of 

 the main idea a number of others, more or less altered, express- 

 ing the relations. Examples of this are the Eskimo of ISTorth 

 America, and the Northern Asiatic dialects. 



3. By Incorporation, 



The leading word of the sentence is divided and the accessory 

 words either included in it or attached to it with abbreviated 

 forms, so that the whole sentence assumes the form and sound of 

 one word. 



4. By Inflection. 



Each word of the sentence indicates by its own form the char- 

 acter and relation to the main proposition of the idea it repre- 

 sents. Sanscrit, Greek and Latin are familiar examples of in- 

 flected tongues. 



* Lettre & M. Abel-Remumt. Werke, Bd. vii, ss. R53-4. 



t Uebf die Verschiedenheit , etc., Sec. 23, Werke, Bd. vi, s. 329. 



