VARIETIES OF HUMAN SPEECH SAPIE. 593 



express relational concepts. On the basis of this formal criterion we 

 may classify languages, at least for the purposes of this paper, into 

 the three main t^^^es of linguistic morphology generally recognized. 

 The first type is characterized by the use of words which allow of no 

 grammatical modification whatever; in other words, the so-called 

 isolating type. In a language of this type all relational concepts are 

 expressed by means of the one simple device of juxtaposing words in 

 a definite order, the words themselves remaining unchangeable units 

 that, according to their position in the sentence, receive various 

 relational values. The classical example of such a language is 

 Chinese, an illustration from which will serve as an example of the 

 isolating type of sentence, woo^ (rising from deep tone) jJiP (rising 

 from high) p'd^ (sinking from middle) t'a} Giigh) may be literally 

 translated ''I not fear he," meaning "I do not fear him;" woo^ "I" 

 as subject comes first; 2>'a* ''fear" as predicate follows it; /m^ "not," 

 inasmuch as it limits the range of meaning given by the predicate, 

 must precede it, hence stands between the subject and predicate; 

 finally t'a^ "he" as object follows the predicate. If we exchange the 

 positions of woo^ and t'a} we change their syntactical bearing; woo^ 

 "I" becomes "me" as object, while fa}, which in our first sentence 

 was best translated as "him" now becomes "he" as subject, and the 

 sentence now takes on the meaning of "he does not fear me." 



In the second main t^^'pe of language, generally known as the 

 agglutinative, the words are not generally unanalyzable entities, as in 

 Chinese, but consist of a stem or radical portion and one or more gram- 

 matical elements which partly modify its primary signification, 

 partly define its relation to other words in the sentence. While these 

 grammatical elements are in no sense independent words or capable 

 of being understood apart from their proper use as subordinate parts 

 of a whole, they have, as a rule, their definite signification and are 

 used with quasi-mechanical regularity whenever it is considered 

 grammatically necessary to express the corresponding logical concept; 

 the result is that the word, though a unit, is a clearly segmented one 

 comparable to a mosaic. An example taken from Turkish, a typical 

 agglutinative language, will give some idea of the spirit of the type it 

 represents. The English sentence "They were converted into the 

 (true) faith with heart and soul" is rendered in Turkish dian u 

 gonul-dcn iman-a gel-ir-ler,^ literally translated, "Heart and soul- 

 from belief-to come-ing-plural." The case-ending -den "from" is 

 here appended only to gonul "soul" and not to d&an "heart," though 

 it applies equally to both; hci-e we see quite clearly that a case-ending 

 is not indissolubly connected with the noun to which it is appended, 

 but has a considerable degree of mobility and corresponding transpa- 



> The Turkish and Chinese examples are taken from F. N. Finck's "Die Haupttypen des Sprachbaua." 



