COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY. 249 



modification of the form of the roots, are inflectional 

 languages." Therefore, if we represent this power of inflec- 

 tional change on the part of the root itself by the symbol ^, 

 the agglutinating formula Rr may become R'^r. IMoreover, 

 the modifying elements may also be inflected, words thus 

 yielding such formulae as Rr'', Rrr^, &c. 



Such, then, are the three main groups or orders of 

 language. But in addition to them we must notice three 

 others, which have been shown to be clearly separable. 

 These three additional groups are the Polysynthetic, the 

 Incorporating, and the Analytic. 



The PoIysyntJietic (^ = Incapsulating) order is found among 

 certain savages, especially on the continent of America, where, 

 according to Duponceau, more or less distinctive adherence 

 to this type is to be met with from Greenland to Chili. The 

 peculiarity of such languages consists in the indefinite 

 composition of words by syncope and ellipsis. That is to say, 

 sentences are formed by the running together of compound 

 words of inordinate length, and in the process of fusion the 

 constituent words are so much abbreviated as often to be 

 represented by no more than a single intercalated letter. For 

 example, the Greenland aiUisariartorasuarpok, " he-hastened- 

 to-go-afishing," is made up oi aiilisar,"io ^s\\" peartoi^, "to 

 be engaged in anything," pinnesiiarpok, " he hastens : " and 

 the Chippeway totoccabo, "wine," is formed of toto, "milk," 

 with chominabo, " a bunch of grapes." Thus, polysynthesis 

 consists of fusion with contraction, some of the component 

 words losing their first, and others their last syllables. More- 

 over, composition of this kind further differs from that which 

 occurs in many other types of language {e.g. our adjectival 

 jievei'-io-be-forgoiien), in that the constituent parts may nc\'er 

 have attained the rank of independent words, which can be 

 set apart and employed by themselves. 



The Ijicorporaliiig order is merely a subdivision of the 

 agglutinative, and represents an earlier stage of it, wherein 

 the speakers had not yet begun to analyze their sentences, 

 and so still retain in their sentences subordinate words in 



