Language. 929 



plished by combinations of the roots, which in all cases form their foun- 

 dation. This combination in its first stage or aspect is called " agglutin- 

 ation. " The principal root in the combined word is preserved without 

 mutilation, as are also to a greater or less degree the other words which 

 have been tacked to it as modifying and explanatory adj uncts. As soon 

 as words are built up in this, or in any other way, they become subject 

 to phonetic corruption, which has been carried to the greatest extreme 

 by the active peoples speaking the Aryan languages. People in a hurry 

 will cut short their pronunciation of words. They do it now and always 

 have done it. We see it in the rustic abbreviations of 'backer, 'tater, 

 'lasses, and those common to all classes, by which words ending in ing 

 are snipped of their final g. A vast list of words mutilated in that way 

 could be produced ; such as Naples for Neapolis, Woorster for Worces- 

 ter, Coblentz for Confluentes, York for Eboracum, Carthage for Qar- 

 tachadashat, l &c. Words adopted from one language into another are 

 usually mutilated, as shown in the following words as they appear in 

 French after adoption from the Latin, and in English after adoption 

 from the French. Thus, Latin scutarius, is in French escuier, and in 

 English squire ; historia becomes histoire, story ; Egyptianus, Egyptian, 

 GyP s J ; extraneus, estrangier, stranger ; capitulum, chapitre, chapter ; 

 dominicella, demoiselle, damsel; paralysis, paralysie, palsy; sacristanus, 

 sacristan, sexton. Hydropsis in Latin is dropsy in English. ( Miiller. ) 

 It seems like a great change from one of these Latin words to its deriv- 

 ative in English, from scutarius to squire, for example; but the Latin 

 words themselves represent a change as great or greater. The original 

 root elements of which they are made up have become so clipped, re- 

 duced or otherwise distorted, and the fragments so welded together that 

 it is often difficult even for the expert philologist to restore the word. 

 By this welding process pronouns have become incorporated with verbs, 

 the auxiliary verbs with ther principals, prepositions with their nouns. 

 Languages that have got into this condition are called inflectional lan- 

 guages. The word loved, is love-did, or did-love. The Latin, habeo, 

 habes, habet ; Gothic, haba, babais, habaith, ( I have, thou hast, he 

 has,) contain the root and the pronouns, completely incorporated. 



The Latin scutarius, from which we get our squire, is a maker or car- 

 rier of a shield, and is from scutum, a shield. Scutum is a cover or 

 protection, and is from the root sku, (a) cover. From the same root 

 comes cutis, the skin, scum, sky, and many others. 



With the 500 or 600 Aryan roots have been constructed vocabularies 

 reaching, with their phonetic variations in the different Aryan languages, 

 several hundred thousand words. In Chinese there are about 450 roots 

 or separate sounds, which are raised to 1,263, by various accents andin- 



1 This word as well as Neapolis means Newtown. 



