246 GEAMMAE OF THE KLAMATH LANGUAGE. 



MORPHOLOGY. 



Morphology is a part of grammar wliich gives a systematic account of 

 the changes experienced by its material units or words through becoming 

 parts of a sentence. Morphology in its descriptive portion has to present 

 the word in its forms altered by inflection, as they occur in the language; 

 in its systematic part it has to explain the origin and function of these forms. 

 The phonetic changes considered under "Phonology" are largely brought 

 about by the changes which the words are undergoing through being placed 

 into mutual relations to each other in forming parts of a sentence. Deri- 

 vation, a process analogous to inflection in many respects, is another import- 

 ant part of linguistics to be dealt with systematically by morphology. 



Languages greatly dift'er among themselves in the degree of the energy 

 which unites or binds together its elementary parts. Where the parts do 

 not unite, the position of the words in the sentence alone points out their 

 mutual relation, and few or no phonetic changes occur. These are the 

 monosyllabic languages. In the agglutinative tongues, certain syllables 

 which indicate relation cluster around other syllables which retain the 

 accent. After gathering up the other syllables to be their affixes, and 

 uniting them into one body, the accented syllables gradually become 

 radical syllables, and phonetic laws begin to manifest themselves in the 

 alteration of colliding sounds, in the abbreviation of the affixes, etc. Here 

 the original function of the relational or affix-syllables is still recognizable 

 in the majority of instances, but in languages reaching a third stage, the 

 inflective languages, the afiixes become so intimately fused with the radix, 

 that they serve as mere relational signs and may be considered as integral 

 parts of the whole word. Through this accretion, or by other causes, the 

 root itself becomes modified, chiefly in its vocalic pai't, for inflectional 

 purposes. 



