38 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



theme is a word having many radically different meanings ; 

 with which meaning it is to be understood is determined 

 only by the formative word, which thus serves as its label. 

 The ways in which the theme words are thus labeled by the 

 formative word are very curious, but the subject cannot be 

 entered into here. 



When words are combined by compounding, the formative 

 elements cannot so readily be distinguished from the theme ; 

 nor for the purposes under immediate consideration can 

 compounding be well separated from agglutination. 



When words are combined by agglutination, theme and 

 formative part usually appear. The formative parts are af- 

 fixes ; and affixes may be divided into three classes, prefixes, 

 suffixes, and infixes. These affixes are often called incorpo- 

 rated particles. 



In those Indian languages where combination is chiefly 

 by agglutination, that is, by the use of affixes, i. e., incorpo- 

 rated particles, certain parts of the conjugation of the verb, 

 especially those which denote gender, number and person, 

 are effected by the use of article pronouns ; but in those lan- 

 guages where article pronouns are not found the verbs are 

 inflected to accomplish the same part of their conjugation. 

 Perhaps, when we come more fully to study the formative 

 elements in these more highly inflected languages, we may 

 discover in such elements greatly modified, i. e., worn out, 

 incorporated pronouns. 



II. The process by vocalic mutation. Here in order to 

 form a new word, one or more of the vowels of the old word 

 are changed, as in "man" — "men," where an "e" is substi- 

 tuted for "a"; "ran" — " run," where " u " is substituted for 

 " a " ; " lead " — " led," where " e," with its proper sound, is sub- 

 stituted for " ea " with its proper sound. This method is used 

 to a very limited extent in English. When the history of 

 the words in which it occurs is studied it is discovered to be 

 but an instance of the wearing out of the different elements 

 of combined words ; but in the Hebrew this method prevails 

 to a very large extent, and scholars have not yet been able 



