i899-*oo Transactions 105 



relation between a highly analytic language and a highly 

 synthetic or inflectional one may be compared to that between 

 printing from movable type and printing from blocks. In the 

 analytic languages we have broken up our blocks, so that the 

 different characters they contain may be employed in any place 

 and in any relation in which they may be found useful. It used 

 to be the custom to speak of inflectional languages as being 

 more perfect than analytical ones. The great German scholar, 

 Bopp, in his " Comparative Grammar," seems distinctly to 

 take this view. He speaks for example of the ancient 

 Gothic as being much more "perfect" than modern German, 

 and of Sanskrit as being the most ' ' perfect ' ' language of 

 all by virtue of the extreme elaborateness of its inflectional 

 system. This opinion, I think I am safe in saying, is 

 no longer held either by scholars or by men of letters. 

 We value languages now, not according to the complexity 

 of their structure, but according to their power, compass and 

 flexibility. Judged by this test the English language, with 

 its very slender accidence, can at least hold its own against any 

 other language either of ancient or of modern times. The fact is 

 that, while the English language is analytic in its structure, it is 

 synthetic in its vocabulary ; that is to say a given word or phrase 

 is capable of conveying far more emotional effect than could be 

 gathered from its mere definition. There is that involved in it which 

 the heart and not the intellect put there ; consequently, while the 

 intellect has come to its rights, or nearly so, in the structure of the 

 language, the heart has many a refuge of its own, many a strong- 

 hold, in a subtler synthesis woven of associations, and expressing 

 itself in phrases and cadences whose effects no formal logic can 

 analyse or appraise. 



In an analytic language of this kind the power of expression 

 by means of spoken and written words reaches its greatest height. 

 There is a further stage, but it is one of declension and disintegra- 

 tion, that namely which is represented by the so-called ' ' isolat- 

 ing ' ' languages. Of these Chinese and Thibetan are well-known 

 specimens. Analysis has here been carried to its utmost limit. 

 Inflections have gone, grammar is little more than a matter of 

 the order of words, all concords and relations which could give 

 organic unity or vitality to a sentence have vanished. Each 

 word is a naked element. Each is a symbol — that is 



