26 



ON THE CLASSIFICATION 



In the morphological classification, monosyllabism repre- 

 sents the first stage, the radical or isolating; the two 

 remaining are the terminational or agglutinative, and the 

 inflectional or amalgamating. There is no doubt that the 

 system expounded in this morphological classification is 

 equally feasible and at first sight convincing. But on the 

 other hand can we anywhere, in any dead or living language, 

 point out such a gradual change ? Or in case that languages 

 exist, where such changes are still occurring, can such a 

 classification be accepted as final ? Or can it be regarded 

 as a sufficient classification, when it contains under each 

 division languages which are totally dissimilar ? 27 



Every language must, in the course of its development, 

 pass through certain phases of growth, but only within the 

 sphere of its peculiar system does it get to maturity. Such 

 a development took place as well in Chinese as in Tamil and 

 in Sanskrit, but what reasons can we produce for arguing 

 that Chinese remained stationary in the first (radical) stage, 

 that Tamil passed through it to the second (terminational), 

 and that Sanskrit outstripped Tamil on the road to further 

 perfection ? Sanskrit represents a higher development than 

 does either Chinese or Tamil, but the exact manner, in which 

 Sanskrit attained its perfection, is not known. Every 

 language, when used as a medium of communication, has 

 already reached a certain state of maturity, and its 

 preceding childhood is screened from view. The divergence 

 in the growth and constitution of languages can only be 

 accounted for by differences in thought and intuition. 

 Neither can a difference merely of place, time, occupation, 

 or mode of living account for such a discrepancy. With 

 regard to mode of life we may take the case of the Bedouins 



(27) Compare Professor Sayce's Principles of Comparative Philology, 

 Chapter IV. " The theory of three stages of development in the history of 

 language," pages 132-174. 



