Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/340

318 actually find between the different dialects; and, on the other hand, the grand means of development of new words and roots would be cut off, and linguistic growth almost stifled. While, then, in general the root receives no modification from the endings, the latter, on the contrary, are modified by the root, in a way which constitutes the most striking phonetic peculiarity of the family. The vowels, namely, are divided into two classes, heavy (a, o, u, etc.), and light (e, i, ü, etc.), or guttural and palatal; and, in the suffixes, only vowels of the same class with that of the root, or with that of the last syllable of the root, if there be more than one, are allowed to occur. Hence, every suffix has two forms, one with light vowel and one with heavy, either of which is used, as circumstances may require. Thus, in Turkish, from baba, 'father,' comes baba-lar-um-dan, 'from our fathers,' with heavy vowels; but from dedeh, 'grandfather,' with light vowels, comes dede-ler-in-den, 'from their grandfathers'; al, 'to take,' makes almak, alma, alajak, while sev, 'to love,' makes sevmek, sevme, sevejek: or, in Hungarian, yuh-asz-nak means 'to the shepherd,' but kert-esz-nek, 'to the gardener.' This is usually called the "law of harmonic sequence of vowels:" it takes somewhat different forms in the different branches, and exhibits niceties and intricacies of harmonic equipoise into which it is unnecessary here to enter: it is most elaborately developed and most strictly obeyed in the Turkish dialects.

One or two important general characteristics of the languages of the family are the natural and direct results of this agglutinative method, which attributes to each suffix a distinct form and office, and in which a true feeling for the unity of words does not forbid an excessive accumulation of separate formative elements in the same vocable. In the first place, varieties and irregularities of conjugation and declension are almost unknown in Scythian grammar: all verbs, all nouns, are inflected upon the same unvarying model; every grammatical relation has its own sign, by which it is under all circumstances denoted. In the second place, a host of more or less complicated forms are derivable by inflectional processes from one root or theme. An