Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/113

Rh only relation; and examples of the kind might be multiplied in that language. So in Chinese, a monosyllabic language, the word for with, the sign of the instrumental case ("with the arm," "with a stick") is simply the root which when a "full" word signifies to make use of.

In the monosyllabic languages, the full words and the vacant words follow one another without ever amalgamating; that is, the roots are always isolated from each other, and there is never a word of several syllables. It is true that we can form something like compounds by bringing two words together, but without uniting them. Thus, in Chinese, the words fú, father, and mù, mother, brought together under the form of fú-mù, signify parents; and in the same way the words for "far" and "near" are made to signify distance. But there is nothing of derivation in this. Neither of the two words serves as an element of relation to the other, but each keeps all of its personality.

A step further is taken at a certain moment of linguistic development. The word indicating relation, the vacant word, is joined to the full word, and a polysyllabic form arises. A new word is formed, consisting of something else than a simple root, by the agglomeration of different elements, and we are in a secondary or agglutinative stage. We have no longer two full words juxtaposed to form a composite word; but an annexation to the principal word of a word playing the part of a secondary derivative and defining the relations of the root to which it is joined. When this derivative element is placed after the radical form, it is called a suffix; when it is placed at the beginning of the word, it is a prefix. Sometimes it is intercalated in the body of the word, and is then called an infix; but that method of derivation is rare.

It may be added that there are no limitations to derivation. The derived word may be the beginning of a second compound, and this of a third, and so on. Thus, in Magyar, the derivative zárat means he causes to shut, and zárhat he can shut; then, by a secondary derivation, we form zárathat, he can cause to shut. In like manner, záratgat, he causes to shut often, is a secondary, and záratgathat, he can cause to shut often, is a tertiary derivative. The languages of the third period of evolution, Latin for example, present a considerable number of these secondary and tertiary derivatives. The Latin word pater, father, is a primary derivative, of which the full or radical element is pa and the limiting element is ''ter. Paternus, whence our paternal, is a secondary, and paternitas,'' corresponding with our paternity, is a tertiary derivative. But our languages have not the extraordinary facility in derivation possessed by some simply agglutinative idioms. Thus, in the Turkish language, a single word may be made to introduce an indefinite number of ideas: as, sèvmèk, to love; sèvmèmèk, not to love; sèvilmèk, to be loved; sèvilmèmèk, not to be loved; sèvdirmèk, to make to love; sèvdirmèmèk, not to make to