Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/64

60 already referred to; it may be termed the genetic method, inasmuch as it employs as its criterion of classification the demonstrable relation of certain languages as divergent forms of some older form of speech. As we have already seen, the linguistic stocks which we thus get as our largest units of speech are too numerous to serve as the simplest possible reduction of the linguistic material to be classified. One naturally turns, therefore, to a psychological classification, one in which the classificatory criterion is the fundamental morphological type to which a particular language or stock is to be assigned. Such a classification of morphological types may proceed from different points of view, varying emphasis being laid on this or that feature of morphology. It is clear at the outset that we have to distinguish between what we may call the subject-matter or content of morphology and the mere form pure and simple. Any grammatical system gives formal expression to certain modes or categories of thought, but the manner of expression of these categories or the formal method employed may vary greatly both for different categories and for different languages. Not infrequently the same logical category may be expressed by different formal methods in the same language. Thus, in English, the negative idea is expressed by means of three distinct formal methods exemplified by untruthful, with its use of a prefix un-, which can not occur as a freely movable word; hopeless, with its use of a suffix -less, which again can not occur as a freely movable word; and not good, in which the negative idea is expressed by an element (not) that has enough mobility to justify its being considered an independent word. We have here, then, three formal processes illustrated to which may be assigned the terms prefixing, suffixing and juxtaposing in definite order. While the same logical category may be grammatically expressed by different formal methods, it is even more evident that the same general formal method may be utilized for many different categories of thought. Thus, in English, the words books and worked use the same method of suffixing grammatical elements, the one to express the concept of plurality, the other that of past activity. The words feet and swam, furthermore, respectively express the same two concepts by the use of an entirely distinct formal method, that of internal vowel change.

On the whole one finds that it is possible to distinguish between two groups of grammatically expressed logical categories. One group may be characterized as derivational; it embraces a range of concepts expressed by grammatical elements that serve to limit or modify the signification of the word subjected to grammatical treatment without seriously affecting its relation to other words in the sentence. Such merely derivational elements are, in English, prefixes like un-, suffixes like -less, agentive suffixes like -er in baker, and numerous others. The second group of logical concepts and corresponding grammatical