Page:Tamil studies.djvu/175

148 canoe, i=euphonic, and neen=to us. Languages in which relations between words are expressed not only by suffixes and prefixes, but also by a modification of the form of roots, are called inflectional languages. For example, in Sanskrit Vinsati, twenty, is composed of two roots dvi, two, and dasati, ten ; and the Sanskrit eti, he goes, is composed of two roots, i, to go and ta, the demonstrative pronoun.

Some philologists do not make much distinction between agglutination and polysynthesis, thus counting only three forms of speech in preference to four, which is the view accepted by recent writers on the subject. The theory that languages must pass through the monosyllabic and the agglutinating phases successively before reaching the inflectional stage-a theory current when Dr. Caldwell wrote his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages has now been given up. An isolating dialect does not become agglutinative, or an agglutinative one inflectional. The radical feature of a language explained in this fourfold classification, besides being innate to that tongue, is expressive of the racial character of the people that speak it ; it cannot change from one class to another though it can be modified or altered by external circumstances.

To the agglutinative group belongs Tamil, while Sanskrit is the most ancient cultivated member of the inflectional family. Morphologically, the one has no connection whatever with the other. Some Tamil scholars seem to expect that their language will, in the