Again, an inflective change of the root itself for the expression of grammatical relations is denotable by exponents attached to the root-symbol. Thus, man being A, men would be Aa; men's, Aaa; sang, sung, song, from sing, would be denoted by Aa, Ab, Ac; spoken, from speak, would be Aaa; its German counterpart, gesprochen, aAab. And in the Semitic tongues, where the root never appears without a vocalization which is formal and significant, the constant radical emblem would be Aa.[1]
Compounds, finally, would be expressed in this method by putting side by side the symbols expressive of their separate members, the capital letters with their modifications and adjuncts. House-top would be AB; songwriter, AaBa; and so on.
It is unnecessary to explain with any more of detail Professor Schleicher's system of morphological notation, or to spend many words in pointing out its convenience and value. It may evidently be made a means of apprehending distinctly, and setting forth clearly, the main structural features of any language. It will not, indeed, enable us to put in a brief and compact form of statement the whole morphological character of every spoken tongue. Most tongues admit no small variety of formations; each must be judged by its prevailing modes of formation, by the average of highest and lowest modes, by their respective frequency of application, and the purposes they are made to serve. It does not help us to a simple and facile scale and classification of all the dialects of mankind; but this is to be imputed to
- ↑ Professor Schleicher, indeed, adopts this emblem as that of the Indo-European root also, since he holds the view, briefly stated and controverted above (in the eighth lecture, p. 293), that the radicals of our family were originally liable to a regular variation, of symbolic significance, for purposes of grammatical expression. I regard it, on the contrary, as the weak point in his system, as applied by himself, that it does not distinguish an internal flection like the Semitic—which, so far as we can trace its history, is ultimate and original, and which continues in full force, in old material and in new formations, through the whole history of the languages—from one like the Indo-European, which is rather secondary and accidental, constantly arising in new cases under the influence of phonetic circumstances, but never winning a pervading force, and in many members of the family hardly taking on anywhere a regular form and office, as significant of relations.
