OCR Text |
Show 746 INTBODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF INDIAN LANGUAGES. in some the verb to be, or predicant, has been slightly developed, chiefly to affirm existence in a place. It will thus be seen that by the criterion of organization Indian tongues are of very low grade. It need but to be affirmed that by the criterion of sematologic content Indian languages are of a very low grade. Therefore, the frequently-expressed opinion that the languages of barbaric peoples have a more highly organized grammatic structure than the languages of civilized peoples has its complete refutation. It is worthy of remark that all paradigmatic inflection in a civilized tongue is a relic of its barbaric condition. When the parts of speech are fully differentiated and the process of placement fully specialized, so that the order of words in sentences has its full significance, no useful purpose is subserved by inflection. Economy in speech is the force by which its development has been accomplished, and it divides itself properly into economy of utterance and economy of thought. Economy of utterance has had to do with the phonic constitution of words; economy of thought has developed the sentence. All paradigmatic inflection requires unnecessary thought. In the clause " if he was here," " if" fully expresses the subjunctive condition, and it is quite unnecessary to express it a second time by using another form of the verb " to be," and so the people who are using the English language are deciding, for th § subjunctive form is rapidly becoming obsolete with the long list of paradigmatic forms which have disappeared. Every time the pronoun he, she, or it is used it is necessary to think of the sex of its antecedent, though in their use there is no reason why sex should be expressed say one time in ten thousand. If one pronoun non-expressive of gender were used instead of the three, with three gender adjectives, then in nine thousand nine hundred and ninety- nine cases the speaker would be relieved of the necessity of an unnecessary thought, and in the one case an adjective would fully express it. But where these inflections are greatly multiplied, as they are in the Indian languages, alike with the Greek and Latin, the speaker is compelled in the choice of a word to |