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The transition into the agglutinative form marks an epoch that must have gradually extended through ages, the written literature of which has only survived in a few fragments of symbolical mythology and certain pithy sentences which have passed into popular proverbs. With the extant literature of the Vril-ya the inflectional stratum commences.
One of the most illustrious of recent philologists, Max Muller, in arguing for the analogy between the strata of language and the strata of the earth, lays down this absolute dogma: "No language can, by any possibility, be inflectional without having passed through the agglutinative and isolating stratum.
And what is true of phonetics in particular is hardly less true of comparative philology as a whole. Its present procedure is in the main analytic or formal. Thus its fundamental distinction between isolating, agglutinative and inflectional languages is arrived at simply by contrasting the different ways in which words are affected by being put together into a sentence.
The scientists divide all the languages of the earth into three great groups: first, the monosyllabic, isolating, radical, or asynthetic languages; second, the agglutinant, terminational, or polysynthetic languages; third, the inflectional languages.
Still the change only affects certain inflectional sy1lables, so that the original s being only partially displaced, retains its place in the language, although it occurs in fewer words. In Australian, where it is wanting at all, it is wanting in toto: and this is a reason for believing that its absence is referrible to non-development rather than to displacement.
They are of the opinion that even the languages of highest rank the inflectional very probably took a starting-point from the asynthetic languages, and a course of development through the agglutinants, and that in like manner the agglutinants have behind them an asynthetic period.
Ano, to Man, | Dat. Anoi, to Men. Ac. Anan, Man, | Ac. Ananda, Men. Voc. Hil-an, O Man, | Voc. Hil-Ananda, O Men. In the elder inflectional literature the dual form existed it has long been obsolete. The genitive case with them is also obsolete; the dative supplies its place: they say the House 'to' a Man, instead of the House 'of' a Man.
As the inflectional stage prevailed over the agglutinative, it is surprising to see how much more boldly the original roots of the language project from the surface that conceals them.
But when the inflectional form of language became so far advanced as to have its scholars and grammarians, they seem to have united in extirpating all such polysynthetical or polysyllabic monsters, as devouring invaders of the aboriginal forms.
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