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Updated: May 24, 2025
A language may be both agglutinative and inflective, or inflective and polysynthetic, or even polysynthetic and isolating, as we shall see a little later on. There is a fourth reason why the classification of languages has generally proved a fruitless undertaking. It is probably the most powerful deterrent of all to clear thinking.
Concepts which we should never dream of treating in a subordinate fashion are symbolized by derivational affixes or "symbolic" changes in the radical element, while the more abstract notions, including the syntactic relations, may also be conveyed by the word. A polysynthetic language illustrates no principles that are not already exemplified in the more familiar synthetic languages.
Any one who has occupied himself with the polysynthetic tongues of the Redskins, or with the prefixes in the languages of the Bantus, knows how much time must have been needed to develop their grammar, and how much higher the makers of these languages must have stood than those who speak them now.
It does not follow that an agglutinative language may not make use of the principle of fusion, both external and psychological, or even of symbolism to a considerable extent. It is a question of tendency. Is the formative slant clearly towards the agglutinative method? Then the language is "agglutinative." As such, it may be prefixing or suffixing, analytic, synthetic, or polysynthetic.
The spirit of the former method has something diagrammatic or architectural about it, the latter is a method of pruning afterthoughts. There is another very useful set of distinctions that can be made, but these too must not be applied exclusively, or our classification will again be superficial. I refer to the notions of "analytic," "synthetic," and "polysynthetic." The terms explain themselves.
An inflective language, we must insist, may be analytic, synthetic, or polysynthetic. Latin and Greek are mainly affixing in their method, with the emphasis heavily on suffixing. The agglutinative languages are just as typically affixing as they, some among them favoring prefixes, others running to the use of suffixes. Affixing alone does not define inflection.
In an analytic language the sentence is always of prime importance, the word is of minor interest. A polysynthetic language, as its name implies, is more than ordinarily synthetic. The elaboration of the word is extreme.
These are the Mixed-relational deriving languages or Complex Mixed-relational languages. Here belong the "inflective" languages that we are most familiar with as well as a great many "agglutinative" languages, some "polysynthetic," others merely synthetic. To expressly consider compounding in the present survey of types would be to complicate our problem unduly. It is a matter largely of degree.
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