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But this is only a theory. True it is, however, that while Stepping and Tottingham and Little Maynard and all the other settlements around are content to exist without explanatory suffixes, Eden maintains and is everywhere accorded the right to be known as Eden Village.
The prefixed element re- "back" merely qualifies to a certain extent the inherent significance of the radical element mitt- "send," while the suffixes -eba-, -nt-, and -ur convey the less concrete, more strictly formal, notions of time, person, plurality, and passivity.
In Nootka, to refer to but one other language in which the process is found, the t or tl of many verbal suffixes becomes hl in forms denoting repetition, e.g., hita-'ato "to fall out," hita-'ahl "to keep falling out"; mat-achisht-utl "to fly on to the water," mat-achisht-ohl "to keep flying on to the water."
Indeed, it is a fair guess that suffixes do more of the formative work of language than all other methods combined. It is worth noting that there are not a few affixing languages that make absolutely no use of prefixed elements but possess a complex apparatus of suffixes. Such are Turkish, Hottentot, Eskimo, Nootka, and Yana.
Confucianism even conditioned the development of Japanese grammar, as it also did that of the Koreans, by multiplying honorary prefixes and suffixes and building up all sociable and polite speech on perpendicular lines. Personality was next to nothing and individuality was in a certain sense unknown.
It goes without saying that in these cases the English principle of word order is as potent a means of expression as is the Latin use of case suffixes or of an interrogative particle. There is here no question of functional poverty, but of formal economy. We have already seen something of the process of composition, the uniting into a single word of two or more radical elements.
The emphasis here placed on self recognizes it as the center of virtue; and the suffixes, activity, expression, etc., declare the unfolding of instincts and other native powers, up to the point of independence, to be a great desideratum in education.
From sittan, "to sit," thirteen compounds were thus formed, but every one has perished. A larger percentage of suffixes was retained, and we still have many words like "wholesome-ness," "child-hood," "sing-er." The power of forming self-explaining compounds was largely lost.
One morning the girls were having a lesson in grammar, and were diligently repeating Latin derivations and Anglo-Saxon suffixes, when some chance called Patty's attention to Enid. She noticed the latter open her desk stealthily, and draw out a tiny paper box, which she placed on her knee, and covered with her pocket handkerchief. Patty wondered what she was doing.
Similarly, we normally expect to find the pronominal elements, so far as they are included in the verb at all, either consistently prefixed or suffixed. But these rules are far from absolute. We have already seen that Hebrew prefixes its pronominal elements in certain cases, suffixes them in others.
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