[Footnote 118:  These are far-eastern and far-western representatives of the “Soudan” group recently proposed by D. Westermann.  The genetic relationship between Ewe and Shilluk is exceedingly remote at best.]

[Footnote 119:  This case is doubtful at that.  I have put French in C rather than in D with considerable misgivings.  Everything depends on how one evaluates elements like _-al_ in national, _-te_ in bonte, or re- in retourner.  They are common enough, but are they as alive, as little petrified or bookish, as our English _-ness_ and _-ful_ and un-?]

The table shows clearly enough how little relative permanence there is in the technical features of language.  That highly synthetic languages (Latin; Sanskrit) have frequently broken down into analytic forms (French; Bengali) or that agglutinative languages (Finnish) have in many instances gradually taken on “inflective” features are well-known facts, but the natural inference does not seem to have been often drawn that possibly the contrast between synthetic and analytic or agglutinative and “inflective” (fusional) is not so fundamental after all.  Turning to the Indo-Chinese languages, we find that Chinese is as near to being a perfectly isolating language as any example we are likely to find, while Classical Tibetan has not only fusional but strong symbolic features (e.g., g-tong-ba “to give,” past b-tang, future gtang, imperative thong); but both are pure-relational languages.  Ewe is either isolating or only barely agglutinative, while Shilluk, though soberly analytic, is one of the most definitely symbolic languages I know; both of these Soudanese languages are pure-relational.  The relationship between Polynesian and Cambodgian is remote, though practically certain; while the latter has more markedly fusional features than the former,[120] both conform to the complex pure-relational type.  Yana and Salinan are superficially very dissimilar languages.  Yana is highly polysynthetic and quite typically agglutinative, Salinan is no more synthetic than and as irregularly and compactly fusional ("inflective”) as Latin; both are pure-relational, Chinook and Takelma, remotely related languages of Oregon, have diverged very far from each other, not only as regards technique and synthesis in general but in almost all the details of their structure; both are complex mixed-relational languages, though in very different ways.  Facts such as these seem to lend color to the suspicion that in the contrast of pure-relational and mixed-relational (or concrete-relational) we are confronted by something deeper, more far-reaching, than the contrast of isolating, agglutinative, and fusional.[121]

[Footnote 120:  In spite of its more isolating cast.]

[Footnote 121:  In a book of this sort it is naturally impossible to give an adequate idea of linguistic structure in its varying forms.  Only a few schematic indications are possible.  A separate volume would be needed to breathe life into the scheme.  Such a volume would point out the salient structural characteristics of a number of languages, so selected as to give the reader an insight into the formal economy of strikingly divergent types.]