This brings up the important general consideration that the method of handling one group of concepts need not in the least be identical with that used for another.  Compound terms could be used to indicate this difference, if desired, the first element of the compound referring to the treatment of the concepts of group II, the second to that of the concepts of groups III and IV.  An “agglutinative” language would normally be taken to mean one that agglutinates all of its affixed elements or that does so to a preponderating extent.  In an “agglutinative-fusional” language the derivational elements are agglutinated, perhaps in the form of prefixes, while the relational elements (pure or mixed) are fused with the radical element, possibly as another set of prefixes following the first set or in the form of suffixes or as part prefixes and part suffixes.  By a “fusional-agglutinative” language we would understand one that fuses its derivational elements but allows a greater independence to those that indicate relations.  All these and similar distinctions are not merely theoretical possibilities, they can be abundantly illustrated from the descriptive facts of linguistic morphology.  Further, should it prove desirable to insist on the degree of elaboration of the word, the terms “analytic,” “synthetic,” and “polysynthetic” can be added as descriptive terms.  It goes without saying that languages of type A are necessarily analytic and that languages of type C also are prevailingly analytic and are not likely to develop beyond the synthetic stage.

But we must not make too much of terminology.  Much depends on the relative emphasis laid on this or that feature or point of view.  The method of classifying languages here developed has this great advantage, that it can be refined or simplified according to the needs of a particular discussion.  The degree of synthesis may be entirely ignored; “fusion” and “symbolism” may often be combined with advantage under the head of “fusion”; even the difference between agglutination and fusion may, if desired, be set aside as either too difficult to draw or as irrelevant to the issue.  Languages, after all, are exceedingly complex historical structures.  It is of less importance to put each language in a neat pigeon-hole than to have evolved a flexible method which enables us to place it, from two or three independent standpoints, relatively to another language.  All this is not to deny that certain linguistic types are more stable and frequently represented than others that are just as possible from a theoretical standpoint.  But we are too ill-informed as yet of the structural spirit of great numbers of languages to have the right to frame a classification that is other than flexible and experimental.

The reader will gain a somewhat livelier idea of the possibilities of linguistic morphology by glancing down the subjoined analytical table of selected types.  The columns II, III, IV refer to the groups of concepts so numbered in the preceding chapter.  The letters a, b, c, d refer respectively to the processes of isolation (position in the sentence), agglutination, fusion, and symbolism.  Where more than one technique is employed, they are put in the order of their importance.[113]