rds in sentences. We have
not envisaged whole languages as conforming to this or that general
type. Incidentally we have observed that one language runs to tight-knit
synthesis where another contents itself with a more analytic, piece-meal
handling of its elements, or that in one language syntactic relations
appear pure which in another are combined with certain other notions
that have something concrete about them, however abstract they may be
felt to be in practice. In this way we may have obtained some inkling of
what is meant when we speak of the general form of a language. For it
must be obvious to any one who has thought about the question at all or
who has felt something of the spirit of a foreign language that there is
such a thing as a basic plan, a certain cut, to each language. This type
or plan or structural "genius" of the language is something much more
fundamental, much more pervasive, than any single feature of it that we
can mention, nor can we gain an adequate idea of its nature by a mere
recital of the sundry facts that make up the grammar of the language.
When we pass from Latin to Russian, we feel that it is approximately the
same horizon that bounds our view, even though the near, familiar
landmarks have changed. When we come to English, we seem to notice that
the hills have dipped down a little, yet we recognize the general lay
of the land. And when we have arrived at Chinese, it is an utterly
different sky that is looking down upon us. We can translate these
metaphors and say that all languages differ from one another but that
certain ones differ far more than others. This is tantamount to saying
that it is possible to group them into morphological types.

Strictly speaking, we know in advance that it is impossible to set up a
limited number of types that would do full justice to the peculiarities
of the thousands of languages and dialects spoken on the surface of the
earth. Like all human institutions, speech is too variable and too
elusive to be quite safely ticketed. Even if we operate with a minutely
subdivided scale of types, we may be quite certain that many of our
languages will need trimming before they fit. To get them into the
scheme at all it will be necessary to overestimate the significance of
this or that feature or to ignore, for the time being, certain
contradictions in their mechanism. Does the difficulty of classification
prove the uselessness of the task? I do not think so. It w