to be preceded by a particular type of such element, an
adjective. Its own power is thus, in a manner, checked in advance. The
fusion here, however, is so vague and elementary, so much a matter of
course in the great majority of all cases of affixing, that it is
natural to overlook its reality and to emphasize rather the juxtaposing
or agglutinative nature of the affixing process. If the _-ness_ could be
affixed as an abstractive element to each and every type of radical
element, if we could say _fightness_ ("the act or quality of fighting")
or _waterness_ ("the quality or state of water") or _awayness_ ("the
state of being away") as we can say _goodness_ ("the state of being
good"), we should have moved appreciably nearer the agglutinative pole.
A language that runs to synthesis of this loose-jointed sort may be
looked upon as an example of the ideal agglutinative type, particularly
if the concepts expressed by the agglutinated elements are relational
or, at the least, belong to the abstracter class of derivational ideas.

Instructive forms may be cited from Nootka. We shall return to our "fire
in the house."[107] The Nootka word _inikw-ihl_ "fire in the house" is
not as definitely formalized a word as its translation, suggests. The
radical element _inikw-_ "fire" is really as much of a verbal as of a
nominal term; it may be rendered now by "fire," now by "burn," according
to the syntactic exigencies of the sentence. The derivational element
_-ihl_ "in the house" does not mitigate this vagueness or generality;
_inikw-ihl_ is still "fire in the house" or "burn in the house." It may
be definitely nominalized or verbalized by the affixing of elements that
are exclusively nominal or verbal in force. For example,
_inikw-ihl-'i_, with its suffixed article, is a clear-cut nominal form:
"the burning in the house, the fire in the house"; _inikw-ihl-ma_, with
its indicative suffix, is just as clearly verbal: "it burns in the
house." How weak must be the degree of fusion between "fire in the
house" and the nominalizing or verbalizing suffix is apparent from the
fact that the formally indifferent _inikwihl_ is not an abstraction
gained by analysis but a full-fledged word, ready for use in the
sentence. The nominalizing _-'i_ and the indicative _-ma_ are not fused
form-affixes, they are simply additions of formal import. But we can
continue to hold the verbal or nominal nature of _inikwihl_ in abeyance
long before we reach the _-'i_