same concepts in the word--in
so far inflective-like--and those that do not? We dismissed the scale:
analytic, synthetic, polysynthetic, as too merely quantitative for our
purpose. Isolating, affixing, symbolic--this also seemed insufficient
for the reason that it laid too much stress on technical externals.
Isolating, agglutinative, fusional, and symbolic is a preferable scheme,
but still skirts the external. We shall do best, it seems to me, to hold
to "inflective" as a valuable suggestion for a broader and more
consistently developed scheme, as a hint for a classification based on
the nature of the concepts expressed by the language. The other two
classifications, the first based on degree of synthesis, the second on
degree of fusion, may be retained as intercrossing schemes that give us
the opportunity to subdivide our main conceptual types.

It is well to recall that all languages must needs express radical
concepts (group I) and relational ideas (group IV). Of the two other
large groups of concepts--derivational (group II) and mixed relational
(group III)--both may be absent, both present, or only one present. This
gives us at once a simple, incisive, and absolutely inclusive method of
classifying all known languages. They are:

A. Such as express only concepts of groups I and IV; in other words,
languages that keep the syntactic relations pure and that do not possess
the power to modify the significance of their radical elements by means
of affixes or internal changes.[110] We may call these _Pure-relational
non-deriving languages_ or, more tersely, _Simple Pure-relational
languages_. These are the languages that cut most to the bone of
linguistic expression.

B. Such as express concepts of groups I, II, and IV; in other words,
languages that keep the syntactic relations pure and that also possess
the power to modify the significance of their radical elements by means
of affixes or internal changes. These are the _Pure-relational deriving
languages_ or _Complex Pure-relational languages_.

C. Such as express concepts of groups I and III;[111] in other words,
languages in which the syntactic relations are expressed in necessary
connection with concepts that are not utterly devoid of concrete
significance but that do not, apart from such mixture, possess the power
to modify the significance of their radical elements by means of affixes
or internal changes.[112] These are the _Mixed-relational non-deriving
lang