type to which a language belongs one must
be careful not to be misled by structural features which are mere
survivals of an older stage, which have no productive life and do not
enter into the unconscious patterning of the language. All languages are
littered with such petrified bodies. The English _-ster_ of _spinster_
and _Webster_ is an old agentive suffix, but, as far as the feeling of
the present English-speaking generation is concerned, it cannot be said
to really exist at all; _spinster_ and _Webster_ have been completely
disconnected from the etymological group of _spin_ and of _weave (web)_.
Similarly, there are hosts of related words in Chinese which differ in
the initial consonant, the vowel, the tone, or in the presence or
absence of a final consonant. Even where the Chinaman feels the
etymological relationship, as in certain cases he can hardly help doing,
he can assign no particular function to the phonetic variation as such.
Hence it forms no live feature of the language-mechanism and must be
ignored in defining the general form of the language. The caution is all
the more necessary, as it is precisely the foreigner, who approaches a
new language with a certain prying inquisitiveness, that is most apt to
see life in vestigial features which the native is either completely
unaware of or feels merely as dead form.]

Note.--Parentheses indicate a weak development of the process in
question.

+----------------+---+----+---+--------------+----------+--------------+
|Fundamental Type"II |III |IV |Technique "Synthesis "Examples |
+----------------+---+----+---+--------------+----------+--------------+
| A " | | | " " |
|(Simple Pure- "-- |-- |a |Isolating "Analytic "Chinese; |
| relational) " | | | " "Annamite |
| " | | | " " |
| "(d)|-- |a,b|Isolating "Analytic "Ewe |
| " | | |(weakly " "(Guinea Coast)|
| " | | |agglutinative)" " |
| " | | | " " |
| "(b)|-- |a, |Agglutinative "Analytic "Modern Tibetan|
| " | |b,c|(mildly " " |
| " | | |agglutinative-" " |
|