The older writers on comparative linguistics devoted much attention to the original meanings of inflectional terminations. A deeper research has, however, led to less dogmatic views, and it would seem that, in our present state of knowl edge, no conclusion as to their primitive force of inflections can be reached. It may be true that s is characteristic of the plural (as Gothic wulfos, walfans, Sanskrit rrkahyas, rrkais. 'wolves'—nom.. ace., lug., abl., instr.), but s is also a mark of the nominative masculine and genitive singular (as Latin lupus, 'wolf,' Greek grjaos, 'of a serpent'). It is just that the case-endings were indeed originally hide pendent words, which became stereotyped and meaningless terminations. A possible analogue is furnished by the modern Indo-Iranian languages as compared with the ancient, as Ilindu gharakc, 'of a horse.' corresponding to Prakrit gluiduassa Sanskrit gh.5takasya kaksF, 'at the side of a horse,' or Persian §eihro, 'for the king,' cor responding to Old Persian a•Arlyaaiyaltya radiy, 'for the sake of the king.' This, however, is a mere hypothesis, a. suggestion of a process which may have taken place. In the case of the verbs, repeated endeavors have been made to trace the endings back to the personal pronoun,. Thus the terminations of Sanskrit bharruni, bharati. bbardras, 'I bear,' he bears: 'we two bear,' may be compared with some plausibility with sing, tam, 'him,' acurn, 'we two,' but the other per sons of the verb oppose such a hypothesis. It is true that many agglutinative languages seem to bear out the old view: but it is. notwithstanding this, too faulty a theory to be adopted as even plausible, much less probable.
Inflection comes only at the end of an ludo Germanic word, excepting in the reduplication of the aorist and perfect (as Sanskrit ajijanam, aorist of jaw, 'to be born,' t arnda, perfect of tad, 'to thrust.' Greek perfect of ylyveatiat, `to become,' Latin memordi. perfect [ao•istj of mordere, 'to bite,' Gothic haihait, preterite of haitan, 'to call'). This reduplica tion is probably intensive in origin, as is seen in the intensive or frequentative and desidera tive conjugations in Sanskrit. The separable initial letter used regularly in Sanskrit and Greek, and sometimes in Armenian, to denote past time when prefixed to a preterite tense (as Sanskrit abharam, imperfect of bhar. 'to bear,'
Greek Nepov, imperfect of Opetv, 'to bear.' Ar menian ekaq beside kac, preterite of kal. 'to stand') does not properly belong to inflection, and the same exclusion holds true with regard to ablaut (q.v.).
Inflection may, however, be internal and initial as well as final in Semitic. As examples from Arable, which is the most highly inflected of all the Semitic dialects. may be cited qatalo.' he kills.' qutila, 'he is killed,' yaqtulu. 'he killed.' yuqtalu,' 'he was killed.' uqtul, 'kill!' tuqatiliina, 'ye fought.' or wajaba. 'it is necessary.' ujibu,' I made it necessary,' nastairjibu, 'we considered it neces sary for ourselves.' The decay and loss of inflection has been con stant from the pre-Indo-Germanic period to the present day. The analytic type of language (see I'mtotoGY) has steadily encroached on the in flectional, until we have such relatively inflection less languages as the English and the modern Persian. It is still a moot question whether the growth of the analytic type at the expense of the inflectional marks an advance. Certain scholars, notably Jespersen in his Progress in Longua!K with .S'pecial Reference to English( London, Is04), have answered in the affirmative, for in an inflec tional form, a. Latin arnavcram, 'I had loved.' we have the attitude of the speaker. the per.. n of the speaker. the time of the action. and the verbal force all combined, which may be more elements than are necessary in some instances for the speaker's immediate purpose. On the other hand, the inflectional languages are more compact than the analytic. A fair answer to this problem may be that the surrender of inflection to analy sis marks a linguistic loss hut a psychological gain. Such a conclusion carries with it the im plication that, as psychological requirements ulti mately condition all but the mechanical (pho netic) side of language. the final balance is in favor of the analytic type of speech.
Consult Brug,mann. Grundriss der rergbLich‘ n den Grammatik der indogermanisehen Nprachen, vol ii., part 2 (Strasshurg,