Ideas as delimit the concrete significance of the radical element

without influencing its bearing in the proposition. A Latin form like

_remittebantur_ "they were being sent back" may serve as an illustration

of this type of distribution of elements. The prefixed element _re-_

"back" merely qualifies to a certain extent the inherent significance of

the radical element _mitt-_ "send," while the suffixes _-eba-_, _-nt-_,

and _-ur_ convey the less concrete, more strictly formal, notions of

time, person, plurality, and passivity.

On the other hand, there are languages, like the Bantu group of Africa

or the Athabaskan languages[30] of North America, in which the

grammatically significant elements precede, those that follow the

radical element forming a relatively dispensable class. The Hupa word

_te-s-e-ya-te_ "I will go," for example, consists of a radical element

_-ya-_ "to go," three essential prefixes and a formally subsidiary

suffix. The element _te-_ indicates that the act takes place here and

there in space or continuously over space; practically, it has no

clear-cut significance apart from such verb stems as it is customary to

connect it with. The second prefixed element, _-s-_, is even less easy

to define. All we can say is that it is used in verb forms of "definite"

time and that it marks action as in progress rather than as beginning or

coming to an end. The third prefix, _-e-_, is a pronominal element, "I,"

which can be used only in "definite" tenses. It is highly important to

understand that the use of _-e-_ is conditional on that of _-s-_ or of

certain alternative prefixes and that _te-_ also is in practice linked

with _-s-_. The group _te-s-e-ya_ is a firmly knit grammatical unit. The

suffix _-te_, which indicates the future, is no more necessary to its

formal balance than is the prefixed _re-_ of the Latin word; it is not

an element that is capable of standing alone but its function is

materially delimiting rather than strictly formal.[31]

[Footnote 30: Including such languages as Navaho, Apache, Hupa, Carrier,

Chipewyan, Loucheux.]

[Footnote 31: This may seem surprising to an English reader. We

generally think of time as a function that is appropriately expressed in

a purely formal manner. This notion is due to the bias that Latin

grammar has given us. As a matter of fact the English future (_I shall

go_) is not expressed by affixing at all; moreover, it may be expressed

by the present, as in _to-morrow I leave this place_, where the temporal

function is inherent in the independent adverb. Though in lesser degree,

the Hupa _-te_ is as irrelevant to the vital word as is _to-morrow_ to

the grammatical "feel" of _I leave_.]

It is not always, however, that we can clearly set off the suffixes of a

language as a group against its prefixes. In probably the majority of

languages that use both types of affixes each group has both delimiting

and formal or relational functions. The most that we can say is that a

language tends to express similar functions in either the one or the

other manner. If a certain verb expresses a certain tense by suffixing,

the probability is strong that it expresses its other tenses in an

analogous fashion and that, indeed, all verbs have suffixed tense

elements. Similarly, we normally expect to find the pronominal elements,

so far as they are included in the verb at all, either consistently

prefixed or suffixed. But these rules are far from absolute. We have

already seen that Hebrew prefixes its pronominal elements in certain

cases, suffixes them in others. In Chimariko, an Indian language of

California, the position of the pronominal affixes depends on the verb;

they are prefixed for certain verbs, suffixed for others.