is perceptual. In other words, primitive
languages have names for objects only, not for ideas, qualities,
or relations. Thus it is impossible in some Indian languages
to express the concept of a "brother" by the same word, unless
the "brother" is in every case in the same identical
circumstances. One cannot use the same word for "man" in
different relations: "man-eating," "man-sleeping,"
"man-standing-here," and "man-running-there" would all be separate
compound words. Among the Fuegians there is one
word which means "to look at one another, hoping that each
will offer to do something which both parties desire but are
unwilling to do."[1] Marett writes in this connection:

[Footnote 1: Marett: _Anthropology_, p. 140.]

Take the inhabitants of that cheerless spot, Tierra del Fuego,
whose culture is as rude as that of any people on earth. A scholar
who tried to put together a dictionary of their language found that
he had got to reckon with more than thirty thousand words, even
after suppressing a large number of forms of lesser importance. And
no wonder that the tally mounted up. For the Fuegians had more
than twenty words, some containing four syllables, to express what
for us would be either "he" or "she"; then they had two names for
the sun, two for the moon, and two more for the full moon, each of
the last named containing four syllables and having no elements in
common.[2]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, pp. 138-39.]

It is easy to see how very little refinement or abstraction
from experience could be made with such a cumbersome and
inflexible vocabulary. The thirty thousand word vocabulary
expressed a poverty of linguistic technique rather than a richness
of ideas.

At the other extreme stands a language like English, which
is, to an extraordinary degree, an "analytic" language. It has
comparatively no inflections. This means that words can be
used and moved about freely in different situations and relations.
Thus the dominant elements of an experience can be
freely isolated. A noun standing for a certain object or relation
is not chained to a particular set of accompanying circumstances.
"Man" stands as a definite concept, whether it be
used with reference to an ancient Greek, a wounded man, a
brave, a wretched, a competent, or a tall man. We can give
the accompanying circumstances by additional adjectives,
which are again freely movable verbally and intellectually.
Thus we can speak of a brave child and a tall