English the unity of the word _typewriter_ is further safeguarded by a
predominant accent on the first syllable and by the possibility of
adding such a suffixed element as the plural _-s_ to the whole word.
Chinese also unifies its compounds by means of stress. However, then, in
its ultimate origins the process of composition may go back to typical
sequences of words in the sentence, it is now, for the most part, a
specialized method of expressing relations. French has as rigid a word
order as English but does not possess anything like its power of
compounding words into more complex units. On the other hand, classical
Greek, in spite of its relative freedom in the placing of words, has a
very considerable bent for the formation of compound terms.

It is curious to observe how greatly languages differ in their ability
to make use of the process of composition. One would have thought on
general principles that so simple a device as gives us our _typewriter_
and _blackbird_ and hosts of other words would be an all but universal
grammatical process. Such is not the case. There are a great many
languages, like Eskimo and Nootka and, aside from paltry exceptions, the
Semitic languages, that cannot compound radical elements. What is even
stranger is the fact that many of these languages are not in the least
averse to complex word-formations, but may on the contrary effect a
synthesis that far surpasses the utmost that Greek and Sanskrit are
capable of. Such a Nootka word, for instance, as "when, as they say, he
had been absent for four days" might be expected to embody at least
three radical elements corresponding to the concepts of "absent,"
"four," and "day." As a matter of fact the Nootka word is utterly
incapable of composition in our sense. It is invariably built up out of
a single radical element and a greater or less number of suffixed
elements, some of which may have as concrete a significance as the
radical element itself. In, the particular case we have cited the
radical element conveys the idea of "four," the notions of "day" and
"absent" being expressed by suffixes that are as inseparable from the
radical nucleus of the word as is an English element like _-er_ from the
_sing_ or _hunt_ of such words as _singer_ and _hunter_. The tendency to
word synthesis is, then, by no means the same thing as the tendency to
compounding radical elements, though the latter is not infrequently a
ready means for the synthetic tende