ondition. When the parts of speech
are fully differentiated and the process of placement fully specialized,
so that the order of words in sentences has its full significance, no
useful purpose is subserved by inflection.

Economy in speech is the force by which its development has been
accomplished, and it divides itself properly into economy of utterance
and economy of thought. Economy of utterance has had to do with the
phonic constitution of words; economy of thought has developed the
sentence.

All paradigmatic inflection requires unnecessary thought. In the clause
_if he was here_, _if_ fully expresses the subjunctive condition, and it
is quite unnecessary to express it a second time by using another form
of the verb _to be_. And so the people who are using the English
language are deciding, for the subjunctive form is rapidly becoming
obsolete with the long list of paradigmatic forms which have
disappeared.

Every time the pronoun _he_, _she_, or _it_ is used it is necessary to
think of the sex of its antecedent, though in its use there is no reason
why sex should be expressed, say, one time in ten thousand. If one
pronoun non-expressive of gender were used instead of the three,
with three gender adjectives, then in nine thousand nine hundred and
ninety-nine cases the speaker would be relieved of the necessity of
an unnecessary thought, and in the one case an adjective would fully
express it. But when these inflections are greatly multiplied, as they
are in the Indian languages, alike with the Greek and Latin, the speaker
is compelled in the choice of a word to express his idea to think of a
multiplicity of things which have no connection with that which he
wishes to express.

A _Ponka_ Indian, in saying that a man killed a rabbit, would have
to say the man, he, one, animate, standing, in the nominative case,
purposely killed, by shooting an arrow, the rabbit, he, the one,
animate, sitting, in the objective case; for the form of a verb to kill
would have to be selected, and the verb changes its form by inflection
and incorporated particles to denote person, number, and gender as
animate or inanimate, and gender as standing, sitting, or lying, and
case; and the form of the verb would also express whether the killing
was done accidentally or purposely, and whether it was by shooting or by
some other process, and, if by shooting, whether by bow and arrow, or
with a gun; and the form of the verb would in like man