I have called this growth of inflexions the _third_ stage. It is the _third great_ stage in the formation of language, and is the only other stage distinguishable when we are examining what is called an inflected language. And all the languages the general reader is likely to know belong to this class. But when we turn to a wider study of the various tongues in use among mankind we find that this process of forming inflexions is a very slow one, that it, in its turn, has gone through many stages. And it is, in fact, the different stages through which a language has passed on its road to the formation of inflexions which settles the class in which it is to be placed among the various tongues spoken by mankind.
We shall soon understand what are these further stages in language-formation. As far as we have been able to see at present, the inflexion presents itself as something added on to the significant word to give it a varied meaning. It is evidently therefore part of a new process through which language has to go after it has completed its original stock of sounds, namely, the formation of fresh words by joining together two others which already exist. This is a process which, no doubt, in some shape or other, began in the very earliest ages, and which is to this day going on continually. The simpler form of it is the joining together two words which are significant when they stand alone to form a third word expressing a new idea; just as we have joined ‘ant’ to ‘hill’ and formed _ant-hill_, which is a different idea than either _ant_ or _hill_ taken alone. In the words _playful_, _joyful_, again, we have the same process carried rather further. The words mean simply play-full, ‘full of play,’ joy-full, ‘full of joy.’ But we do not in reality quite think of this meaning when we use them. The termination _ful_ has become half-meaningless by itself, and in doing so we observe it has slightly changed its original form.
But far more important in the history of language is the joining of the meaningless or auxiliary words on to other words of the first, the significant class, whereby in the course of time the inflexions of language have been formed. Although _we_ always put the meaningless qualifying word before the chief word, and say ‘on the rock,’ or ‘under the rock,’ it is more natural to man, as is shown by all languages, to put the principal idea first, and say ‘rock on,’ ‘rock under,’ the idea _rock_ being of course the chief idea, the part of the rock, or position in relation to the rock, coming after. So the first step towards forming grammar was the getting a number of meaningless words, and joining them on to the substantive, ‘rock,’ ‘rock-by,’ ‘rock-in,’ ‘rock-to,’ etc. So with the verb. The essential idea in the verb is the action itself, the next idea is the time or person in which the action takes place; and the natural thing for man to do is to make the words follow that order. The joining process would give us from _love_, the idea of loving, ‘love-I,’ ‘love-thou,’ ‘love-he,’ etc.; and for the imperfect ‘love-was-I,’ ‘love-was-thou,’ ‘love-was-he,’ ‘love-was-we,’ ‘love-was-ye,’ ‘love-was-they;’ for perfect ‘love-have-I,’ ‘love-have-thou,’ ‘love-have-he,’ etc. Of course, these are merely illustrations, but they make the mode of this early joining process clearer than if we had chosen a language where that process is actually found in its purity, and then translated the forms into their English equivalents.