Note 2 — Chapter XIX

A philological parallel may make this clearer. 'The Indo-German,' says Misteli (Typen des Sprachbaues, p. 363), 'embraces or condenses several categories in a single idea in a way which though less logical is more fruitful; for in this way he procures graspable totals with which he can work further, and not patch-work which would crumble away in his hands. Our He includes four grammatical categories, which work not separately, but as a whole:—third person, masculine gender, singular, nominative; whereas the Magyar ö is the vehicle only of one category, the third person, which is either determined as singular by the context, or as plural by the addition of k: gender in these languages does not exist: and as subject again ö is specially interpreted from the context. The unification of the four categories makes He an individual and a word; the generality and isolation of one category makes ö an abstract and a stem.'