Languages may be classified into groups, the dialects of which are related to one another approximately as arc the members of a human family. Examples are the lndo-European (§2); the Semitic of southwestern Asia, the Ural-Altaic of northeastern Europe and northern Asia, the Dravidian of southern India, the Bantu of southern Africa, and the Algonkian of certain North American Indians. The characteristics of a group are:
A. The word bases or roots are the same in all the dialects; though borrowing of words from other languages may obscure this.
B. The morphology of all the dialects is the same; though the wearing down and disappearance of inflectional endings may obscure this, as in modern English.
C. The syntax of all the dialects is the same; though this may be obscured by changes brought about, for example, by loss of endings and assumption of their functions by prepositions, auxiliary verbs, and fixed word-order in the sentence: as in English, when compared with Latin.