If we can draw any conclusion from the fact that roots are monosyllables in Sanskrit and its kindred languages, it is this, that such languages cannot display any great facility of expressing grammatical modifications by the change of their original materials without the help of foreign additions. We must expect that in this family of languages the principle of compounding words will extend to the first rudiments of speech, as to the persons, tenses of verbs, and cases of nouns, &c.
- Bopp (1820), a pag.10