During the immense prehistoric period and prior to the separation of the branches from one another, the inflectional system of the noun, and less distinctly that of the verb, reached a fullness which has since undergone a gradual reduction. No that there has been generally a diminution of ability to express distinctions, but means of another kind have been more and more resorted to: auxiliaries, form-words, instead of suffixes, formative elements in words, and these later means we are accustomed to call analytic, as distinguished from synthetic.
- Whitney (1875), Pag. 211