causality, possibility, passivity, negation, intensity, condition, and so on, besides the direct pronominal objects, in one interminable conglomerate, which is then treated as a simple verb, and run through all the secondary changes of number, person, tense, and mood. The result is an endless number of theoretically possible verbal forms, which, although in practice naturally limited to the ordinary requirements of speech, are far too numerous to allow of a complete verbal paradigm being constructed of any fully developed member of the Ural-Altaic group, such, for instance, as Yakut, Tungus, Turki, Mordvinian, Finnish, or Magyar. In this system the vowels are classed as strong or hard (_a, o, u_), weak or soft (the same _umlauted_: _ae_, _oe_, _ue_), and neutral (generally _e_, _i_), these last being so called because they occur indifferently with the two other classes. Thus, if the determining root vowel is _a_ (strong), that of the postfixes may be either _a_ (strong), _e_ or _i_ (neutral); if _ae_ (weak), that of the postfixes may be either _ae_ (weak), or _e_ or _i_ as before. The postfixes themselves no doubt were originally notional terms worn down in form and meaning, so as to express mere abstract relation, as in the Magyar _vel_ = with, from _veli_ = companion. Tacked on to the root _fa_ = tree, this will give the ablative case, first unharmonised, _fa-vel_, then harmonised, _fa-val_ = tree-with, with a tree. In the early Magyar texts of the twelfth century inharmonic compounds, such as _halal-nek_, later _halak-nak_ = at death, are numerous, from which it has been inferred that the principle of vowel harmony is not an original feature of the Ural-Altaic languages, but a later development, due in fact to phonetic decay, and still scarcely known in some members of the group, such as Votyak and Highland Cheremissian (Volga Finn). But M. Lucien Adam holds that these idioms have lost the principle through foreign (Russian) influence, and that the few traces still perceptible are survivals from a time when all the Ural-Altaic tongues were subject to progressive vowel harmony[629].