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It has little to say of the ultimate psychological basis of speech
and gives only enough of the actual descriptive or historical facts of particular languages
to illustrate principles
...

The perspective thus gained will be useful, I hope, both to linguistic students and to the
outside public that is half inclined to dismiss linguistic notions as the private pedantries
of essentially idle minds
...
Among contemporary writers of influence on liberal thought Croce is
one of the very few who have gained an understanding of the fundamental significance of
language
...
I am deeply indebted
to him for this insight
...
This value depends chiefly on the unconscious and unrationalized nature of
linguistic structure
...
There is not a single diacritical mark in the book
...
It was necessary, however, for the scheme of the
book, which includes a consideration of the protean forms in which human thought has
found expression, to quote some exotic instances
...

Owing to limitations of space I have had to leave out many ideas or principles that I
should have liked to touch upon
...
Nevertheless, I trust that enough has here been brought
together to serve as a stimulus for the more fundamental study of a neglected field
...
A
...

Kroeber and R
...
Lowie of the University of California, Prof
...
D
...
J
...


Edward Sapir
...
,
April 8, 1921
...
Preface
2
...
Introductory: Language Defined
Language a cultural, not a biologically inherited, function
...

Definition of language
...
Concepts
and language
...
The universality of language
...
The Elements of Speech
Sounds not properly elements of speech
...
Types of words
...
The word has a real psychological
existence
...
The cognitive, volitional, and emotional aspects
of speech
...

3
...
The articulating organs and their
share in the production of speech sounds: lungs, glottal cords, nose, mouth
and its parts
...
How and where consonants are
articulated
...
The “values” of sounds
...

4
...
Intercrossing of
the two points of view
...
Word
sequence as a method
...
Affixing:
prefixes and suffixes; infixes
...
Reduplication
...

5
...
Types of concepts illustrated by it
...
How the same sentence
may be expressed in other languages with striking differences in the
selection and grouping of concepts
...


The mixing of essential relational concepts with secondary ones of more
concrete order
...
Classification of linguistic concepts:
basic or concrete, derivational, concrete relational, pure relational
...
Categories
expressed in various grammatical systems
...
Concord
...

6
...
Difficulties
...
Classification according
to formal processes used not practicable
...
“Inflective” and “agglutinative
...
Agglutination
...
Threefold classification suggested: what types of concepts are
expressed? what is the prevailing technique? what is the degree of
synthesis? Four fundamental conceptual types
...

Historical test of the validity of the suggested conceptual classification
...
Language as a Historical Product: Drift
Variability of language
...
Time variation
or “drift
...
Linguistic stocks
...
Tendencies illustrated in an English sentence
...
Leveling tendencies in
English
...
Tendency to fixed position in the
sentence
...

8
...
Phonetic law as illustrated in the
history of certain English and German vowels and consonants
...
Shifting of sounds without destruction of phonetic
pattern
...
Vowel
mutation in English and German
...
Analogical levelings to offset irregularities produced by phonetic
laws
...

9
...
Borrowing of words
...
Phonetic modification of borrowed words
...
Morphological
borrowings
...

10
...
Race and language need not correspond
...
Coincidences between linguistic cleavages and
those of language and culture due to historical, not intrinsic psychological,
causes
...

11
...
Literature may move on
the generalized linguistic plane or may be inseparable from specific
linguistic conditions
...
Necessary esthetic
advantages or limitations in any language
...
Prosody as conditioned by the phonetic
dynamics of a language
...
Index

I
Introductory: Language Defined
Speech is so familiar a feature of daily life that we rarely pause to define it
...
Yet it needs but a moment’s
reflection to convince us that this naturalness of speech is but an illusory feeling
...
In the case of the latter function, culture, in other words, the
traditional body of social usage, is not seriously brought into play
...
Indeed, the
very conformation of these muscles and of the appropriate parts of the nervous system
may be said to be primarily adapted to the movements made in walking and in similar
activities
...
To put it
concisely, walking is an inherent, biological function of man
...
It is of course true that in a certain sense the individual is predestined to
talk, but that is due entirely to the circumstance that he is born not merely in nature, but
in the lap of a society that is certain, reasonably certain, to lead him to its traditions
...
But it is just as certain that he will never learn to talk, that is, to
communicate ideas according to the traditional system of a particular society
...
He will develop the art of walking in his new
environment very much as he would have developed it in the old
...
Walking, then, is a

general human activity that varies only within circumscribed limits as we pass from
individual to individual
...
Speech is a human
activity that varies without assignable limit as we pass from social group to social group,
because it is a purely historical heritage of the group, the product of long-continued social
usage
...

Walking is an organic, an instinctive, function (not, of course, itself an instinct); speech is
a non-instinctive, acquired, “cultural” function
...
This is the well-known
observation that under the stress of emotion, say of a sudden twinge of pain or of
unbridled joy, we do involuntarily give utterance to sounds that the hearer interprets as
indicative of the emotion itself
...
The former kind of utterance is indeed instinctive, but it is non-symbolic; in other
words, the sound of pain or the sound of joy does not, as such, indicate the emotion, it
does not stand aloof, as it were, and announce that such and such an emotion is being felt
...
Moreover, such instinctive cries hardly
constitute communication in any strict sense
...
If they convey certain ideas to the hearer, it is only in
the very general sense in which any and every sound or even any phenomenon in our
environment may be said to convey an idea to the perceiving mind
...
” A definition of language, however, that is so extended as to
cover every type of inference becomes utterly meaningless
...
These interjections are merely
conventional fixations of the natural sounds
...
As such they
may be considered an integral portion of speech, in the properly cultural sense of the
term, being no more identical with the instinctive cries themselves than such words as
“cuckoo” and “kill-deer” are identical with the cries of the birds they denote or than
Rossini’s treatment of a storm in the overture to “William Tell” is in fact a storm
...
It may be objected
that, though the interjections differ somewhat as we pass from language to language, they
do nevertheless offer striking family resemblances and may therefore be looked upon as
having grown up out of a common instinctive base
...
A Japanese
picture of a hill both differs from and resembles a typical modern European painting of

the same kind of hill
...

Neither the one nor the other is the same thing as, or, in any intelligible sense, a direct
outgrowth of, this natural feature
...
The interjections of Japanese and English are, just so, suggested by a
common natural prototype, the instinctive cries, and are thus unavoidably suggestive of
each other
...
Yet the instinctive cries as such are practically
identical for all humanity, just as the human skeleton or nervous system is to all intents
and purposes a “fixed,” that is, an only slightly and “accidentally” variable, feature of
man’s organism
...
Their discussion is
valuable mainly because it can be shown that even they, avowedly the nearest of all
language sounds to instinctive utterance, are only superficially of an instinctive nature
...
But, as a matter of fact, all attempts so to
explain the origin of speech have been fruitless
...
These are a very small and functionally insignificant
proportion of the vocabulary of language; at no time and in no linguistic province that we
have record of do we see a noticeable tendency towards their elaboration into the primary
warp and woof of language
...

What applies to the interjections applies with even greater force to the sound-imitative
words
...
They are just as truly creations of
the human mind, flights of the human fancy, as anything else in language
...
Hence the
onomatopoetic theory of the origin of speech, the theory that would explain all speech as
a gradual evolution from sounds of an imitative character, really brings us no nearer to
the instinctive level than is language as we know it to-day
...
It is true that a number of words
which we do not now feel to have a sound-imitative value can be shown to have once had
a phonetic form that strongly suggests their origin as imitations of natural sounds
...
” For all that, it is quite impossible to show, nor does it seem
intrinsically reasonable to suppose, that more than a negligible proportion of the elements
of speech or anything at all of its formal apparatus is derivable from an onomatopoetic
source
...
Among the most primitive peoples of aboriginal America, the
Athabaskan tribes of the Mackenzie River speak languages in which such words seem to
be nearly or entirely absent, while they are used freely enough in languages as

sophisticated as English and German
...

The way is now cleared for a serviceable definition of language
...
These symbols are, in the first
instance, auditory and they are produced by the so-called “organs of speech
...
Such human or animal
communication, if “communication” it may be called, as is brought about by involuntary,
instinctive cries is not, in our sense, language at all
...
We must not be misled by the mere term
...
The lungs, the larynx, the palate, the nose, the tongue, the teeth, and the
lips, are all so utilized, but they are no more to be thought of as primary organs of speech
than are the fingers to be considered as essentially organs of piano-playing or the knees
as organs of prayer
...
It is an extremely complex and ever-shifting
network of adjustments—in the brain, in the nervous system, and in the articulating and
auditory organs—tending towards the desired end of communication
...
If, then, these and other organs are being
constantly utilized in speech, it is only because any organ, once existent and in so far as it
is subject to voluntary control, can be utilized by man for secondary purposes
...
It gets what service it can out of organs and functions, nervous and muscular,
that have come into being and are maintained for very different ends than its own
...

This can only mean that the sounds of speech are localized in the auditory tract of the
brain, or in some circumscribed portion of it, precisely as other classes of sounds are
localized; and that the motor processes involved in speech (such as the movements of the
glottal cords in the larynx, the movements of the tongue required to pronounce the
vowels, lip movements required to articulate certain consonants, and numerous others)
are localized in the motor tract precisely as are all other impulses to special motor
activities
...
Naturally the particular points or
clusters of points of localization in the several tracts that refer to any element of language
are connected in the brain by paths of association, so that the outward, or psychophysical, aspect of language, is of a vast network of associated localizations in the brain
and lower nervous tracts, the auditory localizations being without doubt the most

fundamental of all for speech
...
It must be further associated
with some element or group of elements of experience, say a visual image or a class of
visual images or a feeling of relation, before it has even rudimentary linguistic
significance
...
We see therefore at once
that language as such is not and cannot be definitely localized, for it consists of a peculiar
symbolic relation—physiologically an arbitrary one—between all possible elements of
consciousness on the one hand and certain selected elements localized in the auditory,
motor, and other cerebral and nervous tracts on the other
...
” Hence, we have no recourse but to accept language as a fully formed
functional system within man’s psychic or “spiritual” constitution
...

From the physiologist’s or psychologist’s point of view we may seem to be making an
unwarrantable abstraction in desiring to handle the subject of speech without constant and
explicit reference to that basis
...
We can
profitably discuss the intention, the form, and the history of speech, precisely as we
discuss the nature of any other phase of human culture—say art or religion—as an
institutional or cultural entity, leaving the organic and psychological mechanisms back of
it as something to be taken for granted
...
Our study of language is not to be
one of the genesis and operation of a concrete mechanism; it is, rather, to be an inquiry
into the function and form of the arbitrary systems of symbolism that we term languages
...
The word “house” is not a linguistic fact if by it is meant merely
the acoustic effect produced on the ear by its constituent consonants and vowels,
pronounced in a certain order; nor the motor processes and tactile feelings which make up
the articulation of the word; nor the visual perception on the part of the hearer of this
articulation; nor the visual perception of the word “house” on the written or printed page;
nor the motor processes and tactile feelings which enter into the writing of the word; nor
the memory of any or all of these experiences
...
But the
mere fact of such an association is not enough
...
This type of association does not constitute speech
...
Such an association, voluntary and, in a
sense, arbitrary as it is, demands a considerable exercise of self-conscious attention
...

But we have traveled a little too fast
...
The world of our experiences must be enormously
simplified and generalized before it is possible to make a symbolic inventory of all our
experiences of things and relations; and this inventory is imperative before we can
convey ideas
...
Only so is communication possible, for the single
experience lodges in an individual consciousness and is, strictly speaking,
incommunicable
...
Thus, the single impression which I have had
of a particular house must be identified with all my other impressions of it
...
The particular
experience that we started with has now been widened so as to embrace all possible
impressions or images that sentient beings have formed or may form of the house in
question
...

It is, essentially, the type of simplification which underlies, or forms the crude subject of,
history and art
...
We must cut to the bone of things, we must more or less arbitrarily throw
whole masses of experience together as similar enough to warrant their being looked
upon—mistakenly, but conveniently—as identical
...
In other words, the speech element “house” is the symbol, first and foremost,
not of a single perception, nor even of the notion of a particular object, but of a
“concept,” in other words, of a convenient capsule of thought that embraces thousands of
distinct experiences and that is ready to take in thousands more
...

The question has often been raised whether thought is possible without speech; further, if
speech and thought be not but two facets of the same psychic process
...
In the first
place, it is well to observe that whether or not thought necessitates symbolism, that is
speech, the flow of language itself is not always indicative of thought
...
It does not follow from this that the use to

which language is put is always or even mainly conceptual
...
When I say, for instance, “I had a good breakfast this morning,” it is clear that I
am not in the throes of laborious thought, that what I have to transmit is hardly more than
a pleasurable memory symbolically rendered in the grooves of habitual expression
...
It is
somewhat as though a dynamo capable of generating enough power to run an elevator
were operated almost exclusively to feed an electric door-bell
...
Language may be looked upon as an instrument
capable of running a gamut of psychic uses
...

Thus the outward form only of language is constant; its inner meaning, its psychic value
or intensity, varies freely with attention or the selective interest of the mind, also,
needless to say, with the mind’s general development
...
From this it follows at once that language
and thought are not strictly coterminous
...
To put our
viewpoint somewhat differently, language is primarily a pre-rational function
...

Most people, asked if they can think without speech, would probably answer, “Yes, but it
is not easy for me to do so
...
” Language is but a garment! But
what if language is not so much a garment as a prepared road or groove? It is, indeed, in
the highest degree likely that language is an instrument originally put to uses lower than
the conceptual plane and that thought arises as a refined interpretation of its content
...
No
one believes that even the most difficult mathematical proposition is inherently
dependent on an arbitrary set of symbols, but it is impossible to suppose that the human
mind is capable of arriving at or holding such a proposition without the symbolism
...
The illusion seems to be due to
a number of factors
...
As a matter of fact, no sooner do we try to put an image into conscious
relation with another than we find ourselves slipping into a silent flow of words
...
A still more fruitful source of the illusive
feeling that language may be dispensed with in thought is the common failure to realize
that language is not identical with its auditory symbolism
...
Hence the
contention that one thinks without language merely because he is not aware of a
coexisting auditory imagery is very far indeed from being a valid one
...

Psycho-physically, this would mean that the auditory or equivalent visual or motor
centers in the brain, together with the appropriate paths of association, that are the
cerebral equivalent of speech, are touched off so lightly during the process of thought as
not to rise into consciousness at all
...
The
modern psychology has shown us how powerfully symbolism is at work in the
unconscious mind
...

One word more as to the relation between language and thought
...
We may assume
that language arose pre-rationally—just how and on what precise level of mental activity
we do not know—but we must not imagine that a highly developed system of speech
symbols worked itself out before the genesis of distinct concepts and of thinking, the
handling of concepts
...
We see this complex process of the interaction of
language and thought actually taking place under our eyes
...
The birth of a new concept is
invariably foreshadowed by a more or less strained or extended use of old linguistic
material; the concept does not attain to individual and independent life until it has found a
distinctive linguistic embodiment
...
As soon as the word is at hand, we instinctively feel, with something of a sigh
of relief, that the concept is ours for the handling
...

Would we be so ready to die for “liberty,” to struggle for “ideals,” if the words
themselves were not ringing within us? And the word, as we know, is not only a key; it
may also be a fetter
...
In so far as it is articulated it is also
a motor system, but the motor aspect of speech is clearly secondary to the auditory
...
The
motor processes and the accompanying motor feelings are not, however, the end, the final

resting point
...
Communication, which is the very object of speech, is
successfully effected only when the hearer’s auditory perceptions are translated into the
appropriate and intended flow of imagery or thought or both combined
...
The concordance between the initial auditory imagery and
the final auditory perceptions is the social seal or warrant of the successful issue of the
process
...

The most important of these modifications is the abbreviation of the speech process
involved in thinking
...
The least modified form is that known as
“talking to one’s self” or “thinking aloud
...
More significant is the
still further abbreviated form in which the sounds of speech are not articulated at all
...
The auditory centers
alone may be excited; or the impulse to linguistic expression may be communicated as
well to the motor nerves that communicate with the organs of speech but be inhibited
either in the muscles of these organs or at some point in the motor nerves themselves; or,
possibly, the auditory centers may be only slightly, if at all, affected, the speech process
manifesting itself directly in the motor sphere
...
How common is the excitation of the motor nerves in silent speech, in
which no audible or visible articulations result, is shown by the frequent experience of
fatigue in the speech organs, particularly in the larynx, after unusually stimulating
reading or intensive thinking
...
Of very great interest and importance is the possibility of transferring the
whole system of speech symbolism into other terms than those that are involved in the
typical process
...
The sense of vision is not brought into play
...
Clearly, if one can only gain a
sufficiently high degree of adroitness in perceiving these movements of the speech
organs, the way is opened for a new type of speech symbolism—that in which the sound
is replaced by the visual image of the articulations that correspond to the sound
...
However, it is well known what excellent use deafmutes can make of “reading from the lips” as a subsidiary method of apprehending
speech
...
The significant feature for our recognition in these new types of
symbolism, apart from the fact that they are no longer a by-product of normal speech

itself, is that each element (letter or written word) in the system corresponds to a specific
element (sound or sound-group or spoken word) in the primary system
...
The written forms are secondary symbols of the spoken ones—symbols of
symbols—yet so close is the correspondence that they may, not only in theory but in the
actual practice of certain eye-readers and, possibly, in certain types of thinking, be
entirely substituted for the spoken ones
...
Even those
who read and think without the slightest use of sound imagery are, at last analysis,
dependent on it
...

The possibilities of linguistic transfer are practically unlimited
...
Here the transfer takes place
from the written word rather than directly from the sounds of spoken speech
...
It does not, of course, in the
least follow that the skilled operator, in order to arrive at an understanding of a
telegraphic message, needs to transpose the individual sequence of ticks into a visual
image of the word before he experiences its normal auditory image
...
It is even conceivable, if not exactly likely, that certain operators may
have learned to think directly, so far as the purely conscious part of the process of
thought is concerned, in terms of the tick-auditory symbolism or, if they happen to have a
strong natural bent toward motor symbolism, in terms of the correlated tactile-motor
symbolism developed in the sending of telegraphic messages
...

Some of these systems are one-to-one equivalences of the normal system of speech;
others, like military gesture-symbolism or the gesture language of the Plains Indians of
North America (understood by tribes of mutually unintelligible forms of speech) are
imperfect transfers, limiting themselves to the rendering of such grosser speech elements
as are an imperative minimum under difficult circumstances
...

Such an interpretation would be erroneous
...

We shall no doubt conclude that all voluntary communication of ideas, aside from normal
speech, is either a transfer, direct or indirect, from the typical symbolism of language as
spoken and heard or, at the least, involves the intermediary of truly linguistic symbolism
...
Auditory imagery and the correlated motor

imagery leading to articulation are, by whatever devious ways we follow the process, the
historic fountain-head of all speech and of all thinking
...
The ease with which speech symbolism can be transferred from one sense to
another, from technique to technique, itself indicates that the mere sounds of speech are
not the essential fact of language, which lies rather in the classification, in the formal
patterning, and in the relating of concepts
...
It is this abstracted language, rather more than the
physical facts of speech, that is to concern us in our inquiry
...
One may
argue as to whether a particular tribe engages in activities that are worthy of the name of
religion or of art, but we know of no people that is not possessed of a fully developed
language
...

It goes without saying that the more abstract concepts are not nearly so plentifully
represented in the language of the savage, nor is there the rich terminology and the finer
definition of nuances that reflect the higher culture
...
The fundamental groundwork of
language—the development of a clear-cut phonetic system, the specific association of
speech elements with concepts, and the delicate provision for the formal expression of all
manner of relations—all this meets us rigidly perfected and systematized in every
language known to us
...
Even in the mere matter of the inventory of speech the layman must be
prepared for strange surprises
...
Scarcely less impressive than
the universality of speech is its almost incredible diversity
...
The formal divergences between the English plan and the Latin plan, however,
are comparatively slight in the perspective of what we know of more exotic linguistic
patterns
...
We
are forced to believe that language is an immensely ancient heritage of the human race,
whether or not all forms of speech are the historical outgrowth of a single pristine form
...
I am inclined to believe that it antedated even the
lowliest developments of material culture, that these developments, in fact, were not
strictly possible until language, the tool of significant expression, had itself taken shape
...
” We must now look more closely at
these elements and acquaint ourselves with the stuff of language
...
And yet the
individual sound is not, properly considered, an element of speech at all, for speech is a
significant function and the sound as such has no significance
...
The coincidence is apt to be fortuitous not only in theory but
in point of actual historic fact; thus, the instances cited are merely reduced forms of
originally fuller phonetic groups—Latin habet and ad and Indo-European ei respectively
...
In this chapter we shall have nothing further to do
with sounds as sounds
...
What distinguishes each of
these elements is that it is the outward sign of a specific idea, whether of a single concept
or image or of a number of such concepts or images definitely connected into a whole
...

The English words sing, sings, singing, singer each conveys a perfectly definite and
intelligible idea, though the idea is disconnected and is therefore functionally of no
practical value
...
The first
word, sing, is an indivisible phonetic entity conveying the notion of a certain specific
activity
...
They represent, in a sense, compounded concepts that have
flowered from the fundamental one
...

If we symbolize such a term as sing by the algebraic formula A, we shall have to
symbolize such terms as sings and singer by the formula A + b
...
The element b (-s, -ing, -er)
is the indicator of a subsidiary and, as a rule, a more abstract concept; in the widest sense
of the word “form,” it puts upon the fundamental concept a formal limitation
...
As we shall see later on, the grammatical
element or the grammatical increment, as we had better put it, need not be suffixed to the
radical element
...
Each and every one of these types of grammatical

element or modification has this peculiarity, that it may not, in the vast majority of cases,
be used independently but needs to be somehow attached to or welded with a radical
element in order to convey an intelligible notion
...
The grammatical element, moreover, is not only non-existent except as
associated with a radical one, it does not even, as a rule, obtain its measure of
significance unless it is associated with a particular class of radical elements
...
We must hasten to observe,
however, that while the radical element may, on occasion, be identical with the word, it
does not follow that it may always, or even customarily, be used as a word
...
Neither exists as an independently intelligible and satisfying element of speech
...
It seemed proper to symbolize sing-er as A + (b); hortus must be symbolized as (A) + (b)
...
Before defining the word, however, we must look a little more closely at the
type of word that is illustrated by sing
...

The word sing cannot, as a matter of fact, be freely used to refer to its own conceptual
content
...
On the other hand, the use of sing as an “infinitive” (in
such locutions as to sing and he will sing) does indicate that there is a fairly strong
tendency for the word sing to represent the full, untrammeled amplitude of a specific
concept
...

The truth of the matter is that sing is a kind of twilight word, trembling between the status
of a true radical element and that of a modified word of the type of singing
...
The formula A does not seem to
represent it so well as A + (0)
...
This report of the “feel” of the word is far
from fanciful, for historical evidence does, in all earnest, show that sing is in origin a
number of quite distinct words, of type A + (b), that have pooled their separate values
...
The sing of I sing is the correspondent of the Anglo-

Saxon singe; the infinitive sing, of singan; the imperative sing of sing
...
Were the typical unanalyzable word of the
language truly a pure concept-word (type A) instead of being of a strangely transitional
type (type A + [0]), our sing and work and house and thousands of others would compare
with the genuine radical-words of numerous other languages
...
” Our English correspondent
is only superficially comparable
...
The Nootka Indian can convey the idea of
plurality, in one of several ways, if he so desires, but he does not need to; hamot may do
for either singular or plural, should no interest happen to attach to the distinction
...
And this increment of value makes all the difference
...
There is but one other type that is
fundamentally possible: A + B, the union of two (or more) independently occurring
radical elements into a single term
...
e
...
It frequently happens,
however, that one of the radical elements becomes functionally so subordinated to the
other that it takes on the character of a grammatical element
...
A
word like beautiful is an example of A + b, the -ful barely preserving the impress of its
lineage
...

In actual use, of course, these five (or six) fundamental types may be indefinitely
complicated in a number of ways
...
In such a Latin word as cor “heart,” for instance, not only is a concrete concept
conveyed, but there cling to the form, which is actually shorter than its own radical
element (cord-), the three distinct, yet intertwined, formal concepts of singularity, gender
classification (neuter), and case (subjective-objective)
...
The significant thing about such a word as cor is that the three conceptual
limitations are not merely expressed by implication as the word sinks into place in a
sentence; they are tied up, for good and all, within the very vitals of the word and cannot
be eliminated by any possibility of usage
...
In a given word there may be
several elements of the order A (we have already symbolized this by the type A + B), of

the order (A), of the order b, and of the order (b)
...
A comparatively simple language like
English, or even Latin, illustrates but a modest proportion of these theoretical
possibilities
...
One example will do
for thousands, one complex type for hundreds of possible types
...
The word wii-tokuchum-punku-rügani-yugwi-va-ntü-m(ü)[5] is of unusual length even for its own
language, but it is no psychological monster for all that
...
)-future-participle-animate plur
...
It is the plural of the future participle of
a compound verb “to sit and cut up”—A + B
...
The formula (0) is intended
to imply that the finished word conveys, in addition to what is definitely expressed, a
further relational idea, that of subjectivity; in other words, the form can only be used as
the subject of a sentence, not in an objective or other syntactic relation
...
This group in turn consists of
an adjectival radical element (E) (“black”), which cannot be independently employed (the
absolute notion of “black” can be rendered only as the participle of a verb: “black-being”), and the compound noun C + d (“buffalo-pet”)
...
It will be observed that the whole complex
(F) + (E) + C + d + A + B is functionally no more than a verbal base, corresponding to
the sing- of an English form like singing; that this complex remains verbal in force on the
addition of the temporal element (g)—this (g), by the way, must not be understood as
appended to B alone, but to the whole basic complex as a unit—; and that the elements
(h) + (i) + (0) transform the verbal expression into a formally well-defined noun
...
Our first impulse, no doubt,
would have been to define the word as the symbolic, linguistic counterpart of a single
concept
...
In truth it is impossible to
define the word from a functional standpoint at all, for the word may be anything from
the expression of a single concept—concrete or abstract or purely relational (as in of or
by or and)—to the expression of a complete thought (as in Latin dico “I say” or, with
greater elaborateness of form, in a Nootka verb form denoting “I have been accustomed
to eat twenty round objects [e
...
, apples] while engaged in [doing so and so]”)
...
The word is merely a form, a

definitely molded entity that takes in as much or as little of the conceptual material of the
whole thought as the genius of the language cares to allow
...
Radical (or
grammatical) element and sentence—these are the primary functional units of speech, the
former as an abstracted minimum, the latter as the esthetically satisfying embodiment of a
unified thought
...
We may put the whole matter in a nutshell by saying that the radical and
grammatical elements of language, abstracted as they are from the realities of speech,
respond to the conceptual world of science, abstracted as it is from the realities of
experience, and that the word, the existent unit of living speech, responds to the unit of
actually apprehended experience, of history, of art
...
It is the psychological
counterpart of experience, of art, when it is felt, as indeed it normally is, as the finished
play of word with word
...

We can therefore easily understand why the mathematician and the symbolic logician are
driven to discard the word and to build up their thought with the help of symbols which
have, each of them, a rigidly unitary value
...
It is true that in
particular cases, especially in some of the highly synthetic languages of aboriginal
America, it is not always easy to say whether a particular element of language is to be
interpreted as an independent word or as part of a larger word
...
Linguistic experience, both as expressed in
standardized, written form and as tested in daily usage, indicates overwhelmingly that
there is not, as a rule, the slightest difficulty in bringing the word to consciousness as a
psychological reality
...
He regularly refuses, on the other hand, to isolate the radical or
grammatical element, on the ground that it “makes no sense
...
The best that we can do is to say that the
word is one of the smallest, completely satisfying bits of isolated “meaning” into which

the sentence resolves itself
...
In
practice this unpretentious criterion does better service than might be supposed
...
Think or thinkable might be isolated, but as
neither un- nor -able nor is-un yields a measurable satisfaction, we are compelled to leave
unthinkable as an integral whole, a miniature bit of art
...

Chief of these is accent
...
The particular syllable that is to be so distinguished is dependent, needless
to say, on the special genius of the language
...

The long Paiute word that we have analyzed is marked as a rigid phonetic unit by several
features, chief of which are the accent on its second syllable (wii’-“knife”) and the
slurring (“unvoicing,” to use the technical phonetic term) of its final vowel (-mü, animate
plural)
...
They at best but strengthen a feeling of unity
that is already present on other grounds
...
Its definition is
not difficult
...
It combines a subject of
discourse with a statement in regard to this subject
...
No matter how many of these qualifying elements (words or
functional parts of words) are introduced, the sentence does not lose its feeling of unity so
long as each and every one of them falls in place as contributory to the definition of
either the subject of discourse or the core of the predicate[7]
...
The contributory ideas of of New
York, of welcome, and in French may be eliminated without hurting the idiomatic flow of
the sentence
...

But further than this we cannot go in the process of reduction
...
[8] The reduced sentence resolves itself into the
subject of discourse—the mayor—and the predicate—is going to deliver a speech
...
Such an analysis,
however, is purely schematic and is without psychological value
...
There are languages that can
convey all that is conveyed by The-mayor is-going-to-deliver-a-speech in two words, a
subject word and a predicate word, but English is not so highly synthetic
...
These fixed types or actual sentence-groundworks
may be freely overlaid by such additional matter as the speaker or writer cares to put on,
but they are themselves as rigidly “given” by tradition as are the radical and grammatical
elements abstracted from the finished word
...
In
the same way new sentences are being constantly created, but always on strictly
traditional lines
...
It is this margin of
freedom which gives us the opportunity of individual style
...
It is
important to note that there is in all languages a certain randomness of association
...
” The multiple expression of a single concept is universally felt as
a source of linguistic strength and variety, not as a needless extravagance
...
Thus, the randomness of the expression of plurality in such words as books,
oxen, sheep, and geese is felt to be rather more, I fancy, an unavoidable and traditional
predicament than a welcome luxuriance
...
Many languages go incredibly far in this respect, it is
true, but linguistic history shows conclusively that sooner or later the less frequently
occurring associations are ironed out at the expense of the more vital ones
...
Were this
tendency entirely inoperative, there would be no grammar
...

Were a language ever completely “grammatical,” it would be a perfect engine of
conceptual expression
...

All grammars leak
...
We have, in other words, been assuming
that language moves entirely in the ideational or cognitive sphere
...
The volitional aspect of consciousness also is to some extent
explicitly provided for in language
...
Emotion, indeed, is
proverbially inclined to speechlessness
...
On
the whole, it must be admitted that ideation reigns supreme in language, that volition and

emotion come in as distinctly secondary factors
...

The world of image and concept, the endless and ever-shifting picture of objective
reality, is the unavoidable subject-matter of human communication, for it is only, or
mainly, in terms of this world that effective action is possible
...
All this does not mean
that volition and emotion are not expressed
...
The nuances
of emphasis, tone, and phrasing, the varying speed and continuity of utterance, the
accompanying bodily movements, all these express something of the inner life of impulse
and feeling, but as these means of expression are, at last analysis, but modified forms of
the instinctive utterance that man shares with the lower animals, they cannot be
considered as forming part of the essential cultural conception of language, however
much they may be inseparable from its actual life
...

There are, it is true, certain writers on the psychology of language[9] who deny its
prevailingly cognitive character but attempt, on the contrary, to demonstrate the origin of
most linguistic elements within the domain of feeling
...
What there is of truth in their contentions may be summed up, it seems to
me, by saying that most words, like practically all elements of consciousness, have an
associated feeling-tone, a mild, yet none the less real and at times insidiously powerful,
derivative of pleasure or pain
...
Not only may the feeling-tone change from one age to another (this, of
course, is true of the conceptual content as well), but it varies remarkably from individual
to individual according to the personal associations of each, varies, indeed, from time to
time in a single individual’s consciousness as his experiences mold him and his moods
change
...
They rarely have the rigidity of the
central, primary fact
...
Storm, we feel, is a more general and a decidedly less “magnificent” word than
the other two; tempest is not only associated with the sea but is likely, in the minds of
many, to have obtained a softened glamour from a specific association with
Shakespeare’s great play; hurricane has a greater forthrightness, a directer ruthlessness
than its synonyms
...
To some tempest and hurricane may seem “soft,” literary words, the simpler
storm having a fresh, rugged value which the others do not possess (think of storm and
stress)
...


The feeling-tones of words are of no use, strictly speaking, to science; the philosopher, if
he desires to arrive at truth rather than merely to persuade, finds them his most insidious
enemies
...
Generally his
mental activities are bathed in a warm current of feeling and he seizes upon the feelingtones of words as gentle aids to the desired excitation
...
It is interesting to note, however, that even to the artist they are a
danger
...
Every now and then the artist has to fight the feelingtone, to get the word to mean what it nakedly and conceptually should mean, depending
for the effect of feeling on the creative power of an individual juxtaposition of concepts
or images
...
For all that, speech is so inevitably bound up with sounds and their
articulation that we can hardly avoid giving the subject of phonetics some general
consideration
...
A detailed survey of phonetics would be
both too technical for the general reader and too loosely related to our main theme to
warrant the needed space, but we can well afford to consider a few outstanding facts and
ideas connected with the sounds of language
...
As for the languages of foreigners, he generally feels that, aside
from a few striking differences that cannot escape even the uncritical ear, the sounds they
use are the same as those he is familiar with but that there is a mysterious “accent” to
these foreign languages, a certain unanalyzed phonetic character, apart from the sounds
as such, that gives them their air of strangeness
...
Phonetic analysis convinces one that the number of clearly distinguishable
sounds and nuances of sounds that are habitually employed by the speakers of a language
is far greater than they themselves recognize
...
It is the frequent failure of foreigners, who have acquired a
practical mastery of English and who have eliminated all the cruder phonetic
shortcomings of their less careful brethren, to observe such minor distinctions that helps
to give their English pronunciation the curiously elusive “accent” that we all vaguely feel
...
If two languages taken at random, say English
and Russian, are compared as to their phonetic systems, we are more apt than not to find
that very few of the phonetic elements of the one find an exact analogue in the other
...
It differs from both in its “dental” articulation, in other words, in being
produced by contact of the tip of the tongue with the upper teeth, not, as in English, by
contact of the tongue back of the tip with the gum ridge above the teeth; moreover, it
differs from the t of teem also in the absence of a marked “breath release” before the
following vowel is attached, so that its acoustic effect is of a more precise, “metallic”
nature than in English
...
Even so simple
and, one would imagine, so invariable a sound as m differs in the two languages
...
The vowels, needless to say, differ completely in English
and Russian, hardly any two of them being quite the same
...
Yet a complete inventory of the acoustic
resources of all the European languages, the languages nearer home, while unexpectedly
large, would still fall far short of conveying a just idea of the true range of human
articulation
...
They are not necessarily
more difficult of enunciation than sounds more familiar to our ears; they merely involve
such muscular adjustments of the organs of speech as we have never habituated ourselves
to
...
Indeed, an experienced phonetician should have no difficulty in
inventing sounds that are unknown to objective investigation
...
A
slight change in any one of these adjustments gives us a new sound which is akin to the
old one, because of the continuance of the other adjustments, but which is acoustically
distinct from it, so sensitive has the human ear become to the nuanced play of the vocal
mechanism
...

All or nearly all other adjustments have become permanently inhibited, whether through
inexperience or through gradual elimination
...
The point
may be brought home by contrasting the comparative lack of freedom of voluntary
speech movements with the all but perfect freedom of voluntary gesture
...
One cannot be both splendidly free in the random choice of movements and
selective with deadly certainty
...
A full account of the activity of each of the organs
of speech—in so far as its activity has a bearing on language—is impossible here, nor can
we concern ourselves in a systematic way with the classification of sounds on the basis of
their mechanics
...
The organs of
speech are the lungs and bronchial tubes; the throat, particularly that part of it which is
known as the larynx or, in popular parlance, the “Adam’s apple”; the nose; the uvula,
which is the soft, pointed, and easily movable organ that depends from the rear of the
palate; the palate, which is divided into a posterior, movable “soft palate” or velum and a
“hard palate”; the tongue; the teeth; and the lips
...

The lungs and bronchial tubes are organs of speech only in so far as they supply and
conduct the current of outgoing air without which audible articulation is impossible
...
It may be that differences of stress are due to slight differences in the
contracting force of the lung muscles, but even this influence of the lungs is denied by
some students, who explain the fluctuations of stress that do so much to color speech by
reference to the more delicate activity of the glottal cords
...

The cords, which are attached to the cartilages, are to the human speech organs what the
two vibrating reeds are to a clarinet or the strings to a violin
...

They may be drawn towards or away from each other, they may vibrate like reeds or
strings, and they may become lax or tense in the direction of their length
...
The two other types of glottal action
determine the nature of the voice, “voice” being a convenient term for breath as utilized
in speech
...
” All sounds produced under
these circumstances are “voiceless” sounds
...

On the other hand, the glottal cords may be brought tight together, without vibrating
...
The slight choke
or “arrested cough” that is thus made audible is not recognized in English as a definite
sound but occurs nevertheless not infrequently
...
Between the
two extremes of voicelessness, that of completely open breath and that of checked breath,
lies the position of true voice
...
A tone so produced is known as a “voiced sound
...
Our vowels, nasals (such as m and n), and such sounds as b, z,
and l are all voiced sounds
...
[15] The voiced
sounds are the most clearly audible elements of speech
...
The voiceless
sounds are articulated noises that break up the stream of voice with fleeting moments of
silence
...
[16]
These and still other types of voice are relatively unimportant in English and most other
European languages, but there are languages in which they rise to some prominence in
the normal flow of speech
...
It may be disconnected from the mouth, which is the other great resonance
chamber, by the lifting of the movable part of the soft palate so as to shut off the passage
of the breath into the nasal cavity; or, if the soft palate is allowed to hang down freely and
unobstructively, so that the breath passes into both the nose and the mouth, these make a
combined resonance chamber
...
As soon as the soft
palate is lowered, however, and the nose added as a participating resonance chamber, the
sounds b and a take on a peculiar “nasal” quality and become, respectively, m and the
nasalized vowel written an in French (e
...
, sang, tant)
...
Practically all
sounds, however, may be nasalized, not only the vowels—nasalized vowels are common
in all parts of the world—but such sounds as l or z
...
They occur, for instance, in Welsh and in quite a number of American Indian
languages
...
The
breath, voiced or unvoiced, nasalized or unnasalized, may be allowed to pass through the
mouth without being checked or impeded at any point; or it may be either momentarily
checked or allowed to stream through a greatly narrowed passage with resulting air
friction
...
The
unimpeded breath takes on a particular color or quality in accordance with the varying

shape of the oral resonance chamber
...
As the tongue is raised or lowered, retracted
or brought forward, held tense or lax, and as the lips are pursed (“rounded”) in varying
degree or allowed to keep their position of rest, a large number of distinct qualities result
...
In theory their number is infinite, in practice the ear
can differentiate only a limited, yet a surprisingly large, number of resonance positions
...

The remaining oral sounds are generally grouped together as “consonants
...
There are four main types of articulation generally
recognized within the consonantal group of sounds
...
Sounds so produced, like t
or d or p, are known as “stops” or “explosives
...
Examples of such “spirants”
or “fricatives,” as they are called, are s and z and y
...
There is a true stoppage at the central point of articulation,
but the breath is allowed to escape through the two side passages or through one of them
...
Laterals are possible in many
distinct positions
...

Finally, the stoppage of the breath may be rapidly intermittent; in other words, the active
organ of contact—generally the point of the tongue, less often the uvula[20]—may be
made to vibrate against or near the point of contact
...
They
are well developed in many languages, however, generally in voiced form, sometimes, as
in Welsh and Paiute, in unvoiced form as well
...
The place
of articulation must also be considered
...
It is not necessary here to go at length into
this somewhat complicated matter
...
The tongue articulations are the most complicated of all, as the
mobility of the tongue allows various points on its surface, say the tip, to articulate
against a number of opposed points of contact
...
As there is no break at any point between
the rims of the teeth back to the uvula nor from the tip of the tongue back to its root, it is
evident that all the articulations that involve the tongue form a continuous organic (and
acoustic) series
...
Frequently a language allows a certain latitude in the
fixing of the required position
...
We ignore this
difference, psychologically, as a non-essential, mechanical one
...

The organic classification of speech sounds is a simple matter after what we have learned
of their production
...
[24]
The phonetic habits of a given language are not exhaustively defined by stating that it
makes use of such and such particular sounds out of the all but endless gamut that we
have briefly surveyed
...
Two languages may, theoretically, be built up of precisely the same
series of consonants and vowels and yet produce utterly different acoustic effects
...
Or the one, say
English, may be very sensitive to relative stresses, while in the other, say French, stress is
a very minor consideration
...
Varying methods of syllabifying are also responsible for noteworthy
acoustic differences
...
Each language has its peculiarities
...
Some languages allow of great heapings
of consonants or of vocalic groups (diphthongs), in others no two consonants or no two
vowels may ever come together
...
In English, for instance, the z-sound of azure
cannot occur initially, while the peculiar quality of the t of sting is dependent on its being
preceded by the s
...

We have already seen, in an incidental way, that phonetic elements or such dynamic
features as quantity and stress have varying psychological “values
...
Again, the t of
time is indeed noticeably distinct from that of sting, but the difference, to the
consciousness of an English-speaking person, is quite irrelevant
...
” If we
compare the t-sounds of Haida, the Indian language spoken in the Queen Charlotte
Islands, we find that precisely the same difference of articulation has a real value
...
In other words, an objective difference that is
irrelevant in English is of functional value in Haida; from its own psychological
standpoint the t of sting is as different from that of sta as, from our standpoint, is the t of
time from the d of divine
...
The
objective comparison of sounds in two or more languages is, then, of no psychological or
historical significance unless these sounds are first “weighted,” unless their phonetic
“values” are determined
...

These considerations as to phonetic value lead to an important conception
...
The inner sound-system, overlaid though it may be by the
mechanical or the irrelevant, is a real and an immensely important principle in the life of
a language
...
Two historically related
languages or dialects may not have a sound in common, but their ideal sound-systems
may be identical patterns
...
It may shrink or expand or change its functional complexion, but its rate of
change is infinitely less rapid than that of the sounds as such
...
Both the phonetic and conceptual structures show the instinctive feeling of
language for form
...
We may either
consider the formal methods employed by a language, its “grammatical processes,” or we
may ascertain the distribution of concepts with reference to formal expression
...
The English word
unthinkingly is, broadly speaking, formally parallel to the word reformers, each being

built up on a radical element which may occur as an independent verb (think, form), this
radical element being preceded by an element (un-, re-) that conveys a definite and fairly
concrete significance but that cannot be used independently, and followed by two
elements (-ing, -ly; -er, -s) that limit the application of the radical concept in a relational
sense
...
A countless number of functions may be expressed by it; in other words, all the
possible ideas conveyed by such prefixed and suffixed elements, while tending to fall into
minor groups, do not necessarily form natural, functional systems
...
It is perfectly
conceivable that in another language the concept of manner (-ly) may be treated
according to an entirely different pattern from that of plurality
...
There are, of course, an unlimited number of other
possibilities
...
Thus, the negative idea conveyed by un- can be just as
adequately expressed by a suffixed element (-less) in such a word as thoughtlessly
...
Again, the
plural notion conveyed by the -s of reformers is just as definitely expressed in the word
geese, where an utterly distinct method is employed
...
g
...
But the expression in English of past time is not by any means always
bound up with a change of vowel
...
Functionally, died and sang are
analogous; so are reformers and geese
...
Both die-d and re-form-er-s employ the method of suffixing grammatical
elements; both sang and geese have grammatical form by virtue of the fact that their
vowels differ from the vowels of other words with which they are closely related in form
and meaning (goose; sing, sung)
...
Some of these grammatical
processes, like suffixing, are exceedingly wide-spread; others, like vocalic change, are
less common but far from rare; still others, like accent and consonantal change, are
somewhat exceptional as functional processes
...
As a rule,
such basic concepts as those of plurality and time are rendered by means of one or other
method alone, but the rule has so many exceptions that we cannot safely lay it down as a
principle
...
A few further examples of the multiple expression of
identical functions in other languages than English may help to make still more vivid this
idea of the relative independence of form and function
...
Thus, the group sh-m-r expresses the

idea of “guarding,” the group g-n-b that of “stealing,” n-t-n that of “giving
...
The consonants
are held together in different forms by characteristic vowels that vary according to the
idea that it is desired to express
...

The method of internal vocalic change is exemplified in shamar “he has guarded,”
shomer “guarding,” shamur “being guarded,” shmor “(to) guard
...
” But not all
infinitives are formed according to the type of shmor and gnob or of other types of
internal vowel change
...
g
...
” Again, the pronominal ideas may be expressed by independent
words (e
...
, anoki “I”), by prefixed elements (e
...
, e-shmor “I shall guard”), or by
suffixed elements (e
...
, shamar-ti “I have guarded”)
...
Most nouns (and verbs)
are reduplicated in the plural, that is, part of the radical element is repeated, e
...
, gyat
“person,” gyigyat “people
...
g
...
” Still
other plurals are formed by means of internal vowel change, e
...
, gwula “cloak,” gwila
“cloaks
...
g
...
”
From such groups of examples as these—and they might be multiplied ad nauseam—we
cannot but conclude that linguistic form may and should be studied as types of patterning,
apart from the associated functions
...
It does not matter that in such a
case as the English goose—geese, foul—defile, sing—sang—sung we can prove that we
are dealing with historically distinct processes, that the vocalic alternation of sing and
sang, for instance, is centuries older as a specific type of grammatical process than the
outwardly parallel one of goose and geese
...
Failing the precedent set
by such already existing types of vocalic alternation as sing—sang—sung, it is highly
doubtful if the detailed conditions that brought about the evolution of forms like teeth and
geese from tooth and goose would have been potent enough to allow the native linguistic
feeling to win through to an acceptance of these new types of plural formation as
psychologically possible
...
A general
survey of many diverse types of languages is needed to give us the proper perspective on
this point
...
We now learn that it has also a definite feeling for patterning
on the level of grammatical formation
...
It goes without saying that these impulses can find realization only in

concrete functional expression
...

Let us now take up a little more systematically, however briefly, the various grammatical
processes that linguistic research has established
...
There are also special quantitative processes, like vocalic lengthening or
shortening and consonantal doubling, but these may be looked upon as particular subtypes of the process of internal modification
...
It is important to bear in mind
that a linguistic phenomenon cannot be looked upon as illustrating a definite “process“
unless it has an inherent functional value
...
It is a purely external, mechanical change induced by the presence of a
preceding voiceless consonant, k, in the former case, of a voiced consonant, g, in the
latter
...
In the latter case, however, it has an important grammatical
function, that of transforming a noun into a verb
...
Only the latter is a true illustration of
consonantal modification as a grammatical process
...
Let us put down two simple English words at random, say sing praise
...
Nevertheless, it is psychologically
impossible to hear or see the two words juxtaposed without straining to give them some
measure of coherent significance
...
In the case of sing praise different individuals are
likely to arrive at different provisional results
...
e
...
The theoretical possibilities in the way of rounding out these two
concepts into a significant group of concepts or even into a finished thought are
indefinitely numerous
...
It depends
entirely on the genius of the particular language what function is inherently involved in a
given sequence of words
...
In these, sequence is apt to be a rhetorical rather than a

strictly grammatical principle
...
The woman sees the man is the
identical significance of each of these sentences
...
The difference between the two languages is that,
while Latin allows the nouns to establish their relation to each other and to the verb,
Chinook lays the formal burden entirely on the verb, the full content of which is more or
less adequately rendered by she-him-sees
...
We need to husband our resources
...
Latin and Chinook are at one extreme
...
But the majority of
languages fall between these two extremes
...
It goes
without saying that in these cases the English principle of word order is as potent a means
of expression as is the Latin use of case suffixes or of an interrogative particle
...

We have already seen something of the process of composition, the uniting into a single
word of two or more radical elements
...
It differs from the mere juxtaposition of words in the sentence in that the
compounded elements are felt as constituting but parts of a single word-organism
...
It is but a
step from such a Chinese word sequence as jin tak “man virtue,” i
...
, “the virtue of men,”
to such more conventionalized and psychologically unified juxtapositions as t’ien tsz
“heaven son,” i
...
, “emperor,” or shui fu “water man,” i
...
, “water carrier
...
In English the unity of the word typewriter is further safeguarded by a
predominant accent on the first syllable and by the possibility of adding such a suffixed
element as the plural -s to the whole word
...
However, then, in its ultimate origins the process of composition may go back
to typical sequences of words in the sentence, it is now, for the most part, a specialized
method of expressing relations
...
On the
other hand, classical Greek, in spite of its relative freedom in the placing of words, has a
very considerable bent for the formation of compound terms
...
One would have thought on general principles that so simple a
device as gives us our typewriter and blackbird and hosts of other words would be an all
but universal grammatical process
...
There are a great many
languages, like Eskimo and Nootka and, aside from paltry exceptions, the Semitic
languages, that cannot compound radical elements
...
Such a Nootka word, for instance, as “when, as they say, he had been absent
for four days” might be expected to embody at least three radical elements corresponding
to the concepts of “absent,” “four,” and “day
...
It is invariably built up out of a single
radical element and a greater or less number of suffixed elements, some of which may
have as concrete a significance as the radical element itself
...
The tendency to word synthesis is, then, by no means the same thing as the
tendency to compounding radical elements, though the latter is not infrequently a ready
means for the synthetic tendency to work with
...
These types vary according to
function, the nature of the compounded elements, and order
...
In English, for
instance, such compounded elements as red in redcoat or over in overlook merely modify
the significance of the dominant coat or look without in any way sharing, as such, in the
predication that is expressed by the sentence
...
In
Iroquois, for instance, the composition of a noun, in its radical form, with a following
verb is a typical method of expressing case relations, particularly of the subject or object
...
In other languages similar forms may express local or instrumental or still
other relations
...

We cannot say he marplots
...
Paiute, for instance, may compound noun with noun, adjective with
noun, verb with noun to make a noun, noun with verb to make a verb, adverb with verb,
verb with verb
...
On the other hand, Iroquois can
compound only noun with verb, never noun and noun as in English or verb and verb as in
so many other languages
...
In English the qualifying element regularly precedes; in certain other
languages it follows
...
” The

compounded object of a verb precedes the verbal element in Paiute, Nahuatl, and
Iroquois, follows it in Yana, Tsimshian,[29] and the Algonkin languages
...

There are languages, like Chinese and Siamese, that make no grammatical use of
elements that do not at the same time possess an independent value as radical elements,
but such languages are uncommon
...
Indeed, it is a fair guess that
suffixes do more of the formative work of language than all other methods combined
...
Such are Turkish,
Hottentot, Eskimo, Nootka, and Yana
...
The
reverse case, the use of prefixed elements to the complete exclusion of suffixes, is far less
common
...

A considerable majority of known languages are prefixing and suffixing at one and the
same time, but the relative importance of the two groups of affixed elements naturally
varies enormously
...
A Latin form like remittebantur “they were being sent
back” may serve as an illustration of this type of distribution of elements
...

On the other hand, there are languages, like the Bantu group of Africa or the Athabaskan
languages[30] of North America, in which the grammatically significant elements
precede, those that follow the radical element forming a relatively dispensable class
...
The element te- indicates
that the act takes place here and there in space or continuously over space; practically, it
has no clear-cut significance apart from such verb stems as it is customary to connect it
with
...
All we can say is that
it is used in verb forms of “definite” time and that it marks action as in progress rather
than as beginning or coming to an end
...
It is highly important to understand that the
use of -e- is conditional on that of -s- or of certain alternative prefixes and that te- also is
in practice linked with -s-
...
The
suffix -te, which indicates the future, is no more necessary to its formal balance than is
the prefixed re- of the Latin word; it is not an element that is capable of standing alone
but its function is materially delimiting rather than strictly formal
...
In probably the majority of languages that use both types of affixes
each group has both delimiting and formal or relational functions
...
If a certain verb expresses a certain tense by suffixing, the probability is strong
that it expresses its other tenses in an analogous fashion and that, indeed, all verbs have
suffixed tense elements
...
But
these rules are far from absolute
...
In Chimariko, an Indian
language of California, the position of the pronominal affixes depends on the verb; they
are prefixed for certain verbs, suffixed for others
...
One of
each category will suffice to illustrate their formative possibilities
...
This word—and it is a thoroughly unified word with a clear-cut accent on the first
a—consists of a radical element, -d- “to give,” six functionally distinct, if phonetically
frail, prefixed elements, and a suffix
...
e
...
The suffixed -am modifies the verbal content in a
local sense; it adds to the notion conveyed by the radical element that of “arriving” or
“going (or coming) for that particular purpose
...

A reverse case, one in which the grammatically significant elements cluster, as in Latin,
at the end of the word is yielded by Fox, one of the better known Algonkin languages of
the Mississippi Valley
...
” The radical element here is kiwi-, a verb stem
indicating the general notion of “indefinite movement round about, here and there
...
” Of the seven suffixes included
in this highly-wrought word, -n- seems to be merely a phonetic element serving to
connect the verb stem with the following -a-;[34] -a- is a “secondary stem”[35] denoting
the idea of “flight, to flee”; -m- denotes causality with reference to an animate object;[36]
-o(ht)- indicates activity done for the subject (the so-called “middle” or “medio-passive”
voice of Greek); -(a)ti- is a reciprocal element, “one another”; -wa-ch(i) is the third
person animate plural (-wa-, plural; -chi, more properly personal) of so-called
“conjunctive” forms
...
” Eskimo, Nootka, Yana,
and other languages have similarly complex arrays of suffixed elements, though the
functions performed by them and their principles of combination differ widely
...
It is utterly unknown in English, unless we consider the -n- of stand (contrast
stood) as an infixed element
...
There are,
however, more striking examples of the process, examples in which it has assumed a
more clearly defined function than in these Latin and Greek cases
...
Good
examples from Khmer (Cambodgian) are tmeu “one who walks” and daneu “walking”
(verbal noun), both derived from deu “to walk
...
Thus, an infixed -in- conveys the idea of the product
of an accomplished action, e
...
, kayu “wood,” kinayu “gathered wood
...
Thus, an infixed -um- is characteristic of many
intransitive verbs with personal pronominal suffixes, e
...
, sad- “to wait,” sumid-ak “I
wait”; kineg “silent,” kuminek-ak “I am silent
...
g
...
” The past tense is
frequently indicated by an infixed -in-; if there is already an infixed -um-, the two
elements combine to -in-m-, e
...
, kinminek-ak “I am silent
...
The process is also found in a
number of aboriginal American languages
...
g
...
g
...
A peculiarly
interesting type of infixation is found in the Siouan languages, in which certain verbs
insert the pronominal elements into the very body of the radical element, e
...
, Sioux cheti
“to build a fire,” chewati “I build a fire”; shuta “to miss,” shuunta-pi “we miss
...
In some languages, as in English (sing, sang, sung, song; goose,
geese), the former of these has become one of the major methods of indicating
fundamental changes of grammatical function
...
We all know of the growing youngster who
speaks of having brung something, on the analogy of such forms as sung and flung
...

What is true of Hebrew is of course true of all other Semitic languages
...
The noun balad “place” has the plural form
bilad;[38] gild “hide” forms the plural gulud; ragil “man,” the plural rigal; shibbak
“window,” the plural shababik
...
g
...
” Strikingly similar to English and Greek
alternations of the type sing—sang and leip-o “I leave,” leloip-a “I have left,” are such
Somali[41] cases as al “I am,” il “I was”; i-dah-a “I say,” i-di “I said,” deh “say!”

Vocalic change is of great significance also in a number of American Indian languages
...
The Navaho verb for “I put (grain) into a
receptacle” is bi-hi-sh-ja, in which -ja is the radical element; the past tense, bi-hi-ja’, has
a long a-vowel, followed by the “glottal stop”[42]; the future is bi-h-de-sh-ji with
complete change of vowel
...
g
...
In another Indian language, Yokuts[43], vocalic modifications affect both noun
and verb forms
...

Consonantal change as a functional process is probably far less common than vocalic
modifications, but it is not exactly rare
...
Examples are wreath (with th as in think), but to wreathe (with th as
in then); house, but to house (with s pronounced like z)
...
g
...

In the Celtic languages the initial consonants undergo several types of change according
to the grammatical relation that subsists between the word itself and the preceding word
...
g
...
In the verb the principle has as one of its most
striking consequences the “aspiration” of initial consonants in the past tense
...
In modern
Irish the principle of consonantal change, which began in the oldest period of the
language as a secondary consequence of certain phonetic conditions, has become one of
the primary grammatical processes of the language
...
Here we find that all nouns belonging to the personal
class form the plural by changing their initial g, j, d, b, k, ch, and p to y (or w), y, r, w, h, s
and f respectively; e
...
, jim-o “companion,” yim-’be “companions”; pio-o “beater,” fio’be “beaters
...
g
...
” In Nootka, to refer to but one other
language in which the process is found, the t or tl[45] of many verbal suffixes becomes hl
in forms denoting repetition, e
...
, hita-’ato “to fall out,” hita-’ahl “to keep falling out”;
mat-achisht-utl “to fly on to the water,” mat-achisht-ohl “to keep flying on to the water
...
g
...
”

Nothing is more natural than the prevalence of reduplication, in other words, the
repetition of all or part of the radical element
...
Even in English it is
not unknown, though it is not generally accounted one of the typical formative devices of
our language
...
Such locutions as a big big
man or Let it cool till it’s thick thick are far more common, especially in the speech of
women and children, than our linguistic text-books would lead one to suppose
...
Words of this type are all but universal
...

But it can hardly be said that the duplicative process is of a distinctively grammatical
significance in English
...
Such cases as
Hottentot go-go “to look at carefully” (from go “to see”), Somali fen-fen “to gnaw at on
all sides” (from fen “to gnaw at”), Chinook iwi iwi “to look about carefully, to examine”
(from iwi “to appear”), or Tsimshian am’am “several (are) good” (from am “good”) do
not depart from the natural and fundamental range of significance of the process
...
g
...
Causative duplications are characteristic of Hottentot, e
...
,
gam-gam[49] “to cause to tell” (from gam “to tell”)
...

The most characteristic examples of reduplication are such as repeat only part of the
radical element
...
The functions are
even more exuberantly developed than with simple duplication, though the basic notion,
at least in origin, is nearly always one of repetition or continuance
...
Initially reduplicating
are, for instance, Shilh ggen “to be sleeping” (from gen “to sleep”); Ful pepeu-’do “liar”
(i
...
, “one who always lies”), plural fefeu-’be (from fewa “to lie”); Bontoc Igorot anak
“child,” ananak “children”; kamu-ek “I hasten,” kakamu-ek “I hasten more”; Tsimshian
gyad “person,” gyigyad “people”; Nass gyibayuk “to fly,” gyigyibayuk “one who is
flying
...
” Even more commonly than simple duplication, this partial duplication of the radical

element has taken on in many languages functions that seem in no way related to the idea
of increase
...
g
...
In Nootka reduplication of the radical element is
often employed in association with certain suffixes; e
...
, hluch- “woman” forms
hluhluch-’ituhl “to dream of a woman,” hluhluch-k’ok “resembling a woman
...
The former has final reduplication,
which is absent in the latter; e
...
, al-yebeb-i’n “I show (or showed) to him,” al-yeb-in “I
shall show him
...
The chief difficulty in isolating accent as a functional process is that it
is so often combined with alternations in vocalic quantity or quality or complicated by the
presence of affixed elements that its grammatical value appears as a secondary rather
than as a primary feature
...
There is thus a striking accentual difference between
a verbal form like eluthemen “we were released,” accented on the second syllable of the
word, and its participial derivative lutheis “released,” accented on the last
...
This value
comes out very neatly in such English doublets as to refund and a refund, to extract and
an extract, to come down and a come down, to lack luster and lack-luster eyes, in which
the difference between the verb and the noun is entirely a matter of changing stress
...
[52]
Pitch accent may be as functional as stress and is perhaps more often so
...
g
...
g
...
In such cases the pitch is merely inherent in the radical element or affix, as any
vowel or consonant might be
...
” Examples of
this type are not exactly common in Chinese and the language cannot be said to possess
at present a definite feeling for tonal differences as symbolic of the distinction between
noun and verb
...
They are particularly common in the Soudan
...

Even more striking are cases furnished by Shilluk, one of the languages of the headwaters
of the Nile
...
g
...
” In the pronoun three forms may be distinguished by tone alone;
e “he” has a high tone and is subjective, -e “him” (e
...
, a chwol-e “he called him”) has a
low tone and is objective, -e “his” (e
...
, wod-e “his house”) has a middle tone and is
possessive
...

In aboriginal America also pitch accent is known to occur as a grammatical process
...
In this language many verbs vary the tone of the radical element
according to tense; hun “to sell,” sin “to hide,” tin “to see,” and numerous other radical
elements, if low-toned, refer to past time, if high-toned, to the future
...


V
Form in Language: Grammatical Concepts
We have seen that the single word expresses either a simple concept or a combination of
concepts so interrelated as to form a psychological unity
...
In this chapter we shall look a little more closely into the nature of the world of
concepts, in so far as that world is reflected and systematized in linguistic structure
...
A rough and ready analysis discloses here the presence of three distinct
and fundamental concepts that are brought into connection with each other in a number of
ways
...
We can visualize the farmer and the duckling and we have also no difficulty in
constructing an image of the killing
...

But a more careful linguistic analysis soon brings us to see that the two subjects of
discourse, however simply we may visualize them, are not expressed quite as directly, as

immediately, as we feel them
...
” The concept conveyed by the radical element (farm-) is
not one of personality at all but of an industrial activity (to farm), itself based on the
concept of a particular type of object (a farm)
...
This
element, which may occur as an independent word, refers to a whole class of animals, big
and little, while duckling is limited in its application to the young of that class
...
It transforms the verb to farm into
an agentive noun precisely as it transforms the verbs to sing, to paint, to teach into the
corresponding agentive nouns singer, painter, teacher
...
It adds to the basic concept the notion of smallness
(as also in gosling, fledgeling) or the somewhat related notion of “contemptible” (as in
weakling, princeling, hireling)
...
They do not so much define distinct concepts as mediate between concepts
...
He may, as a matter of fact, go to town
and engage in any pursuit but farming, yet his linguistic label remains “farmer
...
It would be impossible
for any language to express every concrete idea by an independent word or radical
element
...
It must perforce throw countless concepts under the rubric of certain
basic ones, using other concrete or semi-concrete ideas as functional mediators
...
”
Some concrete concepts, such as kill, are expressed radically; others, such as farmer and
duckling, are expressed derivatively
...
When a word (or unified group of words) contains a derivational
element (or word) the concrete significance of the radical element (farm-, duck-) tends to
fade from consciousness and to yield to a new concreteness (farmer, duckling) that is
synthetic in expression rather than in thought
...

Returning to this sentence, we feel that the analysis of farmer and duckling are practically
irrelevant to an understanding of its content and entirely irrelevant to a feeling for the
structure of the sentence as a whole
...
This indifference of the sentence as such
to some part of the analysis of its words is shown by the fact that if we substitute such
radical words as man and chick for farmer and duckling, we obtain a new material

content, it is true, but not in the least a new structural mold
...
” The new sentence, the man
takes the chick, is totally different from the first sentence in what it conveys, not in how it
conveys it
...
In other words, they express identical
relational concepts in an identical manner
...

Change any of these features of the sentence and it becomes modified, slightly or
seriously, in some purely relational, non-material regard
...

We feel that there is no relation established between either of them and what is already in
the minds of the speaker and his auditor
...
We know that the farmer and duckling which the sentence tells us about are
the same farmer and duckling that we had been talking about or hearing about or thinking
about some time before
...
” If the
fact nevertheless seems interesting enough to communicate, I should be compelled to
speak of “a farmer up my way” and of “a duckling of his
...

If I omit the first the and also leave out the suffixed -s, I obtain an entirely new set of
relations
...
The subjective relation of the first sentence has become a vocative one, one
of address, and the activity is conceived in terms of command, not of statement
...
The latter element clearly defines, or
rather helps to define, statement as contrasted with command
...
Evidently -s involves the notion of singularity in the subject
...
[54] Comparison with such forms as I kill and you
kill shows, moreover, that the -s has exclusive reference to a person other than the
speaker or the one spoken to
...
And comparison with a sentence like the farmer killed
the duckling indicates that there is implied in this overburdened -s a distinct reference to
present time
...
Number is evidently felt by those who speak English as
involving a necessary relation, otherwise there would be no reason to express the concept
twice, in the noun and in the verb
...
Of the four concepts inextricably interwoven in the -s suffix, all are felt as relational,
two necessarily so
...

Finally, I can radically disturb the relational cut of the sentence by changing the order of
its elements
...
It may or it may not be
happening, the implication being that the speaker wishes to know the truth of the matter
and that the person spoken to is expected to give him the information
...
An even more striking
change in personal relations is effected if we interchange the farmer and the duckling
...
The duckling has turned, like the proverbial worm, or, to put it in
grammatical terminology, what was “subject” is now “object,” what was object is now
subject
...

I
...
First subject of discourse: farmer
2
...
Activity: kill
—— analyzable into:
D
...


Verb: (to) farm

2
...


Verb: kill

E
...


1
...


Diminutive: expressed by suffix -ling

RELATIONAL CONCEPTS:

Reference:
0
...
Definiteness of reference to second subject of discourse: expressed by
second the, which has preposed position Modality:
2
...
Subjectivity of farmer: expressed by position of farmer before kills; and
by suffixed -s
4
...
Singularity of first subject of discourse: expressed by lack of plural suffix
in farmer; and by suffix -s in following verb
6
...
Present: expressed by lack of preterit suffix in verb; and by suffixed -s
In this short sentence of five words there are expressed, therefore, thirteen distinct
concepts, of which three are radical and concrete, two derivational, and eight relational
...
The method of suffixing is
used both for derivational and for relational elements; independent words or radical
elements express both concrete ideas (objects, activities, qualities) and relational ideas
(articles like the and a; words defining case relations, like of, to, for, with, by; words
defining local relations, like in, on, at); the same relational concept may be expressed
more than once (thus, the singularity of farmer is both negatively expressed in the noun
and positively in the verb); and one element may convey a group of interwoven concepts
rather than one definite concept alone (thus the -s of kills embodies no less than four
logically independent relations)
...
Yet
destructive analysis of the familiar is the only method of approach to an understanding of
fundamentally different modes of expression
...
Not everything that is “outlandish” is intrinsically
illogical or far-fetched
...
From a purely logical standpoint it is obvious that there is no
inherent reason why the concepts expressed in our sentence should have been singled out,
treated, and grouped as they have been and not otherwise
...
This is the case, to a
greater or less degree, in all languages, though in the forms of many we find a more
coherent, a more consistent, reflection than in our English forms of that unconscious
analysis into individual concepts which is never entirely absent from speech, however it
may be complicated with or overlaid by the more irrational factors
...
First as to a different method of handling such
concepts as we have found expressed in the English sentence
...
Indeed, the chief burden of the expression of case, gender, and
number is in the German sentence borne by the particles of reference rather than by the
words that express the concrete concepts (Bauer, Entelein) to which these relational
concepts ought logically to attach themselves
...
[55]
Wandering still further afield, we may glance at the Yana method of expression
...

The suffixed element in “kill-s” corresponds to the English suffix with the important
exceptions that it makes no reference to the number of the subject and that the statement
is known to be true, that it is vouched for by the speaker
...
Had the statement been made
on another’s authority, a totally different “tense-modal” suffix would have had to be
used
...
Gender, indeed, is completely absent in Yana as a relational category
...
One could go on

and give endless examples of such deviations from English form, but we shall have to
content ourselves with a few more indications
...
The three concrete concepts—two
objects and an action—are each directly expressed by a monosyllabic word which is at
the same time a radical element; the two relational concepts—“subject” and “object”—
are expressed solely by the position of the concrete words before and after the word of
action
...
Definiteness or indefiniteness of reference, number, personality as
an inherent aspect of the verb, tense, not to speak of gender—all these are given no
expression in the Chinese sentence, which, for all that, is a perfectly adequate
communication—provided, of course, there is that context, that background of mutual
understanding that is essential to the complete intelligibility of all speech
...
Nothing has been said, for
example, in the English, German, Yana, or Chinese sentence as to the place relations of
the farmer, the duck, the speaker, and the listener
...

What, then, are the absolutely essential concepts in speech, the concepts that must be
expressed if language is to be a satisfactory means of communication? Clearly we must
have, first of all, a large stock of basic or radical concepts, the concrete wherewithal of
speech
...
No proposition,
however abstract its intent, is humanly possible without a tying on at one or more points
to the concrete world of sense
...
And, secondly, such relational concepts must be expressed
as moor the concrete concepts to each other and construct a definite, fundamental form of
proposition
...
We must know what concrete
concept is directly or indirectly related to what other, and how
...
g
...
If I wish to
communicate an intelligible idea about a farmer, a duckling, and the act of killing, it is
not enough to state the linguistic symbols for these concrete ideas in any order, higgledy-

piggledy, trusting that the hearer may construct some kind of a relational pattern out of
the general probabilities of the case
...
I can afford to be silent on the subject of time and place and
number and of a host of other possible types of concepts, but I can find no way of
dodging the issue as to who is doing the killing
...

We are thus once more reminded of the distinction between essential or unavoidable
relational concepts and the dispensable type
...
But what prevents us from throwing in these “dispensable” or
“secondary” relational concepts with the large, floating group of derivational, qualifying
concepts that we have already discussed? Is there, after all is said and done, a
fundamental difference between a qualifying concept like the negative in unhealthy and a
relational one like the number concept in books? If unhealthy may be roughly
paraphrased as not healthy, may not books be just as legitimately paraphrased, barring the
violence to English idiom, as several book? There are, indeed, languages in which the
plural, if expressed at all, is conceived of in the same sober, restricted, one might almost
say casual, spirit in which we feel the negative in unhealthy
...
In
English, however, as in French, German, Latin, Greek—indeed in all the languages that
we have most familiarity with—the idea of number is not merely appended to a given
concept of a thing
...
It infects much else in the sentence, molding other concepts, even
such as have no intelligible relation to number, into forms that are said to correspond to
or “agree with” the basic concept to which it is attached in the first instance
...
What
we are doing in these sentences is what most languages, in greater or less degree and in a
hundred varying ways, are in the habit of doing—throwing a bold bridge between the two
basically distinct types of concept, the concrete and the abstractly relational, infecting the
latter, as it were, with the color and grossness of the former
...

The case is even more obvious if we take gender as our text
...
It
would seem a little far-fetched to make of masculinity and femininity, crassly material,
philosophically accidental concepts that they are, a means of relating quality and person,
person and action, nor would it easily occur to us, if we had not studied the classics, that
it was anything but absurd to inject into two such highly attenuated relational concepts as
are expressed by “the” and “that” the combined notions of number and sex
...
Illa alba femina quae venit and illi albi homines qui veniunt,

conceptually translated, amount to this: that-one-feminine-doer[57] one-feminine-whitedoer feminine-doing-one-woman which-one-feminine-doer other[58]-one-now-come;
and: that-several-masculine-doer several-masculine-white-doer masculine-doing-severalman which-several-masculine-doer other-several-now-come
...
Logically, only case[59] (the
relation of woman or men to a following verb, of which to its antecedent, of that and
white to woman or men, and of which to come) imperatively demands expression, and
that only in connection with the concepts directly affected (there is, for instance, no need
to be informed that the whiteness is a doing or doer’s whiteness[60])
...
An intelligent and sensitive Chinaman,
accustomed as he is to cut to the very bone of linguistic form, might well say of the Latin
sentence, “How pedantically imaginative!” It must be difficult for him, when first
confronted by the illogical complexities of our European languages, to feel at home in an
attitude that so largely confounds the subject-matter of speech with its formal pattern or,
to be more accurate, that turns certain fundamentally concrete concepts to such attenuated
relational uses
...
It goes
without saying that a Frenchman has no clear sex notion in his mind when he speaks of
un arbre (“a-masculine tree”) or of une pomme (“a-feminine apple”)
...
[61] This is evident from our use of the present to
indicate both future time (“He comes to-morrow”) and general activity unspecified as to
time (“Whenever he comes, I am glad to see him,” where “comes” refers to past
occurrences and possible future ones rather than to present activity)
...
If the thinning-out
process continues long enough, we may eventually be left with a system of forms on our
hands from which all the color of life has vanished and which merely persist by inertia,
duplicating each other’s secondary, syntactic functions with endless prodigality
...
There must have been a time,
for instance, though it antedates our earliest documentary evidence, when the type of
tense formation represented by drove or sank differed in meaning, in however slightly
nuanced a degree, from the type (killed, worked) which has now become established in
English as the prevailing preterit formation, very much as we recognize a valuable
distinction at present between both these types and the “perfect” (has driven, has killed)
but may have ceased to do so at some point in the future
...
Both are ceaselessly changing, but, on the whole, the form
tends to linger on when the spirit has flown or changed its being
...

There is another powerful tendency which makes for a formal elaboration that does not
strictly correspond to clear-cut conceptual differences
...
Once we
have made up our minds that all things are either definitely good or bad or definitely
black or white, it is difficult to get into the frame of mind that recognizes that any
particular thing may be both good and bad (in other words, indifferent) or both black and
white (in other words, gray), still more difficult to realize that the good-bad or blackwhite categories may not apply at all
...
It must have its perfectly exclusive
pigeon-holes and will tolerate no flying vagrants
...
In English we have made up our minds that all action must be
conceived of in reference to three standard times
...
[63] In French
we know once for all that an object is masculine or feminine, whether it be living or not;
just as in many American and East Asiatic languages it must be understood to belong to a
certain form-category (say, ring-round, ball-round, long and slender, cylindrical, sheetlike, in mass like sugar) before it can be enumerated (e
...
, “two ball-class potatoes,”
“three sheet-class carpets”) or even said to “be” or “be handled in a definite way” (thus,
in the Athabaskan languages and in Yana, “to carry” or “throw” a pebble is quite another
thing than to carry or throw a log, linguistically no less than in terms of muscular
experience)
...
It is almost as though at some
period in the past the unconscious mind of the race had made a hasty inventory of
experience, committed itself to a premature classification that allowed of no revision, and
saddled the inheritors of its language with a science that they no longer quite believed in
nor had the strength to overthrow
...
Linguistic categories make up a system of surviving dogma—dogma of the
unconscious
...

There is still a third cause for the rise of this non-significant form, or rather of nonsignificant differences of form
...
Much of the irregularity and general formal complexity of our
declensional and conjugational systems is due to this process
...
In the former case we have a true -s symbolizing plurality, in
the latter a z-sound coupled with a change in the radical element of the word of f to v
...
This type of form development, therefore, while

of the greatest interest for the general history of language, does not directly concern us
now in our effort to understand the nature of grammatical concepts and their tendency to
degenerate into purely formal counters
...


Basic (Concrete) Concepts (such as objects, actions, qualities): normally
expressed by independent words or radical elements; involve no relation as
such[64]

II
...


Concrete Relational Concepts (still more abstract, yet not entirely devoid of a
measure of concreteness): normally expressed by affixing non-radical elements to
radical elements, but generally at a greater remove from these than is the case
with elements of type II, or by inner modification of radical elements; differ
fundamentally from type II in indicating or implying relations that transcend the
particular word to which they are immediately attached, thus leading over to

IV
...


The nature of these four classes of concepts as regards their concreteness or their power
to express syntactic relations may be thus symbolized:
I
...
Derivational Concepts
III
...
Pure Relational Concepts

Material Content {
Relation

These schemes must not be worshipped as fetiches
...
This is particularly apt to be the case in exotic languages, where we
may be quite sure of the analysis of the words in a sentence and yet not succeed in
acquiring that inner “feel” of its structure that enables us to tell infallibly what is
“material content” and what is “relation
...
Concepts II and III are both common, but not essential;
particularly group III, which represents, in effect, a psychological and formal confusion
of types II and IV or of types I and IV, is an avoidable class of concepts
...
It is particularly significant that the unanalyzable independent
word belongs in most cases to either group I or group IV, rather less commonly to II or
III
...
This happens, for instance, in Chinese and
Cambodgian when the verb “give” is used in an abstract sense as a mere symbol of the
“indirect objective” relation (e
...
, Cambodgian “We make story this give all that person
who have child,” i
...
, “We have made this story for all those that have children”)
...
To the first of these
transitions belongs that whole class of examples in which the independent word, after
passing through the preliminary stage of functioning as the secondary or qualifying
element in a compound, ends up by being a derivational affix pure and simple, yet
without losing the memory of its former independence
...

brim-full) and that of a simple suffix (cf
...
In general, the more highly synthetic our linguistic type, the more difficult
and even arbitrary it becomes to distinguish groups I and II
...
In many languages it becomes almost
imperative, therefore, to make various sub-classifications, to segregate, for instance, the
more concrete from the more abstract concepts of group II
...
An example
or two should make clear these all-important distinctions
...
Some of
these are quite material in content (e
...
, “in the house,” “to dream of”), others, like an
element denoting plurality and a diminutive affix, are far more abstract in content
...
If, therefore, I wish
to say “the small fires in the house”—and I can do this in one word—I must form the
word “fire-in-the-house,” to which elements corresponding to “small,” our plural, and
“the” are appended
...
So far, so good
...
”[67] But is the Nootka correlate of “the
small fires in the house” the true equivalent of an English “the house-firelets”?[68] By no
means
...
A more adequate rendering would be “the house-fire-several-let,” in which,
however, “several” is too gross a word, “-let” too choice an element (“small” again is too
gross)
...
” But what more than anything else cuts off all possibility of comparison
between the English -s of “house-firelets” and the “-several-small” of the Nootka word is
this, that in Nootka neither the plural nor the diminutive affix corresponds or refers to
anything else in the sentence
...
Hence, while Nootka
recognizes a cleavage between concrete and less concrete concepts within group II, the
less concrete do not transcend the group and lead us into that abstracter air into which our
plural -s carries us
...
In Yana the third person of the verb makes no formal
distinction between singular and plural
...
“It burns in the east” is rendered by the verb ya-hau-si “burn-east-s
...
Note that the plural affix immediately follows the
radical element (ya-), disconnecting it from the local element (-hau-)
...

But can we go a step farther and dispose of the category of plurality as an utterly material
idea, one that would make of “books” a “plural book,” in which the “plural,” like the
“white” of “white book,” falls contentedly into group I? Our “many books” and “several
books” are obviously not cases in point
...

We must turn to central and eastern Asia for the type of expression we are seeking
...
[72] If the fact is worth expressing, however, I
can say nga-s mi rnams mthong “by me man plural see,” where rnams is the perfect
conceptual analogue of -s in books, divested of all relational strings
...
” No need to bother about his plurality any more than about his whiteness
unless we insist on the point
...
They do not necessarily belong where we who speak English are in the habit of
putting them
...
Nor dare we look down on the Nootka Indian and the Tibetan for their
material attitude towards a concept which to us is abstract and relational, lest we invite
the reproaches of the Frenchman who feels a subtlety of relation in femme blanche and
homme blanc that he misses in the coarser-grained white woman and white man
...

It is because our conceptual scheme is a sliding scale rather than a philosophical analysis
of experience that we cannot say in advance just where to put a given concept
...
What boots it to
put tense and mode here or number there when the next language one handles puts tense a
peg “lower down” (towards I), mode and number a peg “higher up” (towards IV)? Nor is
there much to be gained in a summary work of this kind from a general inventory of the
types of concepts generally found in groups II, III, and IV
...
It would be interesting to show what are the most typical noun-forming and
verb-forming elements of group II; how variously nouns may be classified (by gender;
personal and non-personal; animate and inanimate; by form; common and proper); how
the concept of number is elaborated (singular and plural; singular, dual, and plural;
singular, dual, trial, and plural; single, distributive, and collective); what tense
distinctions may be made in verb or noun (the “past,” for instance, may be an indefinite
past, immediate, remote, mythical, completed, prior); how delicately certain languages
have developed the idea of “aspect”[74] (momentaneous, durative, continuative,
inceptive, cessative, durative-inceptive, iterative, momentaneous-iterative, durativeiterative, resultative, and still others); what modalities may be recognized (indicative,
imperative, potential, dubitative, optative, negative, and a host of others[75]); what
distinctions of person are possible (is “we,” for instance, conceived of as a plurality of “I”
or is it as distinct from “I” as either is from “you” or “he”?—both attitudes are illustrated
in language; moreover, does “we” include you to whom I speak or not?—“inclusive” and
“exclusive” forms); what may be the general scheme of orientation, the so-called
demonstrative categories (“this” and “that” in an endless procession of nuances);[76] how
frequently the form expresses the source or nature of the speaker’s knowledge (known by
actual experience, by hearsay,[77] by inference); how the syntactic relations may be
expressed in the noun (subjective and objective; agentive, instrumental, and person
affected;[78] various types of “genitive” and indirect relations) and, correspondingly, in
the verb (active and passive; active and static; transitive and intransitive; impersonal,
reflexive, reciprocal, indefinite as to object, and many other special limitations on the
starting-point and end-point of the flow of activity)
...
It is enough for
the general reader to feel that language struggles towards two poles of linguistic

expression—material content and relation—and that these poles tend to be connected by
a long series of transitional concepts
...
Every language has its special method or methods of
binding words into a larger unity
...
The more synthetic the language, in other words, the
more clearly the status of each word in the sentence is indicated by its own resources, the
less need is there for looking beyond the word to the sentence as a whole
...
Whether I say agit
dominus “the master acts” or sic femina agit “thus the woman acts,” the net result as to
the syntactic feel of the agit is practically the same
...
It is not so with such a word as the English act
...
” The Latin sentence
speaks with the assurance of its individual members, the English word needs the
prompting of its fellows
...
And yet to say that a sufficiently
elaborate word-structure compensates for external syntactic methods is perilously close to
begging the question
...
This is tantamount to saying
that a word which consists of more than a radical element is a crystallization of a
sentence or of some portion of a sentence, that a form like agit is roughly the
psychological[79] equivalent of a form like age is “act he
...
The most fundamental and
the most powerful of all relating methods is the method of order
...
It is hardly possible to set
down these three symbols—red dog run—without relating them in some way, for
example (the) red dog run(s)
...
To certain syntactic adhesions we are very sensitive, for example, to the
attributive relation of quality (red dog) or the subjective relation (dog run) or the
objective relation (kill dog), to others we are more indifferent, for example, to the
attributive relation of circumstance (to-day red dog run or red dog to-day run or red dog
run to-day, all of which are equivalent propositions or propositions in embryo)
...
It is presumably this very greater or less that ultimately leads to those firmly
solidified groups of elements (radical element or elements plus one or more grammatical

elements) that we have studied as complex words
...
While they are fully alive, in other words, while they are functional
at every point, they can keep themselves at a psychological distance from their neighbors
...
Speech is thus constantly tightening
and loosening its sequences
...
In its more analytic
forms (Chinese, English) this energy is mobile, ready to hand for such service as we
demand of it
...

Such an English word as withstand is merely an old sequence with stand, i
...
,
“against[80] stand,” in which the unstressed adverb was permanently drawn to the
following verb and lost its independence as a significant element
...

But stress has done more than articulate or unify sequences that in their own right imply a
syntactic relation
...
Hence we need not be
surprised to find that accent too, no less than sequence, may serve as the unaided symbol
of certain relations
...
A
sequence like see' man might imply some type of relation in which see qualifies the
following word, hence “a seeing man” or “a seen (or visible) man,” or is its predication,
hence “the man sees” or “the man is seen,” while a sequence like see man' might indicate
that the accented word in some way limits the application of the first, say as direct object,
hence “to see a man” or “(he) sees the man
...
[82]
It is a somewhat venturesome and yet not an altogether unreasonable speculation that
sees in word order and stress the primary methods for the expression of all syntactic
relations and looks upon the present relational value of specific words and elements as
but a secondary condition due to a transfer of values
...
This sort of evolution by transfer is
traceable in many instances
...
” We know, however, that it was originally an

adverb of considerable concreteness of meaning,[85] “away, moving from,” and that the
syntactic relation was originally expressed by the case form[86] of the second noun
...
If we are actually justified
in assuming that the expression of all syntactic relations is ultimately traceable to these
two unavoidable, dynamic features of speech—sequence and stress[87]—an interesting
thesis results:—All of the actual content of speech, its clusters of vocalic and consonantal
sounds, is in origin limited to the concrete; relations were originally not expressed in
outward form but were merely implied and articulated with the help of order and rhythm
...

There is a special method for the expression of relations that has been so often evolved in
the history of language that we must glance at it for a moment
...
It is based on the same principle as the password or label
...
It makes little difference, once they are so
stamped, where they are to be found or how they behave themselves
...
We are familiar with the principle of concord in Latin and Greek
...
” Not that
sound-echo, whether in the form of rhyme or of alliteration[88] is necessary to concord,
though in its most typical and original forms concord is nearly always accompanied by
sound repetition
...
The application of the principle varies considerably according to the genius of the
particular language
...

In Chinook there is a more far-reaching concord between noun, whether subject or object,
and verb
...
“Woman” is feminine, “sand” is neuter, “table” is masculine
...
The
sentence reads then, “The (fem
...
)-it (neut
...
)-on-put the
(neut
...
)-table
...
Adjective thus calls to noun, noun to verb
...
)-woman she
(fem
...
)-it (masc
...
)-thereof (neut
...
)-sand the
(masc
...
)-largeness the (masc
...
” The classification of “table” as
masculine is thus three times insisted on—in the noun, in the adjective, and in the verb
...
In
them also nouns are classified into a number of categories and are brought into relation

with adjectives, demonstratives, relative pronouns, and verbs by means of prefixed
elements that call off the class and make up a complex system of concordances
...
We recognize in this
insistence on external clarity of reference the same spirit as moves in the more familiar
illum bonum dominum
...
Where they are all for implication, for subtlety of feeling, concord is impatient
of the least ambiguity but must have its well-certificated tags at every turn
...
In Latin and Chinook the independent words are free in
position, less so in Bantu
...
These examples again bring home to us the significant fact
that at some point or other order asserts itself in every language as the most fundamental
of relating principles
...
” The reason for this is not far to seek
...
We imagine, to
begin with, that all “verbs” are inherently concerned with action as such, that a “noun” is
the name of some definite object or personality that can be pictured by the mind, that all
qualities are necessarily expressed by a definite group of words to which we may
appropriately apply the term “adjective
...
We
say “it is red” and define “red” as a quality-word or adjective
...
Yet as soon as we give the “durative” notion of
being red an inceptive or transitional turn, we can avoid the parallel form “it becomes
red, it turns red” and say “it reddens
...
” Yet “it is red” is related to “it reddens” very much as is “he
stands” to “he stands up” or “he rises
...
” There are
hundreds of languages that can
...
“Red” in such languages is
merely a derivative “being red,” as our “sleeping” or “walking” are derivatives of
primary verbs
...
We speak of “the height of a
building” or “the fall of an apple” quite as though these ideas were parallel to “the roof of

a building” or “the skin of an apple,” forgetting that the nouns (height, fall) have not
ceased to indicate a quality and an act when we have made them speak with the accent of
mere objects
...
In Chinook, as we have seen,
“the big table” is “the-table its-bigness”; in Tibetan the same idea may be expressed by
“the table of bigness,” very much as we may say “a man of wealth” instead of “a rich
man
...
” But let us insist on
giving independence to this idea of local relation
...
We can say something like “he reached the
proximity of the house” or “he reached the house-locality
...
” Such expressions are stilted
in English because they do not easily fit into our formal grooves, but in language after
language we find that local relations are expressed in just this way
...
And so we might go on examining the various parts of speech and showing
how they not merely grade into each other but are to an astonishing degree actually
convertible into each other
...
A part of speech
outside of the limitations of syntactic form is but a will o’ the wisp
...
Each language has its own scheme
...

Yet we must not be too destructive
...
There must be something to talk about and something must be said about
this subject of discourse once it is selected
...
The subject of discourse is a
noun
...
As the thing predicated of a subject is
generally an activity in the widest sense of the word, a passage from one moment of
existence to another, the form which has been set aside for the business of predicating, in
other words, the verb, clusters about concepts of activity
...
It is different with the other parts of speech
...
[91]

VI
Types of Linguistic Structure

So far, in dealing with linguistic form, we have been concerned only with single words
and with the relations of words in sentences
...
Incidentally we have observed that one language
runs to tight-knit synthesis where another contents itself with a more analytic, piece-meal
handling of its elements, or that in one language syntactic relations appear pure which in
another are combined with certain other notions that have something concrete about
them, however abstract they may be felt to be in practice
...

For it must be obvious to any one who has thought about the question at all or who has
felt something of the spirit of a foreign language that there is such a thing as a basic plan,
a certain cut, to each language
...
When we pass from Latin to
Russian, we feel that it is approximately the same horizon that bounds our view, even
though the near, familiar landmarks have changed
...
And when we have arrived at Chinese, it is an utterly different sky that is looking
down upon us
...
This is tantamount to saying
that it is possible to group them into morphological types
...
Like all human institutions, speech is too
variable and too elusive to be quite safely ticketed
...
To get them into the scheme at all it will be necessary to
overestimate the significance of this or that feature or to ignore, for the time being,
certain contradictions in their mechanism
...
It would be too easy to relieve ourselves of the
burden of constructive thinking and to take the standpoint that each language has its
unique history, therefore its unique structure
...
Just as similar social, economic, and religious institutions have grown up in
different parts of the world from distinct historical antecedents, so also languages,
traveling along different roads, have tended to converge toward similar forms
...

From this it follows that broadly similar morphologies must have been reached by
unrelated languages, independently and frequently
...

As linguists we shall be content to realize that there are these types and that certain
processes in the life of language tend to modify them
...
Perhaps the psychologists of the future
will be able to give us the ultimate reasons for the formation of linguistic types
...
Various classifications have been suggested, and they all contain elements of
value
...
They do not so much enfold the known languages in
their embrace as force them down into narrow, straight-backed seats
...
First and foremost, it has been difficult to choose a point of
view
...
And is one point of view sufficient? Secondly, it is dangerous to
generalize from a small number of selected languages
...
We have no right to assume that a sprinkling of exotic
types will do to supplement the few languages nearer home that we are more immediately
interested in
...
There is something irresistible about a method of classification that starts
with two poles, exemplified, say, by Chinese and Latin, clusters what it conveniently can
about these poles, and throws everything else into a “transitional type
...
Sometimes the languages of the American Indians are
made to straggle along as an uncomfortable “polysynthetic” rear-guard to the
agglutinative languages
...
In any case it is very
difficult to assign all known languages to one or other of these groups, the more so as
they are not mutually exclusive
...

There is a fourth reason why the classification of languages has generally proved a
fruitless undertaking
...

This is the evolutionary prejudice which instilled itself into the social sciences towards
the middle of the last century and which is only now beginning to abate its tyrannical
hold on our mind
...
The vast majority of linguistic theorists themselves
spoke languages of a certain type, of which the most fully developed varieties were the
Latin and Greek that they had learned in their childhood
...
Whatever conformed to the pattern of Sanskrit and Greek and Latin and
German was accepted as expressive of the “highest,” whatever departed from it was
frowned upon as a shortcoming or was at best an interesting aberration
...
A linguist that insists on talking about the
Latin type of morphology as though it were necessarily the high-water mark of linguistic
development is like the zoölogist that sees in the organic world a huge conspiracy to
evolve the race-horse or the Jersey cow
...
These may shape themselves in a hundred

ways, regardless of the material advancement or backwardness of the people that handle
the forms, of which, it need hardly be said, they are in the main unconscious
...

We come back to our first difficulty
...
Every language can
and must express the fundamental syntactic relations even though there is not a single
affix to be found in its vocabulary
...

Aside from the expression of pure relation a language may, of course, be “formless”—
formless, that is, in the mechanical and rather superficial sense that it is not encumbered
by the use of non-radical elements
...
” Chinese, for instance, has no formal elements
pure and simple, no “outer form,” but it evidences a keen sense of relations, of the
difference between subject and object, attribute and predicate, and so on
...
” On the other hand, there are
supposed to be languages[95] which have no true grasp of the fundamental relations but
content themselves with the more or less minute expression of material ideas, sometimes
with an exuberant display of “outer form,” leaving the pure relations to be merely
inferred from the context
...
It may well be that in these languages
the relations are not expressed in as immaterial a way as in Chinese or even as in
Latin,[96] or that the principle of order is subject to greater fluctuations than in Chinese,
or that a tendency to complex derivations relieves the language of the necessity of
expressing certain relations as explicitly as a more analytic language would have them
expressed
...
We shall therefore not be able to use the notion of
“inner formlessness,” except in the greatly modified sense that syntactic relations may be
fused with notions of another order
...

More justifiable would be a classification according to the formal processes[98] most
typically developed in the language
...
The latter type might be not inaptly
termed “symbolic” languages
...
There are two serious
difficulties with this fourfold classification (isolating, prefixing, suffixing, symbolic)
...
The Semitic
languages, for instance, are prefixing, suffixing, and symbolic at one and the same time
...
It would throw
together languages that differ utterly in spirit merely because of a certain external formal
resemblance
...
The
classification has much greater value if it is taken to refer to the expression of relational
concepts[100] alone
...

We shall find that the terms “isolating,” “affixing,” and “symbolic” have a real value
...
[101]
There is another very useful set of distinctions that can be made, but these too must not
be applied exclusively, or our classification will again be superficial
...
” The terms explain themselves
...
In an analytic language the
sentence is always of prime importance, the word is of minor interest
...
A polysynthetic language,
as its name implies, is more than ordinarily synthetic
...
Concepts which we should never dream of treating in a subordinate fashion are
symbolized by derivational affixes or “symbolic” changes in the radical element, while
the more abstract notions, including the syntactic relations, may also be conveyed by the
word
...
It is related to them very much as a synthetic
language is related to our own analytic English
...
I believe the terms are more useful in defining certain drifts
than as absolute counters
...
[103]
We now come to the difference between an “inflective” and an “agglutinative” language
...
The meaning that we had best assign to the term “inflective” can be gained by
considering very briefly what are some of the basic features of Latin and Greek that have
been looked upon as peculiar to the inflective languages
...
This does not help us much
...
An inflective language, we must insist,
may be analytic, synthetic, or polysynthetic
...
The agglutinative languages are just as typically affixing as they, some among
them favoring prefixes, others running to the use of suffixes
...
Possibly everything depends on just what kind of affixing we have to
deal with
...
The -er and -ness are affixed quite mechanically to radical
elements which are at the same time independent words (farm, good)
...
Their use is simple and regular and we should
have no difficulty in appending them to any verb or to any adjective, however recent in
origin
...
It is
different with height and depth
...
Radical element and affix, while measurably distinct, cannot be torn apart quite
so readily as could the good and -ness of goodness
...
We may designate the two types of affixing as “fusing” and
“juxtaposing
...

Is the fusing technique thereby set off as the essence of inflection? I am afraid that we
have not yet reached our goal
...
g
...
g
...
g
...

The mere fact of fusion does not seem to satisfy us as a clear indication of the inflective
process
...

What is true of fusion is equally true of the “symbolic” processes
...
In
such Greek forms, nevertheless, as pepomph-a “I have sent,” as contrasted with pemp-o
“I send,” with its trebly symbolic change of the radical element (reduplicating pe-,
change of e to o, change of p to ph), it is rather the peculiar alternation of the first person
singular -a of the perfect with the -o of the present that gives them their inflective cast
...
If by an

“agglutinative” language we mean one that affixes according to the juxtaposing
technique, then we can only say that there are hundreds of fusing and symbolic
languages—non-agglutinative by definition—that are, for all that, quite alien in spirit to
the inflective type of Latin and Greek
...

It is necessary to understand that fusion of the radical element and the affix may be taken
in a broader psychological sense than I have yet indicated
...
One reasons, or feels, unconsciously about
the matter somewhat as follows:—If the form pattern represented by the word books is
identical, as far as use is concerned, with that of the word oxen, the pluralizing elements s and -en cannot have quite so definite, quite so autonomous, a value as we might at first
be inclined to suppose
...
The words books and oxen are therefore a little other than
mechanical combinations of the symbol of a thing (book, ox) and a clear symbol of
plurality
...
A little of the force of -s and -en is anticipated by, or appropriated by, the
words book and ox themselves, just as the conceptual force of -th in dep-th is appreciably
weaker than that of -ness in good-ness in spite of the functional parallelism between
depth and goodness
...
The mind must rest on something
...
A word like goodness illustrates “agglutination,”
books “regular fusion,” depth “irregular fusion,” geese “symbolic fusion” or
“symbolism
...
To be strictly accurate, the significance
of the -ness is not quite as inherently determined, as autonomous, as it might be
...
Its own power is thus, in a manner,
checked in advance
...
If the -ness could be affixed as an abstractive element to each and every type of
radical element, if we could say fightness (“the act or quality of fighting”) or waterness
(“the quality or state of water”) or awayness (“the state of being away”) as we can say
goodness (“the state of being good”), we should have moved appreciably nearer the
agglutinative pole
...


Instructive forms may be cited from Nootka
...
”[107] The Nootka word inikw-ihl “fire in the house” is not as definitely
formalized a word as its translation, suggests
...
The derivational element ihl “in the house” does not mitigate this vagueness or generality; inikw-ihl is still “fire in
the house” or “burn in the house
...
For example, inikwihl-’i, with its suffixed article, is a clear-cut nominal form: “the burning in the house, the
fire in the house”; inikw-ihl-ma, with its indicative suffix, is just as clearly verbal: “it
burns in the house
...
The nominalizing -’i and the indicative -ma are not fused formaffixes, they are simply additions of formal import
...
We
can pluralize it: inikw-ihl-’minih; it is still either “fires in the house” or “burn plurally in
the house
...
” What if we add the preterit tense
suffix -it? Is not inikw-ihl-’minih-’is-it necessarily a verb: “several small fires were
burning in the house”? It is not
...
”
It is not an unambiguous verb until it is given a form that excludes every other
possibility, as in the indicative inikwihl-minih’isit-a “several small fires were burning in
the house
...
They are typically
agglutinated elements, though they have no greater external independence, are no more
capable of living apart from the radical element to which they are suffixed, than the -ness
and goodness or the -s of books
...
It is a question of tendency
...
” As such,
it may be prefixing or suffixing, analytic, synthetic, or polysynthetic
...
An inflective language like Latin or Greek uses the method of
fusion, and this fusion has an inner psychological as well as an outer phonetic meaning
...
[109] As far as Latin and Greek are concerned, their inflection consists
essentially of the fusing of elements that express logically impure relational concepts
with radical elements and with elements expressing derivational concepts
...
”

But to have thus defined inflection is to doubt the value of the term as descriptive of a
major class
...
“Fusional” and “symbolic” contrast with “agglutinative,” which is not
on a par with “inflective” at all
...
Isolating, affixing, symbolic—this also seemed insufficient for the reason that it
laid too much stress on technical externals
...
We shall do best, it seems to
me, to hold to “inflective” as a valuable suggestion for a broader and more consistently
developed scheme, as a hint for a classification based on the nature of the concepts
expressed by the language
...

It is well to recall that all languages must needs express radical concepts (group I) and
relational ideas (group IV)
...
This gives us at once a simple, incisive, and absolutely inclusive method of
classifying all known languages
...
Such as express only concepts of groups I and IV; in other words, languages that
keep the syntactic relations pure and that do not possess the power to modify the
significance of their radical elements by means of affixes or internal
changes
...
These are the languages that cut
most to the bone of linguistic expression
...
Such as express concepts of groups I, II, and IV; in other words, languages that
keep the syntactic relations pure and that also possess the power to modify the
significance of their radical elements by means of affixes or internal changes
...

C
...
[112] These are the Mixed-relational nonderiving languages or Simple Mixed-relational languages
...
Such as express concepts of groups I, II, and III; in other words, languages in
which the syntactic relations are expressed in mixed form, as in C, and that also
possess the power to modify the significance of their radical elements by means
of affixes or internal changes
...
Here belong the “inflective” languages
that we are most familiar with as well as a great many “agglutinative” languages,
some “polysynthetic,” others merely synthetic
...
It answers, in effect, two fundamental
questions concerning the translation of concepts into linguistic symbols
...
We can therefore simplify our classification and present it in the
following form:
A
...
Complex
C
...
Mixed-relational Languages {
D
...
Pure-relational Languages {

The classification is too sweeping and too broad for an easy, descriptive survey of the
many varieties of human speech
...
Each of the types A, B, C, D
may be subdivided into an agglutinative, a fusional, and a symbolic sub-type, according
to the prevailing method of modification of the radical element
...
In the isolating languages the syntactic relations are
expressed by the position of the words in the sentence
...
Such
languages could be termed “agglutinative-isolating,” “fusional-isolating” and “symbolicisolating
...
Compound terms
could be used to indicate this difference, if desired, the first element of the compound
referring to the treatment of the concepts of group II, the second to that of the concepts of
groups III and IV
...
In
an “agglutinative-fusional” language the derivational elements are agglutinated, perhaps
in the form of prefixes, while the relational elements (pure or mixed) are fused with the
radical element, possibly as another set of prefixes following the first set or in the form of
suffixes or as part prefixes and part suffixes
...
All these and similar distinctions are not
merely theoretical possibilities, they can be abundantly illustrated from the descriptive
facts of linguistic morphology
...
It goes without saying that languages of type A are
necessarily analytic and that languages of type C also are prevailingly analytic and are
not likely to develop beyond the synthetic stage
...
Much depends on the relative emphasis
laid on this or that feature or point of view
...
The degree of synthesis may be entirely ignored;
“fusion” and “symbolism” may often be combined with advantage under the head of
“fusion”; even the difference between agglutination and fusion may, if desired, be set
aside as either too difficult to draw or as irrelevant to the issue
...
It is of less importance to put each language in
a neat pigeon-hole than to have evolved a flexible method which enables us to place it,
from two or three independent standpoints, relatively to another language
...
But we are too ill-informed as yet
of the structural spirit of great numbers of languages to have the right to frame a
classification that is other than flexible and experimental
...
The columns II, III, IV
refer to the groups of concepts so numbered in the preceding chapter
...
Where more than one technique is employed, they are put in the
order of their importance
...

California)

Polysynthetic
Synthetic

Classical

d,
(b)

b

b

—

c

c

—

c

d, c (d)
(b) b
C
(Simple Mixedc,
(c)
relational)
(d)
b,
b
c, d

D
(Complex
Mixedrelational)

agglutinative
(symbolic tinge)
Agglutinativefusional
Fusional

d,
Symbolic
c, a
— Agglutinative
a

Fusional

b

Agglutinative
(symbolic tinge)

c,
Fusionalb
—
(d)
agglutinative
c,
c,
(d), — Fusional
(d)
(b)
c c, d a Fusional
Fusional (symbolic
c, d c, d —
tinge)
c,
Fusional (strongly
c, d (a)
b, d
symbolic)
d, c c, d (a) Symbolic-fusional

(mildly)

Tibetan

Synthetic (mildly
Sioux
polysynthetic)
Salinan (S
...

Synthetic
California)
Shilluk (Upper
Analytic
Nile)
Synthetic
Bantu
Analytic (mildly
French[114]
synthetic)
Nootka
Polysynthetic
(Vancouver
Island)[115]
Polysynthetic
Chinook (lower
(mildly)
Columbia R
...
W
...
Nor that the fact that two languages are similarly classified does not
necessarily mean that they present a great similarity on the surface
...
Nevertheless, in numerous instances
we may observe this highly suggestive and remarkable fact, that languages that fall into
the same class have a way of paralleling each other in many details or in structural
features not envisaged by the scheme of classification
...
Their similarity goes beyond the generalized
facts registered in the table
...
If, therefore, we can only be sure of
the intuitive similarity of two given languages, of their possession of the same submerged
form-feeling, we need not be too much surprised to find that they seek and avoid certain

linguistic developments in common
...
We can only feel them rather vaguely at best
and must content ourselves for the most part with noting their symptoms
...
Some day, it may be, we shall be able to read from them the great underlying
ground-plans
...
I do not know
whether the suggested classification into four conceptual groups is likely to drive deeper
or not
...
They have to be tested at every possible
opportunity before they have the right to cry for acceptance
...

Languages are in constant process of change, but it is only reasonable to suppose that
they tend to preserve longest what is most fundamental in their structure
...
This is not surprising, for there is no reason why a
language should remain permanently true to its original form
...

The illustrative material gathered in the table is far too scanty to serve as a real basis of
proof, but it is highly suggestive as far as it goes
...
But types
A : B and C : D are respectively related to each other as a simple and a complex form of a
still more fundamental type (pure-relational, mixed-relational)
...

The table shows clearly enough how little relative permanence there is in the technical
features of language
...
Turning to the Indo-Chinese languages, we find that Chinese is
as near to being a perfectly isolating language as any example we are likely to find, while
Classical Tibetan has not only fusional but strong symbolic features (e
...
, g-tong-ba “to
give,” past b-tang, future gtang, imperative thong); but both are pure-relational
languages
...
The relationship between Polynesian and
Cambodgian is remote, though practically certain; while the latter has more markedly
fusional features than the former,[120] both conform to the complex pure-relational type
...
Yana is highly
polysynthetic and quite typically agglutinative, Salinan is no more synthetic than and as
irregularly and compactly fusional (“inflective”) as Latin; both are pure-relational,
Chinook and Takelma, remotely related languages of Oregon, have diverged very far
from each other, not only as regards technique and synthesis in general but in almost all
the details of their structure; both are complex mixed-relational languages, though in very
different ways
...
[121]

VII
Language as a Historical Product: Drift
Every one knows that language is variable
...
A minute investigation of the speech of
each individual would reveal countless differences of detail—in choice of words, in
sentence structure, in the relative frequency with which particular forms or combinations
of words are used, in the pronunciation of particular vowels and consonants and of
combinations of vowels and consonants, in all those features, such as speed, stress, and
tone, that give life to spoken language
...

There is an important difference, however, between individual and dialectic variations
...
The
individual variations are swamped in or absorbed by certain major agreements—say of
pronunciation and vocabulary—which stand out very strongly when the language of the
group as a whole is contrasted with that of the other group
...
One individual plays on
the norm in a way peculiar to himself, the next individual is nearer the dead average in
that particular respect in which the first speaker most characteristically departs from it but
in turn diverges from the average in a way peculiar to himself, and so on
...
If all the speakers of a

given dialect were arranged in order in accordance with the degree of their conformity to
average usage, there is little doubt that they would constitute a very finely intergrading
series clustered about a well-defined center or norm
...
The differences between the outer-most members of the
series are sure to be considerable, in all likelihood considerable enough to measure up to
a true dialectic variation
...

If the speech of any member of the series could actually be made to fit into another
dialect series,[123] we should have no true barriers between dialects (and languages) at
all
...
But such a conception of the nature of dialectic variation does not
correspond to the facts as we know them
...
In course of time the
compromise dialect may absorb the parents, though more frequently these will tend to
linger indefinitely as marginal forms of the enlarged dialect area
...

They are closely linked with such social developments as the rise of nationality, the
formation of literatures that aim to have more than a local appeal, the movement of rural
populations into the cities, and all those other tendencies that break up the intense
localism that unsophisticated man has always found natural
...
It is evidently not enough
to say that if a dialect or language is spoken in two distinct localities or by two distinct
social strata it naturally takes on distinctive forms, which in time come to be divergent
enough to deserve the name of dialects
...
Dialects do
belong, in the first instance, to very definitely circumscribed social groups, homogeneous
enough to secure the common feeling and purpose needed to create a norm
...
But
language is not merely something that is spread out in space, as it were—a series of

reflections in individual minds of one and the same timeless picture
...
It has a drift
...
Now dialects arise not because of the mere fact of
individual variation but because two or more groups of individuals have become
sufficiently disconnected to drift apart, or independently, instead of together
...
In practice, of course, no language can be spread over a vast territory or even
over a considerable area without showing dialectic variations, for it is impossible to keep
a large population from segregating itself into local groups, the language of each of
which tends to drift independently
...
Yet even in so young a country as America the dialectic differences are not
inconsiderable
...
It is natural, therefore, that the languages of primitive folk or of nonurban populations in general are differentiated into a great number of dialects
...
The life of the
geographically limited community is narrow and intense; its speech is correspondingly
peculiar to itself
...
No sooner are the old dialects ironed out by
compromises or ousted by the spread and influence of the one dialect which is culturally
predominant when a new crop of dialects arises to undo the leveling work of the past
...
In classical antiquity there were
spoken a large number of local dialects, several of which are represented in the literature
...
But this linguistic uniformity[124] did not long continue
...
Now Greece is as richly diversified in speech
as in the time of Homer, though the present local dialects, aside from those of Attica
itself, are not the lineal descendants of the old dialects of pre-Alexandrian days
...
Old dialects are being continually wiped out
only to make room for new ones
...
It would be too much to expect a locally
diversified language to develop along strictly parallel lines
...
Failing the retarding effect of dialectic
interinfluences, which I have already touched upon, a group of dialects is bound to
diverge on the whole, each from all of the others
...
And so the budding process continues, until the divergences
become so great that none but a linguistic student, armed with his documentary evidence
and with his comparative or reconstructive method, would infer that the languages in
question were genealogically related, represented independent lines of development, in
other words, from a remote and common starting point
...
There is naturally no
reason to believe that this earliest “Indo-European” (or “Aryan”) prototype which we can
in part reconstruct, in part but dimly guess at, is itself other than a single “dialect” of a
group that has either become largely extinct or is now further represented by languages
too divergent for us, with our limited means, to recognize as clear kin
...
e
...
” There is nothing
final about a linguistic stock
...
At any point in the progress of our researches an unexpected ray of
light may reveal the “stock” as but a “dialect” of a larger group
...
They are
convertible as our perspective widens or contracts
...
Of late years linguists have been able to make larger historical syntheses
than were at one time deemed feasible, just as students of culture have been able to show
historical connections between culture areas or institutions that were at one time believed
to be totally isolated from each other
...
Nevertheless we are as
yet far from able to reduce the riot of spoken languages to a small number of “stocks
...
Some of them,
like Indo-European or Indo-Chinese, are spoken over tremendous reaches; others, like
Basque,[128] have a curiously restricted range and are in all likelihood but dwindling
remnants of groups that were at one time more widely distributed
...
Such a theory constructed “on
general principles” is of no real interest, however, to linguistic science
...

We must return to the conception of “drift” in language
...
What significant changes take place in it must exist, to begin with, as
individual variations
...
They themselves are random phenomena,[130] like the waves of
the sea, moving backward and forward in purposeless flux
...
In other words, only those individual variations embody it or carry it which
move in a certain direction, just as only certain wave movements in the bay outline the
tide
...
This
direction may be inferred, in the main, from the past history of the language
...
As we look about us and observe current usage, it is not likely to occur to
us that our language has a “slope,” that the changes of the next few centuries are in a
sense prefigured in certain obscure tendencies of the present and that these changes, when
consummated, will be seen to be but continuations of changes that have been already
effected
...
The feeling is fallacious
...

Sometimes we can feel where the drift is taking us even while we struggle against it
...
We are likely to avoid the locution altogether and to say “Who was it you saw?”
conserving literary tradition (the “whom”) with the dignity of silence
...
“Whom did you see?” might do for an epitaph, but “Who did you
see?” is the natural form for an eager inquiry
...
It is safe to prophesy that within a couple of hundred years from to-day not
even the most learned jurist will be saying “Whom did you see?” By that time the
“whom” will be as delightfully archaic as the Elizabethan “his” for “its
...
” The demonstration “I: me
= he: him = who: whom” will be convincing in theory and will go unheeded in practice
...

But we cannot too frankly anticipate the drift and maintain caste
...
”[133] Meanwhile we indulge our sneaking desire for the forbidden locution by the
use of the “who” in certain twilight cases in which we can cover up our fault by a bit of

unconscious special pleading
...
” You have not caught the name and
ask, not “Whom did you say?” but “Who did you say?” There is likely to be a little
hesitation in the choice of the form, but the precedent of usages like “Whom did you
see?” will probably not seem quite strong enough to induce a “Whom did you say?” Not
quite relevant enough, the grammarian may remark, for a sentence like “Who did you
say?” is not strictly analogous to “Whom did you see?” or “Whom did you mean?” It is
rather an abbreviated form of some such sentence as “Who, did you say, is coming tonight?” This is the special pleading that I have referred to, and it has a certain logic on its
side
...
The real point is that there is not
enough vitality in the “whom” to carry it over such little difficulties as a “me” can
compass without a thought
...
“Whom did you see?” is correct, but
there is something false about its correctness
...
The only distinctively objective
forms which we still possess in English are me, him, her (a little blurred because of its
identity with the possessive her), us, them, and whom
...
We observe immediately in looking through the list
of objective forms that whom is psychologically isolated
...
The forms who and whom are technically “pronouns” but they
are not felt to be in the same box as the personal pronouns
...
Now the other interrogative and relative
pronouns (which, what, that), with which whom should properly flock, do not distinguish
the subjective and objective forms
...
The form groups should be
symmetrically related to, if not identical with, the function groups
...
As
it is, there is something unesthetic about the word
...
The only way to remedy the irregularity of form distribution is to
abandon the whom altogether for we have lost the power to create new objective forms
and cannot remodel our which-what-that group so as to make it parallel with the smaller
group who-whom
...
We do not secretly chafe at “Whom did you see?” without
reason
...
The words who and whom in
their interrogative sense are psychologically related not merely to the pronouns which and
what, but to a group of interrogative adverbs—where, when, how—all of which are

invariable and generally emphatic
...
The inflective -m of whom is felt as a drag upon the
rhetorical effectiveness of the word
...
There is still a third, and a very powerful, reason for the
avoidance of whom
...
We say I see the man but the man sees me; he told him, never him
he told or him told he
...
Even in the interrogative one does not
say Him did you see? It is only in sentences of the type Whom did you see? that an
inflected objective before the verb is now used at all
...
In the “whom” of Whom did you see? there is concealed,
therefore, a conflict between the order proper to a sentence containing an inflected
objective and the order natural to a sentence with an interrogative pronoun or adverb
...
The more radical solution Who did you see? is the
one the language is gradually making for
...
The emphatic whom, with its heavy build
(half-long vowel followed by labial consonant), should contrast with a lightly tripping
syllable immediately following
...
” This clumsiness is a phonetic
verdict, quite apart from the dissatisfaction due to the grammatical factors which we have
analyzed
...
The vowels of what and when are shorter and their final consonants
melt easily into the following d, which is pronounced in the same tongue position as t and
n
...
Neither
common feeling nor the poet’s choice need be at all conscious
...

In any event the poet’s rhythms can only be a more sensitive and stylicized application of
rhythmic tendencies that are characteristic of the daily speech of his people
...
Naturally the four restraining factors do not operate independently
...
This force or minute embodiment of the general drift of the language is
psychologically registered as a slight hesitation in using the word whom
...
The analysis is certain to be unconscious, or rather unknown, to the normal

speaker
...
Their values are variable,
rising and falling according to the individual and the locution
...
If one
or other of the factors is missing and we observe a slight diminution in the corresponding
psychological reaction (“hesitation” in our case), we may conclude that the factor is in
other uses genuinely positive
...
We can therefore understand why a sentence like Is he the man whom
you referred to? though not as idiomatic as Is he the man (that) you referred to?
(remember that it sins against counts one and three), is still not as difficult to reconcile
with our innate feeling for English expression as Whom did you see? If we eliminate the
fourth factor from the interrogative usage,[138] say in Whom are you looking at? where
the vowel following whom relieves this word of its phonetic weight, we can observe, if I
am not mistaken, a lesser reluctance to use the whom
...
Value 1: factors 1, 3
...
”
2
...
“The man whom they referred to
...
Value 3: factors 1, 2, 3
...
Value 4: factors 1, 2, 3, 4
...
It is impossible to be certain, however,
for we can never tell if we have isolated all the determinants of a drift
...
This is the unconscious desire to leave these words to
their interrogative function and to concentrate on that or mere word order as expressions
of the relative (e
...
, The man that I referred to or The man I referred to)
...
A consideration like this is instructive because it indicates that
knowledge of the general drift of a language is insufficient to enable us to see clearly
what the drift is heading for
...

It is hardly necessary to say that the particular drifts involved in the use of whom are of
interest to us not for their own sake but as symptoms of larger tendencies at work in the
language
...
Each of these has
operated for centuries, each is at work in other parts of our linguistic mechanism, each is
almost certain to continue for centuries, possibly millennia
...
This
system, which is at present best preserved in Lithuanian,[139] was already considerably
reduced in the old Germanic language of which English, Dutch, German, Danish, and
Swedish are modern dialectic forms
...
We know this from a careful comparison
of and reconstruction based on the oldest Germanic dialects of which we still have
records (Gothic, Old Icelandic, Old High German, Anglo-Saxon)
...
The case system is practically intact but it is
evidently moving towards further disintegration
...
The
phonetic form of the case syllables became still further reduced and the distinction
between the accusative and the dative finally disappeared
...
The distinction between the nominative and
accusative was nibbled away by phonetic processes and morphological levelings until
only certain pronouns retained distinctive subjective and objective forms
...
All the
while, however, the case system, such as it is (subjective-objective, really absolutive, and
possessive in nouns; subjective, objective, and possessive in certain pronouns) has been
steadily weakening in psychological respects
...
The possessive has little vitality except in the pronoun and in
animate nouns
...
The drift is clearly toward the limitation, of
possessive forms to animate nouns
...
It is significant that theirs is hardly ever used in
reference to inanimate nouns, that there is some reluctance to so use their, and that its
also is beginning to give way to of it
...
It is curiously significant that its young
(referring to an animal’s cubs) is idiomatically preferable to the young of it
...
Can it be that so common a word as its is actually
beginning to be difficult? Is it too doomed to disappear? It would be rash to say that it
shows signs of approaching obsolescence, but that it is steadily weakening is fairly
clear
...


How is it with the alternation of subjective and objective in the pronoun? Granted that
whom is a weak sister, that the two cases have been leveled in you (in it, that, and what
they were never distinct, so far as we can tell[141]), and that her as an objective is a trifle
weak because of its formal identity with the possessive her, is there any reason to doubt
the vitality of such alternations as I see the man and the man sees me? Surely the
distinction between subjective I and objective me, between subjective he and objective
him, and correspondingly for other personal pronouns, belongs to the very core of the
language
...
True, the
phonetic disparity between I and me, he and him, we and us, has been too great for any
serious possibility of form leveling
...
One of the most insidious peculiarities of a linguistic drift is that where it
cannot destroy what lies in its way it renders it innocuous by washing the old significance
out of it
...
This brings us to the second of the
major drifts, the tendency to fixed position in the sentence, determined by the syntactic
relation of the word
...
It is enough to know that as the
inflected forms of English became scantier, as the syntactic relations were more and more
inadequately expressed by the forms of the words themselves, position in the sentence
gradually took over functions originally foreign to it
...
Strictly parallel to these sentences are he
sees the dog and the dog sees him
...
We
could hold to such a view if it were possible to say the dog sees he or him sees the dog
...
In other words, at least
part of the case feeling in he and him is to be credited to their position before or after the
verb
...
The folk says it is
me, not it is I, which is “correct” but just as falsely so as the whom did you see? that we
have analyzed
...
There is little doubt that it is I will one day be as
impossible in English as c’est je, for c’est moi, is now in French
...

Here the distinctively subjective aspect of the I was enough to influence the form of the
preceding verb in spite of the introductory it; Chaucer’s locution clearly felt more like a
Latin sum ego than a modern it is I or colloquial it is me
...
Were he and she subjective forms pure and simple, were they not
striving, so to speak, to become caseless absolutives, like man or any other noun, we
should not have been able to coin such compounds as he-goat and she-goat, words that
are psychologically analogous to bull-moose and mother-bear
...
All in all, we may conclude that our
English case system is weaker than it looks and that, in one way or another, it is destined
to get itself reduced to an absolutive (caseless) form for all nouns and pronouns but those
that are animate
...

Meanwhile observe that the old alignment of case forms is being invaded by two new
categories—a positional category (pre-verbal, post-verbal) and a classificatory category
(animate, inanimate)
...
They show that, however the language strive for a more and more
analytic form, it is by no means manifesting a drift toward the expression of “pure”
relational concepts in the Indo-Chinese manner
...

The drift toward the abolition of most case distinctions and the correlative drift toward
position as an all-important grammatical method are accompanied, in a sense dominated,
by the last of the three major drifts that I have referred to
...
In analyzing the “whom” sentence I pointed out that the rhetorical
emphasis natural to an interrogative pronoun lost something by its form variability (who,
whose, whom)
...
It accounts for a number of
tendencies which at first sight seem unconnected
...
It is interesting to note that derivations that get away
sufficiently from the concrete notion of the radical word to exist as independent
conceptual centers are not affected by this elusive drift
...
English words crave
spaces between them, they do not like to huddle in clusters of slightly divergent centers
of meaning, each edging a little away from the rest
...
g
...
Similarly, unable can hold its own against
able because it destroys the latter’s sphere of influence; unable is psychologically as
distinct from able as is blundering or stupid
...
These lean
too heavily on their adjectives to have the kind of vitality that English demands of its
words
...
The nuance expressed by quickly is too close
to that of quick, their circles of concreteness are too nearly the same, for the two words to
feel comfortable together
...
Another

instance of the sacrifice of highly useful forms to this impatience of nuancing is the group
whence, whither, hence, hither, thence, thither
...
In saying whither we feel too keenly that we repeat all of where
...
We
prefer to merge the static and the directive (Where do you live? like Where are you
going?) or, if need be, to overdo a little the concept of direction (Where are you running
to?)
...
As a matter of fact our vocabulary is rich in near-synonyms and in groups of words
that are psychologically near relatives, but these near-synonyms and these groups do not
hang together by reason of etymology
...
Good and well go better together than quick and
quickly
...
Has English long been peculiarly receptive to foreign words because it craves
the staking out of as many word areas as possible, or, conversely, has the mechanical
imposition of a flood of French and Latin loan-words, unrooted in our earlier tradition, so
dulled our feeling for the possibilities of our native resources that we are allowing these
to shrink by default? I suspect that both propositions are true
...
I
do not think it likely, however, that the borrowings in English have been as mechanical
and external a process as they are generally represented to have been
...
They were a compensation for something that was
weakening within
...
What is true of the particular idiom that we started with is true of everything else
in language
...
Every word, every grammatical element, every
locution, every sound and accent is a slowly changing configuration, molded by the
invisible and impersonal drift that is the life of language
...
Its speed varies enormously according to
circumstances that it is not always easy to define
...
German has moved more slowly
than English; in some respects it stands roughly midway between English and AngloSaxon, in others it has of course diverged from the Anglo-Saxon line
...
The general drift of a language has
its depths
...
In certain features dialects drift
apart rapidly
...
But this is
not all
...
In
many such cases it is perfectly clear that there could have been no dialectic
interinfluencing
...
Here is an interesting example
...
One would be inclined to surmise that these dialectic
forms go back to old Germanic or West-Germanic alternations of the same type
...
There is no trace of such vocalic mutation (“umlaut”) in
Gothic, our most archaic Germanic language
...
D
...
The typical Old High German
forms are singular fuoss, plural fuossi;[145] singular mus, plural musi
...
Modern German Fuss: Füsse,
Maus: Mäuse are the regular developments of these medieval forms
...
[146]
These forms are already in use in the earliest English monuments that we possess, dating
from the eighth century, and thus antedate the Middle High German forms by three
hundred years or more
...
The mere fact that the affected vowels of related words (Old
High German uo, Anglo-Saxon o) are not always the same shows that the affection took
place at different periods in German and English
...

How did such strikingly individual alternations as fot: fet, fuoss: füesse develop? We have
now reached what is probably the most central problem in linguistic history, gradual
phonetic change
...
Their influence reaches far beyond the proper sphere of phonetics
and invades that of morphology, as we shall see
...
The mere fact, for instance, that there is a growing tendency
to throw the stress automatically on the first syllable of a word may eventually change the
fundamental type of the language, reducing its final syllables to zero and driving it to the
use of more and more analytical or symbolic[149] methods
...
In foti “feet” the long o was colored by the following i to long ö, that is, o kept its
lip-rounded quality and its middle height of tongue position but anticipated the
front tongue position of the i; ö is the resulting compromise
...
e
...
At first there is no doubt the alternation between
o and ö was not felt as intrinsically significant
...
Later on the quality of the ö vowel must have departed widely enough
from that of o to enable ö to rise in consciousness[151] as a neatly distinct vowel
...

2
...
This change
also was regular; lusi “lice” became lüsi, kui “cows” became küi (later simplified
to kü; still preserved as ki- in kine), fulian “to make foul” became fülian (still
preserved as -file in defile)
...

3
...
The final -i,
originally an important functional element, had long lost a great share of its value,
transferred as that was to the symbolic vowel change (o: ö)
...
It became dulled to a colorless -e; föti became
föte
...
The weak -e finally disappeared
...

5
...
The alternation
of fot: foti, transitionally fot: föti, föte, föt, now appears as fot: fet
...
The new long e-vowel “fell
together” with the older e-vowel already existent (e
...
, her “here,” he “he”)
...
Thus our
present he has the same vowel as feet, teeth, and feed
...

6
...

At the very end of the Anglo-Saxon period, say about 1050 to 1100 A
...
, the ü,
whether long or short, became unrounded to i
...
The change is analogous to 5, but takes place
several centuries later
...
In Chaucer’s day (circa 1350-1400 A
...
) the forms were still fot: fet (written foot,
feet) and mus: mis (written very variably, but mous, myse are typical)
...
e
...
Shakespeare pronounced mice as meis (almost the same as the
present Cockney pronunciation of mace)
...
About the same time the long u-vowels were diphthongized to ou (i
...
, o of
present Scotch not + u of full)
...
This change may have manifested itself somewhat
later than 7; all English dialects have diphthongized old Germanic long i,[152] but
the long undiphthongized u is still preserved in Lowland Scotch, in which house
and mouse rhyme with our loose
...

9
...
e
...
Our (and Shakespeare’s) “long e” is, then, phonetically the
same as the old long i
...

10
...
e
...
Our (and Shakespeare’s) “long oo” is phonetically the same
as the old long u
...
To
summarize 7 to 10, Shakespeare pronounced meis, mous, fit, fut, of which meis
and mous would affect our ears as a rather “mincing” rendering of our present
mice and mouse, fit would sound practically identical with (but probably a bit
more “drawled” than) our present feet, while foot, rhyming with boot, would now
be set down as “broad Scotch
...
Gradually the first vowel of the diphthong in mice (see 7) was retracted and
lowered in position
...
e
...
[153] What we now call the “long i” (of
words like ride, bite, mice) is, of course, an ai-diphthong
...

12
...
The resulting diphthong may be phonetically
rendered au, though it too varies considerably according to dialect
...

13
...
e
...
This
change has taken place in a number of words with an originally long u

(Chaucerian long close o), such as forsook, hook, book, look, rook, shook, all of
which formerly had the vowel of boot
...
It is highly
significant of the nature of the slow spread of a “phonetic law” that there is local
vacillation at present in several words
...
It is
impossible now, in other words, to state in a definitive manner what is the
“phonetic law” that regulated the change of the older foot (rhyming with boot) to
the present foot
...
If they all, or practically all, are taken by the
drift, phonetic law 13 will be as “regular,” as sweeping, as most of the twelve that
have preceded it
...
g
...
g
...
g
...
Whatever the upshot,
we may be reasonably certain that when the “phonetic law” has run its course, the
distribution of “long” and “short” vowels in the old oo-words will not seem quite
as erratic as at the present transitional moment
...

It will be instructive to set down a table of form sequences, a kind of gross history of the
words foot, feet, mouse, mice for the last 1500 years:[155]
I
...


fot: föti; mus: müsi

III
...


fot: föt; mus: müs

V
...

VII
...

IX
...


fot: fet; mus: müs (Anglo-Saxon)
fot: fet; mus: mis(Chaucer)
fot: fet; mous: meis
fut (rhymes with boot): fit; mous: meis (Shakespeare)
fut: fit; maus: mais
fut (rhymes with put): fit; maus: mais (English of 1900)

It will not be necessary to list the phonetic laws that gradually differentiated the modern
German equivalents of the original West Germanic forms from their English cognates
...

II
...


fuoss: fuossi; mus: musi (Old High German)

IV
...

VI
...

VIII
...

X
...
Their general parallelism is obvious
...
Each
table illustrates the tendency to reduction of unaccented syllables, the vocalic
modification of the radical element under the influence of the following vowel, the rise in
tongue position of the long middle vowels (English o to u, e to i; German o to uo to u, üe
to ü), the diphthongizing of the old high vowels (English i to ei to ai; English and
German u to ou to au; German ü to öü to oi)
...
They are rooted in a common, pre-dialectic drift
...
” All but one (English table, X
...
[159] An example of the first type of
change is the passage in English of all old long i-vowels to diphthongal ai via ei
...
The second type of change is illustrated
in the development of Anglo-Saxon long o to long e, via ö, under the influence of a
following i
...
The former type of change did no violence to the old phonetic pattern, the
formal distribution of sounds into groups; the latter type rearranged the pattern
somewhat
...
This kind of

leveling is quite frequent in the history of language
...
This meant that the long i-vowel
became a more heavily weighted point of the phonetic pattern than before
...
[160] In Modern Greek, for instance,
the vowel i is the historical resultant of no less than ten etymologically distinct vowels
(long and short) and diphthongs of the classical speech of Athens
...

More often the phonetic drift is of a more general character
...
The
vowels tend to become higher or lower, the diphthongs tend to coalesce into
monophthongs, the voiceless consonants tend to become voiced, stops tend to become
spirants
...
The raising of
English long o to u and of long e to i, for instance, was part of a general tendency to raise
the position of the long vowels, just as the change of t to ss in Old High German was part
of a general tendency to make voiceless spirants of the old voiceless stopped consonants
...

To reëstablish the old pattern without going back on the drift the only possible method is
to have the other sounds of the series shift in analogous fashion
...
Such a series is, in phonetic effect, not the equivalent of the
old series, however it may answer to it in etymology
...
But if t and k are also shifted to their voiced correspondents d and
g, the old series is reëstablished in a new form: b, d, g
...
Provided that the new series b, d, g does not become confused with an old
series b, d, g of distinct historical antecedents
...
If there is, the old patterning of sounds can be
kept intact only by shifting the old b, d, g sounds in some way
...
And this sort of shifting about without loss of pattern, or with a minimum loss of
it, is probably the most important tendency in the history of speech sounds
...

The desire to hold on to a pattern, the tendency to “correct” a disturbance by an elaborate
chain of supplementary changes, often spread over centuries or even millennia—these
psychic undercurrents of language are exceedingly difficult to understand in terms of
individual psychology, though there can be no denial of their historical reality
...
Many linguistic students have made the fatal error
of thinking of sound change as a quasi-physiological instead of as a strictly psychological

phenomenon, or they have tried to dispose of the problem by bandying such catchwords
as “the tendency to increased ease of articulation” or “the cumulative result of faulty
perception” (on the part of children, say, in learning to speak)
...
“Ease of articulation” may enter in as a factor, but it is a rather subjective
concept at best
...
“Faulty perception” does not explain that impressive drift in speech sounds which I
have insisted upon
...
It is likely that we shall not advance seriously until we study the
intuitional bases of speech
...
I am inclined to believe that our present tendency to
isolate phonetics and grammar as mutually irrelevant linguistic provinces is unfortunate
...
After all, if speech sounds exist merely because they are
the symbolic carriers of significant concepts and groupings of concepts, why may not a
strong drift or a permanent feature in the conceptual sphere exercise a furthering or
retarding influence on the phonetic drift? I believe that such influences may be
demonstrated and that they deserve far more careful study than they have received
...
The change from o to ö, later e, is by no means peculiar to the plural
...
Moreover, fet of the
plural applies only to the nominative and accusative; the genitive has fota, the dative
fotum
...
Only when
this reassortment of forms took place[161] was the modern symbolic value of the
foot: feet alternation clearly established
...
Thus, a pre-AngloSaxon hohan (later hon) “to hang” corresponded to a höhith, hehith (later hehth) “hangs”;
to dom “doom,” blod “blood,” and fod “food” corresponded the verbal derivatives
dömian (later deman) “to deem,” blödian (later bledan) “to bleed,” and födian (later
fedan) “to feed
...
So many unrelated functions were ultimately served by the
vocalic change that we cannot believe that it was motivated by any one of them
...
Only later in the history of the language was the
vocalic alternation made significant for number
...

The change of foti to föti antedated that of föti to föte, föt
...
This would have been anomalous in Anglo-Saxon for a masculine
noun
...
All the Germanic languages were familiar with vocalic change as possessed of
functional significance
...
Further, the tendency toward the
weakening of final syllables was very strong even then and had been manifesting itself in
one way and another for centuries
...
We may go so far as to say that the o (and u)
could afford to stay the change to ö (and ü) until the destructive drift had advanced to the
point where failure to modify the vowel would soon result in morphological
embarrassment
...
The
unconscious Anglo-Saxon mind, if I may be allowed a somewhat summary way of
putting the complex facts, was glad of the opportunity afforded by certain individual
variations, until then automatically canceled out, to have some share of the burden
thrown on them
...
And the presence of symbolic variation (sing, sang, sung) acted
as an attracting force on the rise of a new variation of similar character
...
Owing to the fact that the destructive
phonetic drift was proceeding at a slower rate in German than in English, the preservative
change of uo to üe (u to ü) did not need to set in until 300 years or more after the
analogous English change
...
And this is to my mind a highly significant fact
...
The general drift seizes upon those
individual sound variations that help to preserve the morphological balance or to lead to
the new balance that the language is striving for
...
g
...
I do not imagine for a moment that it is
always possible to separate these strands or that this purely schematic statement does
justice to the complex forces that guide the phonetic drift
...

Every phonetic element that it possesses may change radically and yet the pattern remain
unaffected
...
Both phonetic pattern and fundamental type are exceedingly
conservative, all superficial appearances to the contrary notwithstanding
...
I suspect that they hang together in a way that we cannot at present
quite understand
...
Sound changes work mechanically
...
Thus, the old AngloSaxon paradigm:
Sing
...

fet (older foti)
N
...
fot
fota
G
...
fet (older foti) fotum
could not long stand unmodified
...
The dative singular fet, however,
though justified historically, was soon felt to be an intrusive feature
...
g
...
Fet as a dative becomes obsolete
...
But this very fact made the genitive and dative o-forms of the plural
seem out of place
...
These, in the end, could
not but follow the analogy of fet
...
Plur
...
Ac
...
* fotes fete
fote
feten
D
...
The
unstarred forms are not genealogical kin of their formal prototypes
...


The history of the English language teems with such levelings or extensions
...
The general analogy of the vast
majority of English adjectives, however, has caused the replacement of the forms elder
and eldest by the forms with unmodified vowel, older and oldest
...
This
illustrates the tendency for words that are psychologically disconnected from their
etymological or formal group to preserve traces of phonetic laws that have otherwise left
no recognizable trace or to preserve a vestige of a morphological process that has long
lost its vitality
...

Analogy may not only refashion forms within the confines of a related cluster of forms (a
“paradigm”) but may extend its influence far beyond
...
This is what happened with the English -s plural
...
Thus analogy not only regularizes irregularities
that have come in the wake of phonetic processes but introduces disturbances, generally
in favor of greater simplicity or regularity, in a long established system of forms
...

A morphological feature that appears as the incidental consequence of a phonetic process,
like the English plural with modified vowel, may spread by analogy no less readily than
old features that owe their origin to other than phonetic causes
...
As a matter of fact, it did not so
become established
...
It was
swept into being by one of the surface drifts of the language, to be swept aside in the
Middle English period by the more powerful drift toward the use of simple distinctive
forms
...
What examples of the type arose legitimately, in other words via
purely phonetic processes, were tolerated for a time, but the type as such never had a
serious future
...
The whole series of phonetic changes comprised under the
term “umlaut,” of which u: ü and au: oi (written äu) are but specific examples, struck the
German language at a time when the general drift to morphological simplification was
not so strong but that the resulting formal types (e
...
, Fuss: Füsse; fallen “to fall”: fällen
“to fell”; Horn “horn”: Gehörne “group of horns”; Haus “house”: Häuslein “little
house”) could keep themselves intact and even extend to forms that did not legitimately

come within their sphere of influence
...
Such analogical plurals as
Baum “tree”: Bäume (contrast Middle High German boum: boume) and derivatives as
lachen “to laugh”: Gelächter “laughter” (contrast Middle High German gelach) show that
vocalic mutation has won through to the status of a productive morphologic process
...
In Yiddish,[162] for instance, “umlaut” plurals have been formed where there
are no Middle High German prototypes or modern literary parallels, e
...
, tog “day”: teg
“days” (but German Tag: Tage) on the analogy of gast “guest”: gest “guests” (German
Gast: Gäste), shuch[163] “shoe”: shich “shoes” (but German Schuh: Schuhe) on the
analogy of fus “foot”: fis “feet
...
Meanwhile
all consciousness of the merely phonetic nature of “umlaut” vanished centuries ago
...

We have in it a splendid example of how a simple phonetic law, meaningless in itself,
may eventually color or transform large reaches of the morphology of a language
...
The necessities of
intercourse bring the speakers of one language into direct or indirect contact with those of
neighboring or culturally dominant languages
...

It may move on the humdrum plane of business and trade relations or it may consist of a
borrowing or interchange of spiritual goods—art, science, religion
...
The tribe is often so small that intermarriages with alien tribes that speak other
dialects or even totally unrelated languages are not uncommon
...
Whatever the degree or
nature of contact between neighboring peoples, it is generally sufficient to lead to some
kind of linguistic interinfluencing
...

The language of a people that is looked upon as a center of culture is naturally far more
likely to exert an appreciable influence on other languages spoken in its vicinity than to
be influenced by them
...
In the western Europe of
medieval and modern times French has exercised a similar, though probably a less
overwhelming, influence
...
g
...
g
...
g
...
But English
has exerted practically no influence on French
...
When there is cultural borrowing there is always the likelihood that the
associated words may be borrowed too
...
Later, when Christianity was
introduced into England, a number of associated words, such as bishop and angel, found
their way into English
...

The careful study of such loan-words constitutes an interesting commentary on the
history of culture
...
When we realize that an educated
Japanese can hardly frame a single literary sentence without the use of Chinese resources,
that to this day Siamese and Burmese and Cambodgian bear the unmistakable imprint of
the Sanskrit and Pali that came in with Hindu Buddhism centuries ago, or that whether
we argue for or against the teaching of Latin and Greek our argument is sure to be
studded with words that have come to us from Rome and Athens, we get some inkling of
what early Chinese culture and Buddhism and classical Mediterranean civilization have
meant in the world’s history
...
They are classical Chinese, Sanskrit,
Arabic, Greek, and Latin
...
It is a little disappointing
to learn that the general cultural influence of English has so far been all but negligible
...
But there is nothing to show that it is anywhere entering into the lexical heart
of other languages as French has colored the English complexion or as Arabic has
permeated Persian and Turkish
...
There are now psychological
resistances to borrowing, or rather to new sources of borrowing,[165] that were not
greatly alive in the Middle Ages or during the Renaissance
...
This is true to a
considerable extent, but it is not the whole truth
...
It seems very probable that the psychological attitude of the
borrowing language itself towards linguistic material has much to do with its receptivity
to foreign words
...
Such words as credible,

certitude, intangible are entirely welcome in English because each represents a unitary,
well-nuanced idea and because their formal analysis (cred-ible, cert-itude, in-tang-ible) is
not a necessary act of the unconscious mind (cred-, cert-, and tang- have no real
existence in English comparable to that of good- in goodness)
...
In German, however, polysyllabic words strive to
analyze themselves into significant elements
...
Latin-German words like kredibel “credible” and FrenchGerman words like reussieren “to succeed” offered nothing that the unconscious mind
could assimilate to its customary method of feeling and handling words
...
” Hence German has generally found it easier to create new
words out of its own resources, as the necessity for them arose
...
The
Athabaskan languages of America are spoken by peoples that have had astonishingly
varied cultural contacts, yet nowhere do we find that an Athabaskan dialect has borrowed
at all freely[166] from a neighboring language
...
They have for
this reason been highly resistant to receiving the linguistic impress of the external cultural
experiences of their speakers
...
Both are analytic languages, each totally different
from the highly-wrought, inflective language of India
...
Like English, therefore, in its relation to French and Latin, it welcomed
immense numbers of Sanskrit loan-words, many of which are in common use to-day
...
Classical Tibetan literature was a slavish
adaptation of Hindu Buddhist literature and nowhere has Buddhism implanted itself more
firmly than in Tibet, yet it is strange how few Sanskrit words have found their way into
the language
...
Tibetan was therefore driven to translating the great
majority of these Sanskrit words into native equivalents
...
Even the proper names of the Sanskrit originals were carefully
translated, element for element, into Tibetan; e
...
, Suryagarbha “Sun-bosomed” was
carefully Tibetanized into Nyi-mai snying-po “Sun-of heart-the, the heart (or essence) of
the sun
...

The borrowing of foreign words always entails their phonetic modification
...
They are then so changed as to do as little violence as possible to these habits
...
Such an English word as the recently

introduced camouflage, as now ordinarily pronounced, corresponds to the typical
phonetic usage of neither English nor French
...
They differentiate our camouflage clearly from the same word as
pronounced by the French
...
In all four of
these cases—initial j, initial v, final “zh,” and unaccented a of father—English has not
taken on a new sound but has merely extended the use of an old one
...
In
Chaucer’s day the old Anglo-Saxon ü (written y) had long become unrounded to i, but a
new set of ü-vowels had come in from the French (in such words as due, value, nature)
...
Eventually this diphthong appears as yu,
with change of stress—dew (from Anglo-Saxon deaw) like due (Chaucerian dü)
...

Nevertheless, we know that languages do influence each other in phonetic respects, and
that quite aside from the taking over of foreign sounds with borrowed words
...
These parallels become especially impressive when they are seen
contrastively from a wide phonetic perspective
...
The Germanic
languages as a whole have not developed nasalized vowels
...
Is it only accidental that these dialects are spoken in proximity to French,
which makes abundant use of nasalized vowels? Again, there are certain general phonetic
features that mark off Dutch and Flemish in contrast, say, to North German and
Scandinavian dialects
...
Even if we assume that the unaspirated stops are more archaic, that they are the
unmodified descendants of the old Germanic consonants, is it not perhaps a significant
historical fact that the Dutch dialects, neighbors of French, were inhibited from
modifying these consonants in accordance with what seems to have been a general
Germanic phonetic drift? Even more striking than these instances is the peculiar
resemblance, in certain special phonetic respects, of Russian and other Slavic languages
to the unrelated Ural-Altaic languages[168] of the Volga region
...
We may at least suspect that the Slavic vowel is not
historically unconnected with its Ural-Altaic parallels
...
Even at the most radical estimate there are at least four totally
unrelated linguistic stocks represented in the region from southern Alaska to central
California
...
Chief of these is the presence of a
“glottalized” series of stopped consonants of very distinctive formation and of quite
unusual acoustic effect
...

It is difficult to believe that three such peculiar phonetic features as I have mentioned
could have evolved independently in neighboring groups of languages
...
But this interpretation
will not get us far
...
However we envisage the process in
detail, we cannot avoid the inference that there is a tendency for speech sounds or certain
distinctive manners of articulation to spread over a continuous area in somewhat the same
way that elements of culture ray out from a geographical center
...
So long as its main phonetic concern is the preservation of
its sound patterning, not of its sounds as such, there is really no reason why a language
may not unconsciously assimilate foreign sounds that have succeeded in worming their
way into its gamut of individual variations, provided always that these new variations (or
reinforced old variations) are in the direction of the native drift
...
Let us suppose that two
neighboring and unrelated languages, A and B, each possess voiceless l-sounds (compare
Welsh ll)
...
Perhaps comparative study reveals the
fact that in language A the voiceless l-sounds correspond to a sibilant series in other
related languages, that an old alternation s: sh has been shifted to the new alternation
l (voiceless): s
...
Perhaps B has a strong tendency toward audible breath release at
the end of a word, so that the final l, like a final vowel, was originally followed by a
marked aspiration
...
Yet this
final l with its latent tendency to unvoicing might never have actually developed into a
fully voiceless l had not the presence of voiceless l-sounds in A acted as an unconscious
stimulus or suggestive push toward a more radical change in the line of B’s own drift
...
The result would be that both A and B
have an important phonetic trait in common
...
The highly significant
thing about such phonetic interinfluencings is the strong tendency of each language to
keep its phonetic pattern intact
...
In phonetics, as in vocabulary, we must be careful not to exaggerate
the importance of interlinguistic influences
...
English also uses a number of affixes that are
derived from Latin and Greek
...
Such examples as these
are hardly true evidences of a morphological influence exerted by one language on
another
...
English was already
prepared for the relation of pity to piteous by such a native pair as luck and lucky;
material and materialize merely swelled the ranks of a form pattern familiar from such
instances as wide and widen
...
The introduction of the suffix
-ize made hardly more difference to the essential build of the language than did the mere
fact that it incorporated a given number of words
...
But
such far-reaching influences are not demonstrable
...
[172]
It is important to realize the continuous, self-contained morphological development of
English and the very modest extent to which its fundamental build has been affected by
influences from without
...
Students are more
conservative today
...
English
may be conveniently used as an a fortiori test
...
It was therefore changing rapidly both within and on the surface
...
The experience gained from the
study of the English language is strengthened by all that we know of documented
linguistic history
...
We may infer one of several things from this:—That a really serious
morphological influence is not, perhaps, impossible, but that its operation is so slow that
it has hardly ever had the chance to incorporate itself in the relatively small portion of
linguistic history that lies open to inspection; or that there are certain favorable conditions
that make for profound morphological disturbances from without, say a peculiar
instability of linguistic type or an unusual degree of cultural contact, conditions that do
not happen to be realized in our documentary material; or, finally, that we have not the
right to assume that a language may easily exert a remolding morphological influence on
another
...

Sometimes we may suspect that the resemblance is due to a mere convergence, that a
similar morphological feature has grown up independently in unrelated languages
...
There must be some historical factor to account for them
...
We can only say, with reasonable certainty, that such and such languages
are descended from a common source, but we cannot say that such and such other
languages are not genetically related
...
May it not be, then, that many instances of morphological similarity between
divergent languages of a restricted area are merely the last vestiges of a community of
type and phonetic substance that the destructive work of diverging drifts has now made
unrecognizable? There is probably still enough lexical and morphological resemblance
between modern English and Irish to enable us to make out a fairly conclusive case for
their genetic relationship on the basis of the present-day descriptive evidence alone
...
It would not be a
bad case nevertheless
...
They will still have in common certain fundamental morphological features,
but it will be difficult to know how to evaluate them
...

I cannot but suspect that many of the more significant distributions of morphological
similarities are to be explained as just such vestiges
...
We must not
allow ourselves to be frightened away by the timidity of the specialists, who are often
notably lacking in the sense of what I have called “contrastive perspective
...
We know that myths, religious ideas, types
of social organization, industrial devices, and other features of culture may spread from
point to point, gradually making themselves at home in cultures to which they were at
one time alien
...
We may go further and recognize that certain languages have, in all
probability, taken on structural features owing to the suggestive influence of neighboring
languages
...
So long as such direct historical testimony as we have gives us no really
convincing examples of profound morphological influence by diffusion, we shall do well
not to put too much reliance in diffusion theories
...
Language is probably the
most self-contained, the most massively resistant of all social phenomena
...


X
Language, Race and Culture
Language has a setting
...
Again,
language does not exist apart from culture, that is, from the socially inherited assemblage
of practices and beliefs that determines the texture of our lives
...

One of the first things they do with a natural area like Africa or the South Seas is to map
it out from this threefold point of view
...
g
...
g
...
g
...
He feels that he is the representative of some strongly integrated portion of
humanity—now thought of as a “nationality,” now as a “race”—and that everything that
pertains to him as a typical representative of this large group somehow belongs together
...
Science is colder
...
The
answer to the inquiry is not encouraging to “race” sentimentalists
...
Races intermingle in a way
that languages do not
...
A language may
even die out in its primary area and live on among peoples violently hostile to the persons
of its original speakers
...
If
we can once thoroughly convince ourselves that race, in its only intelligible, that is
biological, sense, is supremely indifferent to the history of languages and cultures, that
these are no more directly explainable on the score of race than on that of the laws of
physics and chemistry, we shall have gained a viewpoint that allows a certain interest to
such mystic slogans as Slavophilism, Anglo-Saxondom, Teutonism, and the Latin genius
but that quite refuses to be taken in by any of them
...

That a group of languages need not in the least correspond to a racial group or a culture
area is easily demonstrated
...
The English language is not spoken by a unified race
...
It is their
mother-tongue, the formal vesture of their inmost thoughts and sentiments
...
Nor do the Englishspeaking whites of America constitute a definite race except by way of contrast to the
negroes
...
But
does not the historical core of English-speaking peoples, those relatively “unmixed”
populations that still reside in England and its colonies, represent a race, pure and single?
I cannot see that the evidence points that way
...
Besides the old “Anglo-Saxon,” in other words North German,
element which is conventionally represented as the basic strain, the English blood
comprises Norman French,[177] Scandinavian, “Celtic,”[178] and pre-Celtic elements
...
Even if we confine ourselves to the Saxon element, which, needless to say,
nowhere appears “pure,” we are not at the end of our troubles
...
If so, we must content ourselves with the reflection that while the
English language is historically most closely affiliated with Frisian, in second degree
with the other West Germanic dialects (Low Saxon or “Plattdeutsch,” Dutch, High

German), only in third degree with Scandinavian, the specific “Saxon” racial type that
overran England in the fifth and sixth centuries was largely the same as that now
represented by the Danes, who speak a Scandinavian language, while the High Germanspeaking population of central and southern Germany[180] is markedly distinct
...
First of all, the mass of the German-speaking population (central and southern
Germany, German Switzerland, German Austria) do not belong to the tall, blond-haired,
long-headed[181] “Teutonic” race at all, but to the shorter, darker-complexioned, shortheaded[182] Alpine race, of which the central population of France, the French Swiss,
and many of the western and northern Slavs (e
...
, Bohemians and Poles) are equally good
representatives
...
We shall do well to avoid speaking of a “Celtic race,” but
if we were driven to give the term a content, it would probably be more appropriate to
apply it to, roughly, the western portion of the Alpine peoples than to the two island types
that I referred to before
...
Linguistically speaking, the “Celts” of to-day
(Irish Gaelic, Manx, Scotch Gaelic, Welsh, Breton) are Celtic and most of the Germans
of to-day are Germanic precisely as the American Negro, Americanized Jew, Minnesota
Swede, and German-American are “English
...
The northernmost “Celts,” such
as the Highland Scotch, are in all probability a specialized offshoot of this race
...
Their language may quite well
have been as remote from any known Indo-European idiom as are Basque and Turkish today
...

We cannot stop here
...
[184] Not only, then, is
English not spoken by a unified race at present but its prototype, more likely than not,
was originally a foreign language to the race with which English is more particularly
associated
...

Many other, and more striking, examples of the lack of correspondence between race and
language could be given if space permitted
...
The MalayoPolynesian languages form a well-defined group that takes in the southern end of the

Malay Peninsula and the tremendous island world to the south and east (except Australia
and the greater part of New Guinea)
...
The Polynesians and Malays
all speak languages of the Malayo-Polynesian group, while the languages of the Papuans
belong partly to this group (Melanesian), partly to the unrelated languages (“Papuan”) of
New Guinea
...

As with race, so with culture
...
Totally unrelated languages share in one culture, closely related
languages—even a single language—belong to distinct culture spheres
...
The Athabaskan languages form as clearly
unified, as structurally specialized, a group as any that I know of
...
The cultural adaptability
of the Athabaskan-speaking peoples is in the strangest contrast to the inaccessibility to
foreign influences of the languages themselves
...
Culturally identical with them are the
neighboring Yurok and Karok
...
It is difficult to say what elements in their combined
culture belong in origin to this tribe or that, so much at one are they in communal action,
feeling, and thought
...
Hupa, as we have seen, is Athabaskan and, as such, is also
distantly related to Haida (Queen Charlotte Islands) and Tlingit (southern Alaska); Yurok
is one of the two isolated Californian languages of the Algonkin stock, the center of
gravity of which lies in the region of the Great Lakes; Karok is the northernmost member
of the Hokan group, which stretches far to the south beyond the confines of California
and has remoter relatives along the Gulf of Mexico
...
It is customary to say that they possess a common “Anglo-Saxon”
cultural heritage, but are not many significant differences in life and feeling obscured by
the tendency of the “cultured” to take this common heritage too much for granted? In so
far as America is still specifically “English,” it is only colonially or vestigially so; its
prevailing cultural drift is partly towards autonomous and distinctive developments,
partly towards immersion in the larger European culture of which that of England is only
a particular facet
...
A
common language cannot indefinitely set the seal on a common culture when the
geographical, political, and economic determinants of the culture are no longer the same
throughout its area
...
This does not mean that they
never are
...
Thus, there is a fairly definite line of
cleavage between the Polynesian languages, race, and culture on the one hand and those
of the Melanesians on the other, in spite of a considerable amount of overlapping
...
Still clearer-cut coincidences of cleavage may be found
...
Coincidences of this sort are
of the greatest significance, of course, but this significance is not one of inherent
psychological relation between the three factors of race, language, and culture
...
If the
Bantu and Bushmen are so sharply differentiated in all respects, the reason is simply that
the former are relatively recent arrivals in southern Africa
...
As we go back
in time, we shall have to assume that relatively scanty populations occupied large
territories for untold generations and that contact with other masses of population was not
as insistent and prolonged as it later became
...
The very fact that races and cultures which are
brought into historical contact tend to assimilate in the long run, while neighboring
languages assimilate each other only casually and in superficial respects[191], indicates
that there is no profound causal relation between the development of language and the
specific development of race and of culture
...
Is it not inconceivable that the particular collective qualities of mind that
have fashioned a culture are not precisely the same as were responsible for the growth of
a particular linguistic morphology? This question takes us into the heart of the most
difficult problems of social psychology
...
I can only very
briefly set forth my own views, or rather my general attitude
...
But granted that
temperament has a certain value for the shaping of culture, difficult though it be to say
just how, it does not follow that it has the same value for the shaping of language
...
Its line of variation, its drift, runs inexorably in the channel ordained for it
by its historic antecedents; it is as regardless of the feelings and sentiments of its speakers
as is the course of a river of the atmospheric humors of the landscape
...
In this
connection it is well to remember that the emotional aspect of our psychic life is but
meagerly expressed in the build of language[193]
...
As there is nothing to show that there are significant racial differences in the
fundamental conformation of thought, it follows that the infinite variability of linguistic
form, another name for the infinite variability of the actual process of thought, cannot be
an index of such significant racial differences
...
The
latent content of all languages is the same—the intuitive science of experience
...
At last analysis, then, language can no more
flow from race as such than can the sonnet form
...
Culture
may be defined as what a society does and thinks
...
It is difficult to see what particular causal relations may be expected to subsist
between a selected inventory of experience (culture, a significant selection made by
society) and the particular manner in which the society expresses all experience
...
The drift of
language is not properly concerned with changes of content at all, merely with changes in
formal expression
...
If it can be shown that culture has
an innate form, a series of contours, quite apart from subject-matter of any description
whatsoever, we have a something in culture that may serve as a term of comparison with
and possibly a means of relating it to language
...
From this it follows that all
attempts to connect particular types of linguistic morphology with certain correlated
stages of cultural development are vain
...
The merest coup d’oeil verifies our theoretical argument on this point
...
When it comes to linguistic form, Plato
walks with the Macedonian swineherd, Confucius with the head-hunting savage of
Assam
...
A
society that has no knowledge of theosophy need have no name for it; aborigines that had
never seen or heard of a horse were compelled to invent or borrow a word for the animal
when they made his acquaintance
...
But this
superficial and extraneous kind of parallelism is of no real interest to the linguist except
in so far as the growth or borrowing of new words incidentally throws light on the formal
trends of the language
...

If both this and the preceding chapter have been largely negative in their contentions, I
believe that they have been healthily so
...
Its
superficial connections with other historic processes are so close that it needs to be
shaken free of them if we are to see it in its own right
...
This form may be endlessly varied by the individual
without thereby losing its distinctive contours; and it is constantly reshaping itself as is all
art
...


XI
Language and Literature
Languages are more to us than systems of thought-transference
...
When the expression is of unusual significance, we call it
literature
...
The possibilities of individual expression are infinite,
language in particular is the most fluid of mediums
...
In great art there is the illusion of absolute
freedom
...
The artist has intuitively surrendered to the
inescapable tyranny of the material, made its brute nature fuse easily with his
conception
...
For the time being, he, and
we with him, move in the artistic medium as a fish moves in the water, oblivious of the
existence of an alien atmosphere
...


Language is the medium of literature as marble or bronze or clay are the materials of the
sculptor
...
The literature fashioned out of the form and substance of a language has the
color and the texture of its matrix
...
All his effects have been calculated, or intuitively felt, with reference to the
formal “genius” of his own language; they cannot be carried over without loss or
modification
...
Nevertheless literature does get itself translated, sometimes with
astonishing adequacy
...
[197] I believe the distinction is entirely valid,
though we never get the two levels pure in practice
...
Literature that draws its sustenance mainly—
never entirely—from the lower level, say a play of Shakespeare’s, is translatable without
too great a loss of character
...
Both types of literary
expression may be great or mediocre
...
It can be clarified a little by comparing
literature with science
...
It can as readily deliver its
message in Chinese[198] as in English
...
Indeed the apprehension of the scientific
truth is itself a linguistic process, for thought is nothing but language denuded of its
outward garb
...
One can adequately translate scientific literature because the original
scientific expression is itself a translation
...
A truly deep symbolism, for instance, does not depend on the
verbal associations of a particular language but rests securely on an intuitive basis that
underlies all linguistic expression
...
The thought
relations in this deeper level have no specific linguistic vesture; the rhythms are free, not
bound, in the first instance, to the traditional rhythms of the artist’s language
...
One feels that they are unconsciously striving
for a generalized art language, a literary algebra, that is related to the sum of all known
languages as a perfect mathematical symbolism is related to all the roundabout reports of

mathematical relations that normal speech is capable of conveying
...
These artists—Whitmans and Brownings—impress
us rather by the greatness of their spirit than the felicity of their art
...

Nevertheless, human expression being what it is, the greatest—or shall we say the most
satisfying—literary artists, the Shakespeares and Heines, are those who have known
subconsciously to fit or trim the deeper intuition to the provincial accents of their daily
speech
...
Their personal “intuition” appears as a
completed synthesis of the absolute art of intuition and the innate, specialized art of the
linguistic medium
...
The material “disappears
...
There is concealed in it a particular
set of esthetic factors—phonetic, rhythmic, symbolic, morphological—which it does not
completely share with any other language
...
The latter type, the
more technically “literary” art of Swinburne and of hosts of delicate “minor” poets, is too
fragile for endurance
...
The
successes of the Swinburnes are as valuable for diagnostic purposes as the semi-failures
of the Brownings
...
The more extreme technical practitioners may so over-individualize
this collective art as to make it almost unendurable
...

An artist must utilize the native esthetic resources of his speech
...
But he deserves no special
credit for felicities that are the language’s own
...
A
cathedral on the lowlands is higher than a stick on Mont Blanc
...
To so judge literature
would be tantamount to loving “Tristan und Isolde” because one is fond of the timbre of
horns
...
Generally there are compensations
...
It is even doubtful if
the innate sonority of a phonetic system counts for as much, as esthetic determinant, as
the relations between the sounds, the total gamut of their similarities and contrasts
...


The phonetic groundwork of a language, however, is only one of the features that give its
literature a certain direction
...
It
makes a great deal of difference for the development of style if the language can or
cannot create compound words, if its structure is synthetic or analytic, if the words of its
sentences have considerable freedom of position or are compelled to fall into a rigidly
determined sequence
...
These necessary fundamentals of style are hardly felt by
the artist to constrain his individuality of expression
...
It is not in the least
likely that a truly great style can seriously oppose itself to the basic form patterns of the
language
...
The merit of such a style as
W
...
Hudson’s or George Moore’s[199] is that it does with ease and economy what the
language is always trying to do
...
Nor is the prose of Milton and his contemporaries
strictly English; it is semi-Latin done into magnificent English words
...
We understand more clearly now that what is effective and beautiful in one
language is a vice in another
...
English
allows, even demands, a looseness that would be insipid in Chinese
...
While we cannot assimilate the luxurious periods of Latin nor the
pointilliste style of the Chinese classics, we can enter sympathetically into the spirit of
these alien techniques
...
Here is an example:[200]
Wu-river[201] stream mouth evening sun sink,
North look Liao-Tung,[202] not see home
...

These twenty-eight syllables may be clumsily interpreted: “At the mouth of the Yangtsze
River, as the sun is about to sink, I look north toward Liao-Tung but do not see my home
...
The steamer, floating gently like a hollow reed, sails out of the Middle
Kingdom
...
Our more sprawling
mode of expression is capable of its own beauties, and the more compact luxuriance of
Latin style has its loveliness too
...
Most of these are merely potential, awaiting the hand of artists

who will never come
...
The structure of the language often forces
an assemblage of concepts that impresses us as a stylistic discovery
...
We must be careful not to exaggerate a freshness of
content that is at least half due to our freshness of approach, but the possibility is
indicated none the less of utterly alien literary styles, each distinctive with its disclosure
of the search of the human spirit for beautiful form
...
Quantitative verse was entirely natural to the Greeks, not
merely because poetry grew up in connection with the chant and the dance,[204] but
because alternations of long and short syllables were keenly live facts in the daily
economy of the language
...
When the Greek
meters were carried over into Latin verse, there was comparatively little strain, for Latin
too was characterized by an acute awareness of quantitative distinctions
...
Probably, therefore, the
purely quantitative meters modeled after the Greek were felt as a shade more artificial
than in the language of their origin
...
The dynamic basis of English is not
quantity,[205] but stress, the alternation of accented and unaccented syllables
...
Neither stress nor
syllabic weight is a very keen psychologic factor in the dynamics of French
...

Quantitative or accentual metrics would be as artificial in French as stress metrics in
classical Greek or quantitative or purely syllabic metrics in English
...
Assonance, later rhyme, could
not but prove a welcome, an all but necessary, means of articulating or sectioning the
somewhat spineless flow of sonorous syllables
...
Hence rhyme
has always been strictly subordinated to stress as a somewhat decorative feature and has
been frequently dispensed with
...
[206] Chinese verse has developed along
very much the same lines as French verse
...
Syllable-groups—so and so many syllables per rhythmic unit—and
rhyme are therefore two of the controlling factors in Chinese prosody
...

To summarize, Latin and Greek verse depends on the principle of contrasting weights;
English verse, on the principle of contrasting stresses; French verse, on the principles of
number and echo; Chinese verse, on the principles of number, echo, and contrasting
pitches
...
Study carefully the phonetic system of a
language, above all its dynamic features, and you can tell what kind of a verse it has

developed—or, if history has played pranks with its phychology, what kind of verse it
should have developed and some day will
...
If he is squeezed a bit here, he can swing a free arm there
...
It is not strange that this should be so
...
The individual goes lost in the collective creation, but
his personal expression has left some trace in a certain give and flexibility that are
inherent in all collective works of the human spirit
...
If no literary artist appears, it is
not essentially because the language is too weak an instrument, it is because the culture of
the people is not favorable to the growth of such personality as seeks a truly individual
verbal expression
...
Italicized entries are names of languages or groups of languages
...
Abbreviation of stem, (26)
2
...
as grammatical process, (82) (83)
2
...
metrical value of (244) (245) (246)
3
...
“Adam’s apple,” (48)
5
...
Affixation, (26) (64) (70-6)
7
...
African languages, pitch in, (55)
9
...
Agglutinative languages, (130) (136-8) (139) (146) (147) (148) (150) (151) (155)
11
...
Agglutinative-isolating, (148) (150)

13
...
Amer
...
Alpine race, (223) (225)
15
...
Analytic tendency, (135) (136) (148) (150) (151) (154) (216) (217)
17
...
Anglo-Saxon, (28) (175) (183) (185) (186-8) (191) (197) (198) (201)
19
...
culture, (229)
2
...
Annamite (S
...
Asia), (66) (150) (205)
21
...
Amer
...
Arabic, (76) (77) (135) (151) (207)
23
...
Art, (236-40)
1
...
transferability of, (237) (238)
25
...
ease of, (196)
2
...
Articulations:
1
...
manner of consonantal, (52) (53)
3
...
oral, (51) (52)
5
...
vocalic, (52)
27
...
See Indo-European
...
Aspect, (114)
29
...
Associations fundamental to speech, (10) (11)
31
...
Amer
...
Athabaskans, cultures of, (228)
33
...
Attribution, (101)
35
...
Australian culture, (221) (222)
37
...
Bach, (238)
2
...
Bantu languages (Africa), (71) (113) (122) (123) (134) (135) (151) (221) (230)
4
...
Basque (Pyrenees), (164) (219)
6
...
Berber
...

8
...
Bontoc Igorot (Philippines), (75) (81)
10
...
Borrowing, word, (205-7)
1
...
resistances to, (207-10)
12
...
Bronchial tubes, (48)

14
...
Buddhism, influence of, (207) (209)
16
...
Bushman (S
...
Bushmen, (221) (230) (231)

C
1
...
E
...
Carlyle, (242)
3
...
Case, (115)
1
...

5
...
Caucasus, languages of, (213)
7
...
See Celts
...
Celtic languages, (78) (79)
9
...
Brythonic, (224)
10
...
Chaucer, English of, (179) (188) (191) (211)
12
...
California), (73)
13
...
absence of affixes, (70)
2
...
attribution, (101)
4
...
grammatical concepts illustrated, (96) (97)
6
...
“inner form,”, (132)
8
...
radical words, (29)
10
...
sounds, (49)
12
...
structure, (150) (154) (155)
14
...
survivals, morphological, (152)
16
...
verse, (243) (244) (245)
18
...
word order, (66) (97) (118)
14
...
Amer
...
Chipewyan (N
...
), (71)
1
...
Indians, (228)
16
...
Christianity, influence of, (206)
18
...
Classification:
1
...
of linguistic types, (129-56)
3
...

20
...
Composition, (29) (30) (64) (145)
1
...
types of, (69) (70)

3
...
Concepts, (12) (25-30) (31)
23
...
analysis of, in sentence, (86-94)
2
...
concrete, (86) (87) (92) (106)
4
...
concreteness in, varying degree of, (108) (109)
6
...
derivational, abstract, (109-11)
8
...
grouping of, non-logical, (94)
10
...
pure relational, (99) (107) (179)
12
...
redistribution of, (94-8)
14
...
thinning-out of significance of, (102-4)
16
...
typical categories of, (113-15)
18
...

24
...
Concrete concepts
...

26
...
Consonantal change, (26) (61) (64) (78) (79)
28
...
combinations of, (56)

29
...
Corean, (205)
31
...
Culture, (221)
1
...
language as aspect of, (2) (10)
3
...
reflection of history of, in language, (206) (207)
33
...
Danish, (49) (110) (136) (175) (217)
2
...
Dental articulations, (54) (192)
4
...
See Concepts
...
Determinative structure, (135)
6
...
causes of, (160-3)
2
...
distinctness of, (159)
4
...
drifts in, parallel, (184-93)
6
...
unity of, (157-9)
7
...
Diphthongs, (56)
9
...
components of, (172-4)

2
...
direction of, (165) (166) (183)
4
...
examples of general, in English, (174-82)
6
...
speed of, (183) (184)
8
...

10
...
Dutch, (175) (188) (212) (224)

E
1
...
Emotion, expression of:
1
...
linguistic, (39-41)
3
...
agentive suffix, (87)
2
...
analytic tendency, (135) (136) (216) (217)
4
...
aspect, (114)
6
...
case, history of, (169) (170) (175-7) (179)
8
...
concepts, grammatical, in sentence, (86-94)
10
...
consonantal change, (64) (78)
12
...
desire, expression of, (39)
14
...
drift, (166-82)
16
...
esthetic qualities, (241) (243)
18
...
form, word, (59) (60) (61)
20
...
function and form, (93) (94)
22
...
gender, (100)
24
...
influence of, (207)
26
...
interrogative words, (170)
28
...
infixing, (75)
30
...
loan-words, (182)
32
...
number, (90) (91)
34
...
parts of speech, (123-5)
36
...
personal relations, (91) (92) (93)
38
...
phonetic leveling, (193) (194)

40
...
plurality, (38) (39) (100) (105) (106) (202)
42
...
reference, definiteness of, (89) (90) (92) (93)
44
...
relations, genetic, (163) (175) (183) (218)
46
...
sentence, analysis of, (37)
48
...
sound-imitative words, (6) (80)
50
...
stress and pitch, (36) (55) (83)
52
...
survivals, morphological, (149) (152)
54
...
syntactic adhesions, (117) (118)
56
...
tense, (91) (93) (102) (103) (104)
58
...
verse, (245) (246)
60
...
word and element, analysis of, (25) (26) (27) (28) (29) (30) (35)
4
...
English people, (223) (224)
6
...
Eskimos, (230)
8
...
Expiratory sounds, (55)
10
...
Faucal position, (53)
2
...
Fijians, (230)
4
...
Finns, (226)
6
...
“Foot, feet” (English), history of, (184-93) (197-9) (201) (202)
8
...
feeling of language for, (58) (62) (63) (152) (153) (210) (220)
2
...
Form, linguistic:
1
...
differences of, mechanical origin of, (105) (106)
3
...
function and, independence of, (59-63) (93) (94)
5
...
grammatical processes embodying, (59-85)
7
...
twofold consideration of, (59-61)
9
...

10
...
See Gender
...
Formal units of speech, (33)
12
...
Fox (N
...
), (74)
14
...
analytical tendency, (135) (136) (137)
2
...
gender, (102) (104) (113)
4
...
order, word, (67)
6
...
sounds, (51) (212)
8
...
stress, (55) (118)
10
...
tense forms, (103)
12
...
French, Norman, (224)
16
...
Freud, (168)
18
...
Frisian, (175) (224)
20
...
Function, independence of form and, (59-63) (93) (94)
22
...
Fusion, (137) (138) (139) (140) (141) (149)
24
...
See Fusion
...
Fusional-agglutinative, (148) (150) (151)
26
...
“Fuss, Füsse” (German), history of, (184) (185) (191-3) (197-99)

G
1
...
Gender, (100-2) (113)
3
...
French influence on, (208) (209) (212)
2
...
concepts in sentence, (95)
4
...
phonetic drifts, history of, (184) (185) (188) (191-3) (197-9)
6
...
relations, (175) (183)
8
...
sounds, (56) (212)
10
...
“umlaut,” (202) (203) (204)
12
...
German, High, (224)
5
...
German, Old High, (175) (184) (185) (192) (194)
7
...
Germanic, West, (175) (184) (185) (186) (187) (191) (192) (224)
9
...
Gesture languages, (20) (21)
11
...
Glottal cords, (48)
1
...
Glottal stop, (49)
14
...
Grammar, (39)
16
...
Grammatical concepts
...

18
...
classified by, languages, (133-5)
2
...
types of, (63) (64)
4
...
Greek, dialectic history of, (162)
20
...
affixing, (137)
2
...
concord, (121)
4
...
influence, (207) (215) (216)
6
...
plurality, (100)
8
...
stress, (82) (83)
10
...
synthetic character, (137)
12
...
Greek, modern, (137) (163) (194) (212)

H
1
...
Hamitic languages (N
...
Hausa (Soudan), (81)
4
...
Heine, (240)
6
...
History, linguistic, (153-6) (7-204)
8
...
Amer
...
Hottentot (S
...
Hudson, W
...
, (242)
11
...
Hupa (N
...
Hupa Indians, (228)

I
1
...
India, languages of, (54)
3
...
See also Algonkin; Athabaskan; Chimariko; Chinook; Eskimo; Fox; Haida;
Hokan; Hupa; Iroquois; Karok; Kwakiutl; Nahuatl; Nass; Navaho;
Nootka; Ojibwa; Paiute; Sahaptin; Salinan; Shasta; Siouan; Sioux;
Takelma; Tlingit; Tsimshian; Washo; Yana; Yokuts; Yurok
...
Indo-Chinese languages, (155) (164)
5
...
Indo-Iranian languages, (175) (212)
7
...
Inflection
...

9
...
Influence:
1
...
morphological, of alien language, (215-17) (220)
3
...
Inspiratory sounds, (55)
12
...
Irish, (224)
14
...
Iroquois (N
...
), (69) (70)
16
...
Italian, (54) (55) (137) (163)
18
...
Japanese, (205) (207)
2
...
Juxtaposing
...


K
1
...
California), (220) (229)
1
...
Indians, (227)
2
...
See Cambodgian
...
Knowledge, source of, as grammatical category, (115)
4
...
Kwakiutl (British Columbia), (81) (97) (98)

L
1
...
Language:
1
...
associations underlying elements of, (10) (11)

3
...
concepts expressed in, (12)
5
...
definition of, (7)
7
...
elements of, (24-38)
9
...
feeling-tones in, (41) (42)
11
...
grammatical processes of, (59-85)
13
...
imitations of sounds, not evolved from, (5) (6)
15
...
interjections, not evolved from, (5)
17
...
modifications and transfers of typical form of, (17-21)
19
...
psycho-physical basis of, (8) (9)
21
...
simplification of experience in, (11) (12)
23
...
structure of, (127-56)
25
...
universality of, (21-3)
27
...
volition expressed in, (39-41)
3
...
Lateral sounds, (52) (53)
5
...
attribution, (101)
2
...
infixing, (26) (75)
4
...
objective -m, (119) (120)
6
...
plurality, (100)
8
...
reduplicated perfects, (82) (216)
10
...
sentence-word, (33) (36)
12
...
structure, (151) (154)
14
...
suffixing character, (134) (137)
16
...
synthetic character, (135) (137)
18
...
word and element in, analysis of, (27) (29) (30)
6
...
Leveling, phonetic, (193) (194) (195)
1
...

8
...
action of, (52) (53)
9
...
compensations in, formal, (246) (247)
2
...
levels in, linguistic, (237-41)
4
...
science and, (238-40)
10
...
linguistic, (240) (241)
2
...
morphological, (241-4)
4
...
Lithuanian, (55) (175) (183)
12
...
Localization of speech, (8) (9)
14
...
Amer
...
L
...
Lungs, (48)
16
...
Malay, (132)
1
...
race, (227)
2
...
Malayo-Polynesian languages, (219) (221) (227)
4
...
Manx, (225)
6
...
Mediterranean race, (223)
8
...
Meter
...

10
...
Mixed-relational languages, (146) (147) (154)
1
...
simple, (146) (147) (151)
12
...
Mon-Khmer (S
...
Asia), (219)
14
...
Morphological features, diffusion of, (217-20)
16
...
See Structure, linguistic
...
“Mouse, mice” (English), history of, (184-93)
18
...
India), (219)
19
...
Mutation, vocalic, (184) (185) (197-9) (203) (204)

N
1
...
Nasal sounds, (51)
3
...
Nasalized stops, (52)
5
...
Nationality, (222) (227) (228)
7
...
N
...
Nietzsche, (241)
9
...
), (29) (33) (35) (68) (70) (74) (79) (82) (95) (109-11)
(135) (141-3) (151)
10
...
action of, (50) (51)
11
...
Nouns, classification of, (113)
13
...
See Plurality
...
Object, (92) (98)
1
...

2
...
), (55)
3
...
Oral sounds, (51-4)
5
...
composition as related to, (67) (68)
2
...
sentence molded by, (117) (118)
4
...
Organs of speech, (7) (8) (47) (48)
1
...
Paiute (N
...
), (31) (32) (36) (52) (53) (69) (70)
2
...
action of soft, (51)
2
...
Pali (India), (207)
4
...
Papuans, (227) (230)
6
...
Pattern:
1
...
phonetic, (57) (58) (187) (93-6) (99) (200) (206) (211) (214) (215) (220)
8
...
Person, (114)
10
...
Phonetic adaptation, (210) (211)
12
...
Phonetic law:
1
...
direction of, (194) (195) (199)
3
...
influence of, on morphology, (203) (204)
5
...
regularity of, (193) (194)
7
...
spread of, slow, (190) (191)
9
...

14
...
form caused by, differences of, (105) (106)
2
...
Pitch, grammatical use of, (83-5)
1
...
production of, (49)
3
...
Plains Indians, gesture language of, (20)
17
...
Plurality:
1
...
a concrete relational category, (99) (100)
3
...
expression of, multiple, (38) (62)
5
...

19
...
Polynesian, (132) (150) (155) (227) (230)
21
...
Polysynthetic languages, (130) (135) (146) (148) (150) (151)
23
...
Predicate, (37) (126)
25
...
Prefixing languages, (134) (135)
27
...
Psycho-physical aspect of speech, (8) (9)
29
...
complex, (145) (147) (150) (155)
2
...
Qualifying concepts
...

2
...
of speech sounds, (48)
2
...
Quantity of speech sounds, (55) (64)

R
1
...
language and, lack of correspondence between, (227)
2
...
language as correlated with, English, (223-7)
4
...
language, culture and, independence of, (222) (223)
2
...
See Concepts
...
Radical element, (26-32)
4
...
“Reading from the lips,” (19)
6
...
Reference, definite and indefinite, (89) (90)
8
...
See Reduplication
...
Repression of impulse, (167) (168)
10
...
Rolled consonants, (53)
12
...
Root, (25)
14
...
Rounded vowels, (52)
16
...
Sahaptin languages (N
...
), (220)
2
...
W
...
Sanskrit (India), (54) (75) (82) (151) (154) (175) (200) (207) (209) (210)
4
...
Saxon:

1
...
Old, (175)
3
...
Saxons, (224) (225)
7
...
See Danish; Icelandic; Swedish
...
Scandinavians, (224)
9
...
Scotch, Lowland, (188)
11
...
Sentence, (33) (36-8)
1
...
stress in, influence of, (118) (119)
3
...
Sequence
...

14
...
art of, (238) (240)
2
...
Shasta (N
...
Shilh (Morocco), (77) (81)
17
...
Siamese, (55) (66) (70) (207)
19
...
Siouan languages (N
...
), (76)
21
...
Slavic languages, (212)
23
...
Somali (E
...
Soudanese languages, (84) (154) (155) (163)
26
...
Sounds of speech, (24)
1
...
adjustments involved in certain, inhibition of, (46) (47)
3
...
classification of, (54) (54)
5
...
conditioned appearance of, (56) (57)
7
...
illusory feelings in regard to, (43-5)
9
...
place in phonetic pattern of, (194-6)
11
...
values of, psychological, (56-8)
13
...
Spanish, (137)
29
...
See Language
...
Spirants, (52)
31
...
Stem, (26)
33
...
Stopped consonants (or stops), (52)
35
...
See Accent
...
Structure, linguistic, (127-56)
1
...
differences of, (127) (128)
3
...
Structure, linguistic, types of:
1
...
by degree of fusion, (136-43)
3
...
by formal processes, (133-5)
5
...
into “formal” and “formless,” (132) (133)
7
...
examples of, (149-51)
9
...
reality of, (128) (129) (149) (152) (153)
11
...
Style, (38) (216) (242-4)
39
...
See Personal relations
...
Subject of discourse, (37) (126)
41
...
Suffixing, (61) (70) (71-5)
43
...
Survivals, morphological, (149) (152) (202) (218) (219)
45
...
Swinburne, (238) (240)
47
...
Syllabifying, (56)
49
...
Symbolic processes, (134) (138) (139) (140)
51
...
Symbolic-isolating, (148)
53
...
Syntactic adhesions, (117) (118)
55
...
primary methods of expressing, (119) (120)
2
...
See Concepts, relational; Concord; Order, word; Personal relations;
Sentence
...
Synthetic tendency, (69) (135) (136) (137) (148) (150) (151) (154)

T
1
...
W
...
Teeth, (48)
1
...
Telegraph code, (20)
4
...
Tense, (91) (93) (114)
6
...
See Baltic race
...
Thinking, types of, (17) (18)
8
...
Throat, (48)
1
...
Tibetan, (80) (102) (112) (124) (125) (136) (143) (144) (150) (154) (155) (209)
(210)
11
...
See Tense
...
Tlingit (S
...
T
...
Tongue, (48)
1
...
Transfer, types of linguistic, (18-21)
15
...
Tsimshian (British Columbia), (70) (80) (81)
1
...

17
...
Types, linguistic, change of, (153-6)
1
...


U
1
...
“Umlaut
...

3
...
culture in, (209)
2
...
Ural-Altaic languages, (212)
5
...
Values:
1
...
morphologic, (131) (132)
3
...
variability in, of components of drift, (172) (173)
2
...
dialect, (157-65)
2
...
individual, (157-9) (165) (199)

3
...
syntactic relations expressed in, (115)
4
...
Verse:
1
...
linguistic determinants of, (242-6)
3
...
syllabic, (244) (245)
6
...
See Mutation, vocalic
...
Voice, production of, (50)
8
...
Voiceless:
1
...
nasals, (51)
3
...
trills, (53)
5
...
“Voicelessness,” production of, (49)
11
...
Vowels, (52)

W
1
...
Washo (Nevada), (81)
3
...
Westermann, D
...
Whisper, (50)

6
...
“Whom,” use and drift of, (166-74)
8
...
definition of, (32-6)
2
...
“twilight” type of, (28) (29)
4
...
Written language, (19) (20)

Y
1
...
California), (69) (70) (74) (76) (96) (105) (111) (112) (126) (150) (155)
2
...
Yokuts (S
...
Yurok (N
...
California), (229)
1
...
Indians, (228)

Z
1
...

Footnote 2: These words are not here used in a narrowly technical sense
...
Radical-words may and do occur in languages of all varieties,
many of them of a high degree of complexity
...

Footnote 5: In this and other examples taken from exotic languages I am forced by
practical considerations to simplify the actual phonetic forms
...

Footnote 6: These oral experiences, which I have had time and again as a field student of
American Indian languages, are very neatly confirmed by personal experiences of another
sort
...
They were taught merely how to
render accurately the sounds as such
...
This they
both did with spontaneous and complete accuracy
...
Such experiences with naïve
speakers and recorders do more to convince one of the definitely plastic unity of the word
than any amount of purely theoretical argument
...
They are
sentences in a stylistic sense rather than from the strictly formal linguistic standpoint
...
But you may go is as intrinsically justified as I shall remain
...
The closer connection in sentiment between the first two propositions
has led to a conventional visual representation that must not deceive the analytic spirit
...
Such headlines, however, are
language only in a derived sense
...
g
...

Footnote 10: Observe the “voluntary
...
Under
these circumstances we are almost certain to hit on speech sounds that we could never
learn to control in actual speech
...
All that part of speech which falls out of the rigid articulatory framework is not
speech in idea, but is merely a superadded, more or less instinctively determined vocal
complication inseparable from speech in practice
...
Speech, like all elements of culture, demands conceptual selection,
inhibition of the randomness of instinctive behavior
...

Footnote 12: Purely acoustic classifications, such as more easily suggest themselves to a
first attempt at analysis, are now in less favor among students of phonetics than organic
classifications
...
Moreover, the
acoustic quality of a sound is dependent on the articulation, even though in linguistic
consciousness this quality is the primary, not the secondary, fact
...
The general “quality” of the individual’s voice is another matter altogether
...

Footnote 14: As at the end of the snappily pronounced no! (sometimes written nope!) or
in the over-carefully pronounced at all, where one may hear a slight check between the t
and the a
...
One cannot sing continuously on
such a sound as b or d, but one may easily outline a tune on a series of b’s or d’s in the
manner of the plucked “pizzicato” on stringed instruments
...


The sound of “humming,” indeed, is nothing but a continuous voiced nasal, held on one
pitch or varying in pitch, as desired
...

Footnote 17: Aside from the involuntary nasalizing of all voiced sounds in the speech of
those that talk with a “nasal twang
...
In the long Paiute word quoted on page 31 the first u and the final ü are
pronounced without voice
...

Footnote 20: The lips also may theoretically so articulate
...

Footnote 21: This position, known as “faucal,” is not common
...

Footnote 23: Including, under the fourth category, a number of special resonance
adjustments that we have not been able to take up specifically
...
e
...
Certain languages, like the South African Hottentot and
Bushman, have also a number of inspiratory sounds, pronounced by sucking in the breath
at various points of oral contact
...
”
Footnote 25: The conception of the ideal phonetic system, the phonetic pattern, of a
language is not as well understood by linguistic students as it should be
...
I have already employed my
experience in teaching Indians to write their own language for its testing value in another
connection
...
I found that it was difficult or
impossible to teach an Indian to make phonetic distinctions that did not correspond to
“points in the pattern of his language,” however these differences might strike our
objective ear, but that subtle, barely audible, phonetic differences, if only they hit the
“points in the pattern,” were easily and voluntarily expressed in writing
...

Footnote 26: For the symbolism, see chapter II
...

Footnote 28: The language of the Aztecs, still spoken in large parts of Mexico
...

Footnote 30: Including such languages as Navaho, Apache, Hupa, Carrier, Chipewyan,
Loucheux
...
We generally think of time
as a function that is appropriately expressed in a purely formal manner
...
As a matter of fact the English future (I shall

go) is not expressed by affixing at all; moreover, it may be expressed by the present, as in
to-morrow I leave this place, where the temporal function is inherent in the independent
adverb
...

Footnote 32: Wishram dialect
...
An object may be referred to as “he,” “she,” or “it,” according to the
characteristic form of its noun
...
It is likely that -n- possesses a function that still
remains to be ascertained
...

Footnote 35: “Secondary stems” are elements which are suffixes from a formal point of
view, never appearing without the support of a true radical element, but whose function is
as concrete, to all intents and purposes, as that of the radical element itself
...

Footnote 36: In the Algonkin languages all persons and things are conceived of as either
animate or inanimate, just as in Latin or German they are conceived of as masculine,
feminine, or neuter
...

Footnote 38: There are changes of accent and vocalic quantity in these forms as well, but
the requirements of simplicity force us to neglect them
...

Footnote 40: Some of the Berber languages allow consonantal combinations that seem
unpronounceable to us
...

Footnote 42: See page 49
...

Footnote 44: See page 50
...

Footnote 46: Whence our ping-pong
...

Footnote 48: In the verbal adjective the tone of the second syllable differs from that of the
first
...
Transcriber's Note: This
footnote has been renumbered as Footnote 24
...

Footnote 51: An Indian language of Oregon
...

Footnote 53: Not in its technical sense
...

Footnote 55: “To cause to be dead” or “to cause to die” in the sense of “to kill” is an
exceedingly wide-spread usage
...


Footnote 56: Agriculture was not practised by the Yana
...
” There are suffixed elements corresponding to -er and -ling
...
” This is a necessarily clumsy tag to represent the
“nominative” (subjective) in contrast to the “accusative” (objective)
...
e
...

Footnote 59: By “case” is here meant not only the subjective-objective relation but also
that of attribution
...
In
effect one cannot in Latin directly say that a person is white, merely that what is white is
identical with the person who is, acts, or is acted upon in such and such a manner
...
English and Chinese express the attribution directly by
means of order
...
It is important to observe that the subjective form of illa and alba, does not
truly define a relation of these qualifying concepts to femina
...
In
Tibetan both the methods of order and of true case relation may be employed: woman
white (i
...
, “white woman”) or white-of woman (i
...
, “woman of whiteness, woman who
is white, white woman”)
...

Footnote 62: This has largely happened in popular French and German, where the
difference is stylistic rather than functional
...

Footnote 63: Hence, “the square root of 4 is 2,” precisely as “my uncle is here now
...

Footnote 64: Except, of course, the fundamental selection and contrast necessarily
implied in defining one concept as against another
...

Footnote 65: Thus, the -er of farmer may he defined as indicating that particular
substantive concept (object or thing) that serves as the habitual subject of the particular
verb to which it is affixed
...
In the same way the ling of duckling defines a specific relation of attribution that concerns only the radical
element, not the sentence
...

Not everything that calls itself “tense” or “mode” or “number” or “gender” or “person” is
genuinely comparable to what we mean by these terms in Latin or French
...
The Nootka element for “in the house” differs from our “house-” in that it is
suffixed and cannot occur as an independent word; nor is it related to the Nootka word
for “house
...
”
Footnote 69: The Nootka diminutive is doubtless more of a feeling-element, an element
of nuance, than our -ling
...
In speaking to a child, one is likely to add the diminutive to any word in
the sentence, regardless of whether there is an inherent diminutive meaning in the word
or not
...
-hau- “east” is an affix, not a
compounded radical element
...

Footnote 72: Just as in English “He has written books” makes no commitment on the
score of quantity (“a few, several, many”)
...

Footnote 74: A term borrowed from Slavic grammar
...
Our “cry” is indefinite as to aspect, “be crying”
is durative, “cry put” is momentaneous, “burst into tears” is inceptive, “keep crying” is
continuative, “start in crying” is durative-inceptive, “cry now and again” is iterative, “cry
out every now and then” or “cry in fits and starts” is momentaneous-iterative
...
As our examples show, aspect is
expressed in English by all kinds of idiomatic turns rather than by a consistently worked
out set of grammatical forms
...

Footnote 75: By “modalities” I do not mean the matter of fact statement, say, of negation
or uncertainty as such, rather their implication in terms of form
...

Footnote 76: Compare page 97
...
We leave these shades to the context or content ourselves with a
more explicit and roundabout mode of expression, e
...
, “He is dead, as I happen to
know,” “They say he is dead,” “He must be dead by the looks of things
...
” Yet
me of the last example is at least as close psychologically to I of “I sleep” as is the latter
to I of “I kill him
...
Properly speaking, I am handled by forces beyond my control
when I sleep just as truly as when some one is killing me
...
The intransitive
or static subjects may or may not be identical with the object of the transitive verb
...
”
Footnote 80: For with in the sense of “against,” compare German wider “against
...
Latin ire “to go”; also our English idiom “I have to go,” i
...
, “must go
...

Footnote 83: By “originally” I mean, of course, some time antedating the earliest period
of the Indo-European languages that we can get at by comparative evidence
...

Footnote 85: Compare its close historical parallel off
...

Footnote 87: Very likely pitch should be understood along with stress
...

Footnote 89: Perhaps better “general
...
“Masculine” and “feminine,” as in German
and French, include a great number of inanimate nouns
...
Chinook is spoken
in a number of dialects in the lower Columbia River valley
...

Footnote 91: In Yana the noun and the verb are well distinct, though there are certain
features that they hold in common which tend to draw them nearer to each other than we
feel to be possible
...
The adjective
is a verb
...
g
...
g
...
e
...
Adverbs and prepositions are either nouns or merely derivative affixes
in the verb
...

Footnote 93: One celebrated American writer on culture and language delivered himself
of the dictum that, estimable as the speakers of agglutinative languages might be, it was
nevertheless a crime for an inflecting woman to marry an agglutinating man
...
Champions of the “inflective” languages are
wont to glory in the very irrationalities of Latin and Greek, except when it suits them to
emphasize their profoundly “logical” character
...
The glorious irrationalities and formal complexities of many “savage”
languages they have no stomach for
...

Footnote 94: I have in mind valuations of form as such
...
The actual size of a vocabulary at a given
time is not a thing of real interest to the linguist, as all languages have the resources at
their disposal for the creation of new words, should need for them arise
...
All these considerations, important from other
standpoints, have nothing to do with form value
...
g
...

Footnote 96: Where, as we have seen, the syntactic relations are by no means free from
an alloy of the concrete
...
Contrast French huile de foie de
morue “oil of liver of cod
...


Footnote 99: There is probably a real psychological connection between symbolism and
such significant alternations as drink, drank, drunk or Chinese mai (with rising tone) “to
buy” and mai (with falling tone) “to sell
...
Personally I feel that the passage
from sing to sang has very much the same feeling as the alternation of symbolic colors—
e
...
, green for safe, red for danger
...

Footnote 100: Pure or “concrete relational
...

Footnote 101: In spite of my reluctance to emphasize the difference between a prefixing
and a suffixing language, I feel that there is more involved in this difference than
linguists have generally recognized
...
The spirit of the former
method has something diagrammatic or architectural about it, the latter is a method of
pruning afterthoughts
...
It is so difficult in practice to apply
these elusive, yet important, distinctions that an elementary study has no recourse but to
ignore them
...
Relatively to French, it is
still fairly synthetic, at least in certain aspects
...
The latter tendency may be proven, I believe, for
a number of American Indian languages, e
...
, Chinook, Navaho
...

Footnote 104: This applies more particularly to the Romance group: Italian, Spanish,
Portuguese, French, Roumanian
...

Footnote 105: See pages 133, 134
...
Agglutination: c = a + b; regular fusion: c = a + (b - x) + x; irregular fusion:
c = (a - x) + (b - y) + (x + y); symbolism: c = (a - x) + x
...
It is quite likely to have developed as a
purely mechanical product of phonetic forces that brought about irregularities of various
sorts
...

Footnote 108: See Chapter V
...

At the same time it is true that the method of fusion itself tends to break down the wall

between our conceptual groups II and IV, to create group III
...
In modern Tibetan, for instance, in which
concepts of group II are but weakly expressed, if at all, and in which the relational
concepts (e
...
, the genitive, the agentive or instrumental) are expressed without alloy of
the material, we get many interesting examples of fusion, even of symbolism
...
g
...
When the verb is transitive (really passive), the (logical) subject has to
take the agentive form
...
(There is probably also a
change in the tone of the syllable
...
It
is an amusing commentary on the insufficiency of our current linguistic classification,
which considers “inflective” and “isolating” as worlds asunder, that modern Tibetan may
be not inaptly described as an isolating language, aside from such examples of fusion and
symbolism as the foregoing
...
To expressly
consider compounding in the present survey of types would be to complicate our problem
unduly
...
Such compounds often have a
fixity that simulates the unity of single words
...
Hence group
III will be understood to include, or rather absorb, group IV
...

Footnote 112: The line between types C and D cannot be very sharply drawn
...
A language of markedly mixed-relational type, but of little
power of derivation pure and simple, such as Bantu or French, may be conveniently put
into type C, even though it is not devoid of a number of derivational affixes
...

Footnote 113: In defining the type to which a language belongs one must be careful not to
be misled by structural features which are mere survivals of an older stage, which have
no productive life and do not enter into the unconscious patterning of the language
...
The English -ster of spinster and
Webster is an old agentive suffix, but, as far as the feeling of the present Englishspeaking generation is concerned, it cannot be said to really exist at all; spinster and
Webster have been completely disconnected from the etymological group of spin and of
weave (web)
...

Even where the Chinaman feels the etymological relationship, as in certain cases he can
hardly help doing, he can assign no particular function to the phonetic variation as such
...
The caution is all the more necessary, as it is

precisely the foreigner, who approaches a new language with a certain prying
inquisitiveness, that is most apt to see life in vestigial features which the native is either
completely unaware of or feels merely as dead form
...

Footnote 115: Very nearly complex pure-relational
...

Footnote 117: Such, in other words, as can be shown by documentary or comparative
evidence to have been derived from a common source
...

Footnote 118: These are far-eastern and far-western representatives of the “Soudan”
group recently proposed by D
...
The genetic relationship between Ewe and
Shilluk is exceedingly remote at best
...
I have put French in C rather than in D with
considerable misgivings
...
They are common enough, but are they as alive,
as little petrified or bookish, as our English -ness and -ful and un-?
Footnote 120: In spite of its more isolating cast
...
Only a few schematic indications are possible
...
Such a volume would
point out the salient structural characteristics of a number of languages, so selected as to
give the reader an insight into the formal economy of strikingly divergent types
...

Footnote 123: Observe that we are speaking of an individual’s speech as a whole
...

Footnote 124: It is doubtful if we have the right to speak of linguistic uniformity even
during the predominance of the Koine
...

Footnote 125: The Zaconic dialect of Lacedaemon is the sole exception
...

Footnote 126: Though indications are not lacking of what these remoter kin of the IndoEuropean languages may be
...

Footnote 127: “Dialect” in contrast to an accepted literary norm is a use of the term that
we are not considering
...

Footnote 129: Or rather apprehended, for we do not, in sober fact, entirely understand it
as yet
...

Footnote 131: In relative clauses too we tend to avoid the objective form of “who
...
”

Footnote 132: “Its” was at one time as impertinent a departure as the “who” of “Who did
you see?” It forced itself into English because the old cleavage between masculine,
feminine, and neuter was being slowly and powerfully supplemented by a new one
between thing-class and animate-class
...
The form “its” had to
be created on the analogy of words like “man’s,” to satisfy the growing form feeling
...

Footnote 133: Psychoanalysts will recognize the mechanism
...
A more general
psychology than Freud’s will eventually prove them to be as applicable to the groping for
abstract form, the logical or esthetic ordering of experience, as to the life of the
fundamental instincts
...
This has not the support of analogous
possessive forms in its own functional group, but the analogical power of the great body
of possessives of nouns (man’s, boy’s) as well as of certain personal pronouns (his, its; as
predicated possessive also hers, yours, theirs) is sufficient to give it vitality
...

Footnote 136: Students of language cannot be entirely normal in their attitude towards
their own speech
...
”
Footnote 137: It is probably this variability of value in the significant compounds of a
general linguistic drift that is responsible for the rise of dialectic variations
...
Deviations as to the drift itself, at first
slight, later cumulative, are therefore unavoidable
...
Yet not all
...
The old IndoIranian languages alone (Sanskrit, Avestan) show an equally or more archaic status of the
Indo-European parent tongue as regards case forms
...
It will
have played the rôle of a stop-gap between his in its non-personal use (see footnote 11,
page 167) and the later analytic of it
...

Footnote 141: Except in so far as that has absorbed other functions than such as
originally belonged to it
...

Footnote 142: Aside from the interrogative: am I? is he? Emphasis counts for something
...
This is why the stress in locutions like He didn’t go, did he? and isn’t
he? is thrown back on the verb; it is not a matter of logical emphasis
...

Footnote 144: See page 155
...
These purely orthographical changes are
immaterial
...

Footnote 146: The vowels of these four words are long; o as in rode, e like a of fade, u
like oo of brood, y like German ü
...

Footnote 148: Anglo-Saxon fet is “unrounded” from an older föt, which is phonetically
related to fot precisely as is mys (i
...
, müs) to mus
...
The unaffected prototype was
long o
...
Fortunately we do not need inferential evidence in this case, yet inferential
comparative methods, if handled with care, may be exceedingly useful
...

Footnote 149: See page 133
...
The vowels of the first syllables are all long
...
See page 57
...

Footnote 153: At least in America
...

Footnote 155: The orthography is roughly phonetic
...

Footnote 156: After I
...
The orthography is again roughly phonetic
...
It always goes back to
an old t
...
It was probably a dental (lisped) s
...
Strictly
speaking, this “z” (intervocalic -s-) was not voiced but was a soft voiceless sound, a
sibilant intermediate between our s and z
...
It is important not to confound this s—z with the voiceless intervocalic s that soon
arose from the older lisped ss
...

Footnote 159: In practice phonetic laws have their exceptions, but more intensive study
almost invariably shows that these exceptions are more apparent than real
...
It is
remarkable with how few exceptions one need operate in linguistic history, aside from
“analogical leveling” (morphological replacement)
...
A language has
countless methods of avoiding practical ambiguities
...
”
Footnote 162: Isolated from other German dialects in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries
...

Footnote 163: Ch as in German Buch
...
English was moving fast toward a
more analytic structure long before the French influence set in
...

Footnote 166: One might all but say, “has borrowed at all
...

Footnote 168: Ugro-Finnic and Turkish (Tartar)
Footnote 169: Probably, in Sweet’s terminology, high-back (or, better, between back and
“mixed” positions)-narrow-unrounded
...

Footnote 170: There seem to be analogous or partly analogous sounds in certain
languages of the Caucasus
...

Footnote 172: In the sphere of syntax one may point to certain French and Latin
influences, but it is doubtful if they ever reached deeper than the written language
...

Footnote 173: See page 163
...

Footnote 175: A group of languages spoken in northeastern India
...
g
...

Footnote 177: Itself an amalgam of North “French” and Scandinavian elements
...
There is
every reason to believe that the invading Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) did not
exterminate the Brythonic Celts of England nor yet drive them altogether into Wales and
Cornwall (there has been far too much “driving” of conquered peoples into mountain
fastnesses and land’s ends in our histories), but simply intermingled with them and
imposed their rule and language upon them
...
The
terms have rather a local-sentimental than a clearly racial value
...
g
...
In America, English, Scotch, and
Irish strands have become inextricably interwoven
...
”
Footnote 181: “Dolichocephalic
...
”
Footnote 183: By working back from such data as we possess we can make it probable
that these languages were originally confined to a comparatively small area in northern
Germany and Scandinavia
...
Their center of gravity, say 1000 B
...
, seems to
have lain in southern Russia
...
There are a surprising number of common and characteristic
Germanic words which cannot be connected with known Indo-European radical elements
and which may well be survivals of the hypothetical pre-Germanic language; such are
house, stone, sea, wife (German Haus, Stein, See, Weib)
...

Footnote 186: A “nationality” is a major, sentimentally unified, group
...
True racial factors also may enter in,
though the accent on “race” has generally a psychological rather than a strictly biological
value
...
Even at best, however, the linguistic unification is never absolute,
while the cultural unity is apt to be superficial, of a quasi-political nature, rather than
deep and far-reaching
...

Footnote 188: See page 209
...

Footnote 190: Though even here there is some significant overlapping
...
In northeastern
Siberia, too, there is no sharp cultural line between the Eskimo and the Chukchi
...

Footnote 192: “Temperament” is a difficult term to work with
...
In a culture, for instance, that does not look kindly
upon demonstrativeness, the natural tendency to the display of emotion becomes more
than normally inhibited
...
But ordinarily we can get at human
conduct only as it is culturally modified
...

Footnote 193: See pages 39, 40
...
Besides, I do not exactly know
...

Footnote 195: This “intuitive surrender” has nothing to do with subservience to artistic
convention
...
The impressionist wants light and
color because paint can give him just these; “literature” in painting, the sentimental
suggestion of a “story,” is offensive to him because he does not want the virtue of his
particular form to be dimmed by shadows from another medium
...

Footnote 196: See Benedetto Croce, “Aesthetic
...
For all that we speak of the sacrosanct uniqueness of a given
art work, we know very well, though we do not always admit it, that not all productions
are equally intractable to transference
...
A Bach fugue is transferable into another set of musical timbres
without serious loss of esthetic significance
...

Footnote 198: Provided, of course, Chinese is careful to provide itself with the necessary
scientific vocabulary
...

Footnote 199: Aside from individual peculiarities of diction, the selection and evaluation
of particular words as such
...

Footnote 201: The old name of the country about the mouth of the Yangtsze
...

Footnote 203: I
...
, China
...
Yet accentual and syllabic types of verse, rather than
quantitative verse, seem to be the prevailing norms
...
They have not the same
inner, psychological value that they had in Greek
...




---