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sub-types of the process of internal modification. Possibly still other formal types exist, but they are not likely to be of importance in a general survey. 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. The consonantal change in English, for instance, of _book-s_ and _bag-s_ (_s_ in the former, _z_ in the latter) is of no functional significance. 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. This mechanical alternation is objectively the same as that between the noun _house_ and the verb _to house_. In the latter case, however, it has an important grammatical function, that of transforming a noun into a verb. The two alternations belong, then, to entirely different psychological categories. Only the latter is a true illustration of consonantal modification as a grammatical process.

The simplest, at least the most economical, method of conveying some sort of grammatical notion is to juxtapose two or more words in a definite sequence without making any attempt by inherent modification of these words to establish a connection between them. Let us put down two simple English words at random, say _sing praise_. This conveys no finished thought in English, nor does it clearly establish a relation between the idea of singing and that of praising. Nevertheless, it is psychologically impossible to hear or see the two words juxtaposed without straining to give them some measure of coherent significance. The attempt is not likely to yield an entirely satisfactory result, but what is significant is that as soon as two or more radical concepts are put before the human mind in immediate sequence it strives to bind them together with connecting values of some sort. In the case of _sing praise_ different individuals are likely to arrive at different provisional results. Some of the latent possibilities of the juxtaposition, expressed in currently satisfying form, are: _sing praise (to him)!_ or _singing praise, praise expressed in a song_ or _to sing and praise_ or _one who sings a song of praise_ (compare such English compounds as _killjoy_, i.e., _one who kills joy_) or _he sings a song of praise (to him)_. 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. None of them will quite work in English, but there are numerous languages where one or other of these amplifying processes is habitual. It depends entirely on the genius of the particular language what function is inherently involved in a given sequence of words.

Some languages, like Latin, express practically all relations by means of modifications within the body of the word itself. In these, sequence is apt to be a rhetorical rather than a strictly grammatical principle. Whether I say in Latin _hominem femina videt_ or _femina hominem videt_ or _hominem videt femina_ or _videt femina hominem_ makes little or no difference beyond, possibly, a rhetorical or stylistic one. _The woman sees the man_ is the identical significance of each of these sentences. In Chinook, an Indian language of the Columbia River, one can be equally free, for the relation between the verb and the two nouns is as inherently fixed as in Latin. 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_. Eliminate the Latin case suffixes (_-a_ and _-em_) and the Chinook pronominal prefixes (_she-him-_) and we cannot afford to be so indifferent to our word order. We need to husband our resources. In other words, word order takes on a real functional value. Latin and Chinook are at one extreme. Such languages as Chinese, Siamese, and Annamite, in which each and every word, if it is to function properly, falls into its assigned place, are at the other extreme. But the majority of languages fall between these two extremes. In English, for instance, it may make little grammatical difference whether I say _yesterday the man saw the dog_ or _the man saw the dog yesterday_, but it is not a matter of indifference whether I say _yesterday the man saw the dog_ or _yesterday the dog saw the man_ or whether I say _he is here_ or _is he here?_ In the one case, of the latter group of examples, the vital distinction of subject and object depends entirely on the placing of certain words of the sentence, in the latter a slight difference of sequence makes all the difference between statement and question. 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. There is here no question of functional poverty, but of formal economy.

We have already seen something of the process of composition, the uniting into a single word of two or more radical elements. Psychologically this process is closely allied to that of word order in so far as the relation between the elements is implied, not explicitly stated. 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. Such languages as Chinese and English, in which the principle of rigid sequence is well developed, tend not infrequently also to the development of compound words. It is but a step from such a Chinese word sequence as _jin tak_ “man virtue,” i.e., “the virtue of men,” to such more conventionalized and psychologically unified juxtapositions as _t’ien tsz_ “heaven son,” i.e., “emperor,” or _shui fu_ “water man,” i.e., “water carrier.” In the latter case we may as well frankly write _shui-fu_ as a single word, the meaning of the compound as a whole being as divergent from the precise etymological values of its component elements as is that of our English word _typewriter_ from the merely combined values of _type_ and _writer_. 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. Chinese also unifies its compounds by means of stress. 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. French has as rigid a word order as English but does not possess anything like its power of compounding words into more complex units. 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.

It is curious to observe how greatly languages differ in their ability to make use of the process of composition. 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. Such is not the case. There are a great many languages, like Eskimo and Nootka and, aside from paltry exceptions, the Semitic languages, that cannot compound radical elements. What is even stranger is the fact that many of these languages are not in the least averse to complex word-formations, but may on the contrary effect a synthesis that far surpasses the utmost that Greek and Sanskrit are capable of. 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.” As a matter of fact the Nootka word is utterly incapable of composition in our sense. 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. In, the particular case we have cited the radical element conveys the idea of “four,” the notions of “day” and “absent” being expressed by suffixes that are as inseparable from the radical nucleus of the word as is an English element like _-er_ from the _sing_ or _hunt_ of such words as _singer_ and _hunter_. 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.

There is a bewildering variety of types of composition. These types vary according to function, the nature of the compounded elements, and order. In a great many languages composition is confined to what we may call the delimiting function, that is, of the two or more compounded elements one is given a more precisely qualified significance by the others, which contribute nothing to the formal build of the sentence. 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. Some languages, however, such as Iroquois and Nahuatl,[28] employ the method of composition for much heavier work than this. 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. _I-meat-eat_ for instance, is the regular Iroquois method of expressing the sentence _I am eating meat_. In other languages similar forms may express local or instrumental or still other relations. Such English forms as _killjoy_ and _marplot_ also illustrate the compounding of a verb and a noun, but the resulting word has a strictly nominal, not a verbal, function. We cannot say _he marplots_. Some languages allow the composition of all or nearly all types of elements. 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. Yana, an Indian language of California, can freely compound noun with noun and verb with noun, but not 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. Finally, each language has its characteristic types of order of composition. In English the qualifying element regularly precedes; in certain other languages it follows. Sometimes both types are used in the same language, as in Yana, where “beef” is “bitter-venison” but “deer-liver” is expressed by “liver-deer.” 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.

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

[Footnote 29: Indian language of British Columbia closely related to the Nass already cited.]

Of all grammatical processes affixing is incomparably the most frequently employed. 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. Of the three types of affixing–the use of prefixes, suffixes, and infixes–suffixing is much the commonest. Indeed, it is a fair guess that suffixes do more of the formative work of language than all other methods combined. It is worth noting that there are not a few affixing languages that make absolutely no use of prefixed elements but possess a complex apparatus of suffixes. Such are Turkish, Hottentot, Eskimo, Nootka, and Yana. Some of these, like the three last mentioned, have hundreds of suffixed elements, many of them of a concreteness of significance that would demand expression in the vast majority of languages by means of radical elements. The reverse case, the use of prefixed elements to the complete exclusion of suffixes, is far less common. A good example is Khmer (or Cambodgian), spoken in French Cochin-China, though even here there are obscure traces of old suffixes that have ceased to function as such and are now felt to form part of the radical element.

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. In some languages, such as Latin and Russian, the suffixes alone relate the word to the rest of the sentence, the prefixes being confined to the expression of such ideas as delimit the concrete significance of the radical element without influencing its bearing in the proposition. A Latin form like _remittebantur_ “they were being sent back” may serve as an illustration of this type of distribution of elements. The prefixed element _re-_ “back” merely qualifies to a certain extent the inherent significance of the radical element _mitt-_ “send,” while the suffixes _-eba-_, _-nt-_, and _-ur_ convey the less concrete, more strictly formal, notions of time, person, plurality, and passivity.

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 Hupa word _te-s-e-ya-te_ “I will go,” for example, consists of a radical element _-ya-_ “to go,” three essential prefixes and a formally subsidiary suffix. 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. The second prefixed element, _-s-_, is even less easy to define. 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. The third prefix, _-e-_, is a pronominal element, “I,” which can be used only in “definite” tenses. 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 group _te-s-e-ya_ is a firmly knit grammatical unit. 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.[31]

[Footnote 30: Including such languages as Navaho, Apache, Hupa, Carrier, Chipewyan, Loucheux.]

[Footnote 31: This may seem surprising to an English reader. We generally think of time as a function that is appropriately expressed in a purely formal manner. This notion is due to the bias that Latin grammar has given us. 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. Though in lesser degree, the Hupa _-te_ is as irrelevant to the vital word as is _to-morrow_ to the grammatical “feel” of _I leave_.]

It is not always, however, that we can clearly set off the suffixes of a language as a group against its prefixes. In probably the majority of languages that use both types of affixes each group has both delimiting and formal or relational functions. The most that we can say is that a language tends to express similar functions in either the one or the other manner. 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. Similarly, we normally expect to find the pronominal elements, so far as they are included in the verb at all, either consistently prefixed or suffixed. But these rules are far from absolute. We have already seen that Hebrew prefixes its pronominal elements in certain cases, suffixes them in others. 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.

It will not be necessary to give many further examples of prefixing and suffixing. One of each category will suffice to illustrate their formative possibilities. The idea expressed in English by the sentence _I came to give it to her_ is rendered in Chinook[32] by _i-n-i-a-l-u-d-am_. 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. Of the prefixes, _i-_ indicates recently past time; _n-_, the pronominal subject “I”; _-i-_, the pronominal object “it”;[33] _-a-_, the second pronominal object “her”; _-l-_, a prepositional element indicating that the preceding pronominal prefix is to be understood as an indirect object (_-her-to-_, i.e., “to her”); and _-u-_, an element that it is not easy to define satisfactorily but which, on the whole, indicates movement away from the speaker. 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.” It is obvious that in Chinook, as in Hupa, the greater part of the grammatical machinery resides in the prefixes rather than in the suffixes.

[Footnote 32: Wishram dialect.]

[Footnote 33: Really “him,” but Chinook, like Latin or French, possesses grammatical gender. An object may be referred to as “he,” “she,” or “it,” according to the characteristic form of its noun.]

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. We may take the form _eh-kiwi-n-a-m-oht-ati-wa-ch(i)_ “then they together kept (him) in flight from them.” The radical element here is _kiwi-_, a verb stem indicating the general notion of “indefinite movement round about, here and there.” The prefixed element _eh-_ is hardly more than an adverbial particle indicating temporal subordination; it may be conveniently rendered as “then.” 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. The word may be translated more literally (and yet only approximately as to grammatical feeling) as “then they (animate) caused some animate being to wander about in flight from one another of themselves.” 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.

[Footnote 34: This analysis is doubtful. It is likely that _-n-_ possesses a function that still remains to be ascertained. The Algonkin languages are unusually complex and present many unsolved problems of detail.]

[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. Secondary verb stems of this type are characteristic of the Algonkin languages and of Yana.]

[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.]

We have reserved the very curious type of affixation known as “infixing” for separate illustration. It is utterly unknown in English, unless we consider the _-n-_ of _stand_ (contrast _stood_) as an infixed element. The earlier Indo-European languages, such as Latin, Greek and Sanskrit, made a fairly considerable use of infixed nasals to differentiate the present tense of a certain class of verbs from other forms (contrast Latin _vinc-o_ “I conquer” with _vic-i_ “I conquered”; Greek _lamb-an-o_ “I take” with _e-lab-on_ “I took”). 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. It is particularly prevalent in many languages of southeastern Asia and of the Malay archipelago. Good examples from Khmer (Cambodgian) are _tmeu_ “one who walks” and _daneu_ “walking” (verbal noun), both derived from _deu_ “to walk.” Further examples may be quoted from Bontoc Igorot, a Filipino language. Thus, an infixed _-in-_ conveys the idea of the product of an accomplished action, e.g., _kayu_ “wood,” _kinayu_ “gathered wood.” Infixes are also freely used in the Bontoc Igorot verb. Thus, an infixed _-um-_ is characteristic of many intransitive verbs with personal pronominal suffixes, e.g., _sad-_ “to wait,” _sumid-ak_ “I wait”; _kineg_ “silent,” _kuminek-ak_ “I am silent.” In other verbs it indicates futurity, e.g., _tengao-_ “to celebrate a holiday,” _tumengao-ak_ “I shall have a holiday.” 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.g., _kinminek-ak_ “I am silent.” Obviously the infixing process has in this (and related) languages the same vitality that is possessed by the commoner prefixes and suffixes of other languages. The process is also found in a number of aboriginal American languages. The Yana plural is sometimes formed by an infixed element, e.g., _k’uruwi_ “medicine-men,” _k’uwi_ “medicine-man”; in Chinook an infixed _-l-_ is used in certain verbs to indicate repeated activity, e.g., _ksik’ludelk_ “she keeps looking at him,” _iksik’lutk_ “she looked at him” (radical element _-tk_). 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.g., Sioux _cheti_ “to build a fire,” _chewati_ “I build a fire”; _shuta_ “to miss,” _shuunta-pi_ “we miss.”

A subsidiary but by no means unimportant grammatical process is that of internal vocalic or consonantal change. 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. At any rate, the process is alive enough to lead our children into untrodden ways. We all know of the growing youngster who speaks of having _brung_ something, on the analogy of such forms as _sung_ and _flung_. In Hebrew, as we have seen, vocalic change is of even greater significance than in English. What is true of Hebrew is of course true of all other Semitic languages. A few examples of so-called “broken” plurals from Arabic[37] will supplement the Hebrew verb forms that I have given in another connection. 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_. Very similar phenomena are illustrated by the Hamitic languages of Northern Africa, e.g., Shilh[39] _izbil_ “hair,” plural _izbel_; _a-slem_ “fish,” plural _i-slim-en_; _sn_ “to know,” _sen_ “to be knowing”; _rmi_ “to become tired,” _rumni_ “to be tired”; _ttss_[40] “to fall asleep,” _ttoss_ “to sleep.” 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!”

[Footnote 37: Egyptian dialect.]

[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 39: A Berber language of Morocco.]

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

[Footnote 41: One of the Hamitic languages of eastern Africa.]

Vocalic change is of great significance also in a number of American Indian languages. In the Athabaskan group many verbs change the quality or quantity of the vowel of the radical element as it changes its tense or mode. 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. In other types of Navaho verbs the vocalic changes follow different lines, e.g., _yah-a-ni-ye_ “you carry (a pack) into (a stable)”; past, _yah-i-ni-yin_ (with long _i_ in _-yin_; _-n_ is here used to indicate nasalization); future, _yah-a-di-yehl_ (with long _e_). In another Indian language, Yokuts[43], vocalic modifications affect both noun and verb forms. Thus, _buchong_ “son” forms the plural _bochang-i_ (contrast the objective _buchong-a_); _enash_ “grandfather,” the plural _inash-a_; the verb _engtyim_ “to sleep” forms the continuative _ingetym-ad_ “to be sleeping” and the past _ingetym-ash_.

[Footnote 42: See page 49.]

[Transcriber’s note: Footnote 42 refers to the paragraph beginning on line 1534.]

[Footnote 43: Spoken in the south-central part of California.]

Consonantal change as a functional process is probably far less common than vocalic modifications, but it is not exactly rare. There is an interesting group of cases in English, certain nouns and corresponding verbs differing solely in that the final consonant is voiceless or voiced. 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_). That we have a distinct feeling for the interchange as a means of distinguishing the noun from the verb is indicated by the extension of the principle by many Americans to such a noun as _rise_ (e.g., _the rise of democracy_)–pronounced like _rice_–in contrast to the verb _to rise_ (_s_ like _z_).

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. Thus, in modern Irish, a word like _bo_ “ox” may under the appropriate circumstances, take the forms _bho_ (pronounce _wo_) or _mo_ (e.g., _an bo_ “the ox,” as a subject, but _tir na mo_ “land of the oxen,” as a possessive plural). In the verb the principle has as one of its most striking consequences the “aspiration” of initial consonants in the past tense. If a verb begins with _t_, say, it changes the _t_ to _th_ (now pronounced _h_) in forms of the past; if it begins with _g_, the consonant changes, in analogous forms, to _gh_ (pronounced like a voiced spirant[44] _g_ or like _y_, according to the nature of the following vowel). 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.

[Footnote 44: See page 50.]

[Transcriber’s note: Footnote 44 refers to the paragraph beginning on line 1534.]

Perhaps as remarkable as these Irish phenomena are the consonantal interchanges of Ful, an African language of the Soudan. 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.g., _jim-o_ “companion,” _yim-‘be_ “companions”; _pio-o_ “beater,” _fio-‘be_ “beaters.” Curiously enough, nouns that belong to the class of things form their singular and plural in exactly reverse fashion, e.g., _yola-re_ “grass-grown place,” _jola-je_ “grass-grown places”; _fitan-du_ “soul,” _pital-i_ “souls.” 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.g., _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.” Further, the _hl_ of certain elements changes to a peculiar _h_-sound in plural forms, e.g., _yak-ohl_ “sore-faced,” _yak-oh_ “sore-faced (people).”

[Footnote 45: These orthographies are but makeshifts for simple sounds.]

Nothing is more natural than the prevalence of reduplication, in other words, the repetition of all or part of the radical element. The process is generally employed, with self-evident symbolism, to indicate such concepts as distribution, plurality, repetition, customary activity, increase of size, added intensity, continuance. Even in English it is not unknown, though it is not generally accounted one of the typical formative devices of our language. Such words as _goody-goody_ and _to pooh-pooh_ have become accepted as part of our normal vocabulary, but the method of duplication may on occasion be used more freely than is indicated by such stereotyped examples. 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. In a class by themselves are the really enormous number of words, many of them sound-imitative or contemptuous in psychological tone, that consist of duplications with either change of the vowel or change of the initial consonant–words of the type _sing-song_, _riff-raff_, _wishy-washy_, _harum-skarum_, _roly-poly_. Words of this type are all but universal. Such examples as the Russian _Chudo-Yudo_ (a dragon), the Chinese _ping-pang_ “rattling of rain on the roof,”[46] the Tibetan _kyang-kyong_ “lazy,” and the Manchu _porpon parpan_ “blear-eyed” are curiously reminiscent, both in form and in psychology, of words nearer home. But it can hardly be said that the duplicative process is of a distinctively grammatical significance in English. We must turn to other languages for illustration. 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. A more abstract function is illustrated in Ewe,[47] in which both infinitives and verbal adjectives are formed from verbs by duplication; e.g., _yi_ “to go,” _yiyi_ “to go, act of going”; _wo_ “to do,” _wowo_[48] “done”; _mawomawo_ “not to do” (with both duplicated verb stem and duplicated negative particle). Causative duplications are characteristic of Hottentot, e.g., _gam-gam_[49] “to cause to tell” (from _gam_ “to tell”). Or the process may be used to derive verbs from nouns, as in Hottentot _khoe-khoe_ “to talk Hottentot” (from _khoe-b_ “man, Hottentot”), or as in Kwakiutl _metmat_ “to eat clams” (radical element _met-_ “clam”).

[Footnote 46: Whence our _ping-pong_.]

[Footnote 47: An African language of the Guinea Coast.]

[Footnote 48: In the verbal adjective the tone of the second syllable differs from that of the first.]

[Footnote 49: Initial “click” (see page 55, note 15) omitted.]

[Transcriber’s note: Footnote 49 refers to Footnote 24, beginning on line 1729.]

The most characteristic examples of reduplication are such as repeat only part of the radical element. It would be possible to demonstrate the existence of a vast number of formal types of such partial duplication, according to whether the process makes use of one or more of the radical consonants, preserves or weakens or alters the radical vowel, or affects the beginning, the middle, or the end 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. Examples illustrating this fundamental function can be quoted from all parts of the globe. Initially reduplicating are, for instance, Shilh _ggen_ “to be sleeping” (from _gen_ “to sleep”); Ful _pepeu-‘do_ “liar” (i.e., “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.” Psychologically comparable, but with the reduplication at the end, are Somali _ur_ “body,” plural _urar_; Hausa _suna_ “name,” plural _sunana-ki;_ Washo[50] _gusu_ “buffalo,” _gususu_ “buffaloes”; Takelma[51] _himi-d-_ “to talk to,” _himim-d-_ “to be accustomed to talk to.” 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. The best known examples are probably the initial reduplication of our older Indo-European languages, which helps to form the perfect tense of many verbs (e.g., Sanskrit _dadarsha_ “I have seen,” Greek _leloipa_ “I have left,” Latin _tetigi_ “I have touched,” Gothic _lelot_ “I have let”). In Nootka reduplication of the radical element is often employed in association with certain suffixes; e.g., _hluch-_ “woman” forms _hluhluch-‘ituhl_ “to dream of a woman,” _hluhluch-k’ok_ “resembling a woman.” Psychologically similar to the Greek and Latin examples are many Takelma cases of verbs that exhibit two forms of the stem, one employed in the present or past, the other in the future and in certain modes and verbal derivatives. The former has final reduplication, which is absent in the latter; e.g., _al-yebeb-i’n_ “I show (or showed) to him,” _al-yeb-in_ “I shall show him.”

[Footnote 50: An Indian language of Nevada.]

[Footnote 51: An Indian language of Oregon.]

We come now to the subtlest of all grammatical processes, variations in accent, whether of stress or pitch. 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. In Greek, for instance, it is characteristic of true verbal forms that they throw the accent back as far as the general accentual rules will permit, while nouns may be more freely accented. 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. The presence of the characteristic verbal elements _e-_ and _-men_ in the first case and of the nominal _-s_ in the second tends to obscure the inherent value of the accentual alternation. 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. In the Athabaskan languages there are not infrequently significant alternations of accent, as in Navaho _ta-di-gis_ “you wash yourself” (accented on the second syllable), _ta-di-gis_ “he washes himself” (accented on the first).[52]

[Footnote 52: It is not unlikely, however, that these Athabaskan alternations are primarily tonal in character.]

Pitch accent may be as functional as stress and is perhaps more often so. The mere fact, however, that pitch variations are phonetically essential to the language, as in Chinese (e.g., _feng_ “wind” with a level tone, _feng_ “to serve” with a falling tone) or as in classical Greek (e.g., _lab-on_ “having taken” with a simple or high tone on the suffixed participial _-on_, _gunaik-on_ “of women” with a compound or falling tone on the case suffix _-on_) does not necessarily constitute a functional, or perhaps we had better say grammatical, use of pitch. In such cases the pitch is merely inherent in the radical element or affix, as any vowel or consonant might be. It is different with such Chinese alternations as _chung_ (level) “middle” and _chung_ (falling) “to hit the middle”; _mai_ (rising) “to buy” and _mai_ (falling) “to sell”; _pei_ (falling) “back” and _pei_ (level) “to carry on the back.” 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.

There are languages, however, in which such differences are of the most fundamental grammatical importance. They are particularly common in the Soudan. In Ewe, for instance, there are formed from _subo_ “to serve” two reduplicated forms, an infinitive _subosubo_ “to serve,” with a low tone on the first two syllables and a high one on the last two, and an adjectival _subosubo_ “serving,” in which all the syllables have a high tone. Even more striking are cases furnished by Shilluk, one of the languages of the headwaters of the Nile. The plural of the noun often differs in tone from the singular, e.g., _yit_ (high) “ear” but _yit_ (low) “ears.” In the pronoun three forms may be distinguished by tone alone; _e_ “he” has a high tone and is subjective, _-e_ “him” (e.g., _a chwol-e_ “he called him”) has a low tone and is objective, _-e_ “his” (e.g., _wod-e_ “his house”) has a middle tone and is possessive. From the verbal element _gwed-_ “to write” are formed _gwed-o_ “(he) writes” with a low tone, the passive _gwet_ “(it was) written” with a falling tone, the imperative _gwet_ “write!” with a rising tone, and the verbal noun _gwet_ “writing” with a middle tone. In aboriginal America also pitch accent is known to occur as a grammatical process. A good example of such a pitch language is Tlingit, spoken by the Indians of the southern coast of Alaska. 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. Another type of function is illustrated by the Takelma forms _hel_ “song,” with falling pitch, but _hel_ “sing!” with a rising inflection; parallel to these forms are _sel_ (falling) “black paint,” _sel_ (rising) “paint it!” All in all it is clear that pitch accent, like stress and vocalic or consonantal modifications, is far less infrequently employed as a grammatical process than our own habits of speech would prepare us to believe probable.

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. We have, furthermore, briefly reviewed from a strictly formal standpoint the main processes that are used by all known languages to affect the fundamental concepts–those embodied in unanalyzable words or in the radical elements of words–by the modifying or formative influence of subsidiary concepts. 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.

Let us begin with a simple sentence that involves various kinds of concepts–_the farmer kills the duckling_. 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. These three concepts are “farmer” (the subject of discourse), “kill” (defining the nature of the activity which the sentence informs us about), and “duckling” (another subject[53] of discourse that takes an important though somewhat passive part in this activity). We can visualize the farmer and the duckling and we have also no difficulty in constructing an image of the killing. In other words, the elements _farmer_, _kill_, and _duckling_ define concepts of a concrete order.

[Footnote 53: Not in its technical sense.]

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. A “farmer” is in one sense a perfectly unified concept, in another he is “one who farms.” 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_). Similarly, the concept of _duckling_ is at one remove from that which is expressed by the radical element of the word, _duck_. 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. The word _farmer_ has an “agentive” suffix _-er_ that performs the function of indicating the one that carries out a given activity, in this case that of farming. 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_. The element _-ling_ is not so freely used, but its significance is obvious. 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_). The agentive _-er_ and the diminutive _-ling_ both convey fairly concrete ideas (roughly those of “doer” and “little”), but the concreteness is not stressed. They do not so much define distinct concepts as mediate between concepts. The _-er_ of _farmer_ does not quite say “one who (farms)” it merely indicates that the sort of person we call a “farmer” is closely enough associated with activity on a farm to be conventionally thought of as always so occupied. He may, as a matter of fact, go to town and engage in any pursuit but farming, yet his linguistic label remains “farmer.” Language here betrays a certain helplessness or, if one prefers, a stubborn tendency to look away from the immediately suggested function, trusting to the imagination and to usage to fill in the transitions of thought and the details of application that distinguish one concrete concept (_to farm_) from another “derived” one (_farmer_). It would be impossible for any language to express every concrete idea by an independent word or radical element. The concreteness of experience is infinite, the resources of the richest language are strictly limited. It must perforce throw countless concepts under the rubric of certain basic ones, using other concrete or semi-concrete ideas as functional mediators. The ideas expressed by these mediating elements–they may be independent words, affixes, or modifications of the radical element–may be called “derivational” or “qualifying.” Some concrete concepts, such as _kill_, are expressed radically; others, such as _farmer_ and _duckling_, are expressed derivatively. Corresponding to these two modes of expression we have two types of concepts and of linguistic elements, radical (_farm_, _kill_, _duck_) and derivational (_-er_, _-ling_). 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. In our sentence the concepts of _farm_ and _duck_ are not really involved at all; they are merely latent, for formal reasons, in the linguistic expression.

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. From the standpoint of the sentence the derivational elements _-er_ and _-ling_ are merely details in the local economy of two of its terms (_farmer_, _duckling_) that it accepts as units of expression. 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. We can go further and substitute another activity for that of “killing,” say “taking.” 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. We feel instinctively, without the slightest attempt at conscious analysis, that the two sentences fit precisely the same pattern, that they are really the same fundamental sentence, differing only in their material trappings. In other words, they express identical relational concepts in an identical manner. The manner is here threefold–the use of an inherently relational word (_the_) in analogous positions, the analogous sequence (subject; predicate, consisting of verb and object) of the concrete terms of the sentence, and the use of the suffixed element _-s_ in the verb.

Change any of these features of the sentence and it becomes modified, slightly or seriously, in some purely relational, non-material regard. If _the_ is omitted (_farmer kills duckling_, _man takes chick_), the sentence becomes impossible; it falls into no recognized formal pattern and the two subjects of discourse seem to hang incompletely in the void. 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. As soon as a _the_ is put before the two nouns, we feel relieved. 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 I meet a man who is not looking at and knows nothing about the farmer in question, I am likely to be stared at for my pains if I announce to him that “the farmer [what farmer?] kills the duckling [didn’t know he had any, whoever he is].” 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.” These little words, _the_ and _a_, have the important function of establishing a definite or an indefinite reference.

If I omit the first _the_ and also leave out the suffixed _-s_, I obtain an entirely new set of relations. _Farmer, kill the duckling_ implies that I am now speaking to the farmer, not merely about him; further, that he is not actually killing the bird, but is being ordered by me to do so. 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. We conclude, therefore, that if the farmer is to be merely talked about, the little _the_ must go back into its place and the _-s_ must not be removed. The latter element clearly defines, or rather helps to define, statement as contrasted with command. I find, moreover, that if I wish to speak of several farmers, I cannot say _the farmers kills the duckling_, but must say _the farmers kill the duckling_. Evidently _-s_ involves the notion of singularity in the subject. If the noun is singular, the verb must have a form to correspond; if the noun is plural, the verb has another, corresponding form.[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. We conclude, therefore, that it connotes a personal relation as well as the notion of singularity. 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. Statement as such and personal reference may well be looked upon as inherently relational concepts. 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. Time also is clearly felt as a relational concept; if it were not, we should be allowed to say _the farmer killed-s_ to correspond to _the farmer kill-s_. Of the four concepts inextricably interwoven in the _-s_ suffix, all are felt as relational, two necessarily so. The distinction between a truly relational concept and one that is so felt and treated, though it need not be in the nature of things, will receive further attention in a moment.

[Footnote 54: It is, of course, an “accident” that _-s_ denotes plurality in the noun, singularity in the verb.]

Finally, I can radically disturb the relational cut of the sentence by changing the order of its elements. If the positions of _farmer_ and _kills_ are interchanged, the sentence reads _kills the farmer the duckling_, which is most naturally interpreted as an unusual but not unintelligible mode of asking the question, _does the farmer kill the duckling?_ In this new sentence the act is not conceived as necessarily taking place at all. 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. The interrogative sentence possesses an entirely different “modality” from the declarative one and implies a markedly different attitude of the speaker towards his companion. An even more striking change in personal relations is effected if we interchange _the farmer_ and _the duckling_. _The duckling kills the farmer_ involves precisely the same subjects of discourse and the same type of activity as our first sentence, but the roles of these subjects of discourse are now reversed. 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.

The following tabular statement analyzes the sentence from the point of view of the concepts expressed in it and of the grammatical processes employed for their expression.

I. CONCRETE CONCEPTS:
1. First subject of discourse: _farmer_ 2. Second subject of discourse: _duckling_ 3. Activity: _kill_
—- analyzable into:
A. RADICAL CONCEPTS:
1. Verb: _(to) farm_
2. Noun: _duck_
3. Verb: _kill_
B. DERIVATIONAL CONCEPTS:
1. Agentive: expressed by suffix _-er_ 2. Diminutive: expressed by suffix _-ling_ II. RELATIONAL CONCEPTS:
Reference:
1. Definiteness of reference to first subject of discourse: expressed by first _the_, which has preposed position 2. Definiteness of reference to second subject of discourse: expressed by second _the_, which has preposed position Modality:
3. Declarative: expressed by sequence of “subject” plus verb; and implied by suffixed _-s_
Personal relations:
4. Subjectivity of _farmer_: expressed by position of _farmer_ before kills; and by suffixed _-s_
5. Objectivity of _duckling_: expressed by position of _duckling_ after _kills_
Number:
6. Singularity of first subject of discourse: expressed by lack of plural suffix in _farmer_; and by suffix _-s_ in following verb 7. Singularity of second subject of discourse: expressed by lack of plural suffix in _duckling_
Time:
8. 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. Perhaps the most striking result of the analysis is a renewed realization of the curious lack of accord in our language between function and form. 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).

Our analysis may seem a bit labored, but only because we are so accustomed to our own well-worn grooves of expression that they have come to be felt as inevitable. Yet destructive analysis of the familiar is the only method of approach to an understanding of fundamentally different modes of expression. When one has learned to feel what is fortuitous or illogical or unbalanced in the structure of his own language, he is already well on the way towards a sympathetic grasp of the expression of the various classes of concepts in alien types of speech. Not everything that is “outlandish” is intrinsically illogical or far-fetched. It is often precisely the familiar that a wider perspective reveals as the curiously exceptional. 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. The sentence is the outgrowth of historical and of unreasoning psychological forces rather than of a logical synthesis of elements that have been clearly grasped in their individuality. 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.

A cursory examination of other languages, near and far, would soon show that some or all of the thirteen concepts that our sentence happens to embody may not only be expressed in different form but that they may be differently grouped among themselves; that some among them may be dispensed with; and that other concepts, not considered worth expressing in English idiom, may be treated as absolutely indispensable to the intelligible rendering of the proposition. First as to a different method of handling such concepts as we have found expressed in the English sentence. If we turn to German, we find that in the equivalent sentence (_Der Bauer toetet das Entelein_) the definiteness of reference expressed by the English _the_ is unavoidably coupled with three other concepts–number (both _der_ and _das_ are explicitly singular), case (_der_ is subjective; _das_ is subjective or objective, by elimination therefore objective), and gender, a new concept of the relational order that is not in this case explicitly involved in English (_der_ is masculine, _das_ is neuter). 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. In the sphere of concrete concepts too it is worth noting that the German splits up the idea of “killing” into the basic concept of “dead” (_tot_) and the derivational one of “causing to do (or be) so and so” (by the method of vocalic change, _toet-_); the German _toet-et_ (analytically _tot-_+vowel change+_-et_) “causes to be dead” is, approximately, the formal equivalent of our _dead-en-s_, though the idiomatic application of this latter word is different.[55]

[Footnote 55: “To cause to be dead” or “to cause to die” in the sense of “to kill” is an exceedingly wide-spread usage. It is found, for instance, also in Nootka and Sioux.]

Wandering still further afield, we may glance at the Yana method of expression. Literally translated, the equivalent Yana sentence would read something like “kill-s he farmer[56] he to duck-ling,” in which “he” and “to” are rather awkward English renderings of a general third personal pronoun (_he_, _she_, _it_, or _they_) and an objective particle which indicates that the following noun is connected with the verb otherwise than as subject. 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. Number is only indirectly expressed in the sentence in so far as there is no specific verb suffix indicating plurality of the subject nor specific plural elements in the two nouns. Had the statement been made on another’s authority, a totally different “tense-modal” suffix would have had to be used. The pronouns of reference (“he”) imply nothing by themselves as to number, gender, or case. Gender, indeed, is completely absent in Yana as a relational category.

[Footnote 56: Agriculture was not practised by the Yana. The verbal idea of “to farm” would probably be expressed in some such synthetic manner as “to dig-earth” or “to grow-cause.” There are suffixed elements corresponding to _-er_ and _-ling_.]

The Yana sentence has already illustrated the point that certain of our supposedly essential concepts may be ignored; both the Yana and the German sentence illustrate the further point that certain concepts may need expression for which an English-speaking person, or rather the English-speaking habit, finds no need whatever. 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. In the Chinese sentence “Man kill duck,” which may be looked upon as the practical equivalent of “The man kills the duck,” there is by no means present for the Chinese consciousness that childish, halting, empty feeling which we experience in the literal English translation. 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. And that is all. 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. Nor does this qualification impair our argument, for in the English sentence too we leave unexpressed a large number of ideas which are either taken for granted or which have been developed or are about to be developed in the course of the conversation. 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. Are the farmer and the duck both visible or is one or the other invisible from the point of view of the speaker, and are both placed within the horizon of the speaker, the listener, or of some indefinite point of reference “off yonder”? In other words, to paraphrase awkwardly certain latent “demonstrative” ideas, does this farmer (invisible to us but standing behind a door not far away from me, you being seated yonder well out of reach) kill that duckling (which belongs to you)? or does that farmer (who lives in your neighborhood and whom we see over there) kill that duckling (that belongs to him)? This type of demonstrative elaboration is foreign to our way of thinking, but it would seem very natural, indeed unavoidable, to a Kwakiutl Indian.

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. We must have objects, actions, qualities to talk about, and these must have their corresponding symbols in independent words or in radical elements. No proposition, however abstract its intent, is humanly possible without a tying on at one or more points to the concrete world of sense. In every intelligible proposition at least two of these radical ideas must be expressed, though in exceptional cases one or even both may be understood from the context. And, secondly, such relational concepts must be expressed as moor the concrete concepts to each other and construct a definite, fundamental form of proposition. In this fundamental form there must be no doubt as to the nature of the relations that obtain between the concrete concepts. We must know what concrete concept is directly or indirectly related to what other, and how. If we wish to talk of a thing and an action, we must know if they are cooerdinately related to each other (e.g., “He is fond of _wine and gambling_”); or if the thing is conceived of as the starting point, the “doer” of the action, or, as it is customary to say, the “subject” of which the action is predicated; or if, on the contrary, it is the end point, the “object” of the action. 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. The fundamental syntactic relations must be unambiguously expressed. 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. There is no known language that can or does dodge it, any more than it succeeds in saying something without the use of symbols for the concrete concepts.

We are thus once more reminded of the distinction between essential or unavoidable relational concepts and the dispensable type. The former are universally expressed, the latter are but sparsely developed in some languages, elaborated with a bewildering exuberance in others. 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_. For such languages the number concept has no syntactic significance whatever, is not essentially conceived of as defining a relation, but falls into the group of derivational or even of basic concepts. 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 may have something of this merely qualifying value, but its force extends far beyond. 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. If “a man falls” but “men fall” in English, it is not because of any inherent change that has taken place in the nature of the action or because the idea of plurality inherent in “men” must, in the very nature of ideas, relate itself also to the action performed by these men. 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. By a certain violence of metaphor the material concept is forced to do duty for (or intertwine itself with) the strictly relational.

The case is even more obvious if we take gender as our text. In the two English phrases, “The white woman that comes” and “The white men that come,” we are not reminded that gender, as well as number, may be elevated into a secondary relational concept. 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. Yet all this, and more, happens in Latin. _Illa alba femina quae venit_ and _illi albi homines qui veniunt_, conceptually translated, amount to this: _that_-one-feminine-doer[57] one-feminine-_white_-doer feminine-doing-one-_woman_ _which_-one-feminine-doer other[58]-one-now-_come_; and: _that_-several-masculine-doer several-masculine-_white_-doer masculine-doing-several-_man_ _which_-several-masculine-doer other-several-now-_come_. Each word involves no less than four concepts, a radical concept (either properly concrete–_white_, _man_, _woman_, _come_–or demonstrative–_that_, _which_) and three relational concepts, selected from the categories of case, number, gender, person, and tense. 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]). The other relational concepts are either merely parasitic (gender throughout; number in the demonstrative, the adjective, the relative, and the verb) or irrelevant to the essential syntactic form of the sentence (number in the noun; person; tense). 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.

[Footnote 57: “Doer,” not “done to.” This is a necessarily clumsy tag to represent the “nominative” (subjective) in contrast to the “accusative” (objective).]

[Footnote 58: I.e., not you or I.]

[Footnote 59: By “case” is here meant not only the subjective-objective relation but also that of attribution.]

[Footnote 60: Except in so far as Latin uses this method as a rather awkward, roundabout method of establishing the attribution of the color to the particular object or person. 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. In origin the feel of the Latin _illa alba femina_ is really “that-one, the-white-one, (namely) the-woman”–three substantive ideas that are related to each other by a juxtaposition intended to convey an identity. English and Chinese express the attribution directly by means of order. In Latin the _illa_ and _alba_ may occupy almost any position in the sentence. 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_. Such a relation might be formally expressed _via_ an attributive case, say the genitive (_woman of whiteness_). In Tibetan both the methods of order and of true case relation may be employed: _woman white_ (i.e., “white woman”) or _white-of woman_ (i.e., “woman of whiteness, woman who is white, white woman”).]

I have exaggerated somewhat the concreteness of our subsidiary or rather non-syntactical relational concepts In order that the essential facts might come out in bold relief. 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”). Nor have we, despite the grammarians, a very vivid sense of the present as contrasted with all past and all future time when we say _He comes_.[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). In both the French and English instances the primary ideas of sex and time have become diluted by form-analogy and by extensions into the relational sphere, the concepts ostensibly indicated being now so vaguely delimited that it is rather the tyranny of usage than the need of their concrete expression that sways us in the selection of this or that form. 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. Hence, in part, the complex conjugational systems of so many languages, in which differences of form are attended by no assignable differences of function. 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.[62] Now form lives longer than its own conceptual content. Both are ceaselessly changing, but, on the whole, the form tends to linger on when the spirit has flown or changed its being. Irrational form, form for form’s sake–however we term this tendency to hold on to formal distinctions once they have come to be–is as natural to the life of language as is the retention of modes of conduct that have long outlived the meaning they once had.

[Footnote 61: Aside, naturally, from the life and imminence that may be created for such a sentence by a particular context.]

[Footnote 62: This has largely happened in popular French and German, where the difference is stylistic rather than functional. The preterits are more literary or formal in tone than the perfects.]

There is another powerful tendency which makes for a formal elaboration that does not strictly correspond to clear-cut conceptual differences. This is the tendency to construct schemes of classification into which all the concepts of language must be fitted. 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 black-white categories may not apply at all. Language is in many respects as unreasonable and stubborn about its classifications as is such a mind. It must have its perfectly exclusive pigeon-holes and will tolerate no flying vagrants. Any concept that asks for expression must submit to the classificatory rules of the game, just as there are statistical surveys in which even the most convinced atheist must perforce be labeled Catholic, Protestant, or Jew or get no hearing. In English we have made up our minds that all action must be conceived of in reference to three standard times. If, therefore, we desire to state a proposition that is as true to-morrow as it was yesterday, we have to pretend that the present moment may be elongated fore and aft so as to take in all eternity.[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, sheet-like, in mass like sugar) before it can be enumerated (e.g., “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). Such instances might be multiplied at will. 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. Dogma, rigidly prescribed by tradition, stiffens into formalism. Linguistic categories make up a system of surviving dogma–dogma of the unconscious. They are often but half real as concepts; their life tends ever to languish away into form for form’s sake.

[Footnote 63: Hence, “the square root of 4 _is_ 2,” precisely as “my uncle _is_ here now.” There are many “primitive” languages that are more philosophical and distinguish between a true “present” and a “customary” or “general” tense.]

There is still a third cause for the rise of this non-significant form, or rather of non-significant differences of form. This is the mechanical operation of phonetic processes, which may bring about formal distinctions that have not and never had a corresponding functional distinction. Much of the irregularity and general formal complexity of our declensional and conjugational systems is due to this process. The plural of _hat_ is _hats_, the plural of _self_ is _selves_. 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_. Here we have not a falling together of forms that originally stood for fairly distinct concepts–as we saw was presumably the case with such parallel forms as _drove_ and _worked_–but a merely mechanical manifolding of the same formal element without a corresponding growth of a new concept. 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.

We may now conveniently revise our first classification of concepts as expressed in language and suggest the following scheme:

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

II. _Derivational Concepts_ (less concrete, as a rule, than I, more so than III): normally expressed by affixing non-radical elements to radical elements or by inner modification of these; differ from type I in defining ideas that are irrelevant to the proposition as a whole but that give a radical element a particular increment of significance and that are thus inherently related in a specific way to concepts of type I[65]

III. _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. _Pure Relational Concepts_ (purely abstract): normally expressed by affixing non-radical elements to radical elements (in which case these concepts are frequently intertwined with those of type III) or by their inner modification, by independent words, or by position; serve to relate the concrete elements of the proposition to each other, thus giving it definite syntactic form.

[Footnote 64: Except, of course, the fundamental selection and contrast necessarily implied in defining one concept as against another. “Man” and “white” possess an inherent relation to “woman” and “black,” but it is a relation of conceptual content only and is of no direct interest to grammar.]

[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. This relation of “subject” (_a farmer farms_) is inherent in and specific to the word; it does not exist for the sentence as a whole. In the same way the _-ling_ of _duckling_ defines a specific relation of attribution that concerns only the radical element, not the sentence.]

The nature of these four classes of concepts as regards their concreteness or their power to express syntactic relations may be thus symbolized:
_
Material _/ I. Basic Concepts
Content \_ II. Derivational Concepts _
Relation _/ III. Concrete Relational Concepts \_ IV. Pure Relational Concepts

These schemes must not be worshipped as fetiches. In the actual work of analysis difficult problems frequently arise and we may well be in doubt as to how to group a given set of concepts. 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 of class I are essential to all speech, also concepts of class IV. 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. Logically there is an impassable gulf between I and IV, but the illogical, metaphorical genius of speech has wilfully spanned the gulf and set up a continuous gamut of concepts and forms that leads imperceptibly from the crudest of materialities (“house” or “John Smith”) to the most subtle of relations. 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. It is possible for a concrete concept, represented by a simple word, to lose its material significance entirely and pass over directly into the relational sphere without at the same time losing its independence as a word. 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.g., Cambodgian “We make story this give all that person who have child,” i.e., “We have made this story _for_ all those that have children”).

There are, of course, also not a few instances of transitions between groups I and II and I and III, as well as of the less radical one between II and III. 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. Such an element and concept is the _full_ of _teaspoonfull_, which hovers psychologically between the status of an independent, radical concept (compare _full_) or of a subsidiary element in a compound (cf. _brim-full_) and that of a simple suffix (cf. _dutiful_) in which the primary concreteness is no longer felt. In general, the more highly synthetic our linguistic type, the more difficult and even arbitrary it becomes to distinguish groups I and II.

Not only is there a gradual loss of the concrete as we pass through from group I to group IV, there is also a constant fading away of the feeling of sensible reality within the main groups of linguistic concepts themselves. 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. Yet we must always beware of reading into such abstracter groups that purely formal, relational feeling that we can hardly help associating with certain of the abstracter concepts which, with us, fall in group III, unless, indeed, there is clear evidence to warrant such a reading in. An example or two should make clear these all-important distinctions.[66] In Nootka we have an unusually large number of derivational affixes (expressing concepts of group II). Some of these are quite material in content (e.g., “in the house,” “to dream of”), others, like an element denoting plurality and a diminutive affix, are far more abstract in content. The former type are more closely welded with the radical element than the latter, which can only be suffixed to formations that have the value of complete words. 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. The element indicating the definiteness of reference that is implied in our “the” comes at the very end of the word. So far, so good. “Fire-in-the-house-the” is an intelligible correlate of our “the house-fire.”[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. First of all, the plural element precedes the diminutive in Nootka: “fire-in-the-house-plural-small-the,” in other words “the house-fires-let,” which at once reveals the important fact that the plural concept is not as abstractly, as relationally, felt as in English. 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). In truth we cannot carry over into English the inherent feeling of the Nootka word, which seems to hover somewhere between “the house-firelets” and “the house-fire-several-small.” 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. In English “the house-firelets burn” (not “burns”), in Nootka neither verb, nor adjective, nor anything else in the proposition is in the least concerned with the plurality or the diminutiveness of the fire. 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. But at any rate, the reader may object, it is something that the Nootka plural affix is set apart from the concreter group of affixes; and may not the Nootka diminutive have a slenderer, a more elusive content than our _-let_ or _-ling_ or the German _-chen_ or _-lein?_[69]

[Footnote 66: It is precisely the failure to feel the “value” or “tone,” as distinct from the outer significance, of the concept expressed by a given grammatical element that has so often led students to misunderstand the nature of languages profoundly alien to their own. 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.]

[Footnote 67: Suffixed articles occur also in Danish and Swedish and in numerous other languages. 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 68: Assuming the existence of a word “firelet.”]

[Footnote 69: The Nootka diminutive is doubtless more of a feeling-element, an element of nuance, than our _-ling_. This is shown by the fact that it may be used with verbs as well as with nouns. 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.]

Can such a concept as that of plurality ever be classified with the more material concepts of group II? Indeed it can be. In Yana the third person of the verb makes no formal distinction between singular and plural. Nevertheless the plural concept can be, and nearly always is, expressed by the suffixing of an element (_-ba-_) to the radical element of the verb. “It burns in the east” is rendered by the verb _ya-hau-si_ “burn-east-s.”[70] “They burn in the east” is _ya-ba-hau-si_. Note that the plural affix immediately follows the radical element (_ya-_), disconnecting it from the local element (_-hau-_). It needs no labored argument to prove that the concept of plurality is here hardly less concrete than that of location “in the east,” and that the Yana form corresponds in feeling not so much to our “They burn in the east” (_ardunt oriente_) as to a “Burn-several-east-s, it plurally burns in the east,” an expression which we cannot adequately assimilate for lack of the necessary form-grooves into which to run it.

[Footnote 70: _-si_ is the third person of the present tense. _-hau-_ “east” is an affix, not a compounded radical element.]

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. Even if we could say “many book” and “several book” (as we can say “many a book” and “each book”), the plural concept would still not emerge as clearly as it should for our argument; “many” and “several” are contaminated by certain notions of quantity or scale that are not essential to the idea of plurality itself. We must turn to central and eastern Asia for the type of expression we are seeking. In Tibetan, for instance, _nga-s mi mthong_[71] “I-by man see, by me a man is seen, I see a man” may just as well be understood to mean “I see men,” if there happens to be no reason to emphasize the fact of plurality.[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. _Rnams_ follows its noun as would any other attributive word–“man plural” (whether two or a million) like “man white.” No need to bother about his plurality any more than about his whiteness unless we insist on the point.

[Footnote 71: These are classical, not modern colloquial, forms.]

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

What is true of the idea of plurality is naturally just as true of a great many other concepts. They do not necessarily belong where we who speak English are in the habit of putting them. They may be shifted towards I or towards IV, the two poles of linguistic expression. 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_. But the Bantu Negro, were he a philosopher, might go further and find it strange that we put in group II a category, the diminutive, which he strongly feels to belong to group III and which he uses, along with a number of other classificatory concepts,[73] to relate his subjects and objects, attributes and predicates, as a Russian or a German handles his genders and, if possible, with an even greater finesse.

[Footnote 73: Such as person class, animal class, instrument class, augmentative class.]

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. We must dispense, in other words, with a well-ordered classification of categories. 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. There are too many possibilities. 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, durative-iterative, 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). These details, important as many of them are to an understanding of the “inner form” of language, yield in general significance to the more radical group-distinctions that we have set up. 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.

[Footnote 74: A term borrowed from Slavic grammar. It indicates the lapse of action, its nature from the standpoint of continuity. 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. “To put on a coat” is momentaneous, “to wear a coat” is resultative. 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. In many languages aspect is of far greater formal significance than tense, with which the naive student is apt to confuse it.]

[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. There are languages, for instance, which have as elaborate an apparatus of negative forms for the verb as Greek has of the optative or wish-modality.]

[Footnote 76: Compare page 97.]

[Transcriber’s note: Footnote 76 refers to the paragraph beginning on line 2948.]

[Footnote 77: It is because of this classification of experience that in many languages the verb forms which are proper, say, to a mythical narration differ from those commonly used in daily intercourse. We leave these shades to the context or content ourselves with a more explicit and roundabout mode of expression, e.g., “He is dead, as I happen to know,” “They say he is dead,” “He must be dead by the looks of things.”]

[Footnote 78: We say “_I_ sleep” and “_I_ go,” as well as “_I_ kill him,” but “he kills _me_.” 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.” It is only by form that we can classify the “I” notion of “I sleep” as that of an acting subject. Properly speaking, I am handled by forces beyond my control when I sleep just as truly as when some one is killing me. Numerous languages differentiate clearly between active subject and static subject (_I go_ and _I kill him_ as distinct from _I sleep_, _I am good_, _I am killed_) or between transitive subject and intransitive subject (_I kill him_ as distinct from _I sleep_, _I am good_, _I am killed_, _I go_). The intransitive or static subjects may or may not be identical with the object of the transitive verb.]

In dealing with words and their varying forms we have had to anticipate much that concerns the sentence as a whole. Every language has its special method or methods of binding words into a larger unity. The importance of these methods is apt to vary with the complexity of the individual word. 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. The Latin _agit_ “(he) acts” needs no outside help to establish its place in a proposition. 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 can only be a verb, the predicate of a proposition, and it can only be conceived as a statement of activity carried out by a person (or thing) other than you or me. It is not so with such a word as the English _act_. _Act_ is a syntactic waif until we have defined its status in a proposition–one thing in “they act abominably,” quite another in “that was a kindly act.” The Latin sentence speaks with the assurance of its individual members, the English word needs the prompting of its fellows. Roughly speaking, to be sure. And yet to say that a sufficiently elaborate word-structure compensates for external syntactic methods is perilously close to begging the question. The elements of the word are related to each other in a specific way and follow each other in a rigorously determined sequence. 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.” Breaking down, then, the wall that separates word and sentence, we may ask: What, at last analysis, are the fundamental methods of relating word to word and element to element, in short, of passing from the isolated notions symbolized by each word and by each element to the unified proposition that corresponds to a thought?

[Footnote 79: Ultimately, also historical–say, _age to_ “act that (one).”]

The answer is simple and is implied in the preceding remarks. The most fundamental and the most powerful of all relating methods is the method of order. Let us think of some more or less concrete idea, say a color, and set down its symbol–_red_; of another concrete idea, say a person or object, setting down its symbol–_dog_; finally, of a third concrete idea, say an action, setting down its symbol–_run_. 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)_. I am far from wishing to state that the proposition has always grown up in this analytic manner, merely that the very process of juxtaposing concept to concept, symbol to symbol, forces some kind of relational “feeling,” if nothing else, upon us. 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). Words and elements, then, once they are listed in a certain order, tend not only to establish some kind of relation among themselves but are attracted to each other in greater or in less degree. 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. They are in all likelihood nothing but sequences that have shrunk together and away from other sequences or isolated elements in the flow of speech. 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. As they gradually lose much of their life, they fall back into the embrace of the sentence as a whole and the sequence of independent words regains the importance it had in part transferred to the crystallized groups of elements. Speech is thus constantly tightening and loosening its sequences. In its highly integrated forms (Latin, Eskimo) the “energy” of sequence is largely locked up in complex word formations, it becomes transformed into a kind of potential energy that may not be released for millennia. In its more analytic forms (Chinese, English) this energy is mobile, ready to hand for such service as we demand of it.

There can be little doubt that stress has frequently played a controlling influence in the formation of element-groups or complex words out of certain sequences in the sentence. Such an English word as _withstand_ is merely an old sequence _with stand_, i.e., “against[80] stand,” in which the unstressed adverb was permanently drawn to the following verb and lost its independence as a significant element. In the same way French futures of the type _irai_ “(I) shall go” are but the resultants of a coalescence of originally independent words: _ir[81] a’i_ “to-go I-have,” under the influence of a unifying accent. But stress has done more than articulate or unify sequences that in their own right imply a syntactic relation. Stress is the most natural means at our disposal to emphasize a linguistic contrast, to indicate the major element in a sequence. Hence we need not be surprised to find that accent too, no less than sequence, may serve as the unaided symbol of certain relations. Such a contrast as that of _go’ between_ (“one who goes between”) and _to go between’_ may be of quite secondary origin in English, but there is every reason to believe that analogous distinctions have prevailed at all times in linguistic history. 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.” Such alternations of relation, as symbolized by varying stresses, are important and frequent in a number of languages.[82]

[Footnote 80: For _with_ in the sense of “against,” compare German _wider_ “against.”]

[Footnote 81: Cf. Latin _ire_ “to go”; also our English idiom “I have to go,” i.e., “must go.”]

[Footnote 82: In Chinese no less than in English.]

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. Thus, we may surmise that the Latin _-m_ of words like _feminam_, _dominum_, and _civem_ did not originally[83] denote that “woman,” “master,” and “citizen” were objectively related to the verb of the proposition but indicated something far more concrete,[84] that the objective relation was merely implied by the position or accent of the word (radical element) immediately preceding the _-m_, and that gradually, as its more concrete significance faded away, it took over a syntactic function that did not originally belong to it. This sort of evolution by transfer is traceable in many instances. Thus, the _of_ in an English phrase like “the law of the land” is now as colorless in content, as purely a relational indicator as the “genitive” suffix _-is_ in the Latin _lex urbis_ “the law of the city.” 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. As the case form lost its vitality, the adverb took over its function. 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. In other words, relations were intuitively felt and could only “leak out” with the help of dynamic factors that themselves move on an intuitional plane.

[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 84: Perhaps it was a noun-classifying element of some sort.]

[Footnote 85: Compare its close historical parallel _off_.]

[Footnote 86: “Ablative” at last analysis.]

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

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. This is the method of “concord” or of like signaling. It is based on the same principle as the password or label. All persons or objects that answer to the same counter-sign or that bear the same imprint are thereby stamped as somehow related. It makes little difference, once they are so stamped, where they are to be found or how they behave themselves. They are known to belong together. We are familiar with the principle of concord in Latin and Greek. Many of us have been struck by such relentless rhymes as _vidi ilium bonum dominum_ “I saw that good master” or _quarum dearum saevarum_ “of which stern goddesses.” 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 essence of the principle is simply this, that words (elements) that belong together, particularly if they are syntactic equivalents or are related in like fashion to another word or element, are outwardly marked by the same or functionally equivalent affixes. The application of the principle varies considerably according to the genius of the particular language. In Latin and Greek, for instance, there is concord between noun and qualifying word (adjective or demonstrative) as regards gender, number, and case, between verb and subject only as regards number, and no concord between verb and object.

[Footnote 88: As in Bantu or Chinook.]

In Chinook there is a more far-reaching concord between noun, whether subject or object, and verb. Every noun is classified according to five categories–masculine, feminine, neuter,[89] dual, and plural. “Woman” is feminine, “sand” is neuter, “table” is masculine. If, therefore, I wish to say “The woman put the sand on the table,” I must place in the verb certain class or gender prefixes that accord with corresponding noun prefixes. The sentence reads then, “The (fem.)-woman she (fem.)-it (neut.)-it (masc.)-on-put the (neut.)-sand the (masc.)-table.” If “sand” is qualified as “much” and “table” as “large,” these new ideas are expressed as abstract nouns, each with its inherent class-prefix (“much” is neuter or feminine, “large” is masculine) and with a possessive prefix referring to the qualified noun. Adjective thus calls to noun, noun to verb. “The woman put much sand on the large table,” therefore, takes the form: “The (fem.)-woman she (fem.)-it (neut.)-it (masc.)-on-put the (fem.)-thereof (neut.)-quantity the (neut.)-sand the (masc.)-thereof (masc.)-largeness the (masc.)-table.” The classification of “table” as masculine is thus three times insisted on–in the noun, in the adjective, and in the verb. In the Bantu languages,[90] the principle of concord works very much as in Chinook. 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. In such a sentence as “That fierce lion who came here is dead,” the class of “lion,” which we may call the animal class, would be referred to by concording prefixes no less than six times,–with the demonstrative (“that”), the qualifying adjective, the noun itself, the relative pronoun, the subjective prefix to the verb of the relative clause, and the subjective prefix to the verb of the main clause (“is dead”). We recognize in this insistence on external clarity of reference the same spirit as moves in the more familiar _illum bonum dominum_.

[Footnote 89: Perhaps better “general.” The Chinook “neuter” may refer to persons as well as things and may also be used as a plural. “Masculine” and “feminine,” as in German and French, include a great number of inanimate nouns.]

[Footnote 90: Spoken in the greater part of the southern half of Africa. Chinook is spoken in a number of dialects in the lower Columbia River valley. It is impressive to observe how the human mind has arrived at the same form of expression in two such historically unconnected regions.]

Psychologically the methods of sequence and accent lie at the opposite pole to that of concord. 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. Concord tends to dispense with order. In Latin and Chinook the independent words are free in position, less so in Bantu. In both Chinook and Bantu, however, the methods of concord and order are equally important for the differentiation of subject and object, as the classifying verb prefixes refer to subject, object, or indirect object according to the relative position they occupy. 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 observant reader has probably been surprised that all this time we have had so little to say of the time-honored “parts of speech.” The reason for this is not far to seek. Our conventional classification of words into parts of speech is only a vague, wavering approximation to a consistently worked out inventory of experience. 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.” As soon as we test our vocabulary, we discover that the parts of speech are far from corresponding to so simple an analysis of reality. We say “it is red” and define “red” as a quality-word or adjective. We should consider it strange to think of an equivalent of “is red” in which the whole predication (adjective and verb of being) is conceived of as a verb in precisely the same way in which we think of “extends” or “lies” or “sleeps” as a verb. 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.” No one denies that “reddens” is as good a verb as “sleeps” or even “walks.” Yet “it is red” is related to “it reddens” very much as is “he stands” to “he stands up” or “he rises.” It is merely a matter of English or of general Indo-European idiom that we cannot say “it reds” in the sense of “it is red.” There are hundreds of languages that can. Indeed there are many that can express what we should call an adjective only by making a participle out of a verb. “Red” in such languages is merely a derivative “being red,” as our “sleeping” or “walking” are derivatives of primary verbs.

Just as we can verbify the idea of a quality in such cases as “reddens,” so we can represent a quality or an action to ourselves as a thing. 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. And just as there are languages that make verbs of the great mass of adjectives, so there are others that make nouns of them. 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 are there not certain ideas that it is impossible to render except by way of such and such parts of speech? What can be done with the “to” of “he came to the house”? Well, we can say “he reached the house” and dodge the preposition altogether, giving the verb a nuance that absorbs the idea of local relation carried by the “to.” But let us insist on giving independence to this idea of local relation. Must we not then hold to the preposition? No, we can make a noun of it. We can say something like “he reached the proximity of the house” or “he reached the house-locality.” Instead of saying “he looked into the glass” we may say “he scrutinized the glass-interior.” 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. The local relation is nominalized. 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. The upshot of such an examination would be to feel convinced that the “part of speech” reflects not so much our intuitive analysis of reality as our ability to compose that reality into a variety of formal patterns. A part of speech outside of the limitations of syntactic form is but a will o’ the wisp. For this reason no logical scheme of the parts of speech–their number, nature, and necessary confines–is of the slightest interest to the linguist. Each language has its own scheme. Everything depends on the formal demarcations which it recognizes.

Yet we must not be too destructive. It is well to remember that speech consists of a series of propositions. There must be something to talk about and something must be said about this subject of discourse once it is selected. This distinction is of such fundamental importance that the vast majority of languages have emphasized it by creating some sort of formal barrier between the two terms of the proposition. The subject of discourse is a noun. As the most common subject of discourse is either a person or a thing, the noun clusters about concrete concepts of that order. 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. No language wholly fails to distinguish noun and verb, though in particular cases the nature of the distinction may be an elusive one. It is different with the other parts of speech. Not one of them is imperatively required for the life of language.[91]

[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. But there are, strictly speaking, no other parts of speech. The adjective is a verb. So are the numeral, the interrogative pronoun (e.g., “to be what?”), and certain “conjunctions” and adverbs (e.g., “to be and” and “to be not”; one says “and-past-I go,” i.e., “and I went”). Adverbs and prepositions are either nouns or merely derivative affixes in the verb.]

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. We have not envisaged whole languages as conforming to this or that general type. 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. In this way we may have obtained some inkling of what is meant when we speak of the general form of a language. 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. This type or plan or structural “genius” of the language is something much more fundamental, much more pervasive, than any single feature of it that we can mention, nor can we gain an adequate idea of its nature by a mere recital of the sundry facts that make up the grammar of the 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. When we come to English, we seem to notice that the hills have dipped down a little, yet we recognize the general lay of the land. And when we have arrived at Chinese, it is an utterly different sky that is looking down upon us. We can translate these metaphors and say that all languages differ from one another but that certain ones differ far more than others. This is tantamount to saying that it is possible to group them into morphological types.

Strictly speaking, we know in advance that it is impossible to set up a limited number of types that would do full justice to the peculiarities of the thousands of languages and dialects spoken on the surface of the earth. Like all human institutions, speech is too variable and too elusive to be quite safely ticketed. Even if we operate with a minutely subdivided scale of types, we may be quite certain that many of our languages will need trimming before they fit. 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. Does the difficulty of classification prove the uselessness of the task? I do not think so. 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. Such a standpoint expresses only a half truth. 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. Moreover, the historical study of language has proven to us beyond all doubt that a language changes not only gradually but consistently, that it moves unconsciously from one type towards another, and that analogous trends are observable in remote quarters of the globe. From this it follows that broadly similar morphologies must have been reached by unrelated languages, independently and frequently. In assuming the existence of comparable types, therefore, we are not gainsaying the individuality of all historical processes; we are merely affirming that back of the face of history are powerful drifts that move language, like other social products, to balanced patterns, in other words, to types. 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. Why similar types should be formed, just what is the nature of the forces that make them and dissolve them–these questions are more easily asked than answered. Perhaps the psychologists of the future will be able to give us the ultimate reasons for the formation of linguistic types.

When it comes to the actual task of classification, we find that we have no easy road to travel. Various classifications have been suggested, and they all contain elements of value. Yet none proves satisfactory. They do not so much enfold the known languages in their embrace as force them down into narrow, straight-backed seats. The difficulties have been of various kinds. First and foremost, it has been difficult to choose a point of view. On what basis shall we classify? A language shows us so many facets that we may well be puzzled. And is one point of view sufficient? Secondly, it is dangerous to generalize from a small number of selected languages. To take, as the sum total of our material, Latin, Arabic, Turkish, Chinese, and perhaps Eskimo or Sioux as an afterthought, is to court disaster. 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. Thirdly, the strong craving for a simple formula[92] has been the undoing of linguists. 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.” Hence has arisen the still popular classification of languages into an “isolating” group, an “agglutinative” group, and an “inflective” group. Sometimes the languages of the American Indians are made to straggle along as an uncomfortable “polysynthetic” rear-guard to the agglutinative languages. There is justification for the use of all of these terms, though not perhaps in quite the spirit in which they are commonly employed. 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. A language may be both agglutinative and inflective, or inflective and polysynthetic, or even polysynthetic and isolating, as we shall see a little later on.

[Footnote 92: If possible, a triune formula.]

There is a fourth reason why the classification of languages has generally proved a fruitless undertaking. It is probably the most powerful deterrent of all to clear thinking. 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