Bloomfield (1983) An Introduction to the Study of Language

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54 THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LANGUAGE AUTOM A.TIC VARIATIONS 65

plain stops, unvoiced fortes [p, t, k] and voiced lenes [b, and English spoken without this variation would strike
our ear as very foreign-sounding, even though most of us
d, g]; the Peking pronunciation of Chinese uses only un- would be unable to determine exactly what the peculiarity
voiced stops, aspirate fortes [pr, f, kt] and plain fortes was Yet in spite of this universal occurrence, - really
be~ause of it, - this difference of vowel-quantity is never
or lenes L~, 4, g]; other languages, such as the Polyne-
significant. It depends solely on the following sound and
sian, have but one series of stops; Sanskrit had four, un-
voiced fortes and voiced lenes, each in aspirate and plain can never be determined by the meaning of the word: it
form. Such distinctions are recognized by speakers of is an automatic sound-variation. Before and after unvoiced
the language, and forms not so recognized are interpret- sounds we pronounce our [m, n, 1, .1] partly or wholly
ed as standard forms by the hearer. Thus, though un- unvoiced, e. g. in try, belt, hemp, sent, snow, but we are
not even conscious of this variation: it also is purely au-
aspirated [p, t, k1 and unvoiced lenes [~, ~, g] are oc- tomatic. So is the German and English variation between
[k, g] farther forward or back according to the following
casionally spoken in English, they are not recognized as vowel, as in kin, give, - cap, gap, - coop, goose, but in
different from the more usual forms; such a distinction Arabic, as above mentioned, such pairs as [ka.:la.] 'he spoke'
as that between [pt] and [p] is not even noticed. Whether and [qa.:la] 'he measured' could never be confused.
we speak a[t, d, n, 1, .1] a little farther for-ward or a little
farther back is a matter of indifference in English; it is Every language has, further, limitations as to what
left to personal habit, mood, or the influence of the sur- combinations of sounds can occur and as to where, in the
rounding sounds; but in Sanskrit and in many modern lan- syllable, a given sound or combination may be spoken.
guages of India the difference between dental and cerebral Thus no English syllable can begin with the combinations
articulation is as important as that between any other
sounds; thus in Canarese kondu means tkilled' but kof!iJu, fkn, gn, ts, fp.1, tsv, fv], which are common in German,
ttaken'. Whether we pronounce a k farther forward or - even though, distributed between two syllables or at
back depends mainly on the following vowel and is never the end of a syllable, all of these do occur in English, as
significant, but in Greenlandish or. in Arabic [k] and [q] in acknowledge, bigness, its, cash price, it's very cold, cash
must be strictly kept apart. value. The sound [IJ] cannot occur at the beginning of
a German· or an English syllable but it does so in many
In other words, each language, or, better, each dialect languages. In Peking Chinese a syllable can end only in
distinguishes only a limited number of places of articu- a vowel, [n], or [IJJ. In the Polynesian languages no
lation, and in each place only a limited number of manners syllable ends in any other than a vowel sound.
of articulation, and any variations from these are never
significant. Each language, therefore, has.a limited sound-system,
which, if only significant distinctions are counted and non·
15. Automatic variations. The variations that occur, significant variations, whether automatic or merely casual,
while not significant, may be very regular. Our English
vowels, for instance, are longer in final position and be- are ignored, is never yery great.
fore voiced sounds than b.efore unvoiced, longer, to repeat
our example, in bid than in bit, in bee, bead than in ueat,

~..·/.

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TOTAL EXPERIENCES 57

CHAPTER III. complex recurrent units, as a world of objects. The per-
ceptual and emotional elements which we group together,
THE MENTAL BASIS OF LANGUAGE. for instance, as a rabbit, appear to a dog also coherent
and distinct from other perceptions and emotions, such
1. The place of language in our mental life. Lan- as those of the surrounding trees, the sky, other sniells
and noises, the internal bodily sensations, and so on. Like
guage plays a very important part in most of our mental ours, the dog's apperception, - or, as we sn bjecti rely say,
processes, few of which, indeed, are entirely free from his attention, - may focu~ the rabbit as the central ob-
linguistic elements. While it is possible, for instance, with ject, for the time being, of consciousness. The coherence
some effort, to picture in purely visual terms the actions and unity of such a total e:iperience are due to habits of
we have in mind for the morrow, we hardly ever do so, association formed in earlier related experiences: in our
but ·rather plan our day not only by visualizing but also instance the surrounding trees nnrl the sky, the bystanders,
by wording what we intend to do. If, further, we try to and those of our internal sensations and emotions that
think of our reasons for these intended actions, or of
their effects, or of anything else not in immediate physical are not connected with the present experience, have all
connection with them, we must resort to language, fram-
ing our thought in words and sentences. In short, a very entered into various combinations in earlier experiences
little introspection shows that nearly all of our mental and have thereby become familiar enough not to be irrel-
life contains speech-elements. We cannot conceive of the evantly confused with the present one.
human mind without speech. The development of lan-
guage, accordingly, must have advanced in inseparable Animals respond to a total experience by an expression
varying at Lest for a few widely distinct emotional qual-
connection with that of the mental powers generally. To ities; thus the dog barks at the rabbit as he does at a
great many other things. l\Ian differs from the animals
demonstrate in detail the role of language in our mental first of all in that he has a distinctive sound-reaction for
processes would be to outline the facts of psychology. We each one of a great many types of experience, - e. g.
arehereconcerned,ofcourse,onlywith those mental process- for the type of experience which we call a rrabbit'. When-
es which most immedi:3:tely underlie the use of language. ever an experience of a given type occurs, the sound-re-
action connected with that type is associatively recalled
2. Total experiences. The animals have in common and reproduced. When we saw the rabbit, for instance,
we did not rinarticulately°' cry out, but exclaimed ra rabbit.'
with us a process which may be called the formation of
total experiences. Like us, they experience the outside world This also, to be sure, is not an exact way of dealing
not as a chaotic jumble of sensations, but as a system of with experiences. We react to countless experiences of
a single type (such as ·rrabbit') with one and the same
utterance, while in fact no two experiences are wholly
alike. When we associate the present experience with
certain past experiences and utter with it the sound-se-

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68 THE MENTAL BASIS OF LANGUAGE THE ANALYSIS OF 'l'OTAL EXPERIENCES 59

quence which we heard and uttered with them, we do so 3. The analysis of total experiences. The existence
not because the present experience is exactly like the past of a fixed sound-reaction, which enables us to hold an
ones, - it is not, - but because certain elementary fea- experience vividly in our attention, also makes possible
tures are common to it and each of them. These elemen- the analysis of experiences. Every experience is composed
tary features are known as dominant elements. Thus a of a number of elements whose individuality is due to
rabbit of different size or color, or one running in the their having occurred in other contexts in past experiences.
opposite direction might call forth the same utterance. Thus we have seen the color of the rabbit, other four-
We use the word fbook' for objects of many sizes, shapes, footed animals, other running animals, and the like. Each
and colors, provided they present certain features. Even element recalls those past experiences in which it figured.
a clearly defined scientific term, such as 'triangle' applies But it does this obscurely, until language has given the
to an infinite variety of experiences with but a simple experience a fixed and easily handled symbol with which
common element. In short, our reaction to experiences, we can keep it from slipping, as it were, through our
though much more differentiated than that of animals, fingers. Once language exists, however, the analysis of
is not just to the individuality of each experience, but the experience into these elements is bound to develop.
groups great numbers of experiences together under types At least it takes place in all known languages and is in
within each of which all the experiences are designated all of them, as time goes on, being perfected by a grad-
by one and the same reaction. ual but unceasing process of development, to which we
must ascribe also its origin.
The association of experience-types with fixed and dis-
tinctive sound-utterances represents an important step in This process is the assimilation of expression~relations
mental progress. It makes possible attentive and connected to experience-relations. We may illustrate it by a sche-
thought. When we recall the experience, we repeat, ac- matic example: Suppose that in some language the ut-
tually or in imagination, the sounds with which it is con- terance connected with the experience of a white rabbit
nected. They are a convenient means of holding the ex- is patilu and that connected with a white fox is mel.o, -
perience in the attention; by recalling the sounds (or their in other words, that these experiences, ofdifferent emotional
visual symbols) over and over again, - at first as young value, are attended by two totally unlike expressions.
children do, aloud, but, after practice, in imagination alone, Nevertheless, owing to such elements as they have in
- we can keep the experience before us much longer common, whenever a white rabbit is seen, not only the
than is possible in speechless picturing. past white-rabbit experiences, with their patilu, but also,
among others, the white fox experiences, with their meko,
An advantage of the grouping together of hosts of in- will be awakened. Sooner or later one of these types will
dividual experiences under one type is this, that all ex- assimilate the other's expression; such assimilative pro-
periences belonging to the type can· be dealt with en masse cesses are constantly occurring, as we shall see, in every
and need not be recalled one by one, if we use the lin- language, - rs when, in English, Chaucer's word fader
guistic expression, which deals with all of them alike. became the father of present English, uu<ler the influence
This is conceptual or general thinking.

60 THE MENTAL BASIS OF LANGUAGE THE ANALYSIS OF TOTAL EXPERIENCES 61

of mother, brother. For instance, instead of patilu, someon~ always proceeds by single binary ~ivisions into a part
will, under the influence of meko, say metilu. At first this for the time being focused and a remainder. In the pri-
will happen occasionally; but it will be the more likely 1.n2ry division of an experience into two parts, the one
to happen again when one has once spoken or heard the focused is called the subject and the one left for later
new form. The associational circumstances are all in favor attention the predicate; the relation between them is called
of it. Finally the new habit will completely supersede the predication. If, after this first division, either subject or
old. When this has happened, there are two utterances: predicate or both receive further analysis, the elements
rne-tilu 'white-rabbit' and me-ko 'white-fox'. Corresponding in each case first singled out are again called subjects
to the perceptual element 'white' is the phonetic element and the elements in relation to them, attributes. The subject
me-. When one now utters rne-tilu a certain amount of is always the present thing, the k11own thing, or the con-
analysis is involved: me- expresses the color, -tilu (or -ko) crete thing, the predicate or attribute, its quality, action,
the kind of animal. These phonetic elements may ulti- or relation or the thing to which it is like. Thus in the
mately attain independent use: in answer to such a question sentence Lean horses run fast the subject is lean horses
as 'What kind of a rabbit (fox) did you see?' one may and the horses' action, run fast, is the predicate. Within
say me 'White', and one may designate 'rabbit' in general the subject there is the further analysis into a subject
by tilu, 'fox' in general by ko. horses and its attribute lean, expressing the horses' qual-
ity. In the predicate fast is an attribute of the subject
When this development has taken place, such an ut- 1·un.
terance as me tilu or white rabbit involves an analysis of
the total experience into these two elements. When we Constant repetition, t<;> be sure, mechanizing these pro-
say white rabbit we more or less vividly separate the two cesses, saves us the trouble of repeating the entire dis-
elements of the total experience. Sometimes we may not cursive analysis in every sentence we utter. Such groups,
attend closely to the analysis, but at others we shall in- especially, as are very common are no longer felt as attri-
sist on it, as when we say 'No, a white rabbit' or 'No, a butions (predication is always vividly discursive), the con-
white rabbit'. Such an utterance analyzing an experience crete relation alone remaining uppermost. Thus,· in a sen-
into elements we call a sentence. tence such as A. u·hite rabbit ran across the field, the first
three words are plainly felt to be the subject, and the
The relation of the elements of a sentence to each other rest the predicate, and within the subject u·hite, within
has a distinctive psychological tone. It is called the log- the predicate across the field are in vivid attributive re-
ical or discursive relation. It consists of a transition of lation, respectively, to a rabbit and ran; but the groups
the attention from the total experience, which throughout across the field and a rabbit are not by the normal speaker
remains in consciousness, to the successive elements, which felt as discursive relations. He would say simply that a
are one after another focused by it. expresses the 'indefinitiness' and that the expresses the
'definiteness' of the thing, while across is expressive of
The attention of an individual, - that is, apperception, local relation. It is only when we give the parts of the
- is a unified process: we can attend to but one thing
at a time. Consequently the analysis of a total ~xperience

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62 THE MENTAL BASIS OF LANGUAGE THE NAMING OF OBJECTS 63

utterance much more than the usual degree of attention, ever formational elements, can be dealt with as conceptual
that we may feel these relations as discursive, - as, for units of general thinking.
instance, when we say 'It was a house, but I 'don't think
it was the house', where a and the are plainly attributes. 4:. The naming of objects. If we look into concrete
In short, a frequently recurring arrangement of elements
may become habitual and not require a vivid discursive experience, we find that all of it centers round objects.
An independent (or, as we say, abstract) quality, action,
analysis for its utterance. or relation never occurs. The sound-reactions, therefore,
As this circumstance shows, discursive analysis is not which form language can originally have been called forth,
in so far as they refer to perceptual experience, only by
an absolute thing: associational identification shades into objects. Words for qualities, actions, and relations we
it. In most languages we find, accordingly, elements that must suppose to have been evolved in the later course
are but partially independent. In our schematic represen- of speech-history.
tation above, the stage in which me-tilu 'white-rabbit' and
me-ko 'white-fox' are used, but neither me- nor -tilu nor The linguistic expression of an object-experience, then,
-lro are as yet used independently illustrates this. In such is the simplest type, psychologically, of such expression.
an English sentence as He suddenly ran across the field It is a sound-complex heard and uttered in connect:on
there are several such partly analyzed elements.· The element with a number of successive concrete experiences, each
suddenly, for instance, divides itself into sudden and -ly, but of which exhibits certain dominant elements. The words
since the latter ·cannot be used alone, the analysis is not dis- rabbit or book are associated for each speaker with a long
cursive but merely associative. The same is true of across, series of experiences having certain dominant features in
where cross does, in related senses, occur alone, but not common, much as these experiences may have diverged
so a-. The r-vowel-n of ran occurs also in run, and the in their other features.

vowels [ffiJ and [A] of these two forms are felt to express Even here we see a certain degree of abstraction. In
speech or thought the sound-expression may be used not
the relative time of the action, but neither is an abstract only for a given object exhibiting the dominant features,
r-vowel-n, as a term for the action itself regardless of but also as a representative of all objects exhibiting them.
time, in English conceivable, nor is an [ffi] or an [A] ever In a general statement about 'the rabbit', 'books', or 'a
spoken separately to express the time alone. In father, triangle' these words save us the task of picturing suc-
mother, brother, the -ther is common to all and thus ex- cessively all the rabbits, books, or triangles we can re-
presses a common element of all three; or, if we add sister, call or imagine: we need only dwell on the word and
we nay say that dental-plus-r does so, but neither -ther the associated dominant features, such as a vague visual
nor a dental-plus-r can be used alone in some such sense image of a rabbit, a .book, or three intersecting lines.
as '1 ear relative': there is but the suggestion of an ana- Thus, to repeat, the easily handled general concept,
lysis Such imperfectly separable elements are called for- - the basis of logical thought, - is a product of lan-
mati6ool elements, as opposed tb the independently re- guage.
current units of analysis, words. Words only and scarcely
There are numerous languages, especially on the Ameri-

64 THE MENTAL BASIS OF LANGUAGE THE DEVELOPMENT OF ABSTRACT WORDS 65

can continent, which have not gone beyond. the naming they resemble exclamations: as in English, they are usual-
of objects. In these languages the qualities an<l. actions ly short words, and occasionally they differ phonetically
of objects, which in concrete experience never occur apart from the rest of the word-stock, as when in Russian the
from objects, are in expression also always connected word for 'that', ['€.·tat], is the only native word beginning
with them. Thus one cannot, at this stage, speak of -with the sound [5]. These pronominal words thus re-
'white' or of 'runs', but only of such objects as (white- semble the purely emotional responses to experience which
rabbit' or 'running-rabbit', or, at best, of (white-thing' we shall meet as 'interjections'.
or of 'running-thing' - in terms of our diagram, of me-
tilu or me-ko, never of me. Every word is an object-ex- 5. 'l'he delclopmcut of abstract ,vords. Language
pression; qualities or actions are never as such expressed at the nominal or attributive stage has not attained a
by separate words. One cannot say (kills' or (killing', habit of abstraction which English) for instance,. has, -
for instance, but onl.v chis-killirig-of:-it' or the like. This namely the habit of separating, as independent expressions,
state of things forbids any distinction in speech between the qualities and actions of objects. That our concepts
predication and attribution, for, as predication usually of quality and action are purely linguistic is evident upon
has as its subject an object and as its predicate an action a little introspection. Experience contains qualities and
or quality, its explicit expression depends on the exist- actions only in connection witl?, objects. H we try to
ence of action-words and quality-words as separate words. think, apart from the word, of 'white', we can do so only
Hence in these 'nominal'. or (attributing' languages such by picturing an object (such as a flat surface) or a suc-
utterances as 'white-rabbit' correspond equally to our cession of fleeting objects whose white color we hold
predication 'It is a white rabbit' and to our attributive dominantly in our attention, neglecting their other features.
'white rabbit', and such a locution as our 'The rabbit is Simila1·ly, the concept of 'run', 'running', if we exclude
white' is inconceivable: one could only say (This-rabbit word-images, can be pictured only as a man or an ani-
(is a) white-rabbit' or 'This-rabbit (is a) white-thing'. mal or a succession of such running. This is due to the
Owing to the constant possibility of use as wliat we 'i'eel fact that in actual experience there is no ~uch thing as
to be complete predications, the words of such languages a quality or an action apart from an object.· What lan-
are often called 'sentence-words' guage does is to furnish a fictitious object, namely the
word-symbol, by which we represent the unimaginable
In addition to the object-expressions such languages abstract concept of quality or action.
have only pronominal words. These are expressions of
purely deictic value, referring to the speaker in words The historical origin of words independently expressing
for 'I', the one spoken to in words for 'you', the object quality or action is various. In English such words as
near the speaker in words for 'this'' the object farther white used to mean 'white-thing', the 'thing' being defined
away in words for 'that', and so on. Their origin is as to gender, number, and case, and such words as 'runs'
probably to be sought in sounds uttered in connection used to involve also an actor, meaning che-runs'. A.s to
with deictic movements. A.t any rate, in most languages the psychologic character of the expressions as we have
them today, the historic origin is, however, immaterial.

Bloomfield, Study of La.Druage

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66 THE MENTAL BASIS OF LANGUAGE GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES 6'1

In the words expressive of quality the dominant element meaning or experience-content with the auditory and
is a single common feature, permanent in each of a motor elements which constitute the linguistic symbol
number of objects whose other elements are various. Where reading and writing are practised the visual and
This permanence of the dominant element allows it, in motor elements of the printed and written word join the
its association with the word, to remain vivid: such a auditory and motor of the spoken. Disturbances of these
word as white is joined to a lively image of a single ob- associational habits are the much-discussed phenomena of
ject or of successive shifting objects of white color. In the aphasias.
the action-words the dominant element is a feature also
common to a number of objects, but in all of them im- Among the elements constituting this complex the
permanent. As soon as we attempt to pi~ture the object dominant may, according to individual disposition, be
vividly, the action is lost: the object stands immovable, visual, auditory, or motor; whether the linguistic elements
however suggestive of action we may allow its pose to alone or the experience-elements also shall be dominant,
be. Consequently the perceptual dominant element, aside depends, as we have seen, on the character of the word:
from the word, of an action-word is never vivid: as a in object-words, and, in a different sense, in quality-words,
rule, in fact, we do not attend, in thought, to any element elements of perceptual experience may dominate, while
except the word itself, which has thus become dominant in action-words and more abstract expressions the lin-
in the whole complex. That is why the experiment of guistic symbol is dominant, the experience-elements being
thinking of an action-concept without using words is but vaguely imaged. This is why in absent-mindedness
much more difficult than in the case of a quality-concept. or aphasic conditions the most concrete object-words
(such as proper names) are first and most frequently
The psychologic character of the more abstract words, forgotten, the quality-words next and the abstract words
such as .in English, the prepositions (e. g. under, ooer, last of all. In learning languages, on the other hand,
in, by, across), the conjunctions (e.g. if, though, because), we succeed better in remembering object-words and
and the abstract nouns (e. g. cause, result, essence, being, quality-words, which we can associate directly with per-
rel,ation), while in itself interesting, need not further con- ceptual images, than action-words and abstract words
cem us here, if we remember that the principle is the (prepositions, conjunctions, particles, etc.) which we tend
same as in the case of action-words. The dominant ele- to associate only with words of our own language which
ment when these words are used is always the word it- either do not correspond exactly, or, in any case, remain
self; in any given occurrence they resolve themselves into dominant to the exclusion of the foreign words.
concrete collocations or successions of objects, which ob-
jects we do not stop to picture more than vaguely when 7. Grammatical eategories. In the analysis of the
the word is being used. · total experience into independent elements and in the
partial analysis of the latter into formational elements,
6. Psychologic composition of the word. The word certain types may become habitual and finally universal
is thus psychologically a complicative association of those in a language. For instance, in analyzing a total ex-
perceptual and emotional elements which we call its perience we who speak Engli.sh always speak of an actor

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68 THE MENTAL BASIS OF LANGUAG.E l'SYCHOLOGIC CHARACTER OF THE LINGUISTIC FORMS 69

performing an action. Many total experiences really are on relations common in experience, universalize these, so
of this type, e. g. The rabbit ran; in English, however, that they must be formally expressed even where they
this type has been generalized to furnish the mould for are not actually present or where there is no occasion
expressing all total experiences, - that is, for all sen- for focusing them, even though they are present.· We
tences, - including those which really involve no actor must express actor and action in a sentence and tense
or action, such as The raubit is ichite. II ere we use a in a verb even where they are not very vivid in the total
fictitious action-word, is, of whose action the rnbbit is experience, - where, respectively, a Latin or a Chinese
supposedly the agent. In Latin, for instance, this would speaker could ignore them, just as we ignore numerous
not have to be done: one could say Cu.nlculus albus, liter- unessential elements of every experience, - and also
ally (Rabbit white', where no such fiction is maintained, where they are not present at all, as in Jfount Blanc is
- and the same would be true in Russian. In short, high, where the experience presents neither action and
actor and action are grammatical categories in the English actor nor any particular tense.
language. Categories like this one, which universalize
certain relations between words, are syntactic categories. The normal speaker, however, blindly accepts the
categories of his language. If he reflects upon them at
In the imperfect analysis of words into formational all, he usually ends by supposing them to be universal
forms of thought. In linguistics, of course, we must be
elements also there may be categories. These are called careful to distinguish between categories of a language,
morphologic categories. An English verb-form, for instance, be it our own or another, and the features of experience,
always contains an imperfect analysis into a formational as apart from any particular language.
element expressive of the action itself and one expressive
of its relative time: one can say he runs or he ran, but 8. P8ychologic character of the linguistic forms.
there is no indifferent form, as, for instan_ce, in Chinese, The categories of a language originate in the extension
where [Lp'ao/] means, from our point of view, 'runs', of some oft-repeated type of expression: In this they
(ran', or 'shall run', indifferently, but, if the element of are like all linguistic forms. To the speaker they seem
time is vivid in the total experience, one can say also, fixed and universal forms of expression and even -of
in two words, [Lp'ao/ larran' or [LjOO\Lp(ao;] 'will run'. thought; actually they are habits of association in vogue
That is, just as we always express future time in a sepa- in a community. Owing to the similarity of dominant
rate word (will run), so Chinese also analyzes out the elements, an experience awakens a series of past ex-
past-element as a separate word. Latin, on the other periences and is designated by the same word. Owing
hand, has also a future category: currit 'he runs', cu- to the uniformity of the process of analyzing a total ex-
ciirrit (he ran', curret rhe will run'. We say, then, that perience, all such analyses, - that is, all sentences, -
the formational expression of present or of past time may receive the form of certain numerous past ones:
with actions is a morphologic category in English, that thus arise our syntactic categories. All words present-
of present, past, or future time, in Latin. ing certain common features, - belonging, for instance
to a certain class, - may take on formational features
The grammatical categories, then, though always based

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70 THE MENTAL BASIS OF LANGUAGE INTERPRETATION UF THE LINGUISTIC PHENOMENA 71

that corresponded to experience in only a limited part o/ municative motive, declarative utterance, is a natural sequel.
their occurrences, - such features as time-expression: Likewise the question, an utterance expressive of uncer-
morphologic categories. tainty or incompleteness of an experience, is a weaken-
ing, as to dominance of the emotional motive, and a trans-
The best evidence of the purely associational nature ference to communicative use, of the exclamation.
of linguistic forms lies in their change in history. The
word dog once meant tmastiff'; it came, however, to 10. Interpretation of the linguistic phenomena. I
awaken predominantly the idea of dogs in general, with
the species, not the breed, as dominant feature, until it have troubled the reader with a psychologic description
became the universal expression for all these experiences. which, though perhaps difficult, would have been all the
At one time English sentences could be formed without more so, had there been appended to each step the ex-
an actor and an action, but the process of forming a amples from various languages that would illustrate the
sentence came, in the course of time, always to awaken specific linguistic phases of the phenomena in question.
the process of forming actor-and-action sentences, until The most important of these shall in the next chapter
this type became universal. Similarly, when a new action- be so illustrated. After what follows the reader may find
word comes into the language, such as the German walts the psychologic description more intelligible, if he will
or the Japanese hara-kiri, it recalls the verbs of our lan- go back to it; so much is certain, however, that the phe-
guage with their time-forms and unconsciously and imme- nomena themselves, without consideration of their mental
diately submits to the morphologic tense-categories, re- significance are unintelligible or rather, what is worse,
ceiving the past-forms waltzed, hara-kiried. liable to a post fa.ctum logical interpretation which sub-
stitutes for the actual state of things our reflections upon
Thus language is not, as the sight of a grammar and them.
dictionary might lead us to suppose, a system of unalterably
The points of view from which linguistic phenomena
fixed and indivisible elements. It is rather a complex set can be regarded are of course various. For those un-
familiar with them the greatest importance lies in the
of associations of experiences in groups, each of which realization that the categoric and other distinctions of
is accompanied by a habitual sound-utterance, - and all one's own language are not universal forms of expression
these associations are, like all others, certain of displace-
ment in the course of time. or of experience. It is important also to remember that

9. Psychalogic motives of utterance. True to its the meaning of any linguistic expression is due _to the
associative ha.bits of those who use it. A deictic or a rep-
original form of an outcry under the most violent ex- resentative gesture is intelligible at once, because it owes
periences, language is most easily realized under emotion- its meaning to universal psycho-physiologic characteristics
al stress. Some violence of experience must normally of man. Even a. suggestive or symbolic gesture hardly
be present to call forth loud expression. If this emotion- ever fails of immedi·-1te understanding, for the constant
al violence is the dominant cause of the utterance, we analogy of the simpler gestures predominates over associa-
speak of exclamation. Under the social conditions of lin- tive transference. Vocal language, quite otherwise, though
guistic development utterance with .predominantly com

72 THE MENTAL BASIS OF LANGUAGE CHAPTER IV.

it has its origin in the direct reactions of our organism THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE.
to experience, is the result of a very different develop-
_ment. The reactions which gave rise to it were reactions 1. The inarticulate outcry. We have seen that om
of movement, but the effect which became of self-satisfy-
ing and of communicative value, was the acoustic effect linguistic utterances are part of the expressive movements
of these movements. Consequently even the simplest which attend every experience. In many lower animals
utterances furnished no analogy, comparable to that of also some of the expressive movements produce sound.
the simplest gestures, by which every kind of associative The bodily expression of experiences of pain, for instance,
transference and innovation might have been counteracted. may include not ~mly a sudden withdrawal, but also a
The result is that no language has the character of a set contraction of the thorax forcing out breath through the
of sounds in some way logically derivable from the ex• glottis, which, likewise contracted, produces the sound
periences which they express. that we describe as a cry of pain. We have seen that
human language is a developed and varied form of such
vocal reflexes.

Even where language in the highest form exists, how-
ever, these most primitive reflexes occur by its side;
the inarticulate cry of pain or anger is uttered by human
beings under an extremely violent experience. As a di-
rect result of this experience, this cry has nothing to do
with any earlier experiences of the individual. It is in-
dependent, accordingly, as to its form, of the utterer's ·
personal or social history: its sounds need not be speech-
sounds used in his community, and it is no more intelli-
gible in his speech-community than in any other; even
an animal may utter its like.

2. Primary interjections. It is only under the most

violent experiences that such purely reflex vocal utterances
are used by man. If the 13xperience is somewhat less rad-

7

74 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE SECONDARY INTERJECTIONS 75

ical, the vocal utterance is less completely dependent and may also vary in the different communities; thus the
upon it alone, for, owing to the universal laws of habit, interjection of pain is in English ouch! and in German
the utterance now tends to take that form which the in- au! This, indeed, is by far the commoner case.
dividual happens to have most used or heard under sim-
ilar conditions. This factor will, of course, vary accord- In the utterance of an interjection there is thus beside
ing to the earlier history of the individual. Another in- the mere vocal reflex another element: the experience is
dividual who has had, in this respect, the same history lived through as similar to certain earlier experiences,
and has, accordingly, formed the same habit of association, and is accompanied by the same vocal utterances as were
will, on hearing the utterance, at once associate the same these earlier experiences. We may say that these ex-
experience: that is, he will understand. An individual, periences together constitute a class recognized by the
on the other hand, who has not had the same history, speech-community, in that they are always accompanied
and has never heard the utterance in question, will make by the utterance of these particular· sounds. A certain
no such association, and will not know what kind of an degree of pain might, for instance, be called in English
experience the utterer is undergoing. Hearing the ex- an ouch/-experience.
clamations of a Zulu or a Fiji-islander, we may be in
doubt as to whether it is joy, sorrow, anger, or surprise 3. Secondary interjections. Experiences less intense,
that he is expressing. - that is, having less predominantly emotional value, -
than those so far discussed, are accompanied by utterances
Even in these less radical vocal expressions there is of more specific descriptive value While a person who
some element of direct reflex. This appears, on the one inadvertently got his hand into the fire might give an
hand, in the rather extended intelligibility of these inter- inarticulate shriek, and one who got his finger blistered
jections, as we call them, and, on the other, in their occasion- might utter the interjection ouch!, one who merely saw
ally departing somewhat from the regular sound-system a fire where he did not expect it, - saw, for instance,
of the language. An example of both features is the la- that a barn was burning, - would utter the more delib-
bial trill, which is used all over northern Europe as an erate and specific, though still exclamatory cry of Fire,
expression of intense cold and of abhorrence, although fire!
as a regular speech-sound it does not occur in the lan-
guages concerned; in writing it is usually reproduced as The more specific character of this utterance consists
brrr / Similarly, various sound-complexes with the unusual in its perceptual value. In the inarticulate cry and such
feature of a syllabic [s] or [f], written Sh ..! or Pst! are interjections as ouch! only an emotional element of the
used as an urgent demand for silence. Our peculiar whist- experience is expressed; in the utterance Fire! the sounds
ling expulsion of breath, written Whew! to express ex- uttered are associated by speakers of the language with
treme heat as well as surprise, is another instance of di- the specific perceptual content of fire. Exclamatory utter-
vergence from the usual sound-system. On the other hand, ances of this kind are callen. secondary interjections. There
interjections ·may remain within the usual sound-system is no limit to the amount of material detail which they
may contain. Other examples are cries of Help!, Murder!,
Man overboard.', and the lilie; also exclamations describing

76 THE FORMS OF LANGlTAGE 1

noises or movements, such as Bang!, Crash!, Snap!, Fizz!, VALUE OF NON-INTERJECTIONAL UTTERANCES 77
Puff!, "Whoop!, Rip! Here belong also utterances which
name the principal object concerned in the experience, munity before he can speak or understand what is spoken.
such as The chilcl, the child!, Gold!, Forgery!, Mother!, It is only in the inarticulate outcry, and, to a lesser extent,
A shooting star!, A white rabbit! The calling of descrip- in the primary interjection, that the universal reflexes of
tive names is, of course, also exclamatory: You thief!, the human body undergoing an experience determine the
Villain!, Generous man! Of especial importance are com- form of utterance; in the words of material content this
mands: JJfarch!, Get up!, Bring me a glass of water, association is, so to speak, an external one and differs
please!, or the use of people's or animals' names to call greatly in the different speech-communities.
their attention: 0 stranger!, John!, Child!, Doggie!
4. 'l'he arbitrary value of non-interjectional ut-
The reflex element may here be present in various degrees terances. We saw in Chapter I how most new members
and find expression in modulations of pitch, stress, duration, of a speech-community, namely children, are taught to
and the like. The modulations so permil-3sible are different make these associations. The problem of the origin of
in different languages: the articulations which form the language, we further saw, resolves itself into the question
basis of the utterance, however, are in each case determined as to how these associations originally came into being.
by their association with the kind of experience concerned. The answer we found (p. 14, f.) was that the movement
A foreigner does not understand them, because he possesses which produces the sound was originally an expressive
an entirely different set of asrmciative habits in this re- movement, but, as the sound produced by the movement
ga:d. It will be noticed, also, that some of these secondary was in communication the striking element, further devel-
interjections involve a considerable degree of discursive opment proceeded from the sound and not from the move-
analysis (though not, usually, a predication); in so far as ment. As no essential connection between sounds and ex-
they do so, they are exclamatory_ sentences. perience was felt by the speaker, transferences and changes
had free play, so that even between movement and ex-
The same articulations may be used at other times with perience there soon remained no recognizable connection.
a minimum emotional content. A chemist, after long in- For instance, the experience of a bitter taste produces a
vestigation of what a certain component of a preparation very characteristic expressive movement of the facial and
was, could turn to his client or his pupils and, holding oral muscles which, if the experience is violent enough,
up a test-tube, quietly say Gold. A lawyer, after some may be accompanied by sound-production. The sounds
consideration of the technical validity of a paper, could resulting from this expressive movement may have been,
say, with very little emotion, Forgery. The significance in some time and place, the current expression for fbitter'.
of all these utterances, in other words, is due not to the As time went on, however, there happened that which,
emotional value with which they may be used, but only as we shall see, is universal in language: the manner of
to their association, in speaker's and hearer's mind, with articulating the sounds gradually changed until they wero
certain material contents of experience. This association very different from those formerly spoken. Even by this
has to be formed by every memher of the speech-com- time the movements which made up the articulation of
the sound-sequence were no longer those of the cbiiter'

78 THE FORMS OF LAh-GUAGE 7

face-expression. But another, even more radical and equally VALUE OF NON-INTERJECTIONAL UTTERANCES 79
universal kind of change must also be considered: people
do not go on using the same expressions for ever. There many such. For instance, our words flame, flare, flicker,
is a constant tendency, as we have seen and shall in flimmer, flash seem to us highly expressive of certain fea-
greater detail later see, to assimilate expressions to one tures of the experience of fire. Other words that might seem
another when the experiences are at all alike. Thus our directly expressive are puff, fizz, bang, zip, diddle, snap,
expression for 'bitter' might be somewhat changed so as smash, whack, squeak, and so on. We are very much surpris-
to resemble the expression for 'sharp', or rbad' or even ed to learn that to a foreigner these words are as unintel-
rsweet', for ralmond-like' or runeat::Lble' or c:nasty'. Of ligible as any others, - until, of course, he learns English.
these processes we shall see many examples when we
come to speak of the changes of language. For the pres- Let us look a little more closely at these expressions.
ent it is clear that the immediate physiologic connection
between ·expression and experience, which at some particu- In the words flame, flare, fiash, flimmer, flicker we find,
lar time must have existed in a great many expressions, can
in the case of no expression be of indefinite duration. The corresponding to the common half-emotional, half-percep-
English word bitter, for instance, cannot be interpreted tual element of meaning, the common initial sound-group
as an expressive movement, for we know that thousands of fl-. In flare, flash, flimmer, and flicker the rest of the
years ago, if it then existed at all, it had some such form meaning also seems to be directly and immediately ex-
as bhidrom and further that, whenever it began to be pressed; and here again, if we look for words with simi-
used, it was not an expression arising directly from the lar meaning, we shall find the same sound-groups recur-
experience of a bitter taste, but rather a descriptive term ring. Thus flare relates itself to glare and blare. The
which meant literally 'biting', for it was originally an -icker of flicker, which expresses to our feeling the small
adjective derived from the verb to bite. The expressive repeated movements of the flame, performs a similar
habits of the community, in other words, are in a con- function in snicker. The -immer of flimmer, expressive to
stant process of change, and though, for language to be- us of a quiet, small, continued action, is similarly expres-
gin, it was necessary that certain sound-sequences should
be called forth by certain stimuli, it was neither necessary, sive in simmer, shimmer, glimmer. In flash the sounds
once given this beginning, nor even possible that this
<Erect connection should continue to exist. -ash express to us a very different, more rapid and violent
kind of movement also conveyed in clash, crash, dash,
It may be asked, then, if there are in use to-day any lash, mash, slash, smash, splash. Or, to leave our fl- words,
expressions which are still at the stage where there is a the articulation of b- in bang, biff, bump, buffer, box, beat
direct connection between experience and movement. If corresponds to a common element of meaning which, we
we look into our own feeling with regard to certain of feel, is directly expressed by all these words. In the
our words, there might appear in English to be a great common parlance of school-room and dictionary they are
fonomatopoeias'.

This peculiar feeling on the part of those who know
the language is in all probability, however, due to
nothing other than the existence of parallel words
expressing the same shade of meaning with the same
sounds. When we utter any suc.h word the other words

80 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE 'I VALUE OF NON-INTERJECTIONAL UTTERANCES 81

~f similar meaning are awakened, and their similarity There are still other cases in which there seems to be an
of form adds corroborative strength to the impulse of actual connection between the sounds uttered and the
arti.culation. That is, if we had only flash and not the experience, this time in the sense that the experience
other words in fl- and in -ash, it would not seem to us contains a noise which is imitated in the expression. This
any more aptly and immediately expressive of its meaning is especially the case in bird-names, such as cuckoo. Such
than such terms as chair, throw, combustion. In short, investigation as there has been shows that among the
there is no ulterior connection between these words and Germans, for instance, there have been in use great num-
their meanings, or even between such formational sound- bers of bird-names explicable only in this way, - that
groups as fl- or -ash or b- and the elements of meaning is, as onomatopoeias. This, however, is not a general prin-
conveyed by them. Even if it should be found with any ciple, but only a special instance of the way in which
certainty that the movements producing these sounds language is expressive. It happens , that some birds,
are, in a psycho-physiologic sense, the natural expressive - and there are probably few other such fields in human
movements attending the experiences which they in present experience, - are naturally recognizable by their calls,
English express, this would not alter the case. We might at and it is not surprising that, if the call became the dom-
first wonder at the correspondence and then realize that a inant element in these experiences, the exp!'essive habit
selective process by which associations and assimilations of designating the birds by a more or less rough imita-
occur had favored in each case the most suitable articulations. tion of it should have come into currency In English
All this, however, would not change the fact that these this is far less the case, our bird-names being mostly de-
words, like others, are limited to their language and out- scriptive of the birds' appearance or habits (red-breast, blue-
side of it are understood no more than others, and that bird, mocking-bird), and, where an onomatopoetic name
these words have arisen and changed in the course of time seems to exist, its form is usually determined by associa-
by exactly the same processes that affect all words. The tion with usual words of the language, as in the case of
peculiar feeling of directness of meaning which they give Bob- White and u·hip-poor- ·will. The range of onomato-
us is due, then, entirely to the associative conditions of poeia is thus at best very limited, and where it occurs
our vocabulary and not to these words' being any such it can take rank only as one of the many forms of as-
thing as primitive reactions to experience: their history sociational habit that occur in language.
is the same as that of other words. Aside from primary
interjections, the forms of language owe their function As we look first at inarticulate outcries, then at inter-
entirely to their association with experiences in the speak- jections, and finally at the words of ordinary speech, we
ers' minds. The peculiar value in the speakers' feeling thus find a continuous gradation. The outcry is entirely
of such expressions as the above, is called sound-symbolism, the product of the present circumstances, of the primary
- a term which is useful, if we 1·emember that the rsym- interjection this is not fully true, and the utterance with
bolism' is such only within the expressive habits of the material content depends for its form entirely on the
habits of the speaker, which he shares with his speech·
given community. community. These habits are in a sense arbitrary, differing

131 o om fie 1d I Study of Language

B2 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE CLASSIFYING NATURE OJl l.INGUISTIC EXPRESSIOli" .83

for the different communities and changing gradually in understanding would grow as this infinity were approachea,
and that actually each community uses only a limited
the course of time. A new member of a community must number of the possible sounds; that this limitation alone
learn its speech-habits as he would any other set of makes possible well-fixed habits of articulation and hear-
communal habits. ing. We are now again face to face with this principle.
If each experience, owing to its indisputable individuality,
5. The classifying nature of linguistic expression. were to be accompanied by a special utterance, no sound-
The arbitrary nature of speech-expressions is directly due sequence would ever be uttered more than once, and
to the fruitful principle which makes communication by communication by means of speech would be impossible.
means of any such expressions possible. If each speaker
reacted under each experience in such a way that no trace It is the habitual inclusion under one form of expression,
of his earlier history affected the reaction, communication
would be impossible. No two speakers would ever react - that is, under one specific sound-sequence, - of vast
alike and no one speaker would ever react twice alike. numbers of experiences presenting certain dominant fea-
Fortunately we are so constituted that our past does tures, which enables us to understand one another.
unceasingly modify our present: a present experience is
inevitably assimilated by past ones of a similar nature We are so accustomed to think and express ourselves
and is attended by the same or similar expressive actions in the terms of our language that we are not ordinarily
as were these. Thus the circumstance that an English- conscious of the subjective character of this inclusion or
speaking person and a German will express similar ex- classification. Only the poet, who looks directly at the
periences, respectively, by horse and Pferd, - an arbitrary experience and seeks for an exact expression of it, must
divergence, - is due to the very fact that each expression constantly realize this fact. Science also, on the basis of
is moulded by the past history of the speaker. The one objective analysis, can make an extended classification of
has heard and spoken horse when such an experience oc- experiences and then arbitrarily determine that a given
curred, the other Pferd. expression shall be used whenever ~ertain features are
present: this, of course, is the process of scientific defini-
The identity of the several expeI"iences that are in each
case designated by the same expression (e. g. horse or fire) tion. In ordinary life no such analysis is made: certain
is not actually inherent in them. This is obvious, if we
recall the psychologic truth that no two experiences, general, often very complex features are associated with
whether belonging to one person or to different persons, the expression and all experiences in which these features
are ever exactly alike. ·when we express each of a great are dominant are classed together and expressed alike.
number of experiences by the sound-sequence fire, we are
associating them on the basis of an only partial similarity. Yet, even in ordinary life, there are circumstances when

In our survey of the sounds of speech we saw that the uncertain character of our classifications is thrust
language would be unintelligible, if all of the infinity of upon our notic61 - and that is in the face of some novel
possible sounds were employed, that the difficulty of experience. .A marr who for the first time confronts a
phenomenon which, let u~ say, looks like fire but gives
out no heat, or one that presents &. different exterior,
being, say, a liquid, bui prcduces the same charring effect,

84 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE T
I
combined with smoke, as a fire, - this man will ask 'la
this fire or not?' - or, if he is more philosophical, 'Am CLASSIFYING NATURE OF LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION 85

I to call this '{ire or not?' The answer to the question. community. It is especially important to remember that,
except for the case of terms of purely scientific character,
must come, if it be given at all, from the consensus of this classification is due to associative tendencies and is
the speech-community, which may or may not in turn not affected by any logical considerations which individual
call upon a scientific definition to settle the usage by speakers may undertake. People of a nation whose language
determining a logically recognizable dominant feature. 1) had no expression for 'fire' but only for rcamp-fire', 'forest-
The subjective character of our speech-classifications is fi.re', 'cooking-fire', and so on, might know very .well that
brought home most of all, however, by the study of all these have certain features in common, and might
language itself; for here we constantly find that different even study physics and chemistry and arrive at the scien-
speech-communities make very different classifications. tific concept of combustion, - but their language would
There may be languages, for instance, where no such remain the same It would provide, al.ways in accordance
classification as 'fire' is made, but where there is an en- with its existing habits, some analytic expression, such
tirely different expression for each of such classes as as 'camp-fires, kitchen-fires, forest-fires, and the like',
'camp-fire', 'cooking-fire', 'forest-fire', and so on: in such which would be used for the scientific concept of 'fire'.
a language experiences which we should regard as falling This may be illustrated by a few actual instances.
into a single class would fall into several distinct classes.
In other words, a number of experiences that are classed In Malay the experiences which may be logically de-
together in one speech- community may not be classed fined by us as 'offspring of the. same parents' are classed
together at all, or may form but a small part of a larger together, and for such an experience is used the word
class, or may be in some other way distributed in another
speech-community. All depends on the expressive habits, sudara. In English we form no such class; we form two
- that is, on the linguistic tradition, - of the speech-
classes, according to the sex, and speak of a brotl,er or a
1) The vagueness with which these dominant features may sister. .Now, it would be manifestly absurd to say that
be defined is the motive in the anecdote of the traditional a Malay does not know his brother from his sister; it
Irishman who for the first time in his life saw a parrot. It had would be no less absurd, however, to say that English-
escaped from its owner and perclied in a tree, which the Irish- speaking people are unable to form the general idea con-
man at once climbed. As he was about to lay his hand on the veyed by the Malay word. Both languages can express
parrot, it exclaimed 'Hands off! Hands off!' The Irishman was the experiences for which no single designation exists by
dumbfounded, raised his hat, bowed, and said, 'Excuse me, sir; a. compound expression which analyzes them, - the Malay
I thought ye were a bird.' - That is, speech was for him a by saying sudara lakilaki and sudara perarnpuwan, where
dominant feature of human beings, dominant even to the exclu- the added modifying words resemble our terms 'male' and
sion of factors of visual appearance. General usage could have lfemale'; and the English by saying brother or sister or
corrected him by changing his associational habits, - the science child of the same parents.
of zoolog:y, by giving him criteria of' logical validity.
There are still other possibilities. In Chinese the ex-
periences of which we are speaking fall into four classes:
[r9foIJ1, Lti\, rtsza1, Lmel\]. The first two denote males, the

r

86 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE CLASSIFYING NATURE OF LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION 87

second two, females; and in each of these pairs the former The English translations given for the German Ge-
· denotes an older, the latter a younger member of the schwister, however, show that, where a classification is not
family. While we make no such classes, we can analyti-·
cally designate these relatives by saying older brother, made and an experience is instead expressed by some
younger brother, older sister, younger sister. The Chinese, analytic phrase, the analysis is constantly open to the
on the other hand, can express the idea of 'brother'. by speaker. If the expression is very frequently used, it may,
saying [r9'i'.uIJ1 Lti\], df csister' by saying [rtsza1 Lme1\], and to some extent nevertheless become mechanized, and need
of the Malay sudara by [r9'iuIJ1 Lti\ rtsza1 Lme't\], - all of not involve the entire conscious analysis every time it is
which expressions are comparable to our expression of
the Malay term by brother or sister. It would be as absurd used.
to say that the Chinese classification shows the Chinese A few more instances of divergent classification may
to lack power of generalization or else to have a partic-
ularly strong feeling for relationship as it w.ould be to be of value. The general word in English for locomotion
say that we have less power. of generalization than a is go, in German gehen. To begin with, however, while
Malay or more feeling for the difference of sex; or else we can say I go, a German cannot say ich gehen, but must
that we have little feeling for the 4istinction between in this connection use a slightly different form, gehe: ich
older and younger ~rothers and sisters, - when, to take gehe. Aside from this, the German word is more inclusive,
the last point, English law has from time immemorial in that it is used also of the specific form of locomotion
made much of it. separately classed in English as walk. On the other hand,
our word ride is more inclusive than the German terms
If any final demonstration were needed of how inde- reiten, used of riding on the back of an animal; and fahren,
pendent linguistic classification is of logical insight, it of riding in a vehicle or vessel. -A bla~k horse is in
would be furnished by the German form of these words. German Rappe, a white horse Schimmel; compare our
This language, when speaking of one person, makes the bay, roan, sorrel when used as nouns. The rel~tion ex-
same classification as English: Bruder, Schwester, but pressed by our on in on the table is in German auf, but
when speaking of more than one, makes also that of the that in on the wall is in German an: auf dem Tisch, an
Malay, using the term Geschwister, for experiences which in der Wand. It will also be seen from this example how
English would have to be analyzed into brothers and sisters, our word the corresponds to an element variously expressed
brothers or sisters, brother and sister, brother and sisters, in German. In French there a.re no simple expressions
brothers and sister, as the case might be. It is evident that corresponding to our stand or sit; the idea must in each
whatever hasty conclusions· were drawn from the contrast case be analyzed into etre debout (assis) cbe upright (sit-
between the Malay and English expressions would have ting)', rester debout (assis) rremain upright (sitting)', se
to be applied in turn to one and the same German, from tenir deboiit (assis) 'hold oneself upright (sitting)'.
moment to moment, according to the number of people
he happened to be talking about. Even pronominal expressions (p. 64), in which the simple
deictic value might lea.d us to expt.ct entire uniformity,
differ greatly. Three rpersons', that of the speaker, the
one spoken to, and the person or thing ~poken of, are

'1T

88 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE CLASSIFYING NATURE OF LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION 89

everywhere distinguished. Some languages, however, use hie for an object near one, ille for one farther off, and
material object-words instead of the first and second per- iste for one near the person addressed; in German, too,
sons; so the Malay for rp sahaya ccompanion', hamba; one says hier rhere', da 'there', and dort 'yonder'.
beta, or patelc cslave', rather than the purely pronomil;lal
aku, and for ryou' rather the name of the person addressed Beside the deictic expressions most languages distinguish
or tuwan rmaster' or datoh rgrandfather', than ankau ryou' anaphoric reference: mention of things known or spoken
In Japanese such object-expressions are exclusively used, of, as, for instance, in English: he, she, it, they; other
no purely pronominal terms for ryou' and T being known. languages make no distinction between anaphoric and
Similarly, Polish uses pan (gentleman', rsir', pani clady', deictic reference. Within the anaphoric relations a single
(mistress', rmadam' to all but intimates and servants, instance may be cited of a distinction absent in some
rather than ty ryou'. Other languages identify different languages (including English) but observed in others;
persons: thus the Italian uses ella or lei, literally 'she', namely, the distinction between anaphoric reference to
rit', for 'you', the German similarly Sie rthey' for ryou'; an object immediately concerned and that to another
these pronouns originally referred to such nouns as ryour object. So in Latin: Amat sororem suam <He loves his
grace', singular and plural, and are thus results. of the sister', that is, his own sister, but Amat sororem eius <He
preceding type of usage. All these fori;ns had their origin loves his sister', that is, someone else's (who has been spoken
in polite phrases. The same was once true of the English of) sister. Similarly in Norwegian <he took his hat' is
you: it was the plural, politely used instead of the si.agu- Han tok sin hat, if the hat belongs to the one who took
lar thou, - a use which finds its parallel today in the it, but Han tok hans hat, if it belongs to someone else.
French vous instead of singular tu and the Russian [vi] The same distinction is made in the Slavic languages.
instead of singular [t:i]. In Italian, German, and French
the substitute-forms are almost universal, the old words A striking example of differences in classification is
for 'you' (singular), - German du, French tu, Italian furnished by the numerals. In most languages the numbers
tu, - being used only to intimates, children, and in prayer. are divided, as in English, into series of ten, the multiples
In the· plural some languages differ from ours in distin- of ten receiving analytic expression: the decimal system.
guishing two kinds of 'we', one including, the other ex- This had its origin in counting on the fingers, - an
cluding the person or persons addressed: thus, in Malay, origin plainly apparent, also, in the quinary or fives system
inclusive kita, exclusive kami. of the Arowak7 a Carib language, in which the expression
for <five' is the same as that for 'one hand', aba-tekabe,
Related to this is the expression of varieties of deixis, for <ten' as for <two hands', biaman-tekabe; that for 'fifteen'
such as the (here' and 'this', the cthere' and 'that'. In means 'one-foot-toe~' (sc. <added'), aba-maria-kutihibena,
this, too, languages differ somewhat. In the Scotch dialects while 'twenty' is 'one man', aba, li1,ku. Our peculiar words
of English three types of deixis occur: not only a (here' eleven and twelve (instead of oneteen, twoteen) may be traces
and a (there', but also a 'yonder', and not only a 'this' of a duodecimal system with which speakers of English
and a 'that', but also a 'yon'. Likewise in Latin one used may have come in contact in prehistoric times. In French
one counts from sixty twenty units to eighty: 'sixty-nine,

1

90 THE F0B¥S OF LANGUAGE EXPRESSION OF THE THREE TYPES OF UTTERANCES 91

seventy, seventy-one' are soixante-neuf, soixante-dix ('sixty- by its violence forces a sound-producing expressive move-
ten'), soixantc-on~e ('sixty-eleven'), and so on; 'eighty' is ment. The most typical instance of this is the insuppress-
quatre-vingt (four-twenties'). This is a trace of a vigesimal able cry of pain or rage. Almost as characteristic are
system, probably ·used by the prehistoric inhnbitants of the circumstances under which the primary interjections
France. At any rate, in the Basque (which probably rep- are uttered, and finally, the endless variety of expressions
resents the speech of prehistor~c times in this part of which may pe used as secondary interjections. All these
Europe), the vigesimal system prevails, though the dec- utterances, in which the dominant motive is the emotional
imal has encroached upon it. Thus 'twenty' is hogei, stress contained in the experience, are exclamatory utter-
'twenty-one' hogei-ta-bat, 'twenty-two' hogei eta bi, 'thirty' ances. We have seen that language must have had its
hogei eta hamar (twenty and ten'), and so on, while 'forty' beginning in these, since jt is a developed form of ex-
is be-ogei, 'sixty' hirur-ogei ('three twenties') and 'eighty' pressive movement (p. 9).
laur hogei ('four twenties'). Wild peoples who have little
occasion for systematic use of numbers, often have less We have also seen that there is no fixed boundary
extensive systems. Thus the Kham [t*kham] Bushmen in between an exclamatory utterance and one in which the
South Africa have a trial system, with words for 'one', emotional prompting is at a minimum and the communi-
'two', and 'three'; higher numbers are expressed by com- cation of a material content is the determining motive,
binations: 'foui, people' are 'two people, two people', 'five as in the chemist's Gold or the lawyer's Forgery (p. 76).
people' are 'two people, two people, one person', - or Most of our speech today is of the latter kind, declarative
else one simply uses the word for 'many'. utterance. Some emotional tone is, to be sure, present in
every experience,. and the minimum of emotional tone
In short, just as each language uses only. a limited set must be greatly exceeded before the experience will receive
out of the infinity of sounds possible to the human vocal loud expression, but the declarative utterance i:s al ways
organ, so each language divides the infinitely various chiefly prompted not by the emotional content itself but
experiences of life into a limited number of classes within by some material content connected with sufficient value
each of which all experiences are named by the same to bring about utterance.
expression. The classes so recogn~zed by the different
languages are, as we have just seen, very different. It Finally we have interrogative utterance, unified by the
need hardly be said that the description of the various peculiar emotional tone of doubt o:- hesitation at the ac-
experience-classes and of the sound-complexes used to ceptance of an experience into a particular spher6, In
express them, constitutes the lexicon or dictionary of a this· form also the emotionai tone may be so great that
the utterance merges with the exclamatory type, as in
language. What!? - Gold!? - Forgery!?

6. Expression of the three types of utterances. The constellation under which an axperience receives
expression always modifies the form, though it may do
There are, as we have seen, three types of psychic con- so in the most diverse ways. In English, for instance,
ditions under which speech occurs (p. 70). The simplest int(\rrogative and declarativt, utterances are distinguished
and most fundamental one is that in which an experience

1

92 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE THE PARTS OF UTTERANCES 93

not only by pitch-modulation, as in Your fathcr has go'M chapter been speaking of utterances as units and ignoring
out (even, then falling pich) and Your father has gone the fact that most of them consist of definite parts
out? (rising pitch), - see p. 51, f. - but also often by (p. 60, ff.).
word-order, as when the interrogative of the preceding is
Has your father gone out?, as well as by particular question- Many of the utterances of which we have spoken are,
words: Where is your father? (ris~ng, then falling pitch). in fact, indivisible, - for instance, Ouchi or Fire! OT
In Latin the three question-words ne, nonne, and num Goldi or in Malay the word sudara or each of the four
have no content except that of expressing the interroga- Chinese words [r<;'iuIJ1, Lti\, rtsza1, Lmel\]. They present
tive situation, and the same is true of the Slavic li, - the simple instance of a sound-complex used in its entirety
e. g. Russian [zda 'r;r va l'i vafa 'ma·t'] 'ls your mother for the expression of an expe1·ience lived through as
well?', liternlly rWell (Zi) your mother?' - and of the falling into a class with certain earlier ones.

Chinese [Lmo/]. Many other of the utterances I have quoted are, how-
On the other hand, very much the same pitch-modula- ever, more complex, containing formational elements
(p. 62). The English word fiash, for instance, is felt to
tion that with us is expressive of interrogation is in belong, on the one hand, to a group with flame, flare,
Norwegian usual in declarative utterances. Similarly, ex- flicl.'er, flimmer, on the other, with clash, crash, dash, slash,
clamatory sentences have in English a peculiar pitch- etc. This word is, to be sure, used repeatedly to express
modulation of greater range than that of other utterances, a certain type of experience; but to this value is added
but Italians use a very similar modulation for declarative another factor: it relates the experience, on the one hand,
and interrogative speech, which makes them in our ears to such as would be expressed by flame, flare, and so on,
seem to be excited when really they are not. The accom- and, on the other, to· such as would be designated by
paniment of the utterance by a primary interjection may crash, dash, slash, and the like. It does this subtly, without
also be used to express exclamatory value, as ·n Ostranger!, analytic consciousness on the speaker's part, and yet cer-
Oh, come on! The names of persons or animals used as tainly, as is shown by the peculiar feeling of pregnant
secondary interjections, to call them, have in many lan- significance (p. 79, f.). Or, to take one of several other
guages a particular form when. so used, called a vocative; instances of formationally composed words that have oc-
curred, the German gchen 'go' or ·walk' relates the ex-
e. g. Latin Fill! 'Son!' (otherwise, for instance, Ji"ilius perience, on the one side, to that of gehe in ich gehe 'I
abcst rThe son is away') or ancient Greek Pater t Father!' walk' and other similar forms, and, on the other side, to
(as opposed, for instance, to Pater open 'The father was reiten, fahren, and many others with final -en and the
meaning of general verb-forms.
away'). An action expressed exclamatorily as desired or
commanded has in many languages a particular form !or That is to say, beside expressing the classification of
this use, an imperative, as in Latin Audr,/ 'Hear!' or Dal the experience with those past experiences with which
·Give!' (as opposed, for instance, to Audls 'Thou hearest' it is unconditionally thrown into one class, these utterances
or Dare vult 'He wants to give'). at the same time imply that the experience is similar to

7. The parts of utterances. We have so far in this

1

94 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE THE PARTS OF UTTERANCES 95

a number of others, - this implication being made by such as fathers, boys, sisters and with the similar sounds
[s] and [az] iri cats, ropes and watches, peaches. 1) In fact,
a partial similarity of form. We thus obtain, beside the even the normal speaker would not need to think long
total assimilation of experiences into a single class or
word, a grouping of such single classes into larger and before he could define the common element by saying
looser classes, the 'morphologic word-classes'. The associ-
ational character of the grouping appears in the fact that that the -s expresses· plurality. Nevertheless, as the -s
we cannot, for instance, say -ash for a violent movement
or fl- for an experience of fire, and so on: these are for- cannot be used in this sense in certain words, such as
mational elements, not words (p. 62). Though the value man; deer, goose, foot, - and, further, as it could not be
- especially the emotional value - of these words is used independently in the sense, let us say, of 'several'
due very greatly to the associations which their formational
elements express, the normal speech-feeling, no matter or 'many', it is but a formational part of the expression
how often it associates these words with one another,
never stops to analyze them. Such utterances as 'flash or fires, even if a more independent part than, say, the fi-
father (p. 62), therefore, though composed of parts, are
nevertheless conceptually units. in flash.

The unity of such expressions as these may outweigh In the possessive father's the first and larger element,
the divisibility in various degrees. In the case of flare, father, has as much independence as fire in the last in-
'flash, flimmer, flicker, flame the sound-complex fl- is a stance, but the second element, -s [z], has m01·e. For,
formational element, the expression of a similarity of the beside occurring also, with the same value, in such ex-
the experiences, which can never occur alone. In fact, it pressions as boy's, king's, man's, it may even occur with
can not be added at liberty to any other utterance, but some measure of independence, as in the King of Eng-
occurs fixedly and exclusively in certain words. What is land's son and the man I saw yesterday's father. Never-
more significant still, the same sounds occur in other theless its independence is not complete. One who said
words, such as 'flow, 'float, fly, flutter, with a different value 's', meaning some such thing as 'possession' or 'belong-
entirely, or, at any rate, if there is association with our ing', would not be understood, nor is the speaker of
first set of words, in a much extended and vaguer value.
English, no matter how conscious he may be of the value
If, now, we look at an English expression, such as the
plural fires, the parts at once appear to possess a much of the possessive s as a part of the larger expressions,
greater degree of independence than in the instances so
far· mentioned. Even the normal speaker feels at once ever tempted to essay this independent use.
that the first, larger part, fire-, of the expression is iden-
tical with the singular, fire, and that the last part, -s [z], Another type of the same phenomenon is illustrated
is identical with the same sound in other expressions, by Turkish plurals, such as kullar 'slaves', evler 'houses'.
The Turkish speaker could not use -Zar or -ler alone in
some such sense as 'several', any more than the English

sp~aker could so use his -s. Moreover the vowel of this

element is a, if the preceding part of the word has a

1) Owing to the similarity of the writing and to the autom-

atism of the sound-variation, the normal speaker is not con-
iich,us of the difference between the endings [s], (z], and fez].

1
!

96 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE THE WORD: PHONETIC CHARACTER 97

back vowel, e, if it has a front vowel, - obviously an its value is not exactly the same; the expression bulldog,
indication of the unity of the whole exp'ression in the consequently, retains a considerable degree of unity; as
speaker's analysis of experience. On the other hand, side we shall see, it is technically a compoun/1 word.
by side with this dependence, there are features which
show the sound-sequence -lar or -ler to have a more in- The independence pf the parts is even greater in a
dependent value than the English plural-suffix; most im- Chinese expression such as [_r<;folJ1 Lti\J for fbrother'. The
portant among them the fact that, if the plurality is elements [r<;folJ1] and [Lti\] occur independently in the
otherwise expressed, the suffix is left off, as in dort adam respective senses of 'older brother' and cyounger brother';
'four men', not dort adamlar. the unity of the whole expression consists only in its
habitual use, with this order of the parts, in the sense
Of a different character, again, is an English expression of 'brother' or rbrothers' - a very 'loose' compound.
such· as thirteen. The transparency of the meaning, due
to the association with such forms as, on the one hand, 8. The word: phonetic character. An expression
fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, etc., ten, tenth, and, on the other, in which the independence of the parts is fully realized
three, third, thirty, makes it certain that every speaker can no longer be said to have unity in the sense of the
feels the thir- to mean the units above ten and the -teen preceding cases. The English expression older brother, for
to mean the ten. Nevertheless, no one would say inde- instance, contains two parts, older and brother, each of
pendently, thir instead of three or teen instead of ten. Yet which is used to designate a class of experiences and can
cases like sixteen, seventeen, nz'.neteen, where the first part, recur in this capacity in the most varied connections, as
six, seven, nine does occur independently, make the second in I am older, older men and my brother, Where is brother?
part so distinct in the feeling of speakers that we have younger brother. Such elements of speech, independently
come to speak of 'a girl in her teens'. The formational recurring as expressions of experiences viewed as similar,
element -teen is more nearly independent, therefore, than are, of course, words (p. 62). It will be evident from the
any we have yet analyzed out of a unified expression. foregoing illustrations of less independent elements ap-
proaching the independent use of words, that the word
If we look finally, at an English word like bulldog, is by no means a mathematically definable concept; in
there can be no question, from the outset, but that the fact it is sometimes very hard to decide what is and what
elements bull and dog are used independently. Still, there is not a word. It may be a· puzzle, even in one's own
is a reserv~tion: for bulldog does not mean 'a bull and language, to decide whether an element can or cannot be
a dog', but only a· certain kind of a dog that may be independently useJ. Does the usage in bull terrier, bull
supposed in some way to resemble a bull. The word bull pup, and a few similar instances justify us in setting up
independently used has never this meaning; it means a an adjective bull and calling bulldog two words? Probably
'bull' and not 'like a bull', - it is a noun and not an not, for all these expressions may be looked upon as
adjective. In the expression bulldog, therefore, the element compounds of uniform type, - but the point is disputable:
bull is not fully indepenrlent, for, though closely associa- a dog- fancier who spoke of 'three terriers, two fox and
ted with the independent use of the same sound-sequence, one bull' would be using bull in this sense as an inde-

'Bioomfieid, Study of Language

T

I

98 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE THE WORD: PHONETIC CHARACTER 99

pendent adjective, no different from small, large, white, or that shown by Latin versification of something like
black. 1) [karne:do] for Oarnem edo, or in English of [retfu] for
at you, show this most plainly; and it is safe to challenge
It is also clear that the unity or plurality of words anyone who does not understand a language, be it Eng-
lish or any other, to. divide the current of speech int:o
used to express a given experience must vary greatly in words. The word, in short, is a semantic, not a phonetic

different languages. vVe have seen how what a Malay ex- unit. It is only through a process uf analyzing the mean-

presses by sudara is expressed in_ Chinese by a very loose ing that people can come to distinguish the word-bound-
compound of four parts, and in English by three inde- aries, as we imperfectly do in our writing.
pendent words: brother or sister What we express by the
.vord brother, a fairly close-knit ·unit, the Chinese express Secondarily, however, every language does make some
by a compound of two parts, and the Malays by the phonetic recognition of the word: but this differs greatly
two words sttdara lakilaki. Finally, the Chinese unit [Lti\] in different languages.
would be in English two words, younger brother, and in
Malay, - where we might expect three or four words, A language which shows little phonetic recognition of
- again but one: adek. To take another example, - our word-boundaries is modern French. In a French sentence
expression 1 am eating meat, corresponds to the German there is no feature which shows where one word ends and
one of three words: lch esse Fleisch, to the Latin of two,: the next begins. The stress-accent, for instance, is not
Oarncm edo, and in Aztec to a single fairly close -knit distributed according to the words, but rests on the last
compound word: Ninakakwa. syllable of the sentence, or, in longer sentences, on the
last syllable of connected word· groups (p. 48). On account
It is especially to be observed that the unity of such of this lack of phonetic word-boundaries French has been
expres'3ions as we found above to be unified, was in no called, par excellence, 'the language of the pun. A good
way due to any phonetic peculiarity in these words. If illustration is the couplet quoted by Passy in his Petite
we found thirteen, for instance, to be a single word, this phonetique 2, page 22.. The two verses are pronounced ex-
was not due to anything in the immediate phonetic form actly alike. They each read:
of the expression, but only to the fact that thir- does not
occur independently. Likewise, where an expression con- [ga la ma. da la 'rE:n a la tur ma Jla 'ni:m];
sists of several words, phonetic observation does not reveal
any pause between them. Indeed ·such pronunciations as the word-division, however, is seen in the conventional
orthography:
1) The written form of the expressions gives, of course, no
answer, for the graphic (p. 20, f.) separation of the words is only Gal, amant de la Reine, alla, tour magnanime,
a half-conscious and unscientific attempt at answering the question
we are .here dealing with; genuine compound words may be a aGalamment de l'Arene la Tour Magne, Nimes.
found in good English printing as separate words, as hyphenated
combinations, or run together as one word, e. g. bull moose, bull· 'Gal, lover ·of the Queen, went, brave feat, gallantly from
pup, bulldog. the Arena to the Large Tower, at Nimes.' For the same
reason uneducated Frenchmen have great difficulty in sep-
arating their w )rds in writmg; Passy quotes an instance

i THE WORD: PHONETIC CHARACTER 101
I
or proclitically used haive one...of two pitch-melodies, ris-
100 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE ing or falling-rising (p. 51). Cechish has a stress-accent
regularly on the first syllable of all but enclitically used
in which [3a syi 'sa:3 a veik man mua 'zEl] 'I am being words, and Icelandic has a similar habit; Polish stresses
good with Miss (the governess)' was written by a child: almost always the next..to-last syllable of its words (p. 49).
je suisage avecmone moisel, the conventional orthography In Chinese the phonetic recognition of the word is es-
(and real word-di vision) being: Je suis sage avec Jfade-; pecially striking. Every word here consists of only one
moiselle. The one-sound utterance au [o] 'to the' is two syllable ending in vowel, [n], or [IJ], und uttered on one
words, for it is semantically composed of the fully ana- of a limited number of pitch-melodies (p. 51); the only

lyzable elements a [a] 'to' and le °[Ia] 'the', the substitu- exceptions are enclitics.
If we look beyond the single utterance, we find another
tion of au whenever they come together being a purely
phonetic automatism. set of phenomena involving phonetic recognition of word-
bounduies. These phenomena may- be described as sound-
All this is in some contrast to languages like English, variation in word-initial and word-final, and are spoken
in which nearly every word has a high stress-accent on of by the name which the grammarians of ancient India
one of its syllables (p. 49). Certain small words which gave them, sandhi. The beginning or the end of a word
lack this stress, - commonly, for instance, such words often varies phonetically according to the phonetic char-
as the, a, is, in, and (p. 49), - we call enclitics, if they acter of the preceding or the following word. In Eng-
are semantically joined to the preceding word (hasn't, let lish, for instance, the word you [juu] or [ju] when
'im), and proclitics, if to the word that follows (a rabbit, coming after a final [t] is pronounced [Ju], and- after
in speaking); they alone can offer difficulty as to the number a final [d], [3u], e. g. u;on't you, did you. We thus find
of words in a sentence. This clearness is increased by the one word occurring with three different initials, - a
fact that we use an almost entirely different set of vow- variation which does not occur within any word, and
els in unstressed syllables from that of the stressed. It therefore marks phonetically the word-boundary. The
is only the presence of stressless words that makes half- most familiar example of sandhi is the so-called 'liai-
way possible the pun which answers the question, 'What's son' of French. The word vous 'you', for instance, is
the difference between a rheumatic man and a healthy [vu] except before a word closely connected in mean-
man who lives with his parents?' by saying, 'One is well ing that begins with a vowel, where it is [vuz]; thus
at some times and has a rheumatism others, and the other vous avez 'you have' is [vu za 've] but vous faites 'you
is well at all times and has a room at his mother's'. It make' is [vu 'fat]. Such a variation without change of
will be noticed, however, that the boundary between words
is sufficiently marked by certain stress-relations to rob meaning, as th~t between [vu] and [vuz] occurs only at
such similarities of their full effect: in the latter phrase the end of words and is therefore a sign of active rec-
our stress begins to increase with the m of mother's, in ognition of the word-boundary even in French. Another
the other the m is weak and stress begins on the initial »f the many instances is the word a 'has' [a], which be-
vowel of others. There is the same difference, for instance,
between a name and an aim (p. 46).

In Norwegian and Swedish all words not enclitically

T

102 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE THE WORD: SEMANTIC CHARACTER 103

fore a semantically closely joined vowel-initial becomes are cows' but a va 'his cows'; '"' 'an egg', an tuv 'the
[at], written a-t, e. g. elle a sonne' rshe rang' [s la s~ 'ne], egg', na nttv 'of the eggs', a huv 'her egg'. This variation
but a-t-elle? 'has she?' [a 'tcJ]. The most extreme instance has semantic value in that it does not depend automati-
of the use of sandhi, at least in writing, is Sanskrit, the cally on the adjoining sounds but implies a division of
language from which the name of the phenomenon is words into classes, """"".'" ·in this instance, however, not of
taken; here the end of every word has a number of forms the words in which the variation occurs, but of the words
that appear according to the nature of the following in- that may closely precede them. A great many other se-
itial, which also is sometimes affected. Thus: deva~ pa- mantic classifications as we shall see, are expressed by
tati 'the god falls', devas tatra 'the god there', devas ca- sound-variations and affixed sounds in almost all languages:
rati 'the god wanders', deva eti c:the god goes', devo gacchati in so far as these sound-variations and affixations affect
fthe god walks', and, with change also of the following
initial, before atra 'here', devo 'tra 'the god here'. Sandhi, eithAr the end or the beginning of words, they involve,
however,· does not iniply so vivid a recognition of the of course, a recognition of the word as a unit.
word as do those features which appear in each single
utterance; for sandhi makes itself felt only when several 9. The word: semantic character. The word, then,
utterances containing the same word are taken in view,
and under these conditions the very reappearance of the is not a phonetic unit, but is to be defined as a semanti-
word already constitutes such a recognition. cally independent ·and recurrent element which can be

There is always a tendency, when a word has several dealt with as a conceptual whole. We have seen that,
sandhi-forms, that these may come to vary not in auto- in spite of this, a language may recognize within its words
matic sound-variation, according to the character of the a relation to other words of partially similar meaning.
preceding or the following sound, (as is the case in San- This relation expresses itself, as we have seen, by partial
skrit), but that the difference of form may come to imply phonetic similarity, as in fiame, fiare, fiimmer, fiash or in
some semantic difference. A transition to the latter type fiash, crash, dash, etc., or in fathers, boys, '{ires. It may,
is the French liaison, which limits the longer forms, such however, receive Iio phonetic expression, but inhere en-
as [vuz] and [at] to occurrence before words closely con- tirely in a parallelism of use, especially as to categoric
nected in sense. An instance still farther along toward distinctions, as in the plurals fathers, men, geese, children,
semantic differentiation occurs in Irish. This language or the verbs, present tense, third person singular, eats,
has a sound-variation in word-initial which, however, does is, has, may, can. Here there is no phonetic similarity
not depend upon the phonetic character of the preceding between the forms, but their function with regard to the
word-final, but arbitrarily on the preceding word; that English categories of actor and action, number, and tense
is, Irish words may be divided into a uumber of otherwise (p. 68) is in each group uniform. The formational elements,
arbitrary classes, according to the effect they have on a as we have seen, may stand in various degrees of de-
pendence, from the comparative unity of fiash, clash, and
taclosely following word-initial. Examples are: ba 'there the like; where the normal speaker is unoonscious of the
relating values, to such comparative independence as that
of the English possessive -s (p. 95), or of the members

104 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE THE WORD: SEMANTIC CHARACTER 105

of a compound like bulldog, which, in slightly dinrgent character of the word. is responsible for the inclusion of
use, occur as independent words. Semantically, the ele- objects standing in some relation to another object, for
ments can be of the most various significance, from the these, too, are qualifying elements. Here belong such
words as [iJ:u-a] 'house-his', 'his house' and [qitoRna-Ra]
almost purely emotional tinge of fl,-, cl-, -ash, -immer to 'child-mine', 'my child':. the 'he' or 'I' as possessor is, of
course, not present in the actual experience as an object;
the explicit relational value of a plural or possessive sign, all that is there present is the house or the child as-
or the material explicitness of the elements of compounds sociatively standing out as 'his' or 'my' possession: the
such as bulldog. inclusion in the same word is, therefore, concretely jus-
tified. This is true also of such w9rds as [kia-gu-n:eq]
Different languages vary, of course, widely in the mean- 'heat-suffering-result', 'perspiration', - for here the heat
ings of the formational elements into which imperfect and the suffering are not objects figuring in the experi-
analysis divides a word. The greatest complexes of se- ence, but are associatively presented features of the 're-
mantic elements in single words are found in the attribut- sult'. Our abstract relational words, finally, are, of course,
ing languages, where every word is an object-expression by no means found in such a language,. where the relation
(p. 64). For here the expression of experiences of action is expressed as an associative feature of the object. Thus
and quality cannot dissociate these elements from objects; our 'in' appears in [nuna-me] 'land-in', 'in the land', our
one cannot say 'white' but only 'white-rabbit' (as a single 'across' in [nuna-k:ut] 'land-across', 'across the land', and
word) or, at best 'white-thing', and cannot express 'runs' our conjunction 'when' in such a form as [tuawioR-toR-
or 'running' except in 'rabbit's-running' or 'running- s{uo-!:u-ne aneRlaRpoq] 'hurry-using-very-when-his he-re-
rabbit' (again, as a single word) or, at best, in 'he-runs', turns', i. e. 'hurrying very much, he goes home'.
'running-thing', 'his-running'. Consequently, any expres-
sion of quality ·or action must be in a word containing In many languages which, like our own, are not con-
these elements together with that of an object. We find fined to this objective expression, we find, nevertheless,
such words, therefore, as the Greenlandish [tusaRp-a-Ra] frequent inclusion of several partly analyzed elements
'hearing-bis-mine', that is, '1 hear him': the action is viewed under one word. It is possible that extended investigation
as an object possessed by the actor and by the object will determine that these features are always, as they
affected, or, to put it more justly, the actor is expressed surely sometimes are, traces of an older objective habit
as an object possessing the action. Similarly, where qual-
ity is to be expressed, it appears as an element of the of expression.
word which also expresses the object that has the qual- The inclusion of qualities of an object in one word
ity; thus 'liar' (or 'he is a liar', cf. p. 64) is [saJ:uto:q],
'big liar' [sa!:uto:qaoq]. Only an object-experience can be with the object, as in the Greenlandish [~a!:uto:-qaoq] 'liar-
independently expressed, as in [qiin:eq] 'dog' (or 'it is a big', 'bigliar', appears in rdiminutive', 'augmentative', 'pe-
dog'). All this corresponds, as we have seen, to the con- jorative' and similar formations, as in the Italian sorellina
crete facts of outer experience, where we never meet qual- 'little sister' beside sorella 'sister', librone rbig book' be-
ities or actions apart from objects. The same objective aide libro 'book', tempaccio 'nasty weather' beside ·tempo

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106 THE FORMS Ol!1 ·LANGUAGE THE WORD: SEMANTIC CHARACTER 107

'weather', or the German Mannchen or Mannlein 'little The verb, like the adjective, is in English an independ-
man' beside Man,i 'man', compare our manikin. Such
forms are common in many languages, especially the ent word, inclusive of the action:meaning only; sing or
Romance, Slavic, and Baltic (Lithuanian). The value,
especially as to emotional tone, of these formations is differ- sings or sang does not express the actor, even though the
ent enough from that of the analytic· expression by means first two of these forms can occur only with certain actors.
of adjective and noun to prevent interference. Much rarer In Italian canta can be used as well as egli canta to include
are compounds whose elements correspond to adjective the actor: 'he sings'; in Latin and many other languages
and noun, like the Sanskrit maha-dhanam 'big-booty'. this is the regular usage, there being no other way of saying
Such compounds are almost equal to the analytic ex- 'he sings' than the one-word expression cantat; the verb,
pression, mahad dhanam 'big booty'. The only difference, in other words, does not occur independently of an ob-
in fact, lies in the very slight tone of unity expressed ject-element, namely that of the actor. When we say in
by the fixed order of the members and by the non-in- Latin Puella cantat 'The girl sings', the latter word ex-
flection of the one element, as in the plural maha-dhanani presses the idea not only of 'sings', but also of an actor,
'big-booties', opposed to the two-word mahanti dhanani 'she-sings', more exactly defined by puella. This resembles
'big booties'. The presence of genuine adjectives, which the expressions of an objective language, like the Green-
tend to be awakened in the production of the sentence, landish [takuwa:] 'seeing-of-him-his', 'he sees him', which
is the cause for the rarity of these forms. These genuine reappears in its entirety even where the actor is specific-
adjectives are themselves probably sprung from nominal ally expressed: [qim:ip takuwa:] 'to-the-dog seeing-of-
expressions. In the oldest scientifically attainable stage him-his', 'the dog sees him'.
of English, Primitive Indo-European, the value of such
an adjective as 'white', for instance, seems to have been Inclusion of objects in some relation to other objects
'white-person' or 'white-thing' as often as the present
purely qualitative meaning. Thus in Latin, which is is also common. It appears most of all in compound words.
another historic descendant of Primitive Indo-European,
adjectives are frequently used as substantives. So bonus, Thus bulldog includes in one word with the object 'dog'
bona, bonum mean not only 'good', but also, respectively, the other object to which the dog stands in an associative
'good man', 'good woman', 'good thing' or ·'blessing'; relation, here that of resemblance; similar instances are
juvenis means both 'young' and 'young man, youth'; sa- sofa-cushion, pay-day, schoolboy, and the like. In many
piens both 'wise' and 'wise man', and so on; this appears languages we find pronominal elements expressing these
aJso in some of the Latin adjectives borrowed in English, Telational object-ideas; so, especially, in the Semitic langua-
as German, Italian both noun (person of this nationality) ges, e. g. Egyptian Arabic duliib-i 'my cup~oard', dul-
and adjective, - but not so the native English forms, ab-oh 'his cupboard', dulab-ha 'her cupboard', dulab-hum
such as English, Danish, which are adjectives only. 'their cupboard', and so on, like the Greenlandish [qitoRna
-Ra] 'my child'.

The abstract relational elements, finally, which pertain
to an object, are very extensively found formationally
combined with it. The extreme of this is seen in the
Uralic languagrs, as in F;nnish, for instance, which has

1

108 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE WORD-CLASSES 109

twelve 'cases' expressing local relations, such as the 'in- a given material formational element, as boy, boy's, boys,
essive', e. g. silmi:i-ssii 'in the eye', the fadessive' silma-lla boyish, boyishly. Where a relational element expresses a
•by the eye', the fablative' silmii-ltii 'from the eye', the categoric distinction, it is the basis of a class, even though
'comitative' silmii-ne along with the eye', and so on. The it has no uniform expression. Thus the English plurals
case-forms of the more familiar languages are in part just quoted are only a smaller class within a larger one
of this type; in Latin, for instance, there are a number I containing also such forms as knives, houses, men, geese,
of locutions in which the case-form expresses the object feet, children, oxen, etc., which have not the same plural-
together with a relational element. So especially the fab- formation and, in some cases, not even the final -s, but
lative of means': manu 'by hand', lacte vivunt 'by means fulfil the same function with regard to the grammatical
of milk they live'. Less common in Latin are forms like
Romae fat Rome', Romam fto Rome', Gallia 'from Gaul'. categories of the language.
The genitive or possessive case is another example: John's, We find, however, other word-classes which are not
as in John's hat, expresses the possessive relation in par-
tial analysis in one word with the object-element, John. expressed by formational similarity at all, but seem to
But, as we have seen (p. 95), the analysis is almost equal go back, none the less, to emotional associations of the
to that into a separate word, for we can use such turns speakers. The well-known three 'genders' of nouns in
of speech as the man I saw yesterday's father. Even here German, Latin, and Greek, or the two of French and Dano-
the use of the independent word of expressing the re- Norwegian are an example. To only a minimal extent do
lation is more freque~t: we say not the table's legs but these agree with any perceptual reality, such, for instance,
the legs of the table. The relational element of number, as animal sex. Thus in German two nouns for 'woman' will
also, is in niost languages included in the object-expression, be found in different genders: die Frau 'feminine' gender,
as in boy: boys, man: men. A language in which this is das Weib fneuter' gender; similarly, of men: der Mann
not the case is Chinese. Here a word like [r3AD/] 'man, 'the man', fmasculine' gender and die Schildwache 'the
men, people' expresses only the object, not its number; sentry', 'feminine' gender, das Mannchen cthe little man',
only if the number is a vivid element in the experience, fneuter'; sexless objects appear equally in all three gen-
is it expressed, and then by an independent word. ders; der Tisch 'the table', is 'masculine', die Tiir 'the door',
is 'feminine', and das Fenster 'the window' is 'neuter'.
10. Word-classes. Partial analysis, such as just de- Similar are the 'animate' and cinanimate' genders of many
scribed, is due to association of experiences with others American languages, or the dozen and more gender-classes
like them. Consequently, we may say that the words of certain African languages.
containing a given formational element fall into a class.
Thus those English nouns which express, by means of Naturally, we cannot expect the associational habits of
speech-communities, which underlie these morphologic
an element -s, plural number in addition to the object- classifications, to coincide with the results of conscious
scientific study of the universe. The noun-genders are
content, form a class, e. g. boys, fathers, rabbits, stones, an example of this. Another instance is furnished by the
trees, fires, eggs, etc. Or, again, all the words containing English action-words. In these we make no distinction

T
I

110 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE THE SENTENCE 111

between the performance of an action, as in .I eat, I walk, or is apperceived as the substratum of an action (The
I write, and the undergoing of a sensational process, as rabbit runs across the field, The rabbit is being chased).
in J hear, I see. Our expression seems everywhere to
correspond to the former type of occurrence. In other The explicit predication of quality or action is impossi-
languages, such as Greenlandish, the second type is gener- ble for languages in which every word expresses an ob-
alized; one says, in accordance with reality, [takuwa:]
'appearing-of-it-to-him' i. e. 'he sees it', but also [tukaRpa:] ject (p. 64). In these languages the sentence consists of
'stamping-of-it.to-him', i. e. 'he stamps on it, tramples
it', where the Ehglish type of expression is more appropri- one or more object-words. Each of these, since it can
ate. In Georgian both types exist: one very justly says occur alone as a sentence, is capable of expressing what
[v-t?ser] 'I-write' and, differently, [m-e-smi-s] 'me-to-sound- we look upon as a predication; any series of them, conse-
ing-is', i. e. 'sound comes to me', 'I hear'. Yet, as we quently, contains no expression as to where the predica-
must in such cases expect, the distinction is by no means tion lies. These words, then, are sentence-words. The
carried through· with scientific correctness; seeing, for Greenlandish [qim:eq] thus can mean 'dog' or 'It is a
instance, is viewed as if it were an activity, not a sen- dog', [sa!:uto:qaoq] 'big liar', 'He is a big liar', or 'He
sation: [v-naxav] 'I-see'. lies very much', and so on.

The phase of linguistics which studies these classes, - In contrast with this stands such a language as English,
that is, the structure of words, - is morphology. in which the existence of independent action-words and
quality-words removes all obstacles to the expression of
11. The sentence. When the analysis of experience predication. Among such languages, also, there are, howev-
arrives at independently recurring and therefore separate- er, a great many differences. Latin, for instance, presents
ly imaginable elements, words, the interrelations of these some features that remind one of the nominal languages.
in the sentence appear in varied and interesting linguistic Its verb always includes expression not only of the action,
phenomena. Psychologically the basis of these interrela- but also of the acting object. Accordingly, predication
tions is the passing of the unitary apperception from one can in Latin also be expressed in one word, - a sentence-
to the other of the elements of an experience (p. 60, f.). word, - even though only a limited portion of the words,
The leading binary division so made is into two parts, the verbs, can be so used: cantat 'he, she, it sings', edo
1mbject and predicate, each of which may be further ana- 'I eat', and so on. Where a quality-word, - an adjective,
lyzed into successive binary groups of attribute and sub- - forms the predicate, there is often no difference be-
ject, the attribute being felt as a property of its subject. tween predication and attribution. Thus magna eu,lpa means
Th_e subject of the sentence is analyzed out of the total either r(a) great fault' (attributing adjective) or '(The)
experience as the substratum, more or less permanent, fault (is) great' (predicating adjective). Russian makes
and, owing to earlier experiences, the relatively familiar this distinction by using different forms of the adjective;
element, which in the predicate receives definition (The thus, in [mu'3i·k 'b' e·i'in] the adjective is the predicate:
rabbit is an animal) or description (The rabbit is whi-te), '(The) peasant (is) pvor', and in ['b'ei'dni mu'3i·k] it is
an attribute: '(the) poor peasant'. English has gone farther.
It expresses predication only and always by means of the

I

i

112 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE THE SENTENCE 113

verb; where no action is involved, the abstract verb is, such classes. Thus the quality-word [Lxoo/] appears as
expressive only of the relation of predication (in the form attribute in [Lxa.o;r0.A.n/] 'good man' and as predicate in
of an action), is used (p. 67, ff.); we cannot say fault great ('"t'a.1 Lxa.o/] 'He (is) good'. The action-words [Lmas/] 'buy'
or peasant poor but only The fault is great, The peasant and [Lmas\J 'sell' appear as attributes (where we in English
is poor. Moreover, the English verb does not, like the should have to use verbal adjectives 'buying', 'selling') in
Latin, include the expression of an acting object: we cannot [LmaE/ Lma&\ r0m/] 'a trader, merchant', and so on. In the
say sings or eat, but only He sings, I eat, - so that no modern speech there are also the independent words frti1]
sentence-word exists. and [Ja\] which independently express the r.elations, re-
spectively, of attribution and predication; thus one can
By thus confining the function of predication to our say also ~xa.o/ ti r0An/] 'good (attribution) man', and
action-words and that of subject to our object-words, we [rt'a.1 ti Lma.o·J 'he (attribution) hat', 'his hat', and [Lma6/
have produced the syntactic categories of action and Lmas\ ti r0.rnj] 'trader', as well as [rfa.1 fa Lxao/] 'He
actor (p. 68). If, now, it happ~ns that the subject of a (predication) good', almost exactly our 'He is good'.
total experience is not an object, but an action, this action
cannot be expressed by a verb, but must be put in the The process of analyzing an experience may be tem-
form of a noun. This is the function of our abstract porarily interrupted by the associative addition of ele-
nouns, such as skating in Skating strengthens the ankles. ments viewed as entering into the same discursive relation
Similarly, if the subject of the statement is really a quality, as some one of the original elements. As well as we say
no genuine quality-word (adjective) can be used, but only He is a good student, we can include other attributes of stu-
an abstract noun of quality, such as length in The length dent suggesting themselves as parallel to good: He is a
of the wall was two miles. When the predicate does not good, intelligent, industrious student. Such groups are call-
really involve an action, we have seen that the abstract ed serial groups. It is possible that they represent a
verb is fulfils the predicative function. Attribution is specialized, automatized form of the discursive relation.
always expressed by adjectives with nouns, by adverbs They are especially common in English and the languages
with verbs. Hence the use of nominal and verbal adjec- most closely related to it; we say John and Mary ran
tives and adverbs when an object or an action is attrib- rather than John ran, Mary ran, but this condensed habit
utive: a boyish man, he spoke boyishly, skating boys, he of' expression is not everywhere so common.
spoke drawlingly. For attributive occurrence of objects
we have, however, also our possessive form: John's hat. While the sentence has its foundation in the discursive
analysis, other forces also play a part in determining its
The categoric distinction between these 'parts of form. Most important of these are perhaps the emotional
speech', - verbs, nouns, and so on, - is by no means relations of the elements. The relations of emotional
a necessary attendant of independent words for quality stress find expression especially in the modulation of
and action. Chinese, for instance, also has such words, loudness (p. 50). In addition to this, however, they affect
[e.g. [Lxa.o/] 'good' or [Lma6/] 'buy', - but the functions the sentence in various ways in different languages. A
of subject, predicate, attribute are not confined to any method in English, for instance, is to ·plaec the emotion-

Bloomfield, Stud7 of Language

.i

r

114 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE THE SENT ENCE 115

ally dominant element1) in some way out of its usual Thus, as we have seen, the concrete relation of an actor
position, preferably first or last. Thus He came last is performing an action has in English furnished the uni-
turned into Last came he. This inversion can be effected versal form for the sentence. When, for instance, the
also by making the dominant element predicate of an subject is not an actor but the goal (object affected) of
introductory sentence: It was he who came last, It was an action, we make it actor-subject of the abstract verb
last that he came, It was me they beat. The introductory is and use in the predicate a verbal adjective denoting
words are here entirely abstract and are spoken with the quality of something that has undergone an act10n.
very low stress, so that phonetically t~e dominant element Thus we say He is hurt, The rabbit was killed, The house
practically comes first. This construction is the regular was being built. For su.ch locutions Latin has special verb-
one, as we shall see, in some languages. forms, the rpassive', which express an action as being
undergone, allowing the object affected to be expressed
The material or concrete relations between the elements as actor: Domus struebiitur 'The house was being built'.
of a sentence may also play a part in its structure. These Where there is no actor at all, we use in English a purely
relations are, of course, endless in variety, and their formal word: It is raining, It was four years ago.
linguistic expression is scarcely less manifold; we are
interested, however, only in those cases where such a Another concrete relation which we feel as entirely
concrete ·relation receives some other expression than unique is that of the goal or object am~cted of an action
that of the underlying discursive construction. Such Originally this seems _to have been an ordinary attribute
specialized expression of concrete, non-discursive relations of the predicate verb. In Latin, as in Old English, there
is of course, always a sequence of words that once stood are two case-forins of nouns used in this way: the 'accu-
only in discursive relation but then became mechanized sative' for the object fully affected and the 'dative' for
in the particular use. Are the two words in Rome in dis- the object less fully affected. Thus in Pater fi,lw Ubrum
cursive relation? Which is attribute, which subject? We dat 'the father gives the son a book', librum is in the
cannot answer: for our feeling the relation is simply this, 'accusative' filio in the 'dative' case. In present English
that in expresses a local inclusion with regard to Rome. these distinctions of word-form are almost entirely lost.
Our feeling is due to the fact that this type of expression Nevertheless the expression of these relations has remained
has become mechanized: we reel it off without entering a thing by itself. The object fully affected follows the
upon the discursive analysis, which, when ·such locutions verb; that less fully affected either stands between the
were first used, was vividly present. two or is viewed as in prepositional (local) relation: this
latter usage amounts to an analysis of the relation of
1) The term 'psychological (as opposed to the 'logical' or object less fully affected into an independent word. Thus
tgra.mmatical') subject', used in this meaning by many writers, we say either The father gives the son a book or The father
is to be avoided as confusing. There is nothing more tpsycho- gives a book to the san. In Chinese also the object fully
logical' about an emotionally dominant element than about the affected has a constr 1ction all its own: while all other
subject of a discuriive analysis, and 'subject' ia a discursive. attributes precede their subject, the object affected follows
not an emotional concept.

T
!

11.6 THE FORMS OF IANGUAGE THE SENTENCE 117

its action-word. Thus [Lwo/ Lp'a\ rfa1] 'I fear him', (:ta1 head'. Here the verb he'leske 'He-drew' has, beside the
u>"a\ Lwo/] 'He fears me'. The object less fully affected object fully affected pharos, the attributes apo foff', an
has a different expression, which, however looks like a adverbial word, and the case-form, of ablative v&.lue,
specialized form of the preceding: a few action-words take keph<iles "from-the-head'. Later such combinations of ad-
it as their goal, forming a phrase which then as attribute verbial word and case-form became habitual and were
precedes the main action-word of the sentence. For in- crystallized into a standard expression of the concrete
stance [rfa, Lke'f/ Lyvo/ Lsmj\ rcc;ie/ Lli/] 'He sends me local relations with regard to objects: apo kephales ffrom
festival-presents' (more literally: "He, giving me, sends the head'. The same occurred in English, and even today,
festival-presents'). Here [rt' a1], the subject, is followed by when our case-forms are practically lost, such phrases
the predicate, in which [Lkeij Lwo/] is an attribute com- are our regular expression for local relations: from Corinth,
posed of the action-word [Lke'ij] 'give' followed by its f,o Rome, from his head, into the fields. Thus we obtain
. object affected, [Lwo/] fl'. This two-word attribute, accord- the collocation of preposition plus noun which would be
ing to the general principle, precedes its subject [Lsmj\], entirely inexplicable on the basis of the purely discursive
an action-word meaning fsend', which is followed by its relations from which history shows it has grown. In Chinese
object affected [rcc;ie/ Lli/], in which the former word similar phrases have a very different origin. One can there
ffestival' is an attribute of the latter fpresents'. say [rtfa.1 Ltao, rt'fon/ Lli/ Lcify\] 'He goes into the fields',
but it would perhaps be more literal to translate 'He,
Coming, finally, to our English preposition-groups, entering (the) fields' interior, goes'; For the central ele-
with which we began as an example of crystallized con- ment of the predicate is here [Leef y\], preceded by its
crete relations, we may seek their origin in older con- attribute of three words, which consists of the action-word
structions of attribution. Local relations are always, con-
cretely, relations with regard to objects; we find them, G.to.o\] fenter' followed by its object fully affected [ri!'1en/
accordingly, in many languages expressed by case-forms
of object-words, as in the Latin Fugit Corintho fHe-flees Lli/J 'fields' interior'.
from-Corinth', ('ablative' case), Ilomam venit ('He-comes Of similar nature are our words the and a. The relation
to-Rome' ('accus~tive' case), the Sanskrit parvate ti#hati
fOn-the-mountain he-stands' ('locative' case) prayacchati of the to rabbit in the rabbit or of a in a rabbit is scarcely
savyena fHe-hands-out with-(his)-left-(hand)' ('instrumen- the regular discursive one of attribution. Originally the
tal' case); com pare also the Finnish case-forms on p. 108. word the was probably a deictic word similar to our that:
This purely attributive usage is still seen in a later stage, it was used attributively with a noun; in time, however,
when there come into use set phrases of certain adverbial it came to be used anaphorically (of objects not actually
attributive words with these case-forms of nouns. Thus. present, but of those which had been mentioned or were
otherwise specifically known), until today the use of the
to take an example from Ancient Greek, we find such is a peculiar and categoric expression of d.efiniteness of
sentences as Kephales apo pharos heleske fFrom-(his)-head an object. Likewise, a, an was originally the numeral
'one', attributively used. It came in time to be used when-
off the-cloak he-drew', fHe drew the cloak from his ever only one object was meant and the definite tlie could

118 THE FORMS OF LANGUAGE THE SENTENCE 119

not be used. Today, in consequence, we have three syn- interpreted into them, - for any feeling for this historic-
tactic categories affecting nouns: every object must be ally un<lerlying relation has long ago disappeared. The
spoken of either as definite (at least with the), or as in- preposition to, by the same token, has here become an
definite (at least with a), or as collective, without the abstract relational element, expressing the relation between
article, as in Man wants but little . . . or Men are easily the two verb-forms; its independent value can be seen in
moved by such things. This is in contrast with most lan- such expressions as He doesn't want to.
guages. In Latin, for instance, homo means 'the man',
'a man', or 'man', and such attributes as ille 'that' or These peculiar developments, beyond predication and
unus 'one' or quldam 'some' are used only where such attribution, of the sentence-relations of a language, are,
elements are actually and vividly present in the experience; of course, an important part of its syntax. The descrip-
they stand, then, in regular attributive relation to their tion of typical cases could be greatly expanded. The
noun. principle, however, is everywhere the same: the discur-
sive relations of predication and attribution, which are
As a last example I shall cite our 'infinitive' verb-forms. inherent in the formation of the sentence, lie at the basis
These express the action as complement of another pre- of all set locutions in which the material content becomes
ceding ve1·b, e.g. I shall go, He can speak, You must write dominant. While a Chinese speaker, on reflection, will
a letter, 1 want to forget it, They tried to deceive us, - the realize that rfields' in the above sentence (p. 117) is the
relation between the two verbs being in many instances object affected by the action-word 'enter', - for the word
expressed by the word to. This form of expression would [Ltao\] can thus occur in a sentence without any other
baffle all attempts at reducing it to terms of attribution action-word, as the central element of the predicate: [rt'a1
or predication. But it was not always so. In the older Ltao\ rf'i.en/ Lli/] 'He enters the fields', - he would per-
forms of English the infinitive is a verbal noun, compa~ haps have difficulty in appreciating the relation of 'enter'
rable to those we now use in -ing (as skating), occurring to 'go' as the regular attributive relation of his language,
most frequently in two case-forms, an accusative, e. g. just as an English speaker would undoubtedly be at a
Old English bindan 'to bind' and a dative case, Old loss, were we to require him to explain in terms of attri-
English bindanne, bindenne. The accusative form was used
as the object fully affected of a verb; thus I shall go, for bution and predication, the relations of the words in He
instance, meant originally 'I owe going' and was parallel
to such expressions as 'I owe money'. The dative form, goes into the fields. In short, the change of language pro-
after the preposition to, was used like any other noun duces such relation-words as our prepositions, with the
with a preposition (see above), such a sentence as He simple and direct forms of expression which they make
went to eat meaning 'He went to eating', parallel to 'He possible, out of the concrete, cumbersome habits of an
went to London'. The scheme of these expressions has older time. This change is at the same time a develop-
long ago, however, become so automatized that they are ment of the mind: the conceptual values of our words
used where the original discursive relation could not be of quality, action, and relation would be impossible with-
out these words (p. 65), just as the latter can exist only
as the result of a definite mental-linguistic develo·pment.

CHAPTER V. MORPHOLOGIC CLASSIFICATION BY SYNTACTIC USE 121

MORPHOLOGY. division is due to the existence of syntactic categories, -
in English mainly to that of actor and action. The Eng-
1. The significance of morphologic phenomena. lish parts of speech received some mention in the last
The morphologic classes of a. la:1gnage represent communal chapter, where our classification of noun, verb, and ad-
associative habits: they express the associative connections jective was spoken of. The classification may in its entirety
which the national mental life of a. people has made be described as follows:
between the types of experience which the language ex-
presses in words. Thus we in English find some connec- a) The verbs express an action (1 eat, they danced) or
tion between flare and flash, between father and mother, another element viewed as such (he is). Their distinctive
between boys and stones. Every formational element characteristics are several. They always form the nucleus
common to a number of words involves a grouping of the predicate; predication cannot be expressed in any
together of these words on the basis of what to the com- other way in the English language. The actor, real or
munity has appealed as a common element in the ex- formally viewed as such, must always be explicitly men-
periences expressed by these words. The classifications tioned with the verb. Nearly every verb expresses by its
of language are, in fact, the clearest expressions of the form the time, pres~nt or past, of the action. In the
associations made by the community as a whole. They present-time forms most verbs vary according to the
are, accordingly, of great ethnologic significance. This number and person of the actor, in that a third-person
significance is increased by the fact that they are far less singular actor requires a special form: J, we, you, they
subject to reflection than other communal activities (such eat, but he, she, it eats.
as religion) and are never, in any but thE? most highly
cultured communities, modified by such reflection. The only exception to all this is the non-committal or
infinitive verb-form, e. g. eat in I shall eat this apple. This
2. Morphologic classification by syntactic use form expresses the action apart from any actor. It can
(Parts of speech). The first kind of morphologic word- be used only in exclamatory utterance, where it serves
class of which we shall speak, - and it is in many as a command (Eat!), and as a supplement to another
languages the most fundamental, - is really a syntactic verb (p.118). The infinitive differs from the present-tense
phenomenon. It is the division into parts of speech. This form in only one verb: be (present tense: we are); it is
lacking in several others (can, may, shall, will).

Verbs are modified by adverbs (see below).
b) The nouns express an object-experience, be it really
such (stone, house, man) or viewed as such (skating, length,
greenness). They are distinguished by a number of char-
acteristics from verbs (e. g. they cannot express predi-
cation) and from the other parts of speech. They express
the actor or the objects affected by an action (The man
gave his son a book), as well as that to which something

122 MORPHOLOGY r

is equated or under which it is subsumed by the predi• MORPHOLOGIC CLASSIFICATION BY SYNTACTIC USE 123
cation (He is a merchant, The whale is a mammal). They
can stand in attribution to other nouns only when in written?, He had arrived. Like the verbal nouns, the
their possessive form (the man's hat). Nearly every noun verbal adjectives can be followed by expression of the
shows by its form whether one or more than one of- the objects affected, as in several of the above examples.
objects is intended. The nouns are modified by the attrib-
utive nouns already mentioned, by adjectives, and by A few of our adjectives may be said to form a sub-class
attributively used pronouns, among which the and a, an in that they can be used in the predicate only: He is
are especially frequent, owing to certain syntactic habits asleep, awake; The ship ran aground.
of the language (p.117, f.), and they are used in set phrases
with prepositions (p. 117). The constrast with verbs is d) The pronominal words are unified by their relational
thus complete. value, personal, deictic, anaphoric, numeral, etc.; in their
syntactic use they can be divided into a number of sub·
This contrast is, however, less in the verbal nouns classes. They are used to express actor or objects a.ifected
(ending in -ing) which express what is usually looked (He gave me it) or, in the predfoate, that relational element
upon as an action (e. g. skating in Skating strengthens th.e
ankles), for these verbal nouns can, like a verb, be follow- to which something is equat.,d (Is it L It is mine), -
ed by mention of the objects affected: Giving them alms
is no remedy, I am tired of hearing him grumble. differing in these uses from nouns in that they never are
attributively modified by adjectives, though some of them
c) The adjectives express a quality (green, large, long) are so modified by other pronouns. They are used, further,
or what is viewed as such (growing, burning, boyish). as attributive modifiers of nouns and of other pronoulis
They can be used to express neither predication nor action, (the man, this man, three men, the other), but differ in
actor, or objects affected, but stand only in attribution this use, as well as in the predicate, from adjectives in
with nouns or, in the predicate, as qualities predicated that they always precede the latter when both are present
of the subject (The man is good). Beside the usual form (three good men, the old house). Some pronouns occur in
they have two variations which express a superior and the nominal uses only (who, I, mine), these and a few
a superlative degree of a quality (better, best). Adjectives others (what) are never modified by another preceding
are modified attributively by adverbs. pronoun; two, the and a, never occur in the nominal, but
only in the modifying uses. While less homogeneous as
A peculiar variety of adjectives are the verbal adjecti- to syntactic use, then, than the other parts of speech,
ves or participles, which express as. a quality what is the pronouns, taken together, yet constitute as distinct
usually viewed as an action, e.g. a running boy, 1.woken a class as any, owing to their peculiar meaning and to
toys. These verbal adjectives are used in set phrases with their resistance to material modifying elements.
the verbs is, has, to express durative and perfeotic manner
of action (see below, p. 145), as in I am reading a book, e) The adverbs attributively express the circumstances
He was dreaming, I have written him a letter, Have you of qualities and actions, such as pla;,ce (here, there, where),
time (then, yesterday, afterwards), degree (more, 'Oery),
manner (rapidly, slowly, kindly), and the like. They alone
, have the function of modifying adjectives and, in a direct
sense, verbs. As in the case of adjectives, their form may

124 MORPHOLOGY f

express a superior or superlative degree of the experience MORPHOLOGIC CLASSIFICATION BY SYNTACTIC ITSE 125
(kindlier, kindliest) but no other relations.
nyms to introduce even the slightest confusion. Such
f) Prepositions express a relation, usually spatial, with homonyms as wood (noun) and would (verb), for instance,
regard to an object. Accordingly, they are used only could be confused only in the dream-world of Alice in
with nouns or with nominally used pronouns, preceding Wonderland. The noun wood occurs with preceding ad-
them and their modifiers in a unique construction, the jectives, prepositions, and pronominal modifiers, in the
set phrase of preposition plus noun (p. 117). function of actor, object affected, or predicate noun; the
verb would, expresses only and always a predication, must
g) The conjunctions express relations between coordi- be accompanied by mention of an actor, is modified by
nate parts of speech and between predications. Subordi- adverbs only, and is followed by an infinitive supplement.
nating conjunctions express a relation of time, condition, Even where the homonymy is significant, corresponding
cause, and the like (when, if, because, though) with regard to some resemblance of semantic content, as in the case
to a predication. Thus they relate a predication, as a of stone, noun in a stone, verb in they stone him, and ad-
jective in a stone gate, the same distinctions hold true,
whole, subordinately to another predication (When he saw and a single syntactically joined word will show which
of the homonyms is present: all that is necessary to show
the house, he ... J. Coordinating conjunctions express that the noun is meant is the modifier a, the verb is at
once identified by a preceding actor, and the adjective
serial relations of all kinds (and, or, but, both ... and, ei- by a following subject. In short such homonymy never
ther ... or). Externally, this function involves their appear- obscures the boundaries between these classes, as it well
ing between coordinate words, phrases, and predications. might, were they less clearly drawn; thus one is never

h) Interjections (of the primary type) are, of course, tempted to confuse house [haosJ noun and house [haoz]
opposed to all the other classes of words, in content, use,
and form. verb, or gun, bullet, arrow, nouns and shoot verb, in spite
of the corresponding homonymy in stone. Likewise there
The most striking circumstance about this classification is no confusion between adverb and preposition in spite
is that the normal speaker is utterly unconscious of it. of such homonymy as that of in, preposition (in the house)
It requires a considerable degree of mental training and and in, adverb (He walked in); no confusion between prep-
even of linguistic habit of thought before one can by osition and conjunction in spite of the homonymy of
introspection analyze these classes. And yet they are used after, preposition (after the meal) and after, conjunction
correctly every day by millions of speakers who would 1 afler they had gone). For instance, the conjunction cor-
be utterly incapable of making such an introspective anal· responding to in would never be expressed as in, no
ysis, and perhaps even of understanding it, if it were matter how ignorant the speaker, but would be while,
made for them. With all the complexity of the classifi- during, or the like; and the adverb corresponding to after
cation, confusion between the different parts .of speech would (in spite of homonymy of adverb and preposition
never occurs. This is a most important fact, especially in such cases as in) never be after, but always afterwards
in view of the unconscious natnre of the habits, and one
which could be illustrated by many features of English
usage. It is attested, for instance, by the failure of homo-

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126 MORPHOLOGY CLASSIFICATION BY CONGRUENCE 127

or then. In short, the classification into parts of speech, cate, attribute its subject. Example: [ff a1 Lxao/ r3.A.D/] 'he
good man', to be.taken as subjeat and predicate, the latter
though not appearing in the phonetic form of the single consisting of an attribute and its subject, i. e. 'He is a
word, is as <listinct as any other classification in the good man'. Other examples have occurred earlier in this
language. Self-explanatory and self-understood as it seems book (p. 113).
to us when once we are made conscious of its existence,
it is by no means universal in linguistic expression. In Within this first class of words a subdivision can be
fact, the parts of speech used in English occur in only made between intransitive and transitive words. The object
affected by a transitive word follows it (in opposition to
a limited number of languages. In Chinese, for instance, the usual rule of attribute-subject), e. g. [rfu1 rfuo1 Lpe'i./
as we have seen (p. 112, f.), a word, no matter whether it rc9i:g1 Lxuu\] (He speaks North-capital language'. The word
[Lxua\], for instance, is intransitive, and could never, like
expresses object, quality, or action, is externally treated [rfuo1], be followed by the expression of an object affected.
alike, and may express subject, predicate, or attribute; Other examples will be found on pages 116, 119, 126.
thus we saw on p. 113 the word [Lxuo/] egood' (quality) The words of the transitive class thus resemble some of
as attribute and as predicate, and the words [Lma6/ Lmas\] our verbs (or, again, our prepositions, see page 117); but
(buy' and (sell' (action) as attributes; as predicate they the resemblance is distant, for the Chinese transitive
appear in SUCh Sentences as [Lmas/ rji/ Lprn/ rfu1] (buy One words by no means, as we have seen, either occur only
volume book', i. e. rbuy a book'. Similarly the action- as predicates or monopolize this function; further they
word [rfuo1] (speak' appears as predicate in (f{ Ul rfuol alone can, by definition, be followed by expression of
Lpe)'.j rc9i:g1 Lxua'] (He speaks North-capital (Peking) lan- objects affected, whereas in English this is exactly the
guage', but as subject in [rt a1 Lpe'ij rc9i:g1 LXUU\ rfuo1 fa feature in which verbal nouns and adjectives (p.122, f.) com-
_xuo/] (His North-capital language speaking is good', i. e. pete with verbs; and our verbs, on the other hand, can by
(He speaks the Peking language well', where we must no means all of them take an object affected.
translate the uniform [rfuo1] by a verb in the one case,
where it is predicate, and by an abstract noun of action The other part of speech consists of words not subject
in the second, where it is subject. to these rules of word-order, but used, sometimes invaria-
bly, sometimes at will, between words of the former type
Chinese may, indeed, serve us as an example of a lan- to express explicitly the relation between them. Thus
guage with parts of speech entirely different from ours. [Lfm] expresses predication, [rti1] attribution, and the sen-
It has no such parts of speech as noun, verb, adjective, tence above could read [rt' a1 fa Lxuo/ ti r3AD/], the mean-
and adverb. (Good' is a quality, (man' an object, (speaks' ing being unchanged but more fully stated (cf. p. 113).
an action in China as everywhere else, but the fact that
these experiences belong to these different spheres is not 3. Classification by congruence. A peculiarity of the
expressed in the Chinese sentence. In Chinese we can classifications by use in the sentence, - parts of speech,
distinguish primarily two parts of speech. One, by far "- which we have just seen in Chinese and English, is
the more numerous, is used according to certain rules of that the phonetic form of the word itself does not express
word-order, chiefly the following: subject precedes predi-

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128 MORPHOLOGY CLASSIFICATION BY CONGRUENCE 129

the classification. Thus stone noun, verb, and adjective 'our cow' and from uv 'egg': an tuv 'the egg': na nuv
are alike in form; similarly in preposition and in adverb, 'of the eggs': a huv 'her egg'. Each of these dasses has
after preposition and after conjunction, or in Chinese one distinctive feature, and that is simply the fact that
the words in it are felt to have this phonetic effect on
[rti1] expressing attribution and lrti1J 'low'. It would be following words, as it were necessarily and as part of
the expression of the meaning. To the Irish speech-con-
impossible to find in such words as street, house [haos], sciousness nothing dse seems possible: here, as always,
gun, arrow any formal feature to show that they are nouns, the morphologic classification of a word is, in the feeling
as opposed to such adjectives as sweet, narrow or to such of the speakers, part of its semantic value. For this very
reason most speakers of a language are unconscious of
verbs as beat, souse, run. their morphologic classifications, taking the classification-
The next type of morphologic word-class that demands element for granted as an inevitable part of the meaning.

discussion, has the same feature of not involving formal Another example of classification apparent not in the
classified word itself, but in its effect on other words, -
identification of the classes. It also is really a syntactic classification by congruence, - is that of the German
noun-genders. There is nothing in snch German nouns
rather than a morphologic phenomenon. as Leib 'body', Anker 'anchor', Auster 'oyster', F-rau
We had occasion in the last chapter to notice that fwoman', Wcib 'woman', Fenster rwin<low', either in form
or in material meaning, to indicate a classification. All
word-boundaries are sometimes phonetically recognized attributive words, however, sueh as adjectives and pro-
by the fact that word-initial or word-final may vary accord- nouns, and all later anaphoric reference to these or othet
ing to the sounds that precede or follow (p. 101, ff.). In nouns at once show them to fall into three separate
some cases, as in the Sanskrit example there quoted, the classes. Thus the definite article 'the' has in the nomina·
variation is an automatic sound-variation and therefore of tive case singular three forms, one being used with each
no m.orphologic significance. In another example this class of nouns: dcr Leib, der Anker, - die Ausier, die
was different; in the Irish ta ba 'there are cows' and a Frau, - das Weib, das Fenster; and similarly in anaphoric
va 'his cows' (p. 102, f.), the variation of ba: va does not reference, the pronoun referring to nouns of the first or
depend upon the preceding sound. One says also na ba 'masculine' gender is er, to the second or 'feminine', sie,
'the cows'; further, bog 'soft' but r6 vog 'very soft', ban
'white' but b6 van 'white cow', brish 'break' but do vrish to the third, 'neut-er', es. This German classification differs,
'did break', and so on. The speaker must have a class-
feeling for words such as ta, na, after which b- is spoken, then, from the Irish in that not the next word, but all
as opposed to words such as a, r6, b6, do, after which v- the attributively modifying word:s and all words expn"'ss-
is spoken. The words in these two classes possess no ing anaphoric reference, even though spoken much later,
distinguishing characteristics, by themselves, as to form are affected.
or meaning: they constitute a class, in each case, by virtue
of the effect they have on other, - in our instance, the Speakers of English can contrast this German gender·
following, - words in the utterance. These are word-
classes by congruence. That there are several such classes Bloomfield, Study of Language
in Irish appears from M 'cow': an vo 'the cow: ar mo'

130 MORPHOLOGY PHONETIC-SEMANTIC CLASSES 181

classification with their own language. In English such [rsan1 ko r3An/] 'three piece man', i. e. 'three men',
words as the or good are the same for all nouns, and, (rsan1 ko rc{ien/] tthree piece mace', i.e. 'three mace
though we have in the singular three anaphoric pronouns,
(coin)', but:
M, she, it, these differ not in being assigned to different
rsu[rsan1 LPAn/ 1] tthree root book', 'three books',
classes of nouns, but only in actual meaning, just as any
three· other words may differ. While we refer to human (:san\we:ifrjy/J rthree tail fish', tthree fishes',
·beings beyond infancy according to sex as he or she, we
are in other cases free to recognize sex or not: the horse .... he rs(:San1 LWel \ r<;'ien1 AIJ1] 'three rank earlier born', 'three
or the horse ... it. When we use the sex-forms to refer
to a sexless object, we are, by a genuine metaphor, attribut- teachers',
ing personal and sexual character to it, as when we refer
[rsanirti'.ao/ L<;'ien\] tthree branch thread', 'three threads',
to a ship or a steam-engine or the moon as she. In short,
he and she differ as any other words may differ, e.g. man, [rsan1 rnao/ Lpe1\J tthree Coverlets', -

icoman, child, and do not, like the three German forms very much as we speak of three head of cattle. Owing to
of the pronoun, involve the constant presence of a classifica- the material content of these numeratives there is a cer-
tion of nouns. Chinese, which has but one anaphoric tain amount of freedom in their use: in the North, for
word [rr a1], does not in this differ much from Engli.sh.
The difference is merely parallel to that between the instance, [Lko\] encroaches on the others, but this freedom
Chinese [r<;".i'.uIJ1] tolder brother', [Lti\] 'younger brother' has definite limits; each of the forty or more numeratives
and our brother, where the Chinese has two different words has its range of objects with which it is used. It is appar-
to our one: in the anaphoric pronoun we have three words ent that the Chinese speech-feeling di vides everything
to the Chinese one. Both languages are in this respect that may be counted into a number of classes which re-
widely different from the German with its er, sie, es, which ceive distinction in the numerative word. Here again we
demand a complete and always present classification of see a classification by congruence, though of a very different
the nouns in that language. kind from those which we examined in Irish and German.

Another type of classification by congruence is seen 4. Phonetic-semantic classes. The two kinds of
in Chinese. Anything counted is expressed in this lan- classification so far considered have this fr.;_ common, thali
guage by the numeral-word and the designation of the the words classified in no way show the classificatior..
thing counted, and the latter is preceded by a modifying in their immediate form. In the classification by syn
word of fairly material content expressing the unit of tactic use it is in the sentence that the classification appearaJ
the object-idea; e. g. [rji/ko r3An/] 'one piece man', i. e. the different classes here performing entirely differen~
'one man'. Now, there is a considerable number of such functions; and in the classifications by congruence it is
numerative words, and the choice of the numerative word in the form. of following words or of attributively Ol'
depends upon the thing counted. Thus one says: anaphorically connected words or in the choice of certam
other words, JJever in the classified word itself, that the
classification is expressed.

Now, it is conceivabie that such classifications may
receive expression in the classified wo1 d itself. For instance,
there are in Italian two gender-ciasses of nouns, the classifi-

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132 MORPHOLOGY PHONETIC-SEMANTIC CLASSES 183

cation receiving expression, as in German, by variation fire with especial reference to its peculiar moving light.
in the form of attributive and anaphoric words. In addi- This class is of interest in the present connection, be-
tion to this, however, very many of the masculine nouns cause it illustrates the emotional rather than perceptual
end in -o and very many of the feminine in -a. Although value and the ill-defined rather than clear-cut extent of
there is one feminine in -o (la 1nano 'the hand') and there many of these classes. For there can be no doubt that,
are a few foreign masculines, usually, however characterized in the feeling of many speakers, fiicker again associates
by peculiar accent, in -a (e. g. il sofa 'the sofa'), the feel- itself with such words as fiutter, fly, and even, further,
ing that nouns in -o are masculine, those in -a feminine with fiit, fiip, fl,op, fiap, and so on. All these words share
is part of the Italian speech-feeling. In German and Eng- the initial fi- and are more or less vaguely related in
lish the prepositions, pronouns, and eonjunctions tend to meaning; indeed, the feeling for the semantic connection
be shorter than other words, and similar tendencies occur may vary in the same speaker under different circum-
in other languages, notably in the Semitic and the Malayan. stances. In short, the extent or the existence of a phonetic-
All this shows that a word-classification may express it- semantic word-class may be very doubtful, and could
self in more than one way, although, as a rule, the ex- be determined with accuracy only for a given person at
pression is in only one direction complete and regular, a given time, and here only if a full insight into his
and in the others imperfect and irregular, as in the Italian associative disposition at the moment were attainable.
-o and -a endings.
The different members of such word-classes, may, more-
There are, however, word-classes which receive expres- over, cohere in differing degrees. Thus fiare and fiash read-
sion in the form of the classified words alone. These are ily and vividly associate each other; so do fiicker and
the commonest of all classes: most of our instances in flimmer; so, perhaps, though in lesser degree, do fiicker
the third and fourth chapters illustrated them. Thus and fiutter; then, again, fl,ip, fiop, and fiap form a smaller
we there set up a formula by which metilu might be used class within the larger, their coherence being expressed
for 'white rabbit' and meko for 'white fox'. In these two by the common final -p; or, further, fiicker, fiimmer, fiit,
hypothetical expressions the phonetic element me- corre- flip possess a common semantic value in the smallness
sponds to the common semantic element of 'white'. To and fineness of the movement designated, to which corre-
turn, now, to our actual instances, we may recall a num- sponds, in form, the common vowel -i-. We are dealing
ber of them. here with complex and delicate habits of association of
emotional rather than perceptual significance.
English father, mother, brother, sister: common phonetic
element, dental plus -er; these words form a semantic This appears, further, in the fact that these classes
class in that they are all nouns designating a near rel cross each other. We have seen (p. 79), in our instance,
ative. that flicker also connects itself with snicker; likewise,
flimmer with glimmer, shimmer, simmer, where the first
English fiame, fiare, fl,ash, fi1'.mmer, fiicker: the common two words are closely associated, the last one perhaps
phonetic element is the initial fi-; the words fall into a more loosely. The word fl.ash belongs also to the large
semantic class in that all of them express phenomeD:a of

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134 MORPHOLOGY PHONETIC-SEMANTIC CLASSES 136

but coherent class of clash, crash, dash, gash, gnash, hash, in the last class, but the attributive use puts these words
lash, mash, plash, slash, splash. To this there join quash,
squash, even among us, who pronounce the vowel in these into different connections; notice, moreover, such opposi-

words as [o] instead of [::eJ. Further, the word sash, iio tions as men, but man's
English dance, dances, danced, dancing, dancer, with a
doubt belongs with lash, even though it is far from the
other words of the class, and plash, splash weakly join common material element expressed by the common
to trash. Then again, crossing this class is the associa-
tion of mash with mush. sounds [dams].
English eat, eats, ate, eaten, eating, eater, eatable: com-
English bang, biff, bump, buffer, box, beat form a more
or less homogeneous class, but bed or buy or boat, which mon phonetic element, front diphthong plus t, with ma-
also have initial b-, surely do not belong to it. The best
illustration of the peculiar character of these classes is, terial content of the action reat'.
however, box eto strike blows with the fist'), which de- English danced, walked, rocked, loved, cried, landed,
cidedly belongs to this class, while the homonymotis box
('receptacle') surely does not. If the reader, in first read- bounded, etc.; common phonetic element [t] and, by an
ing the list, took box in the latter sense, he no doubt felt
a disturbing value when he came. to it; yet, keeping. the automatic variation, [d] and [ad], the content being the
former sense in mind, he will be able to re-read the list
without this feeling. This is comparable, of course, to past time of the action relative to that of speaking.
the drawings which may be interpreted as a concave or
a convex object, according to one's momentary predisposi- Russian ['b' s· dni] rpoor' in attributive use, ['b' e· d' in]
tion. So beat above is homonymous with beet.·
rpoor' in predicative use (p. 111). Here the common ma-
Phonetic-semantic classes are also the following, some
of which were quoted in the fourth chapter: terial content finds expression in the common ph1.metic

English thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, etc., to which come, element ['b' s·dn .. , 'b' e-d' .. n], the sound-variations bemg
more loosely, ten and tenth.
common in the language.
English thirteen, thirty, third, three, c1·ossing the latter
Greenlandish [tusaRpaRa] 'I hear h i m7 [tusaRpat] tthou
class. ,
English fires, fathers, boys, sisters, cats, ropes, watches,
hearest him', [tusaRpa:J 'he hears him', etc.1 where the
peaches, etc., all expressing a plurality of objects with common phonetic element [tusaRpa] corresponds to thEi

the common phonetic element [zJ and, by an automatic common meaning, rsouuding of him' (cf. p. 104)

sound-variation peculiar to this ending, [s] and [az]. Semantically similar are the Nahwatl (Aztec) forms
English father's, boy's, king's, man's, priest's, boss's, etc.;
niktlq,maka 'I give him something', niktemaka 'l give it
the common phonetic element is homonymous with that
to some.one', nikmaka <J give it to him', and so on.

The crossing of the classes is very apparent in a lan-

guage like Latin, in which, for instance, words like edo
'I eat', edis rthou eatest', edit rhe eats', edimus 'we eat', etc.

have the common phonetic element ed- and the common

semantic element of the material content reat', while such
groups as edo 'I eat', rego rI rule', lego 'l read', and so on,

have a common -o expressing the actor as the speaker, edis

'thou eatest', regis rthou rulest', le9·is rthuu readest', a com·
mon-is expressing the acto1 as the one addressed, and so on.

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136 MORPHOLOGY CLASSES ON A PARTIALLY PHONETIC BASIS 137

5. Classes on a partially phonetic basis. Still other bluff, etc. in the preceding class; all these plural nouns
morphologic classes depend partly, but not entirely on together however belong to a single phonetic-semantic
phonetic similarities. class, see page 134). Houses, beside adding the ending
[az], substitutes [z] for the final [s] of the corresponding
English nouns, for instance, fall into two categoric singular house, and thus forms a class by itself. Men,
classes: every noun expresses an object either as one or women, geese, mice, children, oxen, sheep, etc. form a class
as more than one. Now, this classification of nouns into in that they lack the usual sibilant ending; and within
singular nouns and plural nouns is, to begin with, classifica- this class the first four words belong with a few others
tion by congruence, for our present-tense verbs and many to a sub-class, the members of which differ from their
of our pronouns vary in form according to whether a singulars in vowel only; within this, again, mice and lice
singular or a plural noun is the actor, or, respectively, form a smaller class in having exactly the same vowel,
that modified or referred to, e. g. The boy skates, The corresponding to the same singular vowel in mouse, louse.
boys skate, The man smokes, The men smoke, this boy, these Children and oxen, further, probably form a class in that
boys, my hat ... it, my hats . .. they. In addition to this, they add an -n suffix, within which class each word again
however, almost every singular noun has by its side, clo- stands by itself. Sheep, fish, and deer constitute a sub-
sely associated with it and falling with it into a seman- class by virtue of homonymy with their singulars.
tic-phonetic class, a plural noun of the same material
content: boy, boys (belonging to the larger semantic-phonet- Owing, finally, to the close association between corre-
ic class boy, boys, boy's, boyish, boyhood, etc.); man, men sponding singulars and plurals, the singulars correspond-
(manhood, manly, mannish, etc.); hat, hats; knife, knives; ing to the plurals within each of these classes, larger or
and vice versa. Our singular nouns form a class, conse- smaller, also form a class. Thus most singular nouns
quently, in that nearly all of them are related, in uniform belong to the large class of boy, father, hat, rock, peach,
semantic relation) to plural nouns which resemble them watch, because they correspond to plurals with the reg-
in form; and our plural nouns form a class because each ular sibilant addition; knife, calf, loaf, etc. form a class
of them has by its side a similarly related singular. Now, because they correspond to plurals with [v] for the final
withm these classes there are a number of sub.classes [f]; house forms a class; so do man, woman~ mouse, louse,
according to the formal relation to the corresponding goose, etc., within which mouse and louse are a smaller
word of the other class. Thus the plural nouns, boys, class, and so on.
fathers, hats, rocks, peaches, watches and the great majority
of other plural nouns form a large class in that they add We see thus in the English nouns two kinds of word-
[z], [s], or [az], -- these three endings varying automati- classification not entirely marked by phonetic common
cally, - to the form of the corresponding singulars. A elements, namely:
smaller class is formed by those which also add a sibi·
lant, but at the same time substitute [v] for the final [f] Classes due to the association of each word with another
of the singular: calves, knives, loaves (as opposed to cliff, word in uniform semantic relation to it; for instanc~e: all
singular nouns; all plural nouns;

Classes due to the association of each word with another

"I"

138 MORPHOLOGY MOUPHOLOGIC CLASSIFICATION etc. 139

word in uniform semantic and phonetic relation to it; bking place: were, had, ate, sang, loved, danced, -homon-
for instance: the plural nouns calves, knives, lives, wives, ymous in all instances except were with e).
loaves, etc., or the singular nouns mouse and louse, or the
singulars or plurals, respectively, corresponding to these Within each of these six classes there are, as among
the nouns, sub-classes by phonetic and semantic parallelism.
classes. To take only one instance, class e) has one largest sub-
We may illustrate such classes by our verbs also. Classes class within which all words have a final [d] (loved, trudg-
ed), [t] (danced, passed), or [ad] (rested, waited), - these
by semantic parallelism are: a) all infinitives: be, have, suffixes vary automatically, - as opposed to the corre-
eat, sing, love, dance; b) all forms used of the present sponding forms of a), b), d). Other sub-classes show other
tense, when the speaker himself is the actor: am, have, forms of dental-addition, e. g. sent, lent, etc. or should,
eat, sing, love, dance, homonymous in all cases except am would, could, where each also stands in a smaller class by
with a) and d); c) all present-tense verbs used with. a itself. Still other classes lack the dental, differing from the
third person singular actor: is, has, eats, sings, loves, dan- present-tense forms usually by change of vowel; e.g. such a
ces, - in a few instances homonymous with b) and d), class as sang, rang, drank, sank, etc. (present: sing, ring,
e. g. can, shall, will; d) all present-tense verbs used with drink, sink). Another class is formed by the few instances
actor in the second person Cyou') or in the plural: are, ofhomonymy with the present (let, hit, beat, cost, etc.). The
have, eat, sing, love, dance, - homonymous in all instan- two past verbs which bear no relation whatever, formally,
ces except are with a) and b). to the corresponding presents also each form a class: was
and went. The present-forms corresponding to each of
As in the instance of all singulars and all plurals of these classes again form a class.
nouns, these classes are at the same time classes by con-
6. Difference between morpl1ologic classification
gruence, for b) is used only with the actor I, c) only with and non-linguistic association. The ways in which a

a singular-noun or singular-pronoun actor, and so. on. morphologic word-classification may express itself, then,
However, all these together constitute a large class, again are various. Nevertheless, it is always possible to recog-
by semantic parallelism, as opposed to those that now nize a morphologic class, as opposed to a non-linguistic_
follow, and this classification is not supported by any psychologic connection. Lf sew closely associates needle,
features of congruence. For, while all the preceding refer the connection is not linguistic, for the two words belong
to an action viewed as present in relative time, those in English to no one morphologic class, not even to the
which follow_ express the action as past in relative time same part of speech. On the other hand, if go is closely
associated with u·ent, this association receives linguistic
or unreal in modal character (cf. below): expression, for the semantic relation between these two
words so habitually receives expression by phonetic simi-
·e) all verbs expressing the action as past, _used with larity (dance: danced; sing: sang) that in this one instancfl
a singular actor of first or third person: (I, he, John) was, the lack of phonetic ,imilarity does not disturb the usua]
had, ate, sang, loved, danced, - rarely homonymous with
a), b), d), e. g let, put, cost; f) all past tense verbs used
with an actor in the second person or in the plural num-
ber, and all verbs referring to an action as not really

T
I
I

140 MORPHOLOGY COMMONEST MORPHOLOGIC CATEGORIES 141

feeling of coherence of past-form and present-form: go: eats: eating: ate: eaten are e:xamples of inflection. If the
went fall into a morphologic class by their parallelism, words have in common an element expressing material
semantically, with dance: danced, sing: sang, etc. If the meaning, but differ also in such an element, the relation
between them is called deriva~ion. Examples are flash:
English language possessed no other pair of words that flare: flame or flash: crash: dash or boy: boyish or eat:
stood to each other in the same semantic relation as go: eater: eatable, and so on, provided always that the relation
'Went, or if there were other such pairs, but phonetic re- between the words shall be not merely a difference of
semblance between them were everywhere as totally out categoric function. If the words have in common only
of the question as in this instance, - then, to be sure, a. relational element, as boys, fathers, stones, etc., it is
go and went would not fall into a common morphologic common to call them 'parallel forms' of different words.
class beyond that of verbs.
In the habits of speakers words related by inflection
7. Classes by composition. The most explicit ex- are very closely associated with each other. For the naive
speaker, taking the categories of his language for granted
pression of a classification of words is the likeness of as the natural and inevitable forms of expression, feels
compounds _to simple words and to each other, as when the inflectionally different words (or 'forms'), e. g. boy:
bed, bedsheet, bed-cover, bedpost, bedroom, bedridden, etc., or bo11s, as necessary variations in the expression of a ma-
bedroom, dining-room, room, etc., fall .into a class. Of this terial content. The inflectionally related words are for
type of word-classification we shall speak later. him really 'forms' of one 'word', - 'forms' made neces-
sary by the exigencies of expression.
8. Derivation and inflection. From the survey which
9. 'l,he semantic nature ofinflection: the common-
we have just made of the principal types of morphologic est categories. Inflection, therefore, could be defined as
classes, it appears that most commonly, when a number
of words fall 'into a morphologic class, they present some variation between words to express relational differences
phonetic resemblance to one another, and, of course, some which involve appurtenance to different categories. What
phonetic divergence. That is, they differ formationally, is inflection in one language may, of course, be nothing
e. g. flame: flash: flare or boys: stones: fathers or boy: of the sort in another, where the categories are different.
boys: boyish.
It will be worth while, then, to mention some of the
In grammatical writings about English and the langua-
ges possessing a similar morphology it has become usual relations which are expressed by inflection in different
to distinguish two kinds of formational differences, accord- languages, - that is, to mention some of the commoner
ing to the semantic nature of the classification. If the morphologic categories. Some of these we met in the third
words have in common an element expressing material and fourth chapters, where, however, we were interested
meaning and differ only in an element of relational con- in the general rationale of relational expression, rather
tent such as is categoric in the language (e. g., in Eng- than in the ground covered by the individual categories
lish, number or tense), it is customary to speak of them
as different 'forms' of one 'word' and of the relation be- Number. Among the English parts of speech the nouns
tween them as in{l,ection. Thus boy: boy's: boys or eat: have the categories of singular q,ud plural number. Nearly

142 MORPHOLOGY COMMONEST MORPHOLOGIC CATEGORIES 143

every noun must express whether one object or a plural- ges nave three genders. The Romance and the Scandi-
ity is meant: we may say that each of these 'words' has navian languages have two, and some of the Bantu lan-
two inflectional fforms', a singular and a plural. guages of Africa go as high as twenty-one, e. g. the Su-
biya: here relations of number and person are viewed as
Some languages distinguish three numbers, singular, coordinate with the purely emotional gender-distinctions,
dual (for two objects), and plural, an instance being the there being a category for the speaker, one for the speaker
Sanskrit deva~ fa god, the god, god', devau fthe two gods,· and those with him, one for the person addressed, one for
two gods', devalJ, rthe gods, gods (more than two)'. An- the person addressed and those with him, one for a single
cient Greek also had inflection for these three numbers, person, one for several persons, one for one small thing,
and the singular-plural distinction was categoric, as in one for several small things, one for abstracts, and so on.
English. The distinction between dual and plural, how-
ever, was not categoric; the dual, in the writings that Case. Case appears as a category in English especially
have come down to us, is used only of such objects as in the personal and anaphoric pronouns, which vary accord-
usually exist in pairs (osse feyes', kheire rhands', etc.) and ing to the function of the object in the sentence: as actors
even there is not obligatory, occurring, indeed, less often appear I, he, she, they, as objects affected by the action
than the plural. The contrast, in this respect, between of a verb or as objects with regard to which a preposition-
Sanskrit and Greek is instructive: the categories represent al relation is expressed, me, him, her, them, and as attrib-
obligatory forms of expression, the element which the utive possessors my, his, her, their. In the nouns there
different forms express being always associatively perceived· is inflection for the first and third of these relations only,
in the experience; a non-categoric distinction receives and the possessive form is limited in occurrence almost
expression only where the. element involved (here, in Greek, entirely to nouns denoting living beings (John: John's;
duality) is vivid enough to enter into the analysis in spite father: father's); nevertheless, the obligatory inflection
of the lack of a regular habit in this direction. It accord-: of the pronouns forces the speaker to make a constant
ingly can serve logical or esthetic impulses of the speaker; (categoric) distinction between these three relations.
the dual of Ancient Greek, as lovers of Greek literature
will testify, appears as one of the many graces of that' German has four cases, the objects affected by a verb
tongue, while in a Sanskrit utterance the use of the dual being divided into two categories, that of objects fully
is esthetically a matter of indifference. We have. seen affected and that of objects less fully affected: e. g. Er
(p. 108) that in Chinese, for instance, the expression of gab mir das Buch rHe gave me the book', where mir, as
the number of an object-idea is by no means obligatory, object less fully affected, is in the fdative' case, das Buch,
the category of number being absent. as object fully affected, in the raccusative' and Er schlug
mich fHe beat me', where mich is in the accusative. The
Gender. It has already been mentioned that English- prepositions in German also vary as to the case they de-
has no categories of noun-gender. The genders of German· mand: Er legte das Buch auf den Tisch 'He laid. the book
appear in the congruence of the adjectives and pronouns. on the table', den Tisch accusative: Es liegt auf dem Tischs
Like German Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and the Slavic langua- 'It is lying on the table', dem Tische, dative.

144 MORPHOLOGY COWONEST MORPHOLOGIC CATEGORIES 145

The local relations of objects which English or German gories than tense is manner of action. It does not exist
analyze fully out of the experience and express by inde- as a morphologic category in English, where we either
pendent words (prepositions), are in many languages in-
flectionally included in the object-word, which thus varies ignore the· manner of an action or else analytically ex-
categorically according to them, - so that there may be press it. Thus I am writing, I was writing are expressive
a great number of cases~ Thus, in Sanskrit, deva~ 'god' of 'durative' action, I have written, I had written of 'per-
fectic' (completed) action, I often write, I used to write
corresponds to our 'nominative' (I, he), devam to the Ger- of 'iterative' actio.n, I wrote it down of 'final terminative',
He burst out weeping of 'inceptive terminative' action, and
man accusative, expressing the object as fully affected,
devaya to the German dative, expressing the object 'as I once wrote of 'punctual' action. Many languages, how-
less fully affected by the action, devasya to our possessive,
'the god's'; but there are also a number of further cases: ever, express the manner of action in the same word with
the 'instrumental' devena expressing the object as a means the action itself, making categoric distinctions between
or an accompaniment ('by means of the god' or 'with the different manners. Thus the Slavic languages distin-
the god'), the 'ablative' devat expressing it as that from guish categorically between, on the one hand, durative
which Cfrom the god'), the 'locative' deve, as that in or and iterative (in Slavic grammar called, together, 'imper-
near which (by the god' or 'in the god'); and to these fective') action, e. g. Russian [p'i 'sa·t'] 'to write' and
comes also a special form, the 'vocative', for interjectional ['p'i· si vet'] 'to be wont to write, to write repeatedly',
use, as in calling, deva '0 god'. (See also pages 76, 92). and, on the other hand, punctual and terminative action
The Latin cases have already been mentioned (p. 108). (in Slavic grammar, together, 'perfective'), e. g. Russian
The number of cases in some languages, especially some [na p'i 'sa.·t'] 'to write (once), to write down', [sp'i 'sa.·t'J
of the Uralic, such as Finnish (cf. p. 108), is greater, but 'to write off', i.e. 'to copy', [pr'i p'i 'sa·t'] 'to write over',
the principle is everywhere the same. i. e. 'to sign away'.

Tense. We have in English two tenses of verbs, past Voice. Another set of categories not found in English
and present. Some European languages add a third tense, are the voices or conjugations, such as ~active', 'middle',
a future, e. g. Latin canto 'I sing', cantabam 'I sang', 'passive', 'causative', 'applicative', and the like. Thus, in
cantabo 'I shall sing' (cf. p. 68). ltuture action is in Eng- Latin amat, active voice, is 'he loves', amatur passive voice,
lish, as the translation shows, analyzed into the independ- 'he is loved, is being loved', or in Greek e'lyse 'he freed'
ent words shall or will, which express futurity with a is active, el,ythe 'he was freed' is passive (actor as suffer-
suggestion, respectively, of obligation or intention (in the ing the action), and elysnto 'be freed himself' or 'he freed
present time), or, else, the present tense is used: Tomorrow for himself' (e.g. elgsato t~n thygatera 'He-freed-for-himself
we die. The category of tense is in many languages, as, the daughter', i. e. 'He freed his - own - daughter')
for instance, in Chinese, entirely absent as such, time- is middle (actor as acting upon himself or for himself).
relations being expressed by independent words (p. 68). In Sanskrit the active voice shows the following 'con-
jugations': patati, normal, 'he falls'; patayati, causative,
Manner (.t4Pect). A much commoner basis of cate- 'he causes to fall, fells'; piipatUi, intensive, 'he falls hard'

Bloomfield, Stud7 of Lupap

146 MORPHOLOGY COMMONEST MORPHOLOGIC CATEGORIES 147

or 'he falls repeatedly'; pipati$ati, desiderative, 'he wishes he .was, we have an 'unreal' mode, and, as it is not stand-
to fall' or 'he is about to fall'. Middle and passive forms
run parallel to the active; thus the passive of the above ~rd English to say, for instance, If he was here, he would
causative is patyate 'he is being felled, he is felled';· cf.
further, yajati 'he sacrifices' (used of the priest who help us, we may call the distinction of mode categoric.
sacrifices in another's behalf) active, yajate 'he sacrifices Those dialectic Cilliterate') forms of English which do
(for himself)' middle, and ijyate rhe (it) is being sacrificed' not ·.use the form he were have lost this category: in them
passive, all three being of normal conjugation. In both the 'past' tense-forms are expressive not specifically of
Greek and Sanskrit middle and passive are in a large action in the past, but of any action not present, be it
part of the forms homonymous; in Modern Greek there past or viewed as unreal; they have· a present and a past-
unreal form, merging what are in standard English the
is no middle voice. c.ategories of mode and tense. In older and still to some
The applicative conjugation is frequent in American extent in literary English a third mode, an roptative',
also- exists, and is used to express action as possible. It
languages; it expresses the action as applying to some is µomonymous with the infinitive, from which it differs
person or thing that would not· be involved, were the
action-word used in normal conjugation. 'fhus in Na- bf the precedence of a subject-actor: If he be there, Be
hwatl the normal ni-petla-tsiwa 'I-mat-make', i.e. 'I make
mats' or ni-k-tsiwa 'I-it-make', i. e. 'I' make it' (as in he live or be he dead, as opposed to he is, he were.
ni-k-tsiwa se kali 'I-it-make one house', i. e. 'I build a ·.i In Ancient Greek three modes were categorically
house') has by its side an applicative ni-k-tsiwi-lia, as in distinguished. An action viewed as really occurring was
ni-k-tsiwi-lia in no-piltsin se kali 'I-it-make-for the my- in the indicative: pherei rhe carries', touto gignetai rthis
son one house', i. e. rI build a house for my son', with happens', while actions not so viewed fell, by a categoric
two objects affected instead of one. The applicative, in distinction, which, however, was in part merged with
applying an action normally without objects affected to
such an object, often coincides in meaning with the caus- mecongruence-relations of tense, into the rsubjunctive': hina
ative of Sanskrit, as in ni-miki 'I-die', ni-k-rnik;,,tiaJI
.. make him die, kin him'. As the English· translations phirei rso-that he-may-carry', phobeitai touto genetai
show, we lack these categories, looking upoll the various 'he-fears that this may-happen', or into the optative: pheroi
forms of action either as upon totally different experiences an rhe might carry', ei touto genoito rif this should-happen'.
(die: kill), giving them an indifferent derivationaf ex- The English translation shows how we analyze such
pression (fall: fell), or analyzing the relation (sacrifices: modal relations by means of words like may, can, should.
sacrifices for himself: is sacrificed, etc.). 'German also has three modes, an indicative: Er ist krank
rHe is sick', an optative: Er gehe rLet him go', Man
Mode. One verb keeps alive in standard English .a sagte, er sei krank rThey said he was sick', and an unreal:
categoric distinction of mode, namely the verb to be. 1n 'Wenn er krank ware rlf he were sick'; German grammars
he were, as opposed to the actual or rindicative' he is, call the last two the rfirstr or rpresent' and rsecond' or
'past' subjunctive.

Both Ancient Greek and German have, like many other
languages, a special set of imperative forms for inter-

148 MORPHOLOGY COMMONEST MORPHOLOGIC CATEGORIES 149

jectional use of the verb in commands: German geh! 'go', course, be inflected for person and number of the object
Ancient Greek phere fcarry', phereto flet him carry', where affected. We have already seen such forms from Green-
the English equivalent is either the infinitive form or,
for the third person, the infinitive of the verb let which landish (p. 104) and from Nahwatl (p. 135). The follow-
directs the command, by an analysis of the situation, at
the person spoken to. ing forms from the latter language will further illustrate
this inflection:
Actor. We have seen that the English verb varies in
ni-mits-matstia fl-thee-teach', fl teach thee',
form according to the person and number of the actor. n-amets-matstia fl-ye-teach', fl teach ye',
The variation according to number (The boy skates, The ni-k-matstia fl-him-teach', fl teach him',
boys skate) is properly a phenomenon of congruence with ni-kin-matstia fl-them-teach', (I teach them',
the number-category of the noun or pronoun expressing ti-nets-matstia (thou-me-teachest', (thou teachest me',
the subject-actor. The· same may be said of the variation ti-tets-matstia (thou-us-teachest', (thou teachest us',
according to person (I am, you are, he is), although there ti-k-matstia (thou-him-teachest', (thou teachest him',
can hardly be said to exist a categoric system of fpersons' ti-kin-matstia rthou-them-teachest', (thou teachest
in nouns and pronouns, since there is only one first-
person pronoun (I, we), and only one for the second them',
person (you): the 'person' of these words is simply their nets-matstia (me-teaches', fhe teaches me',
content as words. and so on. Two objects affected are seen in ni-te-tla-maka
fl-someone-something-give', (I give someone something',
In some other languages, as we have seen (p. 107), ni-k-tla-maka (I-him-something-give', (I give him some-
words expressing action really include personal-anaphoric thing', ni-k-maka (I give it to him'. Here we see a three-
mention of the actor. Thus Latin verb-forms such as fold inflection: for actor and for two objects affected.
edo fl-eat', edis 'you-eat', edit 'he (she, it)-eats', edimus Possessor. With object-words the person, number, and
'we-eat', etc., do not vary in mere congruence with cat- even gender of another attributive object may be expressed
egories of an actor, but actually include mention of the (p. 107, with example from modern Arabic), and this ex-
actor, who may not in any other way be expressed. The pression may be categoric. In Nah watl, for instance, one
Latin verb, then, expresses not only an action, but an cannot say fmother' or (hand' without expressing an at-
actor and an action, and just as it has categoric variation tributive (possessing) object, as in no-nan (my-mothP,r·
according to tense, mode, and voice of the action, it also or to-ma (our-hand'; one can also say te-nan (someone's,
varies categorically according to number and person of an uncertain person's mother'. In some languages this
the actor. applies to every object-word, so that one cannot say, for
instance, 'house', but only (my house', (his-house', fan-
Goal (Object affected). In other languages the action-
uncertain-person's-house', or the like.
word includes the objects or object affected by an action, An interesting phenomenon f,rnnd in some languages
or these together with an actor. '11his phenomenon is
known as fincorporation'. Here the action-wot"d may, of is the fusion of the categories of possessor of an object
with those of performer of an action. In the language

150 MORPHOLOGY THE SEMANTIC NATURE OF DERIVATION 151

of the extinct Lules in South America, for instance, the English flame, flash, µare, flimmer, flicker.
English drip, drop, droop, dribble, drabble.
following showed parallel inflection: English clash, crash, dash, flash, gash, gnash, hash, lash,

umue-s my mother amaitsi-s I love mash, plash, slash, splash.
English dribble, nibble, quibble.
umue-tse thy mother amaitsi-tse thou lovest English tend; tense, tension, tensity, tenseness, intense,
intensive, intensity, intend, intent, attend, attention, inatten-
umue-p his mother arnaitsi-p he loves. tion, attentive, inattentive, etc. No doubt tend is moreover
associated, for most of us, with trend.
No English translation, of course, could do justice to From the Nass dialect of Tsimshian (British Columbia):
[hali'fe:] 'to walk along the edge of the water', [wi: ts?~m'i'.e:]
this complete merging of what we analyze as two entirely 'to walk back through the house', [alqa'ie:] 'to walk in
the dark', and so on.
different relations. In other languages the possessor of Crossing this class: [a!dawa:c;] 'to paddle in the night',
[a!da1e:] 'to walk in the dark'.
an object is fused with the object affected by an action;
11. The phonetic character of the morphologic
thus in Greenlandish these and the actor also are in part processes. The formal phase of morphology includes
every conceivable phonetic variation.
expressed alike: [il:u-a] 'house-his', 'his house', [i}:u-t]
This phonetic variation is to be sharply distinguished
'thy hou_se' show the same inflectional endings as from automatic sound-variation. Whether we say [ju] as
in Will you? or [Ju] as in Won't you.'J [ wilju, wowntfu],
[tusaRp-a-t] 'sounding-his-thine', i. e. 'thou hearest him'. has nothing to do with our meaning (and is therefore of
no grammatical significance) but depends entirely on the
All this illustrates the vast divergence as to the semantic nature of the sound we have been uttering when we come
to the you. The same is true, for instance, of the Sanskrit
character of inflection. sandhi-variations (p.102). On the other hand, whether we
say dash or mash or plash or splash, and whether a Ger-
10. The semantic. nature of derivation. When the
man says der, die, or das, and an Irishman bo, vo, or mo,
relation between words of a phonetic-semantic class is
is of decided significance. In these English words the
not a difference ofcategory, we call it derivation (p. 141); material content varies. with the difference of form; in
the German and the Irish the morphologic category of
thus the relation between fiarne, flash, flare, etc. or be- other words is involved.

tween bull, bullock, we have seen, is derivation. In such Pitch-variation. Pitch-variation for derivation can occur,

instances as the 1atter it is frequently said that the longer of course, only where the pitch-relations within a word

word is 'derived' from the shorter, or a 'derivative' of

it. This mode of expression is permissible, as long as

one does not allow it to affect one's view as to the his-

torical priority: historically it is quite possible in such

cases that the longer word existe4 before the shorter

one, which then, in reality, may have been derived from

the longer.

As to the semantic values of derivation, it is impos-

sible to set limits, or even to quote, as in the case of in-

flection, some of the commoner relations expressed. Al-

most any material relation may be expressed by it. The

following sets of derivatives may illustrate this multi-

plicity:

•

152 MORPHOLOGY PHON. CHARACTER OF MORPHOL. PROCESSES 153

are fixed. It is found, for instance in Norwegian and mice), fablaut' for that in the tense-inflection of the verb

Swedish; thus in the former language: ['skri: var/] 'write, (sing: sang).
writes' (present-tense form of verb): ['skri:\ var/] cwriter'.
In Chinese there are a great many words distinguished Consonant variation also is common in English; we
only by their pitch-relations, and in some instances such have seen it in our example of clash: crash: dash: flash, etc.;
words are derivationally connected in the feeling of the also in the Irish bo: v6: m6 and the like. Further Eng-
speakers, e. g. [rnan/] 'difficult' and L_nan\] 'suffer', L_mai/] lish examples are have: has: had; crash: crack; squeak:
'buy' and [Lmai\] 'sell'. squeal; squawk: squall; bend: bent; send: sent. Another
example is the Kafir word for 'all' which varies in con-
Stress-variation. The place ofthe stress in a word is inEng- gruence with the gender - the Kafir is a Bantu lan-
guage, cf. p. 143, - of the word it modifies: bonke: lonke:
lish significant and consequently can be used for morpho- yonke: zonke: wonke: konke.

logic sound-variation. As the quality of certain vowels fur- It is common to find sound-variation in both conso-

ther depends automatically in English on the place of the nants and vowels, as in flame: flash; crash: creak; was:
were; will: would [wud]; can: could; German schneiden
stress, the following examples illustrate both morphologic fto cut' ['fnaed:r;i.]: schnitten fwere cutting' ['fnit1i1], and
the like.
and automatic sound-variation: accent, noun ['reks1i1t]: verb
.A-ffixation. Somewhat different from sound-variation is
[ak 'sent]; - address, noun l'red.rns] or ['red.1s]: verb [a the plus or minus of sounds seen in such groups of words
I as sing: sings: singer: singing or man: manly or bull:
'd.Ies1; - bullock. This kind of word-variation is called affixation,
overthrow, noun ['owv.18.10]: verb [ov.1 '0.ww]. the phonetic element that is common to a set of words
II related by affixation being spoken of as the kernel, the
Similarly, in Russian: ['ru·lH] 'the hands': [ru 'lei·] cof elements present or absent in the different words, as the
affixes. Thus in the first group among our instances sing-
the hand'; - [u znu 'ju·] 'I recognize': [u 'znu ·ju] cl shall is the kernel and -s [z], -er, and -ing are affixes. Here
again our terminology is metaphoric: there is no reason
recognize'. Place of stress is interesting in An~ient Greek: to believe that the longer words of a group related by
affi:x:ation necessarily arose from the shortest word by
in the verb it. varies automatically and cannot, therefore, any actual process oftaffixing' or adding phonetic elements:
that is a question of historic fact which is not aiswered
be of morphologic significance; i:p. the other parts of speech by our use of the terms taffix' and 'affixation'. Instead
of faffix' the terms fdeterminative', tformative', and ffor-
it is free and receives morphologic employment, e. g. in mans' are current in certain branches of grammar; and

tomos fslice': tom6s fcutter'.

Variation of articulations. Vowel-variation is common
in English morphologic expression: goose: geese; man:
men; foot: feet; mouse: mice; woman [wuman]: women
[wimen]; eat: ate; see: saw; sing: sang: sung: song; ride:
rode; read, present tense [.iijd]: read, past tense [.1ed]; sip:
sop: S?f,p: seep: sap; drip: drop: droop; sniff: snuff; snip:
snap, - and so on. The terms fumlaut' and fablaut' are
used in the grammar of English and the related languages
as designations for certain cases of vowel-variation: fum-
laut' for our vowel-variation for number in the noun (mouse: