Language by Edward Sapir

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[Footnote 1: We shall reserve capitals for radical elements.]

[Footnote 2: These words are not here used in a narrowly technical
sense.]

So far, the first speech element that we have found which we can say
actually "exists" is the word. Before defining the word, however, we
must look a little more closely at the type of word that is illustrated
by _sing_. Are we, after all, justified in identifying it with a radical
element? Does it represent a simple correspondence between concept and
linguistic expression? Is the element _sing-_, that we have abstracted
from _sings_, _singing_, and _singer_ and to which we may justly ascribe
a general unmodified conceptual value, actually the same linguistic fact
as the word _sing_? It would almost seem absurd to doubt it, yet a
little reflection only is needed to convince us that the doubt is
entirely legitimate. The word _sing_ cannot, as a matter of fact, be
freely used to refer to its own conceptual content. The existence of
such evidently related forms as _sang_ and _sung_ at once shows that it
cannot refer to past time, but that, for at least an important part of
its range of usage, it is limited to the present. On the other hand, the
use of _sing_ as an "infinitive" (in such locutions as _to sing_ and _he
will sing_) does indicate that there is a fairly strong tendency for the
word _sing_ to represent the full, untrammeled amplitude of a specific
concept. Yet if _sing_ were, in any adequate sense, the fixed
expression of the unmodified concept, there should be no room for such
vocalic aberrations as we find in _sang_ and _sung_ and _song_, nor
should we find _sing_ specifically used to indicate present time for all
persons but one (third person singular _sings_).

The truth of the matter is that _sing_ is a kind of twilight word,
trembling between the status of a true radical element and that of a
modified word of the type of _singing_. Though it has no outward sign to
indicate that it conveys more than a generalized idea, we do feel that
there hangs about it a variable mist of added value. The formula A does
not seem to represent it so well as A + (0). We might suspect _sing_ of
belonging to the A + (b) type, with the reservation that the (b) had
vanished. This report of the "feel" of the word is far from fanciful,
for historical evidence does, in all earnest, show that _sing_ is in
origin a number of quite distinct words, of type A + (b), that have
pooled their separate values. The (b) of each of these has gone as a
tangible phonetic element; its force, however, lingers on in weakened
measure. The _sing_ of _I sing_ is the correspondent of the Anglo-Saxon
_singe_; the infinitive _sing_, of _singan_; the imperative _sing_ of
_sing_. Ever since the breakdown of English forms that set in about the
time of the Norman Conquest, our language has been straining towards the
creation of simple concept-words, unalloyed by formal connotations, but
it has not yet succeeded in this, apart, possibly, from isolated adverbs
and other elements of that sort. Were the typical unanalyzable word of
the language truly a pure concept-word (type A) instead of being of a
strangely transitional type (type A + [0]), our _sing_ and _work_ and
_house_ and thousands of others would compare with the genuine
radical-words of numerous other languages.[3] Such a radical-word, to
take a random example, is the Nootka[4] word _hamot_ "bone." Our English
correspondent is only superficially comparable. _Hamot_ means "bone" in
a quite indefinite sense; to our English word clings the notion of
singularity. The Nootka Indian can convey the idea of plurality, in one
of several ways, if he so desires, but he does not need to; _hamot_ may
do for either singular or plural, should no interest happen to attach to
the distinction. As soon as we say "bone" (aside from its secondary
usage to indicate material), we not merely specify the nature of the
object but we imply, whether we will or no, that there is but one of
these objects to be considered. And this increment of value makes all
the difference.

[Footnote 3: It is not a question of the general isolating character of
such languages as Chinese (see Chapter VI). Radical-words may and do
occur in languages of all varieties, many of them of a high degree of
complexity.]

[Footnote 4: Spoken by a group of Indian tribes in Vancouver Island.]

We now know of four distinct formal types of word: A (Nootka _hamot_);
A + (0) (_sing_, _bone_); A + (b) (_singing_); (A) + (b) (Latin
_hortus_). There is but one other type that is fundamentally possible:
A + B, the union of two (or more) independently occurring radical
elements into a single term. Such a word is the compound _fire-engine_
or a Sioux form equivalent to _eat-stand_ (i.e., "to eat while
standing"). It frequently happens, however, that one of the radical
elements becomes functionally so subordinated to the other that it takes
on the character of a grammatical element. We may symbolize this by
A + b, a type that may gradually, by loss of external connection between
the subordinated element b and its independent counterpart B merge with
the commoner type A + (b). A word like _beautiful_ is an example of
A + b, the _-ful_ barely preserving the impress of its lineage. A word
like _homely_, on the other hand, is clearly of the type A + (b), for no
one but a linguistic student is aware of the connection between the
_-ly_ and the independent word _like_.

In actual use, of course, these five (or six) fundamental types may be
indefinitely complicated in a number of ways. The (0) may have a
multiple value; in other words, the inherent formal modification of the
basic notion of the word may affect more than one category. In such a
Latin word as _cor_ "heart," for instance, not only is a concrete
concept conveyed, but there cling to the form, which is actually shorter
than its own radical element (_cord-_), the three distinct, yet
intertwined, formal concepts of singularity, gender classification
(neuter), and case (subjective-objective). The complete grammatical
formula for _cor_ is, then, A + (0) + (0) + (0), though the merely
external, phonetic formula would be (A)--, (A) indicating the abstracted
"stem" _cord-_, the minus sign a loss of material. The significant thing
about such a word as _cor_ is that the three conceptual limitations are
not merely expressed by implication as the word sinks into place in a
sentence; they are tied up, for good and all, within the very vitals of
the word and cannot be eliminated by any possibility of usage.

Other complications result from a manifolding of parts. In a given word
there may be several elements of the order A (we have already symbolized
this by the type A + B), of the order (A), of the order b, and of the
order (b). Finally, the various types may be combined among themselves
in endless ways. A comparatively simple language like English, or even
Latin, illustrates but a modest proportion of these theoretical
possibilities. But if we take our examples freely from the vast
storehouse of language, from languages exotic as well as from those that
we are more familiar with, we shall find that there is hardly a
possibility that is not realized in actual usage. One example will do
for thousands, one complex type for hundreds of possible types. I select
it from Paiute, the language of the Indians of the arid plateaus of
southwestern Utah. The word
_wii-to-kuchum-punku-ruegani-yugwi-va-ntue-m(ue)_[5] is of unusual length
even for its own language, but it is no psychological monster for all
that. It means "they who are going to sit and cut up with a knife a
black cow (_or_ bull)," or, in the order of the Indian elements,
"knife-black-buffalo-pet-cut up-sit(plur.)-future-participle-animate
plur." The formula for this word, in accordance with our symbolism,
would be (F) + (E) + C + d + A + B + (g) + (h) + (i) + (0). It is the
plural of the future participle of a compound verb "to sit and cut
up"--A + B. The elements (g)--which denotes futurity--, (h)--a
participial suffix--, and (i)--indicating the animate plural--are
grammatical elements which convey nothing when detached. The formula (0)
is intended to imply that the finished word conveys, in addition to what
is definitely expressed, a further relational idea, that of
subjectivity; in other words, the form can only be used as the subject
of a sentence, not in an objective or other syntactic relation. The
radical element A ("to cut up"), before entering into combination with
the cooerdinate element B ("to sit"), is itself compounded with two
nominal elements or element-groups--an instrumentally used stem (F)
("knife"), which may be freely used as the radical element of noun
forms but cannot be employed as an absolute noun in its given form, and
an objectively used group--(E) + C + d ("black cow _or_ bull"). This
group in turn consists of an adjectival radical element (E) ("black"),
which cannot be independently employed (the absolute notion of "black"
can be rendered only as the participle of a verb: "black-be-ing"), and
the compound noun C + d ("buffalo-pet"). The radical element C properly
means "buffalo," but the element d, properly an independently occurring
noun meaning "horse" (originally "dog" or "domesticated animal" in
general), is regularly used as a quasi-subordinate element indicating
that the animal denoted by the stem to which it is affixed is owned by a
human being. It will be observed that the whole complex
(F) + (E) + C + d + A + B is functionally no more than a verbal base,
corresponding to the _sing-_ of an English form like _singing_; that
this complex remains verbal in force on the addition of the temporal
element (g)--this (g), by the way, must not be understood as appended to
B alone, but to the whole basic complex as a unit--; and that the
elements (h) + (i) + (0) transform the verbal expression into a formally
well-defined noun.

[Footnote 5: In this and other examples taken from exotic languages I am
forced by practical considerations to simplify the actual phonetic
forms. This should not matter perceptibly, as we are concerned with form
as such, not with phonetic content.]

It is high time that we decided just what is meant by a word. Our first
impulse, no doubt, would have been to define the word as the symbolic,
linguistic counterpart of a single concept. We now know that such a
definition is impossible. In truth it is impossible to define the word
from a functional standpoint at all, for the word may be anything from
the expression of a single concept--concrete or abstract or purely
relational (as in _of_ or _by_ or _and_)--to the expression of a
complete thought (as in Latin _dico_ "I say" or, with greater
elaborateness of form, in a Nootka verb form denoting "I have been
accustomed to eat twenty round objects [e.g., apples] while engaged in
[doing so and so]"). In the latter case the word becomes identical with
the sentence. The word is merely a form, a definitely molded entity that
takes in as much or as little of the conceptual material of the whole
thought as the genius of the language cares to allow. Thus it is that
while the single radical elements and grammatical elements, the carriers
of isolated concepts, are comparable as we pass from language to
language, the finished words are not. Radical (or grammatical) element
and sentence--these are the primary _functional_ units of speech, the
former as an abstracted minimum, the latter as the esthetically
satisfying embodiment of a unified thought. The actual _formal_ units of
speech, the words, may on occasion identify themselves with either of
the two functional units; more often they mediate between the two
extremes, embodying one or more radical notions and also one or more
subsidiary ones. We may put the whole matter in a nutshell by saying
that the radical and grammatical elements of language, abstracted as
they are from the realities of speech, respond to the conceptual world
of science, abstracted as it is from the realities of experience, and
that the word, the existent unit of living speech, responds to the unit
of actually apprehended experience, of history, of art. The sentence is
the logical counterpart of the complete thought only if it be felt as
made up of the radical and grammatical elements that lurk in the
recesses of its words. It is the psychological counterpart of
experience, of art, when it is felt, as indeed it normally is, as the
finished play of word with word. As the necessity of defining thought
solely and exclusively for its own sake becomes more urgent, the word
becomes increasingly irrelevant as a means. We can therefore easily
understand why the mathematician and the symbolic logician are driven to
discard the word and to build up their thought with the help of symbols
which have, each of them, a rigidly unitary value.

But is not the word, one may object, as much of an abstraction as the
radical element? Is it not as arbitrarily lifted out of the living
sentence as is the minimum conceptual element out of the word? Some
students of language have, indeed, looked upon the word as such an
abstraction, though with very doubtful warrant, it seems to me. It is
true that in particular cases, especially in some of the highly
synthetic languages of aboriginal America, it is not always easy to say
whether a particular element of language is to be interpreted as an
independent word or as part of a larger word. These transitional cases,
puzzling as they may be on occasion, do not, however, materially weaken
the case for the psychological validity of the word. Linguistic
experience, both as expressed in standardized, written form and as
tested in daily usage, indicates overwhelmingly that there is not, as a
rule, the slightest difficulty in bringing the word to consciousness as
a psychological reality. No more convincing test could be desired than
this, that the naive Indian, quite unaccustomed to the concept of the
written word, has nevertheless no serious difficulty in dictating a text
to a linguistic student word by word; he tends, of course, to run his
words together as in actual speech, but if he is called to a halt and is
made to understand what is desired, he can readily isolate the words as
such, repeating them as units. He regularly refuses, on the other hand,
to isolate the radical or grammatical element, on the ground that it
"makes no sense."[6] What, then, is the objective criterion of the word?
The speaker and hearer feel the word, let us grant, but how shall we
justify their feeling? If function is not the ultimate criterion of the
word, what is?

[Footnote 6: These oral experiences, which I have had time and again as
a field student of American Indian languages, are very neatly confirmed
by personal experiences of another sort. Twice I have taught intelligent
young Indians to write their own languages according to the phonetic
system which I employ. They were taught merely how to render accurately
the sounds as such. Both had some difficulty in learning to break up a
word into its constituent sounds, but none whatever in determining the
words. This they both did with spontaneous and complete accuracy. In the
hundreds of pages of manuscript Nootka text that I have obtained from
one of these young Indians the words, whether abstract relational
entities like English _that_ and _but_ or complex sentence-words like
the Nootka example quoted above, are, practically without exception,
isolated precisely as I or any other student would have isolated them.
Such experiences with naive speakers and recorders do more to convince
one of the definitely plastic unity of the word than any amount of
purely theoretical argument.]

It is easier to ask the question than to answer it. The best that we can
do is to say that the word is one of the smallest, completely satisfying
bits of isolated "meaning" into which the sentence resolves itself. It
cannot be cut into without a disturbance of meaning, one or the other or
both of the severed parts remaining as a helpless waif on our hands. In
practice this unpretentious criterion does better service than might be
supposed. In such a sentence as _It is unthinkable_, it is simply
impossible to group the elements into any other and smaller "words" than
the three indicated. _Think_ or _thinkable_ might be isolated, but as
neither _un-_ nor _-able_ nor _is-un_ yields a measurable satisfaction,
we are compelled to leave _unthinkable_ as an integral whole, a
miniature bit of art. Added to the "feel" of the word are frequently,
but by no means invariably, certain external phonetic characteristics.
Chief of these is accent. In many, perhaps in most, languages the single
word is marked by a unifying accent, an emphasis on one of the
syllables, to which the rest are subordinated. The particular syllable
that is to be so distinguished is dependent, needless to say, on the
special genius of the language. The importance of accent as a unifying
feature of the word is obvious in such English examples as
_unthinkable_, _characterizing_. The long Paiute word that we have
analyzed is marked as a rigid phonetic unit by several features, chief
of which are the accent on its second syllable (_wii'_-"knife") and the
slurring ("unvoicing," to use the technical phonetic term) of its final
vowel (_-mue_, animate plural). Such features as accent, cadence, and the
treatment of consonants and vowels within the body of a word are often
useful as aids in the external demarcation of the word, but they must by
no means be interpreted, as is sometimes done, as themselves responsible
for its psychological existence. They at best but strengthen a feeling
of unity that is already present on other grounds.

We have already seen that the major functional unit of speech, the
sentence, has, like the word, a psychological as well as a merely
logical or abstracted existence. Its definition is not difficult. It is
the linguistic expression of a proposition. It combines a subject of
discourse with a statement in regard to this subject. Subject and
"predicate" may be combined in a single word, as in Latin _dico_; each
may be expressed independently, as in the English equivalent, _I say_;
each or either may be so qualified as to lead to complex propositions of
many sorts. No matter how many of these qualifying elements (words or
functional parts of words) are introduced, the sentence does not lose
its feeling of unity so long as each and every one of them falls in
place as contributory to the definition of either the subject of
discourse or the core of the predicate[7]. Such a sentence as _The mayor
of New York is going to deliver a speech of welcome in French_ is
readily felt as a unified statement, incapable of reduction by the
transfer of certain of its elements, in their given form, to the
preceding or following sentences. The contributory ideas of _of New
York_, _of welcome_, and _in French_ may be eliminated without hurting
the idiomatic flow of the sentence. _The mayor is going to deliver a
speech_ is a perfectly intelligible proposition. But further than this
we cannot go in the process of reduction. We cannot say, for instance,
_Mayor is going to deliver_.[8] The reduced sentence resolves itself
into the subject of discourse--_the mayor_--and the predicate--_is going
to deliver a speech_. It is customary to say that the true subject of
such a sentence is _mayor_, the true predicate _is going_ or even _is_,
the other elements being strictly subordinate. Such an analysis,
however, is purely schematic and is without psychological value. It is
much better frankly to recognize the fact that either or both of the two
terms of the sentence-proposition may be incapable of expression in the
form of single words. There are languages that can convey all that is
conveyed by _The-mayor is-going-to-deliver-a-speech_ in two words, a
subject word and a predicate word, but English is not so highly
synthetic. The point that we are really making here is that underlying
the finished sentence is a living sentence type, of fixed formal
characteristics. These fixed types or actual sentence-groundworks may be
freely overlaid by such additional matter as the speaker or writer cares
to put on, but they are themselves as rigidly "given" by tradition as
are the radical and grammatical elements abstracted from the finished
word. New words may be consciously created from these fundamental
elements on the analogy of old ones, but hardly new types of words. In
the same way new sentences are being constantly created, but always on
strictly traditional lines. The enlarged sentence, however, allows as a
rule of considerable freedom in the handling of what may be called
"unessential" parts. It is this margin of freedom which gives us the
opportunity of individual style.

[Footnote 7: "Coordinate sentences" like _I shall remain but you may go_
may only doubtfully be considered as truly unified predications, as true
sentences. They are sentences in a stylistic sense rather than from the
strictly formal linguistic standpoint. The orthography _I shall remain.
But you may go_ is as intrinsically justified as _I shall remain. Now
you may go_. The closer connection in sentiment between the first two
propositions has led to a conventional visual representation that must
not deceive the analytic spirit.]

[Footnote 8: Except, possibly, in a newspaper headline. Such headlines,
however, are language only in a derived sense.]

The habitual association of radical elements, grammatical elements,
words, and sentences with concepts or groups of concepts related into
wholes is the fact itself of language. It is important to note that
there is in all languages a certain randomness of association. Thus, the
idea of "hide" may be also expressed by the word "conceal," the notion
of "three times" also by "thrice." The multiple expression of a single
concept is universally felt as a source of linguistic strength and
variety, not as a needless extravagance. More irksome is a random
correspondence between idea and linguistic expression in the field of
abstract and relational concepts, particularly when the concept is
embodied in a grammatical element. Thus, the randomness of the
expression of plurality in such words as _books_, _oxen_, _sheep_, and
_geese_ is felt to be rather more, I fancy, an unavoidable and
traditional predicament than a welcome luxuriance. It is obvious that a
language cannot go beyond a certain point in this randomness. Many
languages go incredibly far in this respect, it is true, but linguistic
history shows conclusively that sooner or later the less frequently
occurring associations are ironed out at the expense of the more vital
ones. In other words, all languages have an inherent tendency to economy
of expression. Were this tendency entirely inoperative, there would be
no grammar. The fact of grammar, a universal trait of language, is
simply a generalized expression of the feeling that analogous concepts
and relations are most conveniently symbolized in analogous forms. Were
a language ever completely "grammatical," it would be a perfect engine
of conceptual expression. Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is
tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak.

Up to the present we have been assuming that the material of language
reflects merely the world of concepts and, on what I have ventured to
call the "pre-rational" plane, of images, which are the raw material of
concepts. We have, in other words, been assuming that language moves
entirely in the ideational or cognitive sphere. It is time that we
amplified the picture. The volitional aspect of consciousness also is to
some extent explicitly provided for in language. Nearly all languages
have special means for the expression of commands (in the imperative
forms of the verb, for example) and of desires, unattained or
unattainable (_Would he might come!_ or _Would he were here!_) The
emotions, on the whole, seem to be given a less adequate outlet.
Emotion, indeed, is proverbially inclined to speechlessness. Most, if
not all, the interjections are to be put to the credit of emotional
expression, also, it may be, a number of linguistic elements expressing
certain modalities, such as dubitative or potential forms, which may be
interpreted as reflecting the emotional states of hesitation or
doubt--attenuated fear. On the whole, it must be admitted that ideation
reigns supreme in language, that volition and emotion come in as
distinctly secondary factors. This, after all, is perfectly
intelligible. The world of image and concept, the endless and
ever-shifting picture of objective reality, is the unavoidable
subject-matter of human communication, for it is only, or mainly, in
terms of this world that effective action is possible. Desire, purpose,
emotion are the personal color of the objective world; they are applied
privately by the individual soul and are of relatively little importance
to the neighboring one. All this does not mean that volition and emotion
are not expressed. They are, strictly speaking, never absent from normal
speech, but their expression is not of a truly linguistic nature. The
nuances of emphasis, tone, and phrasing, the varying speed and
continuity of utterance, the accompanying bodily movements, all these
express something of the inner life of impulse and feeling, but as these
means of expression are, at last analysis, but modified forms of the
instinctive utterance that man shares with the lower animals, they
cannot be considered as forming part of the essential cultural
conception of language, however much they may be inseparable from its
actual life. And this instinctive expression of volition and emotion is,
for the most part, sufficient, often more than sufficient, for the
purposes of communication.

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