Language by Edward Sapir

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[Footnote 67: Suffixed articles occur also in Danish and Swedish and in
numerous other languages. The Nootka element for "in the house" differs
from our "house-" in that it is suffixed and cannot occur as an
independent word; nor is it related to the Nootka word for "house."]

[Footnote 68: Assuming the existence of a word "firelet."]

[Footnote 69: The Nootka diminutive is doubtless more of a
feeling-element, an element of nuance, than our _-ling_. This is shown
by the fact that it may be used with verbs as well as with nouns. In
speaking to a child, one is likely to add the diminutive to any word in
the sentence, regardless of whether there is an inherent diminutive
meaning in the word or not.]

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

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

But can we go a step farther and dispose of the category of plurality as
an utterly material idea, one that would make of "books" a "plural
book," in which the "plural," like the "white" of "white book," falls
contentedly into group I? Our "many books" and "several books" are
obviously not cases in point. Even if we could say "many book" and
"several book" (as we can say "many a book" and "each book"), the plural
concept would still not emerge as clearly as it should for our argument;
"many" and "several" are contaminated by certain notions of quantity or
scale that are not essential to the idea of plurality itself. We must
turn to central and eastern Asia for the type of expression we are
seeking. In Tibetan, for instance, _nga-s mi mthong_[71] "I-by man see,
by me a man is seen, I see a man" may just as well be understood to mean
"I see men," if there happens to be no reason to emphasize the fact of
plurality.[72] If the fact is worth expressing, however, I can say
_nga-s mi rnams mthong_ "by me man plural see," where _rnams_ is the
perfect conceptual analogue of _-s_ in _books_, divested of all
relational strings. _Rnams_ follows its noun as would any other
attributive word--"man plural" (whether two or a million) like "man
white." No need to bother about his plurality any more than about his
whiteness unless we insist on the point.

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

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

What is true of the idea of plurality is naturally just as true of a
great many other concepts. They do not necessarily belong where we who
speak English are in the habit of putting them. They may be shifted
towards I or towards IV, the two poles of linguistic expression. Nor
dare we look down on the Nootka Indian and the Tibetan for their
material attitude towards a concept which to us is abstract and
relational, lest we invite the reproaches of the Frenchman who feels a
subtlety of relation in _femme blanche_ and _homme blanc_ that he misses
in the coarser-grained _white woman_ and _white man_. But the Bantu
Negro, were he a philosopher, might go further and find it strange that
we put in group II a category, the diminutive, which he strongly feels
to belong to group III and which he uses, along with a number of other
classificatory concepts,[73] to relate his subjects and objects,
attributes and predicates, as a Russian or a German handles his genders
and, if possible, with an even greater finesse.

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

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

[Footnote 74: A term borrowed from Slavic grammar. It indicates the
lapse of action, its nature from the standpoint of continuity. Our "cry"
is indefinite as to aspect, "be crying" is durative, "cry put" is
momentaneous, "burst into tears" is inceptive, "keep crying" is
continuative, "start in crying" is durative-inceptive, "cry now and
again" is iterative, "cry out every now and then" or "cry in fits and
starts" is momentaneous-iterative. "To put on a coat" is momentaneous,
"to wear a coat" is resultative. As our examples show, aspect is
expressed in English by all kinds of idiomatic turns rather than by a
consistently worked out set of grammatical forms. In many languages
aspect is of far greater formal significance than tense, with which the
naive student is apt to confuse it.]

[Footnote 75: By "modalities" I do not mean the matter of fact
statement, say, of negation or uncertainty as such, rather their
implication in terms of form. There are languages, for instance, which
have as elaborate an apparatus of negative forms for the verb as Greek
has of the optative or wish-modality.]

[Footnote 76: Compare page 97.]

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

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

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

In dealing with words and their varying forms we have had to anticipate
much that concerns the sentence as a whole. Every language has its
special method or methods of binding words into a larger unity. The
importance of these methods is apt to vary with the complexity of the
individual word. The more synthetic the language, in other words, the
more clearly the status of each word in the sentence is indicated by its
own resources, the less need is there for looking beyond the word to the
sentence as a whole. The Latin _agit_ "(he) acts" needs no outside help
to establish its place in a proposition. Whether I say _agit dominus_
"the master acts" or _sic femina agit_ "thus the woman acts," the net
result as to the syntactic feel of the _agit_ is practically the same.
It can only be a verb, the predicate of a proposition, and it can only
be conceived as a statement of activity carried out by a person (or
thing) other than you or me. It is not so with such a word as the
English _act_. _Act_ is a syntactic waif until we have defined its
status in a proposition--one thing in "they act abominably," quite
another in "that was a kindly act." The Latin sentence speaks with the
assurance of its individual members, the English word needs the
prompting of its fellows. Roughly speaking, to be sure. And yet to say
that a sufficiently elaborate word-structure compensates for external
syntactic methods is perilously close to begging the question. The
elements of the word are related to each other in a specific way and
follow each other in a rigorously determined sequence. This is
tantamount to saying that a word which consists of more than a radical
element is a crystallization of a sentence or of some portion of a
sentence, that a form like _agit_ is roughly the psychological[79]
equivalent of a form like _age is_ "act he." Breaking down, then, the
wall that separates word and sentence, we may ask: What, at last
analysis, are the fundamental methods of relating word to word and
element to element, in short, of passing from the isolated notions
symbolized by each word and by each element to the unified proposition
that corresponds to a thought?

[Footnote 79: Ultimately, also historical--say, _age to_ "act that
(one)."]

The answer is simple and is implied in the preceding remarks. The most
fundamental and the most powerful of all relating methods is the method
of order. Let us think of some more or less concrete idea, say a color,
and set down its symbol--_red_; of another concrete idea, say a person
or object, setting down its symbol--_dog_; finally, of a third concrete
idea, say an action, setting down its symbol--_run_. It is hardly
possible to set down these three symbols--_red dog run_--without
relating them in some way, for example _(the) red dog run(s)_. I am far
from wishing to state that the proposition has always grown up in this
analytic manner, merely that the very process of juxtaposing concept to
concept, symbol to symbol, forces some kind of relational "feeling," if
nothing else, upon us. To certain syntactic adhesions we are very
sensitive, for example, to the attributive relation of quality (_red
dog_) or the subjective relation (_dog run_) or the objective relation
(_kill dog_), to others we are more indifferent, for example, to the
attributive relation of circumstance (_to-day red dog run_ or _red dog
to-day run_ or _red dog run to-day_, all of which are equivalent
propositions or propositions in embryo). Words and elements, then, once
they are listed in a certain order, tend not only to establish some kind
of relation among themselves but are attracted to each other in greater
or in less degree. It is presumably this very greater or less that
ultimately leads to those firmly solidified groups of elements (radical
element or elements plus one or more grammatical elements) that we have
studied as complex words. They are in all likelihood nothing but
sequences that have shrunk together and away from other sequences or
isolated elements in the flow of speech. While they are fully alive, in
other words, while they are functional at every point, they can keep
themselves at a psychological distance from their neighbors. As they
gradually lose much of their life, they fall back into the embrace of
the sentence as a whole and the sequence of independent words regains
the importance it had in part transferred to the crystallized groups of
elements. Speech is thus constantly tightening and loosening its
sequences. In its highly integrated forms (Latin, Eskimo) the "energy"
of sequence is largely locked up in complex word formations, it becomes
transformed into a kind of potential energy that may not be released for
millennia. In its more analytic forms (Chinese, English) this energy is
mobile, ready to hand for such service as we demand of it.

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

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

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

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

It is a somewhat venturesome and yet not an altogether unreasonable
speculation that sees in word order and stress the primary methods for
the expression of all syntactic relations and looks upon the present
relational value of specific words and elements as but a secondary
condition due to a transfer of values. Thus, we may surmise that the
Latin _-m_ of words like _feminam_, _dominum_, and _civem_ did not
originally[83] denote that "woman," "master," and "citizen" were
objectively related to the verb of the proposition but indicated
something far more concrete,[84] that the objective relation was merely
implied by the position or accent of the word (radical element)
immediately preceding the _-m_, and that gradually, as its more concrete
significance faded away, it took over a syntactic function that did not
originally belong to it. This sort of evolution by transfer is traceable
in many instances. Thus, the _of_ in an English phrase like "the law of
the land" is now as colorless in content, as purely a relational
indicator as the "genitive" suffix _-is_ in the Latin _lex urbis_ "the
law of the city." We know, however, that it was originally an adverb of
considerable concreteness of meaning,[85] "away, moving from," and that
the syntactic relation was originally expressed by the case form[86] of
the second noun. As the case form lost its vitality, the adverb took
over its function. If we are actually justified in assuming that the
expression of all syntactic relations is ultimately traceable to these
two unavoidable, dynamic features of speech--sequence and stress[87]--an
interesting thesis results:--All of the actual content of speech, its
clusters of vocalic and consonantal sounds, is in origin limited to the
concrete; relations were originally not expressed in outward form but
were merely implied and articulated with the help of order and rhythm.
In other words, relations were intuitively felt and could only "leak
out" with the help of dynamic factors that themselves move on an
intuitional plane.

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

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

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

[Footnote 86: "Ablative" at last analysis.]

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

There is a special method for the expression of relations that has been
so often evolved in the history of language that we must glance at it
for a moment. This is the method of "concord" or of like signaling. It
is based on the same principle as the password or label. All persons or
objects that answer to the same counter-sign or that bear the same
imprint are thereby stamped as somehow related. It makes little
difference, once they are so stamped, where they are to be found or how
they behave themselves. They are known to belong together. We are
familiar with the principle of concord in Latin and Greek. Many of us
have been struck by such relentless rhymes as _vidi ilium bonum dominum_
"I saw that good master" or _quarum dearum saevarum_ "of which stern
goddesses." Not that sound-echo, whether in the form of rhyme or of
alliteration[88] is necessary to concord, though in its most typical and
original forms concord is nearly always accompanied by sound repetition.
The essence of the principle is simply this, that words (elements) that
belong together, particularly if they are syntactic equivalents or are
related in like fashion to another word or element, are outwardly marked
by the same or functionally equivalent affixes. The application of the
principle varies considerably according to the genius of the particular
language. In Latin and Greek, for instance, there is concord between
noun and qualifying word (adjective or demonstrative) as regards gender,
number, and case, between verb and subject only as regards number, and
no concord between verb and object.

[Footnote 88: As in Bantu or Chinook.]

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

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

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

Psychologically the methods of sequence and accent lie at the opposite
pole to that of concord. Where they are all for implication, for
subtlety of feeling, concord is impatient of the least ambiguity but
must have its well-certificated tags at every turn. Concord tends to
dispense with order. In Latin and Chinook the independent words are free
in position, less so in Bantu. In both Chinook and Bantu, however, the
methods of concord and order are equally important for the
differentiation of subject and object, as the classifying verb prefixes
refer to subject, object, or indirect object according to the relative
position they occupy. These examples again bring home to us the
significant fact that at some point or other order asserts itself in
every language as the most fundamental of relating principles.

The observant reader has probably been surprised that all this time we
have had so little to say of the time-honored "parts of speech." The
reason for this is not far to seek. Our conventional classification of
words into parts of speech is only a vague, wavering approximation to a
consistently worked out inventory of experience. We imagine, to begin
with, that all "verbs" are inherently concerned with action as such,
that a "noun" is the name of some definite object or personality that
can be pictured by the mind, that all qualities are necessarily
expressed by a definite group of words to which we may appropriately
apply the term "adjective." As soon as we test our vocabulary, we
discover that the parts of speech are far from corresponding to so
simple an analysis of reality. We say "it is red" and define "red" as a
quality-word or adjective. We should consider it strange to think of an
equivalent of "is red" in which the whole predication (adjective and
verb of being) is conceived of as a verb in precisely the same way in
which we think of "extends" or "lies" or "sleeps" as a verb. Yet as soon
as we give the "durative" notion of being red an inceptive or
transitional turn, we can avoid the parallel form "it becomes red, it
turns red" and say "it reddens." No one denies that "reddens" is as good
a verb as "sleeps" or even "walks." Yet "it is red" is related to "it
reddens" very much as is "he stands" to "he stands up" or "he rises." It
is merely a matter of English or of general Indo-European idiom that we
cannot say "it reds" in the sense of "it is red." There are hundreds of
languages that can. Indeed there are many that can express what we
should call an adjective only by making a participle out of a verb.
"Red" in such languages is merely a derivative "being red," as our
"sleeping" or "walking" are derivatives of primary verbs.

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