The Project Gutenberg eBook of Language by Edward Sapir

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.

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 naïve speakers and recorders do more to convince one of the definitely plastic unity of the word than any amount of purely theoretical argument.

Footnote 7: “Coördinate 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.

Footnote 9: E.g., the brilliant Dutch writer, Jac van Ginneken.

Footnote 10: Observe the “voluntary.” When we shout or grunt or otherwise allow our voices to take care of themselves, as we are likely to do when alone in the country on a fine spring day, we are no longer fixing vocal adjustments by voluntary control. Under these circumstances we are almost certain to hit on speech sounds that we could never learn to control in actual speech.

Footnote 11: If speech, in its acoustic and articulatory aspect, is indeed a rigid system, how comes it, one may plausibly object, that no two people speak alike? The answer is simple. All that part of speech which falls out of the rigid articulatory framework is not speech in idea, but is merely a superadded, more or less instinctively determined vocal complication inseparable from speech in practice. All the individual color of speech—personal emphasis, speed, personal cadence, personal pitch—is a non-linguistic fact, just as the incidental expression of desire and emotion are, for the most part, alien to linguistic expression. Speech, like all elements of culture, demands conceptual selection, inhibition of the randomness of instinctive behavior. That its “idea” is never realized as such in practice, its carriers being instinctively animated organisms, is of course true of each and every aspect of culture.

Footnote 12: Purely acoustic classifications, such as more easily suggest themselves to a first attempt at analysis, are now in less favor among students of phonetics than organic classifications. The latter have the advantage of being more objective. Moreover, the acoustic quality of a sound is dependent on the articulation, even though in linguistic consciousness this quality is the primary, not the secondary, fact.

Footnote 13: By “quality” is here meant the inherent nature and resonance of the sound as such. The general “quality” of the individual’s voice is another matter altogether. This is chiefly determined by the individual anatomical characteristics of the larynx and is of no linguistic interest whatever.

Footnote 14: As at the end of the snappily pronounced no! (sometimes written nope!) or in the over-carefully pronounced at all, where one may hear a slight check between the t and the a.

Footnote 15: “Singing” is here used in a wide sense. One cannot sing continuously on such a sound as b or d, but one may easily outline a tune on a series of b’s or d’s in the manner of the plucked “pizzicato” on stringed instruments. A series of tones executed on continuant consonants, like m, z, or l, gives the effect of humming, droning, or buzzing. The sound of “humming,” indeed, is nothing but a continuous voiced nasal, held on one pitch or varying in pitch, as desired.

Footnote 16: The whisper of ordinary speech is a combination of unvoiced sounds and “whispered” sounds, as the term is understood in phonetics.

Footnote 17: Aside from the involuntary nasalizing of all voiced sounds in the speech of those that talk with a “nasal twang.”

Footnote 18: These may be also defined as free unvoiced breath with varying vocalic timbres. In the long Paiute word quoted on page 31 the first u and the final ü are pronounced without voice.

Footnote 19: Nasalized stops, say m or n, can naturally not be truly “stopped,” as there is no way of checking the stream of breath in the nose by a definite articulation.

Footnote 20: The lips also may theoretically so articulate. “Labial trills,” however, are certainly rare in natural speech.

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

Footnote 22: “Points of articulation” must be understood to include tongue and lip positions of the vowels.

Footnote 23: Including, under the fourth category, a number of special resonance adjustments that we have not been able to take up specifically.

Footnote 24: In so far, it should be added, as these sounds are expiratory, i.e., pronounced with the outgoing breath. Certain languages, like the South African Hottentot and Bushman, have also a number of inspiratory sounds, pronounced by sucking in the breath at various points of oral contact. These are the so-called “clicks.”

Footnote 25: The conception of the ideal phonetic system, the phonetic pattern, of a language is not as well understood by linguistic students as it should be. In this respect the unschooled recorder of language, provided he has a good ear and a genuine instinct for language, is often at a great advantage as compared with the minute phonetician, who is apt to be swamped by his mass of observations. I have already employed my experience in teaching Indians to write their own language for its testing value in another connection. It yields equally valuable evidence here. I found that it was difficult or impossible to teach an Indian to make phonetic distinctions that did not correspond to “points in the pattern of his language,” however these differences might strike our objective ear, but that subtle, barely audible, phonetic differences, if only they hit the “points in the pattern,” were easily and voluntarily expressed in writing. In watching my Nootka interpreter write his language, I often had the curious feeling that he was transcribing an ideal flow of phonetic elements which he heard, inadequately from a purely objective standpoint, as the intention of the actual rumble of speech.

Footnote 26: For the symbolism, see chapter II.

Footnote 27: “Plural” is here a symbol for any prefix indicating plurality.

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

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

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

Footnote 31: This may seem surprising to an English reader. We generally think of time as a function that is appropriately expressed in a purely formal manner. This notion is due to the bias that Latin grammar has given us. As a matter of fact the English future (I shall go) is not expressed by affixing at all; moreover, it may be expressed by the present, as in to-morrow I leave this place, where the temporal function is inherent in the independent adverb. Though in lesser degree, the Hupa -te is as irrelevant to the vital word as is to-morrow to the grammatical “feel” of I leave.

Footnote 32: Wishram dialect.

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

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

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

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

Footnote 37: Egyptian dialect.

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

Footnote 39: A Berber language of Morocco.

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

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

Footnote 42: See page 49.

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

Footnote 44: See page 50.

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

Footnote 46: Whence our ping-pong.

Footnote 47: An African language of the Guinea Coast.

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

Footnote 49: Initial “click” (see page 55, note 15) omitted. Transcriber's Note: This footnote has been renumbered as Footnote 24.

Footnote 50: An Indian language of Nevada.

Footnote 51: An Indian language of Oregon.

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

Footnote 53: Not in its technical sense.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Footnote 60: Except in so far as Latin uses this method as a rather awkward, roundabout method of establishing the attribution of the color to the particular object or person. In effect one cannot in Latin directly say that a person is white, merely that what is white is identical with the person who is, acts, or is acted upon in such and such a manner. In origin the feel of the Latin illa alba femina is really “that-one, the-white-one, (namely) the-woman”—three substantive ideas that are related to each other by a juxtaposition intended to convey an identity. English and Chinese express the attribution directly by means of order. In Latin the illa and alba may occupy almost any position in the sentence. It is important to observe that the subjective form of illa and alba, does not truly define a relation of these qualifying concepts to femina. Such a relation might be formally expressed via an attributive case, say the genitive (woman of whiteness). In Tibetan both the methods of order and of true case relation may be employed: woman white (i.e., “white woman”) or white-of woman (i.e., “woman of whiteness, woman who is white, white woman”).

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

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

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

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

Footnote 65: Thus, the -er of farmer may he defined as indicating that particular substantive concept (object or thing) that serves as the habitual subject of the particular verb to which it is affixed. This relation of “subject” (a farmer farms) is inherent in and specific to the word; it does not exist for the sentence as a whole. In the same way the -ling of duckling defines a specific relation of attribution that concerns only the radical element, not the sentence.

Footnote 66: It is precisely the failure to feel the “value” or “tone,” as distinct from the outer significance, of the concept expressed by a given grammatical element that has so often led students to misunderstand the nature of languages profoundly alien to their own. Not everything that calls itself “tense” or “mode” or “number” or “gender” or “person” is genuinely comparable to what we mean by these terms in Latin or French.

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

Footnote 68: Assuming the existence of a word “firelet.”

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

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

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”).

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

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 naïve 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.

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.

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