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"