- •Instinct); speech is a non-instinctive, acquired, "cultural" function.
- •Indulgent criticism, be termed an element of speech, yet it is obvious
- •Impressions or images that sentient beings have formed or may form of
- •In the brain, together with the appropriate paths of association, that
- •Visual speech symbolisms is, of course, that of the written or printed
- •Is the correspondence that they may, not only in theory but in the
- •Its later stages, we associate with literature is, at best, but a
- •Incapacity of an element to stand alone. The grammatical element,
- •It has not yet succeeded in this, apart, possibly, from isolated adverbs
- •Independent word or as part of a larger word. These transitional cases,
- •Vowel (_-mü_, animate plural). Such features as accent, cadence, and the
- •Its feeling of unity so long as each and every one of them falls in
- •Into the subject of discourse--_the mayor_--and the predicate--_is going
- •Instinctive utterance that man shares with the lower animals, they
- •Value which the others do not possess (think of _storm and stress_). If
- •In such a word as _please_. It is the frequent failure of foreigners,
- •I have gone into these illustrative details, which are of little or no
- •Voluntary speech movements with the all but perfect freedom of voluntary
- •Independent muscular adjustments that work together simultaneously
- •Variations in pitch which are present not only in song but in the more
- •Ignoring transitional or extreme positions. Frequently a language allows
- •It is highly doubtful if the detailed conditions that brought about the
- •In that the compounded elements are felt as constituting but parts of a
- •Incapable of composition in our sense. It is invariably built up out of
- •Ideas as delimit the concrete significance of the radical element
- •It is not always, however, that we can clearly set off the suffixes of a
- •It will not be necessary to give many further examples of prefixing and
- •Indicates activity done for the subject (the so-called "middle" or
- •Is characteristic of true verbal forms that they throw the accent back
- •Indicates that there is implied in this overburdened _-s_ a distinct
- •Interrogative sentence possesses an entirely different "modality" from
- •Is the outgrowth of historical and of unreasoning psychological forces
- •I have exaggerated somewhat the concreteness of our subsidiary or rather
- •Indeed, there is clear evidence to warrant such a reading in. An example
- •Independent word; nor is it related to the Nootka word for "house."]
- •Is indefinite as to aspect, "be crying" is durative, "cry put" is
- •Implication in terms of form. There are languages, for instance, which
- •Idea, say an action, setting down its symbol--_run_. It is hardly
- •Isolated elements in the flow of speech. While they are fully alive, in
- •Instead of "a rich man."
- •Its unique structure. Such a standpoint expresses only a half truth.
- •Independently and frequently. In assuming the existence of comparable
- •Various kinds. First and foremost, it has been difficult to choose a
- •Inferred from the context. I am strongly inclined to believe that this
- •Into more than one of these groups. The Semitic languages, for instance,
- •Involved in this difference than linguists have generally recognized. It
- •Is one that either does not combine concepts into single words at all
- •Isolating cast. The meaning that we had best assign to the term
- •Is at the mercy of the preceding radical element to this extent, that it
- •Its indicative suffix, is just as clearly verbal: "it burns in the
- •III will be understood to include, or rather absorb, group IV.
- •Indicate relations. All these and similar distinctions are not merely
- •Ignored; "fusion" and "symbolism" may often be combined with advantage
- •Ignored in defining the general form of the language. The caution is all
- •I need hardly point out that these examples are far from exhausting the
- •Into "isolating," "agglutinative," and "inflective" (read "fusional")
- •Interesting, however, to note that of the three intercrossing
- •In the technical features of language. That highly synthetic languages
- •In which we can cover up our fault by a bit of unconscious special
- •It is probable that rhythm is an unconscious linguistic determinant even
- •Is still not as difficult to reconcile with our innate feeling for
- •In certain paradigms particular cases have coalesced. The case system is
- •In later medieval and in modern times there have been comparatively few
- •It_. Can it be that so common a word as _its_ is actually beginning to
- •It. We could hold to such a view if it were possible to say _the dog
- •It is only animate pronouns that distinguish pre-verbal and post-verbal
- •Impatience of nuancing is the group _whence_, _whither_, _hence_,
- •Vocabulary is rich in near-synonyms and in groups of words that are
- •Is an interesting example. The English type of plural represented by
- •In other words, to state in a definitive manner what is the "phonetic
- •Is quite frequent in the history of language. In English, for instance,
- •In the singular (_foot_, _Fuss_) and modified vowel in the plural
- •In all manner of other grammatical and derivative formations. Thus, a
- •Itself in one way and another for centuries. I believe that these
- •Variations won through because they so beautifully allowed the general
- •I would suggest, then, that phonetic change is compacted of at least
- •Is identical with the old Indo-European one, yet it is impressive to
- •It was different in German. The whole series of phonetic changes
- •Instance, "umlaut" plurals have been formed where there are no Middle
- •Is often so small that intermarriages with alien tribes that speak other
- •Into England, a number of associated words, such as _bishop_ and
- •Imprint of the Sanskrit and Pali that came in with Hindu Buddhism
- •Is anywhere entering into the lexical heart of other languages as French
- •Its customary method of feeling and handling words. It is as though this
- •Is the presence of unaspirated voiceless stops (_p_, _t_, _k_), which
- •Is biological, sense, is supremely indifferent to the history of
- •Its colonies, represent a race, pure and single? I cannot see that the
- •Is such[183] as to make it highly probable that they represent but an
- •Intrinsically associated. Totally unrelated languages share in one
- •Various--political, cultural, linguistic, geographic, sometimes
- •Importance, while the linguistic division is of quite minor
- •Intelligible historical association. If the Bantu and Bushmen are so
- •In language and culture. The very fact that races and cultures which are
- •Is only apparently a paradox. The latent content of all languages is the
- •It goes without saying that the mere content of language is intimately
- •Intertwined two distinct kinds or levels of art--a generalized,
- •Indeed, is precisely what it is. These artists--Whitmans and
- •Is under the illusion that the universe speaks German. The material
- •Important are its morphological peculiarities. It makes a great deal of
- •Inherent sonority and does not fluctuate significantly as to quantity
- •Verse has developed along very much the same lines as French verse. The
- •Verse, on the principles of number, echo, and contrasting pitches. Each
- •Vocalic,
- •International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
- •Including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
In other words, to state in a definitive manner what is the "phonetic
law" that regulated the change of the older _foot_ (rhyming with _boot_)
to the present _foot_. We know that there is a strong drift towards the
short, open vowel of _foot_, but whether or not all the old "long _oo_"
words will eventually be affected we cannot presume to say. If they all,
or practically all, are taken by the drift, phonetic law 13 will be as
"regular," as sweeping, as most of the twelve that have preceded it. If
not, it may eventually be possible, if past experience is a safe guide,
to show that the modified words form a natural phonetic group, that is,
that the "law" will have operated under certain definable limiting
conditions, e.g., that all words ending in a voiceless consonant (such
as _p_, _t_, _k_, _f_) were affected (e.g., _hoof_, _foot_, _look_,
_roof_), but that all words ending in the _oo_-vowel or in a voiced
consonant remained unaffected (e.g., _do_, _food_, _move_, _fool_).
Whatever the upshot, we may be reasonably certain that when the
"phonetic law" has run its course, the distribution of "long" and
"short" vowels in the old _oo_-words will not seem quite as erratic as
at the present transitional moment.[154] We learn, incidentally, the
fundamental fact that phonetic laws do not work with spontaneous
automatism, that they are simply a formula for a consummated drift that
sets in at a psychologically exposed point and gradually worms its way
through a gamut of phonetically analogous forms.
[Footnote 154: It is possible that other than purely phonetic factors
are also at work in the history of these vowels.]
It will be instructive to set down a table of form sequences, a kind of
gross history of the words _foot_, _feet_, _mouse_, _mice_ for the last
1500 years:[155]
[Footnote 155: The orthography is roughly phonetic. Pronounce all
accented vowels long except where otherwise indicated, unaccented vowels
short; give continental values to vowels, not present English ones.]
I. _fot_: _foti_; _mus_: _musi_ (West Germanic)
II. _fot_: _föti_; _mus_: _müsi_
III. _fot_: _föte_; _mus_: _müse_
IV. _fot_: _föt_; _mus_: _müs_
V. _fot_: _fet_; _mus_: _müs_ (Anglo-Saxon)
VI. _fot_: _fet_; _mus_: _mis_(Chaucer)
VII. _fot_: _fet_; _mous_: _meis_
VIII. _fut_ (rhymes with _boot_): _fit_; _mous_: _meis_ (Shakespeare)
IX. _fut_: _fit_; _maus_: _mais_
X. _fut_ (rhymes with _put_): _fit_; _maus_: _mais_ (English of 1900)
It will not be necessary to list the phonetic laws that
gradually differentiated the modern German equivalents
of the original West Germanic forms from their
English cognates. The following table gives a rough
idea of the form sequences in German:[156]
[Footnote 156: After I. the numbers are not meant to correspond
chronologically to those of the English table. The orthography is again
roughly phonetic.]
I. _fot_: _foti_; _mus_: _musi_ (West Germanic)
II. _foss_:[157] _fossi_; _mus_: _musi_
III. _fuoss_: _fuossi_; _mus_: _musi_ (Old High German)
IV. _fuoss_: _füessi_; _mus_: _müsi_
V. _fuoss_: _füesse_; _mus_: _müse_ (Middle High German)
VI. _fuoss_: _füesse_; _mus_: _müze_[158]
VII. _fuos_: _füese_; _mus_: _müze_
VIII. _fuos_: _füese_; _mous_: _möüze_
IX. _fus_: _füse_; _mous_: _möüze_ (Luther)
X. _fus_: _füse_; _maus_: _moize_ (German of 1900)
[Footnote 157: I use _ss_ to indicate a peculiar long, voiceless
_s_-sound that was etymologically and phonetically distinct from the old
Germanic _s_. It always goes back to an old _t_. In the old sources it
is generally written as a variant of _z_, though it is not to be
confused with the modern German _z_ (= _ts_). It was probably a dental
(lisped) _s_.]
[Footnote 158: _Z_ is to be understood as French or English _z_, not in
its German use. Strictly speaking, this "z" (intervocalic _-s-_) was not
voiced but was a soft voiceless sound, a sibilant intermediate between
our _s_ and _z_. In modern North German it has become voiced to _z_. It
is important not to confound this _s_--_z_ with the voiceless
intervocalic _s_ that soon arose from the older lisped _ss_. In Modern
German (aside from certain dialects), old _s_ and _ss_ are not now
differentiated when final (_Maus_ and _Fuss_ have identical sibilants),
but can still be distinguished as voiced and voiceless _s_ between
vowels (_Mäuse_ and _Füsse_).]
We cannot even begin to ferret out and discuss all the psychological
problems that are concealed behind these bland tables. Their general
parallelism is obvious. Indeed we might say that to-day the English and
German forms resemble each other more than does either set the West
Germanic prototypes from which each is independently derived. Each table
illustrates the tendency to reduction of unaccented syllables, the
vocalic modification of the radical element under the influence of the
following vowel, the rise in tongue position of the long middle vowels
(English _o_ to _u_, _e_ to _i_; German _o_ to _uo_ to _u_, _üe_ to
_ü_), the diphthongizing of the old high vowels (English _i_ to _ei_ to
_ai_; English and German _u_ to _ou_ to _au_; German _ü_ to _öü_ to
_oi_). These dialectic parallels cannot be accidental. They are rooted
in a common, pre-dialectic drift.
Phonetic changes are "regular." All but one (English table, X.), and
that as yet uncompleted, of the particular phonetic laws represented in
our tables affect all examples of the sound in question or, if the
phonetic change is conditional, all examples of the same sound that are
analogously circumstanced.[159] An example of the first type of change
is the passage in English of all old long _i_-vowels to diphthongal _ai_
via _ei_. The passage could hardly have been sudden or automatic, but it
was rapid enough to prevent an irregularity of development due to cross
drifts. The second type of change is illustrated in the development of
Anglo-Saxon long _o_ to long _e_, via _ö_, under the influence of a
following _i_. In the first case we may say that _au_ mechanically
replaced long _u_, in the second that the old long _o_ "split" into two
sounds--long _o_, eventually _u_, and long _e_, eventually _i_. The
former type of change did no violence to the old phonetic pattern, the
formal distribution of sounds into groups; the latter type rearranged
the pattern somewhat. If neither of the two sounds into which an old one
"splits" is a new sound, it means that there has been a phonetic
leveling, that two groups of words, each with a distinct sound or sound
combination, have fallen together into one group. This kind of leveling