- •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
Inherent sonority and does not fluctuate significantly as to quantity
and stress. Quantitative or accentual metrics would be as artificial in
French as stress metrics in classical Greek or quantitative or purely
syllabic metrics in English. French prosody was compelled to develop on
the basis of unit syllable-groups. Assonance, later rhyme, could not but
prove a welcome, an all but necessary, means of articulating or
sectioning the somewhat spineless flow of sonorous syllables. English
was hospitable to the French suggestion of rhyme, but did not seriously
need it in its rhythmic economy. Hence rhyme has always been strictly
subordinated to stress as a somewhat decorative feature and has been
frequently dispensed with. It is no psychologic accident that rhyme came
later into English than in French and is leaving it sooner.[206] Chinese
Verse has developed along very much the same lines as French verse. The
syllable is an even more integral and sonorous unit than in French,
while quantity and stress are too uncertain to form the basis of a
metric system. Syllable-groups--so and so many syllables per rhythmic
unit--and rhyme are therefore two of the controlling factors in Chinese
prosody. The third factor, the alternation of syllables with level tone
and syllables with inflected (rising or falling) tone, is peculiar to
Chinese.
[Footnote 204: Poetry everywhere is inseparable in its origins from the
singing voice and the measure of the dance. Yet accentual and syllabic
types of verse, rather than quantitative verse, seem to be the
prevailing norms.]
[Footnote 205: Quantitative distinctions exist as an objective fact.
They have not the same inner, psychological value that they had in
Greek.]
[Footnote 206: Verhaeren was no slave to the Alexandrine, yet he
remarked to Symons, _à propos_ of the translation of _Les Aubes_, that
while he approved of the use of rhymeless verse in the English version,
he found it "meaningless" in French.]
To summarize, Latin and Greek verse depends on the principle of
contrasting weights; English verse, on the principle of contrasting
stresses; French verse, on the principles of number and echo; Chinese
Verse, on the principles of number, echo, and contrasting pitches. Each
of these rhythmic systems proceeds from the unconscious dynamic habit of
the language, falling from the lips of the folk. Study carefully the
phonetic system of a language, above all its dynamic features, and you
can tell what kind of a verse it has developed--or, if history has
played pranks with its phychology, what kind of verse it should have
developed and some day will.
Whatever be the sounds, accents, and forms of a language, however these
lay hands on the shape of its literature, there is a subtle law of
compensations that gives the artist space. If he is squeezed a bit here,
he can swing a free arm there. And generally he has rope enough to hang
himself with, if he must. It is not strange that this should be so.
Language is itself the collective art of expression, a summary of
thousands upon thousands of individual intuitions. The individual goes
lost in the collective creation, but his personal expression has left
some trace in a certain give and flexibility that are inherent in all
collective works of the human spirit. The language is ready, or can be
quickly made ready, to define the artist's individuality. If no
literary artist appears, it is not essentially because the language is
too weak an instrument, it is because the culture of the people is not
favorable to the growth of such personality as seeks a truly individual
verbal expression.
INDEX
_Note_. Italicized entries are names of languages or groups of languages.
A
Abbreviation of stem,
Accent, stress,
as grammatical process,
importance of,
metrical value of
"Accent,"
"Adam's apple,"
Adjective,
Affixation,
Affixing languages,
African languages, pitch in,
Agglutination,
Agglutinative languages,
Agglutinative-fusional,
Agglutinative-isolating,
_Algonkin_ languages (N. Amer.),
Alpine race,
Analogical leveling,
Analytic tendency,
Angles,
_Anglo-Saxon_,
Anglo-Saxon:
culture,
race,
_Annamite_ (S.E. Asia),
_Apache_ (N. Amer.),
_Arabic_,
_Armenian_,
Art,
language as,
transferability of,
Articulation:
ease of,
types of, drift toward,
Articulations:
laryngeal,
manner of consonantal,
nasal,
oral,
place of consonantal,