ter VI). Radical-words may and do
occur in languages of all varieties, many of them of a high degree of
complexity.]
[Footnote 4: Spoken by a group of Indian tribes in Vancouver Island.]
We now know of four distinct formal types of word: A (Nootka _hamot_);
A + (0) (_sing_, _bone_); A + (b) (_singing_); (A) + (b) (Latin
_hortus_). There is but one other type that is fundamentally possible:
A + B, the union of two (or more) independently occurring radical
elements into a single term. Such a word is the compound _fire-engine_
or a Sioux form equivalent to _eat-stand_ (i.e., "to eat while
standing"). It frequently happens, however, that one of the radical
elements becomes functionally so subordinated to the other that it takes
on the character of a grammatical element. We may symbolize this by
A + b, a type that may gradually, by loss of external connection between
the subordinated element b and its independent counterpart B merge with
the commoner type A + (b). A word like _beautiful_ is an example of
A + b, the _-ful_ barely preserving the impress of its lineage. A word
like _homely_, on the other hand, is clearly of the type A + (b), for no
one but a linguistic student is aware of the connection between the
_-ly_ and the independent word _like_.
In actual use, of course, these five (or six) fundamental types may be
indefinitely complicated in a number of ways. The (0) may have a
multiple value; in other words, the inherent formal modification of the
basic notion of the word may affect more than one category. In such a
Latin word as _cor_ "heart," for instance, not only is a concrete
concept conveyed, but there cling to the form, which is actually shorter
than its own radical element (_cord-_), the three distinct, yet
intertwined, formal concepts of singularity, gender classification
(neuter), and case (subjective-objective). The complete grammatical
formula for _cor_ is, then, A + (0) + (0) + (0), though the merely
external, phonetic formula would be (A)--, (A) indicating the abstracted
"stem" _cord-_, the minus sign a loss of material. The significant thing
about such a word as _cor_ is that the three conceptual limitations are
not merely expressed by implication as the word sinks into place in a
sentence; they are tied up, for good and all, within the very vitals of
the word and cannot be eliminated by any possibility of usage.
Other complications result from a manifolding of parts. In a given word
there may b
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