FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49  
50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   >>   >|  
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
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49  
50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

radical

 
formal
 

element

 

subordinated

 

grammatical

 

elements

 
independent
 

external

 

connection

 
formula

distinct

 
concrete
 

concept

 

conveyed

 
complications
 
result
 
manifolding
 

shorter

 

instance

 
multiple

inherent

 

Radical

 

indefinitely

 

complicated

 

number

 

modification

 

category

 
notion
 

affect

 

possibility


significant
 
material
 
abstracted
 

implication

 

sentence

 
expressed
 
conceptual
 

limitations

 

indicating

 

classification


neuter

 
gender
 

singularity

 

intertwined

 

eliminated

 

concepts

 

subjective

 
objective
 

phonetic

 
vitals