Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech |
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Common terms and phrases
abstract accent affixes agglutinative agglutinative languages analogous analytic Anglo-Saxon articulation Athabaskan languages auditory Chinese Chinook classification complex compound consonants corresponding culture dative define definite derivational developed dialects diphthongized distinct duckling English expression fact farmer feel formal French function fundamental fusion guage High German Hupa idea independent words indicate individual Indo-European inflective instance instinctive isolating kill language Latin linguistic matter means ment merely method Middle High German modified morphological nasal nature Nootka notion noun objective Old High German particular phonetic drift phonetic laws phonetic pattern plural polysynthetic possess pronouns psychological pure-relational purely race radical element rela relational concepts Sanskrit Semitic languages sentence sequence significance sing sounds speaker speech spoken stress suffix syllables symbolic syntactic relations synthetic synthetic languages Takelma tendency tense Tibetan tion tive Tlingit tone uncon variations verb vocalic voiceless vowel Yana
Popular passages
Page 234 - Both simple and complex types of language of an indefinite number of varieties may be found spoken at any desired level of cultural advance. When it comes to linguistic form, Plato walks with the Macedonian swineherd, Confucius with the head-hunting savage of Assam.
Page 7 - Language is a purely human and noninstinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.
Page 233 - Nor can I believe that culture and language are in any true sense causally related. Culture may be defined as what a society does and thinks. Language is a particular how of thought. It is difficult to see what particular causal relations may be expected to subsist between a selected inventory of experience (culture, a significant selection made by society) and the particular manner in which the society expresses all experience.
Page 125 - There must be something. to talk about and something must be said about this subject of discourse once it is selected.
Page 13 - Prom the point of view of language, thought may be defined as the highest latent or potential content of speech, the content that is obtained by interpreting each of the elements in the flow of language as possessed of its very fullest conceptual value.
Page 46 - ... the muscles of our speech organs have early in life become exclusively accustomed to the particular adjustments and systems of adjustment that are required to produce the traditional sounds of the language. All or nearly all other adjustments have become permanently inhibited, whether through inexperience or through gradual elimination. Of course the power to produce these inhibited adjustments is not entirely lost, but the extreme difficulty we experience in learning the new sounds of foreign...
Page 236 - LANGUAGES are more to us than systems of thoughttransference. They are invisible garments that drape themselves about our spirit and give a predetermined form to all its symbolic expression.
Page 39 - Were a language ever completely "grammatical," it would be a perfect engine of conceptual expression. Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak.
Page 35 - These oral experiences, whch I have had time and again as a field student of American Indian languages, are very neatly confirmed by personal experiences of another sort. Twice I have taught intelligent young Indians to write their own languages according to the phonetic system which I employ. They were taught merely how to render accurately the sounds as such. Both had some difficulty in learning to break up a word into its constituent sounds, but none whatever in determining the words.
Page 125 - The upshot of such an examination would be to feel convinced that the "part of speech" reflects not so much our intuitive analysis of reality as our ability to compose that reality into a variety of formal patterns. A part of speech outside of the limitations of syntactic form is but a will o ' the wisp. For this reason no logical scheme of the parts of speech — their number, nature, and necessary confines — is of the slightest interest to the linguist. Each language has its own scheme. Everything...