Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech |
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abstract accent affix agglutinative agglutinative languages analogous analytic Anglo-Saxon articulation Athabaskan languages auditory Chinese Chinook classification consonants contrast corresponding culture dative 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 Latin and Greek linguistic matter means ment merely method Middle High German modified morphological nasal nature Nootka noun objective Old High German particular phonetic drift phonetic laws phonetic pattern plural polysynthetic prefixes pronouns psychological pure-relational purely race radical element rela relational concepts Sanskrit Semitic languages sentence significance sing sounds speak 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 7 - Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.
Page 125 - There must be something to talk about and something must be said about this subject of discourse once it is selected.
Page 11 - The world of our experiences must be enormously simplified and generalized before it is possible to make a symbolic inventory of all our experiences of things and relations and this inventory is imperative before we can convey ideas.
Page 22 - The lowliest South African Bushman speaks in the forms of a rich symbolic system that is in essence perfectly comparable to the speech of the cultivated Frenchman.
Page 235 - I believe the distinction is entirely valid, though we never get the two levels pure in practice. Literature moves in language as a medium, but that medium comprises two layers, the latent content of language — our intuitive record of experience — and the particular conformation...
Page 79 - Nothing is more natural than the prevalence of reduplication, in other words, the repetition, of all or part of the radical element. The process is generally employed, with self-evident symbolism, to indicate such concepts as distribution, plurality, repetition, customary activity, increase of size, added intensity, continuance.
Page 58 - I found that it was difficult or impossible to teach an Indian to make phonetic distinctions that did not correspond to 'points in the pattern of his language' however these differences might strike our objective ear, but that subtle, barely audible phonetic differences, if only they hit the 'points in the pattern' were easily and voluntarily expressed in writing . . . (Language p.
Page 1 - It seems as natural to man as walking, and only less so than breathing. Yet it needs but a moment's reflection to convince us that this naturalness of speech is but an illusory feeling. The process of acquiring speech is, in sober fact, an utterly different sort of thing from the process of learning to walk. In the case of the latter function, culture, in other words, the traditional body of social usage, is not seriously brought into play. The child is individually equipped, by the complex set of...
Page 22 - The fundamental groundwork of language — the development of a clear-cut phonetic system, the specific association of speech elements with concepts, and the delicate provision for the formal expression of all manner of relations — all this meets us rigidly perfected and systematized in every language known to us. Many primitive languages have a formal richness, a latent luxuriance of expression, that eclipses anything known to the languages of modern civilization.
Page 34 - ... both as expressed in standardized, written form and as tested in daily usage, indicates overwhelmingly that there is not, as a rule, the slightest difficulty in bringing the word to consciousness as a psychological reality. No more convincing test could be desired than this, that the nai've Indian, quite unaccustomed to the concept of the written word, has nevertheless no serious difficulty in dictating a text to a linguistic student word by word...