Language Part 4

V

FORM IN LANGUAGE: GRAMMATICAL CONCEPTS

We have seen that the single word expresses either a simple concept or a combination of concepts so interrelated as to form a psychological unity. We have, furthermore, briefly reviewed from a strictly formal standpoint the main processes that are used by all known languages to affect the fundamental concepts--those embodied in una.n.a.lyzable words or in the radical elements of words--by the modifying or formative influence of subsidiary concepts. In this chapter we shall look a little more closely into the nature of the world of concepts, in so far as that world is reflected and systematized in linguistic structure.

Let us begin with a simple sentence that involves various kinds of concepts--_the farmer kills the duckling_. A rough and ready a.n.a.lysis discloses here the presence of three distinct and fundamental concepts that are brought into connection with each other in a number of ways.

These three concepts are "farmer" (the subject of discourse), "kill"

(defining the nature of the activity which the sentence informs us about), and "duckling" (another subject[53] of discourse that takes an important though somewhat pa.s.sive part in this activity). We can visualize the farmer and the duckling and we have also no difficulty in constructing an image of the killing. In other words, the elements _farmer_, _kill_, and _duckling_ define concepts of a concrete order.

[Footnote 53: Not in its technical sense.]

But a more careful linguistic a.n.a.lysis soon brings us to see that the two subjects of discourse, however simply we may visualize them, are not expressed quite as directly, as immediately, as we feel them. A "farmer"

is in one sense a perfectly unified concept, in another he is "one who farms." The concept conveyed by the radical element (_farm-_) is not one of personality at all but of an industrial activity (_to farm_), itself based on the concept of a particular type of object (_a farm_).

Similarly, the concept of _duckling_ is at one remove from that which is expressed by the radical element of the word, _duck_. This element, which may occur as an independent word, refers to a whole cla.s.s of animals, big and little, while _duckling_ is limited in its application to the young of that cla.s.s. The word _farmer_ has an "agentive" suffix _-er_ that performs the function of indicating the one that carries out a given activity, in this case that of farming. It transforms the verb _to farm_ into an agentive noun precisely as it transforms the verbs _to sing_, _to paint_, _to teach_ into the corresponding agentive nouns _singer_, _painter_, _teacher_. The element _-ling_ is not so freely used, but its significance is obvious. It adds to the basic concept the notion of smallness (as also in _gosling_, _fledgeling_) or the somewhat related notion of "contemptible" (as in _weakling_, _princeling_, _hireling_). The agentive _-er_ and the diminutive _-ling_ both convey fairly concrete ideas (roughly those of "doer" and "little"), but the concreteness is not stressed. They do not so much define distinct concepts as mediate between concepts. The _-er_ of _farmer_ does not quite say "one who (farms)" it merely indicates that the sort of person we call a "farmer" is closely enough a.s.sociated with activity on a farm to be conventionally thought of as always so occupied. He may, as a matter of fact, go to town and engage in any pursuit but farming, yet his linguistic label remains "farmer." Language here betrays a certain helplessness or, if one prefers, a stubborn tendency to look away from the immediately suggested function, trusting to the imagination and to usage to fill in the transitions of thought and the details of application that distinguish one concrete concept (_to farm_) from another "derived" one (_farmer_). It would be impossible for any language to express every concrete idea by an independent word or radical element. The concreteness of experience is infinite, the resources of the richest language are strictly limited. It must perforce throw countless concepts under the rubric of certain basic ones, using other concrete or semi-concrete ideas as functional mediators. The ideas expressed by these mediating elements--they may be independent words, affixes, or modifications of the radical element--may be called "derivational" or "qualifying." Some concrete concepts, such as _kill_, are expressed radically; others, such as _farmer_ and _duckling_, are expressed derivatively. Corresponding to these two modes of expression we have two types of concepts and of linguistic elements, radical (_farm_, _kill_, _duck_) and derivational (_-er_, _-ling_). When a word (or unified group of words) contains a derivational element (or word) the concrete significance of the radical element (_farm-_, _duck-_) tends to fade from consciousness and to yield to a new concreteness (_farmer_, _duckling_) that is synthetic in expression rather than in thought. In our sentence the concepts of _farm_ and _duck_ are not really involved at all; they are merely latent, for formal reasons, in the linguistic expression.

Returning to this sentence, we feel that the a.n.a.lysis of _farmer_ and _duckling_ are practically irrelevant to an understanding of its content and entirely irrelevant to a feeling for the structure of the sentence as a whole. From the standpoint of the sentence the derivational elements _-er_ and _-ling_ are merely details in the local economy of two of its terms (_farmer_, _duckling_) that it accepts as units of expression. This indifference of the sentence as such to some part of the a.n.a.lysis of its words is shown by the fact that if we subst.i.tute such radical words as _man_ and _chick_ for _farmer_ and _duckling_, we obtain a new material content, it is true, but not in the least a new structural mold. We can go further and subst.i.tute another activity for that of "killing," say "taking." The new sentence, _the man takes the chick_, is totally different from the first sentence in what it conveys, not in how it conveys it. We feel instinctively, without the slightest attempt at conscious a.n.a.lysis, that the two sentences fit precisely the same pattern, that they are really the same fundamental sentence, differing only in their material trappings. In other words, they express identical relational concepts in an identical manner. The manner is here threefold--the use of an inherently relational word (_the_) in a.n.a.logous positions, the a.n.a.logous sequence (subject; predicate, consisting of verb and object) of the concrete terms of the sentence, and the use of the suffixed element _-s_ in the verb.

Change any of these features of the sentence and it becomes modified, slightly or seriously, in some purely relational, non-material regard.

If _the_ is omitted (_farmer kills duckling_, _man takes chick_), the sentence becomes impossible; it falls into no recognized formal pattern and the two subjects of discourse seem to hang incompletely in the void.

We feel that there is no relation established between either of them and what is already in the minds of the speaker and his auditor. As soon as a _the_ is put before the two nouns, we feel relieved. We know that the farmer and duckling which the sentence tells us about are the same farmer and duckling that we had been talking about or hearing about or thinking about some time before. If I meet a man who is not looking at and knows nothing about the farmer in question, I am likely to be stared at for my pains if I announce to him that "the farmer [what farmer?]

kills the duckling [didn't know he had any, whoever he is]." If the fact nevertheless seems interesting enough to communicate, I should be compelled to speak of "_a farmer_ up my way" and of "_a duckling_ of his." These little words, _the_ and _a_, have the important function of establishing a definite or an indefinite reference.

If I omit the first _the_ and also leave out the suffixed _-s_, I obtain an entirely new set of relations. _Farmer, kill the duckling_ implies that I am now speaking to the farmer, not merely about him; further, that he is not actually killing the bird, but is being ordered by me to do so. The subjective relation of the first sentence has become a vocative one, one of address, and the activity is conceived in terms of command, not of statement. We conclude, therefore, that if the farmer is to be merely talked about, the little _the_ must go back into its place and the _-s_ must not be removed. The latter element clearly defines, or rather helps to define, statement as contrasted with command. I find, moreover, that if I wish to speak of several farmers, I cannot say _the farmers kills the duckling_, but must say _the farmers kill the duckling_. Evidently _-s_ involves the notion of singularity in the subject. If the noun is singular, the verb must have a form to correspond; if the noun is plural, the verb has another, corresponding form.[54] Comparison with such forms as _I kill_ and _you kill_ shows, moreover, that the _-s_ has exclusive reference to a person other than the speaker or the one spoken to. We conclude, therefore, that it connotes a personal relation as well as the notion of singularity. And comparison with a sentence like _the farmer killed the duckling_ indicates that there is implied in this overburdened _-s_ a distinct reference to present time. Statement as such and personal reference may well be looked upon as inherently relational concepts. Number is evidently felt by those who speak English as involving a necessary relation, otherwise there would be no reason to express the concept twice, in the noun and in the verb. Time also is clearly felt as a relational concept; if it were not, we should be allowed to say _the farmer killed-s_ to correspond to _the farmer kill-s_. Of the four concepts inextricably interwoven in the _-s_ suffix, all are felt as relational, two necessarily so. The distinction between a truly relational concept and one that is so felt and treated, though it need not be in the nature of things, will receive further attention in a moment.

[Footnote 54: It is, of course, an "accident" that _-s_ denotes plurality in the noun, singularity in the verb.]

Finally, I can radically disturb the relational cut of the sentence by changing the order of its elements. If the positions of _farmer_ and _kills_ are interchanged, the sentence reads _kills the farmer the duckling_, which is most naturally interpreted as an unusual but not unintelligible mode of asking the question, _does the farmer kill the duckling?_ In this new sentence the act is not conceived as necessarily taking place at all. It may or it may not be happening, the implication being that the speaker wishes to know the truth of the matter and that the person spoken to is expected to give him the information. The interrogative sentence possesses an entirely different "modality" from the declarative one and implies a markedly different att.i.tude of the speaker towards his companion. An even more striking change in personal relations is effected if we interchange _the farmer_ and _the duckling_.

_The duckling kills the farmer_ involves precisely the same subjects of discourse and the same type of activity as our first sentence, but the roles of these subjects of discourse are now reversed. The duckling has turned, like the proverbial worm, or, to put it in grammatical terminology, what was "subject" is now "object," what was object is now subject.

The following tabular statement a.n.a.lyzes the sentence from the point of view of the concepts expressed in it and of the grammatical processes employed for their expression.

I. CONCRETE CONCEPTS: 1. First subject of discourse: _farmer_ 2. Second subject of discourse: _duckling_ 3. Activity: _kill_ ---- a.n.a.lyzable into: A. RADICAL CONCEPTS: 1. Verb: _(to) farm_ 2. Noun: _duck_ 3. Verb: _kill_ B. DERIVATIONAL CONCEPTS: 1. Agentive: expressed by suffix _-er_ 2. Diminutive: expressed by suffix _-ling_ II. RELATIONAL CONCEPTS: Reference: 1. Definiteness of reference to first subject of discourse: expressed by first _the_, which has preposed position 2. Definiteness of reference to second subject of discourse: expressed by second _the_, which has preposed position Modality: 3. Declarative: expressed by sequence of "subject" plus verb; and implied by suffixed _-s_ Personal relations: 4. Subjectivity of _farmer_: expressed by position of _farmer_ before kills; and by suffixed _-s_ 5. Objectivity of _duckling_: expressed by position of _duckling_ after _kills_ Number: 6. Singularity of first subject of discourse: expressed by lack of plural suffix in _farmer_; and by suffix _-s_ in following verb 7. Singularity of second subject of discourse: expressed by lack of plural suffix in _duckling_ Time: 8. Present: expressed by lack of preterit suffix in verb; and by suffixed _-s_

In this short sentence of five words there are expressed, therefore, thirteen distinct concepts, of which three are radical and concrete, two derivational, and eight relational. Perhaps the most striking result of the a.n.a.lysis is a renewed realization of the curious lack of accord in our language between function and form. The method of suffixing is used both for derivational and for relational elements; independent words or radical elements express both concrete ideas (objects, activities, qualities) and relational ideas (articles like _the_ and _a_; words defining case relations, like _of_, _to_, _for_, _with_, _by_; words defining local relations, like _in_, _on_, _at_); the same relational concept may be expressed more than once (thus, the singularity of _farmer_ is both negatively expressed in the noun and positively in the verb); and one element may convey a group of interwoven concepts rather than one definite concept alone (thus the _-s_ of _kills_ embodies no less than four logically independent relations).

Our a.n.a.lysis may seem a bit labored, but only because we are so accustomed to our own well-worn grooves of expression that they have come to be felt as inevitable. Yet destructive a.n.a.lysis of the familiar is the only method of approach to an understanding of fundamentally different modes of expression. When one has learned to feel what is fortuitous or illogical or unbalanced in the structure of his own language, he is already well on the way towards a sympathetic grasp of the expression of the various cla.s.ses of concepts in alien types of speech. Not everything that is "outlandish" is intrinsically illogical or far-fetched. It is often precisely the familiar that a wider perspective reveals as the curiously exceptional. From a purely logical standpoint it is obvious that there is no inherent reason why the concepts expressed in our sentence should have been singled out, treated, and grouped as they have been and not otherwise. The sentence is the outgrowth of historical and of unreasoning psychological forces rather than of a logical synthesis of elements that have been clearly grasped in their individuality. This is the case, to a greater or less degree, in all languages, though in the forms of many we find a more coherent, a more consistent, reflection than in our English forms of that unconscious a.n.a.lysis into individual concepts which is never entirely absent from speech, however it may be complicated with or overlaid by the more irrational factors.

A cursory examination of other languages, near and far, would soon show that some or all of the thirteen concepts that our sentence happens to embody may not only be expressed in different form but that they may be differently grouped among themselves; that some among them may be dispensed with; and that other concepts, not considered worth expressing in English idiom, may be treated as absolutely indispensable to the intelligible rendering of the proposition. First as to a different method of handling such concepts as we have found expressed in the English sentence. If we turn to German, we find that in the equivalent sentence (_Der Bauer totet das Entelein_) the definiteness of reference expressed by the English _the_ is unavoidably coupled with three other concepts--number (both _der_ and _das_ are explicitly singular), case (_der_ is subjective; _das_ is subjective or objective, by elimination therefore objective), and gender, a new concept of the relational order that is not in this case explicitly involved in English (_der_ is masculine, _das_ is neuter). Indeed, the chief burden of the expression of case, gender, and number is in the German sentence borne by the particles of reference rather than by the words that express the concrete concepts (_Bauer_, _Entelein_) to which these relational concepts ought logically to attach themselves. In the sphere of concrete concepts too it is worth noting that the German splits up the idea of "killing" into the basic concept of "dead" (_tot_) and the derivational one of "causing to do (or be) so and so" (by the method of vocalic change, _tot-_); the German _tot-et_ (a.n.a.lytically _tot-_+vowel change+_-et_) "causes to be dead" is, approximately, the formal equivalent of our _dead-en-s_, though the idiomatic application of this latter word is different.[55]

[Footnote 55: "To cause to be dead" or "to cause to die" in the sense of "to kill" is an exceedingly wide-spread usage. It is found, for instance, also in Nootka and Sioux.]

Wandering still further afield, we may glance at the Yana method of expression. Literally translated, the equivalent Yana sentence would read something like "kill-s he farmer[56] he to duck-ling," in which "he" and "to" are rather awkward English renderings of a general third personal p.r.o.noun (_he_, _she_, _it_, or _they_) and an objective particle which indicates that the following noun is connected with the verb otherwise than as subject. The suffixed element in "kill-s"

corresponds to the English suffix with the important exceptions that it makes no reference to the number of the subject and that the statement is known to be true, that it is vouched for by the speaker. Number is only indirectly expressed in the sentence in so far as there is no specific verb suffix indicating plurality of the subject nor specific plural elements in the two nouns. Had the statement been made on another's authority, a totally different "tense-modal" suffix would have had to be used. The p.r.o.nouns of reference ("he") imply nothing by themselves as to number, gender, or case. Gender, indeed, is completely absent in Yana as a relational category.

[Footnote 56: Agriculture was not practised by the Yana. The verbal idea of "to farm" would probably be expressed in some such synthetic manner as "to dig-earth" or "to grow-cause." There are suffixed elements corresponding to _-er_ and _-ling_.]

The Yana sentence has already ill.u.s.trated the point that certain of our supposedly essential concepts may be ignored; both the Yana and the German sentence ill.u.s.trate the further point that certain concepts may need expression for which an English-speaking person, or rather the English-speaking habit, finds no need whatever. One could go on and give endless examples of such deviations from English form, but we shall have to content ourselves with a few more indications. In the Chinese sentence "Man kill duck," which may be looked upon as the practical equivalent of "The man kills the duck," there is by no means present for the Chinese consciousness that childish, halting, empty feeling which we experience in the literal English translation. The three concrete concepts--two objects and an action--are each directly expressed by a monosyllabic word which is at the same time a radical element; the two relational concepts--"subject" and "object"--are expressed solely by the position of the concrete words before and after the word of action. And that is all. Definiteness or indefiniteness of reference, number, personality as an inherent aspect of the verb, tense, not to speak of gender--all these are given no expression in the Chinese sentence, which, for all that, is a perfectly adequate communication--provided, of course, there is that context, that background of mutual understanding that is essential to the complete intelligibility of all speech. Nor does this qualification impair our argument, for in the English sentence too we leave unexpressed a large number of ideas which are either taken for granted or which have been developed or are about to be developed in the course of the conversation. Nothing has been said, for example, in the English, German, Yana, or Chinese sentence as to the place relations of the farmer, the duck, the speaker, and the listener. Are the farmer and the duck both visible or is one or the other invisible from the point of view of the speaker, and are both placed within the horizon of the speaker, the listener, or of some indefinite point of reference "off yonder"? In other words, to paraphrase awkwardly certain latent "demonstrative" ideas, does this farmer (invisible to us but standing behind a door not far away from me, you being seated yonder well out of reach) kill that duckling (which belongs to you)? or does that farmer (who lives in your neighborhood and whom we see over there) kill that duckling (that belongs to him)? This type of demonstrative elaboration is foreign to our way of thinking, but it would seem very natural, indeed unavoidable, to a Kwakiutl Indian.

What, then, are the absolutely essential concepts in speech, the concepts that must be expressed if language is to be a satisfactory means of communication? Clearly we must have, first of all, a large stock of basic or radical concepts, the concrete wherewithal of speech.

We must have objects, actions, qualities to talk about, and these must have their corresponding symbols in independent words or in radical elements. No proposition, however abstract its intent, is humanly possible without a tying on at one or more points to the concrete world of sense. In every intelligible proposition at least two of these radical ideas must be expressed, though in exceptional cases one or even both may be understood from the context. And, secondly, such relational concepts must be expressed as moor the concrete concepts to each other and construct a definite, fundamental form of proposition. In this fundamental form there must be no doubt as to the nature of the relations that obtain between the concrete concepts. We must know what concrete concept is directly or indirectly related to what other, and how. If we wish to talk of a thing and an action, we must know if they are coordinately related to each other (e.g., "He is fond of _wine and gambling_"); or if the thing is conceived of as the starting point, the "doer" of the action, or, as it is customary to say, the "subject" of which the action is predicated; or if, on the contrary, it is the end point, the "object" of the action. If I wish to communicate an intelligible idea about a farmer, a duckling, and the act of killing, it is not enough to state the linguistic symbols for these concrete ideas in any order, higgledy-piggledy, trusting that the hearer may construct some kind of a relational pattern out of the general probabilities of the case. The fundamental syntactic relations must be unambiguously expressed. I can afford to be silent on the subject of time and place and number and of a host of other possible types of concepts, but I can find no way of dodging the issue as to who is doing the killing. There is no known language that can or does dodge it, any more than it succeeds in saying something without the use of symbols for the concrete concepts.

We are thus once more reminded of the distinction between essential or unavoidable relational concepts and the dispensable type. The former are universally expressed, the latter are but spa.r.s.ely developed in some languages, elaborated with a bewildering exuberance in others. But what prevents us from throwing in these "dispensable" or "secondary"

relational concepts with the large, floating group of derivational, qualifying concepts that we have already discussed? Is there, after all is said and done, a fundamental difference between a qualifying concept like the negative in _unhealthy_ and a relational one like the number concept in _books_? If _unhealthy_ may be roughly paraphrased as _not healthy_, may not _books_ be just as legitimately paraphrased, barring the violence to English idiom, as _several book?_ There are, indeed, languages in which the plural, if expressed at all, is conceived of in the same sober, restricted, one might almost say casual, spirit in which we feel the negative in _unhealthy_. For such languages the number concept has no syntactic significance whatever, is not essentially conceived of as defining a relation, but falls into the group of derivational or even of basic concepts. In English, however, as in French, German, Latin, Greek--indeed in all the languages that we have most familiarity with--the idea of number is not merely appended to a given concept of a thing. It may have something of this merely qualifying value, but its force extends far beyond. It infects much else in the sentence, molding other concepts, even such as have no intelligible relation to number, into forms that are said to correspond to or "agree with" the basic concept to which it is attached in the first instance. If "a man falls" but "men fall" in English, it is not because of any inherent change that has taken place in the nature of the action or because the idea of plurality inherent in "men" must, in the very nature of ideas, relate itself also to the action performed by these men. What we are doing in these sentences is what most languages, in greater or less degree and in a hundred varying ways, are in the habit of doing--throwing a bold bridge between the two basically distinct types of concept, the concrete and the abstractly relational, infecting the latter, as it were, with the color and grossness of the former. By a certain violence of metaphor the material concept is forced to do duty for (or intertwine itself with) the strictly relational.

The case is even more obvious if we take gender as our text. In the two English phrases, "The white woman that comes" and "The white men that come," we are not reminded that gender, as well as number, may be elevated into a secondary relational concept. It would seem a little far-fetched to make of masculinity and femininity, cra.s.sly material, philosophically accidental concepts that they are, a means of relating quality and person, person and action, nor would it easily occur to us, if we had not studied the cla.s.sics, that it was anything but absurd to inject into two such highly attenuated relational concepts as are expressed by "the" and "that" the combined notions of number and s.e.x.

Yet all this, and more, happens in Latin. _Illa alba femina quae venit_ and _illi albi homines qui veniunt_, conceptually translated, amount to this: _that_-one-feminine-doer[57] one-feminine-_white_-doer feminine-doing-one-_woman_ _which_-one-feminine-doer other[58]-one-now-_come_; and: _that_-several-masculine-doer several-masculine-_white_-doer masculine-doing-several-_man_ _which_-several-masculine-doer other-several-now-_come_. Each word involves no less than four concepts, a radical concept (either properly concrete--_white_, _man_, _woman_, _come_--or demonstrative--_that_, _which_) and three relational concepts, selected from the categories of case, number, gender, person, and tense. Logically, only case[59] (the relation of _woman_ or _men_ to a following verb, of _which_ to its antecedent, of _that_ and _white_ to _woman_ or _men_, and of _which_ to _come_) imperatively demands expression, and that only in connection with the concepts directly affected (there is, for instance, no need to be informed that the whiteness is a doing or doer's whiteness[60]). The other relational concepts are either merely parasitic (gender throughout; number in the demonstrative, the adjective, the relative, and the verb) or irrelevant to the essential syntactic form of the sentence (number in the noun; person; tense). An intelligent and sensitive Chinaman, accustomed as he is to cut to the very bone of linguistic form, might well say of the Latin sentence, "How pedantically imaginative!" It must be difficult for him, when first confronted by the illogical complexities of our European languages, to feel at home in an att.i.tude that so largely confounds the subject-matter of speech with its formal pattern or, to be more accurate, that turns certain fundamentally concrete concepts to such attenuated relational uses.

[Footnote 57: "Doer," not "done to." This is a necessarily clumsy tag to represent the "nominative" (subjective) in contrast to the "accusative"

(objective).]

[Footnote 58: I.e., not you or I.]

[Footnote 59: By "case" is here meant not only the subjective-objective relation but also that of attribution.]

[Footnote 60: Except in so far as Latin uses this method as a rather awkward, roundabout method of establishing the attribution of the color to the particular object or person. In effect one cannot in Latin directly say that a person is white, merely that what is white is identical with the person who is, acts, or is acted upon in such and such a manner. In origin the feel of the Latin _illa alba femina_ is really "that-one, the-white-one, (namely) the-woman"--three substantive ideas that are related to each other by a juxtaposition intended to convey an ident.i.ty. English and Chinese express the attribution directly by means of order. In Latin the _illa_ and _alba_ may occupy almost any position in the sentence. It is important to observe that the subjective form of _illa_ and _alba_, does not truly define a relation of these qualifying concepts to _femina_. Such a relation might be formally expressed _via_ an attributive case, say the genitive (_woman of whiteness_). In Tibetan both the methods of order and of true case relation may be employed: _woman white_ (i.e., "white woman") or _white-of woman_ (i.e., "woman of whiteness, woman who is white, white woman").]

I have exaggerated somewhat the concreteness of our subsidiary or rather non-syntactical relational concepts In order that the essential facts might come out in bold relief. It goes without saying that a Frenchman has no clear s.e.x notion in his mind when he speaks of _un arbre_ ("a-masculine tree") or of _une pomme_ ("a-feminine apple"). Nor have we, despite the grammarians, a very vivid sense of the present as contrasted with all past and all future time when we say _He comes_.[61]

This is evident from our use of the present to indicate both future time ("He comes to-morrow") and general activity unspecified as to time ("Whenever he comes, I am glad to see him," where "comes" refers to past occurrences and possible future ones rather than to present activity).

In both the French and English instances the primary ideas of s.e.x and time have become diluted by form-a.n.a.logy and by extensions into the relational sphere, the concepts ostensibly indicated being now so vaguely delimited that it is rather the tyranny of usage than the need of their concrete expression that sways us in the selection of this or that form. If the thinning-out process continues long enough, we may eventually be left with a system of forms on our hands from which all the color of life has vanished and which merely persist by inertia, duplicating each other's secondary, syntactic functions with endless prodigality. Hence, in part, the complex conjugational systems of so many languages, in which differences of form are attended by no a.s.signable differences of function. There must have been a time, for instance, though it antedates our earliest doc.u.mentary evidence, when the type of tense formation represented by _drove_ or _sank_ differed in meaning, in however slightly nuanced a degree, from the type (_killed_, _worked_) which has now become established in English as the prevailing preterit formation, very much as we recognize a valuable distinction at present between both these types and the "perfect" (_has driven, has killed_) but may have ceased to do so at some point in the future.[62]

Now form lives longer than its own conceptual content. Both are ceaselessly changing, but, on the whole, the form tends to linger on when the spirit has flown or changed its being. Irrational form, form for form's sake--however we term this tendency to hold on to formal distinctions once they have come to be--is as natural to the life of language as is the retention of modes of conduct that have long outlived the meaning they once had.

[Footnote 61: Aside, naturally, from the life and imminence that may be created for such a sentence by a particular context.]

[Footnote 62: This has largely happened in popular French and German, where the difference is stylistic rather than functional. The preterits are more literary or formal in tone than the perfects.]

There is another powerful tendency which makes for a formal elaboration that does not strictly correspond to clear-cut conceptual differences.

This is the tendency to construct schemes of cla.s.sification into which all the concepts of language must be fitted. Once we have made up our minds that all things are either definitely good or bad or definitely black or white, it is difficult to get into the frame of mind that recognizes that any particular thing may be both good and bad (in other words, indifferent) or both black and white (in other words, gray), still more difficult to realize that the good-bad or black-white categories may not apply at all. Language is in many respects as unreasonable and stubborn about its cla.s.sifications as is such a mind.

It must have its perfectly exclusive pigeon-holes and will tolerate no flying vagrants. Any concept that asks for expression must submit to the cla.s.sificatory rules of the game, just as there are statistical surveys in which even the most convinced atheist must perforce be labeled Catholic, Protestant, or Jew or get no hearing. In English we have made up our minds that all action must be conceived of in reference to three standard times. If, therefore, we desire to state a proposition that is as true to-morrow as it was yesterday, we have to pretend that the present moment may be elongated fore and aft so as to take in all eternity.[63] In French we know once for all that an object is masculine or feminine, whether it be living or not; just as in many American and East Asiatic languages it must be understood to belong to a certain form-category (say, ring-round, ball-round, long and slender, cylindrical, sheet-like, in ma.s.s like sugar) before it can be enumerated (e.g., "two ball-cla.s.s potatoes," "three sheet-cla.s.s carpets") or even said to "be" or "be handled in a definite way" (thus, in the Athabaskan languages and in Yana, "to carry" or "throw" a pebble is quite another thing than to carry or throw a log, linguistically no less than in terms of muscular experience). Such instances might be multiplied at will. It is almost as though at some period in the past the unconscious mind of the race had made a hasty inventory of experience, committed itself to a premature cla.s.sification that allowed of no revision, and saddled the inheritors of its language with a science that they no longer quite believed in nor had the strength to overthrow. Dogma, rigidly prescribed by tradition, stiffens into formalism. Linguistic categories make up a system of surviving dogma--dogma of the unconscious. They are often but half real as concepts; their life tends ever to languish away into form for form's sake.

[Footnote 63: Hence, "the square root of 4 _is_ 2," precisely as "my uncle _is_ here now." There are many "primitive" languages that are more philosophical and distinguish between a true "present" and a "customary"

or "general" tense.]

There is still a third cause for the rise of this non-significant form, or rather of non-significant differences of form. This is the mechanical operation of phonetic processes, which may bring about formal distinctions that have not and never had a corresponding functional distinction. Much of the irregularity and general formal complexity of our declensional and conjugational systems is due to this process. The plural of _hat_ is _hats_, the plural of _self_ is _selves_. In the former case we have a true _-s_ symbolizing plurality, in the latter a _z_-sound coupled with a change in the radical element of the word of _f_ to _v_. Here we have not a falling together of forms that originally stood for fairly distinct concepts--as we saw was presumably the case with such parallel forms as _drove_ and _worked_--but a merely mechanical manifolding of the same formal element without a corresponding growth of a new concept. This type of form development, therefore, while of the greatest interest for the general history of language, does not directly concern us now in our effort to understand the nature of grammatical concepts and their tendency to degenerate into purely formal counters.

We may now conveniently revise our first cla.s.sification of concepts as expressed in language and suggest the following scheme:

I. _Basic (Concrete) Concepts_ (such as objects, actions, qualities): normally expressed by independent words or radical elements; involve no relation as such[64]

II. _Derivational Concepts_ (less concrete, as a rule, than I, more so than III): normally expressed by affixing non-radical elements to radical elements or by inner modification of these; differ from type I in defining ideas that are irrelevant to the proposition as a whole but that give a radical element a particular increment of significance and that are thus inherently related in a specific way to concepts of type I[65]

III. _Concrete Relational Concepts_ (still more abstract, yet not entirely devoid of a measure of concreteness): normally expressed by affixing non-radical elements to radical elements, but generally at a greater remove from these than is the case with elements of type II, or by inner modification of radical elements; differ fundamentally from type II in indicating or implying relations that transcend the particular word to which they are immediately attached, thus leading over to

IV. _Pure Relational Concepts_ (purely abstract): normally expressed by affixing non-radical elements to radical elements (in which case these concepts are frequently intertwined with those of type III) or by their inner modification, by independent words, or by position; serve to relate the concrete elements of the proposition to each other, thus giving it definite syntactic form.