[ Footnote 23: ] Including, under the fourth category, a number of special resonance adjustments that we have not been able to take up specifically.
[ Footnote 24: ] In so far, it should be added, as these sounds are expiratory, i.e., pronounced with the outgoing breath. Certain languages, like the South African Hottentot and Bushman, have also a number of inspiratory sounds, pronounced by sucking in the breath at various points of oral contact. These are the so-called “clicks.”
[ Footnote 25: ] The conception of the ideal phonetic system, the phonetic pattern, of a language is not as well understood by linguistic students as it should be. In this respect the unschooled recorder of language, provided he has a good ear and a genuine instinct for language, is often at a great advantage as compared with the minute phonetician, who is apt to be swamped by his mass of observations. I have already employed my experience in teaching Indians to write their own language for its testing value in another connection. It yields equally valuable evidence here. 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. In watching my Nootka interpreter write his language, I often had the curious feeling that he was transcribing an ideal flow of phonetic elements which he heard, inadequately from a purely objective standpoint, as the intention of the actual rumble of speech.
[ Footnote 26: ] For the symbolism, see [chapter II].
[ Footnote 27: ] “Plural” is here a symbol for any prefix indicating plurality.
[ Footnote 28: ] The language of the Aztecs, still spoken in large parts of Mexico.
[ Footnote 29: ] Indian language of British Columbia closely related to the Nass already cited.
[ Footnote 30: ] Including such languages as Navaho, Apache, Hupa, Carrier, Chipewyan, Loucheux.
[ Footnote 31: ] This may seem surprising to an English reader. We generally think of time as a function that is appropriately expressed in a purely formal manner. This notion is due to the bias that Latin grammar has given us. As a matter of fact the English future (I shall go) is not expressed by affixing at all; moreover, it may be expressed by the present, as in to-morrow I leave this place, where the temporal function is inherent in the independent adverb. Though in lesser degree, the Hupa -te is as irrelevant to the vital word as is to-morrow to the grammatical “feel” of I leave.
[ Footnote 32: ] Wishram dialect.