[ 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.
[ Footnote 64: ] Except, of course, the fundamental selection and contrast necessarily implied in defining one concept as against another. “Man” and “white” possess an inherent relation to “woman” and “black,” but it is a relation of conceptual content only and is of no direct interest to grammar.
[ Footnote 65: ] Thus, the -er of farmer may he defined as indicating that particular substantive concept (object or thing) that serves as the habitual subject of the particular verb to which it is affixed. This relation of “subject” (a farmer farms) is inherent in and specific to the word; it does not exist for the sentence as a whole. In the same way the -ling of duckling defines a specific relation of attribution that concerns only the radical element, not the sentence.
[ Footnote 66: ] It is precisely the failure to feel the “value” or “tone,” as distinct from the outer significance, of the concept expressed by a given grammatical element that has so often led students to misunderstand the nature of languages profoundly alien to their own. Not everything that calls itself “tense” or “mode” or “number” or “gender” or “person” is genuinely comparable to what we mean by these terms in Latin or French.
[ Footnote 67: ] Suffixed articles occur also in Danish and Swedish and in numerous other languages. The Nootka element for “in the house” differs from our “house-” in that it is suffixed and cannot occur as an independent word; nor is it related to the Nootka word for “house.”
[ Footnote 68: ] Assuming the existence of a word “firelet.”
[ Footnote 69: ] The Nootka diminutive is doubtless more of a feeling-element, an element of nuance, than our -ling. This is shown by the fact that it may be used with verbs as well as with nouns. In speaking to a child, one is likely to add the diminutive to any word in the sentence, regardless of whether there is an inherent diminutive meaning in the word or not.
[ Footnote 70: ] -si is the third person of the present tense. -hau- “east” is an affix, not a compounded radical element.
[ Footnote 71: ] These are classical, not modern colloquial, forms.
[ Footnote 72: ] Just as in English “He has written books” makes no commitment on the score of quantity (“a few, several, many”).