PEECH

We have more than once referred to the "elements of speech," by which we
understood, roughly speaking, what are ordinarily called "words." We
must now look more closely at these elements and acquaint ourselves with
the stuff of language. The very simplest element of speech--and by
"speech" we shall hence-forth mean the auditory system of speech
symbolism, the flow of spoken words--is the individual sound, though, as
we shall see later on, the sound is not itself a simple structure but
the resultant of a series of independent, yet closely correlated,
adjustments in the organs of speech. And yet the individual sound is
not, properly considered, an element of speech at all, for speech is a
significant function and the sound as such has no significance. It
happens occasionally that the single sound is an independently
significant element (such as French _a_ "has" and _a_ "to" or Latin _i_
"go!"), but such cases are fortuitous coincidences between individual
sound and significant word. The coincidence is apt to be fortuitous not
only in theory but in point of actual historic fact; thus, the instances
cited are merely reduced forms of originally fuller phonetic
groups--Latin _habet_ and _ad_ and Indo-European _ei_ respectively. If
language is a structure and if the significant elements of language are
the bricks of the structure, then the sounds of speech can only be
compared to the unformed and unburnt clay of which the bricks are
fashioned. In this chapter we shall have nothing further to do with
sounds as sounds.

The true, significant elements of language are generally sequences of
sounds that are either words, significant parts of words, or word
groupings. What distinguishes each of these elements is that it is the
outward sign of a specific idea, whether of a single concept or image or
of a number of such concepts or images definitely connected into a
whole. The single word may or may not be the simplest significant
element we have to deal with. The English words _sing_, _sings_,
_singing_, _singer_ each conveys a perfectly definite and intelligible
idea, though the idea is disconnected and is therefore functionally of
no practical value. We recognize immediately that these words are of two
sorts. The first word, _sing_, is an indivisible phonetic entity
conveying the notion of a certain specific activity. The other words all
involve the same fundamental notion but, owing to the addition of other
phonetic ele