miniature bit of art. Added to the "feel" of the word are frequently,
but by no means invariably, certain external phonetic characteristics.
Chief of these is accent. In many, perhaps in most, languages the single
word is marked by a unifying accent, an emphasis on one of the
syllables, to which the rest are subordinated. The particular syllable
that is to be so distinguished is dependent, needless to say, on the
special genius of the language. The importance of accent as a unifying
feature of the word is obvious in such English examples as
_unthinkable_, _characterizing_. The long Paiute word that we have
analyzed is marked as a rigid phonetic unit by several features, chief
of which are the accent on its second syllable (_wii'_-"knife") and the
slurring ("unvoicing," to use the technical phonetic term) of its final
vowel (_-mue_, animate plural). Such features as accent, cadence, and the
treatment of consonants and vowels within the body of a word are often
useful as aids in the external demarcation of the word, but they must by
no means be interpreted, as is sometimes done, as themselves responsible
for its psychological existence. They at best but strengthen a feeling
of unity that is already present on other grounds.

We have already seen that the major functional unit of speech, the
sentence, has, like the word, a psychological as well as a merely
logical or abstracted existence. Its definition is not difficult. It is
the linguistic expression of a proposition. It combines a subject of
discourse with a statement in regard to this subject. Subject and
"predicate" may be combined in a single word, as in Latin _dico_; each
may be expressed independently, as in the English equivalent, _I say_;
each or either may be so qualified as to lead to complex propositions of
many sorts. No matter how many of these qualifying elements (words or
functional parts of words) are introduced, the sentence does not lose
its feeling of unity so long as each and every one of them falls in
place as contributory to the definition of either the subject of
discourse or the core of the predicate[7]. Such a sentence as _The mayor
of New York is going to deliver a speech of welcome in French_ is
readily felt as a unified statement, incapable of reduction by the
transfer of certain of its elements, in their given form, to the
preceding or following sentences. The contributory ideas of _of New
York_, _of welcome_, and _in French_ may be eliminated