The American anthropologists who have been linguistic scholars as well—I would mention Boas, Sapir, and, last but not least, Alfred L. Kroeber, whom we delight to honor in this issue of Language—have been catholic in their approaches to linguistics. Descriptive linguistics on this continent owes a tremendous amount to these men. But none of them has ignored historical problems, and in their various ways and even with radically different points of view on subjects which were open to dispute, they have contributed much to both detailed genetic problems, especially of the North American continent, and to the discussion of certain general questions. One of the latter is a problem that arises again and again in any region of the world where the linguistic picture is complicated, and it is particularly fitting, as will appear, if I attempt to add something to it as an offering to Kroeber.

Among Alfred L. Kroeber's many great contributions to the sciences of society, some of the most important are in the field of linguistics. They include both descriptive and comparative research, and embrace theory as well as documentation. He has paid considerable attention to the question of linguistic diffusion, tracing and analyzing specific examples of morphologic and lexical borrowing among California Indian languages and developing the theoretical implications of the process. It was in the course of a major study along these lines that he and his co-worker, Roland B. Dixon, discovered several previously unsuspected groupings of languages, including ‘Ritwan’, ‘Hokan’, and Tenutian', and thereby helped to open to comparative linguistics the new horizon of long-range comparison, which we are still struggling to master.

A recently published paper by Gordon H. Fairbanks discusses a question pertinent to the glottochronologic counts of Morris Swadesh and others: On what phonological basis are words to be correlated for lexicostatistical purposes? The most desirable basis is undoubtedly that of determining cognates on the basis of phonemic correspondences. But if this is the only basis, glottochronological methods must be largely inapplicable at present to such groupings as Hokan and Penutian, where few phonemic correspondences have been established. It is apparent that Swadesh does not always limit himself to such a basis. To take an example from his more recent work, his relating of words for ‘man’ in languages of both Americas, ranging from Kwakiutlan *wism to Yamana win, can hardly be based on knowledge of a regular correspondence between Kwakiutlan *w and Yamana w. The basis must then be general phonetic similarity, rather than correspondence. We may apply the term correlate to pairs connected either as cognate or as phonetically similar. The question then remains, what degree of phonetic similarity is necessary to establish a pair or set of correlates? To judge from Swadesh's list of cognate words for ‘man’, which includes such diverse items as Lokono uadili, Caxinaua ina, and Quechua runa, the degree need not be great. The exact degree appears to be determined more by intuitition than by any objective factor.

1. Morris Swadesh, in a series of articles recently published, has described a method for dating the time of first separation of genetically related languages. The method, which he calls lexicostatistics or glottochronology, is said to provide ‘a time dimension for ethnic contacts shown by linguistic relationships’ (1955.121). The precision of this ‘time dimension’ is not easy to determine, but Swadesh claims (1955.123–4) that

The relationship of Natchez to the Muskogean languages has been generally accepted for over thirty years. When Swanton first posited the relationship in 1924, he gave examples of lexical similarities between various individual Muskogean languages and Natchez; as a result of his postulation and his method of presenting the evidence, Natchez has often been referred to as a Muskogean language. Such nomenclature is, however, both misleading and inaccurate, because Natchez must be compared with Proto-Muskogean and not directly with the separate Muskogean languages. To indicate clearly the nature of the relationship that exists, it is more appropriate to speak of a Natchez-Muskogean stock composed of Natchez and the Muskogean family. Since no series of sound correspondences between reconstructed Proto-Muskogean (PM) and Natchez has ever been published, the purpose of the present paper is to make a preliminary statement concerning such correspondences. A brief description of the sounds of Natchez and of the Muskogean languages is provided first as background. This is followed by (1) a fist of possible cognates between Natchez and PM, (2) a list of the sound correspondences exhibited in these cognates, and (3) a discussion of certain other features which point to a relationship between the two languages.

A. L. Kroeber has contributed to Hokan studies to an extent not usually recognized by nonspecialists. Together with Dixon, he first discovered the genetic relationships of the group, then consisting of Karok, Chimariko, Shastan (including Palaihnihan), Pomo, Yana, Esselen, and Yuman. He later added Seri, Tequistlatec (cf. Kroeber), and (with Dixon 1919) Washo. Kroeber has also contributed important fieldwork: Sapir's early comparative work leans exclusively on Kroeber's data for Chontal, Chumash, Salinan, and Esselen, and heavily on Kroeber's data for Yuman, Pomo, Karok, Shasta, Achumawi, and Atsugewi. Kroeber and other Hokanists have long noted the paucity of data from Achumawi and Atsugewi; the present paper is a result of field work undertaken at his suggestion.

For some time there has existed among some philosophers of language an assumption that linguistic development through time shows a universal trend from synthesis to analysis, from multimorphemic to monomorphemic words. Jespersen's theory of progress in language embodies such an assumption. Such hypotheses are based on preconceptions as to inferior and superior types of linguistic structures, with holophrasis at the inferior ‘primitive’ end of the continuum, and with languages which split such holophrases into monomorphemic words at the superior, ‘civilized’ end. Implicit likewise is the thesis that the superior type appeared concomitantly with development of high cultures. In contradistinction to this assumed trend of linguistic development, some evidence has been adduced for the opposite process, that of building up more complex words from earlier phrases, of a shift from analysis to synthesis. Swadesh made such a claim for Nootka in comparison with other related languages, and the isolated instances from Romance languages are well known.

Siamese wan ‘day (A2)’ and waan ‘yesterday (A2)' present some phonological as well as etymological problems in Proto-Tai (PT). They represent a rare type of initial which has to be assumed in the Proto-Tai system. The first word has often been assumed to go back to the PT initial w-; thus Haudricourt lists it unhesitatingly under his PT *w-, and Benedict compares it with Indonesian wari. Wulff has noted, however, that the word appears in Dioi as ŋon, thus showing a curious correspondence of Dioi ŋ- to Siamese w-; but this observation of Wulff has been neglected by both Benedict and Haudricourt.

In an article entitled Dempwolff's *R (Lg. 29.359–366), I referred (362 f.) to a difference between Dempwolff and myself in the interpretation of the Ngaju-Dayak material which he assigns to a posited ‘alte Sprachschicht’. What was there characterized as a difference in interpretation can now be shown to involve a fundamental procedure in the application of the comparative method. For this reason it appears worth while to specify the procedure.

This paper seeks to derive historical information from linguistic material by means of statistical techniques. The material is drawn from the Melanesian languages of southeastern Papua. The principal technique employed may be designated the Czekanowski-Klimek technique, after Jan Czekanowski, the Polish anthropologist who first applied it to linguistics, and his pupil Stanislaw Klimek, who introduced it into this country, and from whom the present writer learned it.

The examination of any map of linguistic distributions for an extended area will show some regions of great diversity (e.g. New Guinea, the Nuba Hills in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan) and others of relative uniformity (e.g. the aboriginal Eastern Woodlands area of North America, the contemporary United States), while still others seem to be intermediate between these extremes. The problem considered here is that of developing quantitative measures of this diversity in order to render such impressions more objective, allow the comparing of disparate geographical areas, and eventually to correlate varying degrees of linguistic diversity with political, economic, geographic, historic, and other non-linguistic factors.

From one point of view, the modern output of phonemic papers may be pretty sharply divided into two kinds, those which consider alternative possibilities and those which do not; the latter are hereinafter termed assertive. The difference reflects neither schools, in the sense of theoretical biases, nor linguistic sophistication, which has not been lacking in the English-language and Americanist fields since these have come to serve as testing grounds for advances in methodology. For assertive phonemicization our examples are from Hoijer, Whorf, Bloomfield, Trager and Bloch and Smith, Swadesh, Harris and Voegelin. Alternative solutions are considered by Wonderly, Harris, Kluckhohn and McLeish, Wolff, Robinett, Trager, and Pike. Recognition of the two contrasting approaches is all that is asked for in these introductory remarks to a study concerned with an alternative dialect phonemicization. The remarks which now follow are intended to be neither an exposition of the weakness of assertive phonemic treatments nor a plea for alternative presentations. (The former includes some of the best linguistic work—where the field worker makes experimental tries at various solutions but presents only that result which turns out to be an experimental success. The latter includes some trivial work—where the alternative presentation is little more than a critique of a previously published solution.)

When a speaker in conversation attempts to conceal the identification and hence the interpretation of what he says, he may change the phonological structure of his utterances; this method of concealment I call speech disguise. This paper describes the kind of informal speech disguise commonly heard in the Philippines, illustrated by recently recorded material from Tagalog.

In his article Some relations of linguistics and ethnology, Lg. 17.291 (1941), Alfred L. Kroeber wrote: On the whole, it is evident that of the two disciplines ethnology is the one which is dependent on linguistics. But the relations are complex, and now and then it is the linguist who can profit by what the anthropologist can tender him.' One kind of material that the anthropologist can offer the linguist is lexical usage in ordinary conversation. I have gone through my field notes and have marked each instance where I recorded a term of approval or disapproval used by a Navaho speaking to one or more other Navahos. I shall report here primarily upon the circumstances surrounding words used most frequently; but I shall also note some less common phrases that seem to illuminate Navaho conceptions of values. Where possible, I have checked my recordings against those published by Sapir, Haile, and Hoijer. In some cases I reproduce here material published by these and other linguists, where this adds to or clarifies the data in my own notes.

This paper deals with an aspect of acculturation which has only recently received some attention in the literature. For the most part linguists have been concerned with historical and descriptive studies, and have generally ignored studies of languages in contact. Cultural anthropologists, on the other hand, have been content to investigate acculturation in its purely nonlinguistic manifestations. Studies of linguistic acculturation, however, can furnish valuable data and may shed considerable light on the general problem of acculturation. Whether language and nonlinguistic aspects of culture change differentially, or whether in every instance language complements and reflects nonlinguistic acculturation, is a crucial problem. In the present illustrations, linguistic acculturation seems to substantiate what has taken place in other aspects of the cultures of the groups under consideration, but this may not be the case everywhere.

Linguistics, semantics, and pragmatics. The subject of this paper is not in strictest terms a linguistic one. ‘Linguistics’, in the narrow sense in which this term is currently used, is understood to concern itself solely with the formal properties of languages. That is to say, it is limited to the analysis of the properties of the signal systems or ‘codes’ themselves as inferred from the structure of messages, while it excludes on the one hand the primary nonlinguistic stimuli which prompt messages or are encoded in them, and on the other hand also the nonlinguistic responses which the messages may evoke. One need only remind oneself of Bloomfield's description of ‘speaker's stimuli’ and ‘hearer's responses’ for an illustration of the sorts of things that get excluded from linguistics. These things which get excluded from linguistics proper, however, are to a large extent the concern and the subject matter of cultural anthropology, and they belong within the fuller study of language.

That the methods of componential analysis as they have been developed for analyzing linguistic forms are applicable in principle for analyzing other types of cultural forms is a proposition toward whose demonstration I have for some time sought to orient my ethnographic researches. The results of some exploratory work toward this end have already been published. Included among them is an analysis of Truk kinship terminology, in which it proved possible to apply some of the principles of linguistic analysis to the problem of deriving the significata of kinship terms and of determining which terms went together in what I called semantic systems. I am taking up this material again in order to present a fuller discussion of the method and of its implications for developing an empirical science of meaning.

Under the general heading terms of address I propose to describe (1) vocatives, or terms of direct address to call persons by, and (2) designatives, or mentioning terms, which one uses as part of connected discourse in speaking of persons. In the order of approximately increasing complexity, I shall discuss pronouns, proper names, titles, and kinship terms. The scope of the present account will include only current usage in colloquial Mandarin. But, unless otherwise qualified, what I have to say will in fact be valid for large sections of China.