[Footnote 1: We shall reserve capitals for radical elements.]
[Footnote 2: These words are not here used in a narrowly technical sense.]
So far, the first speech element that we have found which we can say actually "exists" is the word. Before defining the word, however, we must look a little more closely at the type of word that is illustrated by _sing_. Are we, after all, justified in identifying it with a radical element? Does it represent a simple correspondence between concept and linguistic expression? Is the element _sing-_, that we have abstracted from _sings_, _singing_, and _singer_ and to which we may justly ascribe a general unmodified conceptual value, actually the same linguistic fact as the word _sing_? It would almost seem absurd to doubt it, yet a little reflection only is needed to convince us that the doubt is entirely legitimate. The word _sing_ cannot, as a matter of fact, be freely used to refer to its own conceptual content. The existence of such evidently related forms as _sang_ and _sung_ at once shows that it cannot refer to past time, but that, for at least an important part of its range of usage, it is limited to the present. On the other hand, the use of _sing_ as an "infinitive" (in such locutions as _to sing_ and _he will sing_) does indicate that there is a fairly strong tendency for the word _sing_ to represent the full, untrammeled amplitude of a specific concept. Yet if _sing_ were, in any adequate sense, the fixed expression of the unmodified concept, there should be no room for such vocalic aberrations as we find in _sang_ and _sung_ and _song_, nor should we find _sing_ specifically used to indicate present time for all persons but one (third person singular _sings_).
The truth of the matter is that _sing_ is a kind of twilight word, trembling between the status of a true radical element and that of a modified word of the type of _singing_. Though it has no outward sign to indicate that it conveys more than a generalized idea, we do feel that there hangs about it a variable mist of added value. The formula A does not seem to represent it so well as A + (0). We might suspect _sing_ of belonging to the A + (b) type, with the reservation that the (b) had vanished. This report of the "feel" of the word is far from fanciful, for historical evidence does, in all earnest, show that _sing_ is in origin a number of quite distinct words, of type A + (b), that have pooled their separate values. The (b) of each of these has gone as a tangible phonetic element; its force, however, lingers on in weakened measure. The _sing_ of _I sing_ is the correspondent of the Anglo-Saxon _singe_; the infinitive _sing_, of _singan_; the imperative _sing_ of _sing_. Ever since the breakdown of English forms that set in about the time of the Norman Conquest, our language has been straining towards the creation of simple concept-words, unalloyed by formal connotations, but it has not yet succeeded in this, apart, possibly, from isolated adverbs and other elements of that sort. Were the typical unanalyzable word of the language truly a pure concept-word (type A) instead of being of a strangely transitional type (type A + [0]), our _sing_ and _work_ and _house_ and thousands of others would compare with the genuine radical-words of numerous other languages.[3] Such a radical-word, to take a random example, is the Nootka[4] word _hamot_ "bone." Our English correspondent is only superficially comparable. _Hamot_ means "bone" in a quite indefinite sense; to our English word clings the notion of singularity. The Nootka Indian can convey the idea of plurality, in one of several ways, if he so desires, but he does not need to; _hamot_ may do for either singular or plural, should no interest happen to attach to the distinction. As soon as we say "bone" (aside from its secondary usage to indicate material), we not merely specify the nature of the object but we imply, whether we will or no, that there is but one of these objects to be considered. And this increment of value makes all the difference.