Fries

ICAME Journal No. 34belonging to the major classes, he does not simply provide a morphologicalanalysis. Rather, he “assumes that the morphemes have been identified” (1952:x) and he provides lists of word classes that contrast in their morphemic makeup. These lists demonstrate differences in the internal structures of the majorword classes that lead to the recognition that one word belongs to one majorclass while a second word with a contrasting structure belongs to different majorclass. Thus a portion of a table headed “class 1 contrasting with class 2” listsexamples such as those in Table 1 (from Fries 1952: 113).Table 1: Sample of Fries’s lists showing contrasts in the forms of words whichbelong to the major classesClass 1 Class 2 Class 1 Class 21. arrival arrive 3. delivery deliverrefusal refuse discovery discoverdenial deny recovery recoveracquittal acquit 4. acceptance accept2. departure depart acquaintance acquaintfailure fail admittance admiterasure erase annoyance annoyFurther implications of his emphasis on contrast will be encountered in the discussionunder point 2.7.2.4 The spoken language is primaryLike many linguists of his time, Fries felt that the ‘real’ language was the spokenlanguage of the people. 7 In part, his interest in the spoken language arose inreaction to teachers and grammarians of the previous generation who generallytreated written English, and most particularly literary language, as the ‘real’ language.For example, the great grammarians of the early twentieth century suchas Poutsma and Jespersen devoted the bulk of their efforts to describing literarylanguage, ignoring for the most part not only the spoken language, but also nonliterarygenres such as scientific or technological language. Even F. N. Scott(1926: 25), the teacher who attracted Fries to Michigan, compared the languagethat children brought to school to “the language of the animals from which theyare descended” and described it as consisting in large part of “modulations ofsimple primitive sounds that probably go back to the infancy of the race.”98