1.2 Types of linguistic Structure
Sapir who continued to research the grammatical process of many languages in the world, classified the language concept into four types: (Ⅰ) basic concepts, (Ⅱ) derivational concepts, (Ⅲ) concrete relational concepts and (Ⅳ) pure relational concepts.
The vertical classification (Ⅰ) is the questions concerning the translation of concepts into linguistic symbols. For example, Sapir distinguished pure-relational language (A:simple and B:
complex) from mixed-relational language (C:simple and D:complex) depending on whether the language keeps its radical concepts purely and whether the basic relational concepts are mixed with concrete concepts.
(Ⅱ) derivational concepts affix non-radical elements to radical elements and give a radical element a particular significance. For example the word farmer has an agentive suffix –er and therefore it becomes the subject of a particular verb.
(Ⅲ) concrete relational concepts are shown by affixing non-radical elements to radical elements, but they differ greater in the meaning of affixation than (Ⅱ) (books or depth).
(Ⅳ) pure relational concepts interrelate concrete elements in a proposition and give a clear syntactic form (anaphora of number, gender and case). The lateral classification of table 1 is meant to sort out the concepts as expressed in language.
花村嘉英（2015）「从认知语言学的角度浅析鲁迅作品－魯迅をシナジーで読む」より translated by Yoshihisa Hanamura