[...] occasionally [...] the single sound is an independently significant element (such as French 'a' 'has' and 'à' 'to' or Latin 'i' 'go!'), but such cases are fortuitous coincidences between individual sound and significant word.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.24

[...] there are languages, like the Bantu group of Africa or the Athabaskan languages of North America, in which the grammatically significant elements precede, those that follow the radical element forming a relatively dispensable class.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.68

Such an English word as 'withstand' is merely an old sequence 'with stand', i.e., 'against stand,' in which the unstressed adverb was permanently drawn to the following verb and lost its independence as a significant element.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.112

[...] '-er' and '-ness' are affixed quite mechanically to radical elements which are at the same time independent words ('farm', 'good'). They are in no sense independently significant elements, but they convey their meaning (agentive, abstract quality) [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.129

A word like 'intangible' [...] is nearly as simple a psychological entity as any radical monosyllable (say 'vague', 'thin', 'grasp'). In German, however, polysyllabic words strive to analyze themselves into significant elements.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.196