[...] the old sound pattern 'o', 'e', after an interim of 'o', 'ö', 'e', reappeared as 'o', 'e', except that now the 'e' had greater 'weight' than before.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.175

How can we understand the nature of the drift [...] when we have never thought of studying sound patterning as such and the 'weights' and psychic relations of the single elements (the individual sounds) in these patterns?
- Sapir (1921), a pag.183

We may suppose that individual variations arising at linguistic borderlands [...] have gradually been incorporated into the phonetic drift of a language. So long as its main phonetic concern is the preservation of its sound patterning, [...] there is [...] no reason why a language may not unconsciously assimilate foreign sounds [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.200