Harry Hoijer’s Methods in the Classification of American Indian Languages […] suffers by dealing in such general terms as ‘borrowing’ and ‘influence’, and overlooking what actually happens when a linguistic feature is imitated (i.e. borrowed) from another language, or spreads to (i.e. influences) other forms in the language.
- Harris (1942b), a pag.239

[…] borrowing is not a random influence which radiates evenly out from some center; the influence, if we may so call it, operates only in certain directions, towards languages whose structure or cultural environment makes them receptive.
- Harris (1942b), a pag.239

[…] actual borrowing occurs only if other necessary factors are also present: if the prestige relation of Algonquian to Iroquoian speakers is such that the Iroquoians imitate Algonquian forms and terms, and (especially in the case of morphological borrowing) if the structure of the receiving language is such that it can be host to certain forms which occur in the influencing language. Considerations of statistical probability (‘doctrine of chances’) can be applied only after we have studied and accounted for all factors which may determine whether an event—in this case borrowing—is to take place.
- Harris (1942b), a pag.240