- THE PROPOSAL AND THE FRAMEWORK
William
Haas has written:
Every science may be said to have its origin in some radical complexity:
in a new sense of wonder, about something always taken as obvious – wonder which
asks to be transmitted into sense of understanding. Amid the sophisticated complications
of contemporary linguistics, it is still vitally important to remain aware of
the simple radical problems of the discipline (1960: 121 – 122).
Haas recognizes two main division of linguistics, each with its radical
question serving as a point of departure: linguistic analysis and linguistic comparison.
Slightly modifying and adapting Hass’s formulation of the question, I shall further
subdivide the latter (linguistic comparison) into two: historical and correlative.
So we have.
(1)
ANALYTIC LINGUISTICS
How
do we succeed in understanding one another’s speech?
How
do we manage to say AND to grasp an endless succession of new utterances with
the help of a limited stock of resources?
We choose our way through a maze that proceeds from the more general to
the more specific patterns. These patterns (which are indeterminate but presumably
finite in number – collectively referred to as a system of rules) are what
stand between elementary items (which are finite in number – collectively
referred to as an inventory) and usable texts (which are denumerably
infinite in number – collectively referred to as a corpus). We begin by
matching texts, items, and sets of matched sets within the language being analyzed.
We examine how a text is reproduced (i.e. rerendered or reexpressed) in the same
language system. We examine how a text is used in relation to what it symbolizes
and the situations into which it fits.
(2)
COMPARATIVE LINGUISTICS
Why
do we fail when we do? How does one make sense of this irrational babel of languages
(i.e. sets of matched systems, inventories, corpora)?
The
answer can be sought either by finding out how languages come to be what they
are, or by finding out whether there is some old bags of tricks that each language
draws upon. In either case we begin by comparing languages – texts, items, and
rules.
(2a)
HISTORIC LINGUISTICS
How does a language reproduce itself from one population
to another population of users? What are the patterns of stability, innovation,
and diffusion (collectively called
primary or linear phylogeny); and of maintenance over a line
of descent divergent descent into a family, and convergent influence
over a zone (collectively called secondary or dendroidal phylogeny )
that follow from linear phylogeny; and of contact, acceptance, rejection, maintenance,
and displacement of language systems within a language network.
(collectively called tertiary or reticular phylogeny) that link up linear
and dendroidal phylogeny to the population of language users?
We begin by seeking out diatopic and diachronic correspondences
between texts and then between items, and between systems of rules and, also,
by carrying out reconstructions on the basis of such correspondences.
(2b)
CORRELATIVE LINGUISTICS
How does a text reproduce itself from one language to another? What are
the recurring traits that characterize natural languages as such and natural languages
types? What are the recurring patterns of linear, dendroidal, and reticular phylogeny?
We begin by seeking out trait correlations – within and across languages,
among language traits, and between language traits and traits of users and situations.
It will be seen that the crucial differences between (1) and (2) and between
(2a) and (2b) lie in the different kinds of collations that constitute
the methodological starting point in each case – pattern matchings of analysis,
correspondences of history, and correlations of universal and typical
features.
Before the differences between the three kinds of collations are explicated,
it will be useful to offer a few more definitions. The instantiation of a language
or a transition dialect in an individual user is an idiolect. The history
of an idiolect is linguistic ontogeny, which is thus distinct from linguistic
phylogeny. The instantiation in an individual of a language network or of
an intersection of language networks is the linguistic repertory of that
individual. Patterns of exposure, acquisition, maintenance, overall shift, and
loss of items and rules within a idiolect (a language) and patterns of contact,
acceptance, rejection, and displacement of whole languages (whole idiolects) within
a network (repertory) take us beyond linguistics proper into psychology, social
psychology, ethnology, sociology and cultural history of language.1
The instantiation
of a language in a given situation is language use. Language use has three
modes, namely, production, reception, and reproduction. Reproduction has
a little of both reception and production in it, and may be within the
framework of a single language (the original and the reproduced texts are both
from the same language) or across languages or stages or varieties of that same
language. Reproduction – whether intralinguistic or translinguistic – may
aim primarily aim at recapturing the reproducing user’s reception of the original
(e.g. translation as a form of glossing) or at recapturing the production of the
original (e.g. ready equivalents in a traveller’s phrase book, translation of
a poem as recreation). Translinguistic reproduction may be either transrendition
(e.g. of English [1phoust] by Marathi [1poṣṭə],
or translation (e.g. of English I have two sons by Hindi mere do l¶ṛke hƐ n).
2 The distinction between the two matches the distinction between
rendition and formulation as a aspects of production, between recognition
and comprehension as aspects of reception, and between rerendition
and reexpression as types of intralinguistic reproduction. Reproduction has an
important bearing on linguistic ontogeny and phylogeny.
Between texts, items, or rules, there may be historical relationship
– one may be a successor of the other, or both may be cosuccessors
of some third thing. Historical relationship may be based on the descent
of the descendent language system from the ancestral language system
arising out of childhood transmission from one generation to the next. Alternatively,
they may be based on influence arising out of contact between two
languages, which may range from bare contact, “intimate” bilingualism. Influence
involves a three cornered relationship between the model, the filter,
and the replica, which is a successor to both model and the filter. A replica
text is reproduction of the model from which it deviates because of some filter.
If the replica is being offered as a text of the filter language, we speak of
the influence as borrowing from donor model language to the recipient
(filter –replica) language. Borrowing on a large scale brings a new descendent
of the recipient language into being. If the replica is being offered as a text
in the model language, we speak of the influence as mutation or interference
in the model through the mutator- filter language, the replica being assigned
to a mutant of the model. When a language L1 is consistently a mutator
of L2 into a mutant L21, then L2 is the mutated ancestor of
the mutated descendent L21. Thus, English as used in India by
native speakers from England is a descendent of English acculturated to India
– let us call it Indianized English. It borrows from Indian languages by transrendition
(e.g. bidi, ahimsa) or by translation (e. g. leaf cigarette, non violence).
But English, as used in India by Indians whether as native or as foreign speakers,
is a mutated descendent of English, the various Indian languages being its mutators
– let us call it Indian English, or more specifically, Hindi, English, Tamil English,
All-India English etc. It is characterized by transrendition from English (e.g.
resulting in homonymy between state and estate in Hindi English
or between eights and Yeats in Tamil English), translation from
Indian languages (e. g. communal riot, had gone yesterday), transrendition
from Indian languages (e. g. jira for cumin seed), and of course
plain mis-expression (e.g. really speaking for speaking truthfully,
feel homely for feel at home).
Shared line of descent yields a language chain; codescendent relationship
yields a language family; shared influence yields a language zone. The first great
task of linguistic prehistory is the reconstruction of earlier states of language.
Reconstruction of texts, items, and rules may proceed from a descendent towards
an ancestor (internal), from codescendents towards an ancestor (comparative),
or from a more remote ancestor and codescendents to a less remote ancestor (reverse).
3 Reconstruction of historical relationships of descent and influence
between language systems is the second great task of linguistic prehistory.
Returning to the three kinds of collations, we may begin by observing that
the distinction between correspondences and correlations is reminiscent of the
biologist’s distinction between the homologies of comparative anatomy (e.g. resemblance
between the human hand and the mammalian foreleg pointing to common origin) and
analogies of comparative ecology (e.g. resemblance between the hand and the elephantine
trunk pointing to common function). Again, pattern matchings and correlations
may be distinguished in terms of the three modes of language use. In pattern matching
we are observing the exercise skills of native production, reception and intralinguistic
reproduction. In correlating of traits we are concerned with translinguistic reproduction.
The items brought together in historical correspondences may or may not be translinguistic
reproductions. Sanskrit cakra is hardly a transrendition of English wheel
(its historical cognate). While Marathi sətkar ‘act of honoring’ would be
an acceptable transendition of Bangla šɔtkara
funeral rite’ (a shared loan from Sanskrit satkāra), one could
hardly be translation of the other.
The basic data of historical linguistics are not so much observation of
the exercise of the skills of native production, reception, or reproduction, or
of translinguistic reproduction, nor, again, the description of languages or languages
stages. Rather, they are the observation of successor relationships and of derived
cosuccessor relationships between texts, items, and rules4. If historical
linguistics is comparative in the sense in which comparative anatomy or comparative
physiology or comparative ethology (comparative psychology) is comparative, correlative
linguistics is comparative in the sense in which comparative ecology or comparative
religion is comparative. For the kind of ambiguity (or is it richness) that the
phrase ”comparative linguistics” is thus seen to enjoy, we shall have to find
a match, probably in the phrase “comparative literature.”5
The reason behind this twofold nature of linguistic comparison is, of course,
the peculiar way in which languages instantiations (idiolects) within a language
community are like members of a biological species within a population (Stevick
1963). Like two species (which are not interfertile – cats and dogs do not interbreed:
horses and donkeys do, but the mules do not reproduce themselves) and the unlike
two nonlinguistic institution, two languages do not yield a mixed idiolect with
two ancestors. A child in a bilingual environment ends up by acquiring two languages
and not by acquiring a mixed language, though some of his initial efforts at production
look suspiciously like one. Granting that pidginization has been a much more common
phylogenetic process than linguists have been disposed to grant (Southworth 1971a,
1971b), 6 a pidgin is unmistakably the mutated descendent of one language.
Marathi (Southworth’s example) remains an Indo-Aryan language despite the Dravidian
grafting, as much as Finnegan’s wake remains English despite Joyce’s drastic distortions
and conflations within and across the boundaries of English. (The possibility
of historical comparison does not entail the possibility of comparative reconstruction,
which calls for postulations of certain other properties as well. See below, section
2.3, hypotheses [15] and [23].)
1.1 Precursors
Correlative linguistics has been talked
about previously under other names. Some of the terminological anticipations include
Hockett’s “contrastive linguistic” coordinate with synchronic and diachronic linguistics
(1948); Trager’s ‘contrastive linguistics” inclusive of historical linguistics
and coordinate with descriptive linguistics (1952: 6-7 ); Greenberg’s “general
linguistics” coordinate with descriptive and historical linguistics (1957a: 86);
Halliday’s “comparative descriptive linguistics” inclusive of the theory of translation
and the theory of transfer comparison by the side of comparative historical, descriptive,
and institutional linguistics as division of general linguistics (Halliday, McIntosh,
and Strevens 1964; 15-16, 111-112, 120); Ellis’s “comparative linguistics” (especially
its “all-purpose” version) coordinate with descriptive linguistic (1966); and
Hymes “syncretic linguistic” coordinate with synchronic, diachronic, and diatopic
linguistics (1968:361),
Now has correlative linguistics so understood been actually practiced so
far? It certainly has been. As shall be seen below, such traditional concerns
as universal grammar (or its later avatar – language universals), historical universals
(e.g. the various hypotheses about “progress” in language), structural or non-historical
classification of languages (now being rehabilitated as language typology) and
of writing systems (logo-graphic, syllabic, alphabetic), and such innovations
as contrastive linguistics and Greenberg’s historical typology (1957b) certainly
exemplify, though they do not exhaust, correlative linguistics. A good part of
Trevor Hill’s (1958) institutional linguistics, or of translation theory, or geographical
and social covariation and dialect studies (cf. Footnote 1), or of theoretical
and methodological discussions of archiving and surveying of languages (Kelkar
1969b) exemplify or implify correlative methods. It is about time,
I feel, that we take stock of the situation and propose
at least a tentative but comprehensive frame work for reinterpreting past work,
initiating future work, and ultimately stimulating the search for a more adequate
and more rigorous frame work. We shall call this frame work correlative linguistics
and recognize it as a sub-frame work with in the larger frame work of linguistics
sketched above (Section1).
The presentation that follows is necessarily sketchy and abstract. Too
often, perhaps, I have counted on the reader to flesh it out with his own examples
and to supply his own footnote documentation.
2.
THE IDENTIFICATION OF TRAITS
What
is a language trait? It is any fact about a language as such (other than
correlation with a user trait or a situational trait) that characterizes it as
a semiotic system. Thus, the following are language traits:
a.
having a retroflex flap, having a distinction affirmative/ negative,
having a definite article, having an animate/ inanimate distinction (e.g. who?/
what?, who/ which, man’s/* table’s [in English]), etc;
b.
having a rule or a pattern: having a prohibition on final consonants, having
an abundance of heavy nonmedial consonant sequences having a penultimate accent,
having a passive construction, having S-V-O order in the surface structure of
statements, having double negatives, having a rule in the kinship terminology
that, if x is a kin-type K to a married male, x is also K to the latter’s wife,
etc.;
c.
having a statistical expectation (e.g. expectation of null frequency, of
nonnull frequency, of comparative frequency) about items in some inventory, rules
in some system, or texts in some corpus: lacking a retroflex flap, having more
polymorphemic words than monomorphemic words in the lexicon (or in a representative
subcorpus of occurrent texts), using fusion morphs more often than additive morphs,
tolerating homonymy in functors, tolerating homonymy in nonfunctors, using animate-to-inanimate
shift less often than using inanimate – to-animate shift, lacking a writing system,
etc.
It
will be seen that the concept of trait is wide-ranging enough to accommodate the
negative traits, quantified traits (e.g. having words with the average
length of 2.1 morphemes), and the more sophisticated epistemic traits as
proposed by Bazell (1958) (e.g. being more amenable to analytic model A than to
analytic model B in phonology, grammar, etc.). But then the following are not,
strictly speaking, language traits – rather they are disguised:
a.
language-user traits : having more than a million users,
having more monolingual native users than multilingual native users, having more
nonnative users than native users, having no live speakers, having no native users,
having no native female literate users, etc. (typically, we shall have to add,
“at any given time”).
b.
Situation-of-use traits:
having been used as a medium for schooling, is use exclusively at homes
of native speakers, having been designated as a national language, not used for
love letters, in use when close rapport between participants exists, in use when
secrecy is desired, etc (typically, some of these do not correlate with whole
languages but with specific items, rules, or patterns).
Let
us call these extrinsic language traits, to distinguish them from language
traits proper or intrinsic language traits. As we shall see, we need to speak
of extrinsic language traits too.
2.1
Translinguistic Reproductions
.
Identifying an extrinsic
trait or a purely phonetic intrinsic trait in a language would seem to be easy
enough. Even if it is not easy, that would be a headache for demographers, anthropologists,
experimental psychologists, or whoever, but not for linguists as such. How do
we identify an intrinsic trait, other than a purely phonetic one, within a language?
More importantly, how do we know that two languages possess the same trait? If
one were to adopt an ad hoc approach to
the establishment of the categories of the linguistic analysis of a language,
the identification of intrinsic traits across languages would seem to be an insuperable
problem. How could one say that two languages share the phonological unit |r|
or the grammatical distinction N/V or A/V or the semantic distinction visible/invisible,
if one said that the use of the same symbol or the label in the relation to two
languages is no more than a convenience? Indeed, such an impasse probably delayed
the resumption of the concern for language universals and language typology in
the “descriptive” era of linguistics. In these days linguists delighted in pointing
out that the “adjectives” of one language are apt to be translated by the “nouns”
(or the “verbs”) of another language, or that the unit /p/ participating in the
commutations p:ph:b:bh in one language is not commutation p:b in another language,
or that the case of /r/ realized as an apical trill, uvular trill, apical flap,
or laminal obsulcate7 in various language is a hopeless one. Equally
delighted (or exasperating, according to one’s inclination) was transrendition
of both [ph] and [p] in English as [p] by a native user of Marathi,
a language which has both sounds in contrast, or the lexicographer’s difficulties
in offering a translation gloss for English
have in Hindi or for Hindi juţh
a in English.
A removal of this impasse involves a change in the model underlying analytic
linguistics. Indeed one may claim that one’s correlative comparisons cannot be
better than one’s linguistic analysis. I should broadly accept this claim, but
immediately qualify it in some ways. To begin with, does this claim lead us into
postponing any serious correlative comparison until after analyzing all the languages
in accordance with some one model deemed to be acceptable, or, at least, until
after finding some way of “translating” available descriptions with varied underlying
models to some uniform model? Bazell (1958) and, following him, Lyons (1962)8
have already indicated a way out of this impasse, offering thereby to turn adversity
into opportunity by proposing a new tool, which I earlier christened “epistemic
trait’. A more radical solution, however, would be to accept language users’ translinguistic
reproduction (transrenditions as well as translations) as the basic data of correlative
linguistics rather than the descriptions of individual languages churned out by
some favorite analytic model. Two languages will be deemed to have the same trait,
not so much because the same item label or rule formula turns up in the analysis
of them, but because texts exemplifying the item or the rule in question in each
language are transrendered or translated by texts exemplifying the corresponding
item or rule. This proposal would lead us to see that one’s linguistic analysis
cannot be better than one’s correlative comparisions.
A model of linguistic analysis is subject to check of data – oriented correlative
comparison to prevent it from ignoring genuine relatively deeper resemblances:
cases in point are the salutary effect of Jakobson’s proposal (1966) for a correlative
inventory of phonological minima, or of Fillmore’s proposal (1968) for a correlative
inventory of grammatical cases. Proposals to economize analytical statements by
leaving unstated the appearance of universals or near universals in the language
in question (e.g. by marking conventions) also stem from insights arising out
of correlative comparison. In general, the search for formal universals is also
the search for the foundations of linguistic analysis.
A model of correlative comparison, on the other hand is subject to the
check of the data – oriented linguistic analysis to prevent it from ignoring genuine,
relatively deeper differences; cases in point are the salutary reminders that
languages can differ profoundly in their handling of the structure and function
of syllables or in their handling of word order, grapping, and what Halliday (1970:
43) calls cohesion features.
2.2
Initial and Consequent Collations of correlative linguistics.
2.2.1.1.
THE SELECTION OF THE DOMAIN. Theoretically, the domain of correlative
comparison encompasses every human language – extinct, dead, or living, with perhaps
a sideways glance at Esperanto or Rudolf – Carnapese. Taking on this whole domain
or language population is obviously not feasible. The languages are not all accessible,
let alone the data on all translinguistic reproduction possibilities. Even if
one confines oneself to all those that are accessible and not undeciphered, the
linguist’s attention span is limited, even if it were to be reinforced by computer
memory
Fortunately,
all these ambitious undertaking are unnecessary – at least immediately. Years
of two-languages-at-a-time comparisons are necessary before a receptable group
of testable hypothesis can be assembled, and before at least the major problems
of collation and validation in this field are mastered. Refinements of sampling
and quantification of correlation will also come to our aid, provided we see the
point in exploring the whole gamut from prefect correlation (linguistic impossibilities
and necessities) to near zero correlations (mere possibilities). Finally, there
may even be some virtue in selecting a subdomain. Such a subdomain, as distinct
from maximal domain, may be based on any of the following criteria or any combination
of them:
a.
Membership of a language family (or subfamily) based on shared
descent or of a language chain (or subchain) based on shared line of descent.
b. Membership of a language network (or
subnetwork) bases on shared influence in a certain epoch.
c. Sharing of a certain language-user trait
or traits.
d. Sharing of a certain situation-of-use trait or traits
e. Belonging to a certain phase of culture
history (e.g. feudalism, pre-agricultural or tribal societies enclaved within
societies of a later phase, modern industrial societies) – it will be noticed
that under (e), there is a merger of the criteria in (c) and (d).
The overall picture that will emerge
after correlative comparison within such a domain may or may not confirm significant
generalization, e.g. Indo-European languages are suffixing, Slavic languages palatalizing;
Arabic has been borrowing by translation rather than transrendition throughout
its long history; Standard Average European (to borrow Whorf’s nomenclature [1941
and 1956b: 138]) favors S-V-O order, have like verbs, subject-predicate cleavage,
“meaningless” proper names, and standardization of noncasual languages, and it
does not favor clicks (consigned to paraphonology) or tones (confined to accented
syllables, and that in very few languages).
2.2.2. SELECTION
OF THE SUBSYSTEM. Just as one can conveniently and profitably confine oneself
to a subdomain, one may also confine oneself to a subsystem – say, phonology,
graphonomy, syntax, kinship terminology – from which to select the traits for
study, Selecting just one trait or a pair is the limiting case and the starting
point of study by subsystem.
2.2.3. SCHEMATA OF CORALATIVE COMPARISON. Given the
domain or language population, an inventory of its members, and a repertory of
traits likely to occur within domain, one can then establish, measure, and evaluate
correlations of the following sort:
a.
Between a trait and a given member language
(given the language L, L possesses or lacks the trait T1)
b. Between a trait and membership of the domain
(given the member languages of the domain D, L always or sometimes possesses or
lacks the trait T1; thus, T1 may be universal, near-universal, type-yielding
or negative universal in respect of D )9.
c. Between one trait and another and membership of the domain (given
the member languages of the domain D, if any language L possesses or lacks T1,
then L always or sometimes possesses or lacks T2; thus, T1 and T2 may be compatible
or incompatible, may from a syndrome of co occurring and possibly implicating
traits, may form a spectrum of competing, possibly conflicting traits,
and so on; [a spectrum of traits may be based on either of two considerations:
the traits may be varying renditions or expressions associated with a more “abstract”
item or they may be varying functions or interpretations of a relatively less
“abstract” item]; if L1 possesses T1, L2 possesses a nonidentical T2, and T1 and
T2 transrender or translate each other,
then L1 and L2 are type-different in respect of the trait-couple
T1:T2).
d.
Between a sequence of a trait and successor trait, on the one
hand, and any language sequence in the domain (given that L1 is an ancestor, mutated
ancestor, donor, or mutator of L2 in respect of trait sequence within the
domain D, if L1 possesses T1, then L2 always or sometimes possesses or lacks T2
as successor of T1; thus T1 à T2 is an ordered sequence
of traits; if T1 = T2, then T à T2 is a stable sequence
of traits; if T1 à
T2 occurs and T2 àT1
does not, it is an irreversible sequence; if L1 àL2 represents stages in
a domain made up of ontogenetic chains, then T1 à T2 is an ontogenetic
sequence of traits, and so on).
e. Between a dendroidal or reticular pattern (e.g. a family
tree or a network of a certain shape) and a domain of phylogenetic chains (specific
dendroidal or reticular phylogenetic patterns and specific linear phylogenetic
patterns, as noted in (d) above, may be thought of as intrinsic traits of the
domain as such, rather than of individual members)
f. Between a trait and a extrinsic trait
and membership of the domain (given the member languages of the domain D, if any
language L possesses or lacks T1, then L always or sometimes possesses or lacks
the extrinsic trait ET1; thus, an isogloss is a special subtype of correlations
of type (f); the trait of an intrinsic trait may be thought of as an extrinsic
trait).
g.
Between a trait sequence and an extrinsic trait sequence and
membership of the domain (given that L1 is an ancestor, mutated ancestor, donor,
possesses T1, L2 possesses T2, and T1àT2, then it is always
or sometimes or never the case that L1 possesses ET1, L2 possesses ET2, L2 possesses
ET2, and ET1à ET2; the sequence may be phylogenetic or ontogenetic).
h.
Between an intrinsic trait of a subdomain and an extrinsic trait
of a domains of the domain D, if any subdomain SD possesses or lacks the domain
trait DT1, then SD always or sometimes possesses or lacks the extrinsic domain
trait EDT1).
Briefly,
there are analytic (a, b. c. f,), ontogenetic (d, g,), and phylogenetic (d, e,
g, h) correlations. The ones which involve extrinsic traits, over and above just
the membership of a domain (f, g, h), may be called pragmatic correlations.
Type (b) correlations may be called conditional analytic correlations.
Illustrations of these types of correlation will be provided below (Section 2.3).
2.2.4
EVALUATION OF CORRELATIVE COLLATIONS. Each of these correlations
has to be evaluated: this evaluation will not only take into account quantified
measurement but will also call for qualitative weighting. Thus, a language with
clicks in phonology will be deemed to be more “clicky”, i.e. to be better correlated
with the trait of having clicks, than a language with clicks in paraphonology.
Locating a trait in five closely related languages is certainly less impressive
evidence of its widespread character than locating it in five historically unrelated
cases. The membership of subdomain will be deemed to be better correlated with
a trait if more “key” members of the subdomain have it than if fewer “key” members
have it. Whether a member is a “key” member or not will, presumably, be determined
on the basis of the possession of certain extrinsic traits. In determining the
trait syndromes, the trait spectra, and the trait sequences with respect to a
domain, some traits will probably be deemed to be “key” traits. In general if
T1 is subsumable under T2 (e.g. having an alveolar click, and having a click),
T2 is more important than T1.
Occasionally,
however, even a highly particularized trait may assume a diagnostic value for
some purpose – for example, the greasy (s/z) isogloss in American
English. An isogloss is, to begin with, merely a correlation between (a)
a trait and (b) the extrinsic trait of the language user’s residence or social
position or situation of use and (c) membership of a domain of differentiated
languages of the same family and network. It is expected that a good many of these
isoglosses will turn out to be diatopic historical correspondences based on descent
and influence. In other words, correlations are being subjected to evaluative
criteria that are essentially historical. It is not difficult to extend the concept
of the isogloss to diachronic correspondences and correlations. Thus, we can speak
of fascicule of isoglosses marking two stages in the history of a language.
Finally,
there are “correspondences” that serve as the basis of internal reconstruction,
e.g. d/t nonfinal and t final in German; a/i and o/e
as masculine/ feminine markers in different Marathi paradigms, to give a phonological
and a grammatical example, respectively. A proposal to call these either correspondences
or correlations of isoglosses is attractive enough. Internal reconstructions would
then be assimilated to comparative reconstruction. It must be borne in mind, however,
that this last move would require a major extension of our notion if linguistic
comparison. We shall thereby be recognizing that there is a minor but important
overlap between intralinguistic, analytic collations and interlinguistic, comparative
collations. I think this is well worth the logical maneuvering called for. We
shall sketch the outline of a suggested maneuver below (section 3.1)
2.3
A Sampling of Hypotheses
We
now proceed to cite, without approval or disapproval and largely without comment,
some examples of hypotheses involving correlations differing in the correlated
terms, in conjectural strength, and in evaluative status. Hopefully, these will
serve to indicate what correlative linguistics should look like. I must say that
I have not always taken the trouble to recast the familiar formulation of the
hypothesis into exact conformity to the schemata proposed above (section 2.2.3).
We shall begin with some analytic examples (1-11), then offer an ontogenetic example
(12), and conclude with linear (13-18,24-27) and dendroidal (19-23,28-34) phylogenetic
examples. Some of these are pragmatic and thus involve extrinsic traits (11, 24-27,
28-34).
1.
Both English and French share a trait: my old friend and
mon vieil ami are ambiguous in the same way. Both refer either to one who
has been a friend for a long time or to a friend who has been alive for a long
time,; an old soldier goes the same way but an old hat, an old man,
the old wife, the older wife don’t. Marathi and Hindi lack this trait.
It will be interesting to explore other Indo-European, Indian, and European languages.
2.
A number of languages in Negro Africa use the same metaphor –
a door is called a “mouth of the house” (Greenberg 1957a:70).
3.
Some metaphor types predominantly go in one direction: body-part
name for artifact or other inanimate object, physical for mental state, spatial
for temporal.
4.
High vowels have narrow phonetic ranges; the range of mid vowels
is never narrower than that of high vowels.
5.
The nasal systems form a trait spectrum: m, m/n, m/n/n, m/n/n/ñ,
etc. such that the presence of ŋ implies the presence of m and n, the presence
of n implies the presence of m, but not vice versa.
6.
A voiceless obstruent is never followed by a voiced obstruent
in close transition.
7.
The presence of the number system implies the presence of singular;
that of dual implies that of singular; if one member of the number system lacks
a marker, it will be the singular number.
8.
The following traits from a syndrome; S-V-O as statements; V-S-O
and v-S-V-O (or S-V-s-O) as questions; and S1-V1-O1-and
–S2-O2 as gapping transforms (where v and s stand for dummy
verb and subject respectively).
9.
The following traits form a syndrome: all syllable boundaries
equally open as transitions; tone contrasts; and syllables, morphemes, and words
invariably or predominantly coterminous.
10.
Every language has a phonology;
only some languages have writing systems.
11.
The “deeper” a trait is (in some determinate sense of “deeper”
independent of “universal”) the more nearly it is likely to be. In other words,
the deep traits constitute a universal syndrome.
12.
When the adult language has a vowel system of the type i/e/a/o/u,
then the following is a common ontogenetic trait sequence: I ~ e/a/o ~ u à
i/e/a/o/u.
13.
Tamil has miraculously escaped innovations for centuries.
14.
The following is an irreversible trait sequence: s/h à
h, i.e. s merges with h never the reverse.
15.
The Neogrammarian hypothesis (underlying comparative phonological
reconstruction): phonemes don’t split except by way of resegmentation, i.e. the
trait sequence “lack of contrast à
gain of contrast” is a negative universal. (This is at least true of direct or
nonmutated descent.)
16.
The internal phonological reconstruction hypothesis: the following
is a possible trait sequence;
Rule
(a as a in Environment 1) with Rule (b as b in Environment 1) àRule (a as b in Environment
1) with Rule (b as b in Environment 1) but the following is not:
Rule
(a as a in Environment 1) with Rule (b as a in Environment 1)à Rule (a as b in Environment
1) with Rule (b as b in Environment 1).
Note
that both sequences are compatible with (15) above. A more generalized formulation,
perhaps, would be: phonological alterations are not abridged or lost phonologically,
but only through analogical leveling.
17.
Loss of contrast and loss of sounds in word-initial position
is rare; the same in word-final position is rather common.
18.
The number of genders is always reduced, never increased. When
it is decreased the masculine gender is never sacrificed.
19.
Languages “progress” from a low morphemes-per-word ratio to a
high one: this was later replaced by a contrary hypothesis.
20.
If the following are borrowed at all, they are almost always
borrowed to fill previous gaps in the systems, not to supersede previously existing
items: numerals, kin terms, functors, terms for body parts and body functions.
21.
Some languages borrow freely through transrendition; others prefer
to borrow through translation.
22.
Languages split but do not merge; when they split, they do so
decorously into two languages at a time. In other words, a language cannot have
more than one line of ancestry and more than two immediate descendents. (In wave
hypothesis, the first part is questioned in so far as possibilities of the following
sort are accepted: L1 is ancestral to L2 in respect of T1 but L3 is ancestral
to L2 in respect of T2. In a modified family tree hypothesis, such a possibility
will be accepted, provided that L1 and L3 are barely separated codescendants of
L4. [Cf. South worth 1964 and the nation of transition dialects.]).
23.
The following is a recurring pattern in dendrodial phylogeny:
a single branch proliferates, the other atrophy, e. g. Latin against Oscan, Umbrian,
etc. in Italic; Proto-New-Indo-Aryan against various non-literary, spoken dialects
of Middle Indo-Aryan; Bantu against other branches of Niger-Congo; Classical Arabic
against other cognate languages.
24.
Grammatical irregularities resist analogical leveling in high
frequency items, e.g. widespread suppletion in verbs meaning “go”.
25.
Lexical hypertrophy (snow in Eskimo, horse and date in Arabic,
Kinship in Indo-Aryan and Dravidian) correlates with special attention to the
referential domain in the non-linguistic culture.
26.
Only dead languages escape change. Languages with only non native
users resist change with moderate success. Thus, the noncasual language of law,
folksong, and written literature tends to be archaic and conservative. Traits
associated with certain other situations of use tend to encourage innovations
and their diffusion, which results in a high infant mortality in words and idioms.
Examples are slang and occupational jargon.
27.
The lexicostatistic hypothesis of glottochronology: the percentage
rate of replacements within the basic vocabulary over a given length of time is
constant over long periods. The basic vocabulary consists of those meanings whose
expressions resist borrowing and are near-universal categories.
28.
The age and area hypothesis of glottochronology: the diffusion
of innovations proceeds at a relatively constant rate geographical area and dispersal
over time). This is at least valid for pre-industrial societies.
29.
The language-branching hypothesis of glottochronology: a language
diverges into branches at a relatively constant rate (number of terminal branches
and their dissimilarity from each other over time), e.g. the relatively low diversity
in American English and Bantu indicate recent colonization.
30.
The following is a recurring pattern in language networks: one
of the language systems gains nonnative users from among the native users of other
language systems; this is the auxiliary dialect / language phenomenon.
31.
The following is a recurring pattern in language networks: a
plethora of unrelated or distantly related languages in a small mountainous area,
e. g. the Caucasus, northwestern California, the Nilgiris, the Hindukush Kabul
River Valley-Gilgit Zone.
32.
Donorship in borrowing goes with high social or political status
or with donorship in some field of non-linguistic culture (e. g. Italian musical
terms in English); mutatorship in interference goes with low social or political
status.
33.
A mutant language system has fewer contrasts than either the
mutated ancestor or the mutator (filter) languages, e. g. Marathi English has
fewer intonational patterns than either native English or native Marathi. (This
is an example of a “poverty” trait.)
34.
Language contact without bilingualism but with acute need of
communication results in pidginization. Creolization may or may not follow. If
it does follow, the Creole either sheds its “poverty” traits through innovations
or is displaced by its ancestral language or borrows heavily from it.
3. THE GOALS AND APPLICATIONS OF CORRELATIVE LINGUISTICS
By isolating universal, negative universal,
and near-universal traits of language systems, language families, and language
networks within the maximal domain, we arrive at a far more detailed characterization
of natural language systems, as such, and their history. The validation of analytic
and historical models is aided. (By relating such traits later to extrinsic traits,
especially universal, negative universal, and near-universal extrinsic traits
of natural languages, we open the way for comparing the so-called natural languages
with other sign systems and cybernetic systems in man and nature, and for seeking
explanations for them. This of course takes us outside linguistics proper. Examples
of the relevant extrinsic traits are: every native user of every language plays
all the roles – rendition, expression, recognition or scanning, comprehension,
rerendition, and reexpression; language is useable with eyes closed, hands full,
mouthful, and feet in locomotion; every language can be acquired without difficulty
before the age of six by any child not deaf, dumb, an idiot, or left to the wolves.)
By isolating spectra of type-yielding
traits of language systems, language families, and language networks within the
maximal domain, we come to see the full spectrum of possibilities. This can often
serve as a needed cross-check on the excessively bold or excessively timid claims
and hopes of analytic universals. Thus, while linguists may differ as to the number
of “strata” or “components” in a language, they often seem to agree that the number
is the same for all languages. In such matters it may turn out to be the case
that what were considered rival analytic models are actually opposed language
types.(This is, after all, the point of Bazell’s proposal of what I have called
epistemic traits in section 2.)Alternatively, it may sometime turn out that what
were considered opposed language types appear opposed just because they are applications
of rival analytic models. By isolating syndromes, we arrive at generalization
of wider scope and greater relevance. By isolating trait sequences we understand
the spectrum of possibilities in language history. This can also serve as cross-
check on claims for historical universals. The validation of analytic and historical
models of specific systems and their histories is aided. By correlating the typologies
of languages and language histories with extrinsic traits, we open the way towards
explaining either one or other, or both. This also takes us outside linguistics
proper into the extrinsic study of language, for which correlative linguistics
will provide a firmer base.
By working out typologies and universals
subdomains, we arrive at a far more detailed characterization of such subdomains
and their history. The subdomain may be a phase of cultural history, in which
case our understanding of the extrinsic history of languages as a human institution
is increased. If the subdomain is a language family or a language network, correlative
comparison will make explicit the experienced specialist’s “feel” for what to
expect and what not to expect in dealing with a new body of data within the subdomain:
the scholarly surrogate for the native speaker’s Sprachgefühl that Romanist,
Dravidianist, or Americanist has for his respective domain. (The native speaker’s
intuition is limited to a particular language.) The search for successor and cosuccessor
relationship in historical linguistics may begin with the search for diatopic
and diachronic isoglosses or trait correlations.
3.1.
Proposals for Revising the Schemata
Finally,
the subdomain may be a pair of languages or a small enumerative set of languages
as distinct from the domain defined in historical terms or in terms of extrinsic
traits considered above (section 2.2.1, items (a), (b); (c),(d),and (e)). This
will bring out resemblances as well as differences between the two languages,
and throw light on the processes of transrendition, translation, and the bilingual’s
receptive and productive skills in general involving the members of the domain.
The traditional concerns of error analysis, of the language teacher’s comparison
between model and filter language and attempts to anticipate ease of learning
and errors, and of the translator’s comparisons and attempts to recommend or warn
against certain translation all become relevant at this point. The presentation
of the results of correlative comparison between a pair of languages may be either
nondirected or directed towards one or the other of the two languages10.
The
limiting case of such an arbitrarily enumerated subdomain is of course the subdomain
of only one language – considered earlier as type (a) correlation. In such a “domain”
there will be “universals”, “negative universals”, “syndromes”, but no type-yielding
traits, no spectra, no trait sequence. By working with such a subdomain in relations
to larger domains, one can arrive at the typological characterization of the language.
The stresses and strains set up by competing traits within a language could be
exhibited as quasi-spectra (yielding quasi-isoglosses) internal to a language.
Such a presentation would also serve to provide the initial collations for internal
reconstruction. By allowing itself the privilege of squinting at negative traits
and statistical expectations, it will also illuminate a straight analytic presentation
in various ways.
To
the list of types (a) to (e) of subdomains presented in section 2.2.1, one more
may be added:
(f)
Belonging to an arbitrary enumerated set – typically of one language
or of two or three languages – which may be called an arbitrary domain.
An
arbitrary domain with only one member may be called a singulary domain.
The list of schemata (a) to (h) of correlative collations presented in
section 2.2.3, now stands revised. Schema (a) now reads as follows:
(a)
Between a trait and membership of a singulary domain (given the
member L of the singulary domain D, L wholly or partially possesses or lacks the
trait T1; thus, if L is partially possesses traits T1 and T2 which are in competition,
L may be said to possess the quasi-spectrum T1-T2; the sum of the traits and negative
traits that L possesses, and excludes universals and negative universals of the
maximal domain, may be called the trait profile of L; two trait profiles may be
similar in all respects or in respect of some traits)
Schemata
(b) to (h) remain as they are expect for the added stipulations that the domain
in question may be an arbitrary subdomain but not a singulary arbitrary subdomain,
and that the trait in question may be a negative trait or trait syndrome of positive
and /or negative traits. (A trait profiles is a special case of a sequence of
trait syndromes.)
3.2.
Bearing of Correlative Linguistics on Certain problems
of Theory
It
is worth noting here that the discussion of both universals and typologies in
analytic, ontogenetic, and phylogenetic areas is expected to throw light on certain
interrelated notions whose precise content and mutual import have remained rather
poorly explored so far. I have in mind the following vaguely intuited insights:
a.
That in any language system the items and the rules range from
the inner code to the outer margin. Thus, paraphonology, graphonomy, and onomastics
are barely parts of the system. Paraphonology has presumably grammatical and semologic
analogues. If script and orthography are marginal, Morse code, Pitman shorthand,
and other surrogates of writing are even more so. Proper names tend to be excluded
from dictionaries. “Given” names like William, Rover, Ritz, Philharmonic,
One who knows, the age of reason are probably less marginal than
passively “inherited” or “borrowed” names like Shakespeare, the Malagasy, India,
Swahili; “household” names like Shakespeare, (THE Shakespeare, that is),
Einstein, London, the English, the Thames (the one which
can be set on fire) are less marginal than more “obscure” ones like Thomas
Peacock, Bournemouth, Aurangabad, the Middle Kingdom. Again
“native” or unmarked elements in phonology and vocabulary are more central than
elements in phonology and vocabulary that are marked “borrowed” or “learned” (chair
is of course “native’ or unmarked in this context, no matter what the etymologist
has to say). The notion of “basic” vocabulary is also relevant here. Mixing metaphors
further, deep rules have been set against low-level rules. (Compare section 2.3[11]).
Formal universals (e.g. all languages have phonemes, morphemes, form classes,
and transformations) are deemed to be more important than substantive universals
(e.g. all languages have vowels, consonants and intonation; nouns, verbs, and
predications; animate/inanimate, special markers for speakers and listener). Moderately
slow, deliberate speech – all of which tend to obliterate segmental and prosodic
contrasts. Derivation but not inflection can be consigned to small print or left
out.
(b)
Linguists in their commendable desire to avoid linguistic ethnocentrism
fight shy of “loaded” characterizations like “exotic” or “implausible” or “strange”
in describing traits like implosive, dental slit fricatives, voiced aspiration,
elongated gender, or the pervasive cleavage between ordinary and honorific in
the vocabulary (seen in Javanese and Persian). But it will not be too difficult,
and will be probably worthwhile, to replace these characterizations by more carefully
and objectively defined distinctions. For example, “displaced” articulations like
labiodental, apicolabial, retroflex, dorsopostvelar, uvular, and pharyngeal articulations
are less common than nondisplaced ones like bilabial, apicondental, and apicoalveolar,
dorsovelar, and glottal articulations.
(c)
A similar comment may be offered on another set of epithets usable
in relation to trait sequences. Some changes are dubbed “natural” or “plausible”
or “progressive” or “economizing” or “balance-restoring;” while others are dubbed
“strange” or “degenerative” or “costly” or “imbalance-producing.” This is obviously
connected with the nonexotic /exotic dichotomy. A change “restoring” nonexotic
patterns is presumably more likely than a change bringing in exotic features.
At least sometimes the implied value judgments make obvious sense, for example,
hypertrophy of homonyms or synonyms; the dozen senses of hari - or the
several dozen synonyms for “water” in Sanskrit are suspect, not expectable in
a “living” language. So the alleviation of homonymy and synonymy in functors and
contentors is a really accepted explanatory motivation in discussions of linear
phylogeny. Again, a change, filing a “hole” in a phonological, grammatical or
lexical paradigm, has something “natural” about it.
3.3
Applications of correlative Linguistics
Enough
ha been said on this subject. As examples of application from the general to the
specific, see the sample hypotheses (Section 2.3). Application from correlative
linguistics to other parts of linguistic theory applications from correlative
linguistics to the extrinsic study of language, and, finally, applications from
theory to practical concerns have all been hinted at in Sections 3, 3.1 (first
two paragraphs), and 3.2.
4
ON THE METHODOLOGY OF LINGUISTICS IN GENERAL
By
methodology in linguistics, I understand the procedures that take us from observations
of the exercise of the skills of production, reception, and reproduction on the
part of native, adherent, and (if need be) other speakers, from observed subcorpora,
and from tentative determinations of successor and cosuccessor relationships between
texts, items, and rules to maximally validated presentations of analytic systems,
of linear and dendroidal phylogenetic processes, analytic and phylogenetic universals,
and typologies of subdomains and of the whole domain in every human language,
living, dead, or extinct. To the extent that we are prepared to go beyond linguistics
proper into behavior-oriented, text-oriented, and system-oriented studies of language,
we can also offer explanations that being in matters extrinsic to language as
well. (The exercise of receptive skills, it may be noted in passing, also includes
the giving of metalinguistic judgments, for example: that two texts or text fragments
are or are not reproductions of each other in the same language or across different
language systems; that a given text is appropriate in a given meaning; and that
two texts are homogeneous in language or are in a successor or cosuccessor relationship.)
Methodological
procedures can be grouped under the following phases: (a) collection and storage;
(b) collation and collated storage; (c) analysis or prehension of small-scale
patterns, wide-ranging hypotheses, and fundamental paradigms or postulates; (d)
presentation and storage of collated and validated presentations; and (e) validation
(inclusive of relative evaluation). These different phases are not equally amenable
to the use of mechanical aids (consider sound recording, photocopying, data processing,
and storage and retrieval systems) or of well-defined (especially algorithmic)
procedures as opposed to rough-and-ready, heuristic, ad hoc, or intuitive procedures
(consider alphabetization, formulation of generative routines, ear-phonetic transcription,
“semantic transcription,” assembly-line phonemics à la early Pike, and
specified format for formulating hypotheses and presentations).
We may make
the following comments: (1) A prehension or discovery is the least amenable to
mechanical aids and well-defined procedures; collection, collation, and storage
are the most amenable. (2) The traditional prejudice against mechanical aids and
procedures, especially in phases (b) and, (d) is on the wane. (3) Phonology and
graphonomy are more amenable, semantics least amenable to such aids and procedures.
(4) Areas requiring the handling of large bodies of data have a grater need for
such aids and procedures, e. g. grammar more than Phonology, lexicon more than
grammar, larger domains more than smaller domains. (5) The prehension and validation
of small-scale patterns are more amenable to such aids and procedures; the validation
and, even less so, prehension of fundamental paradigms are the least amenable;
computer-aided validation of the analysis of specific languages is a possibility.11
(6) The increasing formularization of presentation certainly facilities validation,
but then t probably has a ceiling, if language is in some fundamental sense crude,
fuzzy, leaky, open-textured, or ill-defined; it is certainly not an accident that
most analytic models intended for actual application provide for a dustbin in
which to put sweepings from under the rug – call it usage or idiom or performance
or high delicacy zone or nipāta or, even, lexicon. (7) As we come
to understand language or any subdomain of it better, the intuitive “feel” of
the specialist that aids him in prehension and evaluation will become more widely
available as a set of objective formulations; this “vulgarization” of the art
of linguistic methodology probably has an upper limit.
4.1
The Methodology of Correlative Comparison
When we apply the forgoing wider considerations to correlative comparison
as such, we can anticipate rapid advances in the next few years in archiving,
i.e. systematic collection, collation, and storage of data, collations, and presentations.
Something like linguistic analogue of the Human Relations Area Files is badly
needed. This will materially assist the measurement of the strength of analytic
correlations. Phylogenetic correlations call for a different kind of archiving
– not of systems and corpora, but of rules of successor and cosuccessor relationships
between corpora and between systems. Presumably the refinements in the formalizations
(of the kind proposed in section 2.2.3 and 3.1) will be of interest to students
of comparative ethnography.
Correlative linguistics eminently shows the recursive or
cyclical character of the linguistic method. We start with initial collations
(L1 has or hasn’t T1, and L1 and L2 both have or haven’t T1); propose a hypothesis
and validate the collations with reference to consequent or derived collations;
if the hypothesis is valid, the new collations based on it suggest other proposals;
and so on. The so-called initial collations are themselves hypotheses based on
more primitive observations and are separated from latter by the same scientific
leap which resists formalized procedure.
It is not strictly necessary, but still perfectly legitimate,
to seek justification for this leap in formulating analytic universals in considerations
outside linguistics proper. Consider the following conversation:
By one estimate, there are about four thousand languages
spoken today, and there must have been many more in the past, some of which have
probably left no trace at all, “How can you verify your universal theory without
a knowledge of quite a number of them?”
“It is true that we transformationalists have studied only
a handful of languages in a really intensive way, but each new language that we
study intensively in the future will support the conclusions that we have already
drawn. I am confident of this, because it seems to me that if we assume that any
infant can learn any language – that no infant is genetically a speaker of a specific
language – then every attribute we postulate in order to explain an infant’s ability
to learn one language must be true of any child’s learning of any language, and
so must be a universal condition of a universal grammar. Thus, on the basis of
the evidence that we have from the study of a few languages we can safely assume
that for learning languages there must be a schematism in the mind – a physical
mechanism in the brain – that is the same in every human being”.12
While
the assumption that “any infant can learn any language”, given an environment
of a certain kind, seems to be safe enough, it is clear that this rationalization
of the scientific leap in correlative comparison will have a point only if one
can formulate a validation procedure for sorting out those traits of a specific
language that have to be presupposed by ANY infant’s ability to learn THAT language
under certain universal conditions from the traits that are, for one reason or
another, not so presupposed.
By way of concluding, I should like
to indicate an epistemologically vulnerable spot. For some, the mention of neogrammarian
hypothesis as a sample of phylogenetic correlations may have rung a warning bell.
It is not quite clear how far this hypothesis (which is currently under fire)
is a truth claim that can be proved, refuted, or replaced by a revised truth claim,
and how far it is merely a methodological postulate that, in conjunction with
the family tree hypothesis (sample 22 above), makes comparative phonological reconstruction
possible. Probably, the same is the case with the claims that transformations
are all meaning-preserving or that they all “precede” the lexical pass or the
bad odor once associated with context-sensitive rules. Are these truth claims
about formal universals or demands for methodological economy?
Even assuming that we can find some
touchstone with which to answer these questions and make the necessary discriminations,
there are three further questions: (1) What bearing, if any, has this distinction
on the philosophical distinction between categories involved in category mistakes
and classes? (2) How far is the concept of validation or evaluation applicable
to fundamental paradigms or postulates? (3) What bearing, if any, has this distinction
on the alleged possibility of nonautonomous facts in linguistics – facts that
won’t brutally stare you in the face, but will be available only to noses sensitized
by certain theories?
Are we perhaps dealing with a three-way
distinction among universal traits – genuine truth claims, defining traits, and
methodological postulates? To say that the language has AT LEAST two articulations
or strata is offering to define the commonest use of the term language;
but to say, with Saussure or Bloomfield, or Hjelslev or Hockett or Ross-McCawley-Lakoff,
that it has only two, or, with Trager or Chomsky or Lamb or Halliday, that is
has at least three, is making a true claim. To say that the claim that is has,
eight strata is prima facie dubious is making a methodological demand.
Now to which of these three belongs the general conspiracy to agree that all languages
have the same number of strata?
A
SELECTED BIBLOGRAPHY OF CORRELATIVE LINGUISTICS
The following is a selected, partially
annotated bibliography of works on correlative linguistics. (Not all of the items
have been seen by me personally.) The bibliography includes all references cited
in the text of this article.
In addition to the specific items below,
I also recommend the following general sources on correlative linguistics: (a)
the archiving issue of IJAL 20 (2) (1954); (b) the translation issue of
IJAL 20 (4) (1954); (c) the typology papers in IJAL 26 (3) (1960)
and IJAL 28(4) (1962); (d) the section on language universals in ICL-9
(1962); (e) the section on typology in ICL-10 (1970); (f) the papers in
the plenary sessions on language universals and the section on typology in ICL-11
(1972); and (g) TLP-2 (1966), -4 (1972).
Abbreviations
AL
Anthropological linguistics
ICAES-5 Selected
papers of the V international congress of anthropological and ethnological sciences.
Philadelphia; University of Pennsylvania press 1960.
ICL-8 Proceedings of the V111th
international congress of linguists. Edited by Eva Sivertsen. Oslo: Oslo University
press 1958.
ICL-9 Proceedings of the 1Xth
international congress of linguists. Edited by Horace G. Lunt. The Hague;
Mouton. 1962.
ICL-10 Actes du xe congress international
des linguists. Edited by A.Graur at al. Bucharest: Academiei Republicii Sociaaliste
Romania. 1970.
ICL-11 Proceedings of the X1th
international of congress of linguists. Edited by Luigi Heilmann. Bologna
and Florence. 1972.
IJAL International journal of American
linguistics.
IRAL International Review of applied
linguistics.
Lg Language.
TLP Travaux linguistique de Prague.
REFERENCES
AGNISKY, BURT W., ETHEL G. AGNISKY
1948
The importance of language universals. Word 4: 168-172.
ASCH, SOLMON E.
1958
“The metaphor: a psychological inquiry,” in person, perception
and interpersonal behavior. Edited by R. Tagiuri and L. Petrullo,
86-94. Stanford; Stanford University Press.
AUSTIN,
WILLIAM M.
1957 Criteria
for phonetic similarity. Lg 33: 538-543.
(Attestations of unusual phonetic distance between allophones and between phones
in successor relationship.
BACH, EMMON, ROBERT T.
HARMS, editors
1968
Universals in linguistic theory. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
BAZELL,
CHARLES E.
1949 Syntactic
relations and linguistic typology. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 8: 5-20
1958 Linguistic typology:
an inaugural lecture. London; School of Oriental and African Studies, University
of London. (Reprinted 1966 in Five inaugural lectures: language and
language learning. Edited by Peter Strevens, 27-49. London: Oxford University
Press.)
BENDIX, E.H
1966
Componential analysis of general vocabulary: the semantic structure of
a set of verbs in English, Hindi and Japanese. IJAL 32 (2), part 2
BENVENISTE, EMILE
1954
La classification des langues. Conferences de l’Institute de Linguistique
de l’Universitė de Paris 11:32-50
1966
Problėmes de linguistique gėnėrale. Paris; Gallimard.
BERLIN, B., P. KAY
1969
Basic color terms: their universality and evolution. Berkeley
and Los Angles: University of California Press.
BIRNBAUM, HENRIK
1971
Problems of typology and genetic linguistics viewed in a generative
framework. Janua Linguarum, Series Minor 106. the Hague: Mouton.
BOAS, FRANZ
1911
“Introduction,” in Handbook of American Indian languages. Edited
by Franz Boas, 1-83. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute.
BOLINGER, DWIGHT L.
1966
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COLOPHON
This was presented in absentia at the
IXth International Congress of Anthrological Sciences at Chicago, Fall 1973 and
published in Sd Tax [ed.] World Anthropology, volume Approaches to language:
Anthropological issues, ed. William C. Mc Cormack, Stephen A. Warm, The Hague:
Mouton, 1978, p151-188.
1
In current usage, the terms institutional linguistics or, more fashionably, socio-linguistics
have come to lump together indiscriminately these various behavior-oriented
extrinsic studies of language as well as that part of correlative linguistics
which is concerned with the correlation between intrinsic traits of languages
and the traits of users and situations.
2 Catford’s proposal (1967: 23, 56-61) to regard the former as phonological
translation is a brilliant insight. I have tried to incorporate it without disturbing
the conventional meaning of the term translation.
3 Reconstructions,
whether internal, comparative, or reverse, provide limited access to prior states
of languages or language families. Reconstruction text fragments from historically
related text fragments, and phonological items from historically related phonological
items, is primary. Reconstruction of nonphonological items, of analytic rules
and rule system, and of texts on the basis of the primary reconstruction is derivative
and much less certain. Prelanguages and protolanguages are, at best, relatively
short descent subchains. It is misleading to think of them as states of languages
and to hope of making a secondary reconstruction of fables in them. Thus, a reconstructed
item or rule assignable to pre-A may conceivably antedate a reconstructed item
or rule assignable to proto-A-B, where A and B are a pair of languages in codescencent
relationship. (I owe this last point to Gordon H. Fairbanks[personal communication])
4 It
would seem that at least the present generation of historical linguists of the
transformational-generative persuasion are guilty of harping on descent relationships
between rules and between systems at the expense of those between text fragments
and items. The formulation of succession or cosuccession rules of the latter kind
(pà p or p, b à b or Juppiter dyaus-pitar-pointing to the existence
of the compound in the ancestral language or, to take an example involving reexpression
rather than rerendition, digged à dug) is logically prior to the formulation
of the succession or cosuccession rules of the former kind (Rule X à Rule Y à null Rule or Rules X followed
by Y à Rules X followed by Z followed
by Y or Rules X followed by Y à Rules Y followed by X or three-gender
paradigm two gender paradigm). The Neogrammarian slate cannot (and need not) be
wiped clean!
5
We are of course talking of the twofold sense proposed here. Traditionally comparative
linguistics has been usually been confined to comparative reconstruction in the
methodology of linguistic prehistory.
6 One
consequence of this is that the excessive emphasis so far in historical linguistics
on divergence at the expense of convergence and on succession by descent at the
expense of succession by influence has to be corrected.
7 An
obsulcate like [ ɹ ] or [ṣ] is a transverse-groove fricative
or approximant, while a sulcate like [s] or [š ] is a fricative or approximant
with a longitudinal short or long groove.
8
Cf. also Lounsbury (1953; 11-24), Robins (1959:137ff.), Matthews (1965:141-142;
1970: 110) for similar pointers towards reading a spectrum of languages types
into a spectrum of language models.
9 In
current usage, the term language universal trait in the maximal domain, or even
in a subdomain, but also in the sense of any prefect correlation within a linguistic
domain (i.e. any correlation of types [b] to [h] that has “always” or “never”
in it). This is sometimes confusing and leads to awkward collocations like “regional”
or “conditional universal”. By confining the term language universal to prefect
type (b) correlation in the maximal domain, one can speak of a prefect correlation
within a stated linguistic domain when one needs a more inclusive term.
10
The name transfer grammar (Harris 1954) or transfer comparison (Halliday, Mc-Intosh,
and Strevens 1964; 120) has been suggested for a directed presentation of correlative
comparison between a pair of languages. It will consist of transrendition rules
(French to English: the vowel of French pur is somewhat like ew
in English pew) and translation rules (English to French: English goes
and is going are both usually rendered by the present of aller in French).
An excessive reliance on such rules, often in an over-simplified version, was
typical of a good deal of traditional second language teaching (in the present
case, for teaching French renditions and expression skills to English-knowing
learners). Transfer comparison may of course bring out resemblances as well (English
adjectives normally translate as French adjectives).
11
The recent strictures on the search for mechanical” discovery” procedures apply
primarily to phase (c) and to wide-ranging hypotheses and, even more obviously
to fundamental paradigms, where they are quite valid. It is open to question,
however, whether the posing of the following dilemma is valid or not – any proposed
discovery procedure is either mechanical but invalid or nonmechanical but “uninteresting”(Cf.
the exchange between William Haas and Chomsky reported in ICL-9: 994-998.) It
is an irony that a distrust of mechanical “discovery” procedures has often been
accompanied by a rather naïve faith in mechanical “evaluation” or validation procedures
(called evaluation metric of the linear size of the symbol inventory, of a specific
rule, and of whole description of a language), which of course presuppose a highly
formalized presentation.
12 The
interlocutors reported are Ved Mehta and Noam Chomsky, respectively (Mehta 1971:
210-211). The point of view attributed to Chomsky may or may not have been correctly
reported, but in any case it is a possible point of view.