New Directions in

Linguistics and Semiotics

NEW SERIES, NO. 2

New Directions in
Linguistics and Semiotics

Edited by James E. Copeland

Rice University Studies

Houston, Texas

 1984 by Rice University

All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition, 1984
Requests for permission to reproduce material
from this work should be addressed to:
Rice University Studies
Rice University
Post Office Box 1892
Houston, Texas 77251
This edition for sale only in the United States of America and Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
New directions in linguistics and semiotics.
(New series; no. 2)
Includes bibliographies and index.
1. LinguisticsAddresses, essays, lectures.
2. SemioticsAddress, essays, lectures. I. Copeland,
James E. II. Series: New series (Rice University
Studies); no. 2.
P49.N45
1984
410
83-62329
ISBN 0-89263-253-4
10
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Preface
Linguistics at Rice University: The First Two Decades
James E. Copeland
Introduction
On the Aims of Linguistics
Sydney M. Lamb

vii

PARTONE

13

1. Mellow Glory:
See Language Steadily and See It Whole
Winfred P. Lehmann

17

2. The Uniqueness Fallacy

Charles F. Hockett

35

PARTTWO

47

3. Linguistics in the University:

The Question of Social Accountability
M. A. K. Halliday

51

4. Lessons from American Indian Linguistics

Mary R. Haas

68

vi

Contents

PARTTHREE

73

5. Reshaping Linguistics: Context and Content

Robert E. Longacre

79

6. The Many Linguistic Functions of Duration

Ilse Lehiste

96

7. Lexical Semantics and Text Semantics

Charles J. Fillmore

123

PART FOUR

149

8. Linguistics, Poetics, and the Literary Genres

Edward Stankiewicz

155

9. Subjects + Objects:
The Current State of Visual Semiotics
Donald Preziosi

179

P A R T

F I V E

207

10. Symptom

211

Thomas A. Sebeok
11. Semiotic Laws in Linguistics and Natural Science
Sebastian Shaumyan

231

Notes on Contributors

259

Index

265

PREFACE

Linguistics at Rice University

The First Two Decades

James E. Copeland

The symposium on new directions in linguistics and semiotics that took

place in Houston, Texas, on March 18 20, 1982, was held to celebrate
the inauguration of the new Department of Linguistics and Semiotics at
Rice University and its new doctoral program in linguistics. The sympo
sium also marked the return of Sydney M. Lamb to full-time academic
life after four years in the computer industry. The new department had
grown out of an interdepartmental linguistics program, and the event
brought to fruition almost two decades of effort by the linguistics faculty
at Rice. This preface is thus an appropriate place to record some of the
events in the short history of linguistics at Rice that led to the establish
ment of the Department of Linguistics and Semiotics, along with an ex
pression of how the newest developments fit in.
The first course in linguistics to be offered at Rice was taught in the
Department of German by Earl Douglas Mitchell, who was at Rice
briefly in the early 1960s. In 1965 Robert S. Cox introduced a course on
syntax in the Department of English, and in the same year Pardie Lowe,
Jr., offered an introduction to general linguistics in the German depart
ment. I came to Rice in 1966 for the purpose of developing a program in
linguistics, and that potential attracted a number of linguists to Rice dur
ing the latter half of the decade.
Work on the proposed linguistics curriculum began in earnest in the
fall of 1966. A core curriculum was designed with the participation of
Edward Norbeck, acting dean of humanities and social sciences. James

viii James E. Copeland

A. Castaneda, chairman of the Department of Classics, Russian, Italian,

Spanish, and Portuguese, also took part in the planning. New faculty
members were recruited in several departments: Roy G. Jones was ap
pointed in 1967 in Russian (linguistics), and Hector Urrutibheity was
appointed in Spanish (Romance linguistics). During the same year an ad
hoc linguistics committee was formed, with James E. Copeland, Robert
S. Cox, Roy G. Jones, and Hector Urrutibheity as its members. Working
together with the new dean of humanities and social sciences, Virgil W.
Topazio, the committee presented a proposal to President Kenneth Pitzer
in the fall of 1967. The B.A. program was approved by the faculty and
became operative in 1968, but courses had been listed in the annual cata
logue under a separate linguistics heading since 1966. Philip W. Davis
joined the linguistics faculty in 1969, and Stephen A. Tyler was appointed
to a joint position in linguistics and anthropology in 1970. With the ex
ception of Philip Davis, all incoming faculty members received appoint
ments that were administered in existing departments. Anticipating the
establishment of a Department of Linguistics in 1969, the administration
created a position in general linguistics and appointed Philip Davis di
rectly under the office of the dean of humanities and social sciences as a
temporary measure. But a new administration and other unforeseen de
velopments in the late 1960s and the early 1970s were to postpone the
emergence of a Department of Linguistics for another decade, and
Davis's position was transferred to the Department of Anthropology for
administrative expedience.
From its inception the linguistics program at Rice had been inter
disciplinary, both in the design and administration of its curriculum and
in the conduct of research. From 1968 until 1982 the program continued
to be administered by the Linguistics Committee, with representation
from the departments of anthropology, German and Russian, philoso
phy, Spanish and Portuguese, and sometimes others. The B.A. program in
linguistics was consistent with the size and quality of Rice University and
its highly select undergraduate student body. In addition, graduate pro
grams in anthropology, German, and Spanish allowed concentration in
linguistics. Some forty graduate degrees (de facto degrees in linguistics)
were awarded in those programs during the period under review.
The interests of the Rice faculty have, over the years, extended to a
wide variety of topics ranging from the study of specific languages to

Linguistics at Rice University

ix

work that integrates such studies within an overall conception of the na

ture of language. Research activity is characterized by a view that the
study of language cannot successfully be abstracted from the context of
its use by actual speakers. Focusing on language in this way necessarily
forces the investigator to look beyond the scope of the sentence; and this
wider focus has become a dominant theme of linguistics at Rice, sup
ported by the belief that language can be fully understood only within the
broader compass of cognitive studies. Linguistics in this view is not seen
as simply drawing upon the cognitive sciences for instruction and para
digms, but rather as actively contributing to cognitive studies and pro
moting a more integrated conception of humankind. Recognizing that
this path in the pursuit of knowledge about language is innovative and
broad, the new department is determined that there will be at Rice no
narrowly doctrinaire pronouncements to further shape research and
teaching activities. The products of this catholic view seem to be durable,
and they will make our conceptualization more precise but will not nar
row or constrain its purview.
In the fall of 1978 Sydney Lamb was invited to give two lectures at
Rice: one on computer architecture and one on linguistics. These lectures
generated interest from computer science as well as from linguistics. Then
in the spring of 1979 Lamb accepted an appointment as adjunct pro
fessor of linguistics and computer science at Rice, intending at that time
to remain active in Semionics Laboratories of Orinda, California, while
also participating in symposia and other academic endeavors at Rice. In
the fall of 1980 Rice University brought him to its teaching faculty as An
drew W. Mellon Visiting Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology. The
linguistics program at Rice and its possibilities attracted Lamb while he
was in Houston, and he was finally at a point in his career where he could
again consider a permanent academic appointment in linguistics.
Lamb's perception of language is closely congruent with that of the lin
guistics faculty at Rice. In his professional career, Lamb has argued con
sistently for the broader semiotic view. His linguistic model, often called
stratificational or cognitive-stratificational linguistics, together with re
lated theories like Halliday's systemic linguistics, stands as a prominent
alternative to the narrowness of the dominant metalanguage of the 1960s
and 1970s. Of particular interest at Rice was Lamb's extension of his
work in linguistics to practical applications in computer science.

James E. Copeland

The concerted efforts of the Linguistics Committee, the active support

of Dean Virgil Topazio, and the vision and advocacy of Allen Matusow,
incoming dean of the newly established School of Humanities, resulted in
the creation of a permanent position for Lamb in 1981, and he accepted
an appointment as professor of linguistics and semiotics. Work had al
ready begun on designing a graduate program in general linguistics, and
efforts were now continued towards the establishment of a new depart
ment of linguistics to administer it. Meanwhile Professor Earl Douglas
Mitchell had been recruited and appointed to the linguistics faculty, and
Richard E. Grandy, Robert Lane Kauffmann, and Wesley A. Morris had
joined the Linguistics Committee from inside the university faculty.
With the establishment of the new Department of Linguistics and Semi
otics by President Norman T. Hackerman in the spring of 1982, chaired
by Sydney M. Lamb, a major milestone in the linguistics program at Rice
had been reached; new goals had been set, and new directions were being
sought. Plans were laid for the inauguration of the new department. The
event was to be marked by a symposium on the theme, "New Directions
in Linguistics and Semiotics." The symposium was intended to focus on
the state of linguistics in its recent past, the current status and recent his
tory of linguistics and semiotics, neglected opportunities, and recommen
dations to the new department on directions that should be taken in the
period immediately ahead.
Participants included Harold Conklin, Yale University; Charles Fill
more, University of California, Berkeley; Mary R. Haas, University of
California, Berkeley; M. A. K. Halliday, University of Sydney, Australia;
Charles F. Hockett, Cornell University; Ilse Lehiste, Ohio State Univer
sity; Winfred P. Lehmann, University of Texas at Austin; Robert Longacre, University of Texas at Arlington and Summer Institute of Linguis
tics; Donald Preziosi, State University of New York, Binghamton, and
Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts; John Robert Ross, Mas
sachusetts Institute of Technology; Thomas A. Sebeok, Indiana Univer
sity; Michael Silverstein, University of Chicago; Sebastian Shaumyan,
Yale University; and Edward Stankiewicz, Yale University. In addition to
these speakers, six scholars were invited to participate as official discus
sants of the papers, one for each of the six sessions of the symposium.
The discussants were Peter Fries, Central Michigan University; David
Lockwood, Michigan State University; Adam Makkai, University of Illi
nois at Chicago Circle; Julius Purczinsky, Hunter College; Peter Reich,

Linguistics at Rice University

xi

University of Toronto; and William Sullivan, Florida State University.1

Section chairmen were Sydney Lamb, Philip Davis, Hector Urrutibheity,
Douglas Mitchell, Stephen Tyler, and James Copeland, all from the Rice
University linguistics faculty.
In his letter of invitation to the participants, Sydney Lamb included a
copy of his 1981 paper, "The Aims of Linguistics" (the introduction to
this volume). This ecumenical statement, together with his opening re
marks, set the tone of the symposium. As the reader will see, the papers
in this volume sparkle with a new optimism. Most of the papers delivered
at the symposium appear here; the three that do not are absent only be
cause of the demands of our publication schedule. The order of the pa
pers reflects, by and large, the original organization of the sessions in the
symposium.
The momentum provided by these events continues at Rice University.
The new graduate program is active, and new research activities are un
derway. In the spring of 1984, Charles F. Hockett will be linguist-inresidence at Rice for three weeks and will deliver a series of lectures ten
tatively titled "Rebuilding Linguistics." Additional symposia are being
planned for the future. We are looking forward to further decades of lin
guistics and semiotics at Rice with new directions, new relevance, and
renewed humanistic applications and concerns.

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

A word of special thanks is due here to the most gracious of hosts, Pro
fessor Earl Douglas Mitchell, for his generous support of the symposium.
The elegance and informal warmth of his hospitality and of the events
that he created for us during the four days of activities greatly enhanced
our enjoyment and fostered the spirit of fraternity that dominated the
symposium.

N O T E

1. The introductory notes to each section reflect the comments sub

mitted by these discussants after the symposium for inclusion in this
volume.

INTRODUCTION

On the Aims of Linguistics

Sydney M. Lamb

From time to time linguists wonder what linguistics is and where it is

going, or where it ought to be going, and what it is good for.1 Now, dur
ing a period of widespread confusion and lack of consensus on even the
most basic problems of linguistic theory, it may be a good time to look
into such questions once again. But I hope no one is expecting me to say
anything conclusive or profound on this subject; by its nature it does not
lend itself to conclusive answers.
Back in the days when I was a graduate student, linguists would com
monly say, upon looking into the question of what linguistics is and find
ing themselves unable to come up with anything better, that linguistics is
what linguists do. To say that the business of linguistics is the study of
language would clearly be unsatisfactory in at least two ways: first, be
cause linguistics concentrates only on some aspects of language; and sec
ond, because several other disciplines are also concerned with studying
language. Language departments are, after all, even called language departments. Language study is also important in anthropology, cognitive
psychology, and psychiatry, not to mention other fields. This jurisdic
tional situation has become even more complex in recent years, not only
with the increasing role of language study in such fields as psychology
and sociology, but also with the emergence of a whole new discipline that
is devoting more and more attention to the study of language: computer
science.

Sydney M. Lamb

Another view of linguistics that was also rather prevalent during my

graduate student days has now become quite decidedly a minority view.
It can be briefly characterized in three parts. The purpose of engaging in
linguistic theory, if indeed that should be done at all, is to facilitate the
job of describing languages. The purpose of describing languages is to
provide the data that can be used in comparative linguistics. The reason
for doing comparative linguistics is to classify the languages of the world.
Here the term classify refers of course to genetic classification, and the
fact that typological classification is largely ignored by this view of lin
guistics is one indication of its narrowness.
To indulge in another bit of reminiscing, I remember well the 1960
meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in Hartford, Connecticut.
The presidential address that year was given by George Trager, and his
topic was "Linguistics is Linguistics." The content of the address, as it
turned out, developed into a presentation of the latest version of the
Trager-Smith theory of language, garnished with a large number of newly
derived Greek terms that had been devised with the help of a graduate
student in Greek. Such was the linguistics of twenty years ago. But actu
ally I do not think that the direction Trager's address took was irrelevant
to his announced topic. The reason will perhaps become apparent as I
continue.
Now, what am I inquiring intothe aims of linguistics (my title) or
what linguistics is? The answer is, both, since it turns out that these two
questions are very nearly inseparable.
Continuing with another view from the past, there are no doubt many
who have heard it said by one of the most prominent linguists of our day
that linguistics is merely a branch of cognitive psychology. Except for his
large band of disciples, there are probably not many people who agree
with that narrow view. And in fact the extent of our disagreement with
that view, though it is held by many who are considered to be in the
mainstream of linguistics, is an indication of the prevailing diversity of
opinion on the questions of what linguistics ought to be doing and why.
Two other views that have been seriously maintained are that the job
of linguistics is to define language, and that the job of linguistics is the
study of texts. Again, both are too narrow.
I would like to examine a list of areas to which the findings or methods
of linguistics have something to contribute. It is convenient to divide the
list into two categories on the basis of "pure science" as opposed to "ap-

On the Aims of Linguistics

plied science," but I don't think that distinction should be taken too seri
ously. The more one looks into it, the more one is likely to find the bound
ary difficult to define. And perhaps ultimately giving up comes closer to the
truth than giving credence to some artificial criterion. Those who think of
themselves as pure (as opposed to applied) scientists are probably more
inclined to give credence to the boundary; they claim to be engaged purely
in the pursuit of knowledge, without regard to whatever applications
may or may not result. I used to think that I myself was such a person.
By contrast, others, according to a widespread way of categorizing, are
thought to study such topics as language with a view of learning some
thing whose usefulness has been motivated from outside the field itself.
If we look at this distinction a little more closely, we see that the other
areas to which linguistics can contribute are in turn divisible into two
kinds: areas of more or less "pure" science, and applications areas. For
example, the pursuit of the genetic classification of languages, generally
thought of as pure science, has application to prehistory, another disci
pline of "pure" science. By contrast, the study of linguistic structure can
be applied to language teaching, and just about everyone will agree that
we are here talking about applied linguistics, although I am not sure that
we can say precisely why.
So we have a three-way distinction. Starting with the most applied, we
might call the area in which we get our hands dirtiest dirty applied, such
as the application of linguistics to language teaching; the second, clean
applied, covers applications to areas of pure science, such as prehistory;
and finally pure linguistics (if there is such a thing) would be the pure
pursuit of knowledge of language for its own sake. Let us first look at
other areas of "pure" science and scholarship.
We can begin with psychology as a friendly gesture to those of our col
leagues who think that this is the only field worth mentioning. Here we
have cognitive linguistics, the area of linguistics that is most closely re
lated to cognitive psychology and cognitive anthropologyrelated to but
not to be equated with neurolinguistics, which relates more closely to
neurophysiological "hardware" and thus to neurophysiology. We may
say that the aim of cognitive linguistics is to shed light on cognitive struc
tures and processes, while that of neurolinguistics is to shed light on neu
rological structures and their physiology as well as to apply findings from
neurophysiology to cognitive linguistics.
To use the label cognitive linguistics is of course to imply that the lin-

Sydney M. Lamb

guistic endeavors that relate to cognitive psychology constitute only one

branch of linguistics, not the whole thing.
Moving on, we can mention other fields of social science. We have so
ciology and the area of sociolinguistics, an increasingly large and com
plex field that intersects with sociology in various ways. Sociolinguistics
has grown rapidly during the past decade, and the growth still appears to
be vigorous.
Psychology is not the only field to which linguistics has been assigned
as a branch. Another is anthropology. And the possible contributions of
linguistics to anthropology have been recognized as including not only
findings but also methods. One new area in anthropology has been par
ticularly influenced by linguistic methods and concepts, as practiced by
investigators with solid training in both linguistics and anthropology.
This is cognitive anthropology (cf. especially Tyler 1969 and references
there). At the risk of oversimplifying, we may say that the job of cultural
anthropology is to describe, classify, and somehow account for cultures,
while that of cognitive anthropology is to explore the cognitive structures
and processes that underlie the phenomena of culture.
All of these fieldscognitive psychology, cognitive anthropology, cog
nitive linguistics, cultural anthropology, sociology, and sociolinguistics
are of course interwoven, and it is impossible to find boundaries that sep
arate them from one another. The metaphor of academic fields to geo
graphic territories loses its appropriateness when we look closely. This
merging of one field into another is particularly striking if we look at the
relationship between semantic structure and culture, or at a different
level, that between cognitive semantics and cognitive anthropology. If we
are to make a distinction, it has to be on the basis that the structure of a
society's culture is different from its semantic structureor, at the cogni
tive level, that a person's knowledge of his culture is not the same thing as
his knowledge of the semantic structure of his language. But these come
close to being the same, since their area of overlap is so large. Perhaps the
main difference between cognitive anthropology and cognitive semantics
as these fields are practiced is that the former is done in departments of
anthropology while the latter is done (as yet by a very few people) in de
partments of linguistics.
Another area of social science already mentioned is prehistory, and we
have known since the days of our various respective introductory courses
in linguistics that comparative linguistics can shed light upon prehistory

On the Aims of Linguistics

in ways that are quite surprising to the uninitiated. Still another area in
which findings of linguistics can be useful is artificial intelligence, a
branch of computer science closely related to cognitive psychology. As
this field has developed during recent years it has paid more and more
attention to language, to the point where it may now be accurate to say
that natural language processing is more important than any other topic
in the area, as measured by hours of study or volume of publication or
software produced. And although the fields of linguistics and artificial in
telligence have much to contribute to each other, there has been rather
little interaction in recent years. Linguists would do well to pay more at
tention to what is going on in computer science. Thus the systems for
understanding discourse, the structures and processes that make it possi
ble for you to understand what I am saying, for example, are being more
intensively investigated in computer science departments and in labora
tories in the computer industry than in linguistics departments, even
though this area is logically a major concern of cognitive linguistics.
As we look at how linguistics relates to the social sciences, we begin to
wonder if there is any part of social science to which linguistics cannot
contribute. What about political science and economics? I maintain that
linguistics has much to contribute to political science, simply because the
primary medium of politics is language; but this is a potential that has
remained undeveloped. As for economics, since I am not intending to give
an exhaustive treatment of my topic anyway, I leave this as an open
question.
Let us now turn from the social sciences to the humanities. Twenty
years ago there was a great gulf, or so it appeared, between linguistics
and most of the humanistic disciplines. That gap has now narrowed quite
dramatically as linguistics has explored more intensively in the areas of
syntax, semantics, and discourse, so that boundaries no longer exist to
separate linguistics from poetics, rhetoric, and the study of literature in
general.
And there is another area that defies placement in traditional academic
categories: animal communication. We may include here not only the
study of naturally occurring communication systems, such as that of the
bees, but also, of greater general interest during recent years, the area of
linguistic engineering, which involves developing new communication
systems for chimpanzees and dolphins. The work with dolphins is still in
its infancy, that with chimpanzees in its early childhood.

Sydney M. Lamb

Two other fields loom large: philosophy and semiotics. I would, how
ever, like to defer their treatment until after we examine some areas
of applied linguistics. We must also return later to the area of "pure"
linguistics.
Let us continue, then, with a list of areas of applied linguisticsagain
not intended to be complete. The knowledge that linguistics provides, or
can provide, can be applied in at least these areas: translationincluding
machine translation; foreign language teaching; teaching the effective use
of the native languagethe various language arts and skills; speech
therapy; psychiatrye.g., analyzing the speech of schizophrenics; and
electronic data processing (EDP).
This last area is already vast and complex, despite its youth. Of partic
ular interest is a large amount of effort going on in the area of automatic
speech recognition, speech synthesis, and man-machine communication
via written language. Examples are man-to-machine communication by
typing information on a keyboard, and machine-to-man communication
by text displayed on a video-display terminal (VDT). And here we have a
very interesting area of language engineering. At first glance it may seem
that the most friendly computer would be one that would understand
ordinary English as typed on the keyboard. But in fact it takes people too
long to type in a whole sentence to tell the machine to execute, say, some
editing operation upon a text being prepared for publication; it's much
easier to just key in one or two words, or even one or two characters.
Most computer users would rather do a little new language learning in
order to save strokes on the keyboard than to give their instructions in
ordinary English. So we have a problem in language engineering: to de
sign communication systems that are close to English and easy to learn,
while being as easy as possible to interface to the machine in the particu
lar communication environment defined by keyboard and VDT.
Another aspect of EDP concerns the development of electronic hard
ware to facilitate information processing. As many of you know, I have
recently been working on a new type of computer memory that was in
spired by the relational network theory of linguistic structure (Lamb
1978). That effort is the only project I know of so far involving develop
ment of electronic hardware under the influence of linguistics, but further
developments could occur in designing computers whose operation more
closely resembles the human brain. This prospect is an exciting challenge
in a new kind of semiotic engineering.

On the Aims of Linguistics

This brings us, finally, to the three areas I personally find most inter
esting: pure linguistics; semiotics; and philosophy, including epistemology and logic as well as the art of reasoning. We shall see that the first
of these three, properly considered, leads almost automatically to the
other two.
The notion of pure linguistics is paradoxical. On the one hand it can be
argued that there is no such thing. On the other, it can be argued that our
field will never be able to develop fully unless it develops a pure linguis
tics. The first argument runs like this: nobody ever really pursues the
study of language without some application in mind, even though that
application may only be at the back of the mind or in the subconscious.
Those who may claim to have gone into linguistics purely out of curiosity
about language could probably always be found to have some hidden ap
plication present, if we only had some means of discovering that appli
cation. Thus it may be, for some linguists, that some traumatic experi
ence or series of experiences occurred at around age three, when they
were devoting much time and effort to learning their native language, so
that they became fixated on one or more aspects of language learning or
linguistic structure. Or, if one looks at the writing of some linguists, one
is led to guess that they may have gone into linguistics because they knew
at some level that they have trouble communicating! If the "hidden appli
cation" hypothesis applies to all cases of supposedly pure linguistics, we
may conclude that all linguistics is applied linguistics.
Now let us look at a contrary line of reasoning; and here I turn to one
of the great figures of linguistics, Louis Hjelmslev, and the thoughts he
developed in his brilliant Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (1961). I
hope that those of you who have read this book will not mind if I review
some of its contents.
Hjelmslev begins by observing that all (or most) of the linguistics up to
his time had been, as he called it, "transcendent." In his terminology,
transcendent linguistics is the study of language not to learn about lan
guage itself but to learn about something else. The real object of curiosity
goes beyondthat is, transcendslanguage. The alternative to this type
of study he calls "immanent linguistics," and he considers that it would
be so different from, and so important to distinguish from, ordinary lin
guistics, that he proposed for it the new name "glossematics."
Immanent linguistics differs from transcendent linguistics in one other
very important respect: its foundations, too, lie within linguistics itself

Sydney M. Lamb

rather than outside. By contrast, the foundations of various kinds of tran

scendent linguistics rest upon some other field. For example, those who
believe that a phonology must rest upon phonetic universals obtained
from outside linguistics, e.g., from physiology, or those who believe that
semantics must be based upon natural science, as did Bloomfield (1933),
are engaging in transcendent linguistics. Another excellent example is
provided by Bloomfield's "Postulates for a Science of Language" (1926),
which would have the fundamental concepts of linguistics rest upon, for
example, the sociologically defined speech community.
Those who have criticized Hjelmslev on the grounds that he ignores
what lies outside the linguistic structure seem not to have read beyond
the first few pages of his Prolegomena. After setting forth his objections
to transcendent linguistics, he goes on to develop the outlines of an im
manent linguistic theorynot, I believe, the only possible one or even
the best one, but nonetheless a worthy attempt. And having done so, he
shows that the methods and concepts he develops can be extended to
other systems not generally considered to be languagesand in fact dif
fering in important properties from languages, while sharing other prop
erties. The systems of this larger class that has language at its center he
calls "semiotics." That is, a semiotic is a quasi language that can be il
luminated by the methods developed in immanent linguistics. And it
turns out that every science is a semiotic. The plausibility of this conclu
sion is apparent even without reading Hjelmslev if we simply consider
that every science is using language and language-based notation systems
to organize and manipulate its data and findings.
It thus turns out that, far from being isolated from the rest of science,
immanent linguistics naturally relates to all other sciences and in fact
stands at the very center of them all. The conclusion of this line of reason
ing is stated quite elegantly by Hjelmslev as follows (p. 127):
Linguistic theory here takes up in an undreamed-of way and in
undreamed-of measure the duties that it imposed on itself. . . . In
its point of departure linguistic theory was established as imma
nent, with constancy, system, and internal function as its sole aims,
to the apparent cost of fluctuation and nuance, life and concrete
physical and phenomenological reality. A temporary restriction of
the field of vision was the price that had to be paid to elicit from
language itself its secret. But precisely through that immanent point

On the Aims of Linguistics

of view and by virtue of it, language itself returns the price that it
demanded. In a higher sense than in linguistics till now, language
has again become a key position in knowledge. Instead of hinder
ing transcendence, immanence has given it a new and better basis;
immanence and transcendence are joined in a higher unity on the
basis of immanence. Linguistic theory is led by an inner necessity
to recognize not merely the linguistic system, in its schema and in
its usage, in its totality and in its individuality, but also man and
human society behind language, and all man's sphere of knowledge
through language. At that point linguistic theory has reached its
prescribed goal: bumanitas et universitas.
Thus we see that pure linguistics, properly conceived, leads quite natu
rally to semiotics and to all the various applications of linguistics, and as
it does the boundary between the pure and the applied becomes unim
portant, while the relevance of theoretical linguistics to other fields be
comes increasingly important.
For semiotics as well as for cognitive psychology and cognitive an
thropology, the great, as yet largely undeveloped, potential of linguistics
comes more from its methods than from its factual findings about lan
guages. When the investigator who is equipped with the concepts and
methods of linguistics looks at systems other than languagewhether
they be musical compositions, architectural structures such as buildings
(cf. Preziosi 1979) and cities (cf. Alexander 1965), biological systems
such as the hereditary information system, or products of Oriental phi
losophy such as the J Ching, he finds the same basic structural principles
at work that were discovered and analyzed in natural languages. Even the
structures that account for our visual and auditory perception and our
knowledge of how to drive a car, ride a bicycle, or play the piano appear
now to be amenable to treatment by techniques being developed in theo
retical linguistics, although this is a potential that remains as yet unrea
lized. But let us consider this a call to action. Let us awaken this sleeping
giant of relational network analysis and turn it loose! There is no law that
says it has to be confined to prepositions and verb phrases!
And as we do, particularly as we apply our tools to the human infor
mation system itself, we may find ourselves in the area of epistemology.
Our conceptual systems, our systems for knowing and thinking, which
current studies are showing to be not only amenable to analysis by lin-

io

Sydney M. Lamb

guistic methods but even to be included within the boundaries of the re

lational network of linguistic structure, intervene between ourselves and
the real world that we believe exists out there. When we think we are
apprehending that real world, we are actually operating directly only
with our conceptual systems and only indirectly with that world. When
we suppose that our thoughts are most free from extraneous influences,
they are actually being formednot just influencedby our linguistic
conceptual systems that have been built within us by our previous experi
ence, education, conversations, and by the automatic workings and struc
tural principles of the cognitive mechanisms.
As we learn more about the structure of this puzzling, beautiful, and
complex human information system, we may become better equipped to
understand what that real world is really like.

N O T E

1. This article constituted the Inaugural Address for the Seventh Fo

rum of the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States, held
at Rice University in August 1980. It subsequently appeared in The Seventh LACUS Forum 1980, edited by James E. Copeland and Philip W.
Davis, pp. 1727, published by Hornbeam Press, Columbia, S.C., in
1981. Reprinted here by permission of LACUS, Inc.

R E F E R E N C E S

C I T E D

Alexander, Christopher. 1965. A city is not a tree. The Architectural

Forum: April/May.
Bloomfield, Leonard. 1926. A set of postulates for the science of lan
guage. Language 2:153-64. Reprinted in Joos 1966.
. 1933. Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Hjelmslev, Louis. 1961. Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. Rev. ed.
Francis J. Whitfield, trans. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Joos, Martin, ed. 1966. Readings in Linguistics I: The Development of
Descriptive Linguistics in America 1925-56. 4th ed. Chicago: Uni
versity of Chicago Press.

On the Aims of Linguistics

11

Lamb, Sydney M. 1978. An add-in recognition memory for S-Ioo bus

microcomputers. Computer Design: August, September, October.
Preziosi, Donald. 1979. The Semiotics of the Built Environment. Bloom
ington: Indiana University Press.
Tyler, Stephen A. 1969. Cognitive Anthropology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Part One

INTRODUCTION TO PART O N E

The announced general topics of the symposium, which the participants

were requested to address in their presentations, were the current status
and recent history of the fields of linguistics and semiotics; neglected op
portunities in these fields; suggestions and predictions for the future
course of linguistics and semiotics; and recommendations to Rice Univer
sity and to other institutions on directions that should be taken during
the next twenty years.
Winfred P. Lehmann's paper addresses all four of these issues, but con
centrates particularly on the current status and recent history of linguis
tics and on recommendations for future directions. In developing this
theme, he begins with the assumption that the purpose of linguistics is
the achievement of an understanding of language. He discusses the activ
ities of two previous schools of linguistics: the neogrammarians and the
transformationalists. In enumerating their contributions and examining
their shortcomings, he does not take a position against specialization or
against theoretical schools focusing on specific goals. His major objec
tion to the activities of these two schools is that they carried out their
work without regard for the rest of the field and thus risked achieving
only partial success or even failure.
Among Lehmann's critical recommendations is that any linguist have a
background of certain basic knowledge; he also speaks of the goals of
linguistic training. In addition, he cites and discusses some important lin
guistic work that has contributed to these goals in the past but that has
unfortunately been largely ignored.
What Charles F. Hockett identifies in his paper as the "uniqueness fal
lacy" is the assumption that, of two seemingly incompatible interpreta
tions of the structure of an expression, at most one can be the correct
one. He presents a survey of the situations in which the fallacy threatens,
and he gives examples of several types of relations that may obtain be
tween alternative analyses of a single utterance. Some alternative inter
pretations involve the possibility of misconstruing the speaker's intended

16

Introduction to Part One

message; others involve acceptable ambiguities, shading into invariance

in meaning.
Hockett insists that the grammarian's analysis needs to have a direct
relation to the comportment of users of the language. So long as linguis
tic activity was or is restricted to constructing abstract relational struc
tures of a static competence, without regard to language users, it does not
become as easily or as readily apparent that alternative analyses must be
accepted or encouraged. Studies in cognitive anthropology and in cogni
tive linguistics have included provision for shading or gradience in se
mantic taxonomies and in discourse. By demonstrating that a given utter
ance may evoke more than one meaning, even in a given context, Hockett
makes it clear that not only does semantic analysis have to admit of gra
dience, but syntax must make room for it as well. And while the thrust of
his paper is directed at the presence of the uniqueness fallacy in syntactic
analysis, he extends the scope to include both morphology and phonol
ogy, citing Yuenren Chao's warnings of almost half a century ago. Thus,
it becomes apparent that the presence of and/or relations is not restricted
to semantics, but is to be detected throughout the structure of language.
Hockett's cautions and proposals will enrich our understanding of the
nature and functions of linguistic structure. As an indication of his vision
of future directions in linguistics, he suggests that the statements he
makes in this paper about the uniqueness fallacy in syntax be read as a
parable for what has been going wrong in the whole enterprise of linguis
tics in the immediate past.
The ways in which Winfred Lehmann and Charles Hockett have each
addressed the primary topics of the symposium show evidence of a genu
ine concern for the shortcomings in our discipline, present and past, and
indicate a cautious, if enthusiastic, optimism for the future. Both have
underscored the need to be familiar with the work of contemporaries of
competing persuasions, as well as with the long-standing historical tradi
tions of the field of linguistics. Their arguments are stimulating, provoca
tive, and cogent. A linguistics seeking new directions will have to take
their informed reasoning into account.

CHAPTER

Mellow Glory
See Language Steadily
and See It Whole

Winfred P. Lehmann

In adopting Matthew Arnold's phrase for our field, I do not imply that it
has reached its height, as had the Attic stage at the time of Sophocles. A
reading of Professor Lamb's 1981 paper, "On the Aims of Linguistics,"
and the prospectus that sets goals for the Rice University Department of
Linguistics and Semiotics in the next twenty years suggests, however, that
we may soon be there. Whether academic scholars like it or not, the in
tense and growing concern with communication will propel the study of
language into great prominence during this period. With my best wishes
for the success of the department I will explore linguistic activities of the
present and of the recent past for the criteria that according to Arnold
bring mellow glory: seeing lifefor us a segment of life, the language
that makes life in human society possiblesteadily and seeing it whole.
Any scientific concern limits itself to a highly selected topic, as must
linguistics. Essays or extensive monographs focus on particular problems
and must do so if they are to make a contribution in one of the oldest
sciences. My proposed ideal is not directed against specialization, nor
against theoretical approaches or theoretical schools focusing on specific
goals. If, however, such activities are carried out with no regard for the
rest of the field, they bring only partial success, or even failure. I illustrate
this conclusion with examples from linguistic schools, selecting the two
most powerful: the neogrammarian school in the nineteenth century and
the transformational in our own.
The general verdict of linguists criticizes the neogrammarians for their

18

Winfred P. Lehmann

restricted approach to language. They are held to have limited their study
to the sounds and forms, neglecting especially syntax. Moreover, they are
said to be doctrinaire, pursuing their activities with heavy influence from
positivism. This verdict is so powerful that current linguists disregard the
work of the neogrammarians, to judge by the absence of citations. One
example is the complete disregard of Brugmann on the use of es 'there' in
the numerous current studies on extraposition. All linguists, however, at
some time encounter reference to the neogrammarian manifesto, at
tributed to Karl Brugmann though published under the name of Her
mann Osthoff and Brugmann, with priority on the title page going to
Osthoff. To judge by the persistence of the negative verdict, no one today
reads the manifesto, though a fine English translation was produced by
Judy Haddon Bills; it was published in a volume consisting largely of
translations by a student class of mine (Lehmann 1967).
When we examine the manifesto, we find recommendations quite at
variance with the common opinion. The second short initial paragraph
ends with the statement that earlier linguists had indeed investigated lan
guages zealously but had neglected the study of those who speak. Then a
principal goal of linguistics is presented at the beginning of the third para
graph. "The human speech mechanism has a twofold aspect, a mental
[psychische] or psychological and a physical. To come to a clear under
standing of its activity must be a principal goal of the comparative lin
guist" (198).
The ideas stand out sharply. The linguist deals with activity, not with a
state; and a few lines later we find: "one should not think of the language
on paper." Further, the aim is directed at understanding, indeed clear un
derstandingnot at devising formalism, not at setting up theories, not
seeking understanding by subsuming linguistics under a different science.
Instead, one utilizes the findings of these in dealing with specific concerns
of linguistics. One draws on what we now call sociology "to obtain the
correct view of the way in which linguistic innovations, proceeding from
individuals, for example, gain currency in the speech community" (198).
One draws on psychology to form a "clear idea" of such matters as the
"extent to which innovations in sound are on the one hand of a purely
psychological nature and on the other hand the physical reflections of
psychological processes"; "the effect of association of ideas in speech ac
tivity"; and "the creation of speech forms through the association of
forms" (199). For all three matters, Brugmann announces his "attempt to

Mellow Glory

19

develop the pertinent methodological principles" in a subsequent article.

There is no denial of psychological processes connected with language,
no confrontation of mechanism and mentalism. Rather, Brugmann rec
ognizes the various forces at play in language, attempting all the while to
understand it.
To achieve understanding, he advocates concern for languages in use.
Linguistic principles are to be based on such concern, as well as an atten
tion to dialects, not hammered out in the "hypotheses-beclouded atmo
sphere of the workshop" (202). To summarize briefly, linguistics relies on
sociology and anthropology as well as psychology, but establishes its
principles through investigation of language.
In suggesting acquaintance with Brugmann's manifesto, I am not pro
posing that current linguistic activities should be based on a statement
published in 1878. Related sciences, as well as linguistics, might well be
expected to have progressed somewhat over the course of a century. But I
do advocate attention to the principles of the neogrammarians and recog
nition of their goals. There are grounds for misunderstanding. Brug
mann's is a polemic document, directed in part at past and contemporary
errors of linguistics. When he proposes principles to overcome these er
rors, he singles out two topics: sound laws and analogy. In defining these,
Brugmann does not say that "sound laws admit no exception," as we
may do hastily in elementary, pedagogical presentations. Rather, "every
sound change, inasmuch as it occurs mechanically, takes place according
to laws that admit no exceptions" (204). The laws may be psychological
or conceptual; they may well affect underlying rather than surface forms.
In short, language is not chaotic but is rule-governed activity, as we also
propose.
Moreover, he singles out analogy because some linguists account for
forms by "arbitrarily stretching and bending" sound laws. Acknowledg
ing "form association" in language reduces such arbitrary procedures. In
its system of forms as well as its system of sounds, language is rulegoverned; but the rules applying to forms and sentences are less general
than those applying to sounds. It should be noted that Brugmann does
not account for the entire extent of forms and their change solely on the
basis of an obscure force labeled analogy. Morphology and syntax must
be treated with due regard for rules, even though these may have a
smaller area of application than phonological rules.
If I encourage you to examine Brugmann's essay, I must also suggest

20

Winfred P. Lehmann

caution in interpreting terms. Some terms, like speech mechanism, may

imply for us emphasis on a physical view of language as influenced by
positivism, comparable to the tools we use; but the neogrammarian treat
ment of the speech apparatus does not support this interpretation. More
over, the neogrammarians, Hermann Paul among them, are often con
demned because they restricted linguistics to historical study, identifying
it as one of the "historical sciences." The adjective is a label, not a limit
ing designation. In the day of Brugmann and Paul, sciences were either
physical or historical. The physical or natural sciences do not have to
take time into consideration; hydrogen, hydrochloric acid, etc., are the
same today as they always have been. Language, social systems, psycho
logical states on the other hand change. As changing systems, they can
not be treated in disregard of time, unless one arbitrarily introduces such
restrictions, as in directing one's concern at an "ideal speaker-listener, in
a completely homogeneous speech community." In the future we our
selves may be berated for labeling linguistics a social science; indeed a
few years ago the term behavioral science was widely substituted. But la
bels cannot be interpreted narrowly. Those misled by labels fall into the
same trap as the fabled rustic who explains that pigs are called pigs be
cause they are so dirty. Some fail to evade the trap. Successors to Brug
mann may well have disregarded his injunction to study contemporary
dialects and be instructed by them. Brugmann's failure in his exhortation
is not without its parallels among others who recommend sane principles.
Among other criticisms of the neogrammarians, I now note briefly the
one concerning their disregard of the study of syntax. This view is based
in part on exclusive attention in some elementary handbooks for ancient
languages like Old High German, Old English, and Proto-Germanic.
Even some handbooks, such as Heusler's for Old Norse, provide excel
lent syntactic sketches. The chief problem of neogrammarian syntax is its
treatment of longer structures like morphological units. Complements,
for example, are regarded as subjects or objects. Other subordinate
clauses correspond to adverbs or oblique cases of nouns. We ought to
produce upgraded treatments, dealing with such structures syntactically.
But until we do, we draw heavily on the syntax of Delbruck for IndoEuropean and many of the early languages, on that of Behaghel for Ger
man, and on those of Jespersen and Visser, among others, for English. I
would welcome improved syntactic treatments by linguists of any
schoolstandard transformationalist, revised standard, extended re-

Mellow Glory

21

vised standard, relational, stratificational, tagmemic, or whateverto re

place those of the neogrammarians. We must assume that members of
these schools too value the syntactic compilations of the neogrammari
ans, for in their own articles and monographs they draw heavily from the
works of Jespersen and others in the neogrammarian tradition. It is diffi
cult to avoid the conclusion that neogrammarian principles provided the
confidence as well as the energy to carry out sustained work on language,
which led to the handbooks we still use. In recognizing their contribu
tion, we might set out to remedy any deficiencies.
For proper recognition, we must not misinterpret the earlier term comparative linguistics. We would use general linguistics or simply linguistics
or possibly even the pretentious theoretical linguistics. In seeking to un
derstand language, the neogrammarians wished to include all available
languages; hence the adjective comparative. The impossibility of the task
in their day led to one of the fundamental drawbacks of linguistic work
during the past century: primary attention to the languages of Europe.
Even so, drawing on the wide array of those languages, they aimed to
determine general principles, universals, laws, or rules governing lan
guage, not simply to make random, disjointed comments about individ
ual languages. These, as in the writings of George Borrow and other liter
ary figures, may be highly entertaining, but they lack the illuminating
power provided by a scientific approach.
In evaluating the contributions of the neogrammarians, then, we are
grateful for their principled approach to the study of language. But we
regret the concentration of many of them on certain segments of it, espe
cially phonology and morphology; and we deplore their restricted atten
tion to the language structure of the prominent European languages, a
restriction whose consequences I discuss below. On the other hand, we
must acknowledge that there simply were too many things to do, too
many things to set in order, before language could be seen steadily and
whole.
One problem that the neogrammarians did not clarify has to do with
variation in speech. Unlike the concerns of the natural sciences, mani
festations of language are never alike. The speech we produce not only
differs from that of Shakespeare and Chaucer. The speech of one individ
ual also differs from that of the next, even though they readily under
stand each other. Moreover, the speech of any individual differs measur
ably from day to day. From a physical point of view no two utterances, in

22

Winfred P. Lehmann

contrast with two molecules, are ever exactly alike. One's solution to the
problem that utterances differ while speakers accept some utterances as
equivalent determines one's linguistic principles and attitudes.
Solutions that are widely accepted stem from emphasis on either the
social or the psychological role of language. Selecting the social, the in
fluential Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, set up two artifacts, parole and langue. Parole encompasses the actual utterances in all their va
riety. Langue is a social construct that fluent speakers of a language view
as a standard. When the average citizen thinks of language, he thinks of
langue, not parole. The same is true of most treatises on language. Saussure's solution to the linguist's dilemma, which incidentally applies
throughout the social sciences and humanities, has been extensively dis
cussed, for as I noted above, every linguist must come to terms with the
problem. In Saussure's day the locale of the solution was proposed to be
the speaker-listener's social environment. At the time the study of social
relationships occupied a central position in sciences dealing with human
affairs.
Subsequently the focus has changed. Psychology has now outstripped
sociology in attractiveness and influence. The linguist's dilemma has also
been shifted from the social to the psychological sphere. Psychology is
also the locus of the most extensive linguistic school today, as directed by
its most forceful proponent, Noam Chomsky. As we have indicated
above, linguistic theory in this school is "concerned primarily with an
ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community,
who knows its language perfectly. . . ." Concentrating on the ideal
speaker-listener and his knowledge, the theorist distinguishes between
"competence" (the speaker-listener's knowledge of his language) and
"performance" (the actual use of language in concrete situations). A
grammar of a language purports to be a description of the ideal speakerlistener's intrinsic competence (Chomsky 1965:3-4). Since linguistics
concerns itself with knowledge, it is a subbranch of psychology, cognitive
psychology. The linguist's dilemma is solved by ascribing differences in
actual speech utterances to inadequacies of the fallible speaker under var
ied conditions. Chomsky leaves the study of these to others.
Since transformational grammar has been so widely adopted and is so
well publicized, I do not need to list its successes. Some observers even
credit it with the recent rapid growth of linguistics; in my own view this
growth reflects the increasing attention to language at the same time that

Mellow Glory

23

communication has become one of the central problems in our society,

especially in Western culture. In support of this statement we need only
recall the attention given two firms involved in communication, IBM and
AT&T. Whatever one's own explanation for the expanding role of lin
guistics since World War II, transformational grammar was proposed at
the time of great expansion of American universities, partly in response
to sputnik in the 1950s. It possesses one tremendous advantage for math
ematicians, physicists, philosophers, and psychologists who know little
or nothing about previous linguistic work or no language other than
their own. One doesn't need to. The ideal speaker-listener is within you.
Concentration on competence also removes the necessity of regarding
language in time. Linguistics is not a historical science in the technical
sense as understood by Wilhelm von Humboldt, Hermann Paul, and the
other theoreticians of the nineteenth and first part of the twentieth cen
tury. But in spite of its success in attracting highly gifted and energetic
students, we ask whether transformational grammar as portrayed by
Chomsky in contrast with his teacher, Zellig Harris, permits us to see lan
guage steadily and see it whole.
Far from it! Chomskyan linguistics does not even concentrate on lan
guage. In an essay presented to the Royal Society in March 1981 and cir
culated in typescript, Chomsky states: "The focus of inquiry is grammar;
language is a derivative and possibly uninteresting notion" (1981b: 16).
At first blush we might attribute such a statement to adoption of the
McLuhanesque trope that the medium is the message. But we read fur
ther that "languages . . . are clearly at a further remove from real mecha
nisms of the brain than the grammars represented in these mechanisms.
Correspondingly, the theory of universal grammar is not the study of
general properties of language, but rather universal grammar is a postu
lated component of genetic endowment" (17). Since we have commented
on Brugmann's use of mechanism, we might note, by the way, that the
term is used here by a self-proclaimed mentalist.
The shift from attention to language is so far-reaching that language
acquisition by children is misleadingly in Chomsky's view called "lan
guage learning"; a better term would be "growth of grammar" (10). The
academic world is generous enough to permit anyone individual views on
any topic. And one is grateful when scholars state their views as clearly as
does Chomsky. But it is impossible to reconcile his characterization of
linguistics and its goals with that stated in our title.

24

Winfred P. Lehmann

In pointing out this conclusion I would like to reiterate that

Chomskyan linguistics is not without contributions. Its formalism led to
more precise statements of rules, especially in syntax, than were pro
posed previously, even in formalisms like that of Jespersen's Analytic
Syntax (1937). Consequences of greater precision may be compared with
those introduced by August Schleicher and the neogrammarians in his
torical phonology a century or so ago; Jakob Grimm had identified the
contrasts in data interpreted now by what is called Grimm's law. But sub
sequent linguists provided the formalism that we have since employed to
express such relationships simply and precisely. Another contribution at
tendant on transformational grammar is increased attention to seman
tics, almost ironically, in view of Chomsky's 1957 monograph. These
contributions aroused interests affecting other fields, which are so well
known that they need not be reviewed here.
In his shift from language to grammar, it is noteworthy that Chomsky
supports his generalizations on "genetic endowment" with actual utter
ances, or supposed utterances. Even the Royal Society paper disavowing
an interest in language abounds in evidence from language. Support for
the theory now being developed as replacement for The Theory of Syntax
(1965) is given with forty examples of utterances. This employment of
utterances to get at a portion of our genetic endowment provides comfort
to someone proposing that linguistics is based on the study of language,
on examination of its general properties as observed in actual speech.
Turning to directions for linguistics after this brief review of contribu
tions and shortcomings of two influential schools, I propose that future
work be based on the study of language, rather than on psychological
constructs that supposedly correspond to the representation of language
in the mind. That representation, incidentally, is always assumed to be
highly economical, governed by crisp mathematical formulas. In spite of
the brain's huge number of neurons and their multiple connections, some
people assume that its activity corresponds to that of a simple mechanical
switching device. And this kind of cerebral structure is then taken as pat
tern for grammar. With all respect for their assiduity, we might suggest
that our cognitive architects may be deluding themselves. Moreover, sci
ence operates by dealing with the observable, by proceeding from the
known to the unknown rather than vice versa. Further, it is not enough to
base generalizations on knowledge of one language; linguists must mas
ter the structure of different types of language, of OV languages as well as

Mellow Glory

25

VO languages like English. Lack of knowledge of OV languages resulted

in gross deficiencies among Indo-Europeanists of the past and of recent
times. The early Indo-European dialects have reflex after reflex of OV
structure, and the earliest, Hittite, is consistently OV. But the OV patterns
remained without explanation in grammars of the past. And some schol
ars still propose that Proto-Indo-European was VO in structure.
As one readily accessible example of reflexes of OV structure in a late
dialect, I cite once again the OV comparatives in Old English, like sunnan beorhtra 'brighter than the sun.' Such comparative patterns are
found largely in poetry, which everyone agrees is more archaic than
prose. In later texts we find transitional patterns to that of today. Many
centuries passed before we arrived at the new VO syntactic pattern, with
intervening forms such as brighter nor the sun and brighter as the sun.
Even though the facts are readily accessible, contemporary linguists un
accountably have greater difficulties in understanding archaic patterns in
syntax than did scholars of the nineteenth century in morphology, for the
earlier scholars accepted a declension like Latin iter, itinis, in spite of its
archaic structure. There might well be fewer difficulties in such under
standing if future linguists are required to master a language such as
Tamil, Turkish, Japanese, or Kechua. Relic OV patterns, like the com
paratives of Old English, would then be transparent. And linguists would
not be burdened with embarrassing terms like left-branching and rightbranching.
I have cited an example from an older language that remained without
explanation because the linguists treating it did not know OV language
structures. Such examples may be cited from contemporary language
study. As one instance I recall two examples from an essay in Chomsky's
Lectures on Government and Binding (19813:315).
1. Everyone expected John to like him.
2. Everyone expected him to like John.
Chomsky thereupon uses the average speaker's understanding of the
two sentences as evidence for postulating a universal grammar. This pre
sumably innate universal grammar leads the speaker of English both to
produce sentences like the first one and to interpret them correctly.
Interpretations: 1a. Every [Tom] wants John to like [Tom].
1b. Every [Tom] wants John to like [Jim].
2. (Only the b type of interpretation)
The trick of course lies in the SVO construction for reflexivization,

26

Winfred P Lehmann

which in English permits a form homophonous with that of an anaphoric

pronoun. In OV languages such confusion could not occur. Even in Ger
man, where the reflexive for him is sich and the anaphoric pronoun is
ihn, the putative universal grammar does not lead to such confused ex
pression. The possible confusion is a peculiarity of English, one resulting
from the continued use of anaphoric pronouns in some utterances rather
than the composite reflexive that English is developing: himself. If such
examples were first tested with parallels from an OV language, they
would not be cited for such weighty inferenceshence my insistence that
all linguists need to know several languages, one of a structure differing
extensively from their own.
Further, linguists of the future must be acquainted with the view of
language held by various schools, partly to avoid repeating mistakes of
predecessors, partly to maintain the humility that at least formerly was
assumed to be an essential attribute of any scientist. Since the short
comings of students of the neogrammarians have been adequately sig
nalled, I cite examples from the transformational school. One that might
well stir anguish in a fair-minded scientific author is the book, Aspects of
the Theory of Syntax (Chomsky 1965). The "theory" has now been vir
tually abandoned. After remolding, as designated by successive adjec
tives, its proponent now proclaims virtually an opposite approach. Of
central importance currently is the lexicon; transformations are almost
eliminated, even for the belabored English passive. Unless one believes
that the goal of science is to create a succession of paradigmstransfor
mational, relational, what have yousuch activity is highly unfortunate.
One regrets especially the successive groups of students who are trained
in the formalisms of one paradigm and little else, especially of substance;
when they may have heavy professional demands placed on them, they
find that their paradigm is now obsolete. And having acquired little but
formalism and terminology in their training, they are comparable to the
models of automobiles distinguished by excessive streamlining, by fins
and other peripheral paraphernalia.
Generative phonology has failed in much the same way. With great fan
fare, this approach dismissed the autonomous phoneme, insisting that all
phonological entities were to be determined morphologically and syntac
tically. Yet one simply has to listen to a few sentences of American En
glish for counterproof. Many speakers of American English now voice

Mellow Glory

27

intervocalic t, in well-defined phonological, not syntactic, environments.

T is not voiced before a weak vowel and n, as in button in distinction
from bottom, bottle, butter; such an example alone should indicate the
necessity of assuming autonomous phonological classes. Moreover, the
change is carried out with no reference to syntactic structure; a goat may
be a butter, with two morphemes, and butter may be made from milk,
with one morpheme. One wonders how a large number of linguists could
maintain a readily falsifiable theory for so long, swayed by examples of a
language they don't know. For any language in change provides counter
examples. The answer to this obfuscation lies in the fundamental thesis
that linguistic theory is concerned with an ideal speaker-listener. Holders
of this thesis could be oblivious of history. They may be taught that lan
guage itself is uninteresting. When confronted with alternations in the
ideal language, they reduce this to alternations within the grammar of the
ideal speaker-listener.
As any attention to the development of a discipline, or even a social
situation, reveals, new schools score successes on the deficiencies of their
predecessors. Much of the success of transformational grammar may be
attributed to the stalwart positivism of Bloomfield's successors, especially
in syntax. When Chomsky proposed that syntactic patterns are based on
underlying structures, the resulting simplification of syntactic problems
attracted virtually all young students of language. Unfortunately the socalled structuralists refused to accept abstract entities in syntax, even
though their most notable successes were scored through the recognition
of abstract entities in phonology. They readily accepted underlying ele
ments in phonology, but those in syntax smacked of medieval mysticism.
This deficiency is all the more tragic because syntactic theoreticians
elsewhere had long argued in favor of recognizing underlying structures
in syntax. I cite only the German scholar, Erwin Koschmieder, because of
the high regard he enjoyed among readers of German and because of the
ready accessibility of his writings. When, for example, one opens the col
lection of his essays, published in 1965, one finds articles on the follow
ing topics, listed here with the original year of publication: "On the De
termination of the Function of Grammatical Categories" (1945); "The
Noetic (=Cognitive) Bases of Syntax" (1951); "Concerning the Relations
between Language and Logic" (1951); "The Mathematization of Lin
guistics" (1956); "The Universal in Syntax" (1959). Yet if we look for

28

Winfred P Lehmann

attention to Koschmieder's contributions in the journal Language, we are

disappointed. One wonders whether linguistics might have progressed
more smoothly if Bloomfield's successors had not cut themselves off so
adamantly from linguistic approaches that differed from their own.
The lamentable loss of time in our field for the past half century might
have been avoided if instead of training linguists we had educated them.
A small part of that education would require knowledge of the history of
the discipline. A cynic might cast that history in recent times as a series of
cycles: Cycle A, positivist attention to eternal form around 1870; Cycle
B, a turn to psychology; Cycle C, then to sociology; Cycle A', among the
American linguists, a return to psychology with Chomsky and his socalled revolution; Cycle C', returned emphasis on sociology, with a ven
geance among some linguists expressing inflated expectations from the
study of creoles. One might also suggest that the Katz disavowal of
Chomskyan linguistics and alignment of linguistic theory with topology
represents a start of a third Cycle A. For Katz "the linguist's task, like the
mathematician's, is to construct a theory revealing the structure of a set
of abstract objects rather than a theory of the empirical realization of
knowledge of such objects" (1981: 213).
If followers of structuralism now rejoice because their credibility is re
stored, I cite two cautions. One is Katz's Platonic, not Aristotelian, con
ception of linguistics. The second stems from the theories of Guillaume,
who may be almost totally unknown in this country but was considered
by Meillet to be his outstanding student. This information, as well as
some knowledge of Guillaume, I owe to Firth, who was invited as the first
European visiting professor at a linguistic institute after World War II,
when the most vocal members of the profession were unaware of his the
oretical views. According to Guillaume and his school flourishing in Can
ada, "definition of language as a set of sentences . . . [is] manifestly un
satisfactory since no child learning his language learns a set of sentences"
(Hewson 1981:164). I am not proposing that we all become Guillaumians now. But I do suggest that if students knew that a reasonble group
of linguists holds such a view, they would have a better preparation for
evaluating Bloomfield and the postulates on which his linguistics was
constructed, as well as Chomsky with his approach and continued em
phasis on the projection problem, and finally Katz in his "major chal
lenge to Chomskyan linguistics."

Mellow Glory

29

With some understanding of the background of our field, students

might not find unduly remarkable many apparently innovative notions
and publications, such as that conditional clauses should be regarded as
topics. This is an insight of the Greek and Latin grammarians, as their
labels show: Greek hypothesis, Latin condicio at the time the label 'con
ditional' was applied simply meant an agreed position, a topic for further
comment. The Greek labels, protasis 'something set up for comment' and
apodosis 'follow-up, comment,' which every school child used to learn,
are comparable in meanings to topic:comment, theme:rheme, or what
ever functional terms one prefers. In support of grounding in the history
of our discipline, I might also note the recent rehabilitation of subject
and object by the transformational school, though followed by the un
necessary of; even someone knowing only English might check these
words in a desk dictionary and discover that they already have preposi
tional constituents indicating relationship.
It probably would come as too great a shock to suggest that all lin
guists should know something of the history of a language or a language
family, not least their own. In support of this radical statement, I might
simply allude to the Chomsky-Halle treatment of the Great English
Vowel Shift. I have always found it fascinating that the chief evidence for
their understanding of that shift consists of words attested after the ac
tual time of the historical shift. Among these are Newton:Newtonian, re
ferring to a figure who flourished after the shift was completed; verbosity, first attested in 1542, and its alternate verbose in 1672, both
apparently adopted from French; a pair cited for the third alternation of
back vowels, profound:profundity, which may actually have been in the
language when the shift was going on, for the first is attested in the form
profoundid in 1412, the second around 1450. This revolutionary ap
proach to the history of language in The Sound Pattern of English may be
one of the sources of the widespread characterization of Chomsky's im
pact on linguistics.
These suggestions may seem to be internal recommendations, sugges
tions for more appropriate activities in one of the social sciences. Yet the
problem is not that restricted. We may recall and deplore the attempts of
the Reagan administration to reduce the National Science Foundation
budget for social sciences approximately 70 percent in the several divi
sions and programs, with complete elimination of support for linguistics.

3o

Win red P. Lehmann

The Congress restored a portion of the expected funding, though that for
our field is minimal. In evaluating these "threats" to "federal funding for
the social sciences," Kenneth Prewitt, current president of the Social Sci
ence Research Council, suggests external remedies: "establishing a politi
cal presence in Washington, soliciting needed support from national
science leaders, and urging a compelling case for the social sciences"
(Prewitt and Sills, 1981). But I suggest that the problem has more to do
with substance than with political presence and improved status among
our colleagues in the physical sciences.
The substance is eloquently expressed in an article in The American
Scholar (Autumn 1981) entitled "In Defense of the Two Cultures," by
Gertrude Himmelfarb, who is not without influence in the groups now
proposing changes in support for the social sciences. Professor Him
melfarb's chief attack is directed at social Darwinism, "the idea that natu
ral selection functions, or should function, the same way in society as in
nature." This adaptation of natural selection to the social and ethical
sphere she attributes to Herbert Spenser and today in a vehement form to
sociobiology, though as her title suggests also to Lord Snow. Possibly its
most demoralizing effect she finds in a statement of one scientist: "do we
really want to know?" She attributes such a view to a realization that
Snow's remark ("the scientists have the future in their bones") leads to
"dissension and self-doubt," which may result because "they are bur
dened with too heavy a responsibility," a duty they know they cannot
discharge.
I cannot pursue further the implications of Professor Himmelfarb's es
say here, nor do I suggest that linguistics is totally under the sway of so
cial Darwinism and sociobiology, though I leave the verdict to you. But I
do call attention to a highly serious intellectual challenge to current activ
ities in the social sciences and humanities. Among other shortcomings,
Professor Himmelfarb cites "the attempt of political philosophy to trans
form itself into political science, history into social science, literary criti
cism into semiotics, and, most recently, theology into semantics. In each
case the effect has been to 'de-construct' those disciplines, to desocialize,
dehumanize, demoralize them by stripping them of any recognizable so
cial and human reality" (463). She does not refer specifically to our field.
But if we set out to defend linguistics against her charge, we would have
problems in view of the virtual elimination of humanistic aspects of Ian-

Mellow Glory

31

guage study from the field. Anyone planning work in linguistics for the
rest of this century must note that some commentators on intellectual af
fairs today see shortcomings in the entire academic process among what
have come to be known as the social sciences and humanities. Another
influential commentator expressing such views is Prime Minister Gandhi,
who in her Sorbonne address stated that "lost in statistics and masses of
information, we miss the real meaning or ultimate purpose" (1981).
Such widespread criticisms of academic activities suggest at the least
that in planning we look at the bases we assume. Have academicians, not
only linguists, become provincial by speaking only to one another, read
ing only one another's publications, and failing to acquire perspective in
their activities? Has the need to restrict our scientific activities to a mi
nute area if we wish to achieve further contributions made us myopic?
Are proposals like Saussure's parole:langue and Chomsky's performance:
competence dangerous in their reductiveness? Instead of further ques
tions I close with recommendations.
1. Linguistics must be based on knowledge of languages; evidence
from one language alone is treacherous.
2. At least one of the further languages known must be of completely
different structure from one's native language, VO if one's language is
OV, OV if one's language is VO.
3. As recommended by Brugmann, linguists must observe how lan
guage is used in society. All linguistic data must be treated with knowl
edge of the environment that produced it. That is, all data consists of
texts, and proper anthropological/philological techniques must be used
in interpreting those data.
4. Since any linguistic work is carried out in accordance with a theory,
to understand the scientific work of the past and present, linguists should
be acquainted with several theories, especially if they are concentrating
on a new one.
5. For proper perspective, linguists need to know the background of
their discipline, of its theories. If they do not, they run the risk of
rediscovering old discoveries and of repeating theoretical advances
achieved earlier.
6. Since language in use is constantly modified, proper understanding
of linguistic problems requires knowledge of the history of languages one
treats. In scientific attention one may for a time restrict oneself to an ideal

32

Winfred P. Lehmann

language at the social level, a langue, or an ideal language at the psycho

logical level, represented in competence. Both theoretical positions may
be characterized by Goethe's well-known lines:
Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Doch grn des Lebens goldner Baum.
7. Besides devoting attention to language as a living activity, linguists
have the responsibility to contribute to improved knowledge of the huge
amounts of data that linguistics takes as its sphere of work. They may do
so in phonological or grammatical accounts, in dictionaries, presentation
and editing of texts, production of pedagogical materials, of sociolinguistic and of psycholinguistic materials, and the like.
Finally, you may be close to mellow glory, but it will be achieved only
by proper education of your students and a great deal of solid work on
your part.

A P P E N D I X

Since Brugmann's views on linguistic methodology and theory are so

little known, I cite a few passages from his publications.
1. On language as a system in which everything is interrelated: "Weil
das Objekt der Grammatik, die Sprache, eine sehr komplizierte Thtigkeit ist, bei der die verschiedenartigsten Faktoren in gegenseitiger Ab
hngigkeit zum Ganzen zusammenwirken, bei der im Grunde alles durch
alles bedingt ist, ist auf diesem dritten Wege zu einem der Natur des
Gegenstands annhernd gerecht werdenden System und einem System
mit schrferen Grenzen zwischen den einzelnen Teilen nur dadurch zu
gelangen, da man gleich eine betrchtlich lange Reihe von Haupt
abschnitten nebeneinander ansetzt" (1904:VIII).
I have supplied the italics. This passage is also of interest in indicating
how Brugmann expressed his theoretical views offhand rather than pro
ducing a succession of theoretical papers. The clause emphasized is vir
tually equivalent to Meillet's "ou tout se tient." It may also be well to
recall a statement of Georg Curtius, the guiding spirit of the earlier lin
guistic work, against whom the neogrammarians conducted their "revo
lution." This is from the final page of his criticism of the most recent in
vestigation of language, now readily available in Wilbur 1977.

Mellow Glory

33

2. On universals and general linguistic theory, also a reminder that

Brugmann did not shut himself off from views of others, even Schuchardt, who has been proclaimed the arch-opponent of the neogrammarians: "Eine betrchtliche Vermehrung hat endlich das Capitel 'Zum
combinatorischen Lautwandel' erfahren. Ich htte ihm als Motto die
trefflichen Worte Schuchardt's (ber die Lautgesetze S. 36) vorsetzen
knnen: 'Welchen Sinn haben alle die tausende von Lautgesetzen, so
lange sie isoliert bleiben, so lange sie nicht in hhere Ordnungen aufge
lst werden? Sie dienen zum Teil und nur aushlfsweise der Aufhellung
von Vlkerverwandschaften und culturellen Beziehungen; aber zunchst
mssen sie doch innerhalb der Sprachwissenschaft selbst verarbeitet
werden, in dem Einzelnen mssen wir das Allgemeine finden lernen, und
demnach ist auch die Erkenntnis einer Thatsache, welche das ganze
Sprachleben beherrscht, von weit grsserer Wichtigkeit als die Erkenntniss irgend welcher besonderer Erscheinungsformen'" (1897: X-XI).
3. On the sentence as unit of language: "Das Sprechen der Menschen
hat nicht mit Wrtern, sondern mit Stzen begonnen, . . . und noch heute
ist fr das normale Sprechen in der Regel nur da ein wirklicher Ein- und
Abschnitt, wo ein Satz zu Ende kommt" (1904:623). In 364 (p. 281):
". . . ist angedeutet, da alle wissenschaftliche Betrachtung der Sprach
geschichte insofern Satzlehre ist, als das Sprechen stets in Stzen vor
sich geht."

REFERENCES

CITED

Brugmann, Karl. 1904. Kurze vergleichende Grammatik der indogerma

nischen Sprachen. Strassburg: Trbner.
. 18971916. Vergleichende Laut- Stammbildungs- und Flexions
lehre der 1916. Vergleichende Laut- Stammbildungs- und Flexions
lehre der indogermanischen Sprachen. 2d ed. Strassburg: Trbner.
Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton.
. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press.
. 1981a. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris
Publications.
. 1981b. Ms. Knowledge of language; its elements and origins. Pa
per delivered before the Royal Society, March.

34

Winfred P. Lehmann

Chomsky, Noam, and M. Halle. 1968. The Sound Pattern of English.

New York: Harper & Row.
Delbrck, Berthold. 1893-1900. Vergleichende Syntax der indogerma
nischen Sprachen. Vols. IIII. Strassburg: Trbner.
Gandhi, Indira. 1981. Ms. Address on the occasion of the Award of the
Diploma Doctorate Honoris Causa at Sorbonne University, Paris, 12
November.
Hewson, John. 1981. The Guillaumian tradition in Canadian linguistics.
Canadian Journal of Linguistics 26:161 70.
Himmelfarb, Gertrude. 1981. In defense of the two cultures. American
Scholar: 451 63.
Jespersen, Otto. 1909 1949. A Modern English Grammar on Historical
Principles. Vols. 1 7. Copenhagen: Munksgaard. Repr. 1949.
. 1937. Analytic Syntax. Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard.
Katz, Jerrold J. 1981. Language and Other Abstract Objects. Totowa,
N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield.
Koschmieder, Erwin. 1965. Beitrge zur allgemeinen Syntax. Heidelberg:
Winter.
Lamb, Sydney M. 1981. On the aims of linguistics. In James E. Copeland
and Philip W. Davis, eds. The Seventh LACUS Forum 1980. Colum
bia, S.C.: Hornbeam Press.
Lehmann, Winfred P., ed. 1967. A Reader in Nineteenth-Century His
torical Indo-European Linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Osthoff, Hermann, and Karl Brugmann. 1878. Vorwort. In Morpho
logische Untersuchungen auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen
Sprachen I. Leipzig: Hirzel. Judy Haddon, trans. In Lehmann 1967.
Prewitt, Kenneth. 1981. The need for a national policy for the social sci
ences: annual report of the president, 19801981. New York: So
cial Science Research Council.
Prewitt, Kenneth, and David L. Sills. 1981. Federal funding for the social
sciences: threats and responses. SSRC Items 35:3347.
Wilbur, Terence H., ed. 1977. The Lautgesetz-Controversy. Amsterdam:
Benjamins.

CHAPTER

The Uniqueness Fallacy

Charles F. Hockett

Twenty years ago there was a bit of a debate as to whether such an En

glish expression as John clobbered Bill should be interpreted as bipartite
or as tripartite: that is, as subject plus predicate, John | clobbered Bill, or
as subject plus verb plus object, John | clobbered | Bill. Admittedly the
difference does not seem great. If one opts for the first analysis, one can
then go on to interpret the predicate as consisting in its turn of verb and
object, John \1 clobbered |2 Bill, thus obtaining in two steps what the sec
ond analysis obtains in just one. The issue, however, turned on which of
the two analyses yields the IMMEDIATE constituents of the expression,
and two immediate constituents is not the same thing as three.
I don't recall anyone getting very hot under the collar about this issue.
Yet it was taken seriously, in the sense that everyone assumed that at most
one of the alternatives could be right and that in due time, with due dil
igence, we would find out which. The bipartite position was that of
post-Bloomfieldian American structuralism, which for some reason pre
scribed binary cuts whenever any slightest justification could be found
for them, tolerating multiple immediate constituents only as an extreme
measure. For English clauses, the bipartite view was inherited by early
transformational-generative grammar, as is clear from the ancient for
mula S NP + VP, long thought to be the initial step in the generation of
EVERY English sentence. On the other hand, workers in the branch of
symbolic logic known as the predicate calculus had for a long time been
speaking of two-term predicates, such as clobbered in our example, ver-

36

Charles F. Hockett

sus one-term predicates like the sing of Birds sing, three-term predicates
like fined in The judge fined the driver fifty dollars, and, in principle at
least, n-termed predicates with even larger n. It is true that the logicians
were doing logic, not linguistics. But the speculations of logicians have
always been deeply influenced by the way languages work, and, in the
other direction, we all know how strong has been the influence of logic
on several recent trends in syntactic theory.
Another example of disagreement about syntax turns up in the han
dling by grammarians of sentences such as John painted the barn red and
The committee elected Rosalia chairman. My attention was drawn to
these back in the 1940s when I was working on Chinese, because if you
translate such sentences some of them call for a special type of RESULTATIVE construction not characteristic of English or other European lan
guages. To say 'John painted the barn red' you make a compound in
which the first constituent is the transitive verb 'to paint' and the second
is the intransitive verb 'to be red', and say, in effect, 'John paint-redded
the barn'. Analogizing from Chinese to English, we could propose that
the structure of the English predicate is painted<the barn>red, with a
discontinuous transitive verb painted . . . red and an infixed object the
barn. Then it might not be utterly foolish to suggest that, in a similar way,
the predicate in our other example is elected<Rosalia> chairman. It
turns out that William Dwight Whitney (1886:165) suggested this treat
ment a century ago. The school-grammar tradition offers a different solu
tion: there are three immediate constituents, verb painted plus object the
barn plus "object complement" red. Still a third, hinted at by such gram
marians as Jespersen (1933 : 308 12) and Curme (1931:12024), takes
the barn red and Rosalia chairman to be nominalized clauses with subject
and predicate (and with the equational verb be "deleted," if you can tol
erate that jargonistic turn of phrase), objects respectively of the verbs
painted and elected.
A third case for which there are competing interpretations is the predi
cate in (She) looked at him: should we take this as transitive verb looked
at and object him, or as intransitive verb looked and modifier at him}
Similarly, is it {I)'ll wait for | you or (7)7/ wait \ for you}
In none of these cases do I propose to take sides. My point is quite
different. I shall argue that even when two interpretations of the structure
of an expression seem hopelessly at odds, the validity of one does not

The Uniqueness Fallacy

37

NECESSARILY entail the invalidity of the other. To assume the contrary

without careful exegesis in each case is to fall into what I am calling the
uniqueness fallacy.
In order to know whether two assertions are compatible or incompati
ble one obviously must first know what is meant by them. One cannot
judge just from the form, or from a literal interpretation without regard
to context. Thus, in a story I read recently, a character first declares Yve
been here before and then, two lines later, Yve never been here before. But
there is no contradiction, since the first remark is a report of dja vu, the
second a statement of fact.
So in our present inquiry we must ask: What does a grammarian mean
in proposing that such-and-such an expression has such-and-such a
structure? What leads to the statement, and what does it imply?
I think there are always two factors.
First, the assertion means that the grammarian finds the given expres
sion similar to certain other expressions in certain ways, but at the same
time NOT similar in these same ways to still other expressions. To say that
John clobbered Bill consists of subject followed by predicate is to assign it
to a "similarity set" along with John | ran a mile, Bill \ went to sleep, My
oldest uncle \ likes to go fishing, (John painted) the barn \ red, and so
onthe list is of course open-ended, and yet a great many expressions do
not belong on it; for example, not The more the merrier, Away ran John,
Can you sing?, or John!
Second, the statement reflects the grammarian's beliefor, at least,
hopethat the similarities and differences in question are not just arti
facts of analysis, but realities for the users of the language. In some fash
ion, the open-ended similarity sets, or the similarities themselves, or the
recurrent structural features, or the abstract patterns exemplified in the
expressionstake your choice of terminologyplay a part in the way
the users of the language understand what they hear and in the way they
put together what they say.

From just the first of these factors it is immediately clear how two
seemingly inconsistent structural characterizations of an expression can
in fact both be valid. Expressions, after all, resemble one another in many
ways. The fact that an expression E resembles those of similarity set St in
some ways does not preclude it from resembling those of similarity set S2
in others. For our initial example, thus, we have something like this:

38

Charles F. Hockett

S1
E = John | clobbered Bill.
John | ran a race.
My oldest uncle | likes to
go
fishing.
John | ran a mile.
John | ran.
the barn | red

=
=
=

S2
John | clobbered | Bill.
John | ran | a race.
My oldest uncle | likes | to
go fishing.

We note here that if an expression is in S2 it is also in S1 but not vice

versa. S2 is a proper subset of 5 l correlating with the fact that the re
quirements for membership in S1 are less stringent than those for S2.
Skipping our second example and going on to the third, we find a dif
ferent situation, in that each of the similarity sets contains expressions
not in the other:

s.

1
= (She) looked at | him.
' = (I)'11 wait for | you.
(John) clobbered | Bill.
(The butcher) weighed | the
meat.
(They) ran | a race.

s2

= (She) looked | at him.

= (I)'11 wait for | you.
(She) was humming | quietly.
(The meat) weighed | two
pounds.
(They) ran | two miles.

Of course these abbreviated lists only hint at the variety of evidence

that might lead a grammarian to propose one or the other analysis of the
target expressions. In favor of the treatment as transitive verb plus object,
note that one can freely say things like Who are you looking at?, The
newcomer was looked at with great suspicion, There's nothing more to
wait for, which are much like Who did you see?, The newcomer was
viewed with great suspicion, There's nothing more to anticipate. On the
other hand, the analysis into intransitive verb and modifier is certainly
more appropriate for such a narration as She came through the door and
stopped and looked all aroundup, down, into the corners, at me, at
John.
But that was just the first factor. Before we consider how the second
factor bears on our problem, I want to emphasize that it cannot just be
set aside. A grammarian who truly believed that analysis need have no

The Uniqueness Fallacy

39

relation to the comportment of users of the language would truly be play

ing an idle game. We should be charitable in this connection, to be sure,
not only because anyone who wants to play idle games has the right to,
but also because relevance sometimes rears its lovely head in unexpected
places. But that it is possible to be genuinely irrelevant is shown, I think,
by the following, which has the external appearance of our earlier dis
plays but which belongsif anywherein a puzzle book: l
S1

E = John clobbered Bill.

How about some money?
Tranquility reigns.
Leonard Bloomfield

S2

John clobbered Bill.

Shall we dance?
John married Mary.
That was a fine psychodrama.
the oddity

Now we are ready to ask: can two seemingly incompatible analyses

both reflect functional realities for the users of the language?
To get at this, let us first remind ourselves that an expression has no
syntactic structure at all except relative to some human interpreter. If a
tree falls in the wilderness with no one about, there is sound, because
sound is defined in physical terms without reference to perception and
does not require a human observer. But if a stray cat stumbles on a switch
in a deserted auditorium and a PA system starts blaring out You ain't
nothin but a houn dog, all that happens is the sound of speech, not
speech. There can be syntactic structure only where there are human
hearersand they must be hearers who know the language.
For such a hearer, are heard expressions in fact perceived as having
syntactic structure? Clearly there are instances in which the hearer does
not have to do any construing. When someone says Good morning! or
Have a nice day! or any other fixed formula, to identify the formula is to
understand it. You may have to figure out why it was uttered, or how it
fits into the context or the situation, but you don't have to decide how its
parts go together.
But we also grapple successfully with all manner of utterances we have
never heard before. Suppose I am telling you a story about a pair of Fijian
friends of mine named Isa and Lei and, at a certain point, I say Then Isa
clobbered Lei. The parts are all familiar to you, but the utterance as a
whole is new. If you nevertheless have not the slightest doubt as to who

4o

Charles F. Hockett

was the clobberer and who the clobberee, it is because you have con
strued my words; that is, you have perceived my utterance as having syn
tactic structure.
When there are two or more hearers (counting the speaker, of course,
as one), is the syntactic structure the same for all? Or, when it isn't, does
that necessarily imply misunderstanding? Since this is the crux of our in
quiry, we shall consider some cases.
CASE I . Some years ago, when I was in charge of elementary Chinese
instruction at Cornell, I came into the classroom one day just in time to
hear our drillmaster say wde Jdu 'my Christ'. I knew the group was not
discussing religion, and that the drillmaster was not indulging in pro
fanity, but I was puzzled, wondering what could have led up to the re
mark and what sort of response she expected from the studentsuntil I
suddenly realized that what she had actually said was What did she dof
If you're not even listening in the right language, NO construing will
help.
CASE 2. Suppose A wants to know what B thinks of the quality of the
brakes in B's new car, and so asks B How do you find the brakes in this
car?, but that B answers Just put your right hand down between the front
seats. Or suppose A, waiting for someone, needs to leave the room for a
moment and so asks B Will you wait for me? meaning 'Will you wait on
my behalf?', but that B interprets it to mean 'Will you await me?'
Here we have different construings correlating with distinctly different
meanings, and hence definite misunderstandings.
CASE 3. I quote from Jespersen (1922:354):
It is true that it has been disputed which is the subject in Gray's
line

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

but then it does not matter much, for the ultimate understanding of
the line must be exactly the same whether the air holds stillness or
stillness holds the air.
CASE 4. In French, matre d'cole is a perfectly standard expression for
'schoolmaster' and cole de village is a routine way of saying 'village
school'. Also, in the pattern N1 de N2 to which both of those expressions
conform, either N can itself be a noun phrase rather than a single word.
Suppose, now, that A refers to someone as being matre d'cole \ de vil-

The Uniqueness Fallacy

41

lage 'a village schoolmaster' but that B perceives this as matre \ d'ecole
de village 'master of a village school'. Does the inaudible structural dif
ference correlate with a slight difference in meaning? Even if it does, I
cannot imagine a context in which there would be any significant practi
cal consequences. Anyone who could validly be referred to by the expres
sion construed in the one way could with equal validity be referred to by
the expression contrued in the other way.
CASE 5. A is rattling on to B about some event, and says But then Bill
insulted Mary, so Mary told John and then John clobbered Bill. I can
imagine A's utterance-generating machinery grinding out each of the
clauses of this utterance on a tripartite model, as action, actor, and goal
all change from episode to episode, so that on this occasion John clobbered Bill is really being built by marshaling a subject, a transitive verb,
and an object in that order. But B may be thinking along different lines,
perhaps about John's personality and characteristic conduct, so that in
side B's head A's words are fitted into a sequence like (J suppose) John
(tore into the living room and screamed and looked around and) clobbered Bill{, and then got scared and ran out)implying a bipartite
interpretation.
I am sorry this example has to be imaginary. But it seems to me reason
ably realistic, and surely one could not in this case speak of any signifi
cant degree of misunderstanding.
CASE 6. This example is real, except that I have had to invent the de
tails because they were not recorded. A in this case is various adults, in
cluding my wife and me, and B is one or more of our children. On various
occasions, B heard A say such things as Skating is fun, Wasn't that fun,
now?, I think summer is more fun than winter, and also any number of
things like Skiing is dangerous, The weather is nicer in summer than in
winter, Bill is taller than Jane. B then says Summer is funner than winter.
Clearly, A and B do not construe Skating is fun in the same way. The
situation can be displayed as follows:

E = Skating is fun.
We are adults.
John became a doctor.
That white liquid is milk.

Skating is fun.
Arnold was mean.
My hands are dirty.
I'm busy.
Mom got mad.

42

Charles F. Hockett

Thus, for A, fun is a nominal predicate attribute; for B, it is an adjec

tival predicate attribute. But there is no misunderstanding.
CASE 7. In the presence of B and C, A says We're all back in routine. B
knows A well and recognizes this as one of A's catchphrases; thus no con
struing is necessary, just as it is unnecessary for formulas of wider cur
rency, such as Good morning! But C is a new acquaintance and hasn't
heard the expression before, so must construe to understand. Since every
dialect and every idiolect has its own catchphrases, this sort of thing must
happen all the time.
These examples show, first, that the structure of an expression is in
deed not always the same for all the participants in a transaction, but,
second, that when it is not, the differences may or may not lead to confu
sion or misunderstanding.
How can that be?
Certainly there must be large areas of practical agreement among the
speakers of a language. For, although we human beings indulge in a great
many varied uses of language, its primary biological function has always
been the pooling of information and the making of joint plans, and a
community's language could not perform that function unless its conven
tions were for the most part the same for everyone.
But the degree of uniformity required for that should not be overesti
mated. Actually, everyday "consultative prose," if you take the trouble to
listen to it carefully, turns out to be rife with hesitations, false starts, selfcorrections, requests for clarification, and momentary misunderstand
ings cleared up (if at all) by demonstration, gesture, or paraphrase. Lan
guage performs its primary function not through elegance, which is for
mathematicians and other poets, but through persistence. If we can't re
call the exact word for a thing, or if there is none, we point, describe, or
call it a doohickey. If one way of saying something leaves the addressee
puzzled, we may be annoyed, but if it is important we try another way.
Moreover, those "shared conventions," which we have said must exist,
have to focus on what is actually shared by the speaker and all hearers:
the utterance itself. A speaker does not present the audience with sen
tences in which the immediate constituents and the syntactic connections
are all neatly marked. The grammatical structure of an utterance is not in
the utterance as beer is in a bottle or oil in a pipeline, but, like the mean
ing, is elicited or EVOKED in the hearer BY the utterance. The utterance

The Uniqueness Fallacy 43

may include various CLUES to the structure, various "structural signals"

in the form of inflectional elements, particles, and features of stress, into
nation, pause, and word order; but hearers have to interpret those cues,
and if speakers want to be understood, as they normally do, they must
make the clues interprtable. Then how does a speaker know if the clues
have been interpreted correctly? Again, not by any direct testimony.
Hearers don't diagram their structural interpretations on portable black
boards and submit them to speakers for approval or correction. They just
RESPOND. If the response fits, that is all that counts. Sometimes the sequel
shows that the construings by speaker and hearer must have been dif
ferent. But in the nature of the case there can never be any incontestable
evidence that the construings were identical.
The grammatical structure of an utterance is never out in the open
available for direct inspection. It always lurks behind the scenes. That is
where grammarians find it. Grammarians are something like cryptanalysts. They are presented with expressions in a language, together with
partial information about the meanings of those expressions; the ques
tion they ask is "How do these expressions manage to mean what they
mean?" This leads them to the discovery of recurrent forms and pat
ternsto the lexicon and grammar of the language. Furthermore, gram
marians assume, quite legitimately, that what they do overtly and with
the help of technical vocabulary in dissecting and comparing utterances
in some sense matches what the users of the language do, without any
technical props, in learning the language, in speaking it, and in under
standing what they hear. We have already insisted that, without some
such assumption, we grammarians would be playing an idle game.
What is it about this procedure that tempts us to assume uniqueness of
structure? Is this by any chance another manifestation of that typically
human ethnocentrism that leads the laity to view all alien forms of speech
as somehow not quite genuine? Or is the basic reason a quite different
one, namely our tendency, as educated members of Western society,
to think of languages far too much on the model of abstract logicodeductive systems?
Be that as it may, if I have managed not to drop any stitches in the
course of my argument, I have now fully justified my proposal that the
assumption of uniqueness is a fallacy.
To spell out the implications in detail is beyond the scope of this brief
essay, but let me at least give a hint. It is no accident that, in our dealings

44

Charles F. Hockett

with specific languages, we find it useful to have access to more than one
"reference grammar." For English, thus, if Jespersen says too little on a
point that interests us, we can turn to Sweet or Whitney or Kruisinga or
Curme or Fries. The utility of the multiplicity stems not just from the
different interests and insights of different grammarians (though that is
undeniably important), but also from the essential nature of language.
There could be no such thing as a "complete" description of any language.
That I have confined the argument in the foregoing to the domain of
syntax has been strictly a matter of forensic convenience. The uniqueness
notion is also a hazard in our attempts to understand other aspects of
language design.
For sound systems, clear warning was issued almost a half century ago
by Yuenren Chao (1934), and in due time his lessons were fairly well
taken to heart.
In morphology, you will find the dire effects of the uniqueness notion
on a wholesale scale in American writings on "morphemics" roughly
from 1940 to 1955, by investigators like Nida, Harris, Bloch, Trager, and
me.2 Valid objections from people such as Bolinger were simply brushed
aside. Having now learned better, I think of that as the period of the
"atomic morpheme" theory, and characterize the theory opprobriously
as "the great agglutinative fraud."3 I wish I could report that we have
fully recovered from that particular divagation. Unfortunately, that sort
of morphology, founded on the uniqueness fallacy, was taken over un
critically by the transformational-generativists, and to this day forms the
unchallenged underpinnings of generative phonology.
Finally, I would suggest that what I have said about the uniqueness fal
lacy in syntax be read also as a parable for what has been going wrong in
the whole enterprise of linguistics.
No one in any culture known to us denies the importance of language.
Partly because it is important, partly just because it is there, we should
like to know how it works. To that end, people from time immemorial
have examined it or speculated about it, trying to come up with signifi
cant commentaryand very often succeeding, at least in a fragmentary
way.
What one sees of language, as of anything, depends on the angle of
view, and different explorers have approached from different directions.
Unfortunately, what often happens is that investigators become so enam-

The Uniqueness Fallacy 45

ored of their particular approach that they incline to scoff at any other,
so that instead of everybody being the richer for the variety, everybody is
the poorer. It is obviously impossible to see all of anything from a single
vantage point. So it is always appropriate to seek new perspectives, but
always unseemly thoughtlessly to derogate the perspectives favored by
others. Or, to use a different figure: the blind person who feels the tail is
justified in reporting an elephant is like a rope, but does not have the
right to claim an elephant is not like a wall or a tree trunk or a snake.

NOTES

1. Each expression of S1 consists, in written form, of seventeen letters;

each expression of S2 has d as the fifth letter from the end. Don't say I
didn't warn you.
2. A good selection of these papers is reprinted in Joos 1957, and
those reprinted there supply references to others.
3. Floyd Lounsbury supplied the initial crucial insight, in the introduc
tory chapter of his Oneida Verb Morphology (1953). A decade later
(1963), Wallace L. Chafe attempted an expression of discontent with
uniqueness that seems to have fallen on largely deaf ears. I am not at all
proud that it was a good twenty years before I began to discern the
deeper implications of Lounsbury's discussion. At the same time, that
makes it a bit easier for me to understand how hard it must be for young
linguists trained totally in the TG framework to move outside that frame
work and see its defects.

REFERENCES

CITED

Chafe, Wallace L. 1963. Some indeterminacies in language. Report on

the Fourteenth Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Lan
guage Studies. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Mono
graph Series on Language and Linguistics 16, pp. 5 7 - 6 2 .
Chao, Yuenren. 1934. The non-uniqueness of phonemic solutions of
phonetic systems. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology,
Academia Sinica 4(4)1363-97. Reprinted in Joos 1957, pp. 3 8 - 5 4 .
Curme, George O. 1931. [English] Syntax. Boston: Heath.

46

Charles F. Hockett

Jespersen, Otto. 1922. Language: Its Nature, Development, and Origin.

London: Allen & Unwin.
. 1933. Essentials of English Grammar. New York: Holt.
Joos, Martin, ed. 1957. Readings in Linguistics: The Development of
Descriptive Linguistics in America Since 1925. Washington, D.C.:
American Council of Learned Societies.
Lounsbury, Floyd. 1953. Oneida Verb Morphology. New Haven: Yale
University Publications in Anthropology no. 48. Reprinted in Joos
1957, PP- 3 7 9 - 8 5 .
Whitney, William Dwight. 1886. Essentials of English Grammar for the
Use of Schools. Boston: Ginn & Co.

Part Two

INTRODUCTION TO PART T W O

The two articles in this section share a common concern for the practical
responsibilities of linguists. Both M. A. K. Halliday and Mary R. Haas
are worried by the current state of linguistics, finding that the discipline
"lacks cohesiveness" and that linguists often ply their trade without a
concern for actual languages. The answers that Haas and Halliday pro
pose for solving these problems are remarkably similar, though with
characteristically differing emphases. Haas suggests that a student's pri
mary task is to learn to analyze and describe a language, preferably one
that is unrelated to the native language of the student. Halliday suggests
that linguists have a responsibility to show a greater concern for the prac
tical problems that nonlinguists would like to have solved. He considers
linguistics from the point of view of its relevance to the world commu
nity, as a subject with important applications, many of which are not yet
fully explored.
What these two proposals have in common is that both Haas and Hal
liday seem to believe that in getting our hands dirty with datathe real
data of people speaking and listening, of people doing things with lan
guagewe will discover a new sense of purpose and a new value for our
discipline. Implicit in Haas's paper and explicit in Halliday's is the idea
that these activities "contribute in a fundamental way to the pursuit of
our most theoretical aims." Thus this is not just a call for people who
have been theoretical linguists to come and be practical and apply that
knowledge. Rather it is a claim that a careful analysis of how people learn
a language, or learn to read or write itself, will contribute to our knowl
edge of linguistic theory.

CHAPTER

Linguistics in the University

The Question of Social Accountability

M. A. K. Halliday

Nine years ago I was one of the speakers at a Georgetown roundtable

where the topic being discussed was the future of linguistics. It was not so
much a "state of the art" occasion as a state of emergency, a call to action
brought about by the report of the Linguistic Society of America on the
number of unemployed linguists and the even greater number of cur
rently enrolled Ph.D. students in the subject. The assumption seemed to
beand I have always found it a strange onethat the only job for
which a professionally trained linguist was fitted was to go back and train
more linguists: in other words, to be hired by a university linguistics de
partment. It reminded me of the practice adopted at the university where
I first taught in this country: that of putting up buildings without win
dows, which had to be artificially lit and aired, and then leaving on the
lighting and air conditioning at all times, so that the university would pay
more money to the utility companies, who would then endow the univer
sity with funds to put up more buildings, and so on. It works as long as
the energy source holds out and the gross national product goes on going
up. In the same way, linguistics Ph.D.'s can go on being absorbed into the
system as long as the system itself continues to expand.
But why should the assumption have been made in the first place? Why
are linguists inclined to insulate themselves and their students from the
real worldwhich is, after all, the only place where their chosen object,
language, is to be found? When times are hard, when universities and
university departments are faced with cutbacks and retrenchments of all

52

M. A. K. Halliday

kinds, linguists and departments of linguistics are among the most vul
nerable to attack. They are regarded as a rather exotic luxury, one that is
readily expendablea useful standby for a hard-pressed dean looking
for reserves of funding. It seems to me there is a close connection between
the precarious status of linguistics departments and the assumption that
they exist primarily for themselves and for their own purposes.
A discipline is not defined by what it is that its practitioners are study
ing. Nowadays, when the economic order is based on exchange of infor
mation rather than on exchange of goods and services, everybody seems
to be studying language: philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists,
sociologists, computer scientists, mathematicians, physiologists, ethnolo
gists, medical researchersthe list goes on. But the fact that such people
study language does not make them linguists, any more than the fact that
I study culture and society makes me a social anthropologist. I have to
study social structures in order to understand language. But for me a so
cial structure is not an object of study; it is an instrument for the study of
something else. Similarly, for our colleagues around the campus, lan
guage is an instrument: a means of investigating something other than
language, but on which language can shed some light. For a linguist, on
the other hand, language is an object. It is the object; it is what we are
trying to understand, what our questions are all about. This is why we
call ourselves linguists. A discipline is defined by the questions it asks,
and linguistics is the exploration of questions about language.
But who decides what these questions are? More than most of our col
leagues in other disciplines, linguists have tended to claim the right to
determine for themselves which particular questions they will explore,
without reference to the sorts of things that other people want to know
about language. We have tended to dismiss the questions raised by "nonlinguists" (as we refer to the rest of humanity) as being prejudiced and illinformed. It is true that they are often prejudiced and ill-informed; but
that is not a reason for dismissing themrather the contrary, in fact. For
example, many people are interested in what is right and wrong in lan
guage; and while we should, for everyone's sake, point out the limitations
of an "etiquette" model in which grammar is trivialized to the status of a
manual of good behavior, we cannot simply leave it at that, because be
hind these questions lies a concern with real issuesissues of social
value, as embodied in language, on the one hand, and of effective com
munication on the other.

Linguistics in the University

53

There are other questions of popular interest that linguists have tended
to neglect: metaphor, for example. There is a very extensive literature on
the subject of metaphor; but very little of it has been written by linguists,
although certain fundamental aspects of metaphor can be brought out
only through interpretation in linguistic terms. And there are hardly any
accounts of mixed metaphors, which many people find particularly inter
esting. I offer for your consideration one that I recently culled from Time
magazine: "The loopholes that should be jettisoned first are the ones
least likely to go." It is not that the jettisoning of loopholes is in itself
deserving of much serious study; but the principles that underlie the
choice of such expressions on the one hand, and their rhetorical effect on
the other, are certainly relevant to our understanding of linguistic pro
cesses. Perhaps they will figure on the agenda of the Arizona State Univer
sity Conference on Linguistic Humor at some stage in their deliberations.
There is another class of metaphor that has received much less atten
tion, from any quarter, so far as I know: grammatical metaphor. Here are
some examples, together with their rewording in a relatively nonmetaphoric form:
(a) I haven't had the benefit of your experience.
Unfortunately I haven't experienced as much as you have.
(b) He has a comfortable income.
His income is large enough for him to be able to live comfortably.
(c) Two pupils used their access to the school's computer to probe its
secrets.
Two pupils were able to reach the school's computer and managed
in this way to probe its secrets.
(d) The argument to the contrary is basically an appeal to the lack of
synonymy in mental language.
In order to argue that [this] is not so, [he] simply points out that
there are no synonyms in mental language.
(e) Advances in technology are speeding up the writing of business
programs.
Because technology is advancing, people can write business pro
grams more speedily.
Here instead of a lexico-semantic phenomenon, as in the usual sense of
metaphor where the tokens are words, we have a grammatico-semantic
process, in which the tokens are grammatical features.

54

M. A. K. Halliday

Much of the difficulty that language learners face, whether in the

mother tongue or in a second language, arises from the prevalence of
grammatical metaphors, and it deserves more systematic study. Nor is it
necessary to go outside the recognized goals and domains of linguistics in
order to investigate it; any piece of text analysis will be dealing with
grammatical metaphors almost from the start. Well, not quite any: there
are kinds of discourse that are largely without themthe speech of
young children, for example. Up to a certain age, or stage of develop
ment, children's speech is nonmetaphorical; this is perhaps the major dif
ference between child and adult language. It is also probably the main
source of difficulty for a child of primary school age trying to grapple
with the adult language. My eleven-year-old son was totally defeated by
this sentence from his mathematics textbook: "Braking distance in
creases more rapidly at high speeds."
Note that it was not the abstract quality that defeated him: each of the
abstract concepts such as "distance" and "speed" was entirely familiar to
him. It is metaphor and not generality or abstractness that poses prob
lems. As it happens, this particular thesis is hard to express in English
without the presence of grammatical metaphor; as Whorf pointed out
many years ago, European languages are ill-adapted to handling the con
cept of acceleration. In "The Relation of Thought and Habitual Behavior
to Language" (1956:151 n.) he wrote:
This notion of storing up power, which seems implied by much
Hopi behavior, has an analog in physics: acceleration. It might be
said that the linguistic background of Hopi thought equips it to
recognize naturally that force manifests not as motion or velocity,
but as cumulation or acceleration. Our linguistic background tends
to hinder in us this same recognition, for having legitimately con
ceived force to be that which produces change, we then think of
change by our linguistic metaphorical analog, motion, instead of
by a pure motionless changingness concept, i.e. accumulation or
acceleration. Hence it comes to our naive feeling as a shock to find
from physical experiments that it is not possible to define force by
motion, that motion and speed, as also "being at rest," are wholly
relative, and that force can be measured only by acceleration.
If we look at language through the eyes of a layman, our attention will
often be drawn to phenomena of this kind. When we come to study such

Linguistics in the University

55

phenomena, however, we find that it is not only those who first raised the
issue who have something to gain from understanding them better. The
insights derived from attending to other people's questions about lan
guage often contribute in fundamental ways to our own self-appointed
tasks, such as in this instance the theory of grammar and discourse.
All of us could cite numerous other examples of questions that people
ask about language. They are interested in very many issues: standards of
literacy; effective writing by students or others in the community; good
and bad style; the teaching of languages in school and at work; bu
reaucratic language; slang and other deparatures from standardized
speech patterns; the language of the media and its effect on education;
spelling reform; international languages; problems of translationall
the issues that force language into our consciousness in the course of ev
eryday life.
These are matters that we tend to leave to others, confining ourselves
to superior comments from the sidelines. Yet probably most of us have
been called on from time to time to be interviewed by the media or to
give evidence in court or to pronounce in some public forum on questions
concerning language. We tend to feel slightly embarrassed and wish they
would ask us instead the sort of question we like to answer. It seems to
me, however, that we should not only take notice of such popular con
cerns; we should build them in quite centrally to our teaching programs.
We should write books about them, and even more perhaps commit our
selves in public: write to the press, talk on the radio, give extramural lec
tures, or engage in whatever are the appropriate forms of public behavior
in our particular communities.
Such activities constitute in the broadest sense the politics of being a
linguist. For many linguists, of course, it is impossible to avoid being
involved in the political scene, and they see it as part of their role as lin
guists. Many are involved with questions of educational policy and plan
ning: literacy programs, bilingual education, community language de
velopment, and so on. In Australia, for example, we have a national
languages policy committee where the two associations of linguists come
together with other bodies of language professionalsEnglish teachers,
modern language teachers, Aboriginal linguists, and so onto partici
pate in and give further impetus to the current move towards a more mul
tilingual society: urging the need for an explicit language policy for Aus
tralia, organizing discussion of the directions such a policy should take,

56

M. A. K. Halliday

lobbying politicians, publishing statements on the curriculum. As an in

dividual initiative, one of our Ph.D. students has started a nonprofit lan
guage school for children, in which children between the ages of five and
eight learn a foreign language in after-school classes, with their mothers
or other caregivers learning along with them. Eight languages are now
being taught in this way, and faculty members from the linguistics de
partment hold regular discussions with the teachers on problems of
teaching languages to young childrenthe whole exercise being, at the
same time, a form of pressure towards foreign languages in the primary
schools. Any Australian linguist who studies an Aboriginal language
and not only Australians, of course: there are Americans, British, Cana
dians, and othersis likely to be called on to act for the Aboriginal com
munity in legal processes: protecting sacred sites, establishing title to
ownership of tribal lands, or resisting encroachment by mining com
panies and other powerful agencies with whose interests they come in
conflict. Linguists typically achieve a position of considerable trust as
spokesmen for the Aboriginal community whose language they speak,
and are constantly acting in informal ways as unofficial interpreters of
one culture to another. But while these responsibilities are often under
taken by individual linguists, they are not generally recognized as a con
cern of linguistic departments; students are not explicitly taught about
them as part of the social accountability of their discipline.
Such activities go beyond the usual definition of "applied linguistics,"
but they are a natural extension of the principles involved. I take it for
granted that educational and clinical applications of the subject fall
within the proper domain of a linguistics departmentsuch things as
first and second language teaching, language across the curriculum, class
room discourse analysis, special education (e.g., of the deaf), speech
therapy, aphasiology, and the whole field of communicative disorders. Of
more recent concern to linguists, but now coming to be recognized as
areas of responsibility, are the professional activities of translating and
interpreting; language planning and policy making, including the devel
opment of languages both as system (extension into new functional do
mains, creation of new registers of technology, law, government) and as
institution (bilingual education, linguistic demography, language status,
and so on); forensic linguistics, such as voice print analysis, and the
grammatical and phonological evaluation of evidential documents; not

Linguistics in the University

57

to mention the work of a colleague who is consultant to a motoring orga

nization and translates their insurance policies into plain English for
them.
My point is not merely that these activities are in no sense deviations
from the proper goals of linguistics, but more substantively that they
contribute in fundamental ways to the pursuit of our most theoretical
aims, that is, to an understanding of the nature, functions, and develop
ment of language. There is no real boundary, in my opinion, between the
oretical and applied linguistics, just as there is no real boundary between
the activities of a linguist in describing a minority language and the activ
ities of the same linguist in helping to produce literacy materials or train
ing members of the community to become writers and linguists
themselves.
In recent years, however, theory and application have tended to be kept
apart, and theories have been rigorously insulated against any con
tamination from being put to use. Not long ago the editors of the English
Magazine, published by the Ebury Teachers' Centre in London, sent a
number of questions to three linguistsNoam Chomsky, Dell Hymes,
and myselfon the general theme, "what is there in linguistics for a
teacher?" Dell Hymes and I tried to give fairly specific answers; Chom
sky's answer was, in effect, "nothing." Thus on implications for educa
tional practice, he wrote: "My feeling is that linguistics or psychology
more generally have little of value to offer with regard to educational
practice"; on understanding why some children fail in school, "I do not
see how this work in linguistics could contribute significantly to these
quite different ends"; on which aspects of language it is important for
people to understand, "I have done a great deal of work on how the me
dia, and much of the academic and intellectual community, devote them
selves to distortion of contemporary reality, an extremely serious matter
in my view and one that is insufficiently studied. But this work, again, is
almost totally unrelated to my work on language. Nor do I see any inter
esting connections, actual or potential"; and on understanding the pro
duction and reception of written texts, "I don't anticipate that it will lead
to any real theoretical understanding of a nontrivial nature, and do not
believe that it does so now."
The message is not, of course, that linguistics has no implications, but
that it has no practical applications. According to such a view, linguistics

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M. A. K. Halliday

has nothing to say to teachers and others who are professionally con
cerned with language in their daily lives. And this view, which seems to
me misguided and contrary to actual experience, has undoubtedly con
tributed to the isolation of linguistics departments, and hence to their
precarious standing in difficult times.
What we have to be concerned with, however, are not only the practi
cal consequences but also the ideological issues that lie beyond them, is
sues that relate to the entire historical background of linguistics in the
West. There is a sense in which the history of Western linguistics has been
a dialogue between the linguist as philosopher and the linguist as eth
nographer, except that for much of the time it has been not so much a
dialogue as a lack of dialogue, a failure of mutual understanding. The
distinction between these two strands has a very early origin, in the shift
foreshadowed by Plato from the rhetorical grammar of the Sophists to
the logical grammar of Aristotle, the former being ethnographic, the lat
ter philosophical in orientation. After another hundred years, the Stoics
took linguistics out of philosophy and set it up as a separate discipline;
but they did so as philosophers, with philosophical questions to the fore.
The Alexandrian grammarians reopened the ethnographic trail, with
their interest in literary texts, in dialect and standard, and in the teaching
of Greek to speakers of other languages; their tradition then flowed
through the late Latin grammarians into Medieval linguistic scholarship
to be reinterpreted with a new series of philosophical underpinnings in
the speculative grammars of the Modists. This orientation was main
tained through the Port Royal grammarians to the philosophic linguists
of the eighteenth century; but meanwhile, the ethnographic idea reemerged, partly as a result of the expansion of Europe into linguistically
uncharted regions of the world, and partly in response to the new learn
ing and the new problems that appeared on the agendaproblems that
required the development of new resources of meaning and expression:
universal language, real character, shorthand, spelling reform, and an in
ternational alphabet for phonetics.
It fell to Saussure's generation to define the field for the twentieth cen
tury, when Saussure, Durkheim, and Freud took what Culler calls "this
decisive step in the development of the sciences of man," comparable to
that taken for the physical sciences by Newton and his contemporaries
250 years earlier. Culler summarizes the achievement as follows (1976:
76-77):

Linguistics in the University

59

Saussure, Durkheim and Freud seem responsible for this decisive

step in the development of the sciences of man. By internalizing
origins, removing them from a temporal history, one creates a new
space of explanation which has come to be called the unconscious.
It is not so much that the unconscious replaces the historical series;
rather it becomes the space where any antecedents which have an
explanatory function are located. Structural explanation relates ac
tions to a system of normsthe rules of a language, the collective
representations of a society, the mechanisms of a psychical econ
omyand the concept of the unconscious is a way of explaining
how these systems have explanatory force. It is a way of explaining
how they can be simultaneously unknown yet effectively present. If
a description of a linguistic system counts as an analysis of a lan
guage it is because the system is something not immediately given
to consciousness yet deemed to be always present, always at work
in behaviour it structures and makes possible.
Though the concept of the unconscious as such arises in the
work of Freud, it is essential to the type of explanation which a
whole range of modern disciplines seeks to offer and would cer
tainly have been developed even without Freud's aid. In fact, one
could argue that it is in linguistics that the concept emerges in its
clearest and most irrefutable form. The unconscious is the concept
which enables one to explain an indubitable fact: that I know a
language (in the sense that I can produce and understand new ut
terances, tell whether a sequence is in fact a sentence of my lan
guage, etc.) yet I do not know what I know. I know a language, yet
I need a linguist to explain to me precisely what it is that I know.
The concept of the unconscious connects and makes sense of these
two facts and opens a space of exploration. Linguistics, like psy
chology and a sociology of collective representations, will explain
my actions by setting out in detail the implicit knowledge which I
myself have not brought to consciousness.
By creating "a new space of explanation" over and above the purely
historical, Saussure was able to define both the nature of the object,
langue, and its relationship to the observed phenomena through which it
was instantiated, parole. But Saussure drew a partially wrong conclu
sion: that parole is not for studying. It is no disrespect to him if at this

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M. A. K. Halliday

point in the twentieth century we promote him from his position as fa

ther of modern linguistics to that of grandfather, now that a more bal
anced perspective can be achieved. Not that the study of parole is to be
equated with the ethnographic approachfar from it. The ethnographic
linguist is in every way as much concerned with langue as is the philoso
pher; only, his interpolation of the relation between the two is rather dif
ferent. For the linguist in the philosophical tradition there is an ideologi
cal gap between langue and parole: parole represents langue as accidental
form to perfect idea. This standpoint is associated with the purity of cate
gories, with rules (and therefore anomalies), with formalism, and with
the testing of theories by stand-or-fall criteria of falsification. For the ethnographically inclined linguist, there is an interface between the two: parole represents langue in the way that particular social acts or value judg
ments represent the culture. This standpoint is associated with impure
categories, with tendencies (analogy), with functionalism, and with the
testing of theories by better-or-worse criteria of applicationwhether or
not you can do something with them.
One of the consequences of this ideological split is that those who
adopt one approach tend to get misrepresented by those who adopt the
other. In practice throughout the history of linguistics this has tended to
be one-way traffic, because the two ideologies differ in their intellectual
politics. Sampson, contrasting rationalist and empiricist, the terms used
(by the former) to refer to the recent manifestation of these two ap
proaches, puts it as follows (1980:158):
Empiricism tells us to regard our opinions as fallible, and con
tinually seek counter-evidence to them; rationalism tells us that we
are born with true knowledge already in us. This difference of ap
proach operates at all levels: not just in the analysis of English syn
tax, but equally in debates about the theoretical and
methodological foundations of the discipline. In general, empiricist
philosophy encourages one to think, "I may be wrong, and the
other man may well be right"; rationalism encourages one to think,
"I know the truth, so the only point in talking to the other man is
in order to show him the light." When scholars of these contrasting
frames of mind encounter one another, it is clear which one is
likely to win the debate.

Linguistics in the University

61

The philosophical linguists have often preferred to establish their cre

dentials by polemic; but the polemic is directed against their own prede
cessors as much as the ethnographers, whom they are more likely simply
to ignore. At times such polemic can reach epic if not epidemic propor
tions, and the resulting misrepresentation of scholars in the field is not
easily corrected. We should not forget that it has taken five hundred years
to correct the misinterpretations of medieval scholarship by the early hu
manists, for whom medieval linguistics was one of the prime targets,
with the result that it was largely ignored until the second half of the
present century. The fiercest attacks, remarkably, often came from people
who today seem hard to distinguish from those they were attacking; as
Walter Ong said of Peter Ramus, his contemporaries saw him as the be
ginning of something totally new, whereas today he appears rather as the
culmination of what was there before him.
In any grand shifts of perspective, those involved soon lose conscious
ness of what they are replacing; and a new mythology quickly surrounds
whatever went before. Hockett characterized such changes in the recent
history of linguistics several years ago in a famous address to the Linguis
tic Society of America entitled "Sound Change." The mythology created
in this way is often very subtle and requires years of patient study and
documentation to set straight. But I think it is important that it be set
straight; and linguists, whose subject is so often at the center of major
intellectual controversies, whose repercussions go far beyond the study of
language, have a special responsibility in this regard. It is refreshing to
find many linguists now taking part in the historiography of the disci
pline and reexamining some of the received notions about the past. The
recently published volume Towards a History of Phonetics (Asher and
Henderson 1981) contains some excellent examples, such as Albrow's
paper, "The Kazan School and the London School," and Catford's "Ob
servations on the Recent History of Vowel Classification."
It would be disingenuous to suggest that the task is simply one of re
placing black with white; it goes without saying that the issues are more
complex than that. Nevertheless it is a fact that major distortions occur
in the course of reality-transforming polemics of the kind that have been
all too familiar in the linguistics of the recent past. The question of ideo
logical involvement, however, is more than merely a matter of discharg
ing a debt to one's predecessors by setting the record straight; to do this is

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M. A. K. Halliday

no more than to credit them with the intelligence and honesty we expect
others to assume in ourselves. More cogently it is a task of looking objec
tively into the covert assumptions that lie within particular linguistic the
ories and approaches. Let me cite as an example a phenomenon to which
linguistics is especially prone and has been throughout its history: ethnocentrism. This is always an ideological trap; but it is especially seductive
with nonethnographic approaches to cultural phenomena. And language
is a cultural phenomenon.
Every year I try to teach first-year students of linguistics the nature of
writing and writing systems. The available literature is scanty and tends
to present writing in the naivest evolutionary terms, as one grand con
spiratorial design to produce the Roman alphabet. One standard work
has a genealogical tree showing the evolution of writing systems, and I
need not tell you what is blooming proudly at the top. In fact there is so
little work by linguists on writing systems that I suspect that linguistics
has not yet reached the stage of bringing to consciousness the uncon
scious knowledge about language that must be there, in our collective
gut, for writing to have evolved at all.
Of course, linguistics only begins when languages are reduced to writ
ing and people begin to think about the nature of what it is they are writ
ing down. Naturally they start by thinking about their own language. In
any case this is what provides the immediate impetus and context for lin
guistic research; the preservation of ancient texts is a typical motive. So
Greek linguistics was concerned with Greek, Roman linguistics with
Latin, Indian linguistics with Sanskrit, and Chinese linguistics with Chi
nese. In this way the foundations are laid and a methodology and a meta
language hammered out. In medieval Europe, however, a major shift of
orientation took place: the grammar was still a grammar of Latin, but
Latin was nobody's mother tongue and it was now couched in terms that
suggested that the categories themselves were universal. In the Port Royal
grammar of the seventeenth century, which inherited this tradition,
French replaced Latin as the ideal language; and now it was presented as
ideal in the everyday sense of the termthat is, as the highest state of a
language, and thus explicitly as a model for a universal grammar. But at
this point there was a return to ethnographic concerns, with languages
from all over the world coming into the field of vision of European lin
guists; and since French did not enjoy, even in the eighteenth century,
such an unchallenged cultural dominance that everyone else could be per-

Linguistics in the University

63

suaded of its superiority, a more particularist view prevailed, culminating

in the work of Boas, in which it was explicitly recognized, first, that all
languages differed, and second, that all languages had an equal claim to
legitimacy.
In the second half of this century, however, there was a resurgence of
ethnocentric universalism in linguistics, this time with English in the star
role. In the rationalist, so-called Cartesian linguistics of Chomsky, all lan
guages came to look like pale copies of English. Not in the naive Latinate
way in which nineteenth century colonels, consuls, and missionaries had
assigned pluperfect subjunctives to Chinese and Swahilifictions like
these are quite untheoretical and can be easily seen throughbut in
more subtle ways based on abstract notions like rule-ordering and cate
gories such as definiteness. These ideas can always be made to work but
would not have entered the picture, or would have entered it very dif
ferently, if the language had been being described in its own terms and
English had never existed.
Naturally, in our attempts at explaining language we seek generaliza
tions; and one obvious question to ask, given the diversity of human cul
tures, is what all human languages have in common. This is not the only
interesting direction in which to look; we can learn a great deal by asking
what a language has in common with other semiotic systems, what a
child's protolanguage has in common with animal communication sys
tems, and so on. But there is always a danger of procrusteanism, and it
does no harm to adopt a more particularist approach. I would like to see,
for example, an Australian aboriginal language described as if no other
language had ever been described before; and then, as an exercise, a contrastive study of English undertaken using the same categories. Many of
the features that we think of today as universals, while they are unlikely
to be demonstrably false, are nevertheless depicted through European
eyes, rather in the same way that the symbols of the LP.A. show European
sound patterns as the norm, requiring more and more diacritics as one
moves away to other parts of the world.
It seems fairly clear that the development of writing, and subsequently
the development of written languages and literate speech communities,
have had a significant impact on the evolution of the languages con
cerned; and we need to understand the effect that being written down
will have on previously unwritten languages. Yet very little is known
about the interrelationship between writing and speech. It is clear that

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M. A. K. Halliday

the two forms of English, written and spoken, have rather different dy
namics and embody different kinds of complexity. Consider these two
texts:
(a) In the early days, when the engineers had to find a way across a
valley, which had a river running through it, they used to build a
viaduct; lots of these viaducts were built, made of masonry and
with numerous arches in them, and many of them became very
notable.
(b) In bridging river valleys, the early engineers built many notable
masonry viaducts of numerous arches.
The second is a sentence taken from a book on railways written for
children; the first is my translation of it into the spoken mode. I have pre
served the lexical items of the original, to highlight the fact that the sig
nificant difference does not lie in the choice of words.
If we compare the two, we see that the written version is lexically dense
but grammatically simple: that is, it has a large number of content words
per clause, but a simple construction of clauses. The spoken word is lexi
cally sparse but grammatically complex. If I had allowed the vocabulary
to change, that would have differentiated the lexical density still further,
since the words of the written version would have been not only more
tightly packed but also of lower frequency; e.g., masonry would have
been replaced by brickwork, notable by famous.
This is typical of the difference between spoken and written English.
Spoken English tends to display less complexity in the vocabulary pat
terns but greater complexity in its sentence structures. I have been mak
ing this point, and illustrating it, on and off for nearly twenty years now;
but it goes so strongly against what people have been led to believe that I
know I shall have to go on saying it for some time to come. It can be
expressed metaphorically by saying that the complexity of the written
language is crystalline, while that of the spoken language is choreographic.
The two modes are not always exactly translatable, despite our as
sumption that they are the same system underneath. What does "many
notable masonry viaducts of numerous arches" actually mean if repre
sented in the spoken mode, where it is necessary to tease out the relation
ships among the various processes involved? Written English tends to
neutralize certain types of grammatical distinction, such as that between

Linguistics in the University

65

defining and nondefining modifierspartly because of its simpler sen

tence structure, partly because it does not represent intonation and
rhythm, and partly because it uses more grammatical metaphors. My col
league Charles Taylor, in his 1979 study of the difficulties presented by
the language of high school textbooks, reported that in many instances
his subjects found a text with longer sentences easier to read than a com
parable text with shorter ones; perhaps because the longer sentences em
bodied more explicit grammatical information about the relationships
among the concepts involved.
Of course, not all written texts are in the written language, and not all
spoken texts are in the spoken language. The distinctions I have referred
to are general tendencies; there are many intermediate degrees, along
these two dimensions, and many other variables besides, relating to the
whole range of registers, or functional varieties, in the language. Never
theless these are real differences, related to the amount of planning and
monitoring that is associated with the discourse process. Writing and
speaking are in an important sense different ways of knowing; they pro
mote different semantic styles, give different records of experience, and
present different means for organizing reality. Each is better suited to
conveying a different kind of message.
It seems to me that this is an important area for semiotic research
based on a solid foundation of linguistics; and its educational implica
tions are considerable. Many teachers know it already and have an intui
tive grasp of what is better put over orally and what is more effectively
learned through reading. But the complementarity of the two modes of
learning is neither explicit enough, nor well enough understood, to be
incorporated into standard theory and practice in the curriculum of the
classroom. It has a particular significance for communities just embark
ing on literacy programs, or on long-term language planning, and for
all communities in relation to their political, legal, and other social
institutions.
What I have been discussing is just one rather specific example of an
area that needs researching. Even after thirty years of tape recorders there
has been surprisingly little study of large amounts of spontaneous speech;
I have been investigating natural speech on and off for about twenty
years, and I know how much there is to investigate. Most of my time in
this field has been spent in constructing a grammar that will work for

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M. A. K. Halliday

spontaneous speech as well as for other modes of discourse, and that is

just a beginningor even a prerequisite for a beginning. There is work
for hundreds of linguists on the differences between speech and writing,
and this is only one of many aspects of linguistic research that would be
of value to teachers and educators, who in turn are only one among many
groups of consumers for whom linguistics has something to offer, and
from whom it has something to learn.
At the beginning of our present epoch, certain scholars were engaged
in the search for "universal language and a real character": a general
semiotic and a notation for representing human knowledge, as it was at
the time and as they predicted it was going to becomemen like Timo
thy Bright, Cave Beck, George Dalgarno, and John Wilkins in England,
and their contemporaries in other countries of Europe. They would not
have thought of what they were doing as linguistics, even if the term had
existed at the time; their whole aim was to transcend language and re
place it with something better. But if we look closely at their preoccupa
tion with language, we can gain considerable insight into the structure of
knowledge at the time, and find pointers to the directions that scientific
and philosophical investigation would be likely to take. In our own time
the structure of knowledge is very different. What can a department of
linguistics and semiotics tell us, by examining comparable texts of today
(knowledge representation systems in artificial intelligence, for example,
or discussions at the bar during a scientific conference), about the ideo
logical and metaphysical trends of the futureif not for the next epoch,
which is rather a lot to ask, at least for the remainder of the one that is
just coming to an end?

REFERENCES

CITED

Asher, R. E., and Eugnie J. A. Henderson, eds. 1981. Towards a History

of Phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Culler, Jonathan. 1976. Saussure. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins.
Hockett, Charles F. 1965. Sound change. Language 41 (2): 185-204.
Ong, Walter. 1958. Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue. Cam
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Sampson, Geoffrey. 1980. Schools of Linguistics: Competition and Evo
lution. London: Hutchinson.

Linguistics in the University

67

Taylor, Charles V. 1979. The English of High School Textbooks. Can

berra: Australian Government Publishing Service (ERDC Report
N o . 18).

Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1956. Language, Thought and Reality: Selected

Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

CHAPTER

Lessons from American

Indian Linguistics

Mary R. Haas

In my view the field of linguistics has fallen upon hard times in recent
years. As linguists we seem to lack focus, to be unsure of what we should
be doing. The fact that academic jobs are not opening up in the number
that they were fifteen years ago has exacerbated the problem. But the sit
uation in the job market is by no means the worst problem facing stu
dents. More serious is uncertainty about the direction of the field. In its
floundering attempts to acquire a satisfactory orientation, linguistics has
assumed the coloration of a wide spectrum of fieldsanthropology, psy
chology, philosophy, and many others. Since these other fields are also
extremely volatile at the present time, linguistics as a whole gains little in
its search for a sense of direction. While the field has gained many new
and even valuable insights in its attempt to find a proper orientation, it
lacks cohesiveness. Each linguist seems to be moving in his own direc
tion. This is particularly hard on students, since they need to have some
sense of where the field is headed; today one finds that many do not.
Well, don't get your hopes up; I'm not about to propose the ultimate
solution. The quagmire is too deep for that. But I would like to mention a
few things that we might begin to think about. Perhaps we should start
with the question all of us are constantly asked. A new acquaintance asks
what your occupation is. You reply you are a professor. Professor of
what? Professor of linguistics. You hope that will be the end of it. But it
never is. Next comes the dreaded question: what is linguistics? For an
impressive but succinct answer one is likely to fall back on some such

Lessons from American Indian Linguistics

69

phrase as "the scientific study of language" (as in the generally excellent

Collins English Dictionary [1979]). The American College Dictionary
(as of 1960) gives more detail: "the science of language, including among
its fields phonetics, phonemics, morphology, and syntax, and having as
principal divisions descriptive linguistics, which treats the classification
and arrangement of the features of language, and comparative (or histori
cal) linguistics, which treats linguistic change, especially by the study of
data taken from various languages." (You can tell this was written in the
1950s.) Then there is Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
(1962) with this definition: "the study of human speech including the
units, nature, structure, and modification of language, languages, or a
language."
In the main part of the definition, two dictionaries speak of "lan
guage" and one of "human speech." This fact and some other features of
the definitions lead us into one of our major problems in thinking about
the nature of our subject. It seems to me that our thinking is often mud
died by our failure to make a sharp distinction between the study of lan
guage and the study of languages. It seems to me that if we were to main
tain that linguistics is the study of languages (or, serially, one language
and then another language), we could come closer to establishing an
identity that distinguishes our focus from that of anthropology, psychol
ogy, philosophy, and other fields. This does not mean that we would have
to cut ourselves off entirely from these other kinds of problems, but
rather that we could learn to deal with first things first. In other words, a
student's primary task should be to learn to analyze and describe a lan
guage. Moreover, this is not to be treated as a trivial task. Although a
semester's study of "a particular language" is very valuable, some one
language should preferably be studied over a considerable period of time.
One other thing is that this should be a language other than one's na
tive languageeven better, a language unrelated to one's native lan
guage. Notice how this contradicts one of the principles that was so
heavily stressed a few years ago, namely that only a native speaker could
analyze his own language. Of course information must come from a na
tive speaker, but the above restriction also limits knowledge. We gain in
sight from the outside looking in as well as from the inside looking out.
It has been emphasized that we should first study languages, not lan
guage. Particulars should precede generalizations; generalizations can
obliterate particulars, giving a false perspective. Similar problems arise in

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Mary R. Haas

other areas. The search for universal grammar is fine, but it must not
override or obliterate particular grammars.
What, you may ask, has this got to do with American Indian lan
guages? At this point in our discussion, the significant fact is that these
languages are unwritten languages. In order to study them it is necessary
to encounter them head-on. One way to do this is to attempt to learn the
language as a child wouldby learning to speak first. In this way, one
might become a native speaker. But the acquisition of knowledge for sci
entific purposes can be accomplished in other ways. One can argue about
all kinds of methodological problems, but for purposes of study, material
in the language must be recorded. The most important point here is that
translation should be used primarily as an opening wedgeI mean the
presentation of an English phrase or a sentence that is to be translated
into the unwritten language. Attempts to acquire valid information about
an unwritten language by the translation method alone leads to un
satisfactory results. Translation gives translation, not the target language.
Therefore most of the material collected should be acquired entirely in
the target language. This can later be translated into the mediating lan
guage where necessary. There are always traditional stories and myths
that are actually the equivalent of literature in a written language. Con
versation and informal speech can also be recorded. Syntactic structure
can never be properly understood by translation from the mediating lan
guage to the target language.
Now why stress what must appear to be the obvious? In recent years
there has been much interest in carrying out cross-linguistic studies.
These are interesting but generally give dubious results unless each lan
guage has been very thoroughly studied first. To round up twenty speak
ers of twenty languages in order to study a particular structuresay the
imperativeacross these twenty languages would give only the most su
perficial results. This is because the relations between the various types of
syntactic structures must be understood within each language first; then
and only then can they be satisfactorily used in cross-linguistic study. But
the amount of time required to do this is phenomenal and there is the
ever-present temptation to use short cuts.
The fashion in the study of languages is continually changing, and the
study of American Indian languages is no exception. In addition, there is
a multiplicity of situations. There are still languages whose speakers are
largely monolingual (in parts of Mexico, of Brazil or Peru, for example).

Lessons from American Indian Linguistics

71

There are also languages whose speakers are bilingual (or multilingual):
two Indian languages, or an Indian language and a European language.
At most linguistic boundaries this is a common situation. Then there are
situations where the native language is no longer the principal language,
and this is common among many Indians of the United States. Large
numbers of these Indians are interested in acquiring their ancestral lan
guage, and this poses a whole new set of problems; yet in many such situ
ations the recordings of linguists in the early part of the twentieth cen
tury have provided the corpus of material that can be used for such a
purpose.
But here, I think, the most important question arises: why record, why
study, why preserve American Indian languages (especially when there
may be only a handful of speakers)or, for that matter, unwritten lan
guages of any quarter of the globe? I have to confess, on my part, to hav
ing an old-fashioned view of this. In recent times we have become greatly
concerned with preserving plants and animals in danger of extinction
in other words, with the preservation of endangered species. So in the
same way, I would like to see the preservation of endangered languages
and this would include all unwritten languages. Now of course it is an
impossible dream to think we can record all of them or even many of
themor that we can record the ones that are most endangered. Still, if
this were included as one of our goals, more would eventually be done. I
would also like to see linguistic materials collected in a manner relatively
free from a particular theoretical bias. Impossible? In absolute terms, yes.
Indeed, we all know that if there is no other bias, we have the bias of our
own language or others we have studied. On the other hand, there is the
ever-present danger that we will find what we think we are looking for, or
we will fail to find what, through a preconceived notion, we think is not
there.
So, impossible as it is, I would like to see as many languages as possible
recorded, and this is a never-ending task because languages keep chang
ing. In other words, we should emphasize languages first. Now, what
about language, as opposed to languages? Our insights about language
must be constantly fed by our insights in regard to particular languages.
And the two must not be confused.
Now what is new about all of this? Nothing really. And yet if we look
back over the years we can see what, in a small way, we may have accom
plished toward the goals I am speaking of.

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Mary R. Haas

Fifty years ago unwritten languages were generally considered unwor

thy of recognition. Only what was written down in the form of a tradi
tional literature was considered to merit study. Today that has changed in
remarkable ways, and unwritten languages are being studied as never be
fore. Today it is generally recognized that unwritten languages can be
treated comparatively (comparative linguistics) in the same way that
written languages cana point that Bloomfield was at great pains to es
tablish. I suppose the greatest thing we have accomplished is to show that
unwritten languages are languages. That is quite remarkable when we re
member that we are still having a hard time realizing that people of other
cultures are people. What I hope to do here is present some thoughts that
might lead to more cohesiveness in our field. Sometimes I think we are
like that legendary man who jumped on his horse and rode off in all di
rections. We seem too anxious to settle all kinds of linguistic problems
for all time. We have a tendency to become doctrinaire. In many quarters
we have become too theory-oriented. Theory should be the handmaiden,
not the goal.
The complexities and difficulties that are involved in gathering all the
data that we should have seem almost insurmountable. And yet to have
that as the core of our work might help to bring more cohesiveness and
purpose to our field.

Part Three

INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE

The papers by Robert Longacre, Ilse Lehiste, and Charles Fillmore are
excellent examples of empirically based approaches to the study of lin
guistic structure and its uses. Longacre considers the need to include a
discourse portion in a grammar of speech production; Lehiste studies the
structural consequences of phonetic duration in speech; and Fillmore
considers the structural characteristics of a linguistic model sufficient to
account for the ways in which language users decode, interpret, or con
strue the meaning or message communicated in speech. Not only is
Lehiste's study focused on the opposite end of language from the other
two, but Longacre's study centers on encoding texts into sound and Fill
more considers decoding texts from sound. The topics are different, even
disparate.
At close examination, however, a number of parallels can be seen. All
three papers presuppose a linguistic structure that is used for both encod
ing messages into sound and decoding messages from sound. That is,
Longacre and Fillmore consider basically the same structural level of lan
guage, even though Longacre's focus is on one use of the structure (en
coding) and Fillmore's is on the other use (decoding). Similarly, though
Lehiste's work is rooted in phonetics, she studies both encoding and de
coding processes, beginning at the level of functional phonetics and
stretching up, even to the level of clauses or sentences in a paragraph/
discourse context. The structure presupposed in all cases is one used for
the processes of translation between sound and meaning and between
meaning and sound. It is a structure that is not itself generative. It is a
unified structure that exists distinct from the encoding and decoding pro
cesses. It works in either direction. And finally, it is distinct from but not
separate from both its use and its manifestations, whether these be pho
netic or semantic.
This view of language has one more characteristic that is perhaps use
ful to consider. Both the structure and its consequences are subject to
empirical test and subsequent verification or invalidation. Longacre's em
pirical verification can be found in his success in translating texts from

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Introduction to Part Three

ancient Hebrew, Lehiste's in her predictions and phonetic measurements,

and Fillmore's by the fact that his system accounts for both the success
and failure that real language users exhibit in their attempts to under
stand and interpret or construe particular messages.
Fillmore has applied the results of cognitive studies to the predictions
made by the Chomsky-Bierwisch layered idealization model of semantic
interpretation and shown that the two are incompatible. Thereupon he
discarded the layered idealization model and detailed the characteristics
necessary for a model that will account for interpretation and for the
real-life abilities and shortcomings of the speaker as well.
Under Fillmore's approach, there is no need to integrate text semantics
and lexical semantics, because there is no analyst-imposed separation be
tween them. No texts, whether a single word in length or the length of a
Russian novel, contain meaning; they evoke meaning. They are func
tionally related to meaning via linguistic structure, and the ChomskyBierwisch separation between the two types of semantics turns out to be
merely an artifact of the descriptive model.
Longacre takes Fillmore's proposals a step further with considerations
of linguistic structure that require the inclusion of a discourse grammar
as part of the overall structure. Moreover, Longacre wants the clause to
be responsive to the discourse grammar. "Discourse," he says, "can take
the lid off the clause." He is undoubtedly correct.
Longacre, who usually characterizes himself as an OWL (Ordinary
Working Linguist), begins with a mundane task: translation. This activity
is basically the same as hearing, understanding, and giving as exact a
paraphrase as possible, except that the paraphrase produced is not in the
same language as the text that is heard and understood. His empirical
test concerns the accuracy of the translation. What he has discovered is
that no sentence or clause is properly understood (and hence translated)
out of its context in paragraph or discourse. We must know not only the
sentence but also its function in context. The same restriction works for
encoding sentences: they are never produced in a vacuum, outside all
possible contexts. Thus paragraph and discourse structure are necessary
parts of language.
Lehiste, first and foremost a phonetician, has studied unexpected dura
tion in speech: where it occurs and how it is perceived. She fits the phone
tic facts with the psychological. As a phonetician, she must look upon
phonology as functional phonetics. For her, a prime consideration in the

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77

judgment of a phonological model must be whether the model can di

rectly account for the phonetic facts, both in production and perception.
Her view is the diametric opposite of those transformational-generative
phonologists, who insist that a phonological theory/model should be de
veloped without reference to phonetic data. Her view leads to a phonol
ogy that is hierarchical and not purely segmental. It is a view that is
compatible with the hard facts concerning the medium in which linguis
tic communication most often takes place.
What unifies these papers, then, is a common philosophy, a common
approach to the study of language structure and function, and a common
belief in the empirical verification of scientific prediction and conclu
sions. All three linguists work to describe all the relevant data that comes
their way, and they are constantly seeking out more. Not one of them has
spoken here as a basic theoretician. In this way they have set a sterling
example that we should not hesitate to emulate.

CHAPTER

Reshaping Linguistics
Context and Content

Robert E. Longacre

We seem to find ourselves at a pause in major theory building, or at least

at a stage of development where no one theory seems to be making a suc
cessful bid for dominance in our field. Among the diverse trends that
characterize the contemporary linguistic scene, there is interest in the
textvariously called text linguistics or discourse grammar. There is
also a strong indication of interdisciplinary developments. And there is
an all-time high interest in semantics. What 1 want to suggest in this pa
per is that we proceed along the path that we are already facing; that we
help reshape and restructure linguistics into a new linguistics that will be
responsive to the context of items and constructions, that will at the same
time vigorously explore content as well as form, and that will give up
defensive attempts to delimit the field from tangent disciplines. In brief,
what we want and what we need, I feel, is a linguistics that will be
context-responsive, content-oriented, and somewhat open-ended.

Context-responsive
We will no doubt continue to do much, if not all, of what we have always
done in grammar, lexicon, and phonology. We are going to have to con
cern ourselves not just with phonemes or distinctive features, but also
with groupings of such units into syllablesas was, for example, the
basis of Hockett's 1955 Manual of Phonology. But beyond the syllable,

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Robert E. Longacre

which people are beginning grudgingly to recognize as a relevant unit in

phonological structure, there also lie stress groups or phonological feet,
and larger rhythmic units on up to the phonological clause, phonological
paragraph, and phonological discourse (Mayers 1978, Eunice Pike 1976).
There is furthermore a correlation of certain phonological features with
styles. And the styles, along with the phonology, grammar, and lexicon of
discourse, fit into the varied situations in which a discourse is spoken or
written.
It has been long recognized by compilers of dictionaries, that is, by
anyone who is compiling something more than a bilingual word list, that
the meaning of words is largely a function of item interplaying with con
text. I do not at all mean to deny referential linking to something "out
there." I am simply pointing out that ultimately the meaning of a word is
largely a matter of its use in linguistic context, as well as the various
things to which it may refer out in the real world.
Both phonology and lexicon are going to continue to be important to
the linguistics of the future. I hope, therefore, that they will continue to
develop in relation to discourse. I believe, however, that we need to
be especially concerned that the grammars of the future be discourse
responsive.
Mary Haas has elsewhere described the earlier grammars of American
Indian languages, especially those produced under her direction by
graduate students. It became almost traditional in the grammars of this
period to group somewhat loosely the words of a language into nouns,
verbs, and particles. We then may well ask ourselves, what will the struc
ture of discourse have to do with the study of nouns, verbs, and particles
as presented in the grammars of an earlier period?
As far as particles go, the linguist investigating a language that is un
familiar to him repeatedly encounters what my colleague Joseph Grimes
has called "pesky little particles" and that I have referred to as "mystery
particles" (Longacre 1976a). The thing that is interesting about such par
ticles is that the language helperthe source of your information, the
native speakerknows exactly when he wants to use a particle and when
he doesn't. He will suggest to you, "I want it here, I don't want it there."
But he is totally helpless to define the function of the particle or even to
give you a very good hint as to what it is supposed to be doing. Almost
always in such a situation, the particle has a discourse function. It may
serve, for example, to mark the main line of the discourse versus subsidi-

Reshaping Linguistics

81

ary lines. Or it may mark a specially important part of the main line. Or
it may highlight a bit of background information. Or it may serve to indi
cate the relative importance of certain participants in a story. It may even
have to do with the marking of a great moment or peak of the story.
There are, in fact, so many subtle functions of mystery particles that it
would be difficult to summarize them satisfactorily here. They are highly
language-specific.
Then take the matter of verb morphology. A few years ago I went to
hold a workshop in Colombia on languages of Colombia, Ecuador, and
Panama. The very first day that I interviewed people who were to partici
pate in the workshop, Linda Howard walked in with a rather sizable
write-up of the morphemes of the verb morphology of the Camsa lan
guage, which she had been studying. It was a quite impressive piece of
work, done according to structuralist requirementsthat is, she had
marshaled the various morphemes, their allomorphs, and the pertinent
morphophonemic variations of them. Howard tossed it on the desk in
front of me and said, "Well there it is. What do I do with it?"
Now unless we are to believe that the Camsa ancestors up in their high
Andes valleys invented new forms of the verb for their diversion while
huddling in their huts to keep warm at night, we have to believe that the
verb forms of Camsa have some motivation in the structure of the lan
guage. Before the end of the workshop, Howard had begun to discover
some of the discourse functions of the various tense/aspect/mode forms
of Camsa and was well on the way toward rationalizing many features of
the verb structure in terms of discourse functions (Howard 1977).
Then take the matter of noun phrases and of their relative complexity.
What purposes do the more complex and involved noun phrases serve?
Often we go on for page after page of text but find that only at certain
points within the textperhaps at the introduction of certain partici
pants, props, or themes, perhaps when there is some important change in
their statusare the more complex and involved noun phrases used to
indicate such entities.
And take the matter of pronouns as substitutes for nouns. In English,
pronouns are fairly straightforward anaphoric substitutes for nouns. A
paragraph may begin with John Smith and proceed to refer to him as
him, his, or he in the balance of the paragraph. It comes, however, as
somewhat of a shock to a person who speaks and studies such a language
as English that pronouns in this sense do not exist in many languages. In

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Robert E. Longacre

Japanese, for instance, pronouns have no such anaphoric function as in

English. Commonly, in fact, a noun that indicates participant, prop, or
theme is simply referred to by zero anaphora in the balance of the stretch
of discourse that it dominates. Pronouns are used only for special contrastive, pointing functions. Actually, these so-called Japanese pronouns
have nothing to do with the things we call pronouns in English. Consider
also the use of such pro-verbs as do and be. When is the lexical content
washed out of a verb and a substitute verb like do or be used? Again we
must have recourse to discourse functions.
Beyond the matter of nouns, verbs, and particles and their interplay in
discourse, there are many other features of the individual components of
discourse that need to be explained via their discourse functions (Longacre 1979a). Consider, for example, the incidence of locative and tem
poral expressions in the clauses of a discourse. Locative expressions often
provide a sort of physical trajectory in certain kinds of discourses, espe
cially in travelogues. Temporal expressions can provide progressive time
horizons in a story. Rather than such expressions simply being plus or
minus features of the component clauses of a story, they are strongly con
ditioned by the needs of the story as a whole. Take also the matter of
relative and adverbial clauses. When does one stop to tack a relative
clause onto a noun? When does one take what could be an independent
clause and reduce it to a relative clause? Again, this has to be responsive
to discourse features. Take also the matter of adverbial clauses: when
clauses, while clauses, in-order-to clauses, because clauses, although
clauses, if clauses. When are such clauses used and what are their dis
course functions? Consider also the matter of alternative word orders. In
a language that has a basic SVO order, there may be conditions under
which that order permutes to OVS, or even OSV. Again such matters are
conditioned by the texture of the discourse of which they are a part.
Similarly, of course, in a VSO languageas we're going to shortly be il
lustrating via biblical Hebrewthere are specifiable discourse conditions
under which instead of VSO we get SVO or OVS. Likewise, the matter of
active or passive in the component clauses of a discourse is certainly re
sponsive to the thematic requirements of the discourse as a whole, as are
also considerations of when to use cleft, pseudo-cleft, and left disloca
tion. Nomalization and topicalization are discourse-responsive as well.
A variety of concerns cluster around the sentence (as a unit more com
plex than the clause). Take the matter of relative sentence length and

Reshaping Linguistics

83

complexity, including choice among sentence patterns. For instance,

Hemingway's style is characterized by short sentences, isn't it? Actually,
it would be more correct to say that his style is characterized by short
sentences until he decides to use a long one. Thus, for example, in the
"Short, Happy Life of Francis McComber," toward the end of the story,
there are two inordinately long sentences, each of which runs about half a
page. The second such sentence occurs at the point where the hero meets
his death at the hands of his wife, who fires a gun into the back of his
head. Here sentences of unusual length and complexity serve to mark the
high point of the story (Longacre 1976^.223-25). Take the matter also
of quotation sentences, especially variation in the formulas of quotation.
We shall illustrate a few of these from biblical Hebrew later on. But we
have to explain not only variation in quotation sentences, but also the
very use of reported speech and dialogue in discourse. Then the whole
matter of sentence introducers, sentence adverbs, and other sequence sig
nals are the very mortar of discourse cohesion and as such are obviously
responsive to discourse conditions. And finally, as we are beginning to
study paragraph structure and learn something of the kinds of para
graphs and the relative length and complexity of such units (Longacre
1979c), we find that these also are responsive to discourse functions. It
would be just as wrong to construct an isolated paragraph grammar as it
would be to construct an isolated sentence grammar.
In respect to all these issues, we are seeking explanations of what the
items or constructions are doing. And such explanations must become
part of the training of the OWL, i.e., of the Ordinary Working Linguist.
I hope to illustrate some of the matters mentioned above via ongoing
materials that are emerging from my text linguistic analysis of the Joseph
story in the Hebrew scriptures (Genesis 37:3948). In order to make
this work more available to the general linguist, I have transliterated the
Hebrew alphabet into a Latinized transliteration following the standard
transliteration suggested by the Society for Biblical Literature.
One of the high points of the Joseph story occurs at 41 : 14ff., a point
that I have called "peak." One of the things we find out early about dis
course structure, especially about narrative discourse, is that routine nar
ration is not the same as narration at peak. There are special features of
narration at peak (Longacre 1976b:217-31). At this point in the Joseph
story, we have a very special sandwich structure that combines features of
a thematic or didactic peak with features of an action peak. It is not at all

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Robert E. Longacre

uncommon in a story to have both a thematic peak and an action peak.

In the thematic peak, someone talks, or two people dialogue, discuss, air,
or preach certain fundamental themes of the story (Woods 1980). But in
an action peak, we have fast moving events that crowd one on the other.
As I have said, the structure found here is essentially a sandwich. There is
a stretch of didactic material sandwiched between two sections of fastmoving action verbs. The framework is, of course, narrative, but reported
speech will be found in most cases to be something besides narrative.
The main thing I want to illustrate is the role of differing sorts of verbs.
Differing tense, aspect, and moods of biblical Hebrew are focal in various
sorts of discourse. Although the framework of the Joseph story is narra
tive, there are embedded portions that are explanatory, predictive, and
hortatory. I want to show how different verb forms figure in the different
parts of the story. We want to see what is main line in each embedded
type, and what is off-the-line in such types. We're going to asume that
everything in this part of the Joseph story can be subsumed into the four
broad categories of narrative, expository, predictive, and hortatory.
All the verb forms in 41:14 start with w, a fused form of the word for
'and.' 1 And all of them involve a y, which is the third-person masculine
prefix in a tense that is called the imperfect. Formally Hebrew has two
main tenses, the so-called imperfect, which is a prefixai tense, and the
perfect, which is a suffixal tense. But the special tense form that is the
backbone of Hebrew narrative discourse is not really either of these. It
looks like the prefixai tense with a fused form of the word 'and' on the
front and a doubling (under most conditions) of the initial prefix of the
verb stem. Actually the tense has a very old history in this branch of Se
mitic and is not really an imperfect at all, but is what could be with all
fairness called a preterite. It has been variously termed in the grammar of
Hebrew "waw-conversive with the imperfect" and "waw-consecutive
with the imperfect." I will refer to it henceforth simply as preterite. Here
there is a spate of six preterites in succession, picturing Pharaoh sending
for Joseph, calling him, bringing him out of the dungeon, having him
shaved, having his clothing changed, and bringing Joseph to Pharaoh.
Here the spate of preterites serves to picture the haste with which Joseph
is vaulted from the dungeon to stand before Pharaoh himself and to get
his chance for an audience with the greatest monarch of his time.
If we look at verse 41:37 and continue through 45, we get for the most
part another such spate of preterites. Nonpreteritesthat is, other tense/

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85

aspect/mode formsoccur within quoted material; there is, further

more, a nonpreterite occurring in the last clause of 41:43. A little bit
about that later. Again, this is an unusually long sequence of preterites
with a minimium of interrupting material. It pictures the exaltation of
Joseph to the lordship of all Egypt; verses 4143 probably picture the
installation ceremony proper. Thus, in 41:41 Pharaoh pronounces the
words of installation, "I hereby set you over all the land of Egypt." And
then various actions are performed, such as giving Joseph the signet ring,
arraying him in proper clothing, putting a gold chain around his neck,
and causing him to ride in the second chariot of the land. This set ends
with the summary in 41:43, "Thus he set him over all the land of Egypt."
In that this is a summary verb, we find that the verb is not the usual pret
erite, but is a different tense form, wntn, 'And thus he set him over all
the land of Egypt.' This is the regular conjunction and with the infinitive
of the Hebrew verb and not the special preterite form with the fused and.
It is off the main line of narrative by virtue of being a summary reference
to what has preceded; it does not advance the story line.
One thing more is to be noted about the clauses that are preterites and
are on the main line of Hebrew narrative discourse. Clauses that are on
the main line are strictly verb-initial clauses. No noun may precede a pret
erite; not even the Hebrew word l 'not' may precede a preterite. If we
change the basic order VSO to some other order in which there is a noun
in front of the verb, or if we make the verb negative, then we have to
resort to the perfect instead of to the preterite. So here we find that not
only are we getting discourse conditions that govern the use of certain
tense/aspect/modal forms one against the other, but also that alternative
word orderings are beginning to sort out for us as well. In fact, in
Hebrew narrative, verbs that have clauses with an initial verb that is a
preterite are on the main action line of the story. Clauses that have an
initial verb other than a preterite indicate some kind of preparatory or
secondary action. Clauses that have an initial noun step off the event line
to introduce, highlight, or contrast some participant, prop, or theme ver
sus some other such entity in the discourse.
Between these two stretches of rapid fire preterites, which picture
Joseph being taken out of prison into the presence of Pharaoh and later
his exaltation to the lordship of Egypt, we find the conversation that
Pharaoh had with Joseph. The first exchange in 41:15 16 is rather brief.
Pharaoh greets Joseph, tells him that he's had a dream that cannot be in-

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Robert E. Longacre

terpreted, but that he's heard that Joseph is able to interpret dreams.
Joseph replies, "It isn't in merather God will give Pharaoh a satisfac
tory answer." Then in the second exchange Pharaoh recounts his dream,
and Joseph makes a long speech interpreting it. Actually the speech has
three parts that could be paraphrased, "I am explaining to you the dream
in order to predict famine in order to urge you to institute a food conser
vation program." In brief, "I am explaining X in order to predict Y, in
order to urge on you Z." This division correlates with three points of
Joseph's speech, the first (41: 25 28) being expository, the second (41 :
29 32) being predictive, and the third (41:33 36) being hortatory.
Each of these points is expounded by an embedded discourse that has
structure other than that of the narrative framework that surrounds it in
the story.
Here we look at the material in the first point of Joseph's three-point
speech to Pharaoh, i.e., in verses 25 28 of this chapter. Joseph is here
explaining the meaning of Pharaoh's dream. Explanation in Hebrew, as
in any language for that matter, is essentially a static matter. In fact, the
backbone of explanation in Hebrew expository discourse, as illustrated
here, involves clauses that do not even contain a verb; they are verbless,
i.e., nominal clauses. Note for instance in 41:25, halm par'oh ?ehd
h? 'The dream of Pharaoh, one it,' i.e., "The dream of Pharaoh is one"
(but there is no be verb in the Hebrew text). Notice also 41:26, seba'
part hattobot seba' sanm henna . . . 'The seven good cows, seven years
they.' That is, "The seven good cows are seven years." Again we have a
clause that is completely nominal and has no verb. The verse continues
weseba 'hassiblm hattobt seba ' santm henna 'And the seven good ears,
seven years are they.' Verse 26 ends with a repetition of the theme: hlm
'ebd h? 'The dream is one.' To be sure, there are conditions in which be
would enter into such clauses as we have just seen, especially if a past
equivalence or past existence were predicated rather than present equiva
lence or present existence. But this does not materially change the pic
ture. The verb be used in existential and copulative functions is static in
all languages, not just in Hebrew.
We move now to the second point of Joseph's speech to Pharaoh, that
in 4 1 : 2932. Here we find that once more we have verbal clauses on the
main line of this short embedded discourse, but the verbal clauses no
longer have preterites, the form that is used in telling a story. Rather we
have on the backbone another tense/aspect. We have the perfect, i.e., a

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87

suffixal verb form, with the word and on the front and again a strict VSO
or at least verb-initial word order. Just as in narrative discourse, where
we have preterites in VSO clauses, with the proviso that rotation of any
noun to the front necessitates resort to another tense/aspect form; so here
in predictive discourse, something similar is at work. There are special
predictive verbs, such as the word and plus the form of the suffixal tense
in strict VSO clauses, with the proviso that any rotation to the front of
the clause necessitates resort to some other verb form. Again we are able
to correlate discourse constraints about the choice of tense/aspect with
further discourse constraints on word order. So we have in 41:30 (fol
lowing the explanatory introduction that I call "setting") three BU's
(buildups): weqm . . . 'and will raise up (or will come) seven years of
famine after them'; weniskah . . . 'and will be forgotten all the abun
dance in the land of Egypt'; 41:31 wkill . . . 'and will ravage the fam
ine the land.' The balance of the paragraph contains other materials that
are subordinate to the main sequence that we have just seen exemplified.
Finally, the last point of Joseph's speech is hortatory. This last point, by
the way, is introduced by we'att 'and now.' Just as the word now in En
glish has some important discourse functions, so the similar 'att in
Hebrew has certain discourse functions as well; it often serves to intro
duce the main points of a discourse or an important transition within a
discourse. The backbone of hortatory discourse in Hebrew, what we
could call the line of exhortation, is carried by three forms: the impera
tive, which is second person; the cohortative, which is first person; and
the jussive, which is third person, as in "Let George do it." It is possible
to mitigate hortatory discourse by substituting predictive forms such as
those just illustrated for hortatory forms. It is also possible to use a jus
sive in place of a cohortative in deferential speech according to which one
does not address a monarch in second person, but must address him as
"Your Majesty," or something to that effect. So in this speech Joseph does
not address Pharaoh directly in the second person, but uses jussives ("Let
Pharaoh do so and so"): in 4 1 : 33 we'att yer? par'h . . . 'And now let
Pharaoh look out, a discerning and wise man,' and in the second part of
this verse wsth . . . 'And let him set him over the land of Egypt'; and
then in 4 1 : 34 ya'aseh . . . 'And let Pharaoh act'; wyapqd . . . 'And let
Pharaoh appoint overseers over the land'; in 4 1 : 35 wyiqbs . . . 'And
let them gather all sorts of food'; and further on in that verse, wyisbr
. . . 'And let them heap up grain under the hand of Pharaoh.' All these are

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Robert E. Longacre

on the main line of exhortation. We find interspersed with these forms

other material that is off the line of exhortation, such as the verb in what
I call the "result" part of an embedded paragraph in 41:34: "And they
shall double tithe the land of Egypt." Here a predictive form gives a result
of Pharaoh's carrying out the suggestion that Joseph has made to him.
Likewise in 4 1 : 35, in another constituent that I also call "result," we find
wsmr 'And they will guard it,' which is again a predictive form. In
4 1 : 36 in another "result" we find not a predictive form but rather a pr
fixai (imperfect) form that is negated.
I have tried to show in this brief excursus into biblical Hebrew (cf. also
Longacre 1979b) how the verb morphology of a language can be ex
plained relative to different discourse types. I've also tried to begin to ex
plain variations in word order in terms of function on or off the main line
of certain discourse types. I've also tried to account for the occurrence of
clauses that have no verb at all, i.e., nominal clauses, as being a feature of
explanatory discourse, or little embedded pieces of explanation in other
discourse sets. This is only a brief indication of ongoing work. There are
many other concerns, only one of which I will illustrate here: namely the
matter of variation in the structure of quotation formulas.
In Hebrew, a quote can simply be introduced with wayy?mer 'he
said,' watt'?mer 'she said,' or the like. Although such a verb form is
complete in itself, it is possible to use a noun to further specify the
speaker or a noun or pronoun to specify the addressee, or some combina
tion of these. That is, only the speaker may be so specified, only the ad
dressee, or both speaker and addressee, in which case the addressee may
be a pronoun or may be a full noun. I have a tentative list of seven rules to
describe conditions for this variation. But here we have an unusual for
mulasee 41:15, 16, 17, 25, 39, 41, and 44, whereby both the speaker
and the addressee are specified by nouns in every instance. Usually this
pattern introduces a dialogue but gives way to other patterns in the in
terior of a dialogue. What is unusual here is the retention of full speci
fication of both speaker and addressee throughout the dialogue and
throughout the ensuing installation ceremony that follows the dialogue. I
think that retention of the full specification of both speaker and ad
dressee throughout the dialogue is a device on the part of the narrator to
avoid subordinating either one to the other, as he might do if he were to
mention one to the exclusion of the other, or if either were reduced to a
pronoun. Pharaoh is the ruler of the world's most powerful state of the

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89

day. But Joseph, on the other hand, stands before Pharaoh as one of the
most worthy of the twelve patriarchs who were to be progenitors of the
clans of Israel. The narrator is reluctant to subordinate Joseph to Pharaoh
by reducing him to zero or to a pronouneven though in picturing
Joseph's dialogue with Pharaoh, Joseph's speech is necessarily deferen
tial. Here we have overriding sociolinguistic considerations having to do
with the narrator's viewpoint, and these concerns dictate the use of the
unusually full quotation formulas throughout the dialogue.
If we accept that the study of connected discourse is vital to the under
standing of almost every feature of language, what impact should this
have on the profession of linguistics? To begin with, I think we must in
sist that text consciousness should be part of a basic education of all
OWLs, that is, Ordinary Working Linguists. The fact of context should
always be at least in their peripheral vision. Then we will also need text
linguists, who will be a group of specialists within linguistics, a group
whose specialty is the analysis of text. Increasingly, linguistics is being
fragmented into many specialties and subspecialties; certainly among
those specialties the text linguist should be prominent in the future. But
beyond the OWL and the text linguist will be the function and work of
the text theoretician. Text theoreticians will be persons interested in the
interdisciplinary study of text. They may or may not proceed from a lin
guistic base. If they are to work successfully, they may well need to team
up with others in tangent disciplines and work with them.

Semantics
Linguistics must continue the high level of interest in semantics that we
have at present. I have two main concerns here; one is that semantics
should not be a separate concern, but should be a pervasive concern. The
tie between what we say and how we say it may be much closer than most
of us think. Second, I am concerned about the ambiguity of the very term
semantics. Semantics is sometimes used to mean what I would call the
"meaningful underside of grammar." For example, case relations seem to
be finer and more consistent elaborations of such surface structure dis
tinctions as subject, object, indirect object, location, and so forth. Like
wise, notional categories such as coupling, contrast, temporal sequence,
temporal overlap, causality, purpose, conditionality, and the like (see

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Robert E. Longacre

Longacre 19761b:98 164) seem to be more consistent counterparts of

such surface structure distinctions as coordinate sentences (marked with
and), antithetical/adversative sentences (marked with but), conditional
sentences (marked with if... , then), and various combinations of main
clauses with adverbial clauses. All notional categories such as those listed
are distinct from surface structures, yet they encode within them. They
are probably a kind of universal catalogue of notions that are essential to
talking.
But aside from all this is the world of referential semantics. What do
we mean by dog? book? social order? justice? fantasy? yak? igloo?
moon? incinerator? love? hate? embezzle? enlighten? This is the world of
the dictionary/encyclopedia (which I regard as merging into each other
and in principle indistinguishable). In regard to the dictionary/encyclope
dia, each speaker has his very own, with consequent disparity between
the dictionary/encyclopedias of differing speakers of the same language
and with consequent complications in the communication process be
tween such speakers.
These observations have some rather strong and relevant implications
for the use and understanding of language. For one thing, we need to re
member that language is always language in usethat is, except for the
highly artificial and abstract expedient of putting sentences on the board
in the linguistics classroom, where sentences are isolated from a linguistic
context. Second, language is always elliptical. Texts are never complete;
nothing is ever completely spelled out. If we were to try to spell out every
thing, we would find that life is too short, or that at any rate people
would get very bored with the type of discourse that we were giving
them. Third, grammatical and textual signals are often omitted, provided
that the referential structure is clear. Take for instance "cases" in Finnish
and Japanese, i.e., the surface structure marking of the functions of
nouns that occur with verbs. I have heard recently from speakers of both
of these languages that under conditions of informal conversation the
case-marking particles are often omittedand omitted rather freely.
Maybe one of the reasons why classical Latin evolved so quickly into a
family of languages without case is that case was not, in fact, used all that
regularly in informal speech anyway but was often omitted. In fact, case
marking in Latin may have been rather characteristic of formal and writ
ten than of informal speech. Take also the absence of the agent marker in
some colloquial uses of ergative languages.2 In fact, elicitation (rather

Reshaping Linguistics

91

than the study of spontaneous speech) may be part of the problem here.
The assumed regularity of markers of case, markers of the agent in ergative languages, and so forth, may reflect more the regularity of data in
our notebooks than the regularity of language in actual use.
Sequence signals in the paragraph and discourse are in many languages
parallel to these concepts. For example, an easily recognizable structure
that can be called an antithetical or adversative paragraph occurs in most
languages. It falls into two halves with the incidence of a marker such as
but, however, or on the contrary in the first sentence of the second half.
But occasionally such paragraphs are written or spoken without any for
mal signal at all. This also holds for paragraphs that have so or therefore
marking result, also or moreover marking addition, etc. Maybe when all
is said and done, the omission of such signals in paragraphs gives no
more cause to reject the grammatical structure of the paragraph (Longacre 1979c) than the omission of case markers in certain languages gives
reason for rejecting the grammatical structure of the clause.
How do intelligible speech acts occur under conditions of ellipsis and
omission of formal markings such as we have indicated above? We may
well raise a question: how do intelligible speech acts occur at all? How is
the speaker able to understand what is intended? Here we have to assume
a very heavy reliance of the hearer or reader on the contents of his own
dictionary/encyclopedia, and by implication equally heavy reliance of the
speaker or writer on what he believes to be found in the dictionary/ency
clopedia of the hearer or reader. In fact, a very delicate matter in both
spoken and written communication is the attempt to gauge how much is
in the knowledge bank of the person being addressed verbally or in writ
ing. Often the speaker or writer overestimates what is in a person's
knowledge bank and therefore does not manage to communicate with
those with whom he is trying to communicate. An opposite error is when
one talks down or writes down to his hearers or readers and thereby
arouses their antagonism by patronizing them.
We must also raise the question of how the language user's dictionary/
encyclopedia is organized. We know that the person processing a dis
course has access to material in his storage systems with more or less
ease. But we have all had the experience in which we believe that there is
something in our storage that we can not quite call up at a given moment.
We have also had the opposite experience, in moments of idle reflection,
of having something arise spontaneously from the storage banksome-

92, Robert E. Longacre

thing that we had all but forgotten. So the question arises, if the diction
ary/encyclopedia is not organized in some arbitrary wayas we orga
nize, for instance, a dictionary/encyclopedia by alphabetizationhow is
it organized? Is it organized as a hierarchy or as a network? This may be
one of the polarities we need to transcend. Maybe the organization of
our encyclopedia has both hierarchical and network features in it, i.e.,
not only are there categories that go down from the most inclusive to the
most specific, but there also are many sideways connections that help us
to go more directly from one part of the referential ensemble to another.
The Pikes have spoken for several years now of the referential hier
archy (Pike and Pike 1977), and we speculate here as to some of the pos
sible levels in that hierarchy. First of all we note that there are close, im
mediate contextual associations: cheese and crackers; books and papers;
cats and dogs; good and bad; lock, stock, and barrel. These are almost
equal to single lexical items. Second, there are collocational expectancies,
such as the famous saying of Firth that part of the meaning of dark is its
collocability with the word night, while part of the meaning of night is its
collocability with the term dark (Firth 1951). We can expect dark and
night to occur somewhat in the same context; and in effect, their frequent
occurrence in such contexts leads to their mutually defining each other.
Or take such expectancy chains as kill, cook, and eat; or set out, travel,
and arrive; or get engaged and get married; die and be buried. In these
instances we are able to fill in the final verb of a series once we have the
preceding ones. This might be on a level a bit higher than the first one
indicatedmore that of collocational expectancies. A third level might
be that of the lexical entry and script (see Jones 1980). For instance, those
of us who live in such countries as the United States typically have a carmaintenance entry that involves inspections, repairs, checking the tire
pressure and battery, oil change, lubrication, and so forth. In the light of
the presence of this entry, all of us can interpret such a dialogue as the
following:
Question: Why didn't Mary come this morning?
Answer: Her battery was dead.
Here we assume that Mary has a car; the car has a battery; cars can't run
if the battery has no charge; Mary couldn't come without a car. And all
this is largely the result of our having a car-maintenance entry. Or take
the following:

Reshaping Linguistics

93

Remark: We went into that restaurant and sat for half an hour and
absolutely nothing happened.
Question: Didn't a waiter come around to take your order?
Here we assume a restaurant script (as was pointed by van Dijk 1977 and
others) in which we assume that one of the early things that happens in
going into a restaurant is that a waiter will come and take our order. Here
there is a potentially rich area being investigated by Schank, Abelson,
and others via artificial intelligence (Schank and Abelson 1977).
All this helps us to analyze text or portions of texts on any grammati
cal level. Without referential semantics we cannot even have consistent
grammar. If there is as much ellipsis and omission as seem indicated, then
again and again and again, all the way from clause to discourse, we fill in
the grammatical pattern because of what we know about the referential
meanings of the text. It has sometimes been said that all grammars leak,
and they may be a lot more leaky than we think. Grammar in the end
without referential semantics may prove to be impossible, whether ana
lyzing a paragraph or a simple one-clause sentence.
For a further kind of referential semantics, namely the macrostructures
of particular discourseswhat a discourse is all about (which I will not
have time to go into here)suffice it to say that such macrostructures,
germinal ideas, or overall plans of discourses are legislative respective to
the various parts, so much so that we could say as I have frequently said,
"The whole is in the parts contained, the parts are by the whole
constrained."

Interfaces with other disciplines

If what we have said is even approximately an accurate accounting for
the facts of the linguistic situation, then there is no hiding placeno in
sulation of our discipline from tangent disciplines such as sociology, psy
chology, logic, philosophy, music, art, and artificial intelligence. In the
course of our research we sometimes come up to an interface with an
other discipline. We have here the choice of either discontinuing inves
tigation along fruitful veins of research or exploring the interface. Of
course, in exploring the interface, we may need the help of a colleague
from another discipline. And of course, we may feel somewhat uncom-

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Robert E. Longacre

fortable to find ourselves, as it were, beyond our depth. Nevertheless, if it

is a choice between staying in the comfortable confines of our discipline
and ultimately stultifying further development or going beyond such con
fines, we are better off to go on to the interface. When all is said and
done, it is better to find answers to intriguing questions than to gratify
our sense of neatness and order by remaining docilely within the selfappointed limits of our own discipline.

N O T E S

1. The whole unit 41:1445 is considered to be a compound dialogue

paragraph, composed of two exchanges (41:15-16 and 41:1736) that
relate in an overall unity. 41:14 consists of material that leads in to the
dialogue, while 41:3445 consists of material that steps down from the
dialogue. The lead-in and step-down each have the structure of a narra
tive sequence paragraph whose component units are BU's (buildups). Pre
dictive sequence paragraphs (as in 41:29-32) also consist of BU's, but
the main-line forms of narration and prediction differ as described above.
2. Eleanor Ochs reports this in reference to Samoan.

R E F E R E N C E S

C I T E D

van Dijk, Teun A. 1977. Text and Context: Explorations in the Semantics
and Pragmatics of Discourse. New York: Longman.
Firth, Rupert J. 1951. Modes of meaning. Essays and Studies 125. Lon
don: John Murray.
Grimes, Joseph. 1976. The Thread of Discourse. The Hague: Mouton.
Hockett, Charles. 1955. Manual of phonology. Memoir 11 of Interna
tional Journal of American Linguistics.
Howard, Linda. 1977. Camsa: certain features of verb inflection as related
to paragraph types. In R. E. Longacre and E. Woods, eds. Discourse
Grammar: Studies in Indigenous Languages of Colombia, Panama,
and Ecuador, Vol. II. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Jones, Larry. 1980. Pragmatic aspects of English text structure. Doctoral
dissertation. University of Texas at Arlington.

Reshaping Linguistics

95

Longacre, Robert E. 1976a. Mystery particles and affixes. Papers from

the 12th regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Chi
cago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
. 1976b. An Anatomy of Speech Notions. Lisse: Peter de Ridder
Press.
. 1979a. Why we need a vertical revolution in linguistics. In The
Fifth LACUS Forum 1978. Columbia, S.C.: Hornbeam Press.
. 1979b. The discourse structure of the flood narrative. Journal of
the American Academy of Religion 47(1)Supplement B:89133.
. 1979c. The paragraph as a grammatical unit. In Talmy Givn,
ed. Discourse and syntax. Syntax and Semantics 12. New York: Aca
demic Press.
Mayers, Marvin. 1978. Discourse Phonology. Dallas: Summer Institute
of Linguistics.
Pike, Eunice. 1976. Phonology. In Ruth M. Brend and Kenneth L. Pike,
eds. Tagmemics vol. 1: aspects of the field. Trends in Linguistics,
Studies and Monographs 1. The Hague: Mouton.
Pike, Kenneth L., and Evelyn Pike. 1977. Grammatical Analysis. Dallas:
Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Schank, R. C , and R. P. Abelson. 1977. Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Under
standing. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Press.
Woods, Francis. 1980. The interrelationship of cultural information, lin
guistic structure, and symbolic representations in a Halbi myth.
Doctoral dissertation. University of Texas at Arlington.

CHAPTER

The Many Linguistic Functions

of Duration

Ilse Lehiste

One of my longstanding complaints and criticisms of most current lin

guistic theories is the fact that they ignore the temporal aspects of spoken
language almost completely. If duration enters into phonological theory
at all, it gets segmentalized: [+long] may be included among the distinc
tive features of a segment. And this is where linguistic theory stopsim
plying that duration can have only a segmental function, i.e., that all du
ration can do is differentiate between short and long segments.
Those phonologists who have some acquaintance with experimental
phonetics have devoted considerable attention and effort to the study of
temporal aspects of spoken language; unfortunately this seems to have
had little or no impact on the theoreticians, who continue to manipulate
segmental distinctive features to the exclusion of anything larger than a
segment. I have said it before, and I will say it again: phonologists ignore
phonetics at their own peril. The peril is that they may operate in a fic
titious abstract sphere that has no connection with reality. In this ab
stract sphere, linguistic constructs are timeless. In the real world, spoken
language enfolds itself in time.
Duration has many linguistic functions, and these functions are real
ized at several levels. In English, for example, duration serves as a pri
mary perceptual cue distinguishing between inherently long and short
vowels and voiced and voiceless fricatives. (For a summary of linguistic
uses of segmental duration in English, see Klatt 1976.) At this level, one
might still claim that duration is a segmental property. However, even at
the level of segments, the role of duration is much more complex than

The Many Linguistic Functions of Duration

97

that. Let us consider the role of vowel duration in establishing the voiced
or voiceless nature of the postvocalic consonant. (For a recent review, see
Wardrip-Fruin 1982.)
We have known for decades that in English the syllable nucleus preced
ing a voiceless consonant is shorter than the same syllable nucleus pre
ceding a voiced consonant. Perceptual tests with synthetic stimuli have
shown that vowel duration is a sufficient cue for determining the percep
tion of voicing in a final consonant: if you synthesize a sequence like /jus/,
with a voiceless /s/, and lengthen the duration of the vowel, listeners will
begin to hear /juz/, even though there is no voicing present in the frica
tive. Thus the duration of the vowel contributes to the perception of a
segmental feature, namely voicing, in the adjacent consonant.
One might still claim that we are operating at a segmental level; it is the
length of the preceding segment that determines the perception of pres
ence or absence of a distinctive feature in an adjacent segment. But we
need not remain at the segmental level. The segmental feature of voicing
in a postvocalic consonant can also be signalled by the suprasegmental
feature of fundamental frequency applied to the preceding vowel.
I have carried out several studies concerning the influence of funda
mental frequency on the perception of duration (Lehiste 1976, 1977a;
Lehiste and Shockey 1980). These studies were inspired by an observa
tion that I had made in the course of my investigation of accents in Serbocroatian. Serbocroatian has both long and short vowels and so-called
rising and falling accents. The long falling accents actually carry a risingfalling Fo pattern, while the so-called long rising accents are more likely
to be manifested as monotone. The curious observation was that on the
average, the syllable nuclei with long falling accents were some 2030
msecapproximately 10 percentshorter than the syllable nuclei with
so-called long rising accents. I conjectured that the speakers might be
aiming for perceptual equivalence, that they were producing the syllable
nuclei in such a way that they sounded equal in duration. If this is true,
syllable nuclei with changing Fo must sound longer than monotone sylla
ble nuclei of equal duration.
I designed an experiment to test this hypothesis (Lehiste 1976). The
test materials were pairs of synthetic vowels having the formant structure
of [a] and carrying different Fo patterns. One member of the pair was
always level; the other was either level, falling-rising, or rising-falling.
The peak (or valley, respectively) was changed in semitone steps from
monotone to an octave; thus the smallest change in the rising-falling pat-

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Ilse Lehiste

Percent of "longer" judgments of members of five pairs of stimuli

bearing monotone, rising-falling, and falling-rising Fo patterns.
terns was 120127120 Hz, and the largest change was 120240120
Hz. Falling-rising patterns started from 240 Hz, dropping ultimately in
the middle to 120 Hz. Rising-falling patterns were paired with monotone
stimuli at 120 Hz, and falling-rising patterns with stimuli at 240 Hz. I
chose these patterns because I wanted to know whether greater Fo change
would produce greater perceptual lengthening.
There were three durations: 270, 300, and 330 msec. The interval be
tween the members of the pair was 50 msec, and between pairs, 5 sec
onds. The order of presentation was counterbalanced; each pair occurred
twice. Twenty-five listeners decided, for each pair, which of the two stim
uli was longer.
Figure 1 summarizes the results. When the two stimuli were monotone
and of equal duration, the first one was perceived as being longer. When
the second member of the pair carried a changing Fo pattern, this bias
was overcome and the second was perceived as longer. Changing Fo on
the first member of the pair enhanced the perception of length when the
change was rising-falling, but the effect was nonsignificant when the Fo
pattern was falling-rising (and actually in the opposite direction).

The Many Linguistic Functions of Duration

DURATION
AND
PATTERN

99

CORRELATION
NEGATIVE

POSITIVE

Correlation between listener judgments and the magnitude of change

within the changing member of the stimulus pair.
I calculated the correlation between listener judgments and the magni
tude of change within the changing member of the stimulus pair. The cor
relation was calculated with reference to the first member of the pair. Fig
ure 2 summarizes the results.
A positive correlation indicates that an increase in the magnitude of

100

Ilse Lehiste

the change was accompanied by an increase in listeners' judgments that

the first member of the pair was longer. A negative correlation indicates
the opposite: an increase in the magnitude of the change was accom
panied by a decrease in listener judgments that the first member was
longer.
The correlation was significant at the .01 level in three cases out of
twelve: level-rising at 270 msec, level-falling at 300 and 330 msec. In all
three cases, the second member was the one with changing fundamental
frequency. Changes in the first member of the pair produced no signifi
cant correlations between magnitude of change and listener responses.
Figure 3 gives the responses given to individual tokens of these three
types. As becomes apparent from the chart, the generally rising slopes of
the curves are primarily due to low judgments given to the one semitone
change and relatively high judgments given to the octave change. In
between, the pattern of responses is not systematic. Let me recall here
that in the other nine types (out of twelve), the correlations were not
significant.
It seems that listeners were basically responding to the presence of
change in Fo, but that it was largely an all-or-none phenomenon: greater
change did not produce systematically greater numbers of "longer" judg
ments. This suggests a parallel to an earlier study by Fry (1958), in which
he attempted to establish the acoustic correlates of stress. Fry found that
in word pairs like SUBject-subJECT, the syllable that carried a pitch in
flection was judged as stressed. Here, too, it was the presence of the
change that produced the "stressed" responses rather than its magnitude.
Duration is another stress correlate in English. I began wondering
whether the pitch change serves as stress cue directly, or perhaps in
directly, first causing the perception of greater length, and then the
interpretation of length as stress. This possibility of indirect influence
prompted me to investigate whether the effect of lengthening, produced
by changing Fo, is carried over into perception of voicing of the final con
sonant in English monosyllabic words (Lehiste 1977a).
It is, of course, well known that lengthening of the syllable nucleus is a
sufficient cue in English to signal that the consonant following the sylla
ble nucleus is voiced. If perceptual lengthening is produced by changing
Fo, then syllable nuclei of the same duration may be perceived as fol
lowed by a voiceless consonant when produced on a monotone, and by a
voiced consonant when produced with a pitch inflection.

The Many Linguistic Functions of Duration

101

Listener responses to stimulus pairs with three Fo patterns plotted as a

function of the magnitude of change in the second member of the pair.
Used by permission of the Journal of Phonetics (1976), p. 117,
Academic Press Inc. (London) Ltd.
The test was carried out with synthetic speech. Test stimuli were pro
duced at Haskins Laboratories for the word pairs bat-bad and beat-bead.
There were ten durations for each set, ranging in 24 msec steps from 396
to 180 msec. The consonants were simulated by appropriate formant
transitions; lengthening took place during the steady state of the vowel.
The stimuli were produced both on a monotone and with a falling Fo.
Each stimulus occurred twice on a randomized test tape. Twenty-five sub
jects had to identify which member of the pair they heard. The results for
the bad-bat pair are presented in Figure 4. As is apparent from the chart,
the listeners' perception shifted from bad to bat between stimuli 5 and 6
for the monotone set, and between stimuli 8 and 9 in the changing Fo set.

102

Ilse Lehiste

Identifications of synthesized stimuli as bad or bat, depending on the

duration of the stimulus and its fundamental frequency contour. The
solid line connects points representing responses to stimuli with level
Fo; the dashed line connects points representing responses to stimuli
with falling Fo.Used by permission of the Journal of Phonetics (1980),
p. 4 70, Academic Press Inc. (London) Ltd.

This amounts to a difference of 72 msec. Stimuli 6, 7, and 8 were heard as

bat with monotone Fo, and as bad with changing Fo.
There appears to be no direct connection between pitch change on a
syllable nucleus and the voicing of a following consonant. I reasoned
therefore that the relationship is an indirect one: pitch change produces
an impression of greater length, and length is interpreted as voicing of the
postvocalic consonant.
Several other investigators have replicated and extended these results.
Pisoni (1976) likewise found that a stimulus with Fo change is perceived
as longer than a stimulus of equal duration produced on a monotone.

The Many Linguistic Functions of Duration

103

Derr and Massaro (1978) found, among other things, that changing Fo
contour is associated with significantly greater identification of the final
consonant as voiced. Somewhat less consistent results were obtained by
Rosen (1976, 1977a, 1977b).
The most recent paper in this series is Lehiste and Shockey (1980). In
this paper we extended the Lehiste 1977 study in two directions. The first
experiment was designed to test whether categorical labeling functions
are accompanied by categorical discrimination functions, and whether
the Fo contour plays a part in discrimination as it does in labeling. The
purpose of the second experiment was to find out whether the kind of
trade-off between Fo and duration that had been earlier found in labeling
is also a part of speakers' production strategies; whether production is as
categorical as labeling; and whether the average durations of the two
members of a word pair produced by listeners in response to synthesized
stimuli differ depending on the Fo contour applied to the stimulus.
A set of eleven synthesized words spanning the bead-beat continuum
was used in the experiments. The stimuli, again synthesized at Haskins
Laboratories, consisted entirely of formant patterns. Three formants
were spaced so as to simulate the vowel [i], and made to sound like beat
or bead by supplying them with a bilabial-type transition at the begin
ning and an alveolar-type transition at the end. No voiced closures or re
leases were synthesized. The durations of transitions remained constant
throughout while the steady-state vowel length was changed in 20-msec
steps in such a way that the total duration of the stimuli ranged in ten
steps from 150 to 350 msec. The stimuli were synthesized twice, once on
a monotone and once with a falling Fo contour. There were thus twentytwo stimuli included in the tests.
Sixteen subjects were first presented with each of the twenty-two stim
uli in randomized order and asked to judge whether they heard beat or
bead. This was a replication of the 1977 experiment with a different set
of stimuli. The results appear in Figure 5. As before, the labeling was
found to be categorical: the crossover from beat to bead occurred at an
approximately 45 msec shorter duration with falling Fo. The shift from
the perception of beat to the perception of bead occurred between stim
uli 6 and 7 with level fundamental frequency, and between stimuli 3 and
4 with falling Fo.
The discrimination and production tests are of less significance in the
present context. To summarize the results briefly, we found no evidence

104

Use Lehiste

Identification of synthesized stimuli as bead or beat, depending on the

duration of the stimulus and its fundamental frequency contour. The
solid line represents level Fo; the dashed line represents falling Fo. Used
by permission of the Journal of Phonetics (1980), p. 471, Academic
Press Inc. (London) Ltd.
of categorical discrimination, even though the labeling task had pro
duced categorical results. We also found that subjects were able to re
produce the stimuli in a fairly continuous fashion. The subjects differed
among themselves in this ability, and some subjects appeared to have
changed their criterion in the course of the experiment. Nevertheless
there were some subjects who showed a systematic difference between
falling and monotone stimuli in the inferred crossover in the repetition
task. One very consistent subject, for example, identified the monotone
stimulus of 250 msec as beat and in the repetition gave it a duration of
150 msec; she identified the falling 250 msec stimulus as bead, and in the
repetition gave it a duration of 3 60 msec.
It may well be that the perception of linguistically significant supra-

The Many Linguistic Functions of Duration

105

segmental continua is generally characterized by categorical perception

when the subjects are presented with a labeling task, but by noncategorical perception in a discrimination task. This may constitute one of the
characteristics of suprasegmental features in general.
But this is a little removed from my central topic, which is the many
linguistic functions of duration. What these experiments demonstrate is
the interaction of the suprasegmental feature of Fo change with the seg
mental duration of a vowel in determining the presence or absence of a
segmental feature, voicing, not in the segment whose duration and Fo
pattern are being manipulated, but in the following consonanta seg
ment that has remained acoustically unchanged. And I should like to em
phasize that neither the duration of the vowel nor the Fo pattern applied
to it constitute distinctive features according to any distinctive feature
theory that I am familiar with. In fact, no distinctive feature theory is
capable of explaining the results that I have just summarized.
There are, of course, many languages in which duration can be inde
pendently contrastiveat the segmental level as well as at the level of syl
lables and words. (A survey of evidence available before 1970 is given in
Lehiste 1970.) Let me present just one example illustrating the operation
of duration at the level of monosyllabic words. Figure 6 contains average
durations of the segments in three Estonian words, saag-saak-sakk, pro
duced approximately one hundred times each by two native speakers of
Estonian. The segments are identical except for duration; the three-way
contrast is achieved by changing the relative durations of the segments
within a word that has approximately the same duration, regardless of
the distribution of duration among the segments.
Similar results have recently been achieved in the analysis of German
word pairs like baden-baten and lagen-Laken. Kohler (1981) shows that
in such word pairs, the duration of the vowel 4- plosive sequence remains
approximately constant; in a word like Laken, the vowel is shorter and
the consonant is longer, while in words like lagen, the relationship is re
verseda longer vowel is followed by a shorter consonant. Kohler used
electromyography of the musculus palatoglossus and the m. levator veli
palatini in his study, and postulated a simple neural program for the con
trol of the macrotiming and for the two movement patterns within it.
According to traditional analyses, German plosives are called fortis
and lenis; Kohler showed that the fortis-lenis distinction is not exclu
sively associated with the consonants themselves (that presumably carry

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Ilse Lehiste

Average durations of segments in three Estonian words, produced

approximately one hundred times each by two informants.

the distinctive feature of fortis or lenis), but that the distinction between
words containing a fortis or lenis plosive consists of a different distri
bution of the durations of the consonant and the preceding vowel.
The studies just reviewed show that the linguistic significance of dura
tion is not restricted to a single segment: rather, what appears to be sig
nificant is the relationship between the durations of adjacent segments.
There exists also a great deal of evidence for a durational relationship
between a segment and its position within the word in which it appears.
It has been found that, for example, in Dutch and Swedish the duration
of a syllable nucleus decreases as the number of syllables that remain to
be produced in the word increases. Nooteboom (1972) analyzed non
sense words spoken in isolation by Dutch informants and observed dura
tions of long vowels ranging from more than 200 msec in monosyllables
to about 100 msec in the first syllable of a word of four syllables. Lind-

The Many Linguistic Functions of Duration

107

blom and Rapp (1973), analyzing nonsense words uttered in isolation by

speakers of Swedish, found that the durations of stressed long vowels
ranged from about 350 msec in monosyllables to about 200 msec when
three syllables followed. Lindblom and Rapp also found a significant
lengthening of the final syllable. I obtained similar results for English
(Lehiste 1975a).
In my study I used four sets of test words. Two of the sets were similar
to those used by Lindblom and Rapp and by Nooteboom. These lists
consisted of monosyllabic, disyllabic, and trisyllabic words made up of
the syllables big and bag in one list and bick and back in the other list.
All possible stress placements were represented. The lists contained 34
words each. The third list contained 34 English words, selected to match
the described nonsense words with regard to syllable length and stress
placement. The fourth list contained ten words in which the unstressed
syllable be was combined with the stressed syllables big and bag in disyl
labic and trisyllabic words, and 10 similar words in which the unstressed
syllable be was combined with the stressed syllables bick and back. All
four lists together contained 122 words. Three informants read the lists
in three different frames (which I will describe later). Figures 7 and 8
summarize some of the results.
Figure 7 gives average durations of the base form bag, produced in
various positions and under different stress conditions. The chart shows
that the stressed syllable nucleus is longest in a monosyllabic word and
shorter in polysyllabic words; it shows likewise that all other factors
being equal, a syllable in final position is longer than the same syllable in
nonfinal position. Figure 8 compares only stressed syllables. The chart
shows again that a stressed monosyllable is longer than a stressed syllable
in other positions, but within a disyllabic or trisyllabic word, the last syl
lable receives an extra increment of duration.
It is thus clear that the position of a syllable within a word determines
its relative duration. In planning this experiment, I was also curious
about whether the phenomenon is restricted to word level, or whether
the principle might apply at the level of sentences. With that question in
mind, I selected the three frames that were used in the experiment. There
was first of all a short frame, "Say . . . instead," and then two long frames
in which the test word appeared either near the beginning of the utter
ance or near its end. The first long frame was "Sometimes it's useful to
say the word . . . instead." The second long frame was "The word . . . is

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Ilse Lehiste

Average duration of the word bag produced as a monosyllable and as a

constituent of disyllabic and trisyllabic words, with and without stress.
Salzburger Beitrge zur Linguistik (197s) i,p. 90. Used by permission
of Gunter Narr Verlag.
sometimes a useful example." In the short frame and the first long frame,
the test words were thus at an equal distance from the end of the utter
ance. However, in the short frame they were preceded by one syllable and
in the long frame by nine syllables. In the second long frame, the test
words were preceded by two syllables and followed by nine syllables.
As regards the influence of the frames on the average duration of the
test words, the results were somewhat surprising (Lehiste 1980a). The
test words tended to be longest in the frame, "Say . . . instead." In this

The Many Linguistic Functions of Duration

109

Average duration of stressed syllable nuclei in monosyllabic, disyllabic,

and trisyllabic words. Salzburger Beitrge zur Linguistik (197s) 1,
p. 95. Used by permission of Gunter Narr Verlag.

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Ilse Lebiste

frame as well as the frame "Sometimes it's useful to say the word . . .
instead," the test words were followed by the same word, namely "in
stead." If the duration of the words depends on the number of syllables
that remain to be produced in the utterance, the test words should have
had the same duration in both frames. It seems, therefore, that the num
ber of syllables remaining to be produced within the utterance does not
fully determine the duration of test words.
In the frame "The word . . . is sometimes a useful example" the test
words were in a position in which nine syllables remain to be produced in
the utterance. If the original hypothesis holds, the test words should be
shortest in this frame. This, however, was not true; in fact there was very
little difference in the duration of test words in both long frames. I con
cluded that the duration of test words depends on the total duration of
the utterance rather than on the position of the test word within the ut
terance (except, of course, for absolute final position). The way the dura
tion of the test words interacts with the duration of the frames shows
clearly that the speakers integrate the test words into the utterance at the
level at which the time program for the whole sentence is generated.
Having investigated what happens to a sound when it is placed in vari
ous positions within a word, and what happens to a word when it is
placed in various positions within sentences of varying length and struc
ture, I started wondering what happens to a sentence when it is placed in
different positions within a paragraph. I first investigated this question in
a study reported at the Symposium on Dynamic Aspects of Speech Per
ception, held at the Institute for Perception Research at Eindhoven, The
Netherlands, in August 1975 (Lehiste 1975b). I started from the observa
tion that people communicate by isolated sentences only in exceptional
circumstances. A message is often long and complicated enough to re
quire that it be cast in paragraph form. Sentences within a paragraph may
be formally linked by the use of such devices as definite or indefinite arti
cles, deictic adverbs and pronouns, and sequence of tenses. It was my hy
pothesis that paragraphs also possess a suprasegmental structure that in
dicates the beginning and end of paragraphs and characterizes the body
of the paragraph. For example, I hypothesized that the intonation con
tour applied to a sentence produced in isolation (when it constitutes a
one-sentence paragraph) will differ from the intonation contour applied
to the same sentence in the beginning, middle, and end of a paragraph. In
other words, it is possible that a paragraph is characterized by an overall

The Many Linguistic Functions of Duration

111

intonation structure to which the intonation contours of its constituent

sentences are subordinated. Similar relationships may be expected to pre
vail with regard to timing and stress. A corollary hypothesis is that since
speakers and listeners share the same code, listeners are capable of decid
ing whether a sentence has been produced in isolation or as part of a
larger structure.
To test these hypotheses, I selected a paragraph consisting of three sen
tences, shown in Figure 9. The sentences were such that each could be
used in isolation, and each of the six possible orderings of the three sen
tences within the paragraph appeared equally possible. The sentences
had neutral emotional content, and were of the kind that one might easily
hear within the setting of a linguistics department. They were taken from
an article by K. L. Pike and were originally ordered as follows:
"(1) Language is a composite of form and meaning. (2) If a person tries
to study meaning without reference to the formal structure of language,
he may end up with no structuring at all. (3) Meaning does not occur in
isolation, but only in relationship to forms."
An example of a different order might be the sequence 231: "If a per
son tries to study meaning without reference to the formal structure of
language, he may end up with no structuring at all. Meaning does not
occur in isolation, but only in relationship to forms. Language is a com
posite of form and meaning."
These sentences were produced by a male native speaker of English
both in isolation and as paragraphs in the six possible orderings. A listen
ing test was prepared in which each sentence was isolated from its con
text and presented to listeners, whose task was to judge whether the sen
tence had occurred in isolation, or in initial, medial, or final position
within a paragraph. The recordings were analyzed acoustically to iden
tify the phonetic cues that might have contributed to listeners'
judgments.
One of the main findings was that sentences produced in isolation are
longer than the same sentences when they are part of a paragraph. Fur
thermore, the last sentence of a paragraph that had been read tended to
be longer in duration than the same sentence occurring in paragraphinitial or paragraph-medial position. This is directly comparable to the
behavior of words within sentences and syllables within words: recall
that isolated monosyllables were likewise longer than syllables within
words, the same words were longer when they were constituents of

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Ilse Lehiste

1. Language is a composite of form and meaning.

2. If a person tries to study meaning without reference to the
formal structure of language, he may end up with no
structuring at all.
3. Meaning does not occur in isolation, but only in relationship to
forms.
FIGURE 9.

Original ordering of three sentences contained in the studied paragraph.

shorter sentences than when they were constituents of longer sentences,
and final syllables were longer than nonfinal syllables.
Given the observation that syllables are longer when they are in final
position in a word, one might question whether they are longer precisely
for that reason, or whether there might not be some other causes. In a
large number of instances, the word boundary is simultaneously the
boundary of a higher-level unit of some kind, be it determined syn
tactically or phonologically. It might well be that observed word-final
lengthening is actually lengthening before some kind of boundary.
I prefer the term preboundary lengthening to the earlier term prepausal
lengthening, since it is broader and covers more instances. Prepausal
lengthening was used when it was first observed by Gaitenby (1965) that
syllables before a sentence boundary are considerably lengthened. Gait
enby worked with isolated sentences that are, of course, always followed
by pauses. Even in connected speech, a pause may frequently be present
at the end of a sentence. But syntactic boundaries within a sentence are
not normally marked by pauses, while lengthening may nevertheless be
noted; thus the term preboundary lengthening appears to me to be more
appropriate.
Preboundary lengthening has been observed at the boundaries of syn
tactic constituents of spoken sentences by several scholars, notably by
William E. Cooper. (For a summary of his various studies, see Cooper
and Paccia-Cooper, 1980.) I have carried out several studies of prebound
ary lengthening, relating it to the rhythm of the spoken utterance. (The
studies are summarized in Lehiste 1980b.) In this context, I would like to
review two studies dealing with the disambiguation of syntactic ambigu
ity (Lehiste 1973; Lehiste, Olive, and Streeter 1976).
In the paper published in 1973, I reported the results of an investiga-

The Many Linguistic Functions of Duration

113

tion involving fifteen ambiguous sentences, produced by four speakers,

and listened to by thirty listeners. Some examples might be the following:
"The hostess greeted the girl with a smile" (either the hostess smiled or
the girl smiled); "The old men and women stayed at home" (either the
men only or both the men and the women were old); "I know more beau
tiful women than Mary" (either I know women who are more beautiful
than Mary, or I know more women who are beautiful than Mary does).
The sentences were first read by four speakers from a randomized list.
Then the ambiguities were pointed out, and the speakers were asked
which of the possible meanings they had had in mind. The sentences were
then recorded twice again, the speaker making a conscious effort to con
vey one or the other meaning. Figure 10 illustrates the material that was

Broad-band spectrograms of three versions of the sentence "Steve or

Sam and Bob will come."

114 Ilse Lehiste

recorded and presented to listeners. The chart contains broad-band spec

trograms of the sentence Steve or Sam and Bob will come. The letters B
indicate that the original production was meant by the speaker to convey
the meaning I had designated as meaning B: "Steve or (Sam + Bob)." Un
derneath the original sentence is the consciously disambiguated version
of the same reading, followed by the consciously disambiguated version
expressing the other possible reading (which I had designated as meaning
A): "(Steve or Sam) + Bob."
Each sentence thus occurred three times: first with the meaning the
speaker had originally intended without trying to disambiguate, and then
with consciously attempted disambiguation.
The listening test revealed that not all sentences can be successfully dis
ambiguated; but for ten out of the fifteen sentences, the listeners per
formed at better than chance level. The set of successfully disambiguated
sentences consisted of those sentences for which difference in meaning
was correlated with a difference in syntactic bracketing. The sentences
that were generally not disambiguated have only one bracketing, al
though the constituents may bear different labels.
Figure 11 presents broad-band spectrograms of three versions of the
sentence German teachers visit Greensboro. The disambiguation score
for this sentence was 57.9 percent, which is not significantly different
from chance. The sentence has only one surface bracketing, although it is
ambiguous at a deeper syntactic level: the word German can either desig
nate the object of the verb "to teach" or it can constitute a modifier of the
noun "teacher." Whatever phonetic differences are present in the three
productions, they were insufficient for signalling this difference in the
meaning.
Of special interest are the cases in which the spontaneous version re
ceived a random score in the listening test, but the consciously disam
biguated versions were correctly identified. This made it possible to ana
lyze the means that the speakers had used to achieve disambiguation. In
every case, successful disambiguation was achieved when the speakers
had increased the interstress interval that contained the relevant bound
ary. For example, the production of the sentence "The old men and
women stayed at home" by speaker LS received 100 percent correct iden
tification for both meanings. When the meaning was "the old (men and
women)," men and women containing no boundary, the duration of the
sequence men and women was 690 msec; when the meaning was "(the

The Many Linguistic Functions of Duration

115

Broad-band spectrograms of three versions of the sentence "German

teachers visit Greensboro"
old men) and women," the sequence men and women containing a
boundary, the duration of the same sequence of words was 1225 msec.
The speakers would use several ways to achieve the same aim, namely
lengthening of the interstress interval; the most straightforward, of
course, was the insertion of a pause, but equally successful were other
means like lengthening of one or more segmental sounds preceding the
boundary, i.e., preboundary lengthening.
In a study jointly carried out with Olive and Streeter (Lehiste, Olive,
and Streeter 1976), we showed that increase of the interstress interval is a
sufficient boundary signal even in the absence of intonation and specific
segmental lengthening. We processed ten of the sentences used in my

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Ilse Lehiste

1973 study (those that had been successfully disambiguated) through an

analysis-resynthesis program, changed fundamental frequency to mono
tone, and manipulated systematically the duration of interstress intervals.
A listening test, similar to the one I had used earlier, was given to thirty
subjects. Disambiguation was achieved when the relevant interval reached
a certain duration, the actual value of which depended on the particular
sentence. I would like to emphasize here that we did not insert any
pauses; neither did we introduce prepausal lengthening. The interstress
interval was increased by increasing the duration of each sampling period
by the same factor; the durational relationships of the segments to each
other remained unchanged. Thus the disambiguation was produced
solely by increasing the interstress interval, and the results of that study
show that this is indeed a sufficient cue for signalling the presence of a
boundary.
My further studies of the relationship between syntactic and rhythmic
structure of English sentences lead to the postulation of a connection be
tween rhythm and syntax that operates in the following way (Lehiste
1977b). Speech is a rhythmic activity, as are most motor activities per
formed by human beings. Stressed syllables carry the greatest amount of
information; therefore, attention has to be focused on the stressed sylla
bles. This is facilitated by setting up an expectation as to when the next
stressed syllable is likely to occur. Producing sentences in such a way that
stressed syllables occur at regular intervals contributes to optimal percep
tion by the listeners, whose attention is cyclically directed to the points in
time at which the stressed syllables can be expected to be found (Martin
1972, Cutler and Darwin 1981). Furthermore, a disruption of the ex
pected patternnamely, the lengthening of an interstress intervalcan
be used to convey crucial information about syntactic structure: the
placement of a syntactic boundary. The syntactic structure of an English
sentence is thus primarily manifested in the timing pattern of that sen
tence when produced orally by a native speaker of the language.
My 1977 article has produced a number of responses, and one can
fairly say that the topic is presently being vigorously debated. Scott
(1980), for example, focused her study on the perception of phrase
boundaries. It is well known that phrase boundaries are often accom
panied by phrase-final lengthening. I had claimed in 1977 that listeners
judge a boundary to be present on the basis of the lengthening of the in
terstress interval in which the boundary occurs; this lengthening may be

The Many Linguistic Functions of Duration

117

brought about by phrase-final lengthening, or pause, or a combination of

the two. Scott labels this the foot hypothesis, since I had based my de
scription of sentence rhythm on metric feet. A simpler hypothesis, la
beled the phrase-final lengthening hypothesis, suggests that listeners use
the duration of the lengthened phrase-final stressed syllable directly, per
haps on the basis of comparing it with some ideal duration that would be
expected if no phrase boundary were present.
Scott ran a series of experiments testing the two hypotheses. She used
syntactically ambiguous sentences of the type Joe or Patricia and Steve
will go, modeled on my sentence Steve or Sam and Bob will come. The
sentences were read by a male speaker of southern British English, who
was provided with structural bracketings of the sentences and asked to
convey the expected meaning by whatever means he deemed appropriate.
The sentences were analyzed acoustically and resynthesized at a mono
tone. Measurements were made of the duration of each foot, each sylla
ble within the feet, and of any pauses within them. The sentences were
then temporally manipulated by adding pauses, sections of closure inter
vals, or pitch periods to specified areas of the waveform. Listening tests
employed various manipulations of the test sentences as well as distractor
sentences, presented in random order. The results indicated that listeners
perceive a phrase boundary in a lengthened foot even when lengthening is
distributed throughout the foot rather than confined to possible phrasefinal stressed syllables or pauses. In responding to versions of test sen
tences that contained the same amount of phrase-final lengthening but
different foot ratios, listeners interpreted the sentences differently; ac
cording to the phrase-final lengthening hypothesis, such sentences should
receive the same interpretation. Scott therefore rejects the phrase-final
lengthening hypothesis in favor of the foot hypothesis.
It is only fair to say that some researchers disagree with my assumption
that syntactic boundaries are signalled by a controlled disruption of an
underlying isochronous sentence rhythm. Nakatani, O'Connor, and As
ton (1981 ), for example, question the existence of isochrony. They con
clude from their recent study of American English speech rhythm that
stress rather than duration must be the primary acoustic correlate of
rhythm perception, because they found that it is the stress pattern and
not the temporal pattern that remains invariant among metrical feet of a
given type. Duration is correlated with, but is not the cause of, rhythm
perception. This correlation arises because duration is one of the acoustic

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Ilse Lehiste

correlates of stress perception. Nakatani, O'Connor, and Aston also

found no regularity in interstress intervals, the regularity that is presup
posed by my interpretation.
I have claimed (Lehiste 1977b) that isochrony is to a considerable
extent perceptual: that listeners hear sequences as isochronous, even
though measurements reveal less than perfect isochrony. There is experi
mental support for this claim. Morton, Marcus, and Frankish (1976)
reported that when sequences of digits are presented to listeners with
temporally equidistant acoustic onsets, listeners do not perceive them as
isochronous. When the listeners are allowed to adjust the intervals be
tween successive digits, they introduce systematic departures from acous
tic isochrony before judging the sentences to be isochronous. Fowler
(1979) found that when subjects are asked to produce isochronous se
quences, they generate precisely the acoustic anisochronies that listeners
require to hear a sequence as isochronous. This observation led to the
suggestion that listeners judge isochrony on the basis of acoustic infor
mation about articulatory timing, rather than on some articulationindependent acoustic basis. In a subsequent study, Tuller and Fowler
(1980) tested directly whether perceptually isochronous sequences have
isochronous articulatory correlates. They used electromyography of the
orbicularis oris muscle, while speakers were producing test sequences
devised in such a manner that lip-muscle activity was related to the
syllable-initial consonant, the stressed vowel, or the stressed vowel and
final consonant. The results indicated that when subjects are asked to
generate isochronous sequences, their muscular activity is indeed iso
chronous, regardless of whether the resultant acoustic signal is isochro
nous or not. The outcome of the experiment thus supported the in
terpretation of the perceptual phenomenon reported by Morton et al.
(1976), to the effect that listeners judge isochrony with reference to the
talker's articulations as they are reflected in the acoustic signal.
The question that is not completely solved is what properties of the
acoustic signal convey this information about articulatory timing to the
listeners. It appears indeed to be true that listeners perceive such se
quences to be isochronous that have been produced with isochronous
muscular activity, but we do not know how they are able to extract this
information from the acoustic signal.
Regardless of whether we are dealing with articulatory timing or
acoustic timing, the fact remains that boundaries of linguistic units can

The Many Linguistic Functions of Duration

119

be signalled by timing, and overall duration of linguistic units constitutes

a cue to their membership in larger units. I am particularly intrigued by
the role duration plays in the phonological structure of discourse. Very
little information is available concerning that role; I have summarized it
in Lehiste 1980c.
The phonetic characteristics of paragraphs include high Fo on the first
stressed word of the paragraph-initial sentence, and a slowdown in
tempo (preboundary lengthening) before a paragraph boundary. I ran
two separate tests to investigate listeners' ability to perceive sentence and
paragraph boundaries on the basis of suprasegmental information alone,
without semantic or syntactic information. In one of the studies I used
inverted speech; this renders the segmental structure unintelligible but
preserves suprasegmental structure. In the second study I used low-pass
filtering. In both studies, listeners indicated the perception of a sentence
boundary by pushing a button once to insert a click on the second chan
nel of a multichannel tape recorder, and the perception of a paragraph
boundary by inserting two clicks in rapid succession. Subtracting reac
tion time, the place could be identified where the listeners had perceived
the boundaries. The tests confirmed the ability of listeners to identify sen
tence boundaries and paragraph boundaries in spontaneously produced
prompted monologues. Both types of boundaries are characterized by the
presence of a pause, by falling Fo (in the case of declarative sentences),
and by preboundary lengthening. The difference between sentence and
paragraph boundaries was reflected in all three parameters. The param
eters interact with each other, so that relatively weaker cues may be coun
terbalanced by stronger ones. Thus even a fully phonated sentence termi
nation may be interpreted as a paragraph boundary by listeners, if a
sufficient amount of lengthening is present and if the sentence termina
tion is followed by a relatively long pause. A paragraph boundary may be
perceived before a short pause, if the sentence terminal is laryngealized
and sufficiently lengthened.
The most obvious difference between sentence boundaries and para
graph boundaries was the length of the pause that followed the bound
ary. Longer pauses were associated with perceived paragraph boundaries.
However, there was a region of overlap in which utterances followed by
pauses of the same duration were nevertheless assigned to different cate
gories. For example, two utterances were followed by pauses of 1640 and
1626 msec each. One of these was perceived as terminating in a para-

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Ilse Lehiste

graph boundary, while the other was perceived as terminating in a sen

tence boundary. The one perceived as terminating in a sentence boundary
was laryngealized; the utterance perceived as terminating in a paragraph
boundary was not. The pause length clue was inoperative, since both ut
terances were followed by pauses of effectively the same duration. The Fo
cue pointed in the other direction. However, the utterance that was per
ceived as terminating a paragraph had a preboundary lengthening of 23.1
percent, while the utterance perceived as being followed by a sentence
boundary terminated with segments that were actually 26.9 percent
shorter than the average durations of segments in their segment classes.
Here the preboundary lengthening appears to have provided the decisive
cue. The study yielded a fair number of similar examples.
The use of differences in the degree of preboundary lengthening to sig
nal linguistically significant differences in structure suggests that speakers
may control the rate of change of their speaking ratea truly remarkable
feat. The mechanisms that make such control possible are currently being
investigated; much relevant information is contained in recent articles by
Bell-Berti and Harris (1981), Fujimura (1981), Miller (1981), and Gay
(1981 ). The implications for linguistic theory are far-reaching; I hope
that they will be followed up in the future.

REFERENCES

CITED

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Cooper, William E., and Jeanne Paccia-Cooper. 1980. Syntax and Speech.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Cutler, Anne, and Christopher J. Darwin. 1981. Phoneme-monitoring re
action time and preceding prosody: effects of stop closure duration
and of fundamental frequency. Perception and Psychophysics 29:
217-24.

Derr, Marcia A., and Dominic W. Massaro. 1978. The contribution of

vowel duration, Fo contour, and frication duration as cues to the
/juz/-/jus/ distinction. Madison, Wise: Wisconsin Human Informa
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Fowler, Carol A. 1979. "Perceptual centers" in speech production and

perception. Perception and Psychophysics 25:375 88.
Fry, D. B. 1958. Experiments in the perception of stress. Language and
Speech 1:12652.

Fujimura, O. 1981. Temporal organization of articulatory movements as

a multidimensional phrasal structure. Phonetica 38:6683.
Gaitenby, Jane. 1965. The elastic word. Status Report on Speech Re
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English. Salzburger Beitrge zur Linguistik 1:81 104.
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S. G. Nooteboom, eds. Structure and Process in Speech Perception.
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187-95.

CHAPTER

Lexical Semantics and

Text Semantics

Charles J. Fillmore

My objectives in this paper are to characterize certain past and current

ground rules for doing semantics, and then to describe one particular line
of inquiry that appears to break those rules. I suggest that in the future
we will hear more from the increasingly large number of scholars who
are pursuing this alternative path in the study of language and meaning.
Much of my thinking in this area has been shaped by a period of col
laborative research with Paul Kay in which we, with a team of graduate
students in linguistics, anthropology, and education, examined the dy
namics of eight- to ten-year-old children's comprehension of short writ
ten English texts.1 The general research method we used involved present
ing children with texts one piece at a time, after each increment asking
them questions about what they had been able to figure out, up to that
point, about what they were reading. On the presentation of each new
segment the interviewers in our project would ask the children questions
such as, "What do you trunk's going to happen next?" or "Is the person
you read about just now the same as the farmer we read about a while
ago?" Our purpose was to see in what ways, and through what steps, the
children were able to use their ongoing experience with the text to con
struct an interpretation for it.
The research required the prior development of an abstraction that we
called the ideal reader.2 The ideal reader for any given text was defined as
that abstract individual whose knowledge, skills, and experience enabled
him or her to get everything out of the text that was there to get. Our

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ideal reader was imagined as confronting the text in the same way our
real readers did: one segment at a time. We chose to work with a dynamic
view of text comprehension, because we were interested in identifying
such inherently dynamic reading experiences as suspense, expectation,
surprise, closure, and the like. In monitoring the children's interpretation
we tried to discover, for each text, where, in what way, and for what rea
son an individual reader's experience of the text departed from that of
the ideal reader. We believe we learned from this research something
about how to characterize the demands particular texts make on their
readers, as well as something about the reading process in general and
the performance of various instruments for measuring reading abilities.
In conducting this research we found the need to notice what words
the children knew, what scripts or schemata these words evoked for the
children, how these scripts or schemata were capable of framing their un
derstanding of the text's meanings, and how the information brought to
the child by each new increment of the text put them to work at integrat
ing it with what they knew already, what they had been guessing, what
they had been induced to be curious about, and so on. We described ours
as a semantic approach; but although we had clear uses for notions from
lexical semantics and from the not particularly well-defined area of text
semantics, we found no use for what is conventionally, in some current
theoretical linguistic circles, thought of as semantic representations
proper. It could be argued that the study of how interpreters derive un
derstandings from linguistic texts is not strictly speaking a semantic
study, especially as the notion of semantics is generally conceived in cur
rent linguistics. I am nevertheless going to speak of the process of relating
the form of a text to its interpretation as a semantic process, and I will try
to locate certain standard views of "semantics proper" within this larger
view of the study of the comprehension of linguistic material.

Semantics
I will allow myself to use the handy words expression and text for refer
ring to meaningful linguistic forms of any size, and although I don't in
tend to make a precise distinction between them, I shall tend to use
expression for short things and text for longer things. For ease of exposi
tion, I will not try to be careful about the difference between expressions

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or text in the abstract and expressions or text in context. It will generally

be abstracted texts that I have in mind when I speak of semantic theories
that I have doubts about, but it will be texts situated in some human ac
tivity that I have in mind when I speak of the approaches I am interested
in defending.
An examination of the various ways in which the word semantics is
used allows me to structure the points I wish to make about competing
doctrines of the nature of linguistic meaning. In one use, semantics is a
study of the mapping relations that hold between expressions and their
meanings. Such relationships can be thought of as directionally neutral,
that is, as merely abstract pairings between expressions and their mean
ings; or they can be organized according to patterns or structures dis
cernible at one or the other "end" of the relationship. That is, we can, in
the sense of what has been at times called semasiology', look at particular
blocks of expressions and examine the ways in which they, as whole sets
of expressions in mutual contrast, map onto their meanings; or we can,
in the sense of what is sometimes called onomasiology, begin by consid
ering potential organizations of meanings and determining how these get
expressed in the language at hand.3
It is when the mapping relation operates on complex expressions
(phrases, sentences, texts) that we can think of semantics as a process
that language users (under some proper idealization) experience or en
gage in by virtue of their knowledge of the language. The second use of
semantics, then, is as a process that ideal interpreters undergo in con
structing the meaning of an expression out of what is known about its
structure and its parts.
In considering the operation of such a process, it is essential to distin
guish what language users have to know outright from what they are able
to figure out. In today's parlance, this is the difference between storage
and processing. Put simply, it is typically the case that the meanings of
simple expressions in our language are things that we know by conven
tion, and the meanings of complex expressions are things that we con
struct, or compute, by integrating the meanings of the parts into the
meaning of the whole. This process requires us to recognize the words,
recall their meanings, sense their grammatical organization, and some
how draw the right conclusions about what the person who created the
sentence wanted to communicate. The division between what has to be
known outright and what has to get figured out by application of rules

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Charles J. Fillmore

and principles is more or less identical to the division between lexical se

mantics and compositional semantics.
In my view, what is usually thought of as compositional semantics is
too restricted. I am interested here in examining the process by which
people understand linguistic texts, and I do not wish to decide in advance
what kinds of information or what aspects of this process do or do not
belong to linguistics. A model that I think we need for understanding
such a process has to be considerably richer than the standard view of a
proper compositional semantics. First we would want the list of things
the language user has to know to include a great deal of idiomatic infor
mation, both in the form of lexical idioms, with their familiar routines,
clichs, collocations, colligations, etc., and in the form of syntactic idiomaticness, the possibly quite large number of syntactic patterns that have
conventional semantic or pragmatic functions. Second, we would want
the integration process, by which the meanings of texts are constructed
from the meanings of the parts, to be accomplished with the help of lan
guage-external information of a variety of kinds.
I spoke first of semantics as a mapping between expressions and mean
ings, and second, with respect to complex expressions, of semantics as a
process by which a language interpreter construes a text by constructing
its meaning. The third use of semantics that I need to mention is semantics as representation. It is precisely the notion of semantic representa
tion, as usually construed in generative grammar, that I want to put into
question. As I see it, the issue is whether, in the multilayered representa
tion of what a language-user knows of the properties of individual sen
tences (and here we are dealing with sentences, not texts), we need (or
can have) a linguistics-internal semantic representation.
There is no question that we need a level of lexicosyntactic representa
tion of the sentences in a text; and there is no doubt that, however diffi
cult it might be to describe, we need a level on which we can talk about a
text's full interpretation. Do the facts require us to believe that what I am
here calling the semantic process needs to pass through two sharply de
marcated phases, the first yielding a linguistics-internal semantic repre
sentation, the second using that representation as material for construct
ing the full interpretation of the text? Put differently, the question I am
asking is whether in addition to the two branches of semantics known as
lexical semantics and text semantics the empirical study of meaning

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127

within linguistics also needs sentence semantics. When I suggest that it

does not, I will not mean that we will end up unable to say anything
about sentences; a sentence, after all, can be a text.

The data of semantics

Any linguistic theory, of course, has to offer some proposal of a full pic
ture of the workings of a language, if only to delimit clearly the range of
information that properly belongs in a grammar. It seems to me that no
matter what view we take on the proper domain of semantics, we would
have to agree that the phenomenologically primary data for such a theory
are the data of language processing. By language processing I mean the
acts and experiences of producing text as a means of expressing one's
communicative needs, and the acts and experiences of interpreting what
other people say to us. I consider the data of language production and
language comprehension to be the primary data for semantics in spite of
the elusive, changeable, and unarticulatable character of such phenom
ena. They are, in a sense, all that we have.
Of the two "directions" of language processing, the interpretation or
comprehension process is the more easily studied, I believe, at least in the
obvious sense that while it is relatively easy to observe many interpreters'
responses to a single language sample that is presented to them, it is es
sentially impossible to examine many speakers' activities of producing
the same text. The interpretation process can be thought of, in admit
tedly vague and impressionistic terms, as imagining the features of the
world that the text most appropriately fits, constructing what Kay and I
have come to call its envisionment. Semantic research, then, involves
finding the characteristics of texts that allow interpreters to construct
"correct" envisionments of them.
One kind of research in semantics is directed toward discovering how
specific aspects of interpreters' envisionments of texts are linked with the
presence or choice of particular pieces of the text. Through manipulating
texts and exploring the effects that such manipulations can have on their
envisionment, we can be said to be manipulating and observing the pri
mary data of semantics.
The connection between portions of a text and aspects of the text's en-

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Charles J. Fillmore

visionments is only rarely straightforward, almost always requiring many

layers of interpretation. To illustrate my point, I invite you to consider the
following two sentences:
I saw it in the news.
I saw it on the news.
The two sentences differ only in that where one has in, the other has
on. What we notice is that modern interpreters of these two sentences
imagine a newspaper context for the first and a television context for the
second. The difference is in no way directly explained by knowledge of
any independently discoverable difference in meaning between in and on,
but is rather the result of a complicated set of inferences involving the
verb see, the recognition of contexts in which some segments of a larger
domain can be referred to as the news, and certain conventions linking
uses of in and on to print and broadcast contexts, respectively. The infor
mation we need and the calculations we need to perform to achieve the
correct interpretation of even very simple sentences can sometimes thus
be quite subtle and complex.
The primary data, as I said, tend to be rich and complex; but in their
search for orderliness, linguists typically select and refine the primary
data in such a way as to provide something more tractable, a kind of sec
ondary data, or what are sometimes called theory-defined data, which
scholars of particular persuasions find manageable and regard as proper
for their theories. The best established of these "reprocessings" of the
primary data of semantics is the one that in effect limits itself to interpretation data that are associated with single sentences that are used assertively and in separation from any context of use; the secondary data
are further restricted to judgments relevant to the establishment of truth
conditions.
The data surviving such reprocessings make up a system of judgments
about sentences and sentence pairs, of the sort exemplified by such no
tions as analyticity, contradiction, paraphrase, entailment, and the like.
The kind of semantic theorizing best served by such a data refinement is
formal sentence semantics. Formal sentence semantics seeks ways to con
vert natural language sentences into, or to construe natural language sen
tences as, precise formulas within some variant of one of the standard
logics (or within some language-bound formalism that accomplishes
what the standard logics are designed to accomplish4). The minimum re-

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129

quirement for such theories is that they explain the secondary data as ap
plied to sentencesthe data of entailment and contradiction, for exam
plealong with a number of other notions made necessary by this task,
such as necessary coreference or noncoreference.
There is a kind of lexical semantics that can be constructed in the ser
vice of formal sentence semantics, in which a system of semantic rela
tions between words can be defined derivatively from semantic relations
between assertive sentences, yielding such notions as synonymy, antonymy, meaning inclusion, inverseness, etc. Once lexical descriptions
have been provided that make apparent such relations between semantically related lexical items, principles of compositional semantics can be
constructed that will respond to such properties and use them to predict
the proper kinds of semantic relations between sentencesthat is, the
approved secondary data.
Some proposals have been made for combining empirical lexical se
mantics with compositional semantics, but they tend to involve nothing
more than inserting into the slots standing for the predicates of formalsemantic representations the clusters of information provided by lexicalsemantic research, and designing compositional semantic principles that
will be sensitive to such information when relevant. But while empirical
semantics has included in its scope such matters as the focal hues of basic
color terms in a language, the functions of classificatory terms above and
below the level of basic level objects in a taxonomy, and the qualities of
taste and smell that are differently encoded in different languages, formal
semantics has found no use for such information.

Autonomy issues
In a model of language that we wish to construct as part of an account
of the interpretation process, what role can we find for the standard
linguistics-internal notion of semantic representation? I would like to ap
proach this question through a phonological analogy. Let us consider
what a practical-minded man could do with phonological representa
tions in a language he was trying to learn.
Consider the case of somebody who is presented with phonological
representations of sentences (or texts) in some language, and imagine
that this person asks us, "What do I have to do, or what do I have to

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Charles J. Fillmore

know, in order to learn, from these representations, how to pronounce

the sentences that I see represented here?" Let us suppose that our in
quirer is master of the workings of his own vocal tract and has no trouble
reading phonetic symbols or phonetic descriptions.
The answer to his question will obviously be different in the case of
differently motivated phonological representations. Phonological repre
sentations that "hug the phonetic ground closely" might turn out to be
fairly readily usable, as long as we point out the allophonic rules. Pho
nological representations that are limited in their notation and in their
descriptive vocabulary to theory-motivated universal features may re
quire a bit more attention: we will need to point out the standard pho
nological rules, but we must then also indicate the rules that describe the
language-specific phonetic-detail rules, the rules by which the analyst
shows how the universal features are physically realized in the vocal
tracts of the speakers of the language at hand. There is also a possibility
that the phonetic detail rules can be eliminated or simplified if, instead of
working out the phonetic details for each segment in each relevant con
text, a general account of the "basis of articulation" in the language can
do that once and for all.
In any case, we either have in mind a representation that makes avail
able the information our inquirer seeks in a more or less straightforward
way, or we make the details available to him piece by piece, or we provide
him with an ancillary theory (here, the theory of basis of articulation)
that cooperates with the representations to give the interpreter the infor
mation he needs. In the case of phonological representations, it seems
clear that the supporting theories are in principle discoverable and that
therefore the idealizations assumed by the theory underlying these repre
sentations may turn out to be fully justified. The elaboration of the
needed supporting theories, furthermore, is quite clearly within the scope
of the phonologist's research assignment.
Now suppose we look for a semantic analog to our inquirer, somebody
who looks at the semantic representation of a sentence or text and asks a
question like the following: "By examining the semantic representation
you have given me of a text that somebody has just addressed to me, how
can I figure out what its creator expects me to believe or do or feel?"
A standard answer among semantic theorists to such a question is that
it goes beyond anything that can be expected of a linguistics-internal the
ory of semantics. In addition to whatever a grammar can tell you about

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131

an utterance or a text, there has to be some ancillary account of how it is

that the expressions described by the grammar get used by speakers of
the language. These matters of language use necessarily take us away
from the central concerns of linguistic structure. In particular, sentences
are uttered by people who believe certain things, who intend certain
effects, who have certain expectations of their interlocutors, who are per
forming certain acts as they speak, and who produce their texts in real
time, under conditions that change through time as the text gets pro
duced. The proper study of text comprehension, while it has the linguis
tic description of the text as one of its components, requires the consid
eration of an unbounded set of phenomena, most of them not defined by
the science of linguistics, and is therefore not itself a study that belongs
properly within linguistic science.
There is a point here that needs to be made, and I would be foolish to
quarrel with it, a point about the distinction between, on the one hand,
the study of tools and materials and, on the other hand, the study of what
these tools and materials can be used to build. But I am going to disagree
with the conclusions that so many linguists have drawn from this reality.
A more or less standard view of the workings of a language presents a
multitiered structure in which successive layers of the system differ from
each other in terms of the presence or absence of qualitatively different
kinds of information. This layering system has roughly the following
characteristics.5
1. A system of lexicosyntactic representations, constructed or in
terpreted by a grammar (a generative grammar) that provides idio
syncratic phonological, syntactic, and semantic information asso
ciated with each lexical item, together with recursive principles
governing the assembling of syntactic constructions.
2. A system of semantic representations constructed from the
lexicosyntactic representations by means of the elementary princi
ples of compositional semantics operating on semantic information
found attached to lexical items and interpretation principles associ
ated with syntactic relations or constructions; this can be called
sentence meaning.
3. A system of meaning representations constructed from the
bare semantic representations described above, and differing from
them by having referential items anchored in objects or substances

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Charles J. Fillmore

in some possible world, and by guaranteeing that referring items

that are taken to be coreferential are anchored in the same objects
in that world; 6 this can be called utterance meaning.
4. A system of meaning representations constructed from utter
ance meanings through their being "situated" against the speakers'
and hearers' shared system of beliefs about the objects and activi
ties designated; this is the so-called utterance meaning plus encyclopedic information.
5. A system of meaning representations constructed from the
representations above, that is, from utterance meanings together
with associated information about the world of the utterance, but
this time situated in the context of the utterance's production; this
is the pragmatic meaning or conveyed meaning of the utterance.
It is the last two of these representations that most resemble the sort of
"envisionment" I spoke about earlier. It is the second and third that stand
for the notion of "semantic representation" discussed above.
Although I am going to speak against this layer-cake view of things, it
is not plainly and simply "wrong." There are in fact all of these different
aspects of the interpretation process, and the plainest and most prosaic
texts can probably be satisfactorily described and accounted for in terms
of the proposed model. The challenge that I propose to this systematization of the workings of language is to argue that linguistic knowledge,
including lexical and grammatical knowledge, enters at each of these lev
els, not only at the top, and that knowledge about worlds, contexts, and
speakers' intentions enter at every level, not only at the bottom.
Proposals about the "autonomy" of syntax and semantics can be for
mulated within this model. Adherence to the doctrine of the autonomy of
syntax requires the belief that no syntactic rule can appeal to semantic
information. In Andrew Radford's recent textbook on transformational
syntax, the main example given of the kind of rule that could not exist in
a grammar because of this autonomy principle is one that states: "Invert
any word meaning 'tree' in a sentence with any word meaning 'motor
car.'" 7 It may strike many linguists as odd that such an example could
seem convincing, since the ordering of elements by semantic class has
seemed to a number of people to be among the clearest cases of semantic
influence in syntax, as with certain proposals about prenominal adjec
tives in English, clitic ordering in a number of languages, ordering princi-

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133

pies linked to animacy rankings found here and there, and so on. The
autonomists' point, anyway, is that generalizations about syntactic ob
jects cannot, in a grammatical rule, appeal to nonsyntactic information.
The notion of the autonomy of semantics produces the assumption
that the operation of compositional principles should yield a system of
closed, coherent abstract objects of a sort that can be called the semantic
structures of given sentences. The idea is that within the layered idealiza
tion model it is possible to define for each utterance some completed se
mantic structure upon which the encyclopedic and pragmatic informa
tion works to construct that richer meaning representation of the kind I
have been calling the sentence's envisionment.
In the view that I would like to put into contrast with the autonomy
position, we recognize, to be sure, a level of lexicosyntactic structure,
within which we find semantic information about the individual constit
uent lexical items and associated with which we can find semantic infor
mation about those grammatical constructions that have conventional
semantic or pragmatic purposes. This abstract object (type 1 above),
which analysts should be able to construct if they want to, can be said to
"display" the semantic information upon which the semantic interpreta
tion processes can operate; but the processes that accomplish this inte
gration make use of any information they can find, and do not necessarily
pass through a phase in which they deliberately restrict themselves to in
formation of any particular kind. It is apparent, in fact, that for some
sentences, no integration of the meanings of the parts into the meaning of
the whole is accomplishable fully within an autonomous syntax.8

Another analogy
I would like to clarify the two views I am attempting to oppose to each
other with an analogy. I ask you to imagine the kinds of kits you might
expect to be able to buy in a medical training supply house, kits that you
can work with to learn how the human body is put together. One brand
gives you two separate boxes in their kit, one box for the skeleton alone,
and one for the organs and muscles. In this version, the skeleton box con
tains all of the model bones and pieces of cartilage you need plus a com
plete set of instructions. Working with this version, you assemble the
skeleton first, using exclusively the materials and instructions found in

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Charles J. Fillmore

the skeleton kit. When you are done, you open the organs-and-muscles
box and begin fitting and attaching its contents into their proper places in
the skeleton you have already completed. The first kit defines for its user
two sharply different stages in the assembly process. The competing kit
differs from the first one in several important ways. It has bones and car
tilages and organs, too, but it does not have all the pieces you need, the
instructions that go with the kit are incomplete, and it makes all of the
pieces available to you at once. Working with this version, you have to be
more creative. Since the instructions are incomplete, you assemble the
bones partly by remembering what human bodies look like, partly by fig
uring out that if the bones didn't fit together in such-and-such a way, the
organs and muscles they provide scaffolding for would have no place to
go, and so on. And since the kit is not quite complete, you may have to
add glue, rubber bands, or toothpicks in order to make the resulting fig
ure hold together.
Representations within autonomous semantics are complete skeletons
of the sentence's logical form, it being understood that the encyclopedic
or pragmatic organs and flesh need to rest on or fit onto this skeleton. In
the "interpenetration" model I am defending, the interpreter may need to
sense something about the context, infer something about the speaker's
intentions, know something about the world, in order even to find an ini
tial point or coherence to the sentence.
The analogy cannot be taken very far. One way in which it is faithful to
what it analogizes is that in both cases the complete skeleton view is
neater, more attractive, and more satisfying to people who need orderli
ness in their lives. An important way in which the analogy fails is that
with a static, inactive human figure, nothing corresponds to the notion of
utterance-in-use, and hence there is nothing in the analogy that can speak
to the difference between sentences and texts.

Meaning and truth conditions

I have surely overstated the case. There are, of course, many sentences
whose interpretations are more or less independent of any pragmatic con
text. For such sentences it is surely true that useful principles for compos
ing their interpretations can be formulated independently of any context.

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135

Writers on semantics over the centuries have delighted in such zerocontext sentences as these:
Sortes albus est.
No unicorn seeks a friend.
No imaginable context could help us with either of these sentences. It
is also true that there are sentences in which the only pragmatic aspects
that are relevant to the construction of their truth conditions would be
the assignment of referents to their referring expressions, the anchoring
of their deictic elements in space and time, and so on. Such common ex
amples as
John put a book into a box.
Mary made Bill wash the car.
are like that. Their "utterance meanings" differ from their "sentence
meanings" only through the identification of John, Mary, Bill, the car,
etc., and by identifying the time expressed by the past tense category of
their predicates. Nothing that we could easily imagine about why and
when somebody would choose to say these things could affect those as
pects of their meaning that we can figure out without a context.
When I say that contexts, conventions, speakers' intentions, world
knowledge, and the like play no important role in the interpretation of
these sentences, I mean of course that sentences like these have not much
more going for them than what could be said about the conditions under
which they might be true or false. But there are issues that appear to have
a great deal to do with meaning for which questions of truth only get in
the way.
A system of semantic interpretation that recognizes only truth condi
tions forces analysts to take particular stands on the nature of presup
positions and register and tone, a stand that requires the separation of
questions of truth from judgments of appropriateness of use. Consider
the sentence,
The menfolk returned at sundown.
The word menfolk has its role as a category name in isolating adult males
as a group in a human setting involving the activities of whole families. A
natural background for a use of the sentence would be one in which the

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Charles } . Fillmore

men in a village went off fishing in the morning and returned to their
families at the day's end.
Consider now the use of the sentence in an all-male community of
workers on the Alaskan pipeline under the condition that the men, after a
day's work, returned to their dormitories just before nightfall. Truthconditional semanticists would surely recognize that it would be odd to
say the sentence with the word menfolk in it in this context. But people
committed to aletheic notions of semantics would nevertheless be likely
to say something like, "I know that it's inappropriate in this context; but
isn't it at least true?" Such a semanticist would, in fact, have to ask that
question, and would have little reason to propose that in the given con
text it is neither true nor false. But it seems to me that whether it is true or
false is not a question that can be answered within empirical semantics.
My point is that the interpretation of the menfolk sentence in both its
normal and its nonnormal contexts would have to be accounted for dif
ferently in the two types of semantics. One would have to decide whether
or not it could be true in the Alaskan pipeline situation, and, if so, would
then have to appeal to an auxiliary theory of usage for talking about its
preferred fit in the other situation. The competing theory would have to
say that the meaning of menfolk determines why the sentence works in
one context and not in the other, and that judgments about whether it is
true in the pipeline context are judgments that belong to an auxiliary the
ory, a theory not so much about English as about a formal language de
rived from English whose interpretational base is decided by stipulation.
Finally, a system of semantic interpretation limited to deriving truth
conditions from lexical meanings and the semantic consequences of their
syntactic organization would necessarily be blind to the difference be
tween the following two sentences:
The carpenter ordered a fish from the actress.
The huntsman ordered a pair of boots from the cobbler.
In each case, in precisely analogous ways, the system could derive a set of
conditions under which one person places an order with another person
for a particular kind of object, it being required merely that these persons
and objects be characterized in ways determined by the meanings of the
words carpenter, cobbler, fish, etc., together with the information re
quired by the use of the definite article in all of these noun phrases. A
semantic system that is differently motivated would start out by bring-

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137

ing to the task of interpretation richly schematized information about

actresses and huntsmen and the rest, and for each sentence would seek to
integrate all of this information into a single scene, with its parts inter
connected and its movements motivated. This process would lead in the
boots sentence to some natural and automatic hypotheses about who was
to make the boots and why the huntsmen wanted them; but it would be
at a loss to impose coherence in the fish sentence.9
The language we use reflects the ways in which we "frame" or "sche
matize" the world of the text; an automatic consequence of understand
ing the elemental parts of the text is the experience of attempting to fig
ure out the relevance of the schematizations we have been invited to
apply, and then to figure out the author's reasons for inviting us to sche
matize the text world in that way. The very automaticity of such integra
tive experiences forces us away from a static view of texts and into a dy
namic view, a view of an unrolling text and an evolving envisionment.
And all of this goes clearly beyond the expectations of an aletheic theory
of meaning.

Ingredients of the needed model

I am suggesting that it makes sense for linguists to propose a model for
text interpretation that is sensitive to the meanings of lexical items and
the semantic force of the syntactic structurings given to the text's words
and phrases, but that has unlimited access to other kinds of information
and that attempts to go directly from the morphosyntactic structure to
an interpretation of the text, all of this without the logical necessity of
first constructing sentence-semantic skeletons. One of my concerns, then,
is how, for the operation of such a model, lexical meanings can be struc
tured, and how the principles for constructing text meanings operate on
those structures.
The ingredients of the model we need are roughly these:
Lexical meanings, described within a prototype semantics ac
cording to principles that recognize that in order to understand the
meaning of a word you have to understand the beliefs, experiences,
and practices within which or against which the speech community
found a reason to have the category for which the word exists. In a

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Charles J. Fillmore

sense, knowing what is meant by "apple core" requires knowing

something about how people in our culture eat apples. If we ate
apples, seeds and all, straight through rather than around the mid
dle, we would probably not have formed such a category. The word
decedent, in a legal context, does not merely designate a dead per
son, but refers to a person recently dead in a situation in which the
discourse topic is the issue of the distribution of that person's
property. We saw earlier that the words actress, fisherman, cobbler,
huntsman, etc., all bring with them rich associative structures onto
which aspects of the envisionments of texts can hang. Put crudely,
each word in a text evokes in the interpreter's mind the ingredients
of a story, and a big part of the job of interpreting a text involves
seeing how the ingredients of each word's story can be made to fit
together with those of each other word in the text, in ways dictated
by the grammar and the context.
Syntactic patterns with semantic or pragmatic functions not predictable from their constituent categories and relations. Here I have
in mind fairly minor patterns such as those used in number names,
recursive kinship terms (such as the "removal" system of cousin
names in English), time-telling formulas, etc., as well as such cor
ners of congealed syntax found in "year in and year out," "month
in and month out," etc. Also included are such major syntactic
patterns as the passive voice (which is restricted to particular func
tions in some languages), the subject-predicate construction, or the
topic-comment construction, constrained by pragmatic functions in
slightly different ways in different languages, and so on.
The ongoing interactional context, that is, the context in which
the utterance is produced for the speaker's purposes. It is important
to point out that the context itself is changing through time; topics
and facts introduced in one part of a text can form part of the
shared background for the interpretation of the latter part of the
text; scenes and schematizations introduced quite incidentally in
one part of a text can provide major scaffolding for later parts of
the text's envisionment. And so on.
What I have identified here, in barest outline, is the kind of informa
tion that our model needs to have access to. In addition to such informa
tion, we need to attain some precise ways of allowing the schematizing

Lexical Semantics and Text Semantics

139

functions of words, formulas, syntactic patterns, etc., to fit together, and

we need ways of showing in a text how an expectation created by a lexi
cal item at one point in the text gets satisfied by a phrase or sentence at
some later point in the text, and so on. A number of workers in linguis
tics, cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence have come up with
proposals for describing these operations; but nothing very satisfying has
shown itself yet.

Phenomena requiring explanation within the new model

Lacking useful proposals on the workings of the ultimate satisfying
model, I can at least offer some examples of phenomena that it should be
able to account for.
The text interpreter constructs a rich envisionment for the text, and
this typically includes both a set of assumptions concerning what the text
is about and a set of assumptions about the setting in which the text is
produced. This distinction between the text setting and the text content
(between the world that the text is in and the world that the text is about)
can easily be illustrated with a piece of text like:
Once upon a time there was a rich king who had three sons.
The world of our text's content is one in which there is a kingdom whose
monarch has great wealth, and in which there is enough of a history for
that king to have fathered three male children; this world is presented to
us at a time point in which the king and all three of his sons are living.
The text setting is one in which somebody is telling a story to somebody
else. This "external" aspect of our interpretation is based on our knowl
edge of the formulaic introducer ("Once upon a time") and of the con
ventional content of folk tales. The proper envisionment of many a text,
so to speak, includes both what is on the canvas and what is in the artist's
studio.
Sometimes certain elements of the text content are identical to ele
ments in the text's setting, as in sentences with deictic elements. Consider
a sentence like:
You were standing up there, looking down at me.

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Charles J. Fillmore

The people in the text content are identified with the people in the text
setting, but they are splayed about differently and doing different things.
And sometimes, as in the case of performative utterances, the world of
the text content and the world of the text setting are identical, as in:
I offer this to you now.
Certain words bring into play judgments about content and setting si
multaneously, where setting includes the people who are speaking and
their presentations of themselves. It can be pointed out that a word like
droll applied to a person, event, or story tells us not merely that the thing
was funny, but that its funniness was of the kind that could be appreci
ated by somebody with subtle sensitivities. Our envisionment of the
amusing quality of the incident described is influenced by our beliefs
about the kind of thing that would be amusing to the sort of person who
is sophisticated enough to use the word droll. Probably the effect of most
registrally different expressions is like this; the envisionment gets filled
out and colored in by inferences that we draw from our knowledge of the
personality and tastes of the people who would choose to use those par
ticular words.
In the model I am defending, the initial lexicogrammatical structure
can be said to have associated with it a richly structured network of in
formation, all made available in the service of the construction process
whose characteristics we have been trying to imagine. In this view, either
there is no difference between so-called dictionary information and en
cyclopedic information, or that difference is to be drawn at a different
place from what the "meaning minimizers" have generally had in mind. It
is commonly believed that there is a clear distinction between knowledge
about what a word means and knowledge about what the things desig
nated by it are like. But how, one might ask, could such a line be drawn
for a word like carpenter? A committed structuralist could propose a
closed class of vocation names, and could imagine within that set a par
ticular level of the taxonomy in which a simple property or a small list of
properties could precisely distinguish carpenters from all other elements
in the contrast set. Suppose, just to be absurd, that the feature such an
analyst discovered was [ + W O O D ] and that it, together with whatever
semantic features guaranteed that carpenter belonged in the relevant do
main of words at that particular place in the taxonomy, were taken as
making up the "pure semantic" information about the word. Knowledge

Lexical Semantics and Text Semantics

141

about what carpenters do would then belong to the encyclopedia. Since it

is not easy to believe that the lexicon of vocation names is structured in
any way that lends itself to the sort of analysis just proposed, the ap
proach seems pointless. We are dealing with one of those categories for
which there is nothing more to say than that certain things exist, describ
ing them in as much detail as we feel is necessary for capturing what
speakers know of the category. Because of what carpenters do, they have
a place of some sort in people's experiences, enough for them to belong
to a named category. The first part of a description of the knowledge that
we have about carpenters would have to include something of what they
work with, what kinds of tools they use, what sorts of products they
build, and so on. Carpenters are people who take milled wood and by the
use of tools that allow for the cutting and shaping of wood, construct or
assemble various kinds of objects. It seems inescapable that all of this in
formation belongs to what we know of the meaning of the word, and that
if we had to make a division between such knowledge and what belongs
to an encyclopedia, we could probably assign to the latter such informa
tion as the mean wages of carpenters in particular parts of the world at
particular periods of history, the kinds of wood that are most resistant to
weathering, and so on.
Precisely by taking a much more "encyclopedic" view of semantics
than is typically assumed, we automatically bring into an account of
meaning information of the kind needed for constructing text envisionments. If we were to come across a sentence like
The scarcity of timber in these parts makes it hard to make a living
as a carpenter,
we would find that what we know about carpenters in simply knowing
the meaning of the word makes the sentence intelligible. Not so intelligi
ble would be the same sentence with actress replacing carpenter.
In the case of a word like carpenter, we bring into the interpretation
process a great deal of fairly specific knowledge about a particular voca
tion; and with other content words, other detailed knowledge networks
are brought in. But some words contribute their part to the envisionment
by more abstract, schematic means. The spatial location prepositions are
of this sort, and they interact with our knowledge of the words they com
bine with in sometimes fairly vivid ways. To see what I mean, consider
the effect of prepositions like in, on, across, and through when they com-

I42L

Charles J. Fillmore

bine with the noun field. The variety we will see depends on the reality
that the word field can be seen as designating a portion of the earth's
surface (hence a plane surface), an enclosed or bounded area, or an en
closed area plus the volume containing the things that grow or stand in it.
Compare the following two sentences:
To get to the river from here, we'll have to go through Farmer
Brown's field.
To get to the river from here, we'll have to go across Farmer
Brown's field.
To many speakers, the sentence about going through the field communi
cates more of a sense of trespassing than the other. Similar judgments
about trespassing can be sensed in the difference between saying that an
airplane landed in Farmer Brown's field rather than that it landed on
Farmer Brown's field. Those prepositions that invite us to schematize a
segment of land as a bounded area or as a volume containing the things
resting or growing on it are more compatible with a sense of ownership
than those that do not, and hence allow for the impression of trespassing.
With on and across, the field is merely taken to be a place. (Notice that in
each of these cases, questions concerning varying truth conditions would
hardly seem appropriate.) 10
Suppose that we had as a part of the semantics of English words a tax
onomy based on the relation "is-a-kind-of " that had, in a single path up
ward in the taxonomy, such elements as dog, mammal, vertebrate, chordate, and animal.
Whenever we use a word that has a classificatory function, we interpret
its use by being aware of the classificatory schema within which it has a
role. Suppose my dog Fido falls into the swimming pool. You hear a
splash in my back yard and ask me what happened. If I say sentence (a), I
have said something perfectly appropriate; (b), however, is weird, and (c)
is very weird indeed.
(a) A dog fell into the pool.
(b) A mammal fell into the pool.
(c) A chordate fell into the pool.
We might begin to think at this point that the judgments we are coming
up with are based on the fact that the later sentences are less informative

Lexical Semantics and Text Semantics

143

than the one with just dog. But then we would find that (d) is once again
acceptable.
(d) An animal fell into the pool.
Any simple display of the elements in a biological taxonomy that
showed dog, mammal, vertebrate, chordate, and animal as semantically
related to each other only by "is-a-member-of" or "is-a-kind-of" links
would not be telling the whole truth. Words like dog and animal are from
the language of the folk, the one for identifying a familiar "natural kind"
that enters our daily life easily and frequently, the other for identifying a
category of things connected with which we associate lots of properties.
Words like vertebrate, chordate, and even mammal belong to a context
more clearly devoted to the scientific task of classifying things in the
world than to the ordinary task of talking about one's experiences and
perceptions.
Certain words evoke large cognitive schemata while indexing particu
lar pieces or points or relations within such schemata. A sentence like
I refused to leave a tip.
determines an envisionment in which a service was performed (or should
have been performed) of the kind that would ordinarily induce the per
son served to leave a money gift for the server; whatever pressure the per
son might have felt to provide this gift was overcome on the reported oc
casion, leading us to believe that the service was performed badly or was
neglected altogether. A sentence like
I forgot to leave a tip.
by contrast invites us to create the envisionment differently, since the
scripting or schematizing produced by the word forget alludes to some
thing that was intended, suggesting that a tip would have been appropri
ate, in turn allowing the belief that the service was good or at least ade
quate. The framing of the situation created by the word tip interacts in
important ways with the framing of the situation evoked by refuse or forget, resulting in essentially different histories in the service encounter.
Certain words in a text invite the interpreter to situate one portion of
the text in particular rhetorical ways with other portions of the text. Cer
tain conjunctive adverbs, capable of linking not only clauses to clauses

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Charles J. Fillmore

but periods to periods, indicate the situatedness of particular facts in a

structure of reasoning. Here I have in mind such words as however, consequently, nevertheless, and therefore.
Certain words serve to block off the text into portions, indicating how
those portions are to be interpreted. Suppose we find in a text the
sentence,
I had a dream yesterday.
This sentence invites us to accept some following portion of the text as
representing the content of that dream. Notice the following:
I had a dream yesterday. I was riding on horseback at the water's
edge. Suddenly this old lady came up to me. . . .
If the linguistic material expressing the content of the dream had all been
syntactically embedded in a single sentence, ordinary sentence semantics
would be able automatically to assign the content of the that-clause to
the scope of the verb have a dream; but what we see here is the same
process taking place in the interpretation of a multiple-sentence text.
Certain words in a text have the function of referring to portions of
content by virtue of referring to portions of the text. Here I have in mind
text-deictic elements like the following, the preceding, the former, the latter, above, below, etc.
Certain words require for their interpretation recall of facts and ob
jects recently mentioned. In a sentence like
Mozart had a similar effect on Grimshaw,
the interpreter must have available in memory some report of something
or other having had a noticeable effect on the person here named Grimshaw, and must additionally have been able to make some qualitative
judgment on the character of that effect. This suggests that an account of
the interpretation process presupposes an account of memory activation
or, following Wallace Chafe, a theory of consciousness.11
In this section I have given scattered examples of phenomena of "text
semantics" that appear to be beyond the reach (in any natural way) of
familiar proposals for formal semantics. These have included: phenom
ena that appear both in single sentences and in multisentence texts; phe
nomena that necessarily require the dynamic effect of experiencing a text
in time; phenomena that show the connection between a text and the set-

Lexical Semantics and Text Semantics

145

ting in which it is produced; phenomena that show the interpreter's criti

cal use of knowledge that would not make up a part of conventionally
formulated truth-conditional accounts of. word meaning or sentence
meaning. We have seen many cases in which what was arguably "seman
tic" knowledge about lexical items fed directly into the determination of
the interpretation of the text as a whole; but in no case did a level of
representation having the properties that appear to be required for a for
mal sentence semantics appear to be necessary.

The point
According to the account suggested here, semantics as a process begins,
to be sure, with a "pure" linguistic description and proceeds from there
to a "text-semantic" interpretation, but without encountering anything
on the way that could properly be called a "semantic interpretation" in
the manner of sentence semantics.
Compositional semantic research has accomplished a great deal, if
only through inventing formalisms by means of which we can state
clearly what we can only vaguely articulate without such formalisms, in
particular, judgments about implication, presupposition, negation, quan
tification, and various stackings of these, for example. But in my opinion,
formal semantic theories using English sentences as their material are not
as much theories of English as they are theories of an artificial language
based on certain properties of English but requiring for their develop
ment secondary data in the form of intuitive judgments learned by people
who have mastered the rules and stipulations of this artificial language.12

NOTES

1. The project mentioned here was sponsored by the National Insti

tute of Education, under Grant No. G-790121 Rev. 1, "Text semantic
analysis of reading comprehension tests." In the preparation of this paper
I have profitted from discussions with Paul Kay, George Lakoff, and John
Ohala.
2. Some properties of the ideal reader have been discussed in Fillmore
1982a.

3- The distinction I refer to here is associated in recent work mainly

with Kurt Baldinger. See Baldinger i960.
4. This remark is an allusion to Noam Chomsky's recent arguments
for a representation of the "logical form" of a sentence in a form very
closely related to the sentence's grammatical structure. See Chomsky
1981, esp. p. 35.
5. The system of layered idealizations I have tried to sketch out is
probably articulated most clearly in the theoretical writings of Manfred
Bierwisch. See especially Bierwisch 1982.
6. Items that are syntactically required to be coreferential can be so
marked in representations of sentence meaning.
7. See Radford 1981, p. 27.
8. For examples of what I have in mind, see Lakoff 1974.
9. This point, with these examples, was also made in Fillmore 1982b.
10. For particularly insightful discussions of the schematizing func
tions of locative prepositions, see Talmy 1983.
11. See especially Chafe 1974.
12. I have learned that some linguists who find the thesis of this paper
convincing (or who have believed something like it all along) argue that
academic programs in linguistics ought not to provide training in formal
semantics for their students. It should be kept in mind that a great deal of
current work in linguistics makes use of formal semantic notions and no
tations, that some of the brightest young minds in the field are attracted
to this topic, and that the thesis I have been pushing in this paper is an
intemperate one and might (although I think it is right) be wrong.

REFERENCES

CITED

Baldinger, Kurt. i960. Semasiologie et Onomasiologie. Zeitschrift fr ro

manische Philologie 7:521 36.
Bierwisch, Manfred. 1982. Formal and lexical semantics. Ms. To appear
in the proceedings of the 1982 Tokyo International Congress of
Linguistics.
Chafe, Wallace L. 1974. Language and consciousness. Language 50:
111 13.
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa
Lectures. Dordrecht: Foris.

Lexical Semantics and Text Semantics

147

Fillmore, Charles J. 1982a. Ideal readers and real readers. In Deborah

Tannen, ed. Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk. Georgetown Uni
versity Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 1981. Washing
ton, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
. 1982b. Monitoring the reading process. In The Linguistic So
ciety of Korea, ed. Linguistics in the Morning Calm. Seoul: Hanshin.
Lakoff, George P. 1974. Syntactic amalgams. In Robert B. Binnick, ed.
Papers from the Tenth Regional Meetings of the Chicago Linguistic
Society. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
Talmy, Leonard. 1983. How language structures space. In Herbert L.
Pick, Jr., and Linda P. Acredolo, eds. Spatial Orientation: Theory,
Research and Application. New York: Plenum Press.

Part Four

INTRODUCTION TO PART FOUR

The papers by Edward Stankiewicz and Donald Preziosi are remarkable

for their clarity, breadth, and insight. The former analyzes the poetic
function of language as a subclass of verbal semiotics; the latter discusses
visual semiotics as an approach to the analysis of the functions of the
built environment, more specifically of architecture. Among other fea
tures, they have in common an appreciation of the productive impact on
semiotics of Roman Jakobson's formulation of the six basic functions of
language, and of its infelicities.
Stankiewicz's position is that Jakobson's definition of the poetic func
tion of language as focusing on the message itself has led both to a one
sided concern with the properties of verse at the expense of other types of
literary expression, and to an excessively formal treatment of poetic
works to the detriment of their semantic and cognitive aspects. Stankie
wicz redefines the poetic text (in verse or in prose) as being set on the
aesthetic function; he proposes that it is only by means of the extraaesthetic considerations always available to the reader that the poetic
text can be interpreted in terms of nonaesthetic, pragmatic functions of
ordinary language.
The elimination of external and situational context enables the poetic
text to convert a reference to the speech act into a constructive, meaning
ful component of the literary work. Thus the major literary genres are
distinguished by the different role that they assign to the speech act and
to the speaker as components of a work's semantic organization.
Donald Preziosi's reaction to Jakobson's schema is that it has been pro
ductive primarily because of its application of the issue of multifunctionality to a general theory of semiosis. The result of Jakobson's schema
was to place emphasis on the speech act as a base referent. But visual
semiotics took a "speaker" focus in the speaker/message/listener triad,
rather than focusing on the "listener"; by taking the perspective of the
"maker" of visual artifacts instead of that of the "user," the field suc
cumbed to the well-known pitfall of the "intentional fallacy."
Preziosi sees as significant the recognition in linguistics that speech

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Introduction to Part Four

sounds as meaningful sequences are acts of perceptual discrimination,

cognitive classification, and commutation on the part of language users.
Thus while linguistics was beginning to take into account the percep
tually discriminative activity of language users, the focus in visual semio
tics in the last two decades has been shifting from a fixation on the inten
tion of the maker or designer toward consideration of how actual users
perceive the made environment. It is in this new focus on the subject
(user) that Preziosi sees the primary productive direction in visual semio
tics at the present time.
This approach is of course in striking parallel to the position taken in
Fillmore's recent work on text semantics, in which he focuses on the be
havior of the subject (hearer) in his study of the decoding/construal of
ordinary language discourse. (Cf. Fillmore, Chapter 7 in this volume.
Hockett among others had taken the same perspective earlier. Cf. Hockett
1960 and Lamb 1966.) Fillmore's reason for choosing the interpretation
process as the primary object of study is similar to Preziosi's; the com
prehension process is more easily studied. "It is relatively easy to observe
many interpreters' responses to a single language sample that is presented
to them, but it is essentially impossible to examine many speakers' activi
ties of producing the same text."
Preziosi goes on to say that a focus on the subject neither denies nor
undervalues the fact that an object may be intended by makers to mark a
particular content or system of value. But by emphasizing the perspective
of the individual user and construer of the visual environment, he avoids
for the moment the problematic nature of the notion of intention.
Another area of potentially significant influence of current visual semi
otics on linguistics is its making place for the complexity of crossmodal
connections. In Preziosi's terms, we "orchestrate and juxtapose anything
and everything in order to compose realities or simply to get messages
across to ourselves and others. . . . Our discursive activities take place in
a variety of modalities and channels simultaneously and sequentially . . .
in ways specific to given times, places, collectives and individuals."
Traditionally, linguistics has been seen as the source of methodologies
for informing the study of semiotic systems other than language, includ
ing that of visual semiotics. But Preziosi asserts that current study of the
built environment has rejected the mechanistic and simplistic analogues.
It has moved from an older, more narrowly conceived, structural linguis
tics to a visual semiotic theory that accepts a much broader purview,

Introduction to Part Four

153

namely the entire domain of the active, seeing subject, and the entire
range of artifactual spaciotemporal behaviors of the user or viewer. The
arrow between linguistics and visual semiotics that indicates the source
of useful heuristics and directions is now perhaps ready to be turned
around and pointed the other way.

REFERENCES

CITED

Hockett, Charles F. 1960. Grammar for the hearer. In Roman Jakobson,

ed. Proceedings of Symposia in Applied Mathematics, Vol. XII.
Lamb, Sydney. 1966. Linguistic structure and the production and decod
ing of discourse. In E. C. Carterette, ed. Brain Function, Vol. III.
Berkeley: University of California Press.

CHAPTER

Linguistics, Poetics,
and the Literary Genres

Edward Stankiewicz

In a memorable lecture delivered at the 1958 Conference on Style in Lan

guage at Indiana University, Roman Jakobson concluded his remarks
with words that were to steer linguistics for more than two decades to
wards the study of verbal art as one of its central concerns: "All of us
definitely realize," Jakobson declared, "that a linguist deaf to the poetic
function of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistic prob
lems and unconversant with linguistic methods are equally flagrant
anachronisms" (1960: 373).1
The linguist's concern with poetry, Jakobson reminded us, is warranted
by the fact that poetry is a verbal art that mobilizes all the resources of a
given language to construct the form and content of literary works. De
spite the perennial complaints of poets and philosophers about the tyr
anny of language and its unsuitability for artistic purposes ("Language,"
said Valry, "is a practical medium, a maid of all work from which [the
poet] must draw a pure, ideal voice" (1945 [1958: 81]), the truth is that
language is the poet's only instrument, even though he may use it to
gether with signs of a different medium (such as music, gestures, or
graphic design). That the poet or writer is primarily a master, though not
necessarily a juggler of words, needs no special belaboring. You may re
call the anecdote about the painter Degas, who complained to his friend
Mallarm about his difficulties in writing poems even though he had
good ideas about how they should be written. To this Mallarm replied,
"Poetry is made with words, not with ideas." This anecdote was, curi-

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Edward Stankiewicz

ously enough, reversed by Degas' contemporary, the chemist Pasteur;

asked by an aspiring foreign scientist whether he could work with him
with his limited knowledge of French, Pasteur is reported to have said,
"Science, my friend, is not made with words, but with ideas." The point
of these anecdotes is that science and poetry pursue different ends and
assume a different stance toward language. Science, which seeks a corre
spondence between statements and facts, can assert its findings in dif
ferent ways. It can translate them from one language into another or
from a natural language into an artificial one without loss of informa
tion, as long as it specifies the context of discourse and their relation to
empirical experience. Poetry, on the other hand, which pursues an aes
thetic goal, is indifferent to the sanction of facts and depends entirely on
the form of its expression, including the very language in which it is
couched. This accounts for the fact that poetry is "memorable," that it
does not lend itself to paraphrase, and that a good translation of a poetic
text is itself an original work of art.2
The cited anecdotes are, nevertheless, misleading in more than one
way. No "ideas," be they scientific or of practical utility, are shaped with
out the intermediacy of language, which underlies all concept formation,
while poetry does not consist of meaningless words. But it is precisely
such an empty or noncommunicable language that Mallarm must have
had in mind when he encouraged his friend to forget ideas and to depend
on words. For at the end of the last century the poetic avant-garde be
lieved that poetry, as a "pure" art, must sever its ties with any practical or
referential function and rise to the condition of musicor as Valry put
it, "draw a pure, ideal voice from a practical medium." Such a radical
and oversimplified conception of poetry has been inscribed on the banner
of many modern poetic movements, beginning with the symbolists up to
the futurists and dadaists, for whom referential and accessible meaning
seemed to be the very antipode of poetry. Yet it is well known that entire
traditions of poetry pursued expressly cognitive, didactic, and practical
goals without compromising in the least the aesthetic enterprise.
The modern quest for a new poetic language unencumbered by practi
cal or referential functions has had a profound influence on the direction
of modern poetry, and on poetic theory. Although the renunciation of
art's representational function is hardly possible in a medium that con
sists intrinsically of meaningful signs, the new aesthetic program was re
sponsible for two distinct though closely related tendencies in verbal art:

Linguistics, Poetics, and the Literary Genres

157

the search for a new poetic form and the manipulation of language as a
source of poetic invention. Although the Romantics had already pro
claimed the primacy of form over content and the "intransitive" nature of
poetry, it was left to the symbolists and their followers to define the direc
tion of this new linguistically oriented art. Mallarm's call to give up the
authority of the author and to "leave the initiative to the words" has, in
fact, become a raid on the phonetic, lexical, and syntactic possibilities of
language. "Je disais," wrote Aragon in his preface to Les yeux d'Eisa,
"qu'il n'y a posie qu'autant qu'il y a mditation sur le language, et
chaque pas rinvention de ce langage. Ce qui implique de briser les cadres
fixes du langage, les rgies de la grammaire et les lois du discours." A
similar stance toward the language of poetry was taken by all major inno
vators of modern verse.
The conviction that the language of poetry is rooted in the poetry of
language was soon to receive its theoretical formulation in a variety of
doctrines. It was most clearly articulated by the Russian formalists, who
included among their ranks linguists and literary scholars, and who set
out to revise the tenets of traditional poetics (and to legitimatize at the
same time the efforts of their poetic confreres, the futurists). The theories
and fortunes of that linguistically oriented school of poetics have been
amply discussed and need not be restated in this space. However, one of
the central tenets of the formalists was that the poetic text as an autotelic
structure "draws attention to itself," in the process of which it also
"makes palpable" the linguistic sign. The structure of a poetic text, it was
futhermore claimed, shows a strong parallelism with the system of lan
guage in that both are made up of networks of interdependent and mutu
ally conditioning signs. This emphasis on the parallelism between the
code and the message carried with it an attempt to resolve the Saussurean
antinomy between langue and parole by showing that the message, too
(or at least the message in its highly organized poetic form), involves a
kind of organization that, according to Saussure, could exist only in the
linguistic code. The attempt to integrate the study of langue with that of
parole was at the same time advanced in other linguistic quarters, and
nowhere as vigorously as among the students of Saussure, who proposed
to develop a "science de la parole," which would complement their mas
ter's "science de la langue." But the Saussurian cleavage between langue
and parole was not thereby overcome. According to Sechahaye, one of
the leaders of the Geneva school, there was no reciprocity between the

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two, since langue pertains to the "intellectual" and "grammatical" laws

of language, whereas parole concerns all that is "pregrammatical," "vi
tal," and "spontaneous" (Sechahaye 1969:146ff.). Some of these notions
were implicit in the Cours itself, though the dualism set up by Saussure
was by no means as radical as is generally believed. The importance of
parole was recognized by Saussure when he wrote that "les changements
[linguistiques] commencent par cette partie du langage que nous n'tu
dions pas: la parole" (1916 [1967:3312]). Saussure was, furthermore,
aware that language is not a closed and self-referential system but in
volves reference to an outside reality or, as he put it, to "a third object"
("un troisime lment incontestable dans l'association psychologique du
sme") which implies an active participation of the speaker in the process
of speech and an interplay between the linguistic code and the verbal
message. Saussure himself was far from drawing an untraversable bound
ary between competence and performance and would no doubt have re
jected the fashionable belief that linguistic creativity resides in the selec
tion rules of a given language and not with the speaker.
The awareness that language does not consist of ready-made, narrowly
defined signs used in predictable syntactic combinations was long before
Saussure enunciated by the father of modern empiricism, John Locke,
who reacted to the Utopian and a priori ideas of the rationalists who ex
pected language to work like a tight and well-oiled clock. "To attempt to
perfect reforming the language of the world," wrote Locke, "would be to
think that all men should have the same notions and should talk of
nothing but of what they have clear and distinct ideas, which is not to be
expected of anyone who has not vanity enough to imagine he can prevail
with man to be very knowing or very silent. . . . And since wit and
fancy," Locke continues, "find easier entertainment in the world than dry
truth and real knowledge, figurative speeches and allusion in language
will hardly be admitted as imperfection or abuse of it. I confess, in dis
courses where we seek rather pleasure and delight than information and
improvement, such ornaments as are borrowed from them can scarce
pass for faults" (1690 [1959:146, 148]).
The creative and dynamic aspects of language resulting from the inter
play of langue and parole were early in our century most clearly articula
ted by the linguists of Prague, to whom the language of poetry repre
sented this interplay to the highest degree. "Everything in the work of

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159

art," proclaimed one of the Theses of the Prague Circle, "enables us to

experience the act of speech in its totality and reveals to us language not
as a ready-made static system, but as a creative energy" (Theses of the
Prague Circle 1929). The question of the relation of code and message
received more general theoretical formulation in the works of Karl
Bhler (1934), who identified three basic functions of languagethe
cognitive, appellative, and emotiveto which Roman Jakobson, in turn,
added three more functions: the phatic, metalinguistic, and poetic. The
sought-after link between the code and the message seemed thus firmly
established, since the so-called functions of language refer to those uses
of the message that are implemented through distinctive elements of the
linguistic code. However, one cannot fail to notice that of the six func
tions of language established by Jakobson, only the poetic function re
ceived serious attention both in the works of Jakobson and in those of his
followers. This is not surprising, since poetry is the counterpart of all
other "functions of language" taken together. In everyday discourse all
functions of language tend to intersect, whereas poetry, which is almost
as universal as "ordinary" speech, constitutes a linguistic domain of its
own: it presents us with clearly articulated minor or larger texts, with a
variety of genres and literary traditions; it is read or delivered under spe
cial conditions; it combines easily with other arts; and it persists as an
autonomous cultural sphere. A purely linguistic approach to "poetic lan
guage" cannot but overlook these critical aspects of verbal art, since it
concentrates only on those features of "poetic language" that set it apart
from the other functions of language and that are parallel to or derived
from the linguistic code. The treatment of poetics as an ancilla philologiae (especially in the form in which it has hitherto been defined) nar
rows its scope, though it might conceivably be argued that a linguistic
poetics that reveals the dependence of poetry upon the structure of a
given language (as, for example, in the choice of metrical schemes) has
fulfilled its task. Such a program would miss, however, the fact that po
etry is not merely a "realization" of the resources contained in the lin
guistic code, but a transcendence of their values, since it endows these
resources with functions and meanings they do not possess in everyday
speech. Such a poetics is still to be established, since modern theory views
the relations of language and poetry within too restrictive a compass, or
posits this question in an oversimplified and largely inadequate form. In

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Edward Stankiewicz

what follows I shall briefly review the basic approaches to verbal art and
what I consider to be their major shortcomings.
The theoretical question "What is poetry?" has given rise to three
more or less distinct interpretations that have their roots in traditional
poetics and whose contours were adumbrated in the works of Aristotle
(in his Poetics, Rhetoric, Nichomachean Ethics, and On Interpretation.) We may call them the functional, the formal, and the linguistic
approaches.
The functional approach has perhaps the longest and most persistent
tradition, since many literary forms are inseparably intertwined with
practical functions. The Horatian precept of prodesse et delectare, or
representation made pleasant by means of ornaments, has guided literary
practice and theory throughout the ages, finding poignant expression in
all forms of sacral literature, in didactic works, and more recently in the
products of Socialist realism. The conviction that art is "purposeful with
out a purpose" is essentially a modern discovery, though Aristotle had
already averred that the value of art lies in the work itself, and that the
statements of poetry are neither true nor false (ote alethes, ote pseudes)
(On Interpretation, 17a2).
The nonreferential function of poetry is the starting point and center
of gravity for most contemporary literary theories. Besides the symbolists
and such modern poets as Archibald MacLeish, who wrote that "a poem
must not mean, but be," philosophers of language and literary scholars
have restated it in one form or another. According to Carnap and Ingarden, poetry differs from ordinary language in that it does not consist
of statements, but of "pseudo-statements"; for John Austin literature is
"parasitic language" or a "performative utterance," which is "in a pecu
liar way hollow and void" (this about the speech of an actor [1962: 21]);
for John Searle it is "a let's pretend mode of meaning" that "changes in
no way the meaning of words or other linguistic elements" (1970:78
79); for Roland Barthes it is a "system of deceptive signification" (1973 :
23). This insistence on the nonreferential function of literature agrees
with our intuitive feeling that literature creates a world of its own (a "heterocosmos"), but it hardly provides an insight into the workings of this
world. The negative definition of poetry makes the referential function
into a yardstick, a measure of verbal art; and it overlooks the fact that

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161

language does not consist only of declarative sentences, but also of ap

pellative and emotive expressions that are equally immune to the stan
dards of truth (a fact that was likewise recognized by Aristotle, who com
pared the truth value of poetry to that of prayer). Second, it
underestimates the capacity of literary works to convey information
about actual states of affairs, treating all of their utterances as fiction;
and third, it ignores the holistic nature of literary works, concentrating
on the truth value of individual sentences. One can thus hardly agree
with Searle when he asserts that a literary work "changes in no way the
meaning of words or other linguistic elements," for the relations within a
whole give rise to new, emerging qualities that are not contained in the
meaning of the parts. Don Quixote was closer to the truth when he said
to the Duchess: "God knows whether Dulcinea does or does not exist in
the world and whether she is the product of phantasy or not; these are
not things whose investigation can be carried to the end." Likewise,
when a speaker of English hears the proverb, "Rolling stones gather no
moss," he does not stop to inquire whether the statement is true or false,
but interprets it correctly for the richness of its metaphoric meanings,
providing that he comprehends the poetic function of a proverb and in
terprets it as such in the proper context.
Another functional approach has tended to identify poetry (lyrical po
etry in particular) with the expression of emotion and has been encapsu
lated in Wordsworth's famous phrase that poetry is "emotion recollected
in tranquillity," which provoked T. S. Eliot's response that it is "neither
emotion, nor recollection, nor without the distortion of meaning, tran
quility." Bhler's and Jakobson's separation of the emotive and poetic
functions, as well as the nonemotional drift of contemporary poetry,
have largely preempted this oft-repeated claim that still finds its way into
literary manuals and textbooks of linguistics.3
The second, or formal, approach to poetry is far more compelling; and
its significance, as it were, leaps to the eye in the reading of verse. The
"formal method," which became the basic scientific tool of the Russian
formalists, yielded unexpectedly rewarding results, primarily because it
was applied to the study of verse and to works that "lay bare" their for
mal devices. The shortcomings of the "method" begin to show when
form is treated apart from content, or as a goal in itself. The formalist
slogan (coined by Sklovskij) that "the content of a literary work is but a

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Edward Stankiewicz

pretext for the display of form," was, in effect, ignored by the formalists
themselves the moment they touched upon the meaning of literary works
or when they tackled the question of the function of form.
The third, or linguistic, approach to poetry, as I said, owes its modern
thrust to the linguistic orientation of contemporary poetry, even though
one may trace its affiliation to an older tradition (associated with the
names of Rousseau and Herder) that treated poetry as a separate lan
guagea language more primitive and more vigorous than "intellectual"
language.
The linguistic interpretation of verbal art is marked by a variety of
viewpoints that reflect partly the linguistic theories of their practitioners,
and partly the range of their literary expertise. For the sake of simplicity
we may divide them into two types: a one-sided linguistic approach that
makes ordinary language into the yardstick of poetry and that treats the
latter as a deviation from the linguistic norm; and a more profound ap
proach that sees it as one of the basic functions of language. The first
approach has been embraced by a number of literary scholars (Samuel
Levin, Jean Cohen, Tzvetan Todorov) and has received a new boost from
transformational grammar, which treats any figurative expression (and
especially metaphor) as a deviation from the selection rules of a given
language. None of these scholars has been able to show in which way the
"violations" committed by poets differ from those used in everyday
speech or, for that matter, from the metaphorical expressions that are
common in science (to think but of such terms as "field," "wave," "Max
well's demons," "black hole," and "magic bullets"). It is, on the other
hand, well known that some poets and even entire poetic schools shun
the use of "images" or poetic figures that, as Locke remarked, constitute
"the delight and pleasure" of ordinary language. It is by now also per
fectly clear that the concept of straightforward, "well-formed" sentences
eludes any attempt at scientific precision and is one of the illusory con
cepts of transformational grammar.
The view that poetry constitutes one of the functions of language is
inseparably associated with the name of Roman Jakobson. The inner co
hesion of Jakobson's conception and his grand synthesis of linguistic and
literary theory have made it the leading paradigm of a linguistically ori
ented poetics. The lacunae in his theory cannot, however, be overlooked,
and they reveal some of the limitations inherited from the "formal
method," which Jakobson himself helped to shape and later partially to

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revise. The major shortcomings of the theory lie in its limited applicabil
ity to artistic prose (that according to Jakobson comes perilously close to
the referential pole), in the lack of a holistic conception of literary texts,
and in the treatment of poetry on a par with the other functions of lan
guage. (Note that the early formalists, like their eighteenth-century pre
decessors, treated poetry as a separate language.) Since Jakobson's theory
offers the fullest and most systematic program for contemporary poetics,
it may not be out of place to consider some of his proposals more closely.
You may recall that Jakobson's definition of the functions of language
hinges, like his analysis of phonological and grammatical categories,
upon sets of binary oppositions. Among the six functions of language the
poetic function appears as the opposite of the metalinguistic function.
"Poetry and meta-language," Jakobson wrote, "are diametrically op
posed: in meta-language the sequence is used to build an equation,"
whereas in poetry "the equation is used to build a sequence." To achieve
this, "poetry projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of simi
larity to the axis of contiguity" (1960:358). This so-called projection
rule constructs the verbal message as a sequence of equivalents that either
resemble each other (i.e., they form synonyms) or remain in contrast
(they form antonyms). In addition to the equivalents of meaning (the
grammatical equivalents that, in Jakobson's terms, make up the "gram
mar of poetry"), the poetic message is built on phonetic parallelisms, or
on "figures of sound," which modify and complement the "figures of
thought."
As I have stated above, the "poetic function" is by no means commen
surate with the other functions of language. Poetry involves the organiza
tion of texts, whereas the other functions of language are rooted in exter
nal contexts and are rendered by distinctive linguistic forms that belong
to the linguistic code (e.g., the use of predicate forms for the referential
function, of interjections or forms of endearment for the emotive func
tion, of forms of address for the appellative function). Poetry may manip
ulate the resources of language, but it remains a function of parole, even
though some traditions of poetry have at various times created special
poetic languages (e.g., the poetic guilds of Ireland and Iceland) or "artifi
cial" dialects (e.g., the language of Homer) in order to differentiate their
products from practical prose. The use of such languages or of distinctly
poetic forms is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the con-

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struction of literary texts. Jakobson's projection rule is, furthermore, an

overgeneralization, yet is not general enough. It overgeneralizes because
any syntagmatic sequence is built on equivalents that are inherent in the
linguistic code (i.e., on the axis of selection), and it is not general enough
because it does not apply to artistic prose, being meant to account for the
structure of verse that is built on the regular distribution of phonetic and
semantic equivalents (such as the recurrence of rhymes or the alternation
of strong and weak syllables in a metrical line).
The oppositions of poetry need not correspond to the oppositions of
language and are ultimately the result of individual invention, or rather
of an encounter between individual invention and literary conventions.
The construction of a work thus involves not only the use of phonetic or
grammatical equivalents, but also such broad literary equivalents as the
relation of plots, characters, temporal coordinates, narrative voices, and
styles of speech. The narrowly defined projection rule fails, further, to
account for the dynamic and creative qualities that emerge in the process
of reading. For unlike a practical message that unfolds in a progressive
order, the literary text moves in a variety of directions, even though it
strives inevitably towards a final goal, a denouement. John Updike cor
rectly observed that "a poem suggests the image of a line that pretends to
twist and turn, yet in truth is perfectly straight." The twists and turns of
the poetic line mobilize the attention of the reader and compel him to
seek the unity beneath and despite the manifest contradictions. The po
etic text thus differs also from the paradigmatic system of language (the
axis of selection) in that it does not, like the latter, involve either/or alter
natives, but combines, in the complex dialectics of poetry, the either/or
with the both/and. The semantic equivalents, that is, interpenetrate and
illumine each other, producing, in the words of Goethe, "wonderful re
flections . . . which moving from mirror to mirror do not pale, but ignite
each other . . . like entoptic phenomena" (1819 [1948 :172]).
The idea of polarity and enhancement (Polaritt und Steigerung) was
even more cogently expressed by Gerard Manley Hopkins: "Poetry," he
wrote, "makes of each resemblance a reason for surprise in the next dif
ference . . . and resemblances and antitheses themselves are made to
make up a wider difference" (1865 [1959:105]). The tendency of poetry
to unify and to divide (das Geeinte zu entzweien/das Entzweite zu steigern) shapes the organization of the poetic message in which the clearly

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articulated individual parts acquire their final meaning only with refer
ence to each other and to the text as a whole. This relation of the parts to
the whole requires a progressive and retrogressive movement that con
verts the linear or temporal sequence into a simultaneous presence where
the beginning and the end, the centers and the margins, the foreground
and the background constantly modify and redefine each other. The lin
guist's separation of the two axes of language, as well as Jakobson's sys
tematic separation of metaphor and metonymy are, consequently, of little
relevance for the comprehension of a text where the two poles condition
and complete each other.
The metaphoric thrust of a montage, an allegedly metonymic struc
ture, was forcefully emphasized by Sergei Eisenstein, the master and the
oretician of that form. "Two adjacent parts," he wrote, "become inevita
bly welded into one image which emerges from their juxtaposition as a
new quality" (1949: 2.38). Thus, it also becomes clear why the phonetic
repetitions and parallelisms that are particularly conspicuous in verse are
used not merely for superficial musical or euphonic effects, but are the
indispensable elements that tie the parts together and construct them
into ever-larger and cohesive wholes. The aforementioned dynamic and
emerging qualities that confront us in reading literary texts are perennial
qualities of all forms of art and show that the so-called poetic function of
language transcends the confines of linguistics and enters into that wider
domain that we have come to call "the semiotics of art."
It is true that in the history of the various arts the tendency toward
tightly knit compositional wholes (which I have elsewhere called cen
tripetal structures) has frequently been matched by the opposite tendency
towards loosely connected, centrifugal forms (Stankiewicz 1982). How
ever, the very separation of an artistic work from practical contexts, the
various types of frames that delimit its boundaries and the multiple de
vices that bind it into a whole, prevent the dissolution of an aesthetic ar
tifact into disparate fragments or a purely additive sequence. The unity of
aesthetic objects is thus to be seen as one of their fundamental properties,
and it is this unity that ultimately distinguishes verbal art from ordinary
discourse, no matter how deeply the latter is orchestrated with phonetic
figures and rhetorical tropes. A structural poetics, like any theoretical en
deavor in the sphere of arts, cannot but heed the Kantian precept: "There
is yet another consideration which is more philosophical and architec-

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tonic in character; namely, to grasp the idea of the whole correctly and
thence to view all parts in their mutual relation" (1788 [1927:95]).
The lack of a holistic concept of poetry and the neglect of the dynamic
aspects of poetic works has also affected the treatment of the literary
genres, which remains one of the least developed areas of literary theory.
Jakobson defined the genres as follows: "The linguistic study of the po
etic function must overstep the limits of poetry, and on the other hand,
the linguistic scrutiny of poetry cannot limit itself to the poetic function.
The particularities of diverse poetic genres imply a differently ranked
participation of the other verbal functions. Epic poetry, focused on the
third person, strongly involves the referential function of language; the
lyric oriented toward the first person is intimately linked with the emo
tive function; poetry of the second person is imbued with the conative
function and is either supplicatory or exhortative, depending on whether
the first person is subordinated to the second one or the second to the
first" (1960: 357). The proposed definition of the literary genres conflicts
with our and Jakobson's own conception of the autonomy of art. While
the nonpoetic functions of language tend to blend or intersect (e.g., the
emotive and phatic forms of language do often coincide; declarative
statements can be emotionally charged), the "poetic function" consti
tutes, indeed, a category apart, as long as we focus our interest on literary
texts and do not dilute the concept of poetry to embrace any metaphoric
turn of speech or the ubiquitous forms of applied verbal art. The com
bination of the poetic and nonpoetic functions that we encounter in slo
gans, advertisements, sermons, and jokes does not convert such expres
sions into autonomous objects, insofar as they do not renounce their
practical intent and do not sever their ties with the hic et nunc (or illic et
tunc) of the situational contexts in which they arise. The study of poetry
need not ignore such transitional forms, but its proper domain begins
with texts that have, according to Aristotle, "a beginning, a middle and
an end." Aristotle was, in fact, also among the first to recognize the dif
ference between rhetoric, which studies the use of atomistic "poetic de
vices" for practical ends, and poetics, which deals with the structure of
total texts. The borderline between poetic and nonpoetic texts is not, to
be sure, settled once and for all, but varies according to fashions and lit
erary schools, as well as the literary competence and point of view of the
reader. The difference is not a matter of degree, but one of quality that

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stems from the very nature of structured wholes. The precarious line that
may separate works of art from practical objects no doubt introduces a
subjective component in the interpretation of art, but this is unfortu
nately (or fortunately) a predicament with which the judging mind must
come to terms whenever it is confronted with the world of values and
changing tastes.
Another shortcoming of the Jakobsonian approach is that it defines the
"poetic function" in formal terms (the poetic message "uses equations to
build a sequence"), whereas the other functions are described in positive,
semantic terms (they refer to the world, they emote, they enjoin the lis
tener). It would seem more to the point to reverse the formula ("poetry
uses the sequence to create equations"), and to specify the complex and
emerging qualities of the poetic "equations."
Even more strained is the attempt to charge the grammatical persons
with the burden of distinguishing the three basic functions of language as
well as the three traditional literary genres. Neither the three functions of
language nor the literary genres submit easily to such reductionism. Nar
rative fiction can be written in any person, and as a rule it involves, like
the drama, a polyphony of voices and a clash of persons. Lyrical poems
may be written in the first and second person (e.g., Goethe's Warte nur,
balde ruhest du auch), and may equally well dispense with reference to
person. Drama switches constantly from person to person (including the
second person of the audience). Jakobson's characterization of the three
genres harks back to a tradition that accorded new significance to the
lyric as an emotional genre and that readily adopted Goethe's formula,
given in his Weststlicher Divan: "Es gibt nur drei echte Naturformen der
Poesie: die klar erzhlende, die entusiastisch aufgeregte und die persn
lich handelnede" (1819 [1948:187]). However, neither the concept of
"natural forms" nor the criteria for the threefold division have been
clearly defined, although the distinction of genres (at least of the epic and
drama) was early enough recognized by the Greeks. The claim that lyrical
poetry expresses emotion rests on singularly precarious grounds, since a
great deal of lyrical poetry is not emotive at all, while other poetic genres
have at one time or another arrogated to themselves the same role. (In
eighteenth-century France it was the opera rather than the lyric that was
deemed the proper medium for the expression of "passions" [Behrens
1940:146].) The reliance on vague metaphysical notions and atomistic
criteria has been a constant hindrance in the formulation of an adequate

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theory of genres. Thus some German scholars (Vitor) saw in the literary
genres "fundamental stances" {Grundeinstellungen gegenber der Welt),
while others (W. Kaiser) treated them as "primordial human phenom
ena" (Urphnomene); a third group of scholars (J. Paul, Hegel, Vitor)
defined them in terms of grammatical categories (the present tense being
the lyric, the past tense the epic, the future the drama), while a fourth
group compared the three genres to the syllable, word, and sentence
(never mind which corresponds to which!).4 According to Kte Ham
burger, the narrative genres are mimetic, whereas the lyric conveys per
sonal experience (Ich-Erlebnis) (1957:32); for Tzvetan Todorov narra
tive literature is the domain of fiction, while lyric poetry is the genre of
formal devices (rhyme, rhythm, and rhetorical figures) (Theses of the
Prague Circle 1929 [1970: 15ff.5]).
It is not surprising that, faced with such a plethora of definitions, some
literary theorists have given up the effort to define the distinctive features
of the literary genres, in particular of the lyric. Thus even such a search
ing critic as Ren Wellek is inclined to question the value of a literary
typology. "One must abandon attempts," he writes, "to define the general
nature of the lyric (or the lyrical) in favor of the study of the variety of
poetry and the description of genres which can be grasped in their con
crete conventions and traditions" (1970: 252). This call for the study of
literary works "in their concreteness" marks, indeed, a retreat from theo
retical thought, so that Wellek finds himself in league with such thinkers
as Croce and Spingarn, who treated each literary work on its own terms,
as an expression of individual inspiration.5 However, if there is one thing
that strikes even the uninformed reader, it is that we do not consume lit
erature "in general," but that we read novels, enjoy poems, and watch
plays, and that the division of literature into different genres is not a willo'-the-wisp, but one of the most persistent attributes of verbal art, in con
trast to the other arts that do not split up into similar types. The literary
genres are conventions or poetic codes that mediate between language
and each individual work, and constitute the point of reference for the
construction and perception of such works. Like any other social conven
tion or code, they vary in time and in space, but they contain some invari
ant features of which we are intuitively aware, even though we cannot
always formulate them in theoretical terms. The question, then, is: what
are the distinctive features of the literary genres? Before answering, let us
return to the matter of the referential function of literary texts. Such texts

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have been considered to be neither true nor false (if we accept the claim
that they consist of pseudostatements, rather than of statements), or both
true and false (if we agree that they mingle the poetic with nonpoetic
functions). We can escape this double paradox if we adopt a holistic ap
proach and recognize that a literary text is not the sum of individual
"statements" or a blend of linguistic functions but an integral whole that
establishes its own content and context.
The question of reference or of practical functions arises only when the
text is dismantled into its individual components and when we anchor
the latter in the situational context of an actual utterance, or within a
context that the literary text as a work of art attempts by all means to
blur and to transcend. The transcendence of reference is put into particu
lar relief when such a text explicitly denies what it otherwise asserts, as is
the case in some Serbocroatian epic songs that deal with historical events
but end with the formula, "We were lied to, we repeat the lie" (Nas lagali,
mi polagujemo), or when Don Quixote tells us in the same breath that he
learned his story from an old (i.e., reliable) chronicle, and from an Arab
"whose nation is known for its lying propensities." The separation of a
text from the context of the speech act is, perhaps, most palpable in the
theater, which draws a barrier (and a curtain) between the audience,
which is placed in the dark, and the performance, which takes place on
the lighted stage. The overstepping of that barrier is perceived as a viola
tion of the autonomy of the play, as when a naive onlooker rushes to the
stage to save the heroine from imminent murder or to mete revenge on
perfidious Judas. It is only in contemporary art, which plays with the
boundaries between art and reality, that the audience is invited to join the
stage or the stage pretends to join the audience (as for example, in the
theater of Brecht). It should thus be apparent that the aesthetic status of a
text depends not only on its intrinsic properties, but also on the stance of
the observer: by segmenting the text into its constituent parts and by
grounding them one by one in a situational context, we may examine
their relation to external reality, whereas by viewing it as a structured
whole we cannot but overlook its extratextual implications. It is well
known that the very separation of an object from a situational context
tends to invite an aesthetic response; thus our museums are full of for
merly utilitarian objects (e.g., pieces of furniture, armor, clothing, do
mestic utensils), while modern art forces an aesthetic interpretation of
such objects by tearing them from their practical milieu (e.g., the toilet

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seat of Duchamp), although the isolation of objects from their existential

context is the minimal requirement one can demand of a work of art. The
most highly organized artistic objects can, on the other hand, be scru
tinized for their utility or historical truth, as long as we ground them in
an external context. Thus Raphael's painting of Julius II can be examined
by historians of the papacy for the warts and swellings of the pope's fin
gers (provided they know that they deal with a portrait), while Balzac's
novels may tell us a great deal about French bourgeois society (provided
we are aware of their historical setting).
The discrimination of a literary and practical text presupposes, then,
some degree of literary competence. At the least it requires a recognition
of the former as an aesthetic object, whereas at greater depth it demands
a grasp of its relation to other texts (for the use of allusions, quotations,
and cross-references), a knowledge of prevailing and historical literary
codes, and a recognition of its membership in one or another literary
genre.
I have been suggesting all along that a practical message can convey its
cognitive or socializing functions only by being set in a speech act that
may be incomplete (as in the case of an absent or potential addressee),
but is never suppressed. The functions of such a message are fulfilled by
the use of indexical symbols (such as the categories of person, tense, and
mood) that indicate the relation of the participants of the speech event to
the narrated event, or to each other. It is only in poetry, which makes no
claim to pragmatic functions, that the context of the speech act is abol
ished, since a poetic text, like any work of art, establishes its own internal
context. Valry expressed this idea most cogently when he observed that
"poetry is a strange discourse, as though made by someone other than
the speaker and addressed to someone other than the reader" (1945
[1958:63]). The abolition of the actual speech situation is again quite
palpable in the theater, where the role of the addressor is transferred to
the actors (or the hidden spokesmen for puppets), and that of the ad
dressee to the actors as well as to a silent and anonymous audience; or in
oral literature, where the question of authorship does not even arise,
since the actual author is generally unknown (being part of a collective
tradition) and is totally identified with the role of performer.
The abolition of the speech act in a poetic text does not, however, do
away with the use of the indexical symbols, which make up the indis
pensable and most universal elements of language, but converts them

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171

into an integral part of the structure and meaning of a text. To put it dif
ferently, the speech event enters the poetic text as the structural counter
part of its narrated event and forms the basis for the articulation of litera
ture into three distinctive genres. The conversion of the indexical
symbols into the building blocks of poetic structures proves once more
that poetry is not merely a "realization" of oppositions inherent in the
linguistic code, but a true and creative transformation of their ordinary
functions.
Each of the three literary genres assigns a different role to the narrated
event and to the speech event. The drama and the epic (including its mod
ern variant, the novel) can be characterized by the presence of two oblig
atory features: a narrated event (i.e., a story or a plot that evolves in time
and moves ineluctably towards a resolution) and a narrator or speech
event that advances and comments on the narrative and its protagonists.
The difference between the two narrative genres lies in the presentation of
the speech event. In the drama it is implemented through the speech and
performance of the actors, who are at the same time the protagonists of
the narrated event and placed in a fictitious situational setting that serves
as the backdrop for both events. In the epic, on the other hand, the narra
tor and narrative form separate though tightly interlocking realms: the
narrator may act as an impartial (or omniscient) observer, or he may play
the role of any one of the protagonists, though his presence and authority
are inevitably felt. The affinity between the two genres should be appar
ent: they are easily convertible into each other (as, for example, in the
cinema, which uses the material of novels) and they may in part overlap
(as when the author steps forth from a play (as in Brecht's "epic" theater,
or in the dialogue parts of a novel). In contrast to the epic and the drama,
the lyric does away with the use of a narrative and consequently with the
role of a distinctive narrator. If we were to apply the structuralist notion
of markedness to the genres, we might say that the narrative genres are
marked, whereas the lyric is unmarked in that it fails to construct a nar
rative and a narrator, or it fuses the two into a single happening. The un
marked nature of the lyric was no doubt responsible for the fact that it
remained for a long time unrecognized as a genre and that its autono
mous status is still in doubt. The negative definition of the lyric does not,
however, suffice to identify it as a genre, if by a genre is meant a type
whose invariant features must be present in any of its members. A literary
text, we repeat, is a dynamic structure built on the principle of "unity in

172. Edward Stankiewicz

variety." The variety lies in the heterogeneity of the parts, which seem
ingly move in different directions, while its unity is achieved through the
interaction of the parts and the tendency to reconcile the presented con
tradictions. The narrative genres achieve their unity by means of a "plot"
that moves inexorably towards a resolution, whereas the lyric, which
lacks a dominant narrative line, achieves this unity by means of com
positional form, i.e., by means of a rhythmic pattern that pervades the
entire structure of a work and that is supported by a series of supplemen
tary devices, such as recurrent rhymes, syntactic parallelisms, soundorchestration, typographic arrangements, and the accompaniment of
music. The significance of form for the lyrical genre is apparent from the
generic name of the genre, which universally indicates its rhythmic design
(Latin versus; German gebundene Rede), just as the names of the specific
lyrical kinds point unmistakably to their musical origins (e.g., Lied,
canto, sonnet, rondeau, elegy, ode, madrigal, ritornello). The narrative
and lyrical genres, in effect, form complementary structures, for while the
former build their composition on the unity of broad semantic opposi
tions (such as character and plot), the latter build it on the parellelisms
and unity of its minutest details and constituent parts. The narrative
genres do not by any means proscribe the use of rhythmic or phonetic
effects, which do at times acquire considerable proportions (as in the
novels of James Joyce and Vladimir Nabokov). But the use of such effects
is only sporadic and "ornamental" (or marks attempts to break the integ
rity of the genre), whereas the formal organization of the lyric is the life
of the genre, since form becomes here the generator of meaning, while
meaning shapes and generates the form. The indispensable interaction of
meaning and form has been pointedly discussed by such poets as Valry,
who saw verse as "une oscillation entre le son et le sens," or by Goethe,
for whom form itself was sufficient to trigger the meaning of a poem. "In
order to write verse," Goethe remarked, "one must not have anything to
say, for someone who has nothing to say may still write verses and select
rhymes in which one word prompts another and something at last will
come out. And although it still does not mean anything, it seems as if it
means something" (Eckermann 1827 [1959:172]). Without the integrat
ing function of form, the lyrical poem is constantly in danger of falling
apart or dissolving into a series of fragments, as happens in so much
modern verse. The renunciation of traditional metrical forms, which has
been the hallmark of contemporary verse, has on the other hand been

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173

compensated by an increased use of rhythmic devices (especially soundorchestration) that have yielded more condensed and more idiosyncratic
lyrical forms together with more condensed networks of meaning. The
increased emphasis on the sound fabric of verse has at the same time led
to the creation of works (and entire poetic programs) that celebrate form
for its own sake and that look for their models to those microscopic,
mostly oral genres (such as nonsense verse, counting rhymes, riddles, and
linguistic puns) that suppress meaning for the sake of phonetic and
rhythmic effects.
The existence of distinct literary genres should not be construed as
being synonymous with their isolation, especially in our times when the
critical attitude towards rigid codes has blurred the boundaries between
the various genres, as well as between the verbal and nonverbal arts. Ever
since the Romantics began to clamor for heterogeneous, syncretic works
of art (for a Gesamtkunstwerk), the status of the genres has been in con
tinuous flux. Thus the epic became a free-floating form that incorporates
lyrical and dramatic parts; the lyric adopted the everyday language of re
alistic prose and suppressed the role of the lyrical "I," whereas the drama
attenuated the role of the plot and of the temporal sequence (as in the
plays of Chekhov and Beckett), or put the author of the play on the stage
(in the works of Brecht). The creation of such mixed, transitional forms
did not, however, undermine the autonomy of the genres, for it left intact
their invariant features.
The invariant and distinctive properties of the genres involve, as we
said, a dichotomy between the narrator and narrated event in the epic, a
coalescence of the two in the drama, and the suppression of such a di
chotomy in lyrical texts whose unity is built on compact compositional
form. The specification of a genre is not exhausted by the presence of
these invariant and obligatory features, but involves entire sets of supple
mentary, less stable categories. It is the latter that account for the density
and tensions of literary texts, for their divisions into more specific kinds
(or subgenres), and for the susceptibility of the genres to historical
change. In the epic they involve the interaction between major and sec
ondary plots, the presentation of time (e.g., linear, retarded, interrupted,
retrospective), the conflict between the protagonists, the contrasts be
tween actions and descriptions, and the shifting positions and voice of
the narrator. Unlike the classical epic, which assigned a more or less fixed
role to an "omniscient" author, the modern novel has found a new source

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Edward Stankiewicz

of tension in the protean aspects of the narrator (s), a problem that at

tracted considerable attention on the part of novelists and literary schol
ars (E. M. Forster, Kte Friedemann, Henry James, Percy Lubbock,
Wayne Booth, Mikhail Bakhtin). The shifting positions and guises of nar
rator (the hidden and overt, the single and multiple, the alternation of
direct and reported speech) have by no means reduced the authority of
the narrator but have made it more complex and unpredictable. Similar
sets of secondary features increase the complexity of the dramatic genre.
In addition to the use of a dominant plot, which proceeds necessarily in a
linear order (given the drama's limitations of time), and the presence of
actors (with or without a chorus), who narrate and carry forward the
play, the theater expands its internal tensions by actions that take place
off the stage, by shifts of scenes and the tempo of the play and by the
multiple contrasts offered by the stage (e.g., the juxtaposition of static
and mobile props, the changes in lighting, the use of closed and open
spaces, the costumes of the actors, the interplay between the stage and
the audience). One of the "dramatic" tensions of the theater derives from
the fact that it is a syncretic art, though Mukafovsky was no doubt right
when he maintained that the stage is but an optional component of the
dramatic genre. ("Drama," he wrote, "is the poetry of dialogue and dia
logue is action expressed in language: the speeches of a dialogue acquire
the value of a chain of action and reactions in the theater" [1977: 211].)
The subordinate role of the variable properties is indicated by the fact
that whatever their prominence in certain texts or in particular periods,
they tend to gravitate around the two central axes of the narrative genres;
i.e., the narrated event and the role of the narrator(s).
The foregoing remarks suggest some conclusions concerning the rela
tion of poetry to language and the distinctive attributes of the literary
genres. Poetics is the study of the general properties of poetic texts in
contradistinction to messages that are endowed with nonpoetic, cogni
tive, or socializing functions. Inasmuch as poetic texts fall into one or
another literary genre, it is also incumbent upon poetics to study the
common and distinctive features of the literary genres. The literary genres
are conventions or codes that mediate between language and individ
ual texts. Attempts to define these conventions in terms of single linguis
tic features (such as person or tense) have missed the mark, for they failed
to account for the tensions and unities of literary texts, which are in part

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175

predetermined by the system of genres and in part the result of individual

creativity. The literary genres are sets of stable and variable features sub
ject to various degrees of constraint.
The definition of genres as sets of distinctive and hierarchically orga
nized features points up the similarity of the literary codes to linguistic
systems, or more specifically to the phonological and conceptual features
of language that, like the genres, form hierarchies of oppositions that re
cur and differentiate all the phonemes and grammatical forms of a given
language. This parallelism between the poetic and linguistic codes is not a
matter of chance, for it reflects the basic homology of verbal (as well as
nonverbal) systems. But it is no less important to keep in mind their dif
ferences, which stem from the different functions of language and art. Of
particular relevance are the following:
1. The phonological and grammatical patterns of a language comprise
a finite and obligatory number of oppositions, whereas the literary genres
are open-ended and allow a number of alternatives. The distinctive fea
tures of the genres involve only two obligatory oppositions: the relation
between the narrating and narrated events and that between wholes and
parts. All other dichotomies are optional and may vary from work to
work, from period to period, or from one subgenre to another. The the
ater may dispense with costumes and props, dialogues may be prescribed
or improvised (as in the Commedia deWarte), the actors may be cast as
free agents or as stereotypes (as in the puppet theater). Similar alterna
tives are available to the epic: the classical epic required the use of fixed
metrical schemes and of "elevated" themes, whereas the modern novel
has no such constraints. The generic attributes of the epic have not
thereby changed; The Divine Comedy and The Human Comedy are
hewn, as Thomas Mann observed, from the same block. The classical lyr
ics were marked by a number of distinctive traits: they had fixed meters
and stanzaic forms, employed special poetic expressions and set themes
(e.g., the ode and the elegy). Modern lyric has done away with all these
restrictions except for the requirement of structured form.
2. The distinctive features of poetic texts are not either/or alternatives,
but they oppose and mirror each other at the same time. Every opposi
tion implies, in effect, a potential equivalence. The equivalence of opposites makes up the great themes of literary works (e.g., life in death in
The Divine Comedy, seeing in blindness in Oedipus Rex, pettiness in no
bility in Othello) and it involves the formal elements, as well. (Every part

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Edward Stankiewicz

of a poem is at the same time a whole; rhymes oppose and echo each
other.) The complementarity of opposites accounts for the density of po
etic works and for the multivalence of their meanings.
3. The distinctive features of a language are invariant, whereas those
of poetic artifacts are variable and may change their values with the un
folding of the text. Thus a protagonist of a novel may take over the role
of the narrator, formal elements may acquire symbolic meanings, static
props (e.g., a statue) may come to life and decide the outcome of a play.
The transformations of values contribute to the dynamic qualities of a
work and provide the elements of discovery and surprise that character
ize all major works of art.
The literary genres are not, to conclude, prescriptive norms that deter
mine in advance the structure of poetic message; they only define the
basic design and leave the rest to fashion and individual invention.

NOTES

1. This paper was originally dedicated to Roman Jakobson, who

taught us to see the inseparable bond between linguistics and poetics. It is
now dedicated to his memory.
2. The general remarks on the relation of linguistics to poetics made in
the first part of this paper resume and develop some of the points I have
made in Stankiewicz 1977, 1974a, and 1974b.
3. The emotive prejudice about poetry transpires from the following
passage in Malmberg: "Une posie lyrique est, par sa nature, principelment symptme. Le pote ne veut pas d'abord faire savoir le lecteur que
le ciel est bleu, que le soleil brillait; il cherche surtout traduire ses pro
pres sentiments" (1966:309).
4. A survey of the various approaches to the genres can be found in
Markiewicz 1970, Strelka 1978, Weissenberger 1978, Wellek 1970, and
Wellek and Warren 1949 with appropriate bibliographies.
5. A cogent discussion of the narrative genres is nevertheless given in
Wellek 1970 and Wellek and Warren 1949.

Linguistics, Poetics, and the Literary Genres

REFERENCES

177

CITED

Austin, John. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon

Press.
Barthes, Roland. 1973. Le Plaisir du Texte. Paris: ditions du Seuil.
Behrens, Irene. 1940. Die Lehre von der Einteilung der Dichtkunst.
Halle-Saale: M. Niemayer.
Bhler, Karl. 1934. Sprachteorie: die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache.
Jena: Gustav Fischer.
Eckermann, Johann Peter. 1827. Conversations of January 1827. In
Heinrich Hubert Houben, ed. Gesprche mit Goethe in den letzten
Jahren seines Lebens. Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1959.
Eisenstein, Serge. 1949. In Jay Leyda, ed. Film Form. Essays in Film The
ory. New York and London: Harcourt-Brace-Jovanovich.
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 1819. Noten und Abhandlungen zum
weststlichen Divan. In Erich Trunz, ed. Goethes Werke. Ham
burger Ausgabe. Hamburg: Christian Wegner Verlag, 1948.
Hamburger, Kte. 1957. Die Logik der Dichtung. Stuttgart: E. Klett.
Hopkins, Gerard Manley. 1865. Poetic diction and On the origin of
beauty. In Humphrey House, ed. The Journals and Papers. London:
Oxford University Press, 1959.
Jakobson, Roman, 1960. Linguistics and poetics. In Thomas A. Sebeok,
ed. Style and Language. Boston and New York: John Wiley & Sons
and Technology Press (MIT).
Kant, Imanuel. 1788. Preface. In Thomas A. Abbot, ed. Critique of Prac
tical Reason. London.
Locke, John. 1690. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Repr.
ed. A. C. Freiser, ed. New York: Dover, 1959.
Malmberg, Bertil. 1966. Les nouvelles tendances de la linguistique. Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France.
Markiewicz, Henryk. 1970. Gtwne Problemy Wiedzy o Literaturze.
Kracow: Wydawnictuo Literackie.
Mukarovsky, Jan. 1977. The Word and Verbal Art: Selected Essays. John
Burbank and Peter Steiner, trans. and eds. New Haven: Yale Univer
sity Press.
de Saussure, Ferdinand. 1916. Cours de linguistique gnrale: dition cri
tique. Rudolf Engler, ed. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrasowitz, 19671974.

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Searle, John R. 1970. Speech Acts. An Essay in the Philosophy of Lan

guage. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press.
Sechahaye, Albert. 1969. Les trois linguistiques sausuriennes. In R. Godel, ed. A Geneva School Reader in Linguistics. Bloomington: In
diana University Press.
Stahl, Ernest L. 1978. Literary genres: some idiosyncratic concepts. In
Strelka 1978.
Staiger, Emil. 1946. Grundbegriffe der Poetik. Zurich: Atlantis Verlag.
Stankiewicz, Edward. 1982. Centripetal and centrifugal structures in po
etry. Semiotica 38:1 26.
. 1977. Poetics and verbal art. In Thomas A. Sebeok, ed. A Perfu
sion of Signs. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
. 1974a. Structural poetics and linguistics. In Thomas A. Sebeok,
ed. Current Trends in Linguistics. The Hague: Mouton.
. 1974b. The poetic text as a linguistic structure. Sciences of Lan
guages 5:157-74.
Strelka, Joseph P. 1978. Theories of Literary Genres. University Park,
Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Theses of the Prague Circle. Thses prsentes au Premier Congrs des
philologues slaves. 1929. 1.5 29.
Todorov, Tzvetan. 1970. Introduction la Literature Fantastique. Paris:
ditions du Seuil.
Valry, Paul. 1945. Poetry and abstract thought. In The Art of Poetry.
Denise Folliot, trans. New York: Pantheon Books, 1958.
Vitor, Karl. 1951. Geist und Form. Bern: A. Francke.
Weissenberger, Klaus. 1978. A morphological genre theory: an answer to
pluralism of forms. In Strelka 1978.
Wellek, Ren. 1970. Discriminations: Further Concepts of Criticism.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Wellek, Ren, and Austin Warren. 1949. Theory of Literature. New
York: Harcourt Brace.

CHAPTER

Subjects + Objects
The Current State
of Visual Semiotics

Donald Preziosi

For some time now, students of the visual environment have labored in
tensively to teach dumb buildings and mute stones to speak in phonemes
and morphemes. And not a few parables have been written about deep
and surface structures, visual syntax and grammar, metropolitan textualities, and architectonic addressers and addressees. Indeed, many of the
inmates of this logocentric labyrinth appear to have become transfixed by
a graffito on the wall of a cul-de-sac that reads, "since all languages are
made up of words, and since all words are signs, all things that are made
up of signs must be languages."
Nevertheless, such fetishistic fascinations have been on the wane over
the past decade, and there are strong indications that we have entered
upon a strikingly different phase in the development of semiotic study of
the human-made environment. The reasons for these changes, which I
will attempt to portray in outline here, are historically complex. More
over, there has been no single thread of discourse that has extricated us
from the maze of logocentric conundrums.
Rather, there has come about a powerful convergence of several lines
of research that has served in effect to define a new space of discourse on
the problem of visual or architectonic signification. Not least of these
changes has been a transformation of the object and focus of study. In
addition, we have seen a reorientation away from the formalistic and ab
stract morphologies and taxonomies of a decade ago toward considera
tions of the actual conditions and processes of visual perception and cog-

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Donald Preziosi

nition on the part of users of the human-made environment. Of no small

import in these developments has been the growth of poststructuralist
perspectives in philosophy, literature, and the arts, which in their critique
of logocentrist paradigms have returned the semiotic enterprise to its
radical problematizing of the fictive metaphysical network of the human
istic disciplines.
The current transformations in visual semiotic study have come about
in the wake of the failure of the cascade of little semiologies of the past
three decades to add substantially to our broader understanding of the
nature and processes of signification, perception, and cognition. While to
be sure much has been gained by the separate pursuit of the semiologies
of building facades, subway graffiti, television commercials, finger spell
ing, and easel painting, by and large what has been missing has been a
powerful, central, and encatalyzing perspective that might shed light on
the operant interactions and interrelations among these deponent modal
ities. All too commonly, and rather sadly, this lack has been filled (im
plicitly and explicitly) by one or another linguistic analogue.
It has come to be seen with increasing clarity that the proper scope of
visual semiotic theory is the entire domain of the active, seeing subject,
and the entire range of artifactual spatiotemporal behaviors realized by
direct and indirect bodily instrumentalities. While this direction has been
recognized as necessary and inevitable since the 1960s, only relatively re
cently has this been more than another wishful holism or ecologism. In
fact, as I will suggest later on, there have been a number of complex his
torical and disciplinary circumstances that have militated against these
developments. Not least of these factors has been the stagnancy induced
in visual semiotic scholarship by pervasive logocentrist scientism and
reductionism.
What I want to do here is talk about where the semiotic study of the
visual environment has been, some of the ways in which it has emerged
out of its Babylonian captivity, and where it seems to be going.
Semiotic research on aspects of the made environment has proliferated
widely in the postwar period in various countries, particularly since the
early 1950s (see discussions in Agrest and Gandelsonas 1977, Krampen
1979, Tafuri 1980). This period saw many diverse attempts to elaborate
consistent formalized theories of architecture construed variously as
code, system of signs, textual praxis, or communicational process. For
the most part, the concept of architecture as a system of communication

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181

was developed on the explicit or implicit analogy of verbal language. This

began as early as 1953 (Gamberini), and has continued on various fronts
since that time (Koenig 1964,1970). But the notion of material culture as
language-like is very old indeed in Western societies, and similar notions
concerning architecture and artwork may be found in theoretical writing
on the nature of relationships between language and systems of represen
tation since the European Renaissance (Foucault 1970, Collins 1965).
Modern discourse in this vein is partly discontinuous with the latter
tradition, however, and has been stimulated in many cases more directly
by the growth of modern linguistic theory since Saussure and by its cen
tral role in suggesting frameworks for general semiotic theory. Correla
tive developments in structuralist anthropology following Levi-Strauss
have provided an additional important stimulus in scholarship on the vi
sual environment (Tafuri 1980).
Parallel developments have taken place within the traditional discur
sive formats of art history and aesthetics, and some see the growth of
iconographic research on figurai art with Panofsky as both a resuscita
tion of Renaissance theories and a precursor or bridge to more contem
porary versions of visual semiotics (Nodelman 1966; Schapiro 1969,
1973; Michelson 1970; Damisch 1975; Wallis 1975). An early synthesis
of such developments in the study of architecture and the visual arts can
be seen in the writings of Jan Mukaovsky, an active member of the
Prague Linguistic Circle in the 1930s (Mukarovsky 1978). Some writers
(Baudrillard 1981) have suggested that the functionalist movement in ar
chitecture and design initiated at the Bauhaus in the 1920s represented a
theoretical normative solidification of a visual semiotics, building upon
developments already roughed out in the nineteenth century. For Baudril
lard, the Bauhaus movement and its subsequent international-style prog
eny was nothing less than a comprehensive, self-conscious, and system
atic attempt to develop an entire environmental or architectonic code
grounded in a linguistic analogy. It would be of great interest to explore
further the theoretical and methodological parallels between the growth
of a modernist aesthetics and the development of Saussurean linguistics
in the period following the First World War. I suspect that such a study
would uncover not a few influences by the former upon the latter.
At any rate, the period following the Second World War saw the rise of
attempts to identify, isolate, and classify systematically the componential
elements of architectonic systems construed as systems of signs. An early

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Donald Preziosi

attempt to isolate such units against a background of modern linguistic

theories was made in 1953 by Gamberini (1953, 1959, 1961), who in
essence suggested that certain constitutive elements of a building (walls,
floors, pillars, openings) could be seen as directly analogous to sentence
units in speech. In short, he claimed that certain forms bore a relation
ship to an entire building that was analogous to the relationship that sen
tences bore to entire texts (or to verbal aggregates larger in some sense
than sentences). By 1964, Koenig proposed that architectonic codes were
"double-articulated" in a fashion analogous to the phenomenon of
double articulation in verbal language. He suggested that certain forma
tions were inherently "meaningless" (he termed these "archemes," analo
gous to phonemes), whereas others were taken as "meaningful" or di
rectly referential (these he termed "choremes," analogous to linguistic
morphemes).
Umberto Eco summarized the thrust of such developments in componential analysis in architecture, proposing a now-classic analysis of a par
ticular architectural sign-type (column) (Eco 1971, 1972), while Fauque
(1973), focusing upon cities as a whole, proposed a distinction between
urbemes (architectural units such as a house) and component sets of geo
metric features into which urbemes could be decomposed. In the same
period, Hillier and Leaman (1975) proposed the existence of sets of fea
tures that were embedded in verbal language as spatial and propositional
items (inside, among, around, above, below), suggesting that the visual
articulation of the built environment be related more or less directly to
grammatical categories. What they were proposing in effect was that the
significative distinctions in a given built environment are perceivable pri
marily because of the existence of salient grammatical categories in the
language code of the inhabitants of that environment (a view proposed
also by the anthropologist Edmund Leach [1976]).
Such a perspective does not appear to have been taken very seriously
by scholars of visual semiotics, or by scholars familiar with contempo
rary research in perceptual or cognitive psychology, although it may have
gained some passing attention in the linguistic community (Bruner 1966,
Neisser 1976).
More systematic and comprehensive proposals for hierarchies or levels
of sign-types in the articulation of objects were being made by the late
1960s, notably by Rossi-Landi (1968, 1972, 1975), who related these to
levels of articulation in verbal language in terms of production. His mini-

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183

mal level of articulation, that of raw material, was seen as corresponding

to the smallest "meaning-less" units in verbal language. (For Rossi-Landi
at the time these were not distinctive features, but rather phonemes.) A
second level, seen as paralleling linguistic morphemes (and termed by
Rossi-Landi "objectemes") consisted of a set of geometric features that in
combination formed complete functional articulations, such as the oper
ant part of a tool, for example.
A third level consisted of patterns of aggregation of the latter (such as
complete instruments, which he saw as corresponding to grammatical
sentences), while a fourth and highest level included more complex me
chanical devices, which were seen as analogous to complex linguistic syl
logisms or propositions.
Rossi-Landi's theories were refined and augmented in later work, al
though they were still tied inexorably to a somewhat mechanistic and re
duced picture of the network of linguistic signs. Nevertheless, they were
among the earlier and more poignant attempts to picture the made en
vironment in a holistic fashion, deeply sensitive to the complexity of the
modalities of social production and ideology.
We will take up the question of the constitutive formative unities in the
built environment later on. At this point it may be useful to note an im
portant fact, which is that few if any of these proposals (the ones cited
above can be taken as exemplary) generated sustained and ongoing re
search programs. Exemplary data sets were invariably small and highly
selective, and with the general exception of work carried forward under
the aegis of architectural or environmental psychology, the impression
one gains by hindsight is that many early researchers seemed content
merely to test the potential applicability of abstract metaphorical models.
In no small measure this was due to the context of such study. By and
large, this research was carried out either in professional schools of archi
tecture and urban planning, or within the frameworks of traditionally
constituted academic departments of art and architectural history. In the
former situation, a pervasive professionalism tended to shunt research
into more normative and prescriptive areas, while in the latter, semiotic
study came to be seen either as a more abstract and arcane version of
traditional iconography, or tended to be enmeshed in idealist questions of
artistic intentionality. In addition, the open question of the relation be
tween aesthetic and nonaesthetic production tended to preclude more
pertinent and holistic study of the made environment, of which objects of

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purportedly aesthetic or autotelic function are a subset. And for both

designers and historians, exemplary data bases were almost without
exception limited to the traditional monuments of Western art and archi
tecture. Indeed, it was not until relatively recently that larger-scale syn
chronic analysis of made environments began to be made. In part, this
change was stimulated, as we shall see later on, by correlative studies
carried out by anthropologists and environmental or architectural
psychologists.
During the 1960s, however, a number of scholars began to recognize
the importance of redefining the object, scope, and analytic domains of
visual semiotics in fundamental ways, in the face of what was already
seen as the impending exhaustion of the potential insights of particular
semiologicai models of "architecture" or the "visual arts" (Eco 1968).
Fewer, however, attempted to develop methodologies sensitive to the re
quirements of an adequate theory of the built environment in all its com
plexity and multiplicity. Certainly one of the most daunting obstacles to
the elaboration of cohesive and comprehensive theories of architectonic
signification has been the very centrality of the built environment in hu
man life and thought, approached only by that of verbal language. While
astute visual semioticians have continually argued against various kinds
of reductionism, the disciplinary imperialism pervasive in linguistics in
the 1960s and early 1970s served to foster and to some extent make inev
itable a need for students of the built environment to respond in kind. In
part, this response was laid out by means of predictable oscillations be
tween one or another prefabricated metaphorical option: the built en
vironment was either analogous to verbal language or it was not; verbal
language was either the central cognitive template of behavior and cul
ture, or it was one of a group of correlative templates, one system of signs
among many. If the latter, then the design of nonverbal codes was homol
ogous to that of verbal language, or substantially different.
These options, which can be multiplied through many dimensions,
have all been played out, defended, and attacked over the past three dec
ades, both within the arena of general semiotic theory and within the do
mains of particular semiological enterprisesverbal, visual, and other
wise. It is in my view more than rhetorical exaggeration to see much of
the postwar history of the visual semiotic movement as a diachronic
chessboard of rhetorical options, and a dialectical game among re
searchers in various branches of semiotics jockeying for theoretical and

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disciplinary advantage. Characteristically, advantages were gained hast

ily and expeditiously by importing whole the latest metaphorical wrinkles
in linguistics.
And yet it may not be entirely inaccurate to assert that there has been a
pervasive awareness among visual semioticiansnot always fully ex
plicitthat they have been participants in a game whose rules have been
laid out beforehand, for better or worse, by their linguistic colleagues.
And perhaps not so ironically, their own visual colleagues who have been
the most resistant to semiotics are the ones who have seen this more
clearly, for surely one of the principal laments among scholars of the vi
sual environment has long been the semiotic window of vulnerability to
ward logocentrist reductionism.
The history of these developments is of course more complex than this
sketch makes out, but perhaps you may begin to appreciate some of the
flavor of the rhetorical Darwinism characterizing the growth of visual
semiotics from these examples. No adequate critical history of visual
semiotics yet exists, although there are excellent summaries of the gen
eral thrust of developments, notably in the work of Krampen (1979) and
Agrest and Gandelsonas (1977). It was very clearly and directly observed
by Krampen that whereas much earlier writing on architectural semiotics
scientistically superimposed linguistic terminology and taxonomy upon
material culture, such work essentially ignored the fundamental innova
tion made at the outset in modern linguisticsnamely that the recogni
tion of speech sounds as meaningful is an act of cognitive classification,
commutation, and perceptual discrimination on the part of language
users. As with linguistic semiotic theory, it would then be with a homolo
gous experimental study of architectonic or environmental perception
and cognition that viable theories of architectonic signification would
arise. In short, Krampen observed that visual semiotics must be deeply
grounded in a focus upon the cognitive competence of nonfictive users of
the object world, if the enterprise is to achieve anything more than ab
stract metaphorical relevance.
In no small measure, however, the emergence of equivalently "Saussurian" gestures in visual semiotics was considerably retarded by a situa
tion so obvious that it has normally been overlooked. This has to do with
the nature of the institutional and academic formats of visual studies.
Quite simply, visual study of the human-made environment has histori
cally been divided among several academically distinct disciplines, in

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contrast to the situation on the verbal side, wherein the formats of nine
teenth century philology served more directly and linearly as a site for the
elaboration of modern linguistics. Indeed, studies of the construction and
construal of visual environments have been split among several distinct
disciplines: art and architectural history and criticism; anthropology;
perceptual psychology; architectural and environmental psychology;
philosophical aesthetics; and sociology.
This is a historical situation seldom appreciated by students of nonvisual aspects of human culture and behavior. And this fragmentation
continues largely unabated today, despite institutional movements over
recent decades toward so-called interdisciplinary study. Sadly, the discur
sive frameworks focused upon the built environment in each of these aca
demic disciplines have rarely overlapped until relatively recently. In my
view, it has only been the emergence of semiotic study that has promised
to post productively the metaphysical bases of these fragmentations, and
that offers any serious chance of forging coherent and systematic theories
of visual cognition and signification. It must also be added that in the
process of grappling with the nature of visual signification, and with the
complexities of the made environment that have no apparent parallel
in nonvisual modalities, general semiotic theory will be substantially
transformed.
There has been an additional obstacle to the growth of viable theories
of visual semiosisagain, an obstacle so apparent it is also easily over
looked. Quite simply, this is the problem of the relation of artistic or aes
thetic signification to nonaesthetic signification: in short, the role of art
work in a general theory of visual semiosis.
From the vantage point of research within the formats of art and archi
tectural history and criticisma discursive frame whose very existence
has depended upon a reification of the aesthetic functionthis has tradi
tionally been a nonissue. And it may be said (strongly but in my view
with a good deal of truth) that little in the way of serious and productive
semiotic research may be expected from that quarter. This is not to say
that there have not been, nor will there continue to be, art and architec
tural historians who contribute decisively to semiotic research. My point
is rather that the prescribed philosophical and ideological functions of
the disciplinary formats of art history are fundamentally at odds with the
goals and aims of the semiotic enterprise. This goes beyond the question
of the existence or nonexistence of aesthetic and iconographic "codes" or

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systems of signs. It raises the more fundamental question of the role of

art history and criticism as a disciplinary site for the production and
maintenance of a regnant ideology that validates a radical isolation of
subjects and objects from the social and historical circumstances of their
production and reception.
Moreover, the tendency toward a pervasive hierarchy of cultural
objects in terms of purportedly inherent qualities, as well as a general ten
dency toward normative definitions of the built environment, have char
acteristically militated against sustained study of the nature and pro
cesses of visual signification as such within the discipline. To a large
extent, this has worked to sustain fundamental confusions between pre
scriptive and descriptive theory, and has worked to limit the object of
study to small sets of "designed" constructs or artifactual products (cri
tiqued in Eco 1968). Nor are such ambiguities absent from ostensibly
semiotic writing on the visual environment. Typical in this regard is a
proposal by Agrest and Gandelsonas (1977) of a basic distinction be
tween design and nondesign in cultural objects, whereby the former re
fers to social practices functioning by sets of collectively sanctioned
norms and rules, constituted implicitly or explicitly as an institution.
They use the category nondesign to refer to the articulation between dif
ferent cultural systemssemiotically heterogeneous "texts" that are the
product of a social subject producing ideology. In nondesign, metaphoric
and metonymic operations function similarly to dreams, as semiotic
chains that permit access to meanings that have been institutionally re
pressed in the modality of design.
Unfortunately, no solid criteria were developed that would allow us to
assess the perceptual, social, or semiotic distinctions between the two
categories, and it seems rather a methodological gesture intended to jus
tify a larger chain of dichotomies: high art versus vernacular; fine versus
applied art; social versus individual semiotic capacity. We are left with
unjustified distinctions between collective norm and idiosyncratic aberra
tion or bricolage.
The situation is reminiscent of a fundamental problem with Mukarovsky's concept of the functional horizons of architectonic signification
(Mukaovsky 1978), which, superficially analogous to the six functional
categories of Jakobsonian linguistic theory published thirty years later,
nevertheless relies on a deep substantive dichotomy between an individ
ual function and all other functions (critiqued in Preziosi 1979a). While

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rightly drawing attention to the importance of the role of the user or sub
ject in visual or architectonic semiosis, Agrest and Gandelsonas in the
final analysis perpetuated yet another normative definition of architec
ture, grounded further in the existence or nonexistence of supportive or
correlative written documents of artistic intentionality.
It is of course perfectly obvious that distinctions exist in the operant
formats of artifact production in societies, and that certain artifacts cir
culate within behavioral contexts that either heighten their purportedly
aesthetic functions or do not. Indeed, three interrelated yet partly distinct
mechanisms exist in contemporary Western cultures precisely to bracket
certain forms of artifact production within aesthetic or autotelic arenas:
artistic criticism, institutional art and architectural history, and the mu
seum. Each serves as a site for legitimizing and validating aesthetic inten
tion and destination: the threshold of the museum through which objects
pass on their way toward representation is functionally equivalent to the
lexical citations of art history and criticism. Each is a device that wholly
or in part stacks the deck of artifact usages such that the card of aesthetic
functionality invariably turns up on top, closely followed by emotive and
referential cards. I dare say that in the hands of most art historians, there
have been fundamental misperceptions of the hands they've dealt
themselves.
It has been precisely because of a radical fetishizing of the aesthetic
function (and secondarily, at times, of emotive and referential functions),
that traditional art historical scholarship has been ill-equipped to engage
productively in the semiotic enterprise until fairly recently. And among
art historical semioticians, there have been deep confusions as to the na
ture and scope of pertinent objects of study. Does a particular visual style
constitute a code or system of signs in its own right, or are such patterns
of regularity simply manifestations of modal dominance in an inherently
multifunctional visual or artifactual environment? Or, put more simply,
is the semiotic boundary between artwork and nonartwork systemic fact
or perspectival fiction?
By and large, traditional art and architectural history have addressed
such issues through the erection of hierarchies of object types that in fact
represent a metaphorical continuum from autotelic purity to pragmatic
functionality. Necessarily, such hierarchies served to validate and help
generate broader social disjunctions and fragmentations. In this regard, it
may become clearer that the discursive spaces of semiotic study and tra-

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ditional art history often belong to radically different dimensions. And

we may also begin to understand the fact that semiology cannot simply
be plugged into the given epistemic frameworks of these disciplines, with
out in effect adding to the reification of an already deponent object of
study.
The basic point here is that there has historically been great confusion
as to the proper object of visual semiotic study. It surely cannot be art
work as such, unless it can be demonstrated that aesthetic semiosis is ma
terially and cognitively distinct from other forms of visual or artifactual
semiosis.
In attempting to address the real complexities of environmental sig
nification, the research of Martin Krampen (1979, 1981) reopened the
question of architectonic and visual multifunctionality begun in the work
of Mukaovsky half a century ago (Mukarovsky 1978). Krampen's work
has been fairly unique in providing the concrete opportunity for a pro
ductive dialogue between the program of architectural semiotics and the
rich but largely separate tradition of environmental and architectural
psychology (well represented in the extensive research of Canter 1970,
1977; Lynch 1960, 1966; Downs and Stea 1973; Ittleson 1973; Tuan
1974, 1977; and others). Moreover, the work of Krampen sought to re
dress the imbalance in architectural semiotics of an overemphasis on ab
stract morphological classification (Hillier et al. 1976), or upon supposed
intentions of producers (Bonta 1977, Jencks 1970), as well as upon fun
damental confusions between institutionalized prescriptive criticism and
user perception (Bonta 1981).
Discussion of architectonic signification had been dominated by vary
ing responses to a suggestion by Roland Barthes that the meaning of any
object of use is its function; objects were frequently viewed as possessing
primary (or denotative) and secondary (or connotative) functions. Such a
distinction, reflected in Eco (1968), was grounded in part, and somewhat
reductively, in the work of Hjelmslev (1960), and elaborated further in
the extensive research of Greimas (1966).
By contrast, Mukarovsky distinguished five "functional horizons" in
architectonic semiosis: an immediate purpose (referential/contextual
usage); an historical purpose (manifested by a preoccupation with inher
ited rules or norms of design and construction); a social function, refer
ring to the organizations of the collective to which both producer and
user belong; an aesthetic function, rendering the object itself as its own

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purpose or destination, foregrounded when the direct or immediate

usage function is occluded or made secondary; and finally an individual
function, conceived (as noted above) as a violation of functionality on the
part of particular users contradicting or modifying inherited norms.
Mukarovsky's five functional horizons constitute in effect a hierarchy of
articulatory emphasis that is seen to differ from building to building (and
by extension from one artifact of the same type to another).
Although Mukarovsky's "functional horizons" proposal was not ex
tensively supported except by periodic concrete exemplification, we may
understand his perspective critically as a way of organizing our view of
the mechanisms of visual semiosis in general. In particular, his notion of
multifunctionality can be seen as an attempt to elaborate a methodology
for attending to the variations in functional dominance, synchronically,
idiosyncratically, and diachronically.
A generically analogous model of multifunctionality in verbal semiosis,
organized according to differing foci upon copresent parts of commu
nicative events, was developed in the work of one of Mukarovsky's lin
guistic colleagues within the Prague Linguistic Circle of the 1930s,
Roman Jakobson. Published in 1960, Jakobson's much more widely
known schema encompasses six basic functions in verbal communica
tion, most of which are taken to be copresent in varying degrees of domi
nance in a speech act.
Taking the component parts of a verbal transmission as addresser, ad
dressee, referential context of a message, the message itself, contact be
tween addresser and addressee, and the code within which a given mes
sage appears, Jakobson sees a dominance of focus toward one or another
of these components as highlighting corresponding emotive, conative,
referential, poetic, phatic, and metalinguistic functions. Although by no
means uncontroversial, Jakobson's schema, seen as an attempt to inte
grate linguistics and poetics, may be taken as homologous to suggestive
directions taking place in visual semiotics since the time of Mukarovsky.
In more recent attempts to develop adequate theories of architectonic
and visual semiosis, and in particular with regard to the problem of inte
grating a semiotic perspective on art and architecture with a general the
ory of visual semiosis, the issue of multifunctionality has become one of
the more productive research frontiers (see Preziosi 1979a, 1979b; Eco
1972; Krampen 1979). At least one recent writer has explicitly sought to
elaborate an integrated schema of visual multifunctionality sensitive to,

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but not dependent upon, functional correlates between visual and verbal
praxis (Preziosi 1979a; see also Krampen 1981). Within such a perspec
tive, all components of the visual environment are viewed as potentially
multifunctional, and varying foci upon one or another component mo
dalities may yield dominant or codominant manifestations of expressive,
exhortative, referential, aesthetic, territorial, and metacodal functions.
An explicit comparative assessment of multifunctional perspectives in vi
sual and verbal signification will be found in a review article by Krampen
in the journal Semiotica (Krampen 1982).
But the question of visual or architectonic multifunctionality presup
poses positions taken on the communicative nature of visual signing. It
has been in this area that research in visual semiotics reveals no unified
front or direction. Nevertheless, there have been certain pervasive ten
dencies to take one or another reduced or idealized version of the speech
act as a base referent. Indeed, this has been one of the most deeply seated
metaphors for visual signification in the semiotic and presemiotic dis
course on visual meaning.
By and large, visual signification is viewed as a nonverbal correlate of
an idealist speaker/message/listener schema, wherein the position of the
speaker or addresser is seen as corresponding to that of the maker, de
signer, or builder. The made object or artifact or shaped or appropriated
topos is seen as a message or communicative token, and the viewer or
user or beholder is taken to be an addressee of such messages. There are a
great many variants of this topological schema in visual semiotics, but I
shall consider as exemplary those in which the maker of a work is taken
to be addressing users or viewers through some form of artifactual pro
duction, modification, or mediation. Needless to say, addresser or ad
dressee may be groups as well as individuals, and the unity or closure
upon the work or message may be perceived as standing at almost any
perceptual level, from the component parts of an artifact to the entire
fabric of a city.
What tends to remain constant in this schema is less the substantive
identity of each of the three terms in the communicative act, and more
the topology of relationships among the terms that fill the three places
or in other words, the geometric structure of the metaphor or paradigm.
Let us consider first the problem of the apparent naturalness or inevi
tability of the metaphor.
It is certainly true that formations are made and used, and that in cer-

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tain societies at particular times maker and user are distinct individuals
or collectives. And it is without question the case that makers and users
do construe made formations as communicative. To greater or lesser de
grees, made formations are construed as autonomous and semiotically
complete or closed, or as coordinated components in larger and broader
transmissions that may or may not include formations in the same or in
other "media."
To construe made formations or appropriated environments as com
municative in some way (at least to construers) may or may not be generically pertinent or historically apt; but to construe them as always com
municating, or as always communicating in the same or even equivalent
ways and directions, may be quite another kettle of fish. We are con
fronted here with an essentially linear or transitive chain of events
wherein the object in question is taken as a trace of the intentions of an
active fashioner, whose intentions and conditions of production are to be
reconstituted by users, viewers, or beholders. In this (often very long and
extended) chain of assumptions, artifacts are taken as reflections or rep
resentations of thought. In short, the object is a signifier of something
signified. That which is signified is commonly assumed to have existed
somewhere in the mind of the producerwhether that mind is fully con
scious of these signifieds or not.
What tends to remain constant in the corpus of writing and research
on visual semiosis is the topology of relationships among producer, prod
uct, and consumer, as well as the conceptions of the processes of produc
ing and receiving. (In this regard, visual semiology and more traditional
art and architectural history have been coimplicit.) These have been met
aphorically pictured (that is to say, ideologically encoded) in a number of
characteristic ways:
The producer has been viewed as inspired articulator of collective val
ues, privileged servant of a social order symbolized by powerful patrons,
prophetic or bohemian rebel marginal to conventional society, indepen
dent manufacturer freely offering her private products to amenable audi
ences, or as worker-engineer or bricoleur on a fraternal footing with a
usership.
The object has been encoded as product, practice, process, medium,
symbol, epiphany, gesture, index, icon, or as the message in a code.
Production has been viewed as revelation, inspiration, labor, play, re
flection, fantasy, or reproduction.

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Usage has been encoded as consumption, magical influence, arcane rit

ual, participatory dialogue, passive reception, didactic instrumentation,
spiritual encounter, translation, or decipherment.
The user of an object is characteristically viewed as a reader, consumer,
or receiver of a transmission (which may or may not have been directly
aimed at him or her).
Close attention to the history of art historical writing will reveal far
fewer metaphorical variants for the user than for the maker, the object,
or the mechanisms or processes of production and reception. In most
cases, the user is an essentially passive reader or consumer of objects and
images: the end of the paradigmatic line, so to speak; the destiny, fate, or
telos of the work. Traditionally, the art historian has been a manipulator
of symptoms and signs, and legitimate communicator of effects or inter
pretations arising out of such screening or manipulation. Typically and
perennially, the art historian construes the object as a communicative
token or sign of a maker's intention.
But what is at issue here is not the well-known pitfall of the intentional
fallacy, nor the patent fact that makers themselves may construe what
they are doing as more or less transitive communication. Rather, it is the
characteristic slant given this and similar metaphors not only by the in
stitution of art history and criticism, but also by visual semioticians until
relatively recently. By and large, this discourse skews the triadic para
digm so as to privilege the maker, author, or fashioner of works as an
essentially active, originating force, in contrast to what in complemen
tary fashion becomes an essentially passive or receptive consumer or
viewer of works. It takes no great imaginative leap to understand that
such a paradigm simultaneously serves as a validating mechanism to
privilege the role of the art historian, critic, or visual semiotician as a
decoder or diviner of intentionality on behalf of lay beholders. One of my
points here is that the role of the visual semiotician has tended to be vul
nerable to reduction in the direction of the traditional art historian pre
cisely when the semiotic enterprise is scientistically plugged into the
received paradigmatic formats of the latter. And this becomes especially
apparent where semiology buys unreflectively into an older logocentrism
inherent in the triadic paradigm under discussion.
It was observed that the maker-object-consumer paradigm has histori
cally had many different variants that tend on occasion to occlude its
verbocentrist base. Typically, this essentially linear, transitive, or uni-

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directional string of signification is masked by certain rhetorical displace

ment maneuvers, whereby the source and origin of work is situated "be
hind" the producer as conscious designer. Characteristically, this movement
has gone in two directions: first, so to speak, externally, into Zeitgeist,
ethnicity, or economic or social forces of various types; and second, inter
nally, into usually mysterious forces internal to or below the conscious self
of the makerwellsprings of creative or libidinal impulses, which as often
as not the maker is herself blind to or verbally inarticulate about.
We need not belabor the fact that much of this "internalizing" move
ment in visual studies goes toward the legitimization of a homogeneous
selfhood, all of whose products are construed in one way or another as
complementary evidence for biographic unity and self-identity. Indeed,
the disciplines of art and architectural history have historically been bent
toward the validation of such premodern notions of the self and society.
Disciplinary arguments on this front are typically circular: the works of a
person, time, and place reveal certain patterned regularities and stylistic
unities, which are in turn referred to originary individual or collective
tendencies, which themselves are evidenced by stylistic unity in sequences
of works.
It also takes little imagination to realize that the form of logocentrism
that both underlies and produces the communicative paradigm under
discussion, and that produces and legitimizes the social roles of the art
historian and the visual semiotician caught in the art historical web, is
ultimately little more than a latter-day correlate of the paradigm of medi
eval sacred biblical exegesiswherein the maker is a chip off the old di
vine creative block, the historian and semiotician is an exegetical or
sacerdotal authority, and the work is the Word.
But this is not to suggest that any attempt to model the mechanisms of
visual or verbal signification along communicational or transmissive lines
is always or necessarily a reflex of metaphysical theologism. It is rather to
suggest, at least in part, that conceptions of semiotic processes along such
transitive producer-consumer lines mask the very complexities of verbal
communication that the modern revolutions in linguistics and semiotics
have so poignantly and powerfully revealed. In short, they do a disservice
to the extraordinary complexity of both languages and the built world.
In considering the processes of signification in the built environment, it
is important to consider the status and role of whatever may be the visual
correlates of the linguistic addresser and addressee. It is in this area that

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the neatness and apparent simplicity of the maker-user paradigm breaks

down. For in the visual environment, who is doing the "speaking"? And
who is listening? Indeed, what is the medium of this built environment,
within which some would have it that messages are being transmitted?
In order to begin to answer such questionsor, more correctly, to ap
preciate why these are the wrong questionslet us first attend to the na
ture of the visual medium itself. I've been using the terms visual environment, built environment, human-made environment, visual or architectonic or artifactual system more or less interchangeably up to this point.
What is this built environment}
Generically, the term refers to the entire set of place- and space-making
activities whereby individuals and collectives construct, maintain, repre
sent, express, and reckon with a conceptual world through the use of pal
pable distinctions in formation addressed to the visual channel and
decoded spatiokinetically over time. A built environment is not merely
equivalent to the sum of artifactual or made formations, but will nor
mally incorporate formations appropriated from given landscapes, as
well as formations orchestrated by the relative deployment of bodies and
their parts in space and time.
It is important to be clear that whether we are dealing with gesture,
tattoo, costume, clearings of a forest floor, timber, glass, or the choreog
raphy of bodies around a lecture hall, we are dealing nonetheless with
material and morphological distinctions as such. Such distinctions and
disjunctions, by address to the spatiokinetically motile visual channel,
serve (which is to say are employed) to cue the perception of distinctions
in signification, in time- and place-specific ways, and in ways idiosyncra
tic to given subjects in a collective.
The medium of this composed world, then, is plainly and simply any
thing drawn from the entire set of visually palpable resources potentially
offered by the planetary biosphere, including our own and other bodies.
The proper object of visual semiotics, then, is clearly the entire domain of
the active, seeing subject: no more and no less. Subjectsboth users and
makersappropriate, maintain, transform, and reckon with the visual
environment in meaningful and changing ways, and in so doing (and in
this sense) may be said potentially to "transmit" to themselves and others
certain information regarding the dynamic nature of such appropria
tions. I use the term information here simply in Gregory Bateson's sense
of "news of difference" (or, if you prefer, news of difference). And the

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term reckon with may in fact be more appropriate than reception here
precisely because of its double meaning of "coping with" and "thinking
with." Clearly, we build in order to think and act; construal and con
struction are two sides of the same coin. It is thus no idle tautology to
suggest that the built environment has topoi so that thought may have
topics. That environment, in its details and as a whole, is a site for inven
tion, something to reckon with, in all senses of the word. The articulated
world indicates sites of difference, deferral, and displacement. In the do
main of the seeing subject, the environment may be seen as systematic
adjacency and as a model for adjacency, order, spatiality, and tem
porality; simultaneously a frame for and a model of action, interaction,
and thought, a structure of psychic and social affordances, and a theory
of contextualization.
It may begin to become apparent that in picturing the complexities of
visual construction and construal within the paradigm of transitive com
municative transmission, we not only render over-simplistic what is ex
traordinarily complex, but we also may be fundamentally misconstruing
the nature and processes of visual significative behavior. Such complex
ities are induced in this modality in no small measure precisely by a fun
damental property of the built environmentnamely, its relative objectpermanence, and its relatively slow rate of signal decay (relative, of
course, to a complementary signal impermanence in verbal semiosis).
Clearly, if a signal remains perceptually available to many potential users
in an environmental array, traditional analogies with verbal communica
tion become grossly fictive. We are dealing with a situation that in a cer
tain sense is the obverse of what we may characterize (perhaps somewhat
simply) as the operant format of verbal semiosis: in the circumstances of
speech behavior, it is largely the messages that are perceptually ephem
eral. In the former situation, it is those whom we might by simplistic
analogy refer to as the "addressers" and "addressees" who are ephem
eral. Or in other words, the "message" tends to remain, as Roland
Barthes once remarked, inscribed in the soil.
Yet the analogy is only partial; and Barthes' metaphor is simplistically
misleading, for in this regard, environmental formations may be as per
manent as a pyramid, as ephemeral as a parade or an eyebrow flash, or as
dizzyingly transitory as the decorating schemes of my parents' living
room. My point is that taken as a whole, it is the range of objectpermanence that is in complementary contrast to the ephemerality of

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speech signalsunless, of course, they are transformed into a visual me

dium. In other words, they are inscribed into an architectonic medium, in
which case we are necessarily then dealing with an intermodal hybrid
system of representation.
It may be somewhat ironic that it has been those models of visual semiosis most elegantly simple in their reliance upon a logocentric base that
have told us much less than many presemiotically sloppy and intuitive
notions about how the visual world means. Indeed, even the attempts by
Mukarovsky to model the complexities of visual signification along the
horizons of multifunctionality have come up against assumptions that
have been the most resistant to change. You may recall my brief mention
of his horizon of the "individual" function in architectonic semiosis. By
hindsight, this category seems to be a rhetorical device to avoid address
ing the deep problematic of the "addresser-addressee" relationship. In his
writings he was unclear or ambiguous as to whether this function is a
manifestation of the generator of formations or the construer of objects.
This may in fact be a result of his attention to "architecture" as such,1
rather than to visual signification in general (of which "architecture"
is one lexically and socially delimited form of architectonic or visual
praxis). The tendency toward the reification of the maker or designer (or
builder) in traditional architectural (and art) history has served precisely
as a foil against more reflective attention to the processes of visual sig
nification. In fact, if one attempts to elaborate a semiotic perspective on
the visual within the received formats of a particular form of social
praxis (which at certain periods in certain societies deeply implicates a
maker-consumer or builder-client relationship), one's resultant notion of
semiosis tends to remain deeply and uncritically inscribed within the
ideological domain that one seeks in the first place to deconstruct or
demythologize.
In short, we may state that "architecture" or "art" are social and in
stitutionalized practices of subjects using the visual environment, and not
semiotic systems as such.
Over the past decade, visual semiotics has turned a corner away from a
traditional fixation on the purported intentions of makers (in respect to
which it was complicit with the practices of a received art history that it
sought to transcend), and toward considerations of the processes and cir
cumstances of reception on the part of actual users of environments. In
deed, it is this new focus upon the subject that has come to constitute one

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of the primary productive fronts in visual semiotics at the present time.

This interest in visual reception and in the active construal of made en
vironments owes its thrust to at least two distinct areas of concern.
The first stems largely from the realization articulated in the writings
of Krampen cited above that if visual semiotics is to cohere as a substan
tive domain of research, then it must attend empirically and extensively
to how individuals use and construe the visual environment. In this re
gard, visual study would learn from linguistic theory without scientistically applying it, for it was precisely the focus upon the perceptually
discriminative activity of language users that led, in the hands of Troubetzkoy, Jakobson, and many others, to our contemporary understand
ing of the formative bases of linguistic systems as multidimensional net
works of signs. It has in fact been the research of Krampen himself, with
his multiple training in semiotic theory and experimental environmental
psychology, that has gone furthest to date in achieving compatible aims.
The second area of concern that has been deeply committed to under
standing what environments mean through extensive empirical research
is architectural and environmental psychology, itself partly coextensive
with contemporary research in perceptual and cognitive psychology. Al
though such work began in different contexts and for different purposes
from those of visual semiotics, the past decade has seen the beginnings of
a powerful convergence of interests and professional interaction. It was
Krampen's major volume Meaning in the Urban Environment (1979)
that signalled the existence of this convergence of interests and expertise,
and recent important books by David Canter have indicated the depth of
commitment of major figures in environmental psychology to semiological issues (Canter 1970, 1977). In addition, groups of environmental psy
chologists, designers, sociologists, and semioticians have begun to form
interactive research groups and cooperative publication projects (Canter
et al. 1983). But somewhat ironically, the person who more than most
actually initiated a systematic attempt to understand how individuals
perceptually construe their made environmentsviz., Kevin Lynch
(1960)never really followed up on his initial insights.
It might be thought that there is a potential danger in that a renewed
focus upon the dynamic viewpoint of users or subjects in creating the or
der of an object world may simply reverse a traditional bias toward the
maker by privileging decoders or "addressees," throwing the question of
visual meaning into an arena of idiosyncratic bricolage. But attention to

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199

the behavior of active, seeing subjects need not open up the visual en
vironment to transfinite polysemy. Focusing on the subject neither denies
nor undervalues the fact that objects may be intended by makers to
mark, privilege, or punctuate particular contents or systems of value, nor
does it deny that formations are made, appropriated, and construed as
instruments of ideological composition or fixity of meaning. Rather, by
rendering problematic the logocentrist addresser-addressee analogue, we
may begin to establish a more realistic picture of how objects pur
portedly intend, along with what subjects actually do with them both
psychically and socially. This is in effect to attend more deeply to the
question of what constitutes authorship, and more seriously and circum
spectly to the staging, the mise-en-scne, or, more correctly, the mise-ensequence of the visual environment.
Semiosis involves not simply the transfer of information from A to B,
but coevally involves the very establishment of the subject in relationship
to its world, as well as the ways in which this world is internalized in the
very formation of an individual subject. In this regard, the built environ
ment is a scaffold for the erection of individual and collective subjects.
Language and the built environment are the two primary panhuman me
dia for doing this. But they do not do this in parallel, or in tandem, and
they do not run together hand in hand in lily-white and well-formed deic
tic gloves. They are designed to work together in concert, in complemen
tary and supplementary ways, and deeply imply each other's presence
throughout.
Moreover, just as it is clear that messages in any code are inherently
multifunctional in construction and construal, it is similarly the case that
human semiotic behavior is intensely multimodal. In daily life, we or
chestrate and juxtapose anything and everything in order to compose re
alities, or simply to get a message across to others and to ourselves. It is
such embedded and complexly recursive orchestrations that in fact con
stitute the significative behaviors of cultural life. Our discursive activities
take place in a variety of modalities and channels simultaneously and se
quentially; the ways this is done are specific to given times, places, collec
tives, and individuals. This is a trait that though most remarkably evident
in the hominid branch of primates, nevertheless finds pale echoes in the
multimodal displays of those of our primate cousins whom we have al
lowed to survive along with us over the past million years. Human semio
tic behavior distinguishes itself nevertheless from much zoosemiotic

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behavior precisely in the extraordinary complexity of its crossmodal

connections.
What has evolved in the human line may in fact be less a set of autono
mous semiotic behaviors that in themselves have direct genealogies to
particular primate modalities. Human language is no more the apotheo
sis of primate call systems than is the human-built environment merely a
more complex form of chimpanzee nest-building and gestural signing.
What may have evolved in the human line, in other words, is the entire
multimodal and multifunctional semiotic domain as a whole, each of
whose components imply all others. This is not to suggest that each pa
renthesized modality is but a simple transformation of another into a dif
ferent medium. A city is no more a four-dimensional text than a language
is simply architecture in Flatland.
We only dimly understand the ways in which systems of signification
operate in concert with each other. It is clearly more than a matter of
simple and mechanical deixis. Codes, however defined, do not sit to
gether like bricks in houses; they are rather perhaps more like galaxies in
intersection whose very forms and components are in large part a result
of the gravitational forces between them. While we need not abandon the
notion of the code or internally cohesive system of signs, we should be
sensitive to the fact that no system of signification is wholly or even
largely understandable in isolation, whatever the economic benefits of
synecdochic neatness in analytic practice. Moreover, we should not fail to
extend this sensitivity to our reflections on the status of our analytic
metalanguages, and to see them clearly and steadily and wholly as tem
porarily useful, ironic fictions and ideological constructions.
I've attempted here to portray some of the more important directions
within the visual semiotic enterprise today. I hope to have made it at least
partially clear that things have begun to change rapidly and dramatically
in the last few years. Both its objects of study and its methodological for
mats are undergoing radical transformation. I'd like to summarize
quickly the thrust of my remarks not through a repetition of some table
of contents, but rather through the medium of two short parables that
may also serve as an initial palimpsest on my own text. Although both
deal with images of the visual environment, one is addressed to verbal
semiotics, the other to visual semiotics.
In observing the building activities of the !Kung people in Africa, Mar
shall (i960) wrote the following description:

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201

It takes the women only three-quarters of an hour to build their

shelters. But half the time at least, the womens' whim is not to
build shelters at all. In this case, they sometimes put up two sticks
to symbolize the entrance to the shelters so that the family may
orient itself as to which is the man's and which the woman's side of
the fire. Sometimes, they don't bother with the sticks at all.
The second is somewhat longer, and is taken from a book by Italo Calvino entitled Invisible Cities (1974:9697):
In Eudoxia, which spreads both upward and down, with winding
alleys, steps, dead ends, hovels, a carpet is preserved in which you
can observe the city's true form. At first sight nothing seems to
resemble Eudoxia less than the design of that carpet, laid out in
symmetrical motives whose patterns are repeated along straight
and circular lines, interwoven with brilliantly colored spires, in a
repetition that can be followed throughout the whole woof. But if
you pause and examine it carefully, you become convinced that
each place in the carpet corresponds to a place in the city and all
things contained in the city are included in the design, arranged
according to their true relationship, which escapes your eye dis
tracted by the bustle, the throngs, the shoving. All of Eudoxia's
confusion, the mules' braying, the lampblack stains, the fish smell
is what is evident in the incomplete perspective you grasp; but the
carpet proves that there is a point from which the city shows its
true proportions, the geometrical scheme implicit in its every, tin
iest detail.
It is easy to get lost in Eudoxia: but when you concentrate and
stare at the carpet, you recognize the street you were seeking in a
crimson or indigo or magenta thread which, in a wide loop, brings
you to the purple enclosure that is your real destination. Every in
habitant of Eudoxia compares the carpet's immobile order with his
own image of the city, an anguish of his own, and each can find,
concealed among the arabesques, an answer, the story of his life,
the twists of fate.
An oracle was questioned about the mysterious bond between
two objects so dissimilar as the carpet and the city. One of the two
objectsthe oracle repliedhas the form the gods gave the starry
sky and the orbits in which the worlds revolve; the other is an
approximate reflection, like every human creation.

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For some time the augurs had been sure that the carpet's harmo
nious pattern was of divine origin. The oracle was interpreted in
this sense, arousing no controversy. But you could, similarly, come
to the opposite conclusion: that the true map of the universe is the
city of Eudoxia, just as it is, a stain that spreads out shapelessly,
with crooked streets, houses that crumble one upon the other amid
clouds of dust, fires, screams in the darkness.
Attempts to understand traditionally delimited modalities of significa
tion in isolation have been as futile as trying to trace with a pencil the
shadow of the tracing pencil. Semiotics, in the final analysis (not that
there ever is one), is no Archimedean lever that will enable us to lift up
the body of culture and behavior so as to expose, on its underside, its
origins, roots, and nascent logic. Nor is it a magic carpet that will allow
us to trace out the tiniest alleyways of cities, brains, and behavioreven
(and especially) when we might be satisfied that it is succeeding in doing
precisely that. For in this regard the semiotic enterprise, in its fundamen
tal and radical problematizing of the received formats of how we learn to
mean, is at the same time a formidable critique of what it is that consti
tutes satisfaction.

N O T E

1. A detailed elaboration of the network of architectonic sign types re

sulting from an extensive synchronic analysis of a single historical corpus
will be found in Preziosi 19793:38 60, 103 7; the complete data set is
discussed in Preziosi 1982. See also Krampen 1982 for a comparative as
sessment of this and other proposals.

R E F E R E N C E S

C I T E D

Agrest, Diana, and Mario Gandelsonas. 1977. Semiotics and the limits of
architecture. In T. A. Sebeok, ed. A Perfusion of Signs. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
Baudrillard, Jean. 1981. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the
Sign. St. Louis: Telos Press.

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203

Bonta, Juan. 1977. Sistemas de Significacin en Arquitectura. Barcelona:

Editorial Gustavo Gili.
. 1981. Architectural criticism as a means to identify socially
shared values. In M. Herzfeld and M. Lenhart, eds. Semiotics 1981.
New York: Plenum Press.
Bruner, Jerome. 1966. Studies in Cognitive Growth. New York: John
Wiley & Sons.
Calvino, Italo. 1974. Invisible Cities. New York: Harcourt-BraceJovanovich.
Canter, David. 1970. Architectural Psychology. London: RIBA.
. 1977. The Psychology of Place. London: Architectural Press.
Canter, David, Josep Muntanola, Toomas Niit, Arie Peled, and Donald
Preziosi. 1983. Experiencing Places. London: John Wiley & Sons.
Collins, Peter. 1965. Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture. London:
Faber & Faber.
Damisch, Hubert. 1975. Semiotics and iconography. In T. A. Sebeok, ed.
The Tell-Tale Sign. Lisse: Peter de Ridder Press.
Downs, Richard, and David Stea, eds. 1973. Image and Environment:
Cognitive Mapping and Spatial Behavior. Chicago: Aldine
Publishing.
Eco, Umberto. 1968. La struttura assente. Milano: Bompiani.
. 1971. Le forme del contenuto. Milano: Bompiani.
. 1972. A componential analysis of the architectural sign/column/.
Semiotica 5(2):97117.
Fauque, Richard. 1973. Pour une nouvelle approche semiologique de la
ville. Espaces et Societes 9:15 27.
Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things. New York: Random
House.
Gamberini, Italo. 1953. Per una analisi degli elementi dell'architettura.
Firenze: Editrice Universitaria.
. 1959. Gli elementi dell'architettura come 'parole' del linguaggio
architettonico. Firenze: Coppini.
. 1961. Analisi degli elementi costitutivi dell'architettura. Firenze:
Coppini.
Greimas, Algirdas. 1966. Semantique structurale: recherche de methode.
Paris: Librairie Larousse.
Hillier, B., and A. Leaman. 1975. The architecture of architecture. In D.

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Hawkes, ed. Models and Systems in Architecture and Building. Lon

don: Construction Press.
Hillier, B., A. Leaman, P. Stansall, and M. Bedford. 1976. Space syntax.
Environment and Planning B, No. 3.
Hjelmslev, Louis. 1960. Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. Madi
son: University of Wisconsin Press.
Ittleson, W. H. 1973. Environment and Cognition. New York: Seminar
Press.
Jakobson, Roman. 1960. Linguistics and poetics. In T. A. Sebeok, ed.
Style in Language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Jencks, Charles, and George Baird, eds. 1970. Meaning in Architecture.
New York: Praeger.
Koenig, Giovanni. 1964. Analisi del linguaggio architettonico. Firenze:
Editrice Fiorentina.
. 1970. Architettura e Communicazione: Preceduta da elementi di
analisi del linguaggio architettonico. Firenze: Editrice Fiorentina.
Krampen, Martin. 1979. Meaning in the Urban Environment. London:
Pion/Methuen.
. 1981. Zur Multifunktionalitt des Design. In Ingrid Lempl, ed.
Krise des Funktionalistischen Design? Stuttgart: Design Center.
. 1982. Advances in visual semiotics. Semiotica.
Leach, Edmund. 1976. Culture and Communication. Cambridge, Eng.:
Cambridge University Press.
Lynch, Kevin. 1960. The Image of the City. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press.
Marshall, L. i960. !Kung bushman bands. Africa 3o(4):34243.
Michelson, Annette. 1970. Art and the structuralist perspective. In E.
Fry, ed. On the Future of Art. New York: Viking Press.
Mukarovsky, Jan. 1978. On the problem of functions in architecture. In
J. Burbank and P. Steiner, eds. Structure, Sign and Function: Selected
Writings of Jan Mukarovsky. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Neisser, Ulric. 1976. Cognition and Reality. San Francisco: Freeman.
Nodelman, Sheldon. 1966. Some remarks on structural analysis in art
and architecture. Yale French Studies 36-37.
Preziozi, Donald. 1979a. The Semiotics of the Built Environment.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
. 1979b. Architecture, Language and Meaning. The Hague:
Mouton.

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. 1983. Minoan Architectural Design: Formation and Significa

tion. The Hague: Mouton.
Rossi-Landi, Feruccio. 1968. Il linguaggio come lavoro e come mercato.
Milano: Bompiani.
. 1972. Omologia della riproduzione sociale. Ideologia 16/17.
. 1975. Linguistics and Economics. The Hague: Mouton.
Schapiro, Meyer. 1969. On some problems in the semiotics of visual art:
field and vehicle in image-signs. Semiotica 1(3):22242.
. 1973. Words and Pictures: On the Literal and the Symbolic in
the Illustration of a Text. The Hague: Mouton.
Tafuri, Manfredo. 1980. Theories and History of Architecture. New
York: Harper & Row.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1974. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception,
Attitudes, and Values. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall.
. 1977. Space and Place. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Wallis, Mieczyslaw. 1975. Arts and Signs. Bloomington: Indiana Univer
sity Press.

Part Five

INTRODUCTION TO PART FIVE

The scope of the papers by Sebastian Shaumyan and Thomas A. Sebeok

is very broad indeed, and for many of us, novel and full of promise. Be
tween them, Shaumyan and Sebeok have asserted for semiotics a pivotal
role in the future of linguistics and an integrative function in inter
disciplinary relationships.
Shaumyan advances claims for both critical and productive contribu
tions to the science of linguistics on the part of semiotics. On the nega
tive, critical side, he asserts a principle of indeterminacy like the one that
bears the names of Bohr and Heisenberg: questions must not be phrased
in such a way as to depend upon observations that cannot be made with
out changing the data beyond recovery. Language is a tool of cognitive
knowledge, and when the object of study is language itself, the meta
language used is the destructive, disturbing factor that must be reexam
ined and criticized in order to limit and reduce its interference. Shaumyan
asserts that the present crisis of transformational-generative grammar is
due to the limitations of its metalanguage, in particular to its Englishderived linear structure, which requires unnatural rules to fit the forms of
natural languages to the unreal order of a deep structure that is no more
than an artifact of the metalanguage itself. Accordingly, he rejects the or
dered rules, the generative phonology, and the algorithmic approach of
that school.
But semiotics has productive as well as critical contributions to make
to our discipline. According to Shaumyan, we can look to semiotics for
four positive gifts to linguistics: a model and framework within which to
study language in a broader, more unified way; the terms in which the
findings of our research may be understood; the means of relating the
discipline of linguistics to other fields of study; and the guiding principles
around which to organize the history of linguistics.
Thomas A. Sebeok's claims for semiotics are even more sweeping. His
definition of the sign appears to include whatever may be read as a code.
There need be no known intent to convey a message. Thus the data of
subatomic physics, the inferences of astronomers, the symptomatology of

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Introduction to Part Five

ancient Greek medicine, the double helix of DNA are all alike for him
signs within the meaning of semiotics. He is particularly concerned in
this paper with the parallels between biological symptomatological data
(symptoms)construed by him as a subspecies of signsand the ele
ments of systems of communication that convey intentional messages.
Sebeok does not say how many kinds of signs there are or how they
differ. He has preferred to stress the unifying nature of semiotics, a field
that aims to bring together many disciplines to be organized around a
common understanding of signs. He boldly advances into a world of par
adoxes, which both attracts and repels.
Tempting as the philosophical implications of Sebeokian semiotics are,
it is the heuristic implications of semiotics for the further development of
linguistics that ought to deserve our attention. On this, Shaumyan and
Sebeok speak as one and make similar claims for their discipline. These
claims merit our attention and compel our interest.
Sebeok does not defend semiotics here, but offers it as a given. If we are
to use the findings from symptomatology and semiotics as a useful tool
for broadening the scope of linguistics, we will want to know how one
can avoid attributing to the phenomena meaning and implications that
are not there.
The reader will be fascinated by the possibilities suggested in these pa
pers, and their positive claims should be the subject of our attention and
questions.

CHAPTER

10

Symptom

Thomas A. Sebeok

Ullman distinguished among four juxtaposed branches of word-study:

"(1) the science of names (lexicology if synchronistic, etymology if diachronistic); (2) the science of meanings (semantics); (3) the science of
designations (onomasiology); (4) the science of concepts (Begriffslebre)"
(1951:161). Although the distinction between designation and meaning,
particularly as displayed in the works of German and Swiss semanticists
(of the sometimes loosely, as well as incorrectly, called Trier-Weisgerber
School) is far from consistently drawn or ever pellucid, I take it that this
alterity depends on whether one's starting point is the name, the lexeme,
or, more generally, the sign, or whether it is the concept or, more gener
ally, the object, i.e., the constellation of properties and relations the sign
stands for. If the former, the analysis should yield a semiotic network re
sponsive to the question: what does a given sign signify in contrast and
opposition to any other sign within the same system of signs? If the latter,
the analysis should reveal the sign by which a given entity is designated
within a certain semiotic system. According to Ullmann, the second in
quiry "is the cornerstone of Weisgerber's structure" (1951), but I believe
that the two questions are indissolubly complementary. In any case, the
whole enterprise critically hinges upon how the investigator parses the
sign/object (aliquidlaliquo) antithesis, and what the conjunctive stands
for, in his judgment, entails.
The probe becomes at once more intricate, but also more intriguing,
when the lexical field {Bedeutungsfeld} Sinnfeld} Wortfeld}) being ex-

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Thomas A. Sebeok

plored happens to be reflexive, i.e., self-searching. Such is the case of

symptom, a technical term in both semiotics and medicine. Thus its ex
amination may begin in the inner realm of the lexicon, if viewed as a
name, or in the outer realm of clinical experience, if viewed as sense. One
may properly inquire: what does the lexeme symptom mean in language
L1; or what does the same lexeme symptom designate, that is, reveal as a
diagnostic intimation, in respect to, say, an actual quality of "diseasehood" (Fabrega 1974:123), that F. G. Crookshank foresightedly por
trayed as "a mysterious substantia that has 'biological properties' and
'produces' symptoms" (in Ogden and Richards 1938:343)? In the end,
the results of such dichotomous inquiries amalgamate in a common dia
lectical synthesis. For the purposes of this exposition, L1 is American En
glish. However, the semantic field of "medical discourse" (which is typ
ically nested within wider sets of concentric frames; cf. Labov and
Fanshel 1977: 36f.)is here assumed to be, mutatis mutandis, very simi
lar to that in every other speech community committed to the paradigm
of medical theory and practice "in the context of the great tradition"
(Miller 1978 :184) of thinking marked by a continuity that links modern
clinicians with the idea of isonomia launched by the brilliant Alcmaeon
of Croton during the first half of the fifth century. This heritage was fur
ther consolidated by Hippocratesarguably considered, at one and the
same time, the "Father of Medicine" (Heidel 1941:xiii), and "der Vater
und Meister aller Semiotik" (Kleinpaul 1972:103)then Plato, Aris
totle, and the Alexandrian physicians of the fourth century B.C. Quite
recently, equally perceptive studies of symptom have, in fact, cropped up
in semiotic literature (e.g., Baer 1982 and forthcoming), as well as in the
medical literature (e.g., Prodi 1981), undertaken by savants who mutu
ally know their way around the other field as well as their own. (See also
Staiano 1979: n8f., n.5, for further references.) One should, however,
continue to be ever mindful of the admonition of Mounin (1981) against
a mechanical application of semiotic (especially linguistic) concepts to
medicine (especially psychiatry).
Symptom always appears in conjunction with sign, but the precise na
ture of the vinculum is far from obvious (as in MacBryde and Blacklow
1970, or Chamberlain and Ogilvie 1974). The basic semiosic facts were
perspicuously depicted by Ogden and Richards: "If we stand in the
neighbourhood of a crossroad and observe a pedestrian confronted by a
notice To Grandchester displayed on a post, we commonly distinguish

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213

three important factors in the situation. There is, we are sure, (1) a Sign
which (2) refers to a Place and (3) is being interpreted by a person. All
situations in which Signs are considered are similar to this. A doctor not
ing that his patient has a temperature and so forth is said to diagnose his
disease as influenza. If we talk like this we do not make it clear that signs
are here also involved. Even when we speak of symptoms we often do not
think of these as closely related to other groups of signs. But if we say
that the doctor interprets the temperature, etc., as a Sign of influenza, we
are at any rate on the way to an inquiry as to whether there is anything in
common between the manner in which the pedestrian treated the object
at the crossroad and that in which the doctor treated* his thermometer
and the flushed countenance" (1938 : 21).
The relation of sign to symptom involves either coordination or subor
dination. If the distinction is between coordinates, what matters is not
their inherent meaning but the mere fact of the binary opposition be
tween the paired categories. This was nicely brought to the fore in a re
port of an investigation of the symptom "fatigue" by two physicians,
Harley C. Shands and Jacob E. Finesinger: "The close study of . . . pa
tients made it imperative to differentiate carefully between 'fatigue,' a
feeling, and 'impairment,' an observable decrement in performance fol
lowing protracted effort. The distinction comes to be that between a
symptom and a sign. The symptom is felt, the sign observed by some
other person. These two terms cover the broad field of semiotics; they are
often confused, and the terms interchanged [at least in L1] without warn
ing" (Shands 1970: 52). This passage underscores the importance of sep
arating the "private world" of introspection reported by the description
of the symptoms on the part of the patient from the public world of signs
reported by the description of behavior on the part of the physician. As I
have written earlier: "It is a peculiarity of symptoms that their denotata
are generally different for the addresser, viz., the patient ('subjective
symptoms,' confusingly called by many American medical practitioners
'signs') and the addressee, viz., the examining physician ('objective symp
toms,' or simply 'symptoms')" (Sebeok 1976:181). Notice that only a
single observerto wit, oneselfcan relate symptomatic events, whereas
an indefinite number of observersincluding oneselfcan observe
signs. Accordingly, within this framework the fact of privacy looms as a
criterial distinctive feature that demarcates any symptom from any sign
(cf. Sebeok 1979, Appendix I). Symptoms could thus be read as recondite

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Thomas A. Sebeok

communiqus about an individual's inner world, an interpretation that

sometimes acquires the status of an elaborate occult metaphor. For in
stance, the eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, would appear to be reason
ably decodable as "I am starving (emotionally) to death." Its symptoms
are believed to result from disturbed family relationships and interper
sonal difficulties (Liebman, Minuchin, and Baker 1974a, 1974b). One
palpable sign of this ailment is, of course, weight phobia, measurable as a
decrement in the patient's mass.
The crucial distinction between fatigue and impairment is "similar to
that between anxiety as a felt symptom and behavioral disintegration
often exhibited, say, in states of panic. The latter is a sign, not a symp
tom" (Shands 1970). The dissemblance exemplified here is obviously re
lated to Uexkll's notion, maintained both in the life science and the sign
science, of "inside" and "outside." I take the pivotal implication of this to
be as follows: "Something observed (=outside) stands for something that
is (hypothetically) noticed by the observed subject ( = inside). Or some
thing within the observing system stands for something within the ob
served system" (Uexkll 1982:209). For any communication, this com
plementary relationship is obligatory, because the organism and its
Umwelt together constitute a system. The shift from physiological pro
cess to semiosis is a consequence of the fact that the observer assumes a
hypothetical stance within the observed system {Bedeutungserteilung -
Bedeutungsverwertung).
For symptom (in L 1 , there exists an array of both stricter and looser
synonyms. Among the former, which appear to be more or less com
monly employed, Elstein et al. solely but extensively use cue; although
they do so without definition, their import is made quite clear from pas
sages such as "cues were interpreted by physicians as tending to confirm
or disconfirm a hypothesis, or as noncontributory" (1976:279). Fabrega, on the other hand, seems to prefer indicator, but he uses this cornmutably for either symptom or sign; and when he remarks that "all
indicators may be needed in order to make judgments about disease"
(1974:126), he surely refers to both categories together. The word clue,
on the other hand, is a looser synonym for symptom: generally speaking,
where symptom is used in medical discourse, clue is found in the detectival sphere (Sebeok 1981a; and Eco and Sebeok 1983).
In the minimalist coupling, sign ~ symptom are equipollent; both are
unmarked vis--vis one another (Waugh 1982). Sometimes, however,

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215

symptom encompasses both "the objective sign and the subjective sign"
(cf. Staiano 1982:332). In another tradition, symptom is a mere phe
nomenon "qui prcisment n'a encore rien de smiologique, de sman
tique," or is considered falling, e.g., in the terminology of glossematics, in
the area of content articulation, la substance du signifiant, an opera
tionally designated figura that is elevated to full semiotic status only
through the organizing consciousness of the physician, achieved through
the mediation of language (Barthes 1972: 38f.). However, still other radi
cally different sorts of arrangements occur in the literature. In Bhler's
organon model (cf. Sebeok 1981b), symptom constitutes but one of three
"variable moments" capable of rising "in three different ways to the rank
of a sign." These include signal, symbol, as well as symptom. Bhler
specifies further that the semantic relation of the latter functions "by rea
son of its dependence on the sender, whose interiority it expresses"
(1965 : 28 35). He clearly subordinates this trio of words under one and
the same "Oberbegriff 'Zeichen,'" then goes on to ask: "Ist es zweck
mssig, die Symbole, Symptome, Signale zusammenzufassen in einem
genus-proximum 'Zeichen'?" It should also be noted that Bhler's first
mention of symptom is immediately followed by a parenthetic set of pre
sumed synonyms: "(Anzeichen, Indicium)." Thus, in acknowledging the
importance of the notion of privacy as an essential unmarked feature of
symptom, Bhler also recognizes that, while it is coordinate with two
other terms, it is also subordinate to the (unmarked) generic notion of
sign, namely that kind of sign that Peirce earlier, but unbeknownst to
Bhler, defined with much more exactitude as an index.
Despite his extensive knowledge of medicine (Sebeok 1981a), Peirce
did not often discuss symptom (nor, anywhere, in any fecund way, syndrome, diagnosis, prognosis, or the like). For him, a symptom, to begin
with, was one kind of sign. In a very interesting passage, from the dic
tionary lemma "Represent," he expands: "to stand for, that is, to be in
such a relation to another that for certain purposes it is treated by some
mind as if it were that other. Thus a spokesman, deputy, attorney, agent,
vicar, diagram, symptom, counter, description, concept, premise, testi
mony, all represent something else, in their several ways, to minds who
consider them in that way" (2.273).
For Peirce, however, a symptom is never a distinct species of sign, but a
mere subspecies, namely, the indexor secondness of genuine degree (in
contrast to a demonstrative pronoun, exemplifying secondness of a de-

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Thomas A. Sebeok

generate nature)of one of his three canonical categories (2.304). But

what kind of a sign is this? Peirce gives an example that I would prefer to
label a clue: "Such, for instance, is a piece of mould with a bullet-hole in
it as sign of a shot; for without the shot there would not have been a hole;
but there is a hole there, whether anybody has the sense to attribute it to
a shot or not" (2.304). The essential point here is that the indexical char
acter of the sign would not be voided if there were no interpretant, but
only if its object were removed. An index is that kind of a sign that be
comes such by virtue of being really (i.e., factually) connected with its
object. "Such is a symptom of disease" (8.119). All "symptoms of dis
ease," furthermore, "have no utterer," as is also the case with "signs of
weather" (8.185). We have an index, Peirce prescribed in 1885, when
there is "a direct dual relation of the sign to its object independent of the
mind using the sign. . . . Of this nature are all natural signs and physical
symptoms" (3.361).
A further detail worth pointing out is that Peirce calls the "occurrence
of a symptom of a disease . . . a legisign, a general type of a definite char
acter," but "the occurrence in a particular case is a sinsign" (8.335),that
is to say, a token. A somewhat cryptic remark (MS 787, in 1896) rein
forces this: "To a sign which gives reason to think that something is true,
I prefer to give the name of a symbol; although the words token and
symptom likewise recommend themselves." Staiano is undoubtedly cor
rect in remarking that "the appearance of a symptom in an individual is
thus an indexical sinsign, while the symptom interpreted apart from its
manifestation becomes an indexical legisign" (1982: 331).
Symptoms, in Peirce's usage, are thus unwitting indexes, interpretable
by their receivers without the actuality of any intentional sender. Jakobson likewise includes symptoms within the scope of semiotics, but cau
tions that "we must consistently take into account the decisive difference
between communication which implies a real or alleged addresser and in
formation whose source cannot be viewed an addresser by the interpreter
of the indications obtained" (1971:703). This remark glosses over the
fact that symptoms are promptings of the body crying out for an expla
nationfor the construction, by the self, of a coherent and intelligible
pattern (which of course may or may not be accurate; cf. Polunin 1977 :
91). Pain comprises one such symptom that embodies a message com
pelling the central nervous system to influence both covert and overt be
havior to seek out signs of pain, throughout phylogeny, ontogeny, hic et

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217

ubique. Miller befittingly expands: "From the instant when someone first
recognizes his symptoms to the moment when he eventually complains
about them, there is always an interval, longer or shorter as the case may
be, when he argues with himself about whether it is worth making his
complaint known to an expert. . . . At one time or another we have all
been irked by aches and pains. We have probably noticed alterations in
weight, complexion and bodily function, changes in power, capability
and will, unaccountable shifts of mood. But on the whole we treat these
like changes in the weather. . . ." (1978:45-49).
Peirce once particularized the footprint that Robinson Crusoe found in
the sand to be an index "that some creature was on his island" (4.351),
and indeed an index always performs as a sign the vectorial direction of
which is toward the past, or, as Thorn put it, "par rversion de la causa
lit gnratrice" (1980:194), which is the inverse of physical causality.
Augustine's class of signa naturali, definedin contrast to signa data
by the relation of dependence between the sign and the things signified
(De Doctrina Christiana II. 1.2.), beside its orthodox sense (such as that a
rash is a symptom of measles), is also illustrated by footprints left by an
animal passed out of sight, and may thus be regarded as encompassing a
portent, or in the most general usage, evidence (for instance, as a south
westerly wind may both signify and bring rain, that is, give rise to its significatum). Thus symptoms, in many respects, function like tracks
footprints, toothmarks, food pellets, droppings and urine, paths and
runs, snapped twigs, lairs, the remains of meals, etc.throughout the
animal world (Sebeok 1976:133), and in hunting populations, where
men "learnt to sniff, to observe, to give meaning and context to the
slightest trace" (Ginzburg 1983). Tracks, including notably symptoms,
operate like metonyms. The trope involved is pars pro toto, extensively
analyzed by Bilz, who spelled out its relevance (1940:287): "Auch eine
Reihe krperlicher Krankheitszeichen sog., funktioneller oder organ
neurotischer Symptome, haben wir unter den Generalnenner der Szene
gebracht, einer verschtteten Ganzheit. . . . Hier ist es . . . eine Teil funktion der Exekutive . . . wobei wir abermals auf den Begriff des Parsprototo stiessen."
Although it is, of course, Hippocrates who remains the emblematic an
cestral figure of semioticsthat is to say, semiology, in the narrow, par
ticularly Romance, sense of symptomatologyhe "took the notion of
clue from the physicians who came before him" (Eco 1980:277). Baer

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Thomas A. Sebeok

alludes to a "romantic symptomatology," which he postulates may have

been "the original one," carrying the field far back "to an era of mythical
consciousness" (1982:18). Alcmaeon remarked, in one of the scanty
fragments of his book: "As to things invisible and things mortal, the gods
have certainties; but, so far as men may infer . . . ," or, in an alternative
translation, "men must proceed by clues . . ." (Eco 1980), namely, provi
sionally conjecture. And what is to be the basis of such circumstantial
inference? Clearly, the concept that is central here is symptom (smeion;
ci. Ginzburg 1983).
While Alcmaeon is commonly regarded as the founder of empirical
psychology, it was Hippocrates, this clinical teacher par excellence (Temkin 1973), who broke tradition with archaic medical practice where the
physician was typically preoccupied with the nature of disease, its causes
and manifestations, in that he refocused directly upon the sick man and
his complaintsin brief, upon the symptoms of disease: "Nicht so sehr
die Krankheit als das Kranke Individuum" (Neuburger 1906:196).
For Hippocrates and his followers, symptoms were simply "significant
phenomena" (cf. Heidel 1941:6z). Their consideration of symptoms as
natural signsthose having the power to signify the same things in all
times and placeswas of the most comprehensive sort. A very early dis
cussion of signs of this type is found in Hippocrates' Prognostic XXV:
One must clearly realize about sure signs and about symptoms gen
erally (peri tn tekmrin kai tn alln smein), that in every year
and in every land bad signs indicate something bad, and good signs
something favourable, since the symptoms (smeia) described
above prove to have the same significance in Lybia, in Delos, and in
Scythia. So one must clearly realize that in the same districts it is
not strange that one should be right in the vast majority of in
stances, if one learns them well and knows how to estimate and
appreciate them properly.
I had previously recalled an enduring example of this method, the de
tailed description of the famous facies hippocratica (Sebeok 1979:6f.);
another example may be cited from Epidemics I (after Heidel 1941:
129):

The following were the circumstances attending the diseases, from

which I formed my judgments, learning from the common nature

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219

of all and the particular nature of the individual, from the disease,
the patient, the regimen prescribed and the prescriberfor these
make a diagnosis more favorable or less; from the constitution,
both as a whole and with respect to the parts, of the weather and
of each region; from the customs, mode of life, practices and age of
each patient; from talk, manner, silence, thoughts, sleep or absence
of sleep, the nature and time of dreams, pluckings, scratchings,
tears; from the exacerbations, stools, urine, sputa, vomit, the ante
cedents of consequents of each member in the succession of dis
eases, and the absessions to a fatal issue or a crisis, sweat, rigor,
chill, cough, sneezes, hiccoughs, breathing, belchings, flatulence, si
lent or noisy, hemorrhages, and hemorrhoids. From these things we
must consider what their consequents also will be.
In The Science of Medicine, Hippocrates also stated: "What escapes
our vision we must grasp by mental sight, and the physician, being un
able to see the nature of the disease nor to be told of it, must have re
course to reasoning from the symptoms with which he is presented." The
means by which a diagnosis may be reached "consist of observations on
the quality of the voice, whether it be clear or hoarse, on respiratory rate,
whether it be quickened or slowed, and on the constitution of the various
fluids which flow from the orifices of the body, taking into account their
smell and colour, as well as their thinness or viscosity. By weighing up the
significance of these various signs it is possible to deduce of what disease
they are the result, what has happened in the past and to prognosticate
the future course of the malady" (Chadwick and Mann 1950: 87 89).
However, it was Galen, whose one and only idol was Hippocrates, and
whose medicine remained (on the whole) Hippocratic, who attempted to
provide prognostics, wherever feasible, with a scientific underpinning,
that is, to base his forecasts on actual observations. This he was able to
do because he practiced dissection and experiment: whereas Hippocrates
studied disease as a naturalist, Galen "dared to modify nature as a scien
tist" (Majno 1975:396; cf. Neuburger 1906:385). "Empirical method
was first formulated in ancient medicine," as given systematic and de
tailed expression in the Hippocratic corpus (De Lacy 1941:121), and be
came a part of the theory of signs in the Epicureans and Sceptics, in op
position to the Stoic rationalistic position. Philodemus' fragmentary
treatise (composed ca. 40 B.C.) is by far the most complete discussion of a

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Thomas A. Sebeok

thoroughgoing methodological work uncovered (in the Herculanean li

brary) and extensively elucidated to date. Galen, despite all of his Pla
tonic training, was later "forced by his profession to be more empirical"
(Phillips 1973 :174), even though this open-minded investigator, who
continued to speak with the voice and authority of a man of science, did
gradually turn into something of a dogmatic mystic (cf. Sarton 1954:
59). He can therefore be regarded as a subtle founder of clinical semio
tics as such; his work was thus something of a watershed, since "die
galenische Semiotik verwertet die meisten Beobachtungs- und Unter
suchungsmethoden die das Altertum ausgebildet hat" (Neuburger 1906:
385). But he can also, very likely, be reckoned the first "scientific"
semiotician.
Galen's pen was as busy as his scalpel. In the course of his excep
tionally bulky writings, he classified semiotics as one of the six principal
branches of medicine (mer iatriks ta men prta esti, to te phusiologikon kai to aitiologikon pathologikon kai to hugieinon kai to smeiotikon kai to therapeutikon [XIV:689]), an ordering that had a spe
cial importance for its "effect on the later history of medicine" (Phillips
1973 :172). The strength of Galenism, as Temkin (1973 :179) also em
phasized, "reposed in no small measure in its having provided medical
categories . . . for relating the individual to health and disease," includ
ing "semeiology (the science of signs)." Of semiotics, he further specified:
Smeisis de kai eis therapeian men anakaia, all' ouk estin aut h
therapeia. Dia gar ts huls h therapeia sunteleitai kai to men hulikon
aneu therapeias ouden heteron sumballetai. To de smeitikon kai aneu
therapeias anankaion pros to eidenai tina therapeutika kai tina atberapeuta kai periistastbai auta, hops m epiballomenoi adunatois sphallmetba (XIV:689). At the end of this same chapter, he then divided the
field into three enduring parts: in the present, he asserted, its concern is
with inspection, or diagnosis, in the past with cognition, or anamnesis
(etiology), and, in the future, with providence, or prognosis (diaireitai de
kai to smeitikon eis tria, eis te epignsin tn parelluthotn kai eis tn
episkepsin tn sunedreuontn kai eis prognsin ton mellontn [XIV:
690]). His clinical procedure was depicted by Sarton (1954 : 6): "When a
sick man came to consult him, Galen . . . would first try to elicit his medi
cal history and his manner of living; he would ask questions concerning
the incidence of malaria and other common ailments. Then the patient
would be invited to tell the story of his new troubles, and the doctor

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221

would ask all the questions needed to elucidate them and would make the
few examinations which were possible." Galen regarded "everything un
natural occurring in the body" as a symptom (VII:50, 135; also X:71ff.),
and an aggregation of symptoms (athroisma tn symptomaton) as a syn
drome (VII:516). He was fully aware that symptoms and syndromes di
rectly reflected clinical observation, but the formulation of a diagnosis
required causal thinking (cf. Siegel 1973). He was the master of foretell
ing the course of diseases: Galen "pflegte . . . die Prognostik in beson
derem Masse, und nicht den geringsten Teil seines Rufes als Praktiker
dankte er richtigen Vorhersagungen" (Neuburger 1906:385). Although
his prognostications rested essentially and loyally upon the Corpus Hippocraticum, his own anatomical knowledge and exactitude of mind
predisposed him to build up his prognoses from a cogent diagnostic
foundation.
It would not appear unreasonable to expect a finely attuned reciprocal
conformation between man's internal states and "reality," between his In
nenwelt and the surrounding Umwelt, or more narrowly, between symp
toms and their interpretations as an outcome over time or evolutionary
adaptationprodotto genetico, in Prodi's succinct formulation (1981:
973)that benefits an organism by raising its fittingness. But such does
not reflect the state of the art of diagnosis. The probabilistic character of
symptoms has long been realized, among others, by the Port-Royal logi
cians (Sebeok 1976:125); their often vague, uncertain disposition was
clearly articulated by Thomas Sydenham, the seventeenth century physi
cian often called "The English Hippocrates" (Colby and McGuire 1981 :
21). This much-admired doctor, held in such high regard by his brother
of the profession, John Locke, was also known as the "Father of English
Medicine" (Latham 1848:xi). Sydenham was noted for his scrupulous
recognition of the priority of direct observation. He demanded "the sure
and distinct perception of peculiar symptoms," shrewdly emphasizing
that these symptoms may be "referred less to the disease than to the doc
tor." He held that "Nature, in the production of disease, is uniform and
consistent; so much so, that for the same disease in different persons, the
symptoms are for the most part the same; and the self-same phenomena
that you would observe in the sickness of a Socrates you would observe in
the sickness of a simpleton" (1848:14ff.). This assertion of his was, of
course, quite mistaken, although the old medical-student jape referred to
by Colby and McGuire, "that the trouble with psychiatry is that all psy-

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Thomas A. Sebeok

chiatric syndromes consist of the same signs and symptoms" (1981: 23),
appears to be equally exaggerated. There are, to be sure, certain diagnos
tic difficulties inherent in the similarities between the symptomatology of
functional syndromes and of those of organic maladies. The marginal, or
supplementary, symptoms of the former can, however, be assimilated ac
cording to specific criteria, such as are set forth, for instance by Uexkll
(1979).
This set of strictures leads me to a consideration of an aspect of symp
toms that is seldom mentioned in the literature, but that I have found
both fascinating and, certainly for semiotics, of broad heuristic value.
This has to do with anomalies, a problem that concerned, in a philosoph
ical context, especially Peirce. According to Humphries (1968), a natu
rally anomalous state of affairs is such "with respect to a set of statements
which are at present putatively true" (88); or, putting the matter in a
more direct way, "any fact or state of affairs which actually requires an
explanation can be shown to be in need of explanation on the basis of
existing knowledge" (89). The enigmatic character of semiotic anomalies
can especially well be illustrated by clinical examples, where few existing
models are capable of accounting for a multitude of facts. Medicine may,
in truth, be one of the few disciplines lacking an overarching theory, al
though local, nonlinear, and hence restricted and over-simple paradigms,
as the "theory of infectious diseases," certainly do exist.
Take as a first approach to the matter of anomalies the spirochete
Treponema pallidum. This virus, in its tertiary phase, may manifest itself
("cause") aortitis in individual A, paretic neurosyphilis in individual B,
or no disease at all in individual C. The latter, the patient with asymptomatic tertiary syphilis, can be said to have a disease without being ill.
Note that a person may not only be diseased without being ill, but, con
versely, be ill without having a specific identifiable disease. What can we
say, in cases such as this, about the implicative nexus conjoining the
"proposition," viz., the virus, with its consequent, expressed in some tan
gible manner or, to the contrary, mysteriously mantled? Are A, B, and C
in complementary distribution, and, if so, according to what principle
the constitution of the patient, or some extrinsic factor (geographic, tem
poral, societal, age- or sex-related, and so forth), or a coalition of these?
The influence of context, one suspects, may be paramount. This becomes
overriding in the matter of hypertensionnot a disease at all, but a sign
of cardiovascular disorder (Paine and Sherman 1970: 272)which is rea-

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223

lized in one and only one restricted frame: within that of patient/physi
cian interaction, assuming the aid of certain accessories, such as a sphygmoscope. Semiosis is, as it were, called into existence solely under the
circumstances mentioned; otherwise there are no symptoms (the asymp
tomatic, i.e., so-called silent, hypertension lasts, on the average, fifteen
years [ibid. 1291])there are no signs, and there is, therefore, no determi
natethat is, diagnosableobject.
A recent study found that the majority of peopleabout fifteen mil
lion Americans among themwho have gallstones go through life with
out palpable problems. The presence of these little pebbles of cholesterol
that form in a sac that stores digestive juice can clearly be seen in X-rays:
the shadows are "the objective signs," but most of them never cause pain,
or any other symptom: they remain mute. They are, in other words, diag
nosed only in the course of detailed checkups, and thus require no surgi
cal intervention.
Sensory experiences, at times, lead to semiosic paradoxes, such as the
following classic contravention. A hole in one of my teeth, which feels
mammoth when I poke my tongue into it, is a subjective symptom I may
elect to complain about to my dentist. He lets me inspect it in a mirror,
and I am surprised by how trivially small the aperturethe objective
signlooks. The question is: which interpretation is "true," the one de
rived via the tactile modality or the one reported by the optical percept?
The felt image and the shape I see do not match. The dentist is, of course,
unconcerned with the size of the hole; he fills the cavity he beholds.
It is a common enough experience that the symptom (for reasons ulti
mately having to do with the evolutionary design of man's central nerv
ous system) refers to a different part of the body than where the damage
is actually situated. "The pain of coronary heart-disease, for example, is
felt across the front of the chest, in the shoulders, arms and often in the
neck and jaw. It is not felt where the heart isslightly over to the left"
(Miller 1978 : 22). Such a misreport is unbiological, in the sense that a lay
reading could be fatal. An even more outlandish symptom is one for
which the referent is housed nowhere at all, dramatically illustrated by a
phantom limb after amputation. Miller writes: "The phantom limb may
seem to moveit may curl its toes, grip things, or feel its phantom nails
sticking into its phantom palm. As time goes on, the phantom dwindles,
but it does so in peculiar ways. The arm part may go, leaving a madden
ing piece of hand waggling invisibly from the edge of the real shoulder;

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Thomas A. Sebeok

the hand may enlarge itself to engulf the rest of the limb" (20). What is
involved here is an instance of subjectiveas against objectivepain, a
distinction introduced by Friedrich J. K. Henle, the illustrious nineteenth
century German anatomist and physiologist, and generally perpetuated in
classifications of pain ever since (e.g., Behan 1926, Ch. V). Subjective
pain is described as having "no physical cause for existence," that is,
there is no organic basis for its presence (indeed, in respect to a limb un
hinged, not even an organ): it results "of impressions stored up in the
memory centers, which are recalled by the proper associations . . .
aroused" (Behan 1926: 741.), which is to say the pain remains connected
with a framework of signification dependent upon retrospective cog
nizance. Referred pain and projection pain are closely allied; the latter is
a term assigned to pain that is felt as being present either in a part that
has no sensation (as in locomotor ataxia) or in a part that because of
amputation no longer exists.
Certain symptomspain, nausea, hunger, thirst, and the likeare
private experiences, housed in no identifiable site, but in an isolated an
nex that humans usually call "the self." Symptoms such as these tend to
be signified by paraphonetic means, as groans, or verbal signs, which may
or may not be coupled with gestures, ranging in intensity from frowns to
writhings. An exceedingly knotty problem, which can barely be alluded
to here, arises from the several meanings of self and how these relate to
the matter of symptomatology. The biological definition hinges on the
fact that the immune system does not respond overtly to its own selfantigens; there are specific markers that modulate the system generating
antigen-specific and idiotype-specific cell linesin brief, activate the pro
cess of self tolerance. Beyond the immunological self, there is also a "semiotic self," which I have discussed elsewhere (Sebeok 1979:263 67).
Another diacritic category of symptoms deserves at least passing men
tion. These a linguist might be tempted to dub "minus features," or
symptoms of abstraction; Miller (1978) calls them failings, or errors in
performance. Here belong all the varieties of asemasia (Sebeok 1976:
57, 1979: 58,70)agnosia, agraphia, alexia, amnesia, amusia, aphasia,
apraxia, etc., as well as "shortcomings" like blurred vision, hardness of
hearing, numbnessin short, symptoms that indicate a deficit from
some ideal standard of "normality."
In any discussion of symptoms, it should be noted that even a syn
drome, or constellation of symptomssay, of a gastrointestinal charac-

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225

ter (anorexia, indigestion, and hemorrhoids)may not add up to any

textbook disease labeling or terminology. Ensuing treatment may, ac
cordingly, be denominated "symptomatic," accompanied by the supple
mentary advice that the patient remain under continuing observation. In
some circumstances, "the syndrome might be ascribed to psychologic
etiology" (Cheraskin and Ringsdorf 1973:37). What this appears to
mean is that the interpretation of symptoms is often a matter involving,
over time, a spectrum of sometimes barely perceptible gradations, entail
ing a progressively multiplying number of still other symptoms (ibid.:69).
It is also worth remarking that, temporally, or for predictive purposes,
symptoms generally precede signs, which is to say that the orderly un
folding of evidence may be termed prognostic.
No one, at present, knows how afferent neuronal activity acquires
meaning, beyond the strong suspicion that what is commonly called "the
external world," including the objects and events postulated as being
contained in it, is their formal structure (logos) (see Sebeok 1979: 289n6,
1981:11). For all practical purposes, we are ignorant about how the
CNS preserves any structure and assigns a meaning to it, how this pro
cess relates to perception in general, and how it induces a response. Im
plicit in this set of queries is a plainly linear model: for example, that fear,
or joy, "causes" increased heart rate. Not only does such a model seem to
me far too simplistic; there is not even any proof that it exists at all.
The future of symptomatology will clearly rest with program develop
ments using computer techniques (Sebeok 1976:127) derived from stud
ies of artificial intelligence. These are intended to mimic and comple
ment, if not yet to replace, human semiosic processes, such as judgment
based on intuition (in one word, abduction; cf. Sebeok 1981, Ch. 2).
Such diagnostic counselors are already operational, as the program
termed CADUCEUS (McKean 1982). In the simplified example given in
Figure 1, this program "examines a patient with fever, blood in the urine,
bloody sputum from the lungs, and jaundice. The program adds together
numbers that show how much each symptom is related to four possible
diagnosescirrhosis of the liver, hepatitis, pneumonia, and nephritis
and picks pneumonia as top contender. The runner-up in score is hepati
tis. But because hepatitis has one symptom not shared with pneumonia
(blood in the urine), CADUCEUS chooses cirrhosis as first alternative.
This process, called partitioning, focuses the computer's attention on
groups of related diseases" (McKean 1982: 64).

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Thomas A. Sebeok

FIGURE 1.

A diagnosis using the CADUCEUS program. Reproduced by permission

of the editors of Discovery.

The craft of interpreting symptoms has a significance far exceeding the

physician's day-to-day management of sickness. As Hippocrates had al
ready anticipated, its success derives from its psychological power, which
critically depends on the practitioner's ability to impress his skills on
both the patient and their joint environment (the audience gathered in his
workshop, which may consist of the patient's family and friends, as well
as the physician's colleagues and staff). Dr. Joseph Bell, of the Royal Infir
mary of Edinburgh, attained the knack with panache, leaving his impress
on the detective story, following in the footsteps of Dr. Arthur Conan
Doyle's fictional realization, Sherlock Holmes (Sebeok 1981, Ginzburg
1983). According to recent medical thinking that once again became
aligned in conformity with semiotic theory and practice, the modern doc
tor's preoccupation with diagnosisthat is, his perceived task, or pivotal
drive, to explain the meaning of the patient's conditionrests in the final
analysis with his self-assigned role as an authenticated expositor and explicator of the values of contemporary society. Disease is thus elevated to

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the status of a moral category, and the sorting of symptoms had therefore
best be viewed as a system of semiotic taxonomyor, in Russian semiotic parlance, a "secondary modeling system."
Lord Horder's d i c t u m " t h a t the most important thing in medicine is
diagnosis, the second most important thing is diagnosis and the third
most important thing is diagnosis" (Lawrence 1982)must be true, be
cause medical knowledge has risen to the status of a means of social con
trol. Symptomatology has turned out to be that branch of semiotics that
teaches us the ways in which doctors function within their cultural
milieu.

R E F E R E N C E S

C I T E D

Baer, Eugen. 1982. The medical symptom: phylogeny and ontogeny.

American Journal of Semiotics 1(3):17 34.
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ed. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Barthes, Roland. 1972. Smiologie et mdecine. In Roger Bastide, ed. Les
sciences de la folie. Paris: M o u t o n .
Behan, Richard J. 1926. Pain: Its Origin, Conduction, Perception, and
Diagnostic Significance. New York: D. Appleton.
Bilz, Rudolf. 1940. Pars Pro Toto. Leipzig: Georg Thieme.
Bornet, John. 1892. Early Greek Philosophy. Reprint ed. 1930. London:
MacMillan.
Bhler, Karl. 1934. Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Spra
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Chadwick, John, and William N . M a n n . 1950. The Medical Works of
Hippocrates. Oxford: Blackwell.
Chamberlain, Ernest N . , and Colin Ogilvie, eds. 1974. Symptoms and
Signs in Clinical Medicine. Bristol: Wright.
Cheraskin, Emanuel, and William Ringsdorf. 1973. Predictive Medicine:
A Study in Strategy. Mountainview, Ca.: Pacific Press.
Colby, Kenneth M a r k , and Michael T. McGuire. 1981. Signs and symp
toms. The Sciences 21(9):21 23.
De Lacy, Phillip Howard, and Estelle Allen De Lacy, eds. 1941. Philodemeus On Methods of Inference; A Study in Ancient Empiricism.
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Eco, Umberto. 1980. The sign revisited. Philosophy and Social Criticism
7(3/4):261-97.
Eco, Umberto, and Thomas A. Sebeok, eds. 1983. The Sign of Three.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Elstein, Arthur S., et al. 1978. Medical Problem Solving: An Analysis of
Clinical Reasoning. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Fabrega, Horacio, Jr. 1974. Disease and Social Behavior: An Interdis
ciplinary Perspective. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Ginzburg, Carlo. 1983. Clues: Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes. In
Umberto Eco and Thomas A. Sebeok, eds. 1983.
Heidel, William Arthur. 1941. Hippocratic Medicine: Its Spirit and
M e t h o d . N e w York: Columbia University Press.
H u m p h r e y s , Willard C. 1968. Anomalies and Scientific Theories. San
Francisco: Freeman, Cooper.
Jakobson, Roman. 1971. Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The
Hague: M o u t o n .
Kleinpaul, Rudolf. 1888. Sprache ohne Worte: Idee einer allgemeinen
Wissenschaft der Sprache. Reprint ed. 1972. The Hague: M o u t o n .
Kuhn, Carolus Gottlob, ed. 1821 1833. Claudii Galeni Opera omnia,
22 Vols. Leipzig: Cnobloch. (Semiotics is discussed, in this standard
edition, in XIV:689ff., 693, and XVIII[B]:633. Though not com
plete, this edition is bilingual [Greek and Latin]. For bibliographical
details concerning Galen's writings, see Sarton 1954, Ch. IV.)
Labov, William, and David Fanshel. 1977. Therapeutic Discourse: Psy
chotherapy as Conversation. New York: Academic Press.
Latham, Robert G. 1848. The Works of Thomas Sydenham, M . D . Lon
don: Syndenham Society.
Lawrence, Christopher. 1982. Illnesses and their meanings. Times Liter
ary Supplement 148(4) (October 1).
Liebman, Ronald, Salvador Minuchin, and Lester Baker. 1974a. An inte
grated program for anorexia nervosa. American Journal of Psychia
try 1 3 1 : 4 3 2 - 3 5 .
. 1974b. The role of the family in the treatment of anorexia ner
vosa. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychology 3 :
264-74.
MacBryde, Cyril M., and Robert S. Backlow, eds. 1970. Signs and Symp
toms: Applied Pathologic Physiology and Clinical Interpretation.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott.

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Majno, Guido. 1975. The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the An
cient World. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Markus, Robert A. 1957. St. Augustine on signs. Phronesis 2:6083.
McKean, Kevin. 1982. Diagnosis by computer. Discovery 3(9):6265.
Miller, Jonathan. 1978. The Body in Question. New York: Random
House.
Mounin, Georges. 1981. Smiologie mdicale et smiologie linguistique.
Confrontations Psychiatriques 19:43-58.
Neuburger, Max. 1906. Geschichte der Medizin 1. Stuttgart: Ferdinand
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Ogden, Charles K., and Ivor A. Richards. 1923. The "Meaning of Mean
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Brace.
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Peirce. Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur W. Burks, eds.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. (References are either
to volumes and paragraphs [not pages] or to unpublished manu
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John Blacking, ed. The Anthropology of the Body. London: Aca
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Siedler.

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Shands, Harley C. 1970. Semiotic Approaches to Psychiatry. The Hague:

Mouton.
Siegel, Rudolph E. 1973. Galen on Psychology, Psychopathology, and
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. 1982. Medical semiotics: redefining an ancient craft. Semiotica

38:319-46.
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Thorn, Ren. 1980. L'espace et les signes. Semiotica 29:193 208.
Uexkll, Thure von. 1982. Semiotics and medicine. Semiotica 38:
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Uexkll, Thure von, et al. 1979. Lehrbuch der Psychosomatischen Medi

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Waugh, Linda R. 1982. Marked and unmarked: A choice between unequals in semiotic structure. Semiotica 38:299 318.

CHAPTER

I I

Semiotic Laws in Linguistics

and Natural Science

Sebastian Shaumyan

Language as an instrument of cognition and

the law of semiotic relevance
Language is an instrument of communication and an instrument of cog
nition. What Bohr said about the interaction between the objects under
investigation and the measuring instruments necessary for the definition
of the experimental arrangements applies also to language. If language is
viewed as an instrument, then, speaking of its impact upon the formation
of our concepts, we may make an analogy with the impact of a measur
ing instrument on the results of measurements in the microworld.
Science is a symbolic representation of experience. Improvements in
experimental technique bring into the scope of science new aspects of na
ture that come into obvious conflict with the conventional means of ex
pression. Kant's notion of space and time as innate categories that are not
given to us in experience is from a semiotic point of view no more than a
notion of space and time as language-dependent categories. Relativistic
physics, which came into conflict with the language of classical physics,
created a semiotic problem that was solved by finding a new language for
the description and interpretation of the new experience. If we view lan
guage as an instrument of cognition, semiotics must study the impact of
language on the results of cognitive processes.
In a natural science the object of cognition is a particular aspect of na
ture. But the objects of linguistics are languages. Thus linguistics creates

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languages for the description of languages. These languages are called

metalanguages, and languages described by a metalanguage are called
object-languages.
The basic question of linguistic theory must be: what is the essence of
languages? That is, what features are either the necessary properties of
languages or possible consequences of these properties? To answer this
question, linguistics must create a metalanguage in terms of which it is
possible to present correct cross-linguistic generalizations, to state uni
versal laws explaining these generalizations, and to provide an insightful
language typology and adequate descriptions of individual languages.
Since a metalanguage of linguistic theory is an instrument of the
cognition of the languages of the world, the structure of the meta
language must interfere with the structure of the description of the
object-languages: the limits of the metalanguage mean the limits of the
description of the object-languages. One of the important tasks of semio
tics is the search for ways of reducing to a minimum the interference of
the metalanguage with the description of the object-languages.
The present crisis of transformational generative grammar is due to the
serious limitations of its metalanguage. The metalanguage of transforma
tional generative grammar was shaped under the influence of the struc
ture of the English language, which has linear order of constituents. The
metalanguage of transformational generative grammar is inadequate as
an instrument of linguistic theory, because transformations stated in
terms of the linear order of constituents make it necessary to formulate
distinct rules for languages with different word order for what can be
characterized as the same phenomenon in relational terms (Chomsky
1957, 1965, 1981).
A different kind of inadequate metalanguage is represented by Mon
tague grammar. The metalanguage of Montague grammar has been
shaped under the influence of the language of formal logic. Hence this
metalanguage imposes on the description of natural languages various
logical characteristics that are either alien or irrelevant to their structure
(Montague 1970a, 1970b, 1974).
Another example of an inadequate metalanguage of linguistic theory is
relational grammar, proposed by David M. Perlmutter and Paul M. Pos
tal. This metalanguage, which treats the terms subject, direct object, and
indirect object as primitives of linguistic theory, gets into serious diffi
culties when applied to ergative languages. The notions denoted by these

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233

terms cannot be regarded as universal categories. In this case the con

struction of the metalanguage has been shaped under the influence of the
syntactic categories of accusative languages (Perlmutter and Postal 1974,
1977; Perlmutter 1980).
Semiotics is able to solve the problem of constructing an adequate
metalanguage for linguistic theory. The solution to this problem might be
as follows.
The construction of a metalanguage of linguistic theory is necessarily
limited by the principle of linguistic relativity, which can be traced back
to W. von Humboldt (1971) but was most clearly formulated and applied
by B. L. Whorf (1956) and E. Sapir (1921). According to the principle
of linguistic relativity, any language will give a relative picture of the
world. It follows from this that since languages of the world are objectlanguages for a metalanguage of linguistic theory, we cannot construct an
adequate universal grammar no matter which metalanguage we use. This
creates a serious difficulty for universal grammar. But we can solve this
difficulty by introducing the principle of semiotic invariance into univer
sal grammar. Since it is indeed indisputable that any language will give
only a relative picture of the world, relativity and invariance may seem
incompatible with each other. But, as a matter of fact, they complement
each other. The relativity principle applies to relativity itself. Relativity is
relative. The complementarity of linguistic invariance and linguistic rela
tivity has its counterpart in physics. The concept of invariant is central to
the theory of relativity. The theory of relativity is concerned with finding
out those things that remain invariant under transformation of coordi
nate systems.
Sapir and Whorf must be given credit for laying stress on linguistic rel
ativity. But being unaware that relativity presupposes invariance, they
made an absolute of linguistic relativity. The one-sided approach of Sapir
and Whorf must be rectified. The principle of linguistic relativity must be
supplemented by its counterpartthe principle of linguistic invariance.
I propose the concept of the metalanguage of linguistic theory as an
invariant under all possible transformations of one language-system into
another. This invariant metalanguage of linguistic theory I call the genotype language.
Modern linguistics faces a semiotic problem that arises from the situa
tions defined by Bohr's complementarity principle (1958). Originally this
principle was formulated for quantum mechanics, but it soon became

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clear that it can be applied to other fields of human knowledge as well.

This principle precludes the simultaneous use of classical concepts that in
different connections are equally necessary for the explanation of a given
phenomenon. For example, once we have decided to describe a certain
event in terms of the wave concept, we cannot at the same time make use
of the particle concept for the same purpose. If we mix these two inter
pretations, we get into difficulties. These difficulties are due in the last
resort to the rules of the language that we are accustomed to using.
Here is an example of the situations in linguistics that can be charac
terized by the complementary principle. As I tried to show in my book
Problems of Theoretical Phonology (1968), every speech sound splits
into two objects: a physical object and a functional object. The two types
of objects are logically independent. Functional and physical identity are
complementary and at the same time mutually exclusive concepts. A
sound as a member of a class of physically identical objects is a sound
proper, but as a member of functionally identical objects, it is a funda
mentally new objecta phoneme. As a unity of contradictory objects
functional and physicala speech sound is a combined object: a soundphoneme. The notion of the sound-phoneme reminds us of such notions
as the wave-particle in physics, the commodity as a unity of use-value
and exchange-value (that is, as the product-commodity) in economics,
etc. I use the metaphorical term centaur concepts to denote this type of
notion, because the structure of these notions reminds us of centaurs, the
fabulous creatures of Greek mythology, half men and half horses.
The requirement of the strict distinction of the functional and physical
identity of sounds I call the two-level principle. The theory based on this
principle I call the two-level theory of phonology.
Other centaur concepts in linguistics are: functional segmenta
tionphysical segmentation of the speech flow; linearity-nonlinearity of
word sequences; and constituent structuredependency structure. The
treatment of these pairs of contradictory notions as centaur concepts
makes it possible to solve the difficulties that result either from mixing
these notions or from exaggerating the significance of one notion at the
expense of the notion that is complementary to it.
One of the most important goals of semiotics is a systematic study of
structural analogies between natural languages and the languages of nat
ural sciencesthe language of classical physics, the language of relativis-

Semiotic Laws in Linguistics and Natural Science

235

tic physics, the language of quantum mechanics, chemical language, the

genetic code.
An important semiotic problem is the use of mathematical language as
an instrument of cognition. The application of mathematical language
should increase the accuracy of judgments. However, this is not always
the case. As an instrument of cognition, mathematical language has a
specific functionto be a tool of deduction. The word deduction is im
portant. The use of mathematical language as a tool of deduction makes
sense when the initial ideas from which we deduce their consequences
have cognitive value. If, on the contrary, the initial ideas do not have cog
nitive value, or worse than that, are absurd, then the use of mathematical
language as a tool of deduction causes harm. In this case mathematical
language turns from an instrument of cognition into an instrument of obfuscation. It is possible to dress great ideas and great absurdities alike in
the impressive uniform of mathematical formulas and theorems. Deduc
tion is neutral to the cognitive value of ideas: mathematization of knowl
edge and mathematization of nonsense are equally possible.
A question arises: why should the structure of a language interfere
with the structure of the description of reality? This phenomenon is ex
plained by the following law: only those distinctions between meanings
are relevant that correlate with the distinctions between their signs, and
vice versa, only those distinctions between signs are relevant that corre
late with the distinctions between their meanings.
This law I call the law of semiotic relevance. Linguistic relativity is a
direct consequence of this law, since the structures of different languages
must classify the elements of linguistic reality in different ways. The
structure of a language interferes with the structure of the description of
reality, because a classification of the elements of reality independent of
the structure of a particular language is impossible. Any classification of
the elements of reality depends on the structure of a language.
Let us examine linguistic relativity in the light of the law of semiotic
relevance. English makes a difference between to float and to swim
(wood floats on water, fish swim in water), while Russian uses the same
verb, plavat', in both cases. The distinction between the two meanings of
plavat' ("to swim" and "to float") is irrelevant for Russian, because it
does not correlate with a distinction between two different sound se
quences. The English word wash has different meanings in the context of

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Sebastian Sbaumyan

the expressions of wash hands and wash linen. But the distinction be
tween these two meanings is irrelevant for English, because this distinc
tion does not correlate with a distinction between two different sound
sequences: in both cases we have the same sound sequence denoted by
wash. Therefore, these two meanings must be regarded not as different
meanings but as two variants of the same meaning. On the other hand,
the meaning of the Russian word myf, which corresponds to the mean
ing of the English wash in wash hands, and the meaning of the Russian
word stiraf, which corresponds to the meaning of the English wash in
wash linen, must be regarded as different meanings rather than variants
of the same meaning as in English, beause the distinction between the
meanings of Russian myf and stiraf correlates with the distinction be
tween different sequences of sounds, and therefore is relevant. As to the
relevant and irrelevant distinctions between signs, consider, for instance,
the substitution of [a] for [i] in the penultimate syllables of terminations
such as -ity or -ily: ['biliti] and ['bilti] (ability). Since the distinction
between the two signs is not correlated with a distinction between their
meanings, this distinction is irrelevant, and therefore they must be re
garded as variants of one and the same sign. Another example: the dis
tinction between signs [nju] and [nu] is not correlated with a distinction
between their meanings. Therefore, these signs are variants of the same
signs denoted by a sequence of letters new.
One may wonder whether the law of semiotic relevance results in cir
cularity: while relevant distinctions between meanings are defined by
their correlation with the distinctions between their signs, at the same
time the relevant distinctions between signs are defined by the distinc
tions between their meanings. As a matter of fact, this law does not result
in circularity. The point is that the relation sign o f makes signs and mean
ings interdependent. Distinctions between signs do not determine distinc
tions between meanings, nor do distinctions in meanings determine dis
tinctions between signs; each kind of distinction presupposes the other.
Neither the distinctions between signs nor the distinctions between
meanings should be taken as primitive. What is really primitive is the cor
relation of distinctions between signs and distinctions between meanings.
The law of semiotic relevance dominates the entire structure of lan
guage; its consequences are numberless. To discover them and under
stand their significance is possible only by analyzing theoretical problems

Semiotic Laws in Linguistics and Natural Science

237

in different fields of linguistics: syntax and semantics, morphology, and

phonology.

Static and dynamic metalanguage

The principle of semiotic invariance must be regarded as a constraint on
linguistic relativity: although the classification of the elements of reality
is arbitrary, there are limits to the arbitrariness of the classification. Dif
ferent languages present different pictures of reality, but these pictures
may be isomorphic with respect to their cognitive value. Let me give an
example of cognitive isomorphism between two languages.
There are two ways of describing reality. We may describe reality as a
system of coexisting things or as a system of changing things. In terms of
ontological categories, we may describe reality as being or as becoming.
These two types of the description of reality can be traced to Greek phi
losophy. Parmenides advocated the description of reality as being, and
Heraclitus advocated the description of reality as becoming.
Two different languages correspond to the two types of the description
of reality; I call them static language and dynamic language. A static lan
guage is used to describe reality as being, and a dynamic language is used
to describe reality as becoming. Static language is used by Lamb's stratificational linguistics (1966) and by relational grammar; dynamic lan
guage is used by applicative grammar and by transformational generative
grammar.
As a matter of fact, both a static language and a dynamic language give
only relative pictures of reality. In many cases the choice between one or
the other type of description is merely a choice between two metaphors.
Which type of description is chosen is often simply a matter of
convenience.
Static and dynamic languages are used in physics as alternative lan
guages for the description of physical reality. A. Einstein and L. Infeld
point out that these two languages may be equivalent:
We picture the motion as a sequence of events in the one-dimen
sional space continuum. We do not mix time and space, using a
dynamic picture in which positions change with time. But we can

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Sebastian Shaumyan

picture the same motion in a different way. We can form a static

picture, considering the curve in the two-dimensional time-space
continuum. Now the motion is represented as something which is,
which exists in the two-dimensional time-space continuum, and
not as something which changes in the one-dimensional space con
tinuum. Both these pictures are exactly equivalent and preferring
one to the other is merely a matter of convention and taste (Ein
stein and Infeld 1938 : 205).
What is important is not which language we choose, but rather which
hypothesis about the nature of reality we combine with the language we
have chosen. In order to obtain a correct description of reality, we must
choose a correct hypothesis about the nature of reality. Two descriptions
presented in different languages have the same invariant cognitive struc
ture if they are combined with identical hypotheses about the nature of
reality. Under this condition, two descriptions in different languages must
be regarded as two variants, or two realizations, of the same cognitive
structure.
The distinction between a synchronic and a diachronic description of a
language should not be confused with the distinction between a static
and a dynamic metalanguage. A synchronic description of a language can
be presented not only in static metalanguage but in a dynamic meta
language as well; a diachronic description of language can be presented
not only in a dynamic metalanguage, but also in a static metalanguage.
The choice of a dynamic or a static metalanguage for a synchronic or
diachronic linguistic description has nothing to do with a confusion of
synchrony and diachrony. Thus, both transformational generative gram
mar and applicative grammar use dynamic metalanguages; but transfor
mational generative grammar confounds synchrony with diachrony, and
applicative grammar does not.
Transformational generative grammar confounds synchrony and dia
chrony not because it uses a dynamic metalanguage, but because it dis
regards the fundamental functional properties of language as a signsystem used as an instrument of communication and cognition.
To sum up, two languages may be used for the description of reality
a static metalanguage and a dynamic metalanguage. One can always
translate statements from one language into another without loss of in
formation. The choice between the two metalanguages is a matter of con-

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and Natural Science

239

venience. The essential thing is not the choice of metalanguage, but the
choice of the right hypothesis about reality.

The semiotic basis for abstraction

The goal of theoretical linguistics is the discovery of facts that are crucial
for determining the underlying structure of language and hidden abstract
principles and laws. In pursuing this goal, theoretical linguistics faces the
following problems: what basis can we provide for justifying our abstrac
tions? H o w can we distinguish between correct and incorrect abstrac
tions? W h a t abstractions have cognitive value and what abstractions, far
from having cognitive value, distort linguistic reality and hamper prog
ress in linguistics? For example, what basis could we provide for such ab
stractions as deep structure in transformational grammar, underlying
phonological representations in generative phonology, the abstract uni
versal notion of subject in various linguistic theories, and so on? A lin
guistic theory that lacks a reliable basis for its abstractions is built on thin
ice.
The problem of justifying abstractions is central to any linguistic the
ory. As a matter of fact, all important discussions and controversies in
contemporary linguistics turn around this basic problem, which has not
so far been resolved satisfactorily.
In my own linguistic research I have come to the conclusion that to
resolve this problem, one must make an intensive study of specific prop
erties of language as a sign-system. H u m a n language is a special type of
sign-system; one can understand its specific properties only in the context
of the concepts, principles, and laws of semioticsthe science of signs, a
general theory of sign-systems. Granted that human language is a special
type of sign-system, linguistics must be regarded as a part of semiotics.
In order to outline the semiotic basis for abstraction, I will start with
the primitive concepts of semiotics.
I suggest the following two concepts as primitive:
Sign of: X is a sign of Y.
Meaning of: Y is a meaning of X.
These concepts refer to relations rather than to objects. Speaking of

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signs, we mean a binary relation sign of; speaking of meanings, we mean

a binary relation meaning of.

Sign of
X is a sign of Y if X means Y, that is if X carries the information Y. For
instance, the phoneme sequence /bed/ carries the information 'bed,' it
means 'bed'; therefore /bed/ is a sign of 'bed.'
A sign is not necessarily a phoneme sequence. It may be the change of a
stress (compare cnvict and convct), an alternation (compare take and
took), or the change of a context (compare I love and my love). There
may be a zero sign; for example, if we compare quick, quicker, and
quickest, we see that er is a sign of comparative degree and est is the sign
of the superlative degree. But the positive degree is expressed by the ab
sence of any phoneme sequence with quick, that is, by a zero sign.
The opposition sign:meaning is relative. There may be an interchange
between these entities. For example, the letter p in the English alphabet
normally denotes the phoneme /p/. But when we refer to the English letter
p we use the phoneme /p/ as a name, that is as a sign of this letter. Fur
ther, the meaning of a sign may serve as a sign of another meaning. Thus,
lion is a sign of a large, strong, flesh-eating animal. This meaning of the
sign lion can be used as a sign of a person whose company is very much
desired at social gatherings, for example, a famous author or musician.
It follows from the foregoing that the proposed concept of the sign is
considerably broader than the common concept of the sign.
Meaning of
The proposed concept of meaning is likewise much broader than the tra
ditional understanding of the term meaning. My concept of meaning
covers all kinds of information including various grammatical relations.
As shown above, the notion of meaning is relative: a meaning may be a
sign of another meaning.
Language is a stratified sign-system; that is, it consists of hierarchically
organized functional levels. To see this, let us take the Latin expression i
'go' (imperative). This is the shortest possible expression, and at the same
time it is a complete sentence that contains a variety of heterogeneous
elements. What are these elements?

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241

i is a sound; that is, a physical element

i is a phoneme; that is, a diacritic, a functional element that differen
tiates linguistic units
i is a root (a lexical morpheme; that is, an element that expresses a
concept)
i is a word (an imperative form of a verb)
i is a part of a sentence (a predicate)
i is a sentence; that is, a message, a unit of communication.
These elements belong to different levels of language; in other words, i
is stratified. I have chosen a one-sound expression deliberately, in order
to show that the difference between the levels of language is qualitative
rather than quantitative: although linguistic units of a higher level are
usually longer than units of lower levelsfor example, a word is usually
longer than a morpheme and a sentence is longer than a wordwhat is
crucial is not the length of expressions but their function. Language is
stratified with respect to different functions of its elements.
What are functions of these elements?
Sounds as physical elements constitute the physical level of lan
guage; and as elements with a diacritic, or distinctive, functionthat is,
as phonemessounds constitute the phonemic level of language, as well.
Sounds are dual elements constituting two distinct levels of language.
Phonemes have a diacritic, or distinctive, function.
Morphemes have a function of signifying concepts:
(1) root concepts, like child-, king-, govern-, kin(2) nonroot concepts of two kinds:
(a) subsidiary abstract concepts, like -hood, -dom, -ment, -ship
(childhood, kingdom, government, kinship), and
(b) syntagmatic relations, like -s in (he) writes or -ed in (he)
ended.
Wordsnouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbshave a symbolic func
tion; that is, they name the elements of reality.
Words have a syntactic function as elements of a message.
Sentences have a communicative function; that is, they are mes
sagesunits of communication.1
Besides these functions there is an important function called deixis
(which comes from a Greek word meaning "pointing" or "indicating").
Deixis is the function of demonstrative and personal pronouns, of tense,
of concrete cases, and of some other grammatical features that relate a

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Sebastian Shaumyan

sentence to the spatiotemporal coordinates of the communication act.

Finally, in terms of three essential components of the communication
actthe speaker, the hearer, and the external situationto which refer
ence may be made, a sentence may have one of the following functions: a
representational function, a vocative function, or an expressive function.
A sentence has a representational function if it describes a situation re
ferred to by the speaker; it has a vocative function if it serves as a direc
tive imposing upon the addressee some obligation (a sentence in the
imperative mood, interrogative sentence, etc.); it has an expressive func
tion if it refers to the speaker's wishes or emotions.
The foregoing shows that the notion of linguistic level is a functional
notion. This notion is central to linguistic theory. There are very complex
hierarchical relationships between linguistic levels. For instance, the level
of sounds is subordinated to the phonemic level, the level of words to the
level of sentences, etc. To discover laws that characterize linguistic levels
and hierarchical relationships between them is the main concern of lin
guistic theory.2

Semiotic reality
I define semiotic reality as "the specific properties of sign-systems and all
necessary or possible consequences of these properties." The fundamen
tal assumption is that natural language, like any kind of sign-system, has
a unique status: genetically it is the product of human consciousness, but
ontologically it is independent of human consciousness. Language is a so
cial phenomenon, and social phenomena should not be confused with
psychological phenomena. Linguistics is not a branch of psychology. Lin
guistics is a branch of semiotics. The importance of semiotics for various
branches of social science is comparable to the importance of physics for
various branches of natural science.
Semiotic reality is a single empirical basis for testing linguistic theories.
A cooperation of linguistics with psychology and other sciences can be
fruitful only if linguistics is conscious of semiotic reality as its single em
pirical basis. The founders of modern semiotics and linguistics, Charles
Sanders Peirce (Peirce 1931-1935) and Ferdinand de Saussure (Saussure
1959), clearly characterized the unique ontological status of language as
a social phenomenon. The basic fact about semiotic reality is that it is the

Semiotic Laws in Linguistics

and Natural Science

243

domain of the coupling of thought and phonic substance. Saussure

wrote:
Language might be called the domain of articulations. . . . Each
linguistic term is a member, an articulus in which an idea is fixed in
a sound and a sound becomes the sign of an idea. Language can
also be compared with a sheet of paper: thought is the front and
the sound is the back; one cannot cut the front without cutting the
back at the same time; likewise in language, one can neither divide
sound from thought nor thought from sound; the division could be
accomplished only abstractly, and the result would be either pure
psychology or pure phonology. Linguistics then works in the bor
derland where the elements of sound and thought combine; their
combination produces a form, not a substance (1959 :11213).
(Saussure uses the term phonology in the sense of what is called phonetics in contemporary linguistics.)
By claiming that language is form, not substance, Saussure meant that
sound and meaning are linguistic facts only insofar as they are not sepa
rated from each other: sound separated from meaning is merely a phonic
substance, not a linguistic fact; meaning separated from sound is merely
a conceptual substancea logical phenomenon, rather than a linguistic
fact. Stating the crucial significance of his claim that language is a form,
not a substance, Saussure wrote: "This truth cannot be overstressed, for
all the mistakes in our terminology, all our incorrect ways of naming
things that pertain to language, stem from the involantary supposition
that the linguistic phenomenon must have substance" (1959: 122).
Saussure's statement that language is form, not substance, is well
k n o w n ; but the meaning and implications of this statement are poorly
understood.
Semiotic reality is determined by the principle of semiotic relevance,
which was formulated and explained above: only those distinctions be
tween meanings are relevant that correlate with distinctions between
their signs and, vice versa, only those distinctions between signs are rele
vant that correlate with the distinctions between their meanings. All
other principles and laws that characterize semiotic reality are rooted in
the principle of semiotic relevance.
An important characteristic of natural language is its hierarchical strat
ification into functional levels, as shown above. The principle of semiotic

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Sebastian Shaumyan

relevance and the principle of hierarchical stratification constitute basic

constraints on the degree of abstraction allowable in linguistics. Linguis
tic abstractions that conflict with these principles must be rejected, be
cause they distort semiotic reality.
As constraints on the degree of abstraction, the principle of semiotic
relevance and the principle of hierarchical stratification have two func
tions: preventive and heuristic. The preventive function of these princi
ples is that they avoid linguistic abstractions that distort semiotic reality,
such as deep structure or underlying phonemic representation in genera
tive phonology. The heuristic function of these principles is that they lead
to novel significant insights into the nature of semiotic reality. Disregard
of semiotic reality leads to disastrous consequences for linguistics, such
as autonomous syntax, deep structure, generative phonology, a confusion
of logical and linguistic analysis, a confusion of synchrony and diachrony, and so on. Here I will consider an example of this disaster.
In their book on the sound pattern of English, Chomsky and Halle sug
gest that alternations, such as resign:resignation and paradigm: paradig
matic, can be accounted for by providing a unique base for each mor
pheme (Chomsky and Halle 1968). Thus Chomsky and Halle posit
Irsign/ as the systematic phonemic representation of resign. The equal
ity sign ( = ) represents a special morpheme boundary that is necessary in
the following rule:
sz in the context: Vowel=
Vowel
Chomsky and Halle posit /s/ in the underlying form because they claim
that the same morpheme occurs in words such as consign where the same
boundary '=' is recognized.
Is sign in resign identical with sign in consign} Are they allomorphs of
the same morpheme?
The answer is no. If we analyze the meaning of resign and consign, we
can easily see that from a synchronic point of view neither can resign be
divided into two morphs re and sign, nor can consign be divided into
morphs con and sign. From a synchronic point of view, resign and consign have nothing in common with each other except a partial similarity
of their physical shape: neither the word resign nor the word consign is
related to the word sign.
Chomsky and Halle clearly disregard the function of words as signs.
They ignore the problem of justifying synchronic identifications of mor-

Semiotic Laws in Linguistics and Natural Science

245

phemes. What basis could we provide for saying that resign is related to
sign} If the only basis for saying this is the physical similarity of sign with
-sign as part of resign, we can use the same basis for saying that mother is
related to moth, liquor to lick, season to sea, butter to butt, luster to lust,
and arsenal to arse. The identity of sign with -sign in resign and with
-sign in consign claimed by Chomsky and Halle is a fiction that conflicts
with the synchronic structure of English.
Since the phoneme /g/ is present in resignation and absent in resign,
Chomsky and Halle propose a rule that changes /g/ into a fricative Ay/.
This rule is stated as follows: /g/ changes into Ay/ when it occurs before a
syllable-final /n/. Then the following rules are applied: a rule changing
the lax vowel HI into tense vowel // when /i/ occurs before Ay/; a rule of 7deletion when Ay/ occurs before syllable-final /n/; a rule of vowel shift; a
rule of diphthongization. Chomsky and Halle represent resign phone
tically as [riyzayn] and derive this phonetic form from the underlying
phonemic representation /r = sign/ as follows:
/r = sign/
r = zign
r = zin
r = zin
r = zn
r = zn
[riyzyn]

Underlying phonemic representation

Voicing of /s/
Change of /g/ into ll before syllable-final /n/
Tensing of a vowel before ll
Drop of ll
Vowel shift
Diphthongization

The diphthong [y] is modified to [ay] ( = [ai]) by another rule.

This derivation is characteristic for generative phonology. It is a pure
fiction that conflicts with the synchronic structure of contemporary En
glish.
Since generative phonology disregards the semiotic properties of lan
guage as a sign-system, it provides no constraint on abstractness. As a
result, generative phonology abounds with fictions that, far from having
any cognitive value, present a distorted picture of the phonological sys
tem of language. Some generativists, such as Lightner (1971), find it pos
sible to take the underlying phonemic representation of English back to a
Proto-Indo-European stage. According to Lightner, contemporary En
glish has alternations /f/ and /p/, /7 and /t/, /h/ and /k/, as in the following
words:

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Sebastian Shaumyan

foot : pedestrian
father : paternal
full : plenary
mother : maternal
brother : fraternal
heart : cardiac
horn : unicorn
hound : canine
One may argue that Lightner goes too far, that Chomsky and Halle
would not approve of Lightner's approach. If Chomsky and Halle did not
approve of Lightner's approach, that would be sheer inconsistency on
their part. Lightner is consistent; he reduces the principles of generative
phonology to their absurd conclusions. And so do other pupils of Chom
sky and HalleS. Shane, J. Harris, C. Kisseberth, M. Kenstowicz, W. A.
Foley, to mention a few. All works in generative phonologyearlier
works or the most recent onesare based on the same principles, which
are completely bankrupt.

The semiotic versus generativist notion of language

Chomsky, the founder of transformational generative grammar, defines
language as follows: "From now on I will consider a language to be a set
(finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of
a finite set of elements" (1957:12). Defining the goals of linguistic the
ory, he writes: "The fundamental aim in the linguistic analysis of a lan
guage L is to separate the grammatical sequences which are the sentences
of L from the ungrammatical sequences which are not sentences of L and
to study the structure of grammatical sentences" (1957:12).
Chomsky defines the grammar of a language as follows: "The gram
mar of L will thus be a device that generates all of the grammatical se
quences of L and none of the ungrammatical ones" (1957: 12). What
strikes one in these definitions is a complete disregard of the fact that
language is a sign-system. As an alternative to the semiotic notion of a
language as a sign-system, Chomsky suggests a notion of a language as a
set of sentences.
As an alternative to the notion of grammar as a system of rules that

Semiotic Laws in Linguistics and Natural Science

247

constitutes an integral part of a language, Chomsky suggests a notion of

grammar that is not a part of language but is an external device for gener
ating a language understood as a set of sentences.
Let us not argue about definitions. After all, every linguist, like every
other scientist, has the right to define his terms in his own way. What
matters is not definitions in themselves, but empirical consequences of
definitions. So let us consider the empirical consequences of Chomsky's
notions of language and grammar. If we accept the notion of language as
a sign-system, we cannot investigate grammar independently of meaning,
because linguistic units are signs, and a sign as a member of the binary
relation sign of cannot be separated from its meaning. A sign separated
from its meaning is no more a sign but merely a sequence of soundsa
purely physical phenomenon.
If, on the other hand, we do not include the notion of the sign in the
definition of language and base this definition on some other set of no
tions, as Chomsky does, then, according to Chomsky, "grammar is au
tonomous and independent of meaning" (1957 :17). As a special case, he
considers syntax to be an autonomous component of grammar distinct
from semantics. To support his claim that the notion grammatical cannot
be identified with meaningful, Chomsky devises an example of a sentence
that is nonsensical but grammatically correct: colorless green ideas sleep
furiously.
As a matter of fact, the nonsensical content of this sentence has no
bearing on the question of whether or not its grammatical structure is
meaningful. Chomsky confounds the notion of grammatical meaning
with the notion of lexical meaning. But we must distinguish lexical mean
ing and grammatical meaning. No matter whether from the standpoint of
lexical meaning a sentence is nonsensical, if the sentence is grammatically
correct, it is grammatically meaningful. So the above sentence contains
the following grammatical meanings: the noun ideas signifies a set of ob
jects; the verb sleep signifies a state ideas are in; the adverb furiously sig
nifies the property of sleep; the adjectives colorless and green signify two
different properties of ideas. Grammatical meanings are categorical
meanings, the most general meanings characterizing classes of words and
other linguistic units. If this sentence did not have grammatical mean
ings, we could not even decide whether it was nonsensical or not. We con
sider this sentence nonsensical because of the conflict between the gram
matical and lexical meanings: the grammatical meanings of adjectives

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Sebastian Shaumyan

colorless and green and the verb sleep assign contradictory properties
and an impossible state to the object denoted by the noun ideas; the ad
verb furiously assigns an impossible property to a state denoted by the
verb sleep.
Compare the following expressions:
(1) round table
(2) round quadrangle
The meaning of (2) is nonsensical because the grammatical, that is cat
egorical, meanings of its words conflict with the lexical meanings: the
grammatical meaning of round assigns a contradictory property to the
object denoted by the noun quadrangle. Expression (1) makes sense, be
cause its lexical and grammatical meanings are in keeping with each
other.
Consider the following verses from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis
Carroll:
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Do these verses make sense? Yes, they do. Although these verses do not
contain a single English root, we understand that "did gyre and gimble"
signifies some actions in the past, "in the wabe" signifies a localization in
some object, "slithy" signifies a property of the set of objects called
"toves," etc.
What are grammatical meanings?
Grammatical meanings are morphological and syntactic categories.
These categories are represented in the above verses by the plural suffix
-s, the preposition in, the auxiliary verbs did and were, the conjunction
and, and the article the, and by word order. Affixes, prepositions, con
junctions, and other parts have meaning because they are signs, and signs
presuppose meaning. The notion of the meaningless sign is no better than
the notion of the round quadrangle.
An analysis of a sentence into immediate constituents is impossible
without an analysis of meaning. Consider the sentence:
(3) The mother of the boy and the girl will come soon.
This sentence admits of two analyses into immediate constituents:
(4) The mother (of the boy and the girl) will come soon.

Semiotic Laws in Linguistics and Natural Science

249

(5) (The mother of the boy) and the girl will come soon.
We analyze these two sentences differently because they have different
meanings.
Let us now have a complete analysis of sentence (3) into immediate
constituents:
(6) ((The mother) (of ((the boy) and (the girl)))) (will come) soon.
If we disregard the meaning of (3), this is not the only possible way of
an analysis of (3) into immediate constituents. We could have constitu
ents such as:
(7) (mother of)
( (boy and) the) (and the)
( (mother of) the) (come soon)
( (and the) (girl will) )
(girl will)
(boy and)
(of the)
An analysis of a sentence into immediate constituents without an anal
ysis of the meaning of the sentence admits of any arbitrary bracketing.
Why do not we analyze the sentence as shown in (7)? Because this analy
sis contradicts the semantic connections between words. Any analysis of
phrases into immediate constituents presupposes an analysis of semantic
connections between words. A syntactic analysis presupposes a semantic
analysis.
It is clear from the foregoing that an autonomous grammar indepen
dent of a semantic analysis is impossible unless we are ready to do a sort
of hocus-pocus linguistics. A question arises: how does Chomsky manage
to avoid unacceptable constituents, such as (mother of) or (of the) in the
example above? He does the trick by tacitly smuggling an analysis of
meaning into an analysis of immediate constituents. Of course, smug
gling semantic analysis into syntax cannot be an adequate substitute for
an honest, consistent analysis of meaning as a part of syntax. Therefore,
in many cases Chomsky's syntactic analysis into immediate constituents
is arbitrary.
It should be noted that in the first version of transformational genera
tive grammar (1957), Chomsky was not concerned about semantics at
all. However, he introduced a semantic component into the second ver
sion of his grammar (1965). This did not mean a change of his concep
tion of an autonomous grammar independent of meaning: his grammar
remained autonomous because the semantic component was conceived
of as a component interpreting syntactic structures established indepen
dently of meaning. Clearly, the perverse idea that syntactic structures can

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Sebastian Shaumyan

be established without recourse to an analysis of meaning has persisted in

all versions of transformational generative grammar. Of course,
Chomsky makes do with smuggling an analysis of meaning into syntax,
which sometimes helps but in many cases does not help him to avoid ar
bitrary decisions. There can be no substitute for an explicit consistent
analysis of meaning as a part of syntax.
As a matter of fact, Chomsky inherited the idea of autonomous gram
mar from the distributionally oriented type of American structuralism, in
particular from the works of Zellig Z. Harris, who was concerned in
grammatical description primarily with specifying patterns of occurrence
and co-occurrence of elements. Harris worked without reference to
meaning. His aim was to develop a method for representing the gram
matical structure of sentences without reference to semantic criteria; it
was assumed that semantic statements would follow from purely formal
syntax constructed independently of meaning.
Transformational generative grammar is essentially a recasting of
American distributional structuralism into a formal system. The new
idea introduced by Chomsky was generation. He declared that structural
ism was taxonomic, and he opposed his generative system to it as an ex
planatory model.
In order to evaluate the methodological significance of the notion of
generation, let us consider some other important notions used in Chom
sky's works. One fundamental factor involved in the speaker-hearer's
performance is his knowledge of grammar. He refers to this mostly un
conscious knowledge as "competence." Competence is distinct from
"performance." Performance is what the speaker-hearer actually does; it
is based not only on his knowledge of language, but on many other fac
torsmemory restrictions, distraction, inattention, nonlinguistic knowl
edge, beliefs, etc.
Chomsky uses the term grammar in two senses: on the one hand, to
refer to the system of rules in the mind of the speaker-hearer, a system
that is normally acquired in early childhood; on the other hand, to refer
to the theory that the linguist constructs as a hypothesis concerning the
actual internalized grammar of the speaker-hearer.
Grammar in the sense of a linguistic theory is called a "hypothesis,"
because the internalized grammar in the mind of the speaker-hearer is not
available for immediate observation. Chomsky assumes that the gram-

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251

mar in the speaker-hearer's mind is not an ordinary grammar, but a gen

erative grammar. He constructs his theoretical generative grammar as a
hypothesis about the real grammar in the speaker-hearer's mind. Chom
sky assumes further that since the generative grammar in the speakerhearer's mind is not available for immediate observation, the only way to
draw conclusions about it is from the results of its activity, that is, from
the properties of the set of sentences it has generated. Under this assump
tion, only those aspects of the generative grammar in the speaker-hearer's
mind are relevant that cause generation of the particular set of sentences.
By analyzing all available sentences produced by an allegedly genera
tive grammar in the speaker-hearer's mind, Chomsky constructs his theo
retical generative grammar, which serves as a hypothesis about the gener
ative grammar in the speaker-hearer's mind. Since only those aspects of
the generative grammar in the speaker-hearer's mind are considered rele
vant that cause it to generate a set of sentences, the only thing that is
required from the theoretical generative grammar is a capacity for gener
ation of the same set of sentences available for immediate observation. To
verify a theoretical generative grammar means to establish that it is capa
ble of producing this set of sentences.
The idea of a theoretical generative grammar as a hypothesis about the
generative grammar in the speaker-hearer's mind looks very attractive,
but actually this is a wrong idea. If nothing is required of a theoretical
generative grammar except that it generate correct sentences for a given
language, then it must be considered unverifiable as a hypothesis about
the real grammar in the speaker-hearer's mind.
What is wrong with generative grammar as a theoretical hypothesis?
Generative grammar aims at constructing a mathematically consistent
system of formal rules. But mathematical consistency does not guarantee
a correct description of reality. Using a mathematical formalism, we may
posit a system of rules for deriving sentences from certain basic linguistic
objects. Granted that these rules work, does it mean that they present a
reasonable model of the real rules of a language we are describing? No, it
does not. From the fact that a mathematical design works one cannot
conclude that language works in the same way. Real rules of real lan
guages are empirical dependencies between truly basic linguistic objects
and sentences that are derived from them because of an empirical neces
sity. But empirical necessity should not be confused with logical necessity.

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Sebastian

Shaumyan

In accordance with the laws of logic, true statements may be logically

necessary consequences of both true and false statements. Let me illus
trate this with two examples.
We may deduce the true statement butterflies fly from two false state
ments by constructing the following syllogism:
(1) Cows fly.
(2) Butterflies are cows.
(3) Butterflies fly.
In accordance with the rules of logic, the deduction of (3) from (1) and
(2) is a logical necessity. But the logically necessary connection between
(1) and (2), on the one hand, and (3), on the other hand, conflicts with
empirical necessity.
Another example. Suppose we construct a calculus in which we posit
some false initial statements like 2 = 5, 3 = 7, and so on. Suppose further
that this calculus has the following derivation rule: if x = y, then x can be
substituted for y and y can be substituted for x. By applying this rule we
may derive true statements from the initial false statements, for example:
2 = 2, 3=3, 5 = 5, 7 = 7, and so on. The logically necessary connection
between these true statements and the initial false statements from which
they are derived conflicts with empirical necessity.
If a linguist claims that his mathematical design is a model of the gram
mar of a real language, it is not enough to show that grammatically cor
rect sentences can be derived by applying formal rules to certain initial
objects. He bears the burden of proving that the initial objects are not
fictitious; he bears the burden of proving that logically necessary deriva
tions in his formal system correspond to empirically necessary deriva
tions in the real system of a real language.
A linguist w h o claims that his formal system corresponds to the real
system of a real language can validate his claim by basing his argumenta
tion on an analysis of semiotic properties of language.
Generativism is unacceptable as a methodological postulate, because it
confounds logical necessity with empirical necessity. Even if that trans
formational generative grammar is able to generate only true linguistic
objects of the surface structure of a language (actually, it is far from being
able to do this), this fact in itself does not guarantee that this grammar is
not fictitious. Transformational generative grammar based on the fic
titious notion of deep structure and fictitious phonological entities con
flicts with the functional properties of language as a sign-system.

Semiotic Laws in Linguistics and Natural Science

253

Fictionalism and generativism are two sides of the same coin. There is
nothing wrong with the mathematical notions of algorithm and generation; rules of algorithmic type when properly applied to particular do
mains may be an important mathematical aid in empirical research. But
generativism is a different story. Generativism as a methodological postu
late is an attempt to justify fictitious entities in linguistics by devising
mechanistic rules converting fictitious linguistic entities into observable
linguistic objects. Inventing and manipulating mechanistic rules is the
only way to justify fictitious entities, but all this has nothing to do with
explanation; rather, all this is akin to reflections in curved mirrors.
The only right alternative to generativism is the semiotic method with
its concept of semiotic reality. The semiotic method does not reject math
ematical notions of algorithm and generation as useful tools of linguistic
research. Rather, the semiotic method rejects generativism as a meth
odological postulate. The choice of a mathematical tool is not crucial;
what is crucial is to associate our mathematical tool with a correct hy
pothesis about language, and this can be done only by applying the semi
otic method.
We can construct different systems that will generate the same set of
sentences. Which system is the right system? There is no way to answer
this question if the only thing we require of a generative model is that it
generate correct sentences for a given language.
The only way to solve our problem is to study the properties of lan
guage as a sign-system. Then and only then will we be able to make the
right choice among different ways of constructing sentences of a given
language. The correct system of rules must respect linguistic stratifica
tion; it must respect functional properties of linguistic units; it must re
spect the distinction between synchrony and diachrony; and so on. In
other words, we must use the semiotic method, which provides the neces
sary criteria for an evaluation of linguistic models.
Generativism is unacceptable, because it aims at constructing arbitrary
mechanistic rules that either distort linguistic reality or at best have no
explanatory value. Generativism distorts linguistic reality as follows:
It confounds the phonological level with the morphological level.
As a result, it rejects the phonological level.
It uses fictitious entities like deep structure and fictitious phonologi
cal representation.
It confounds constituency relations with linear word order, which

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Sebastian Sbawnyan

involves an inferior formalism that is inadequate for a study of lin

guistic relations and formulating linguistic universals.3
Chomsky has written much on the philosophy of language. A discus
sion of Chomsky's philosophical views is outside the scope of this essay. I
will simply make a few comments on his claim that his linguistic theory
relates to the ideas of Humboldt. He claims that his notion of compe
tence as a system of generative processes is related to Humboldt's concept
of free creativity. He writes: "We thus make a fundamental distinction
between competence (the speaker-hearer's knowledge of his language)
and performance (the actual use of language in concrete situations). . . .
This distinction I am noting here is related to the langue-parole distinc
tion of Saussure; but it is necessary to reject his concept of langue as
merely a systematic inventory of items and to return rather to the Humboldtian conception of underlying competence as a system of generative
processes" (1965 14). The works of Humboldt are not easy reading. But
anyone who is familiar with these works and is able to understand them
can see that Chomsky's notion of competence as a system of generative
processes has no relation whatever to Humboldt's ideas.
The most often quoted passage from Humboldt's main linguistic work
contains a succinct characterization of the essence of language as he un
derstood it: "In itself language is not work (ergon) but an activity (energeia). Its true definition may therefore be only genetic. It is after all the
continual intellectual effort to make the articulated sound capable of ex
pressing thought" (1971:27).
Obviously, Chomsky confounds his notion generative with Hum
boldt's notion genetic. If one does not base his speculations on the ety
mological affinity of the words generative and genetic but concentrates
his intellectual powers on understanding what he reads, he will see that
the passage above in the context of the whole of Humboldt's work has
the following meaning.
By stating that language is not work (ergon) but an activity (energeia),
Humboldt meant that language is a constantly changing instrument of
expressing thought and that expressive activity is a constant struggle by
the individual to adapt the meaning of linguistic form to the thought he
wants to express.
Humboldt conceives of the word as a bilateral unita combination of
sign and meaning. Here is what he writes about the notion of the word:
"By the term 'words' we mean the signs of individual concepts. The sylla-

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255

ble forms a sound unit, but it only becomes a word when there is some
significance attached to it; this often requires a combination of several
such units. Therefore, in the word two units, the sound and the idea, co
alesce. Words thus become the true elements of speech; syllables lacking
significance cannot be so designated" (1971:149).
Humboldt's conception of the word as a bilateral unit consisting of
sign and meaning is in keeping with the conception of the word in mod
ern semiotics and has nothing in common with Chomsky's conception of
autonomous grammar independent of meaning, with its unilateral lin
guistic units.
Humboldt's conception of language as an activity has nothing in com
mon with the mechanistic rules of generative grammar. Rather, it is in
keeping with the conception of language in modern semiotics as a dy
namic conventionalized conceptual system that is in a state of constant
flux as a result of constant struggle of individuals to adapt linguistic form
to the thoughts they want to express.
Generativism must be abandoned. By saying that generativism must be
abandoned, I do not mean to say that linguistics must return to one of the
old varieties of structuralism; we must attain a higher level of com
prehension by reconstructing the old concepts in the framework of new
formal systems based on semiotics. This will be progress, not a return to
old concepts.

N O T E S

1. This example has been used by Reformatskij (1960). Reformatskij

claims that sounds as physical elements have a perceptual function. This
claim is untenable: being an object of perception is not a special function
of found, but a general property of any linguistic level.
2. The notion of strata is central to the stratificational linguistics of
Sydney M. Lamb (1966). Stratificational linguistics and applicative uni
versal grammar proposed by me (1971, 1977) are different linguistic the
ories, but they share a semiotic point of view.
3. The latest version of generative grammar is presented in Chomsky's
Lectures on Government and Binding (1981). Although the new version
greatly differs from the first version presented in 1957, the basic princi
ples of Chomsky's linguistic theory have not changed.

256

Sebastian

R E F E R E N C E S

Shaumyan

C I T E D

Bohr, N . 1958. Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge. New York: John
Wiley and Sons.
Chomsky, N o a m . 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague: M o u t o n .
. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: M I T
Press.
. 1 9 8 1 . Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris
Publications.
Einstein, A., and Infeld, L. 1961. The Evolution of Physics. New York:
Simon and Schuster.
von H u m b o l d t , Wilhelm. 1971. Linguistic Variability and Intellectual
Development. Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press.
Lamb, Sydney M . 1966. Outline of Stratificational Grammar. Revised ed.
Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
M o n t a g u e , Richard. 1970a. English as a formal language. In B. Visentini
et al., eds. Linguaggi nella societa e nella tecnica. Milan.
. 1970b. Universal grammar. Theoria 36.
. 1974. Formal Philosophy: Selected Papers of Richard Montague.
R. Thomason, ed. . New Haven: Yale University Press.
Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1 9 3 1 - 1 9 3 5 . Collected Papers. 6 vols. Cam
bridge, Mass.
Perlmutter, David M . 1977. Towards a universal characterization of passivization. Proceedings of the Third Annual Meeting of the Berkeley
Linguistic Society.
. 1980. Relational grammar. In E. A. Moravcsik and J. R. Wirth,
eds. Current Approaches to Syntax. New York: Academic Press.
Perlmutter, David M., and Paul M . Postal. 1974. Lectures on relational
grammar at Summer Linguistics Institute of the Linguistic Society of
America. Amherst, Mass.
Reformatskij, A. A. i 9 6 0 . Vvedenie v jazykoznanie. Moscow: Upedgiz.
Sapir, Edward. 1 9 2 1 . Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech.
N e w York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.
de Saussure, Ferdinand. 1959. Course in General Linguistics. New York:
Philosophical Library.
Shaumyan, S. K. 1968. Problems of Theoretical Phonology. The Hague:
Mouton.
. 1 9 7 1 . Principles of Structural Linguistics. The Hague: M o u t o n .

Semiotic Laws in Linguistics and Natural Science

257

. 1977. Applicational Grammar as a Semantic Theory of Natural

Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1956. Language, Thought and Reality. Cam
bridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Notes on Contributors

Charles J. Fillmore, born in 1929, received his B.A. in linguistics from the
University of Minnesota and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
He first taught linguistics at Ohio State University and later at the Univer
sity of California, Berkeley, where he has been professor of linguistics
since 1971. Internationally known as a thoughtful innovator since his fa
mous article "The Case for Case" (1966), he is one of the leading figures
in modern linguistic theory.
Mary R. Haas was born in Richmond, Indiana, in 1910. She studied at
Earlham College and the University of Chicago, and received her Ph.D.
from Yale University in linguistics in 1935. At Yale she worked under Ed
ward Sapir, and under his influence she developed a lifelong interest in
the languages of native America. She eventually became a leading expert
in that field. From 1935 to 1941 she was research fellow for the Commit
tee on Research in Native American Languages at Yale University and
was appointed instructor of Oriental languages at the University of
Michigan in 1941. At Michigan she conducted research on the Thai lan
guage. At the University of California, Berkeley, she was a lecturer in Sia
mese in the Army Specialized Training Program from 1941 to 1944. She
joined the faculty at Berkeley in 1946 and served as chairman of the
Department of Linguistics from 1958 to 1964. Since 1977 she has been
professor of linguistics emeritus at Berkeley. Professor Haas has through
the years trained many of the currently practicing descriptive linguists
and continues to be active in research and teaching. She has held numer
ous visiting professorships and has received honorary doctorate degrees
from several universities, including Northwestern University, the Univer
sity of Chicago, Earlham College, and Ohio State University.
M. A. K. Halliday is professor of linguistics at the University of Sydney,
Australia. He was born in Leeds, England, in 1925. He studied Chinese
language and literature at London University (B.A.) and then studied lin
guistics, first in China (Peking University and Lingnan University, Can-

z6o

Notes on Contributors

ton) and then at Cambridge, where he received the Ph.D. in 1955. After
holding appointments at Cambridge and Edinburgh he served as director
of the Communication Research Center at University College London.
From 1965 until the end of 1970 he was concurrently professor of gen
eral linguistics and responsible for building a new department of linguis
tics. From 1973 through 1975 he was professor of linguistics at the Uni
versity of Illinois, Chicago Circle, and since 1976 he has been head of the
new Department of Linguistics at the University of Sydney. His current
research interests include semantics and modern English grammar, lan
guage development, text linguistics and register variation, educational
applications of linguistics, and artificial intelligence. He is associated
with the "Penman" AI project at the Information Sciences Institute at the
University of Southern California. In 1983 Professor Halliday was presi
dent of the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States.
Charles F. Hockett was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1916. He received
his B.A. and M.A. degrees in ancient history from Ohio State University
in 1936 and his Ph.D. at Yale University in anthropology in 1939. He
conducted field work and worked closely with Leonard Bloomfield on Algonkian in subsequent years, and also worked in the English Language
Institute at the University of Michigan from 1940 to 1942. During the
war years from 1942 to 1946 he worked for the United States Army on
language projects with military applications. In 1946 he accepted an ap
pointment in the newly established Division of Modern Languages at
Cornell University. He was Goldwin Smith Professor of Linguistics and
Anthropology at Cornell from 1970 through 1982 and since 1982 has
been Goldwin Smith Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology Emer
itus. Professor Hockett's influence has been felt in all aspects of the
science of linguistics. His textbook, Course in Modern Linguistics, pub
lished in 1958, remains a standard even today; and his 1973 anthropol
ogy textbook, Man's Place in Nature, is also widely used. His contribu
tions to linguistic theory and practice are numerous, and several of his
publications have taken their place as milestones in the development of
modern linguistics, including, among others, his "Problems of Mor
phemic Analysis" (1947), "Two Models of Grammatical Description"
(1954), A Manual of Phonology (1955), "Linguistic Elements and their
Relations" (1961), and The State of the Art (1969). Professor Hockett
was president of the Linguistic Society of America in 1965 and served as

Notes on Contributors

261

president of the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States

in 1982.

Sydney M. Lamb was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1929. He received his

B.A. degree in economics from Yale University and his Ph.D. in linguistics
from the University of California, Berkeley. As a graduate student at
Berkeley he conducted field work and wrote a dissertation on Monachi
under the direction of Professor Mary R. Haas. After receiving his Ph.D.
in linguistics in 1955, he taught at Berkeley and was director of the ma
chine translation project until his appointment to the Department of Lin
guistics at Yale in 1964. Professor Lamb is without any doubt one of the
most original linguists of his generation. He is perhaps best known for his
development of the theory of language called stratificational grammar,
according to which linguistic structure is treated as a network of relation
ships rather than as a system of rules. In keeping with its emphasis both
on language as code and on its use in encoding and decoding of infor
mation, the theory has now come to be called cognitive-stratificational
linguistics. Professor Lamb's work on cognitive networks has been rele
vant to many current developments in cognitive psychology. For the last
two decades or more, he has also done pioneering work in relating lin
guistic theory to computer science, and this work is now being directed
toward applications in artificial intelligence. Since 1981 Professor Lamb
has been professor of linguistics and semiotics at Rice University. He is
currently Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Linguistics and Semiotics
and chairman of the new Department of Linguistics and Semiotics at
Rice. He is now serving as president of the Linguistic Association of Can
ada and the United States (1983 1984).
Use Lehiste is professor of linguistics at Ohio State University. She was
born in Tallinn, Estonia, in 1922 and received her education at the Uni
versity of Hamburg (Dr.Phil. 1948) and at the University of Michigan
(Ph.D. 1959). She has held numerous appointments in linguistics through
out the world, including visiting professorships at the Universities of
Tokyo, Vienna, and Cologne, and at the University of California, Los An
geles. From 1965 to 1971 she served as chairman of the Department of
Linguistics at Ohio State University. She has received honorary doctorates
from such universities as Lund, Sweden, and Essex, England. In her re
search, which has focused primarily on phonological aspects of language,

262

Notes on Contributors

she has been innovative and productive for many years. Professor Lehiste
was president of the Linguistic Society of America in 1980.
Winfred P. Lehmann was born in Surprise, Nebraska, in 1916. He re
ceived his B.A. at Northwestern College (1936) and his M.A. (1938)
and his Ph.D. (1941) from the University of Wisconsin. During the pe
riod from 1942 to 1946 he was an instructor in Japanese and officer-incharge at the Japanese Language School in the Army Signal Corps. He
taught at Washington University before joining the Department of Ger
manic Languages at the University of Texas in 1949, where he is currently
Ashbel Smith Professor of Linguistics and Germanic Languages. At the
University of Texas he served first as chairman of the Department of Ger
manic Languages (1953 1964) and then as chairman of the newly estab
lished Department of Linguistics (1964 1972). Since 1961 he has been
director of the Linguistics Research Center. He has held academic ap
pointments in linguistics in many countries, including Norway, Turkey,
India, and West Germany. In 1974 he was chairman of the linguistics del
egation to the People's Republic of China. Professor Lehmann's research
has spanned the whole range of linguistic theory and has encompassed a
wide range of languages, both in an historical and in a synchronic per
spective. His books have been translated into many languages. His recent
work reflects a continuing interest in linguistic typology and universals,
Proto-Indo-European syntax, and historical Germanic linguistics. For
many years Professor Lehmann has been active in the field of computa
tional linguistics, and he served as president of the Association for Com
putational Linguistics in 1964. He was also president of the Linguistic
Society of America in 1973.
Robert E. Longacre received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsyl
vania in 1955. He has been teaching linguistics at the University of Texas
at Arlington since 1972. Before that he was a field linguist working with
the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Mexico, where he was associated
with the studies of Trique and the comparative phonology of the Otomanguean languages. As an international consultant to the SIL he has di
rected special research projects on the text structure of little-known lan
guages not only in Mexico and Guatemala but also in the Philippines
(19671968), in Papua New Guinea (1970), and in Colombia (1974
1975, with attention to the languages of Equador and Panama as well).

Notes on Contributors

263

The latter three efforts were sponsored variously by the United States
Office of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the National
Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Longacre has also written or
edited volumes on text structure in those three areas. His present inter
ests include text theory and methodology and the discourse structure of
biblical Hebrew.
Donald Preziosi, a native of New York City, was born in 1941. He is now
associate professor of art history at the State University of New York,
Binghamton. He studied anthropology and linguistics at Columbia Uni
versity from 1959 to 1961 and entered graduate school in linguistics at
Harvard University and MIT in 19621963. He studied art and architec
tural history at Harvard from 1963 to 1968. As a Harvard Traveling Fel
low he studied at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens
(1964 1965), where he was also instructor in Greek art and archeology
(1965 1966). He has held appointments at Yale University, MIT, Cornell
University, and the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts at
the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Professor Preziosi has written
a number of books on architectural semiotics, including The Semiotics of
the Built Environment (1979). His current interests include applications
of semiotics to the study of paleolithic art and of the origins of the built
world, distinctive feature theory in the visual arts, and current issues in
architectural semiotics.
Thomas A. Sebeok is a native of Budapest, Hungary. He was born in
1920 and came to the United States in 1937, where he has lived since
then. He was educated first at the University of Chicago, where he stud
ied literary criticism, anthropology, and linguistics, and later at Princeton
University, where he received his Ph.D. in Oriental languages and civiliza
tions. Since 1943 he has been a member of the Indiana University faculty
in linguistics, where he has served as a chairman of the Research Center
in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics, and as chairman of the Pro
gram in Uralic and Altaic Studies. He has held visiting posts at many uni
versities, including visiting professor of anthropology and linguistics and
associate director of the Linguistic Institute at the University of Michi
gan. His research interests center on Uralic languages and peoples, as well
as on zoosemiotics and general semiotics. He is currently editor-in-chief
of Semiotica, as well as of the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics. His

264

Notes on Contributors

recent publications include The Sign & Its Masters (1979), "You Know
My Method": A Juxtaposition of Charles S. Pierce and Sherlock Holmes
(1980), and The Play of Musement (1981). Earlier works include books
on Hungarian, Finnish, and Cheremis. At present Professor Sebeok holds
the titles of Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and Semiotics, profesor of anthropology, and chairman of the Research Center for Lan
guage and Semiotic Studies at Indiana University. He served as president
of the Linguistic Society of America in 1975.
Sebastian Shaumyan came to the United States in 1975. He was born in
Tbilisi, USSR, in 1916. From 1936 to 1940 he studied at Tbilisi State
University, and he entered the Institute of Slavic Studies at the Academy
of Sciences, USSR, in Moscow as a graduate student in 1946. He received
the degree of Candidate of Sciences (Ph.D.) in the Institute of Linguistics
at the Academy of Sciences in 1950 and the degree of Doctor of Sciences
from Moscow University in 1962. From 1960 to 1975 he was director of
the Department of Structural Linguistics at the Institute of Russian Lan
guage at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, and during the same pe
riod he was professor of linguistics at Moscow University. Since 1975
he has been professor of linguistics at Yale University. Among Professor
Shaumyan's considerable academic accomplishments is the development
of a stratified theory of linguistic structure called applicative grammar.
His current interests include the extension of linguistics to a broader
scope, congruent with the principles of general semiotics. He has recently
completed a new Introduction to Linguistics, intended for undergraduate
students.
Edward Stankiewicz was born in 1920 in Poland. He studied at the
Academia della Arte in Rome in 1946 and the University of Rome from
1947 to 1950, and came to the United States in 1950. He received his
M.A. degree in linguistics at the University of Chicago in 1951 and his
Ph.D. in Slavic linguistics from Harvard University in 1954. Professor
Stankiewicz has held appointments at the University of Chicago, Indiana
University, the University of Michigan, the University of Colorado, and
Yale University, where he is currently professor of Slavic and general lin
guistics. He was Collitz Professor at the Summer Linguistic Institute at In
diana University in 1964. His interests are in Slavic phonology, dialectol
ogy, metrics, morphology, and kinship terminology, genre theory, poetic
language, and functional linguistics.

Index

Action peak, 83
Adverbs, conjunctive, 14344
Alexandrian grammarians, 58
Analogy, 19
Anthropology, 4, 19, 52, 68, 123, 186
Architectonic signification, 179, 187,
189
Architecture: history of, 183, 188,
192, 194; structures in, 9, 180 82
Aristotle, 28, 58, 160, 166, 212
Art, 9 3 , 197; history of, 192, 194,
197; pure, 156; verbal, 155 56
Artificial intelligence, 5, 66, 9 3 . See
also C o m p u t e r science
John Austin, 160
Barthes, Roland, 1 6 1 , 189, 196, 215
Bateson, Gregory, 195
Behavioral science, 20
Bloomfield, Leonard, 8, 28
Boas, Franz, 63
B o t h / a n d , 164
Brain, h u m a n , 6, 24
Brugmann, Karl, 18
Bhler, Karl, 1 6 1 , 215
Cerebral structures, 24
Chafe, Wallace, 4 5 , 144
Chomsky, N o a m , 24, 25, 57, 22
Clause, phonological, 80
Cleft construction, 82
Code: linguistic, 1 5 8 - 5 9 , 180, 182,
186, 192, 199, 200; knowledge of,
170
Cognition, 180, 185, 2 3 1 , 235
Cognitive: classification of, 185, 235;
isomorphism in, 237; mechanisms
of, 10; psychology of, 5

Cognitive processes, 180, 231

Coherence, 134
Communication: animal, 5; manmachine, 6
Competence/performance, 22, 23,
250, 254. See also Langue I'parole
Comprehension, 131
C o m p u t e r science, 1,52. See also Ar
tificial intelligence
Consciousness, 59, 144
Constituents, immediate, 35, 36,
248-49
Context: discourse, 89; interactional,
138; linguistic, 80; pragmatic, 134;
situational, 39, 169
Coreference, 129
Cross-linguistic studies, 70
Culture, knowledge of, 4
Data processing, electronic, 6
Definite article, English, 136
Deictics, 135, 139, 241
Design, 187
Dictionary, 92
Dictionary information, 140
Discourse, 55, 89; cohesion in, 8 3 ;
conditions of, 82; context of, 156;
functions of, 80, 8 1 , 8 3 , 87; medi
cal, 212; narrative, 85. See also
G r a m m a r , discourse; Linguistics,
text
Dynamic viewpoint, 144, 165, 198,
327
Eco, Umberto, 182
Economics, 5
Either/or, 164, 175
Ellipsis, 91

266

Index

Empiricism, 6
Energeia, 254
Environment, built, 186 87, 194; se
mantics of, 182
Envisionment, 127, 133, 138 39,
143
Epistemology, 9
Ergon, 254
Ethnology, 52, 58
Firth, J. R., 28
Formalism(s), 18, 26, 60, 145, 254
Formalists, 157; Russian, 157, 161,
163
Freud, Sigmund, 59
Function: aesthetic, 188, 189; biolog
ical, 4 2 ; emotive, 161; metalinguis
tic, 159, 163; phatic, 159; poetic,
159, 166
Galen, 219 20
Geneva school, 157
Genres, literary, 166 68, 1 7 1 , 174
Glossematics, 7
von Goethe, J o h a n n Wolfgang, 32,
167, 172
G r a m m a r , 9 3 ; discourse, 79; M o n
tague, 2 3 2 ; relational, 232; univer
sal, 23
G r a m m a r , transformational. See Lin
guistics, transformational
Great English Vowel Shift, 244;
Chomsky-Halle treatment of, 29
Greimas, Algirdas, 189
Grimes, Joseph, 80
G r i m m , J a k o b , 24
Grimm's law, 24
H a r d w a r e , electronic, 6
H a r r i s , Zellig, 2 3 , 250
Hearer, 39
Himmelfarb, Gertrude, 30
Hippocrates, 218
Hjelmslev, Louis, 7
Hockett, Charles F., 6 1 , 79

Humanities, 5, 30
H u m b o l d t , Wilhelm von, 23, 233,
254
Hymes, Dell, 57
Ching, 9
Implication, 145
Indexical expression, 216
Information, 42, 1 3 2 - 3 3 , 138, 195,
240; encyclopedic, 140; idiomatic,
126
Information processing, 6
Intentional fallacy, 193
Intentions, speaker's, 134
Interpretation, 5 3 ; aesthetic, 169;
process of, 127, 136, 144
Isochrony, 117, 118
J a k o b s o n , R o m a n , 155, 162, 190,
198
Jesperson, O t t o , 2 1 , 26
Knowledge, 66; encyclopedic, 90, 9 1 ,
132, 1 4 1 ; linguistic, 22, 132; of the
world, 134 35
Koschmieder, Erwin, 27
L a m b , Sydney M., 17, 255
Language: acquisition of, 2 3 ; artifi
cial, 145, 156; creative aspects of,
158; description of, 237, 238; as
instrument, 52; knowledge of, 9,
3 1 , 123, 125, 134, 1 4 1 ; learning of
a, 2 3 , 54; multitiered structure of,
1 3 1 ; as object, 52, 232; poetic
function of, 155, 163; properties
of, 2 5 2 ; psychological role of, 22;
spoken, 96; spoken versus written,
64, 6 5 ; structure of, 252; study of,
24, 6 9 ; teaching of, 6; Trager-Smith
theory of, 2; universals in, 2 1 ; use
of, 9, 3 1 , 39, 4 3 , 90, 9 1 , 12.5, 185,
198. See also Metalanguage, Poetry
Language engineering, 6
Language planning, 65
Language processing, 127

Index

Languages: American Indian, 7 1 ;

Australian Aboriginal, 56, 6 3 ;
Camsa, 8 1 ; Chinese, 36, 40, 62,
6 3 ; Dutch, 106, 107; English, 26,
27, 6 3 , 74, 8 1 , 96, 132; ergative,
9 0 ; Estonian, 105; European, 2 1 ;
Finnish, 90; French, 4 0 ; German,
1 0 5 ; Greek, 29; Hebrew, 8 3 - 8 8 ;
Hittite, 2 5 ; Hopi, 52; individual,
6 9 ; Indo-European, 20; Japanese,
82; Kechua, 2 5 ; Latin, 29, 62; mi
nority, 57; Old English, 20, 25; Old
High G e r m a n , 20; Old Norse, 20;
Proto-Germanic, 20; Proto-IndoEuropean, 2 5 , 2 4 5 ; Russian, 235
36; Sanskrit, 6 2 ; Serbocroatian,
169; Swahili, 6 3 ; Swedish, 107;
Tamil, 2 5 ; Turkish, 2 5 ; unwritten,
63, 70, 73
Langue / parole, 22, 59, 157, 158,
254. See also
Competence/performance
Linguistic expression, 37, 124, 126;
bipartite, 2 1 , 3 5 ; locative, 82; spa
tial, 8 2 ; tripartite, 35, 41
Linguistic innovations, 18
Linguistic relativity, 2 3 3 , 237
Linguistics: applicative, 2 3 8 ; applied,
3, 6, 7, 3 1 , 52, 55, 56, 58; cogni
tive, 2, 3, 2 1 , 22; cohesiveness in,
6 8 , 7 2 ; comparative, 2 1 ; depart
ments of, 5 1 , 52, 56, 66; discourse
g r a m m a r in, 7 9 ; domains of, 54;
forensic, 56; future of, 5 1 ; goals of,
2, 18, 2 3 , 54, 57, 7 1 ; history of,
28, 58, 6 1 ; immanent, 7; pure, 3,
7, 52; specialization in, 17, 72;
stratificational, 2 1 , 244, 255; tagmemic, 2 1 ; text, 79, 124; transcen
dent, 7; transformational, 17, 20,
22, 2 3 2 ; universals in, 6 2 - 6 3 ,
Literacy, 65
Literature. See Genres, literary
Locative expressions, 82

267

Locke, John, 158, 221

Logic, 36, 232
MacLeish, Archibald, 160
M a i l a r m , Stephan, 155
Mathematics, 52
Meaning, 42, 126, 2 4 7 / - 4 8 . See also
Utterance meaning
M e d i a , language of, 55
Medical research, 52
Metalanguage, 232
Metaphor, 4 5 , 53; grammatical, 53,
54; mixed, 53
Metaphorical expressions, 162
Metonymie structure, 165
Modalities, 199, 200
Modists, 58
M o n t a g e , 165
Morphology, 44
Mukarovsky, Jan, 174, 181, 187,
189, 190, 197
Music, 93
Mystery particles, 80
Narrated event, 171
Negation, 145
N e o g r a m m a r i a n s , 18
Network, 10, 183
Neurolinguistics, 3
Neurophysiology, 3
Osthoff, H e r m a n n , 18
OSV. See Word order
OVS. See Word order
Pasteur, Louis, 156
Paul, H e r m a n n , 20
Peirce, Charles S., 215, 242
Performative utterances, 140
Philosophy, 6, 7, 52, 68, 9 3 , 180; aes
thetics in, 186
Phonology, n o , 112, 119; discourse,
80; generative, 26, 2 4 4 - 4 5 ; segmental duration in, 96, 9 7 ; syllable

268

Index

in, 7 9 , 9 7 , 106. See also Clause,

phonological; Isochrony
Physiology, 52
Pike, Kenneth L., 92, 111
Plato, 28, 58, 212
Poetic invention, 157
Poetic movements, 156
Poetic text, 157, 170
Poetry, language of, 157 58
Political science, 5
Port Royal grammarians, 58
Positivism, 20, 28
Pragmatic functions, 134, 138, 170
Prague school, 158, 1 8 1 , 190
Predicate calculus, 3 5
Predicates, 36
Prehistory, 4
Prepositions, spatial-locative, 14142
Presupposition, 145
Pronouns, 8 1 - 8 2
Prose, consultative, 4 2 . See also
Speech, spontaneous
Pseudo-cleft, 82
Psychiatry, 6
Psychological constructs, 24
Psychology, 4, 19, 22, 52, 57, 68, 9 3 ,
2 4 2 ; architectural, 183, 184, 198;
cognitive, 2, 4; environmental, 183;
perceptual, 186
Q u a n t u m mechanics, 233
Rationalism, 60
Reader, 166, 193; ideal, 123, 145
Reality, 2 5 1 ; classification of, 235
Reductionism, 185
Referential function, 156, 182
Referential hierarchy, 92
Referential semantics. See Semantics,
referential
Referents, 135
Response, listener's, 103
Resultative construction, 36
R h y t h m structure, 116, 117

Sapir, Edward, 233

de Saussure, Ferdinand, 22, 59, 157,
1 8 1 , 242
Schemata, 124; cognitive, 1 4 1 , 143
Schematizations, 137 38, 142
Schleicher, August, 24
Science, 8, 156; applied, 3; of signs,
2 3 9 ; pure, 2; as symbolic represen
tation, 231
Semantic information, 140
Semantic links, 143
Semantic process, 126
Semantic structure, knowledge of, 4,
133

Semantics, 5, 129; compositional,

126, 145; lexical, 126; prototype,
137, 145; referential, 9 3 ; research
in, 127, 129; sentence, 127, 128;
and syntax, 132, 136, 138; text,
126
Semasiology, 125
Semiosis, 199, 214; architectonic,
188; verbal, 190; visual, 186, 197
Semiotic relevance, law of, 235
Semiotic taxonomy, 226
Semiotics, 6 8, 9, 6 3 , 184, 186, 233,
2 5 5 ; architectural, 185; of Galen,
220; network, 2 1 1 ; visual, 185,
190, 195, 198; in the visual en
vironment, 180. See also Environ
ment, built: semantics of
Setting, 1 4 3 - 4 4
Shared conventions, 42
Sign, 156, 180, 183, 193, 2 1 1 , 213,
2 3 9 - 4 0 , 252
Situation: context of, 169; framing of,
1 4 3 ; linguistic, 93
Slang, 55
Social science, 20
Socialist realism, 160
Sociobiology, 30
Sociolinguistics, 4, 36
Sociology, 4, 19, 52, 9 3 , 186
Sound change, 19, 61

Index

Sound laws, 19
SOV. See Word order
SVO. See Word order
Speaker/message/addressee, 42, 88,
190, 242
Speech, spontaneous, 65, 9 1 ; and
writing, 64, 6 5 , 66. See also Prose,
consultative
Speech act, 169, 134, 191
Speech recognition, 6
Speech synthesis, 6
Speech therapy, 6
Storage, 91
Stratification, 2 1 , 244, 2 5 3 , 255
Structuralism, American, 35, 250
Symbol, 216
Symptom, 193, 212
Symptomatology, 217, 222, 225
Syntactic analysis, 114, 249
Syntactic structure, 27, 39, 40, 116,
138, 249
Syntax, 5, 27, 36; a u t o n o m o u s , 132
3 3 , 244, 249, 2 5 5 ; neogrammarian,
20; study of, 20, 27
Taxonomy, 129, 143, 179
Text: analysis of, 54; comprehension

269

of, 1 3 1 ; interpreter of, 139. See

also Linguistics, text.
Text-deictic elements, 144
Trager, George, 2
Translation, 6
Tropes, rhetorical, 165
Truth conditions, 134, 136, 144
Uniformity, degree of, 42
Uniqueness fallacy, 4 3 - 4 4
Universals. See Grammar, universal;
Language, universals in
Utterance meaning, 132
Valry, Paul, 155, 170
Visual semiotics. See Semiotics, visual
VSO. See Word order
Whorf, Benjamin Lee, 54, 233
Word order, 4 3 , 132, 2 5 3 ; OSV, 8 3 ;
OVS, 82; SOV, 25, 82; SVO, 25;
VSO, 85
Writing, 62. See also Speech and
writing