| Human language is a large and intricate system of symbols and expressions. The speaker is normally aware of only one or two aspects of this system. First, one may think of language as having a physical shape. This shape may be its audible or written form. Secondly, one should be aware that language conveys meaning. Ideally the written form of a language transcribes the sounds of the language more or less directly. This is a certain process of derivation from the sounds of the language. Certain sound sequences make up utterances. The interpretation of the various utterances comes from the meaning that language users ascribe to various sound sequences. |
Relating sound and meaningSuppose the relationship between sound and meaning in language were in fact simpler than it is. Imagine that a speaker could utter a single sound. Imagine further that the hearer could then interpret this one sound as having but one meaning. This would be a kind of one-to-one mapping suggesting that the more complex the meaning to be conveyed, the more complex the sounds required to express it. In such an artificial situation the language user would have no use for a full grammar. After assigning symbols to primitive sounds and meanings, the user would associate each of the sounds to each of the meanings in a simple way, one expressible by means of a rule of transformation. Unfortunately natural languages require a mapping of sound to meaning that is actually much more complicated. One reason the system of rules is so elaborate is that while the variety of sounds is not perceptually infinite, these are related to an infinite variety of meanings. Although the infinity of sounds and meanings does not in itself imply that the relationship needs to be complicated, in practice language carries it out in an ever changing variety of ways. |
Intermediate conceptual levelsAs it happens the nature of the speech organs makes it impossible in the strictest sense to duplicate a given sound precisely from one instance to the next. In one situation speakers might pronounce a particular sound more emphatically than usual. In another they might produce it more rapidly. Yet, true to its symbolic nature, language does not require the physical shape of the sound to be mechanically precise. What is important is that certain features of the sound be present — features that serve to situate the sound in a distinct place in the system. These features categorize the sound. They are the distinctive features, which the communicant extracts from the sound stream and analyzes. The analysis of distinctive features is one of many steps in the process of extracting meaning from an utterance. Furthermore this process is complicated by the fact that in practice many features are ignored in producing an utterance, requiring the hearer to surmise sounds from the context — sounds that aren’t physically present. |
Structure of world vs. structure of languageOne cannot help seeing the structure of grammaticalization and expression as a great tree. The diverse elements of sound, i.e., the [xyz] of figure 2, are like the partially overlapping roots of a great tree. The diverse elements of the real world, i.e., the omega of figure 1, are like a vast network of branches and leaves. The symbolic nature of language enables the expression of an infinite variety of concepts. But there are gaps and overlaps. The analyst must keep the fact in mind that there are some concepts that are ineffable. These are the gaps. There is always variation in how the communicant synthesizes a meaning from the symbolic elements. This causes overlaps. The system of the language obliges the speaker to cast his expression in terms of certain abstractions of the real world (R). The mapping from root to branch is imperfect. Only certain abstractions of the world participate in grammaticalization. In this way the grammar can impose its concepts on the content as well as the form of the expression. |
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesisThis view of grammaticalization and expression may lead to a form of the Sapir-Whorfian hypothesis, that “all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated” (Whorf 1940). Pertinent here is the model more recently developed by Robert E. MacLaury (MacLaury 1986). His model for semantics distinguishes two levels: perception and cognition. Perception is defined in terms of physical (neurological responses) attributes of the signal. These are attributes inherent to the signal. Cognition is the active devotion of attention to similarities and differences in the signals together with the personal selective emphasis placed on these two attendences. These are the elements of the real world that are relevant to natural language and become codified by it. Cognition lies mostly within the conceptual structures of the language derived from our perceptions. The debate over the Sapir-Whorfian hypothesis turns on the extent to which cognition or conceptualization guides perception and the extent to which the percepts and concepts of the real world grammaticalize. Recent work in neuropsychology has in fact found a measurable effect of language on cognition in the area of color terminology (Gilbert, et. al. 2005). |
Communication needs analysis and synthesisDespite the strictures of grammar, communication does in fact occur successfully. First the speaker’s message comes to be analyzed in terms of the language’s conceptual structure. Here is another analogy that might elucidate this principle. Analyzing a message is like removing the flesh which covers up a person’s skeleton. The speaker then encodes the message in terms of the language’s sounds. This is like breaking the skeleton apart and giving the bones to the hearer. The hearer is able to arrive at an analysis by decoding the sounds that the speaker used to frame his message. This is like taking the bones and putting them together again. The analyst must recognize the bones for what they are and then using his own knowledge of anatomy fill in the flesh required by the skeleton. |
Two meanings of expression and grammarNotice that in this introduction there are already two very different meanings of the term expression. When first mentioned an expression was one of the essential components of a calculus. In communication an expression is an aspect of human language. This simply illustrates the ubiquity of ambiguity in natural language. Like expression the very term grammar is systematically ambiguous. This term may refer to the internalized system of language structure that makes it possible for two people to communicate in that language. It may also refer to the complex set of symbols and rules that the linguist uses to describe that system. It may be either an actual set of conventions (GRAMMAR1) or else a logical or mathematical model of those conventions (GRAMMAR2). |
