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Deviation — statistical and determinate — in poetic language
Lingua; 62 (1963) 276-290,
Q M’or&Hotta~
Pubtishi:tig Co., Amstwdam
Mot to be reproduced by photoprint or microfilm without written permission from the publisher
DEVIATION DETERMINATE
- STATISTICAL AND - IN POETIC LANGUAGE
SAMUEL
R. LEVIN
One of the characteristics of current American linguistic practice is its insistence that native-speaker intuitions about the language should be explicated in any description or formalization of that language. Thus, for example, it is reqttired that a grammar of English “explain” the intuitive sense in which two sequences like “John played tennis” and “my friend likes music” are simi1ar.l) It is also required that it explain the intuitive sense in which a construction like ‘flying planes can be dangerous” is ambiguous, the different sense in which “Ii don’t like her cooking” is ambiguous, and the still different sense in which “the bill is large” is ambiguous.2) The development by Chomsky and Harris of the transformation level for grammatical theory was motivated to a considerable extent by the failure of the pre-existing levels to account satisfactorily for intuitive reactions of this kind?) If we now ask ourselves what intuitive responses to the language of poetry we might expect a theory of poetics to account for, there would seem to be at least these three: poetic language is more unified (or is unified in a different way) than the language of prose; i) See Noam Chomsky, Syottactic Strztc$wes ‘s-Gravenhage (1957) p. 86. 2) For these three types, see, respectively, N. Chomsky, “A Transformational Approach to Syntax’ ‘, Third Texas Conference om Problems of Liquistic Analysis in English Austin, Texas (1962) 148; N. Chomsky, “The Logical Basis of Linguistic Theory”, Proceedings of the Ni;rathInterna;iional CoPzgvessof Linguists, to appear; Jerold J. Katz and Jerry A. Fodor, “The Structure of a Semantic Theory”, Language, 39 (1963) 174 f. a) See Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, pp. 86ff. and Zellig S. Harris, “Cooccurrence and Transformation in Linguistic Structure”, Larguage 33 (1957) 337. The development of the semantic theory by Katz and IFodor, op. cit. (fn. 2), is in turn motivated by the failure of transformational grammars to account fol the ambiguity of such sentences as “the bill is large”.
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poetic language is more highly compressed than the language of prose; and poetic language is more novel, that is, it contains more deviations than the language of prose. I shall consider in this paper only the last-named of these properties: deviation. No attempt will be made ts develop a theory of poetics. I shall merely try to providlz a more satisfactory basis for the notion of deviation, in the sense that I shall try to indicate what it means theoretically to say of a poetic sequence that it is “deviant’ ‘. In general, deviation implies some regularity of pattern, the disruption of which constitutes the deviation. In order to account for deviation, one tims has to specify the pattern. Since language, especially poetic language, is structured on various levels, it turns out that there are various patterns that need to be specified. First, h+owever, it is necessa=r A**+certain .Ly +fi cu ~-.‘!a iUIc UUL types of deviation as being irrelevant to the concerns of our central problem, which is that of explicating certain aspects of poetic language. To be eliminated would be *all pathologically conditioned deviations, where these would range from the physiologically conditioned (phonetic) deviations induced by cleft palate, laryngectcmy, etc. to the more general kinnds of linguistic deviation associated with the various types of aphasia. Deviations of such kinds, inasmuch as they are automatically conditioned, and thus dc not represent the free choice of t.he speaker, can obviously haT,-ono bearing on the poetic function of deviation. Closer to our central co ern would be what that is, psycholoRiffaterre has called tics of an author’s spee gically conditioned sequences that compulsorily recur in situations that bear some resemblance to each other?) Finally, such phenomena as slips of the tongue and nonce-blends which, while not a.utomatic, are not the result of intent, may also be eliminated from considerat ion, The deviations that are significant in poetry, as in any other medium, are those made in a context where choice is possible, since it is only sluch deviations that provile any information. But even il!n respect to such, significant, deviations, it is necessary to make certain distinctions. Thus, we must snake a fundamental distinction .4) Michael Riffaterre, “Stylistic Context”, Word 16 (1960) 212; deviations similar to rthe type described above are deemed irrelevant (for semantk analysis1 !.qr Paul Ziff, on the basis of the principle which he calls “convent ionality ;iemaMiic Analysis, Ithaca, N.Y. (1960) pp. 54ff.
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R.LEVIN
between those deviations produced against the background of language and those Iproduced against the conventions of the poem as a literary genre, Deviations of the latter sort take many forms, as there are many conventions. Thus, the meter may be deviated from, in the form of metrical inversions, “sprung rhythm,” etc.; a form may be deviateld from, as in Meredith’s sixteen-line sonnets; a rhyme-scheme may be deviated from, in the form of false or near rhymes; one may deviate from the convention of beginning the lines ings does consistently; of a poem with capital letters, as e. e. c y a certain “poetic” the convention that a poem should diction may be deviated from, by the inclusion of dialectal or commonplace expressions.5) The study of deviations such as those mentioned above is interesting, but it is ultimately not the proper concern of linguists; it devolves rather upon students of literary form to investigate artd to point out the significance of such cartonicai’ deviations. In the case of canonical deviation, by which I mean deviation against the conventions of the art, the fact that a given form is deviant is not difficult to perceive. More important than this, hciwever, is the fact that such deviations are not difficult to establish. Since the canons of literary discourse are rather well-defined, one can “explain” the fact of a deviation by simple reference to the canon that has been violated. Although the authority of these canon:; varies from epoch to epoch, the canons themselves are always1 present. The lcritical terms “classical”, “romantic”, “decadent”, etc. attest not merely to the degree to which the canons of an art form are observed, but also, implicitly, to the existence of the canons. 6) If we turn now to deviations within the framework of the language itself, we find a somewhal: different and, for explanatory purposes, less ::atisfactory state of affairs. Unlike what is provided by the c:no 1s of literary forms, the language would seem to offer no clearcut model against which to measure deviation. This is true despite the fact that various standards have been proposed, I shall now -5) Cf. Iv&n Fbnagy, “Communication in Poetry”, Wo9d 17 (196 1) 204ff. 6) I am not suggesting that critical terms like “romanticism”,
etc. reflect merely the degree of adherence to or deviation from the conventional aspects of a work of art. Such terms can of course also be used as a function of subject matter, tone, and various other factors,
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take up some of these proposals and try to show in what way they are inadequate, One strong candidate for this standard has been the notion of the noms of the language. In the usual linguistic interpretation of this view, the norms correspond to what one more or less expects to encounter at various places in the linguistic chain, where these norms are built into our memories on the basis of our experience with the language.?) Since by far the great bulk of our linguistic experience is with the prosaic or non-poetic language, the norms are those conditioned by what is often referred to as the “casual” or “ordinary*’ language. One can then attempt to render this subjective conception of norms more explicit, by conducting statistical analyses on samples of the language, where such samples are selected with a view toward representing this neutral, prosaic, or “ordinary” usage. Such statistical surveys can then be made to yield information on the rank-orders of various linguistic units such as phonemes (or lette-rs) or words. Beyond this, matrices of transitional probabilities can in theory be worked out on the basis of a sample, which will show, given one, two, or more-phoneme or -word environments, what d:he probabilities are of any other phoneme or word occurring in that environment. Comparison of the rank-orders of words occnk-ring in poetry with the rank-orders of words occurring in the sample may then be expected to reveal something of poetic diction, and deviation may be rationalized by co paring a given sequence in poetry with the transitional probabilities arrived at by analyzing the sample corpus. The preceding discussion can perhaps be epitomized by quoting Bernard Bloch’s definition: “The style of a discourse is the message carried by the frequency-distributions and transitional probabilities of its linguistic features, especially as they differ from those of the same features in the language as a whole?) The discussion above has perhaps made it appear that the notion of norms construed statistically has a certain @ma fncie plausibility. Statistical norms would seem capable of providing a means for confirming or infirming our predictions about linguistic elements, -7) !GeeC. E. Shannon, “Prediction and Entropy of Printed Engljsh”, Bell System Techkal Jouwzal, 30 ( 195 1) 54. 8) ]&mard Bloch, “Linguistic Structure and Linguistic Analysis”, Re@+,t oftheFourthAnnual Row.& Table Meetitig on Linguistics and Language Teaching, Washington, D.C. (1953) 42.
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SAMUEL
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and in this way explicate deviation. But to this statistical conception of norms various objections have been raised. Thus, Juilland has objected that it is impossible to establish in quantitative terms the precise boundary between what is normal and what is deviant?) More recently, Rjiffaterre has similarly rejected the notion of statistical norms, adding that, in fact, linguistic norms are not only difficult to obtain, thus concurring with Juilland’s point, but that even if they could be obtained they would be irrelevant ‘- this because readers base their reactions not on this “ideal norm, but on their individual concepts of what is the accepted norm . . .” He goes on to say, “These rnultiple norms are given some common traits by normative grammar”. 10) However, even the norms of normative gK3IIimX r (by w’hich If take it is meant sanctioned, as opposed to statistical norms) are found wanting by Riffaterre, who then introduces his own conception, that of the context as nom+) This general conception of the context as norm is elaborated by Riffaterre in a later article, in which he develops a distinction between the micro- and the macrocontext.12) The low-predictable items that produce stylistic effects (deviation) thus produce these effects in a micro- or macrocontext, the stylistic effect consisting of the two necessary parts con,fextand the item that contmsts in the context. As examples of stylistic effects produced in microcontext, Riffaterre gives the phrase ok~ure dart& of Corneihe and the line of Emily Dickinson or fame erect her siteless citadel, where the sequences fame erect and siteless citadel are cited as comprising stylistic effects produced in microcontext: i.e., erect contrasts in the context fame, and citadel contrasts in the context siteless?) The macrocontext, in Riff’aterre’s exposition, is constituted by that part of the text that precedes the stylistic device or devices, and in respect to which the stylistic devices may be modified; or as Riffaterre has it, “the (macro-) context begins at the point where the reader perceives the existence of any continuous pattern”?) Alphonse G. Juilland, review of Charles Brunea.u, L’t$oque rhliste; pYemit?ye partie : Fin du rommtisme et Pamasse, Larrgruage30 ( 1954) 3 18f., fn. 5. lo) Wchael Riffaterre, “Criteria for Style Analysis”, ‘Word 15 (1959) 167ff. 9 Ibid., pp. 169ff. 12) Riffaterre, “Stylistic Context”, Wuvd 16 (1960) 207-2 18. 13j Ibid., pp. 2lof. m 369 1.4) x2,, y- L.&d.
9j
DEVIATXON
Riffaterre-s
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4
E
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substitution of context for statistical ;;orms is a nloteworthy attempt to replace something less patent by something more patent and, as such, it merits serious consideration. As I shall tl:y to show, however, the n.otion of microcontext is invalid and that of the macrocontext, while valid, is limited. -4ccording to the view of norms that we have been discussing, a gi\ en linguistic element produces a stylistic effect because its occurrence has zero or near-zero probability of occurring where it doe?. We say that its occurrence is unpredictable or scarcelypredictable in that environment. The problem is to account for this low predictability. It cannot be said that the microcontext accounts for this fact in anv wav. All that one can say of an item and a microcontext is th& the”item occws in the particular microcontext. But in saying this, one is merely making an observation - nothing is explained thereby. That is, it is otiose to say that the item is unpredictable in the particular microcontext if by microcontext wtl mean the actually 0ccurrin.g tokens that make up that context. A corollary of this criticism is that we are not even entitled to label an item a “contrast” if what is given as the rationalization for the contrast is the microcontext alone. The whole notion of predictability is based on expectations, where thclse expectations are in turn based on experience. This experience t results in the establishment of certain implicit models, patterns, norms, or some similar standard, and a deviation is then interpretable against that background. But an actually occurring linguistic element does not constitute such a standaid. The inadequacy of the microcontext as a means of explaining the stylistic effect may perhaps be further indicated by a short discu:Vsion of the macrocontext. The latter does serve to set up expectations. Thus, the repeated use of a certain, say the favorite, sentence type would set up an expectation, and this expectation would be defeated by the subsequent occurrence of a different sentence type, and thus produce a stylistic effect by deviation. Or the use of an archaism would produce the same effect in a text running for some time in standard, non-archaic language. In the same way, the use of familiar or colloquial expressions in a text which had been proceeding in literary language w-guld produce a similar effect?) In such cases it is to be noted that the macro-G) Ibid., pp. 215, 213.
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SAMUEL
R. LEVIN
1 context functions so as’ to build up short-range norms. On the basis of these norms the reader makes predictions, and it is the frustration of these predictions that accounts for the stylistic effect. It does not seem to me, however, that any such rationalization can be given for the microcontext as Riffaterre describes it. The type of sequence that Riffaterre cites by way of illustrating deviation in microcontext is certainly characteristic of a good deal of poetic language. If the microcontext cannot be employed to serve as the disrupted pattern (inasmuch as it does not constitute a pattern), can we expect statistical procedures to provide us with some such system of norms? We Should notice, first of all, that effects produced in macrocontext are essentially effects produced through deviation from statis5cally ccnditioned expectations. It seems to me, however, and here I aimin agreement with Juilland and Riffaterre, that statistical norms cannot be used to explain deviations of the other sort, those, that is, that occur without reference to a set of expectations built up in the text itself, those, namely, for which Riffaterre invokes the microcontext. The difficulty here is not a theoretical one; it is simply that statistical norms in the area of syntax are impracticable. A language contains tens of thousands of words and infinite possibilities for combining these words in sentences. Obtaining statistics on transitional probabilities in syntax is thus hardly possible.16) There is no such diffic lty in determining frequencies of occurrence, since this involb . mere 16) In making a cursory survey of textual analysis from the statistical point of view, one finds that the question of syntax is not really tackled. When a syntactically significant element like the word is selected for investigation, the statistics are employed in establishing rank-orders; when, on the other hand, the study is one of transitional probabilities, then the unit is the phoneme or letter. This is no more than might be expected. When we consider that a language with a vocabulary of just 1 000 words, permitting syntactic sequences of just 3 places, would comprise 1 000 000 000 different sequences (I 000 a), we are in a position to see the difficullties attending on any such project. Of course, no natural language realizes all the theoretically possible combinations of sts elements but, even allowing for restrictions, the number of combinations is staggering. If we extrapolate from 1 000 3 to what Tvewould need in order to obtain statistical norms for English syntax, we see the impracticability of any such project. For a good general discussion of statistics and style, see Warren Plath, “Mathematical Linguistics”, Tvends in Eumpem and Americm Linglaistics rgJo-rgdo Utrecht (196 1) edited by Christine Mohrmann, Alf Sommerfelt and Joshua Whatmough, pp. 27-30.
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counting of occurrences, and significant results thus can be, and have been, achieved on the basis of reasonable samples. It might also be feasible to conduct statistical studies on broad morpheme -class co-occurrences. If we limited ourselves to some ten or twelve classes (Noun, Verb, etc.), we might, even though the calculations would be considerably more complex, achieve some worthwhile results on the probabilities of various sentence types, or even on their transitional probabilities.17) But when we are interested in making st.atistical inferences about the transitional probabilities of individual words - and if we are approaching the problem from the point of view of poetic deviation, we would need to do this - then the task becomes impracticable. If we were to go ahead and assign probabilities on the basis of an inadequate sample base, we would give rise to a variety of inaccurracies. The one that chiefly concerns us is that one in which a sequence is assigned a probability of zero. When such an assignment is made on the basis of an inadequate sample (and, as I have tried to indicate, samples of word-transition almost have to be inadequate), a “zero” sequence may be one which intuitively may seem quite undeviant Jits zero assignment being due to inadequacy of the sample. Conversely, a sequence may strike us as being deviant, but we could then not be sure whether the statistical confirmation (or disconfirmation) of our reaction reflected the real state of linguistic i.e., would continue to obtain evin if the statistics were affairs :arried out on a significant sample - or U’ ether it was due merely to an accident of the sample?) For these reasons, as well as for others, it would be highly desirable if we could interpret deviation not in respect to statistical norms but, rather, in respect to some kind of linguistically deMminate norms. In speaking of determinate deviation, as opposed to -17) Cf. Plath, OP. cit., p. 30; see also Thomas A. Sebeok, “Notes on the Digital Calculator as a Tool for Analyzing Literary Information”, J’oetics, ‘s-Gravenhage (196 l), p. 588. 18) On the question of proba.bility, Chomsky takes an even stronger position than the one discussed here. According to him, “For any sentence at all, probabilitv is so low that it can be regarded as zero” ; in Discussion following his piper, “ A Transformational Approach to Syntax”, p. 180. Thus, for Chomsky, the question is not whether it is possible to gather a significant body of statistics; it is simply that the probability of a sequence stands in no signif icant relation to its grammaticality.
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SAMUEL
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statistical deviation, I have in mind that kind of deviation which takes place against a background where all the possible elements of a domtin and all the Ijossible arrangements of the elements in that domain are given in advance, and where deviation may therefore be defined as any occurrence which is not represented as being in that domain. If we look to langu(age descriptions or grammars, we find that we have just such a situation. The phonemes of a language, for example, are given by the description or grammar of that language. Whether the occurrence of a given phoneme is a deviation can thus be determined univocally by checking that occurrence against the inventory of phonemes given by the description. Thus the description of English tellsus that the phonemes /t, 1, e/ occur in English, whereas phonemes of the shape /x, 9, fi/ do not. Further, the phonotactic description of English tells us that, while clusters such as /tr-, pl-, -ept, -rldz/ occur, those of the shape /sr-, tl-, -etp, -mldz/ do not. The description of a language therefore enables us to specify whether or not a given phoneme or phoneme cluster is deviant - and this not in any statistical sense, but in a determinate sense. Thus, it has been pointed out by Sapir that in Nootka the phonology of the ordinary language (i.e., that part of the language for which there is a description) is deviated from, in that the phonemes /q/ and /l/, which are not included in the Nootka phoneme inventory, are employed In certain types of songs. Further, in the mourning songs of the Southern Paiute, the phoneme /l/ occurs, a phoneme which does not occur in the ordinary language?) Most cases of deviation in poetry occur not in the domain of phonology, however, but in that of syntax. If we now look for a syntactic counterpart to the phoaological description, for some framework, that is, against which we could univocally consider a syntactic sequence as deviant or as not deviant, we can find such a counterpart in the syntactic portion of ;a generative grammar. Theoretically, such a grammar generates every graminatical sequence in the language and is constrained against generating any non-grammatical sequence, Any sequence which lies beyond the grammar’s generative capacity can thus be said to be deviant. Since, by definition, such sequences 29) Edward
Sapir, “A.bnormal Types of Speech in Nootka”, in Selected ed. by David G. Mandeibaum, Berkeley, Calif. (1949) p. 188.
Writhgs of Edward Sapiv in Language, Culture avadPersonal&
DEVIATION
are also ungrammatical,
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it would appear that deviation and ungrammaticalne:; are the same thing. This is in fact the case. But if we speak of deviations occz~rring in poetry, then a distinction may be drawn. All deviations, poetic or otherwise, are ungrammatical, and all ungrammatical sequences are deviant. But not all ungrammatical sequences are poetica& deviant. A complete discussion of this question lies beyond the scope of P.his paper, but we may simply say here that poetic deviation is n some sense controlled. Sometimes this control manifests itself in keeping the deviation from departing too drastically from the grammar; at other times it he form of developing a sympathetic matrix for the deviation within the poem itself. These and other aspects of poetic deviation distinguish it from ungrammaticalness toat court. The assertion that poetic deviation is ungrammatical may seem surprising. But if poets indeed exploit the language, it should not be surprising that it sometimes gives. Therefore, the charge sometimes made that linguistic analysis of style reduces the question to a kind of countergrammar is not really embarrassing?*) If the linguistic analysis of poetry discloses the fact that characteristic sequences, which we apprehend as deviant, lie beyond the limits of the grammar, we should welcome such a result as a structural confirmation of our intuitions. Moreover, deviation from the grammar is not the only device for producing stylistic effects. ‘or example, the type of deviatron described by Riffaterre as occurri g in macrocontext can very well produce a stylistic effect without its being countergrammatical. In particular, our criterion does not rule out the possibility that a sequence which is grammatically quite banal mav function in a particular context so as to be deviant and thus produce a stylistic effect. The point is that there are at least two types of deviation: one type is deviant in respect to the text in which it occurs; the other type is deviant in respect to the language at large, and it is for the rationalization of the latter type that 1 am suggesting the grammar be used instead of statistical inference. If we ciel:ide to use non-generability as a criterion for deviation, it does not fellow that we are limited to mere yes-or-no answers. By comparing the number and types of grammatical rules violated by -20) See Red Wellek’s Closing Statement in St@ in Lnngzrage, d. by Thomas A. Sebeok, New York (1960) p. 417; cf. also Juilland, op. cit., pp. 318ff.
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different deviant forms, we can also say something about the kind or degree of deviation displayed by those formszx) We can in fact use this facility to make distinctions between poetic sequences that seem to be deviant in different ways. It might be possible, that is, that use of the grammar might provide us not merely with the means to determine univocally whether a given sequence was ceviant or not, but also to clarify the way in which deviant sequendes differed from each other. Let us assume that our criterion of nongenerability would correctly mark as deviant, for example, the following lines of poetry: S/&MS in the mind of heaven God There could I
marvel
my
. . .
(Ezra Pound, Canto LI)
birthday away
. . .
(Dylan Thomas, poem z’nOctober) What words can s!ra@e this deaf moodight?
(Hart Crane, Voyages V) We would still be interested in seeing whether there were not some way in which we could rationalize our intuitive responses to these three lines as being deviant in different ways or in different degrees. One way to account for these differences would be to ask what we would have to do to grammar in order that it would generate these sequences. Or, to put the question in a different way, can we localize the area of the grammar that breaks down in the attempt to generate these sequences? 22) Comparing the results might then serve to throw some light on our intuitive reactions, At this point it seems advisable to give a very brief sketch of some of the rules of a generative grammar, in order to provide a basis for the following discussion. A generative grammar comprises three basic types of rules: p’hrase structure or constituent structure rules, transformation rules, and rules (morphophonemic and otherwise) for converting into pronounceable sentences the terminal strings obtained by applying the phrase structure and transflormation rules. Some transformation rules are obligatory, others are optional. The place and function of these various rules in the grammar may 21) See N. Chomsky, “Some Methodological Remarks on Generative Grammar”, Word 17 ( I 96 i ) 236ff. 22) For a discussion of this question, see my “Poetry and Grammaticalnew”, Proceedings of th,~Ninth Internationa,l Congress of Linguists, to appear.
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perhapts best be illustrated by deriving a sample sentence. Let us assume that we wish to generate the sentence: tke titan placed a hook on the shelf. The following would be the phrase structure rules employed in deriving this sentence: (it should be borne in mind that these rules represent only a selection from the full set.) 23)
(1) s
+ NP + VP (Adv)
(5) T/’ 6) vt
-+ V, --+ @ace
(2) VP (Adv) + VP + Adv -+ ,426x + VP/j (3) VP + V + NP2 (4) VP,
(7) Aux (8) Adv
(9j (10) (11) (12) (13) (14)
i’v’P2 T NC NPI T Nh
-3- dPast --+1 12 the -_,
Ii-
+
shelf
NC
-+a --+ book -+w-Nh -+ the -+ man
From the above derivation, structure diagram :
we obtain
the following phrase
T’
If WE-’ should wish to form the interrogative or the passive of this sentence, we would apply the appropriate (optional) transfor23) I have
here followed, with some modifications, the version of generative grammar given by Chomsky in “A Transformational Approach to Syntax”.
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SAT'"
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mation; if, however, we wish merely the sample sentence given above, we would reverse the positions of Past and $&~a, bgr means of an obligatory transformation, and then, by the morp &es, the proper allormorph of Past, in this case /-t/, would be selected, thus givingthe kernel sentence the mm placed a book on the shelf.
’
framework of generative grammar given above, we may now consider our three poetic sequences. We find, in attempting to gyPcrate Found’s line, Shines in the mind of heaven God, that the grammar fails absolutely: the line violates the very first rule in the grammar, S -+ NP + VP (Adv). This failure could of course be redressed, either by including as an alternative expansion of S: VP (A&J) +- NP, or by” including a transformaltion on S -+ NP + VP (Adv) to produce the same-result. But either one of these two alternatives would result in generating not only Pound’s sequence, but also a great many other sequences of the same form, say, *works in the factory John. Since we have no incentive for generating such additional sentences, since, in fact, there are obvious reasons for not generating them, the new rule would have to be constrained to the generation of Pound’s sequence alone. The new rule would then be 11 341 -1 t,l-7 /Y/Ib/l,- C3-d CL,.*m _h - the1 at all. 4 ') Within
cm+deCLdy
the
&+&%
IPUb
a.llU
CllU3
11u
1
In setting about to generate Thomas’ line There co&d I marveZ my birthday away, we find that the grammar does not f#ail quite so absolutely. As the first stage in the derivation, we would need to obtain the kernel sentence I could marvel my birthday away there which, with optional permutation transformations, would yield Thomas’ sentence. We find that we can in this case go through the grammar purposefully until we come to expanding the Verb, at which point our further efforts would be blocked, since marveZ is an intransitive verb. Here, again, we could either shift marveZ to the class of transitive verbs, an unsatisfactory adjustment, since marvel ~mfcl then be free to co--occur with all objects, or we lcould add a rule permitting intransi’tive verbs to take objects, an even more unsatisfactory recourse. 25) 24) This question is discussed in my Linguistic Shztctums in Poetry, ‘s-Gravenhage (1962) p. 26. 25) Here too an alternative would be to adopt (either) one of the suggested adjustments, but then so to constrain the new rule that it would generate only Tlmnas’ sequence and no others. This course is hardly advisable, since,
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If we now examine Hart Crane’s line from the same point of view, we find that the results are still different. The grammar will certainly generate strings of the general form What words can strun&e tk deaf lPtoonlight ; compare, for example, What acts can redeem this initiaL crbne. But while the grammar will generate strings of this form in general, it will nlDt generate the particular sequence occurring in Crane’s poem. If we look for the place where the grammar fails in the present case, it turns out that it is in the area ,of lexicon (or at least in that portion of the grammar where the rules arc: most sensitive to lexical co-occurrence). While the general classes of NOW, Verb, Adjective, etc. can be arranged to give sentencts of the general form of Crane’s sentence, these classes are analyzed into s*ubclasses further on in the grammar, and in the lexicon, such that, because of restrictions on co-occurrability, Crane’s sentence could not be generated. The failure in the case of Crane’s sentence thus comes still lower in the grammar than do the failures for our other two poetic sequences. Let us consider only the collocation strangle this . . . moonlight. In attempting to generate this sequence, we would be able to go further than in generating Thomas’ sequence, in that we could expand Vt as strangle, and it would be only later, when it was a question of expanding the particular subcategory of Vt to which strangle belongs, say Vti, that the gramma] would fail, since ‘c/‘tiwould be corlstrained by a rule to expansion only in the environment of a particular subclass of N, say l&j, a subclass to which moonlight does not belong?) The analysis given abcve of the three lines of poetry makes clear how the criterion of non-generability provides a determinate measure for ascertaining whether a given sequence is deviant or not. It also makes clear that use of the grammar makes inferences to be corxistent, we would be forced to devise similar
nd hoc rules for a host of other sa:quences that occur in poetry. 26) Qrre should avoid the impulse to characterize this type of deviation as semantic in nature, rather than grammatical. The whole of grammar is a question of constraints on co-occurrability, and there is no obvious motivation for considering some of these constraints, say of word-order or agreement, as grammatL:al, and others as semantic. What are usually called “semantic” conditions on well-formedness differ from “grammatical” conditions only in that the former usually have a narrower range of applicability. Cf. R. B. Lees, “The Constituent Structure of Noun Phrases”, American Sfwech 36 (1961) 161, fn. 8.
SAMUEL
290 - _!2_
p(JSslui~
1
A. A..&trrs?%~pr ;i’sG’Gi LiiC Irasu
rLaILy
i
fir j-L
R. LEVIN
&mm --r=e-
-__l_
in ___
which differentsequencesare ___
_.
deviant. I wish also to maintain that the results corre&ond with native-speaker intuitions about these sentences. In the first place, I k-,zk:tt t&+_ nllr Ml __-_-I __-- nc -__ that the three sentences deviate _--- int&innn from the grammar in different degrees. Moreover, I believe that, intuitively, Pound’s sentence is most drastically deviant, Thomas’ sentence is less so, and Crane’s is still less SO. A native-speaker, if asked to explain these intuitions, might say that Pound’s sentence employs an inadmissible word-order, that Thomas’ sentence misuses an intransitive verb, and that Crane’s sentence joins individual words incongruously, and that these several derelictions stand in a descending hierarchy of abuses. All of this is confirmed by confrontation with the grammar, which makes clear in a systematic way what is otherwise unsystematic.27) Hzcnter College,
New York, N.Y.
27) I do not mind saying that, under certain circumstances (charges of circularity notwithstanding), I .would be prepared to modify my intuitions somewhat, if comparison with the consequences of the gra,mmar seemed to make such a recourse necessary. It would not be the first time that a theory led one to do so.
Q M’or&Hotta~
Pubtishi:tig Co., Amstwdam
Mot to be reproduced by photoprint or microfilm without written permission from the publisher
DEVIATION DETERMINATE
- STATISTICAL AND - IN POETIC LANGUAGE
SAMUEL
R. LEVIN
One of the characteristics of current American linguistic practice is its insistence that native-speaker intuitions about the language should be explicated in any description or formalization of that language. Thus, for example, it is reqttired that a grammar of English “explain” the intuitive sense in which two sequences like “John played tennis” and “my friend likes music” are simi1ar.l) It is also required that it explain the intuitive sense in which a construction like ‘flying planes can be dangerous” is ambiguous, the different sense in which “Ii don’t like her cooking” is ambiguous, and the still different sense in which “the bill is large” is ambiguous.2) The development by Chomsky and Harris of the transformation level for grammatical theory was motivated to a considerable extent by the failure of the pre-existing levels to account satisfactorily for intuitive reactions of this kind?) If we now ask ourselves what intuitive responses to the language of poetry we might expect a theory of poetics to account for, there would seem to be at least these three: poetic language is more unified (or is unified in a different way) than the language of prose; i) See Noam Chomsky, Syottactic Strztc$wes ‘s-Gravenhage (1957) p. 86. 2) For these three types, see, respectively, N. Chomsky, “A Transformational Approach to Syntax’ ‘, Third Texas Conference om Problems of Liquistic Analysis in English Austin, Texas (1962) 148; N. Chomsky, “The Logical Basis of Linguistic Theory”, Proceedings of the Ni;rathInterna;iional CoPzgvessof Linguists, to appear; Jerold J. Katz and Jerry A. Fodor, “The Structure of a Semantic Theory”, Language, 39 (1963) 174 f. a) See Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, pp. 86ff. and Zellig S. Harris, “Cooccurrence and Transformation in Linguistic Structure”, Larguage 33 (1957) 337. The development of the semantic theory by Katz and IFodor, op. cit. (fn. 2), is in turn motivated by the failure of transformational grammars to account fol the ambiguity of such sentences as “the bill is large”.
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poetic language is more highly compressed than the language of prose; and poetic language is more novel, that is, it contains more deviations than the language of prose. I shall consider in this paper only the last-named of these properties: deviation. No attempt will be made ts develop a theory of poetics. I shall merely try to providlz a more satisfactory basis for the notion of deviation, in the sense that I shall try to indicate what it means theoretically to say of a poetic sequence that it is “deviant’ ‘. In general, deviation implies some regularity of pattern, the disruption of which constitutes the deviation. In order to account for deviation, one tims has to specify the pattern. Since language, especially poetic language, is structured on various levels, it turns out that there are various patterns that need to be specified. First, h+owever, it is necessa=r A**+certain .Ly +fi cu ~-.‘!a iUIc UUL types of deviation as being irrelevant to the concerns of our central problem, which is that of explicating certain aspects of poetic language. To be eliminated would be *all pathologically conditioned deviations, where these would range from the physiologically conditioned (phonetic) deviations induced by cleft palate, laryngectcmy, etc. to the more general kinnds of linguistic deviation associated with the various types of aphasia. Deviations of such kinds, inasmuch as they are automatically conditioned, and thus dc not represent the free choice of t.he speaker, can obviously haT,-ono bearing on the poetic function of deviation. Closer to our central co ern would be what that is, psycholoRiffaterre has called tics of an author’s spee gically conditioned sequences that compulsorily recur in situations that bear some resemblance to each other?) Finally, such phenomena as slips of the tongue and nonce-blends which, while not a.utomatic, are not the result of intent, may also be eliminated from considerat ion, The deviations that are significant in poetry, as in any other medium, are those made in a context where choice is possible, since it is only sluch deviations that provile any information. But even il!n respect to such, significant, deviations, it is necessary to make certain distinctions. Thus, we must snake a fundamental distinction .4) Michael Riffaterre, “Stylistic Context”, Word 16 (1960) 212; deviations similar to rthe type described above are deemed irrelevant (for semantk analysis1 !.qr Paul Ziff, on the basis of the principle which he calls “convent ionality ;iemaMiic Analysis, Ithaca, N.Y. (1960) pp. 54ff.
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between those deviations produced against the background of language and those Iproduced against the conventions of the poem as a literary genre, Deviations of the latter sort take many forms, as there are many conventions. Thus, the meter may be deviated from, in the form of metrical inversions, “sprung rhythm,” etc.; a form may be deviateld from, as in Meredith’s sixteen-line sonnets; a rhyme-scheme may be deviated from, in the form of false or near rhymes; one may deviate from the convention of beginning the lines ings does consistently; of a poem with capital letters, as e. e. c y a certain “poetic” the convention that a poem should diction may be deviated from, by the inclusion of dialectal or commonplace expressions.5) The study of deviations such as those mentioned above is interesting, but it is ultimately not the proper concern of linguists; it devolves rather upon students of literary form to investigate artd to point out the significance of such cartonicai’ deviations. In the case of canonical deviation, by which I mean deviation against the conventions of the art, the fact that a given form is deviant is not difficult to perceive. More important than this, hciwever, is the fact that such deviations are not difficult to establish. Since the canons of literary discourse are rather well-defined, one can “explain” the fact of a deviation by simple reference to the canon that has been violated. Although the authority of these canon:; varies from epoch to epoch, the canons themselves are always1 present. The lcritical terms “classical”, “romantic”, “decadent”, etc. attest not merely to the degree to which the canons of an art form are observed, but also, implicitly, to the existence of the canons. 6) If we turn now to deviations within the framework of the language itself, we find a somewhal: different and, for explanatory purposes, less ::atisfactory state of affairs. Unlike what is provided by the c:no 1s of literary forms, the language would seem to offer no clearcut model against which to measure deviation. This is true despite the fact that various standards have been proposed, I shall now -5) Cf. Iv&n Fbnagy, “Communication in Poetry”, Wo9d 17 (196 1) 204ff. 6) I am not suggesting that critical terms like “romanticism”,
etc. reflect merely the degree of adherence to or deviation from the conventional aspects of a work of art. Such terms can of course also be used as a function of subject matter, tone, and various other factors,
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take up some of these proposals and try to show in what way they are inadequate, One strong candidate for this standard has been the notion of the noms of the language. In the usual linguistic interpretation of this view, the norms correspond to what one more or less expects to encounter at various places in the linguistic chain, where these norms are built into our memories on the basis of our experience with the language.?) Since by far the great bulk of our linguistic experience is with the prosaic or non-poetic language, the norms are those conditioned by what is often referred to as the “casual” or “ordinary*’ language. One can then attempt to render this subjective conception of norms more explicit, by conducting statistical analyses on samples of the language, where such samples are selected with a view toward representing this neutral, prosaic, or “ordinary” usage. Such statistical surveys can then be made to yield information on the rank-orders of various linguistic units such as phonemes (or lette-rs) or words. Beyond this, matrices of transitional probabilities can in theory be worked out on the basis of a sample, which will show, given one, two, or more-phoneme or -word environments, what d:he probabilities are of any other phoneme or word occurring in that environment. Comparison of the rank-orders of words occnk-ring in poetry with the rank-orders of words occurring in the sample may then be expected to reveal something of poetic diction, and deviation may be rationalized by co paring a given sequence in poetry with the transitional probabilities arrived at by analyzing the sample corpus. The preceding discussion can perhaps be epitomized by quoting Bernard Bloch’s definition: “The style of a discourse is the message carried by the frequency-distributions and transitional probabilities of its linguistic features, especially as they differ from those of the same features in the language as a whole?) The discussion above has perhaps made it appear that the notion of norms construed statistically has a certain @ma fncie plausibility. Statistical norms would seem capable of providing a means for confirming or infirming our predictions about linguistic elements, -7) !GeeC. E. Shannon, “Prediction and Entropy of Printed Engljsh”, Bell System Techkal Jouwzal, 30 ( 195 1) 54. 8) ]&mard Bloch, “Linguistic Structure and Linguistic Analysis”, Re@+,t oftheFourthAnnual Row.& Table Meetitig on Linguistics and Language Teaching, Washington, D.C. (1953) 42.
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and in this way explicate deviation. But to this statistical conception of norms various objections have been raised. Thus, Juilland has objected that it is impossible to establish in quantitative terms the precise boundary between what is normal and what is deviant?) More recently, Rjiffaterre has similarly rejected the notion of statistical norms, adding that, in fact, linguistic norms are not only difficult to obtain, thus concurring with Juilland’s point, but that even if they could be obtained they would be irrelevant ‘- this because readers base their reactions not on this “ideal norm, but on their individual concepts of what is the accepted norm . . .” He goes on to say, “These rnultiple norms are given some common traits by normative grammar”. 10) However, even the norms of normative gK3IIimX r (by w’hich If take it is meant sanctioned, as opposed to statistical norms) are found wanting by Riffaterre, who then introduces his own conception, that of the context as nom+) This general conception of the context as norm is elaborated by Riffaterre in a later article, in which he develops a distinction between the micro- and the macrocontext.12) The low-predictable items that produce stylistic effects (deviation) thus produce these effects in a micro- or macrocontext, the stylistic effect consisting of the two necessary parts con,fextand the item that contmsts in the context. As examples of stylistic effects produced in microcontext, Riffaterre gives the phrase ok~ure dart& of Corneihe and the line of Emily Dickinson or fame erect her siteless citadel, where the sequences fame erect and siteless citadel are cited as comprising stylistic effects produced in microcontext: i.e., erect contrasts in the context fame, and citadel contrasts in the context siteless?) The macrocontext, in Riff’aterre’s exposition, is constituted by that part of the text that precedes the stylistic device or devices, and in respect to which the stylistic devices may be modified; or as Riffaterre has it, “the (macro-) context begins at the point where the reader perceives the existence of any continuous pattern”?) Alphonse G. Juilland, review of Charles Brunea.u, L’t$oque rhliste; pYemit?ye partie : Fin du rommtisme et Pamasse, Larrgruage30 ( 1954) 3 18f., fn. 5. lo) Wchael Riffaterre, “Criteria for Style Analysis”, ‘Word 15 (1959) 167ff. 9 Ibid., pp. 169ff. 12) Riffaterre, “Stylistic Context”, Wuvd 16 (1960) 207-2 18. 13j Ibid., pp. 2lof. m 369 1.4) x2,, y- L.&d.
9j
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Riffaterre-s
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E
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substitution of context for statistical ;;orms is a nloteworthy attempt to replace something less patent by something more patent and, as such, it merits serious consideration. As I shall tl:y to show, however, the n.otion of microcontext is invalid and that of the macrocontext, while valid, is limited. -4ccording to the view of norms that we have been discussing, a gi\ en linguistic element produces a stylistic effect because its occurrence has zero or near-zero probability of occurring where it doe?. We say that its occurrence is unpredictable or scarcelypredictable in that environment. The problem is to account for this low predictability. It cannot be said that the microcontext accounts for this fact in anv wav. All that one can say of an item and a microcontext is th& the”item occws in the particular microcontext. But in saying this, one is merely making an observation - nothing is explained thereby. That is, it is otiose to say that the item is unpredictable in the particular microcontext if by microcontext wtl mean the actually 0ccurrin.g tokens that make up that context. A corollary of this criticism is that we are not even entitled to label an item a “contrast” if what is given as the rationalization for the contrast is the microcontext alone. The whole notion of predictability is based on expectations, where thclse expectations are in turn based on experience. This experience t results in the establishment of certain implicit models, patterns, norms, or some similar standard, and a deviation is then interpretable against that background. But an actually occurring linguistic element does not constitute such a standaid. The inadequacy of the microcontext as a means of explaining the stylistic effect may perhaps be further indicated by a short discu:Vsion of the macrocontext. The latter does serve to set up expectations. Thus, the repeated use of a certain, say the favorite, sentence type would set up an expectation, and this expectation would be defeated by the subsequent occurrence of a different sentence type, and thus produce a stylistic effect by deviation. Or the use of an archaism would produce the same effect in a text running for some time in standard, non-archaic language. In the same way, the use of familiar or colloquial expressions in a text which had been proceeding in literary language w-guld produce a similar effect?) In such cases it is to be noted that the macro-G) Ibid., pp. 215, 213.
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1 context functions so as’ to build up short-range norms. On the basis of these norms the reader makes predictions, and it is the frustration of these predictions that accounts for the stylistic effect. It does not seem to me, however, that any such rationalization can be given for the microcontext as Riffaterre describes it. The type of sequence that Riffaterre cites by way of illustrating deviation in microcontext is certainly characteristic of a good deal of poetic language. If the microcontext cannot be employed to serve as the disrupted pattern (inasmuch as it does not constitute a pattern), can we expect statistical procedures to provide us with some such system of norms? We Should notice, first of all, that effects produced in macrocontext are essentially effects produced through deviation from statis5cally ccnditioned expectations. It seems to me, however, and here I aimin agreement with Juilland and Riffaterre, that statistical norms cannot be used to explain deviations of the other sort, those, that is, that occur without reference to a set of expectations built up in the text itself, those, namely, for which Riffaterre invokes the microcontext. The difficulty here is not a theoretical one; it is simply that statistical norms in the area of syntax are impracticable. A language contains tens of thousands of words and infinite possibilities for combining these words in sentences. Obtaining statistics on transitional probabilities in syntax is thus hardly possible.16) There is no such diffic lty in determining frequencies of occurrence, since this involb . mere 16) In making a cursory survey of textual analysis from the statistical point of view, one finds that the question of syntax is not really tackled. When a syntactically significant element like the word is selected for investigation, the statistics are employed in establishing rank-orders; when, on the other hand, the study is one of transitional probabilities, then the unit is the phoneme or letter. This is no more than might be expected. When we consider that a language with a vocabulary of just 1 000 words, permitting syntactic sequences of just 3 places, would comprise 1 000 000 000 different sequences (I 000 a), we are in a position to see the difficullties attending on any such project. Of course, no natural language realizes all the theoretically possible combinations of sts elements but, even allowing for restrictions, the number of combinations is staggering. If we extrapolate from 1 000 3 to what Tvewould need in order to obtain statistical norms for English syntax, we see the impracticability of any such project. For a good general discussion of statistics and style, see Warren Plath, “Mathematical Linguistics”, Tvends in Eumpem and Americm Linglaistics rgJo-rgdo Utrecht (196 1) edited by Christine Mohrmann, Alf Sommerfelt and Joshua Whatmough, pp. 27-30.
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counting of occurrences, and significant results thus can be, and have been, achieved on the basis of reasonable samples. It might also be feasible to conduct statistical studies on broad morpheme -class co-occurrences. If we limited ourselves to some ten or twelve classes (Noun, Verb, etc.), we might, even though the calculations would be considerably more complex, achieve some worthwhile results on the probabilities of various sentence types, or even on their transitional probabilities.17) But when we are interested in making st.atistical inferences about the transitional probabilities of individual words - and if we are approaching the problem from the point of view of poetic deviation, we would need to do this - then the task becomes impracticable. If we were to go ahead and assign probabilities on the basis of an inadequate sample base, we would give rise to a variety of inaccurracies. The one that chiefly concerns us is that one in which a sequence is assigned a probability of zero. When such an assignment is made on the basis of an inadequate sample (and, as I have tried to indicate, samples of word-transition almost have to be inadequate), a “zero” sequence may be one which intuitively may seem quite undeviant Jits zero assignment being due to inadequacy of the sample. Conversely, a sequence may strike us as being deviant, but we could then not be sure whether the statistical confirmation (or disconfirmation) of our reaction reflected the real state of linguistic i.e., would continue to obtain evin if the statistics were affairs :arried out on a significant sample - or U’ ether it was due merely to an accident of the sample?) For these reasons, as well as for others, it would be highly desirable if we could interpret deviation not in respect to statistical norms but, rather, in respect to some kind of linguistically deMminate norms. In speaking of determinate deviation, as opposed to -17) Cf. Plath, OP. cit., p. 30; see also Thomas A. Sebeok, “Notes on the Digital Calculator as a Tool for Analyzing Literary Information”, J’oetics, ‘s-Gravenhage (196 l), p. 588. 18) On the question of proba.bility, Chomsky takes an even stronger position than the one discussed here. According to him, “For any sentence at all, probabilitv is so low that it can be regarded as zero” ; in Discussion following his piper, “ A Transformational Approach to Syntax”, p. 180. Thus, for Chomsky, the question is not whether it is possible to gather a significant body of statistics; it is simply that the probability of a sequence stands in no signif icant relation to its grammaticality.
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statistical deviation, I have in mind that kind of deviation which takes place against a background where all the possible elements of a domtin and all the Ijossible arrangements of the elements in that domain are given in advance, and where deviation may therefore be defined as any occurrence which is not represented as being in that domain. If we look to langu(age descriptions or grammars, we find that we have just such a situation. The phonemes of a language, for example, are given by the description or grammar of that language. Whether the occurrence of a given phoneme is a deviation can thus be determined univocally by checking that occurrence against the inventory of phonemes given by the description. Thus the description of English tellsus that the phonemes /t, 1, e/ occur in English, whereas phonemes of the shape /x, 9, fi/ do not. Further, the phonotactic description of English tells us that, while clusters such as /tr-, pl-, -ept, -rldz/ occur, those of the shape /sr-, tl-, -etp, -mldz/ do not. The description of a language therefore enables us to specify whether or not a given phoneme or phoneme cluster is deviant - and this not in any statistical sense, but in a determinate sense. Thus, it has been pointed out by Sapir that in Nootka the phonology of the ordinary language (i.e., that part of the language for which there is a description) is deviated from, in that the phonemes /q/ and /l/, which are not included in the Nootka phoneme inventory, are employed In certain types of songs. Further, in the mourning songs of the Southern Paiute, the phoneme /l/ occurs, a phoneme which does not occur in the ordinary language?) Most cases of deviation in poetry occur not in the domain of phonology, however, but in that of syntax. If we now look for a syntactic counterpart to the phoaological description, for some framework, that is, against which we could univocally consider a syntactic sequence as deviant or as not deviant, we can find such a counterpart in the syntactic portion of ;a generative grammar. Theoretically, such a grammar generates every graminatical sequence in the language and is constrained against generating any non-grammatical sequence, Any sequence which lies beyond the grammar’s generative capacity can thus be said to be deviant. Since, by definition, such sequences 29) Edward
Sapir, “A.bnormal Types of Speech in Nootka”, in Selected ed. by David G. Mandeibaum, Berkeley, Calif. (1949) p. 188.
Writhgs of Edward Sapiv in Language, Culture avadPersonal&
DEVIATION
are also ungrammatical,
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it would appear that deviation and ungrammaticalne:; are the same thing. This is in fact the case. But if we speak of deviations occz~rring in poetry, then a distinction may be drawn. All deviations, poetic or otherwise, are ungrammatical, and all ungrammatical sequences are deviant. But not all ungrammatical sequences are poetica& deviant. A complete discussion of this question lies beyond the scope of P.his paper, but we may simply say here that poetic deviation is n some sense controlled. Sometimes this control manifests itself in keeping the deviation from departing too drastically from the grammar; at other times it he form of developing a sympathetic matrix for the deviation within the poem itself. These and other aspects of poetic deviation distinguish it from ungrammaticalness toat court. The assertion that poetic deviation is ungrammatical may seem surprising. But if poets indeed exploit the language, it should not be surprising that it sometimes gives. Therefore, the charge sometimes made that linguistic analysis of style reduces the question to a kind of countergrammar is not really embarrassing?*) If the linguistic analysis of poetry discloses the fact that characteristic sequences, which we apprehend as deviant, lie beyond the limits of the grammar, we should welcome such a result as a structural confirmation of our intuitions. Moreover, deviation from the grammar is not the only device for producing stylistic effects. ‘or example, the type of deviatron described by Riffaterre as occurri g in macrocontext can very well produce a stylistic effect without its being countergrammatical. In particular, our criterion does not rule out the possibility that a sequence which is grammatically quite banal mav function in a particular context so as to be deviant and thus produce a stylistic effect. The point is that there are at least two types of deviation: one type is deviant in respect to the text in which it occurs; the other type is deviant in respect to the language at large, and it is for the rationalization of the latter type that 1 am suggesting the grammar be used instead of statistical inference. If we ciel:ide to use non-generability as a criterion for deviation, it does not fellow that we are limited to mere yes-or-no answers. By comparing the number and types of grammatical rules violated by -20) See Red Wellek’s Closing Statement in St@ in Lnngzrage, d. by Thomas A. Sebeok, New York (1960) p. 417; cf. also Juilland, op. cit., pp. 318ff.
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different deviant forms, we can also say something about the kind or degree of deviation displayed by those formszx) We can in fact use this facility to make distinctions between poetic sequences that seem to be deviant in different ways. It might be possible, that is, that use of the grammar might provide us not merely with the means to determine univocally whether a given sequence was ceviant or not, but also to clarify the way in which deviant sequendes differed from each other. Let us assume that our criterion of nongenerability would correctly mark as deviant, for example, the following lines of poetry: S/&MS in the mind of heaven God There could I
marvel
my
. . .
(Ezra Pound, Canto LI)
birthday away
. . .
(Dylan Thomas, poem z’nOctober) What words can s!ra@e this deaf moodight?
(Hart Crane, Voyages V) We would still be interested in seeing whether there were not some way in which we could rationalize our intuitive responses to these three lines as being deviant in different ways or in different degrees. One way to account for these differences would be to ask what we would have to do to grammar in order that it would generate these sequences. Or, to put the question in a different way, can we localize the area of the grammar that breaks down in the attempt to generate these sequences? 22) Comparing the results might then serve to throw some light on our intuitive reactions, At this point it seems advisable to give a very brief sketch of some of the rules of a generative grammar, in order to provide a basis for the following discussion. A generative grammar comprises three basic types of rules: p’hrase structure or constituent structure rules, transformation rules, and rules (morphophonemic and otherwise) for converting into pronounceable sentences the terminal strings obtained by applying the phrase structure and transflormation rules. Some transformation rules are obligatory, others are optional. The place and function of these various rules in the grammar may 21) See N. Chomsky, “Some Methodological Remarks on Generative Grammar”, Word 17 ( I 96 i ) 236ff. 22) For a discussion of this question, see my “Poetry and Grammaticalnew”, Proceedings of th,~Ninth Internationa,l Congress of Linguists, to appear.
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perhapts best be illustrated by deriving a sample sentence. Let us assume that we wish to generate the sentence: tke titan placed a hook on the shelf. The following would be the phrase structure rules employed in deriving this sentence: (it should be borne in mind that these rules represent only a selection from the full set.) 23)
(1) s
+ NP + VP (Adv)
(5) T/’ 6) vt
-+ V, --+ @ace
(2) VP (Adv) + VP + Adv -+ ,426x + VP/j (3) VP + V + NP2 (4) VP,
(7) Aux (8) Adv
(9j (10) (11) (12) (13) (14)
i’v’P2 T NC NPI T Nh
-3- dPast --+1 12 the -_,
Ii-
+
shelf
NC
-+a --+ book -+w-Nh -+ the -+ man
From the above derivation, structure diagram :
we obtain
the following phrase
T’
If WE-’ should wish to form the interrogative or the passive of this sentence, we would apply the appropriate (optional) transfor23) I have
here followed, with some modifications, the version of generative grammar given by Chomsky in “A Transformational Approach to Syntax”.
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mation; if, however, we wish merely the sample sentence given above, we would reverse the positions of Past and $&~a, bgr means of an obligatory transformation, and then, by the morp &es, the proper allormorph of Past, in this case /-t/, would be selected, thus givingthe kernel sentence the mm placed a book on the shelf.
’
framework of generative grammar given above, we may now consider our three poetic sequences. We find, in attempting to gyPcrate Found’s line, Shines in the mind of heaven God, that the grammar fails absolutely: the line violates the very first rule in the grammar, S -+ NP + VP (Adv). This failure could of course be redressed, either by including as an alternative expansion of S: VP (A&J) +- NP, or by” including a transformaltion on S -+ NP + VP (Adv) to produce the same-result. But either one of these two alternatives would result in generating not only Pound’s sequence, but also a great many other sequences of the same form, say, *works in the factory John. Since we have no incentive for generating such additional sentences, since, in fact, there are obvious reasons for not generating them, the new rule would have to be constrained to the generation of Pound’s sequence alone. The new rule would then be 11 341 -1 t,l-7 /Y/Ib/l,- C3-d CL,.*m _h - the1 at all. 4 ') Within
cm+deCLdy
the
&+&%
IPUb
a.llU
CllU3
11u
1
In setting about to generate Thomas’ line There co&d I marveZ my birthday away, we find that the grammar does not f#ail quite so absolutely. As the first stage in the derivation, we would need to obtain the kernel sentence I could marvel my birthday away there which, with optional permutation transformations, would yield Thomas’ sentence. We find that we can in this case go through the grammar purposefully until we come to expanding the Verb, at which point our further efforts would be blocked, since marveZ is an intransitive verb. Here, again, we could either shift marveZ to the class of transitive verbs, an unsatisfactory adjustment, since marvel ~mfcl then be free to co--occur with all objects, or we lcould add a rule permitting intransi’tive verbs to take objects, an even more unsatisfactory recourse. 25) 24) This question is discussed in my Linguistic Shztctums in Poetry, ‘s-Gravenhage (1962) p. 26. 25) Here too an alternative would be to adopt (either) one of the suggested adjustments, but then so to constrain the new rule that it would generate only Tlmnas’ sequence and no others. This course is hardly advisable, since,
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LANGUAGE
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If we now examine Hart Crane’s line from the same point of view, we find that the results are still different. The grammar will certainly generate strings of the general form What words can strun&e tk deaf lPtoonlight ; compare, for example, What acts can redeem this initiaL crbne. But while the grammar will generate strings of this form in general, it will nlDt generate the particular sequence occurring in Crane’s poem. If we look for the place where the grammar fails in the present case, it turns out that it is in the area ,of lexicon (or at least in that portion of the grammar where the rules arc: most sensitive to lexical co-occurrence). While the general classes of NOW, Verb, Adjective, etc. can be arranged to give sentencts of the general form of Crane’s sentence, these classes are analyzed into s*ubclasses further on in the grammar, and in the lexicon, such that, because of restrictions on co-occurrability, Crane’s sentence could not be generated. The failure in the case of Crane’s sentence thus comes still lower in the grammar than do the failures for our other two poetic sequences. Let us consider only the collocation strangle this . . . moonlight. In attempting to generate this sequence, we would be able to go further than in generating Thomas’ sequence, in that we could expand Vt as strangle, and it would be only later, when it was a question of expanding the particular subcategory of Vt to which strangle belongs, say Vti, that the gramma] would fail, since ‘c/‘tiwould be corlstrained by a rule to expansion only in the environment of a particular subclass of N, say l&j, a subclass to which moonlight does not belong?) The analysis given abcve of the three lines of poetry makes clear how the criterion of non-generability provides a determinate measure for ascertaining whether a given sequence is deviant or not. It also makes clear that use of the grammar makes inferences to be corxistent, we would be forced to devise similar
nd hoc rules for a host of other sa:quences that occur in poetry. 26) Qrre should avoid the impulse to characterize this type of deviation as semantic in nature, rather than grammatical. The whole of grammar is a question of constraints on co-occurrability, and there is no obvious motivation for considering some of these constraints, say of word-order or agreement, as grammatL:al, and others as semantic. What are usually called “semantic” conditions on well-formedness differ from “grammatical” conditions only in that the former usually have a narrower range of applicability. Cf. R. B. Lees, “The Constituent Structure of Noun Phrases”, American Sfwech 36 (1961) 161, fn. 8.
SAMUEL
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deviant. I wish also to maintain that the results corre&ond with native-speaker intuitions about these sentences. In the first place, I k-,zk:tt t&+_ nllr Ml __-_-I __-- nc -__ that the three sentences deviate _--- int&innn from the grammar in different degrees. Moreover, I believe that, intuitively, Pound’s sentence is most drastically deviant, Thomas’ sentence is less so, and Crane’s is still less SO. A native-speaker, if asked to explain these intuitions, might say that Pound’s sentence employs an inadmissible word-order, that Thomas’ sentence misuses an intransitive verb, and that Crane’s sentence joins individual words incongruously, and that these several derelictions stand in a descending hierarchy of abuses. All of this is confirmed by confrontation with the grammar, which makes clear in a systematic way what is otherwise unsystematic.27) Hzcnter College,
New York, N.Y.
27) I do not mind saying that, under certain circumstances (charges of circularity notwithstanding), I .would be prepared to modify my intuitions somewhat, if comparison with the consequences of the gra,mmar seemed to make such a recourse necessary. It would not be the first time that a theory led one to do so.