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Criteria For a Model of Language
CRITERIA FOR A MODEL OF LANGUAGE FH.ANCIS
J.
WHITFIELD
University of California, Berkeley, California, U.S.A. Nicht der Sieg der Wissenschaft ist Das, was unser 19.
J ahrhundert auszeich net, sondern der Sieg der unssenschattlichen Methode iiber die Wissenschaft. - Der Wille zur M achi, 466.
Nietzsche's double-edged dictum, which may appropriately be recalled at this Congress, is well illustrated by the victory of a particular methodology that is the outstanding characteristic of nineteenth-century linguistic science. As Antoine Meillet most clearly pointed out, at the very foundation of the magnificent edifice of nineteenth-century linguistics lies the essentially arbitrary relationship between the two immediate constituents of the linguistic sign, the content and the expression; 'Les moyens dexpression n'ont avec les idees qu'une relation de fait, non une relation de nature et de necessite: rien ne saurait les rappeler a l'existence lorsqu'ils ne sont plus ... Si done deux langues presentent dans leurs formes grammaticales, leur syntaxe et leur vocabulaire un ensemble de concordances de detail, c'est que ces deux langues n'en font en realite qu'une .. .' [5, p. 15]. At a time when the structure of the linguistic sign is very much in dispute, it is not irrelevant to keep in mind this basis of the greatest triumphs that linguistic science has so far known. It is quite another question, however, whether comparative linguists drew the full consequences from this fundamental feature of the linguistic sign, or whether all the consequences that were drawn can now be accepted. Even over the last sentence quoted from Meillet there lies the shadow of a dangerous reductionism. To illustrate it, he offers the examples of Italian, French, Spanish, and Latin - which are not, of course, 'in reality', one language. Or, perhaps better to say, if our methods produce identical models for them, then our investigations have sacrificed vast areas of applicability, and it becomes worth while to consider whether the cost has been justified. Hans Arens, in his historical anthology of linguistic science, has schematized the progress of nineteenth-century linguistics in a series of pseudoequations: Linguistics = Historical Linguistics = Historical Indo-Germanic Linguistics = (we might add, following his own elaboration) Historical Phonology and Morphology of the Indo-Germanic Languages = Historical Phonology and Morphology of the Indo-Germanic Languages with almost exclusive reference to the expression-substance - that is to say, in its phonetic aspects [1, p. 338]. Each successive narrowing of the field of productive interest - each step away from the central concept of the linguistic sign - can be amply documented and demonstrated to be an impoverishment of linguistics, both internally and in its relations to other 577
578
LINGUISTICS
scientific and humane studies. As the universal attitudes and programs of a Wilhelm von Humboldt rapidly lose their influence, there develops - in the words of one of the participants in this Congress, Louis Hjelmslev - a comparative grammar that has the peculiar distinction of not being a grammar [3, p. 59]. Concentration on a restricted type of language and on certain favored features of expression within that type lead to a damaging parochialism with long-lasting consequences - as, for example, in the unfruitful cleavage of morphology and syntax, reflecting the relative autonomy of the 'word' in Greek and Latin. Concentration on the expression side of the linguistic sign leads to the neglect of the more specifically human elements in language and widens the chasm between linguistics and the humanities. Finally, concentration on the substance of the expression tends to disintegrate language into a mere collection of acts of speech, taken in their physical aspect alone, to be described as directly and economically as possible, without regard for their content. If we are able to see more clearly today this impoverishment of linguistics and reduction of its aims, it by no means follows that we have succeeded in eliminating all the causes. Deep-seated peculiarities of traditional linguistics not only persist but also are reenforced - as, for example, the concentration of attention on the expression-substance (and, indeed, on only one of the possible expression-substances) of language. Meanwhile, problems not amenable to treatment under the presuppositions of such a linguistics are swept under the rug or prematurely consigned to some no-man's land outside linguistics for unsystematic investigation. I do not mean such obviously complex problems as are invariably mentioned when the broadest possible applications of linguistics are being considered - questions of poetics and literary stylistics, for example. or artistic translation, or any of the many equally complex problems that do not involve the aesthetics of language. It is healthy for linguistics that increasing attention is being directed to such avenues of inquiry, even though linguistics in its present state may be ill prepared to do much about them. At least one may hope that these distant perspectives will serve to keep open lines of inquiry that a narrowly conceived linguistics might be led to block. But I am thinking rather of more homely problems, where it seems undoubtedly legitimate to look for the application of linguistics, more or less broadly conceived and more or less aided by other disciplines. The few examples that follow have been chosen, not as having anything novel about them, but, on the contrary, as being representative of questions constantly recurring in speculation about language and therefore likely to be of importance to the linguist when he is testing the appropriateness and adequacy of his theoretical constructs. A linguistic treatise by one of the world's greatest poets is more likely than not to be ignored even in a fairly detailed review of the history of linguistics; it seems to have been completely ignored even by his contempo-
WHITFIELD: Criteria for a Model of Language
579
raries. Yet, one of the principal questions to which Dante addresses himself in the De Vulgari Eloquentia - the possible relationships between a standard language and its dialects - can hardly be said to have received satisfactory treatment in the six and a half centuries since he proposed it. The inadequacy of linguistics to deal with the problem in conventional terms has recently received striking illustration in the debate concerning the rise of Modern Standard Polish - a debate already half a century old, which, in the last few years, has led some of its participants to radical reviews of basic linguistic concepts [2]. Yet the general importance of the question and the wealth of disposable data are obvious to anyone who considers the rise and standardization of all the vernaculars in modern Europe. The relevance to linguistics - as opposed, for example, to sociology or history - if it needed demonstration, has certainly received it in the Polish discussions, most particularly in the beautiful and important monograph by Zenon Klemensiewicz on the varieties of contemporary Polish [2, pp. 178-241J, which arose from those discussions and places them against a broad background of general linguistic theory. The specifically linguistic problem that is principally involved - the possibility of manifestation of a single pattern in a variety of regional and social, spoken and written, usages - turns out to require for its treatment a refined and universally applicable distinction of linguistic form and substance, such as conventional linguistics has not yet absorbed. Saussure's other distinction - between content and expression - comes into full play, when the development of a standard language takes place under the strong influence of another language, as exemplified by some of the relationships of Latin to the modern European vernaculars, or, as 'most recently pointed out by Vladimir Nabokov in a discussion of translations from Pushkin [6J, by a comparable relationship of French to Russian. A more exotic example of an essentially similar range of problems was encountered a few years ago by Paul Garvin in his work on Ascension Island towards the establishment of a standard Ponapean. Here, as in many other such instances, the matter of writing introduced further complications. To return once again to the Polish example, which has required the most careful reexamination of a large amount of written material, it is worth observing that investigators who started with what would appear to be simple, straightforward, practical aims have been led to theoretical considerations of the broadest general interest. In particular, their experience confirms the suspicion that a linguistic theory will be inadequate for many of our purposes if it assumes that the phonetic substance is the only 'real' expression-substance of language and that all other candidates must, in some sense, be derived from it and remain dependent on it. This view, which may fairly be described as still the predominant one among linguists and which is hotly defended whenever questioned, has most far-reaching consequences when it is incorporated in the foundations of a linguistic theory and thereby affects the form of a linguistic model. It has a
580
LINGUISTICS
venerable tradition. Aristotle, as is well known, identified the relationship of content to expression-in-speech with the relationship of the latter to expression-in-writing, and the De Interpretatione contains the locus classicus of that hypothesis. Given the restricted aims of comparative Indo-Germanic linguistics, the notion rendered positive service in clearing away irrelevancies from investigations which, by their very nature, had to be focused on the phonetic expression. The Romantic environment in which comparative linguistics developed no doubt had its effect as well. But clearly of more lasting importance has been the hope of maintaining for linguistics an anchor in a single, universal, and apparently immediately given material realitya hope that continues to be reenforced as new attempts are made at establishing universally valid linguistic categories on the bases of physical science. It will not be my purpose here to argue against this venerable tradition,
despite the difficulties which, as I have indicated, seem to follow from it. I would merely suggest that the assignment of any special primacy to the phonetic substance of language is at best a superfluous axiom for linguistics and that, if we include it among our assumptions, we run the grave risk of blocking important lines of inquiry. A linguistic model that allows for the possibility of more than one linguistic substance (in this case, expressionsubstance) therefore has the enormous advantage of not prejudging a question that we can afford to leave open. Such an allowance both presupposes an anterior distinction between linguistic form and linguistic substance and helps us to establish natural and universally applicable boundaries between the two - that is, to isolate those relationships which will be admitted in the theory as constituents of purely formal definitions. This approach leaves open the possibility that the two commonly encountered expression-substances - those of speech and writing - may in particular instances turn out to be isomorphic. It also foresees the possibility that they may not and that more than one form of the expression may be in semantic relationship to a single content. As Louis Hjelmslev has pointed out, such a view finds correspondence in, and gives precision to, the intuitive identification of, say, written English and spoken English, where unity can be maintained in the content although the conventional written form is not a mere mapping of the spoken form on a graphic substance. The history of individual languages will always be an important concern of the humanities, which must evaluate the linguistic documents of human expression and which must therefore have under control both philological tools for the understanding of texts and criteria for interesting comparison and judgment of the means of expression available at different times - the frames of possibility within which given texts make their appearance. If this sounds like a truism, one has only to consider the relationship - or, better to say, absence thereof - between the linguistic and literary parts of typical
WHITFIELD: Criteria for a Model of Language
581
programs of graduate study in our universities. Where historical linguistics, continuing the main tradition of the last century, is reduced to a review of the evidence for genetic relationships between languages, the situation is understandable enough. The predominantly anecdotal and material character of such studies is enough to eliminate any possible contact with the rest of the program. Generations of English students sweat their way uncomprehendingly through the prescribed course of Gothic until a merciful Department eliminates the requirement - often salving its conscience by substituting a Latin reading examination. The fact that study of a language as a tool has thus replaced what was no doubt originally intended as an immanent study of language usually escapes attention and further testifies to the divorce between linguistics and literary research. Structural linguistics - especially in recent years - has been developing in a much more propitious atmosphere so far as concerns its application to historical humanistic studies. It has become increasingly clear that "synchronic" and" descriptive" are not to be identified with "static" and that the once imagined cleft between descriptive and historical linguistics can be successfully bridged to the enrichment of both. From this point of view, variation within a single linguistic state - etat de langue - can be given adequate recognition, and linguistic history becomes something quite different from anecdotal comparison of essentially unrelated systems. Place can also be found for the phenomena of linguistic convergence and those other non-genetic relationships between languages with which the older comparativism and a narrowly conceived descriptivism were helpless to deal. New vistas are being opened on a truly explicative historical and comparative linguistics - one that can relate the observed phenomena to a general scheme of possibilities and thereby even develop predictive powers. Here again, a necessary condition seems to be a linguistic model so articulated as to reveal universally present and therefore comparable strata in language. Thus, these strata are indeed produced, in a sense, by our method of inquiry - "on dirait que c'est Ie point de vue qui cree l'objet ", says Saussure [7, p. 23J - but by a method independent of contingent, arbitrary relationships found in any single language or language type. With the superior explicative power of such a model, it becomes possible to distinguish between shifts of formal pattern and shifts of substance and to base a rational history of linguistic change on the interactions of the two. Kurylowiczs work on the Germanic consonant shifts [4 J provides an especially interesting example of the fruitfulness of this approach, casting, as it does, new light on a classic problem of comparative linguistics, in the favored domain of traditional comparativism - the expression-substance. But on both sides of the linguistic sign - in the content as well as in the expression - the distinction between a formal, systematic pattern and a variety of usages in which the pattern is manifested proves its worth in explicating both the conservative and dynamic elements of language and describing their interplay. Linguistic
582
LINGUISTICS
history so conceived - especially as it addresses itself to the content side of language - has the brightest prospects of regaining a meaningful position within the humanities while strengthening its scientific foundations. I have been concerned in these remarks with some questions of adequacy of linguistic theory - adequacy as tested by a small sample set of possible applications of linguistics. I have assumed that it is legitimate to look to linguistics for the solution - or, at least, for the main contribution to the solution - of the problems I have touched upon, problems of continuing and weighty import in the humanities. I hope I have made clear my view that the divorce of linguistics from the humanities - although a matter of mounting concern to linguists as well as non-linguists - is far from being the result of recent trends in linguistics. On the contrary, as I tried to suggest in my beginning remarks, it is in large measure traceable to a certain restricted methodology whose triumph was the outstanding characteristic of linguistic science in the last century. To the extent that modern linguistics has sought to regain lost ground by broadening its fundamental concepts, to study language in more than its material expression, and to study even its material expression under more than its genetic aspect, it has moved toward renewed contact with other branches of the humanities.' In so far as that renewed contact of which I speak has brought again to the attention of linguists long neglected aspects of the linguistic sign, their own immediate study of language, viewed in and for itself, has been demonstrably enriched. This last point has, I hope, received some little illustration in the examples I have offered. In each instance, what I have tried to bring to the fore is the confrontation of variety and unity at certain points within linguistic phenomena - variety of usages, extending over both space and time, as opposed to a single, unifying pattern; variety of substances in the linguistic expression as contrasted with unity of distributionally defined form; variety of expression form in the face of a single content (for which examples are to be sought not merely in the differing written and spoken forms of individual languages, but also in the several language members of a single linguistic league). In my analyses of these examples, it will have been obvious how completely indebted I have been to Saussure's distinctions between content and expression, and linguistic form and linguistic substance, and to the development that those distinctions have received in glossematic theory. My purpose has not been, however, to argue in support of a particular linguistic theory but to urge that any adequate theory must find place for the type of interplay of linguistic strata that I have been discussing. lAnd here we may profitably recall that it was a linguist - and one of the greatest - who said, in effect, that linguistics is too important to be left to the linguists alone; again I quote Saussure: "Plus evidente encore est I'irnportance de la linguistique pour la culture generale: ... II serait inadmissible que son etude restat l'affaire de quelques specialistes .. ,''' [7, p. 21].
J
WHITFIELD: Criteria for a Model of Language
583
Taking "model" in the very simple sense of a schematic representation designed to set in relief important structural relationships within the represented object, I conclude that an adequate model of a language will be prominently articulated at such points of interplay between variety and unity and that the articulation we seek must be a universally applicable one, which alone can provide a rational basis of comparison between languages and thereby reveal the variety within unity that is human language itself. REFERENCES
[1] ARENS, H. Sprachwissenschajt. Orbis Academicus 1/6. Miinchen, 1955. [2] BUDZYK, K., ed. Pochodzenie polskiego jpyka literackiego. Studia staropolskie III. Wroclaw, 1956. [3] HJELMSLEV, L. La Categoric des cas, I. Acta [utlandica, Aarsskrijt tor Aarhus Universitet, Vol. 7 (1935). [4] KURYLOWICZ, J. Le Sens des mutations consonantiques. Lingua, Vol. I, pp. 77-8,'j.
[5] MEILLET, A. Introduction a l'etwde des langues indo-europeennes. Paris, 1937. [6] NABOKOV, V. The Servile Path. On Translation, R. A. Brower, ed., Cambridge. Massachusetts, 1959, pp. 97-110. [7] SAUSSURE, F. DE. Cours de linguistique generale 3 , Paris, 1949.
J.
WHITFIELD
University of California, Berkeley, California, U.S.A. Nicht der Sieg der Wissenschaft ist Das, was unser 19.
J ahrhundert auszeich net, sondern der Sieg der unssenschattlichen Methode iiber die Wissenschaft. - Der Wille zur M achi, 466.
Nietzsche's double-edged dictum, which may appropriately be recalled at this Congress, is well illustrated by the victory of a particular methodology that is the outstanding characteristic of nineteenth-century linguistic science. As Antoine Meillet most clearly pointed out, at the very foundation of the magnificent edifice of nineteenth-century linguistics lies the essentially arbitrary relationship between the two immediate constituents of the linguistic sign, the content and the expression; 'Les moyens dexpression n'ont avec les idees qu'une relation de fait, non une relation de nature et de necessite: rien ne saurait les rappeler a l'existence lorsqu'ils ne sont plus ... Si done deux langues presentent dans leurs formes grammaticales, leur syntaxe et leur vocabulaire un ensemble de concordances de detail, c'est que ces deux langues n'en font en realite qu'une .. .' [5, p. 15]. At a time when the structure of the linguistic sign is very much in dispute, it is not irrelevant to keep in mind this basis of the greatest triumphs that linguistic science has so far known. It is quite another question, however, whether comparative linguists drew the full consequences from this fundamental feature of the linguistic sign, or whether all the consequences that were drawn can now be accepted. Even over the last sentence quoted from Meillet there lies the shadow of a dangerous reductionism. To illustrate it, he offers the examples of Italian, French, Spanish, and Latin - which are not, of course, 'in reality', one language. Or, perhaps better to say, if our methods produce identical models for them, then our investigations have sacrificed vast areas of applicability, and it becomes worth while to consider whether the cost has been justified. Hans Arens, in his historical anthology of linguistic science, has schematized the progress of nineteenth-century linguistics in a series of pseudoequations: Linguistics = Historical Linguistics = Historical Indo-Germanic Linguistics = (we might add, following his own elaboration) Historical Phonology and Morphology of the Indo-Germanic Languages = Historical Phonology and Morphology of the Indo-Germanic Languages with almost exclusive reference to the expression-substance - that is to say, in its phonetic aspects [1, p. 338]. Each successive narrowing of the field of productive interest - each step away from the central concept of the linguistic sign - can be amply documented and demonstrated to be an impoverishment of linguistics, both internally and in its relations to other 577
578
LINGUISTICS
scientific and humane studies. As the universal attitudes and programs of a Wilhelm von Humboldt rapidly lose their influence, there develops - in the words of one of the participants in this Congress, Louis Hjelmslev - a comparative grammar that has the peculiar distinction of not being a grammar [3, p. 59]. Concentration on a restricted type of language and on certain favored features of expression within that type lead to a damaging parochialism with long-lasting consequences - as, for example, in the unfruitful cleavage of morphology and syntax, reflecting the relative autonomy of the 'word' in Greek and Latin. Concentration on the expression side of the linguistic sign leads to the neglect of the more specifically human elements in language and widens the chasm between linguistics and the humanities. Finally, concentration on the substance of the expression tends to disintegrate language into a mere collection of acts of speech, taken in their physical aspect alone, to be described as directly and economically as possible, without regard for their content. If we are able to see more clearly today this impoverishment of linguistics and reduction of its aims, it by no means follows that we have succeeded in eliminating all the causes. Deep-seated peculiarities of traditional linguistics not only persist but also are reenforced - as, for example, the concentration of attention on the expression-substance (and, indeed, on only one of the possible expression-substances) of language. Meanwhile, problems not amenable to treatment under the presuppositions of such a linguistics are swept under the rug or prematurely consigned to some no-man's land outside linguistics for unsystematic investigation. I do not mean such obviously complex problems as are invariably mentioned when the broadest possible applications of linguistics are being considered - questions of poetics and literary stylistics, for example. or artistic translation, or any of the many equally complex problems that do not involve the aesthetics of language. It is healthy for linguistics that increasing attention is being directed to such avenues of inquiry, even though linguistics in its present state may be ill prepared to do much about them. At least one may hope that these distant perspectives will serve to keep open lines of inquiry that a narrowly conceived linguistics might be led to block. But I am thinking rather of more homely problems, where it seems undoubtedly legitimate to look for the application of linguistics, more or less broadly conceived and more or less aided by other disciplines. The few examples that follow have been chosen, not as having anything novel about them, but, on the contrary, as being representative of questions constantly recurring in speculation about language and therefore likely to be of importance to the linguist when he is testing the appropriateness and adequacy of his theoretical constructs. A linguistic treatise by one of the world's greatest poets is more likely than not to be ignored even in a fairly detailed review of the history of linguistics; it seems to have been completely ignored even by his contempo-
WHITFIELD: Criteria for a Model of Language
579
raries. Yet, one of the principal questions to which Dante addresses himself in the De Vulgari Eloquentia - the possible relationships between a standard language and its dialects - can hardly be said to have received satisfactory treatment in the six and a half centuries since he proposed it. The inadequacy of linguistics to deal with the problem in conventional terms has recently received striking illustration in the debate concerning the rise of Modern Standard Polish - a debate already half a century old, which, in the last few years, has led some of its participants to radical reviews of basic linguistic concepts [2]. Yet the general importance of the question and the wealth of disposable data are obvious to anyone who considers the rise and standardization of all the vernaculars in modern Europe. The relevance to linguistics - as opposed, for example, to sociology or history - if it needed demonstration, has certainly received it in the Polish discussions, most particularly in the beautiful and important monograph by Zenon Klemensiewicz on the varieties of contemporary Polish [2, pp. 178-241J, which arose from those discussions and places them against a broad background of general linguistic theory. The specifically linguistic problem that is principally involved - the possibility of manifestation of a single pattern in a variety of regional and social, spoken and written, usages - turns out to require for its treatment a refined and universally applicable distinction of linguistic form and substance, such as conventional linguistics has not yet absorbed. Saussure's other distinction - between content and expression - comes into full play, when the development of a standard language takes place under the strong influence of another language, as exemplified by some of the relationships of Latin to the modern European vernaculars, or, as 'most recently pointed out by Vladimir Nabokov in a discussion of translations from Pushkin [6J, by a comparable relationship of French to Russian. A more exotic example of an essentially similar range of problems was encountered a few years ago by Paul Garvin in his work on Ascension Island towards the establishment of a standard Ponapean. Here, as in many other such instances, the matter of writing introduced further complications. To return once again to the Polish example, which has required the most careful reexamination of a large amount of written material, it is worth observing that investigators who started with what would appear to be simple, straightforward, practical aims have been led to theoretical considerations of the broadest general interest. In particular, their experience confirms the suspicion that a linguistic theory will be inadequate for many of our purposes if it assumes that the phonetic substance is the only 'real' expression-substance of language and that all other candidates must, in some sense, be derived from it and remain dependent on it. This view, which may fairly be described as still the predominant one among linguists and which is hotly defended whenever questioned, has most far-reaching consequences when it is incorporated in the foundations of a linguistic theory and thereby affects the form of a linguistic model. It has a
580
LINGUISTICS
venerable tradition. Aristotle, as is well known, identified the relationship of content to expression-in-speech with the relationship of the latter to expression-in-writing, and the De Interpretatione contains the locus classicus of that hypothesis. Given the restricted aims of comparative Indo-Germanic linguistics, the notion rendered positive service in clearing away irrelevancies from investigations which, by their very nature, had to be focused on the phonetic expression. The Romantic environment in which comparative linguistics developed no doubt had its effect as well. But clearly of more lasting importance has been the hope of maintaining for linguistics an anchor in a single, universal, and apparently immediately given material realitya hope that continues to be reenforced as new attempts are made at establishing universally valid linguistic categories on the bases of physical science. It will not be my purpose here to argue against this venerable tradition,
despite the difficulties which, as I have indicated, seem to follow from it. I would merely suggest that the assignment of any special primacy to the phonetic substance of language is at best a superfluous axiom for linguistics and that, if we include it among our assumptions, we run the grave risk of blocking important lines of inquiry. A linguistic model that allows for the possibility of more than one linguistic substance (in this case, expressionsubstance) therefore has the enormous advantage of not prejudging a question that we can afford to leave open. Such an allowance both presupposes an anterior distinction between linguistic form and linguistic substance and helps us to establish natural and universally applicable boundaries between the two - that is, to isolate those relationships which will be admitted in the theory as constituents of purely formal definitions. This approach leaves open the possibility that the two commonly encountered expression-substances - those of speech and writing - may in particular instances turn out to be isomorphic. It also foresees the possibility that they may not and that more than one form of the expression may be in semantic relationship to a single content. As Louis Hjelmslev has pointed out, such a view finds correspondence in, and gives precision to, the intuitive identification of, say, written English and spoken English, where unity can be maintained in the content although the conventional written form is not a mere mapping of the spoken form on a graphic substance. The history of individual languages will always be an important concern of the humanities, which must evaluate the linguistic documents of human expression and which must therefore have under control both philological tools for the understanding of texts and criteria for interesting comparison and judgment of the means of expression available at different times - the frames of possibility within which given texts make their appearance. If this sounds like a truism, one has only to consider the relationship - or, better to say, absence thereof - between the linguistic and literary parts of typical
WHITFIELD: Criteria for a Model of Language
581
programs of graduate study in our universities. Where historical linguistics, continuing the main tradition of the last century, is reduced to a review of the evidence for genetic relationships between languages, the situation is understandable enough. The predominantly anecdotal and material character of such studies is enough to eliminate any possible contact with the rest of the program. Generations of English students sweat their way uncomprehendingly through the prescribed course of Gothic until a merciful Department eliminates the requirement - often salving its conscience by substituting a Latin reading examination. The fact that study of a language as a tool has thus replaced what was no doubt originally intended as an immanent study of language usually escapes attention and further testifies to the divorce between linguistics and literary research. Structural linguistics - especially in recent years - has been developing in a much more propitious atmosphere so far as concerns its application to historical humanistic studies. It has become increasingly clear that "synchronic" and" descriptive" are not to be identified with "static" and that the once imagined cleft between descriptive and historical linguistics can be successfully bridged to the enrichment of both. From this point of view, variation within a single linguistic state - etat de langue - can be given adequate recognition, and linguistic history becomes something quite different from anecdotal comparison of essentially unrelated systems. Place can also be found for the phenomena of linguistic convergence and those other non-genetic relationships between languages with which the older comparativism and a narrowly conceived descriptivism were helpless to deal. New vistas are being opened on a truly explicative historical and comparative linguistics - one that can relate the observed phenomena to a general scheme of possibilities and thereby even develop predictive powers. Here again, a necessary condition seems to be a linguistic model so articulated as to reveal universally present and therefore comparable strata in language. Thus, these strata are indeed produced, in a sense, by our method of inquiry - "on dirait que c'est Ie point de vue qui cree l'objet ", says Saussure [7, p. 23J - but by a method independent of contingent, arbitrary relationships found in any single language or language type. With the superior explicative power of such a model, it becomes possible to distinguish between shifts of formal pattern and shifts of substance and to base a rational history of linguistic change on the interactions of the two. Kurylowiczs work on the Germanic consonant shifts [4 J provides an especially interesting example of the fruitfulness of this approach, casting, as it does, new light on a classic problem of comparative linguistics, in the favored domain of traditional comparativism - the expression-substance. But on both sides of the linguistic sign - in the content as well as in the expression - the distinction between a formal, systematic pattern and a variety of usages in which the pattern is manifested proves its worth in explicating both the conservative and dynamic elements of language and describing their interplay. Linguistic
582
LINGUISTICS
history so conceived - especially as it addresses itself to the content side of language - has the brightest prospects of regaining a meaningful position within the humanities while strengthening its scientific foundations. I have been concerned in these remarks with some questions of adequacy of linguistic theory - adequacy as tested by a small sample set of possible applications of linguistics. I have assumed that it is legitimate to look to linguistics for the solution - or, at least, for the main contribution to the solution - of the problems I have touched upon, problems of continuing and weighty import in the humanities. I hope I have made clear my view that the divorce of linguistics from the humanities - although a matter of mounting concern to linguists as well as non-linguists - is far from being the result of recent trends in linguistics. On the contrary, as I tried to suggest in my beginning remarks, it is in large measure traceable to a certain restricted methodology whose triumph was the outstanding characteristic of linguistic science in the last century. To the extent that modern linguistics has sought to regain lost ground by broadening its fundamental concepts, to study language in more than its material expression, and to study even its material expression under more than its genetic aspect, it has moved toward renewed contact with other branches of the humanities.' In so far as that renewed contact of which I speak has brought again to the attention of linguists long neglected aspects of the linguistic sign, their own immediate study of language, viewed in and for itself, has been demonstrably enriched. This last point has, I hope, received some little illustration in the examples I have offered. In each instance, what I have tried to bring to the fore is the confrontation of variety and unity at certain points within linguistic phenomena - variety of usages, extending over both space and time, as opposed to a single, unifying pattern; variety of substances in the linguistic expression as contrasted with unity of distributionally defined form; variety of expression form in the face of a single content (for which examples are to be sought not merely in the differing written and spoken forms of individual languages, but also in the several language members of a single linguistic league). In my analyses of these examples, it will have been obvious how completely indebted I have been to Saussure's distinctions between content and expression, and linguistic form and linguistic substance, and to the development that those distinctions have received in glossematic theory. My purpose has not been, however, to argue in support of a particular linguistic theory but to urge that any adequate theory must find place for the type of interplay of linguistic strata that I have been discussing. lAnd here we may profitably recall that it was a linguist - and one of the greatest - who said, in effect, that linguistics is too important to be left to the linguists alone; again I quote Saussure: "Plus evidente encore est I'irnportance de la linguistique pour la culture generale: ... II serait inadmissible que son etude restat l'affaire de quelques specialistes .. ,''' [7, p. 21].
J
WHITFIELD: Criteria for a Model of Language
583
Taking "model" in the very simple sense of a schematic representation designed to set in relief important structural relationships within the represented object, I conclude that an adequate model of a language will be prominently articulated at such points of interplay between variety and unity and that the articulation we seek must be a universally applicable one, which alone can provide a rational basis of comparison between languages and thereby reveal the variety within unity that is human language itself. REFERENCES
[1] ARENS, H. Sprachwissenschajt. Orbis Academicus 1/6. Miinchen, 1955. [2] BUDZYK, K., ed. Pochodzenie polskiego jpyka literackiego. Studia staropolskie III. Wroclaw, 1956. [3] HJELMSLEV, L. La Categoric des cas, I. Acta [utlandica, Aarsskrijt tor Aarhus Universitet, Vol. 7 (1935). [4] KURYLOWICZ, J. Le Sens des mutations consonantiques. Lingua, Vol. I, pp. 77-8,'j.
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