Now you see it, now you don't: Literature and the art of semantic prestidigitation

Poetics 6 { 1977) 4 i-54 © North-Holland P~blishing Company

NOW YOU SEE Ir. ~ O W YOU D O ~ ' T : L I T E R A T U R E AND T H E ART OF SEMANTIC P R F ~ T I D I G I T A ' H O N

R I C H A R D McLAIN

Most educated :.peakers have strongly hetd, ready opinions ~bo~.Jt h o w language functions, how words refer, how sentences mean, and how humans acquire language. Moreover, some casual evidence elicited by me suggests tliat speakers find it n e c e s s ~ " ~o employ certain theories about the relationship o f syntax to semantics whenever ~,e, perform and interpret language. These beliefs about the nature o f language a, .ften ~nconsistent with what we know about language structure and with the .mptions upon which most c o n t e m p o r a r y linguistic and p h i l ~ o ~ d descriptioas o f language are based. One w~de-spread principle o f individ,m~! inte~pretation is that o f absolute form, a principle which results in private contr~stfve readings o f transformational utterance pairs. I c o n t e n d that this principle is an important factor in m o d e m literary interpretation. (lb) 'L~dies and gentlemen." he began, as u s u a l - a n d the foolish courtesy had neve~ sounded so ~nister - '| will not conce~ from you the ~ u s n e s s of the ~t~u~tion. The pr~3ner h ~ given me more than twen~ r~r~e~ and a d d r e ~ , add~ss¢~ which were thought to be unknown, except to thei~ owners and to me. Thege h ~ been ggett c ~ r e ~ . " (lb) "Ladies and gentterrmn,' he began, as usttal- and the foolish courtesy had never sounded so sin~ter - "| will not ¢om:ea| the serim~$ness of the situatkm from you. The ~ s o t ~ r has given more than twenty n4trne~ an~ addres,~s to me, a d d ~ which were tbou~dht to be unknown, except to their owners and to me. There has been gre~t ~reteume~" (Passsges adapted from Dorothy L. S~yers, "Tim ~Iventu~ous exp~ok of the cave of All l~ba.') Some difficuh knots hzve recently appeared in the string o f assumptions on which lingu/~tic critics h a ~ relied to bind linguistic m e t h o d o l o g y to I R e ~ criticism. The-, there is a s u b s t a n ~ difference o f opinion between the w o f e ~ i o n ~ l L~ngt~ge u a e o ~ t end the professional l i t e ~ r y critic over the nature o f l a n g u a ~ with a resutf~,lt confusion o f ~ in the hybrid ~ i p l i n e , s t y l o 4 h ~ i s t i c s (McLain 1976). "~,%ep s r t i c u h r knot that interests me here develops from conflicting assumptions over what f e a ~ s o f sound and syntax can be udd t o have sem~...~tic sign|fic ~ c ¢ . This debate is not pe~ultar to stylodinguisUcs. Just as critic and critic and

41

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linguist and critic fail to see eye to eye on the re[ationship of form to meaning so too do linguist and linguist. Using the results of some informal su~eys I shall attempt to further confound the issue by cIaiming that native speakers and interpretew may be as perplexed and inconsistent about what features of language have semantic significance as linguists and critics. Nevertheless, ! want to argue that from the confusion it is possible to uncover at least one widely-held principle of interpretation, but a principle at variance with the assumptions of conventional syntactic medals. ! shall further p~opose that this principle may be fundamental ~o our view of the lang-.age of literature. [n some measure, most generative grammars continue to espouse a synonymy or 'meaningopreserving' hypothesis, though it is now dear that many of tt~e optional syntactic operations once thought to keep meaning intact do not. Grammarians (see Chomsky 1971 ; Partee 197! ~and Kuroda 1970) have submitted considerable evidence to show that certain transformations, such as passivization, clefting, or adverb prepo~ng, result in consistent shifts in meaning - e.g., (2a) (2b) (3a) (3b) (4a) (4b)

Everyone in the room ~nows at least two languages At least two languages are known by everyone in th,• room We all considered Alice to be tiny It was Alice who we all considered to be tiny Verioc slipped into the house at midnight At midnight, Verloc slipped into the house.

The evidence has prompted a re-evaluation of the role whicl~ these transformations play in a grammar of English: one solution is to deal with t[~em as shallow, stylistic operations with predictable, conventional ~emantic effect:;: a second is to treat them as signs of semantic information about topic, discourse structure, or utterance funct ion (Chomsky 197 ] ; McCaw|ey 1975). Notwit[-.standing these well.known exceptions the classi,-al generative supposi~on that a large number of syntactical operations can preserve the meaning of an utterance remains a central thesis in all textbook accounts of contemporary syntactic-semantic theory. Some examples of optional, stylistic ! ~ansformations are dative movemenf

(5a) (5b) (6a) <6b)

To facilitate the matter, Tom mailed the manuscripl to Ezra To facilitate the matter, Torn mailed Ezra the manu: cript Virginia read the manu~cript to herself before retirh~ !; Virginia read herself the manuscript before retiring

g~P~g

(7a) (7b) p~rt/c/e (8a) (8b)

Gertrude ordered beer and Alice ordered schnitzel Gertrude ordered beer and Alice schnitzel movement James pieced together the puzzle James pieced the puzzle together

R. ,¢1~ I m i n / N t m , y o u ~ee it. n o w

you don't

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relative clause reduction (ga) The boy who was in the store was Harry (gb) The boy in the s t o ' e was Harry contraction (10a) Lisa's fettuccini is magnificent ( l O b ) Lisa's fettuccini is magnificent do so (I In) Her brothers t o o k the freeway and we took the freeway too (t i b) Her brothers took the freeway and we did so too comparative reduction (12a) James Dickey is wealthier but not happier than Gary Snyder is (I 2b) James Dickey is wealthier but not happier than Gary 5 n y d e r heavv NPs last (l 3a) The man who drove in from P~lrJs's suitcase is missing (I 3b) The suitcase o f the man who drove in from Paris is missing

and so forth. ~ tt is apparent from the current syntactical literature that these transformations are considered to be purely formal operations: thus, th.~re could never be a situation in which (! 2a) was true and (I 2b) false, a context fi~r which ( 1 2 a ) has a higher potential as a response than (l 2b), or a state o f affairs for which ( 1 2 a ) i s an accurate description but for which (! 2b) is not. (An exception, of course, would be in answer to some request to perform the formal operation o f comparative reduction - "Give me a sentence that does not end with the w o r d / s , but which means ~'Jarnes Dickey is wealthier but not happier than Gary S lyder is ~" " - t h a t is, absolute s y n o n y m y does not exist as a linguistic principle.) Hard, direct evidence for these claims is not easy - it m a y be impossible - to come by. But informal surveys suggest that, in contexts, these pairs o f utterances are perceived by native speakers as if they were s y n o n y m o u s . For instance, over the past few years I have asked several h u n d r e d graduate and undergradua:e literature and creative writing majors to read or listen t o paired passages - such a ~ the t w o passages, ( i n ) and (l b), at the beginning o f this paper - which contrast o~ le or more sentences evincing the movetnent o f the dative object, the animate object noun phrase preceded by to or f r o m , to the left and a / b a n d the direct object, the object noun phrase not preceded by a preposition. (l emphasize the animate feature o f dative o b ~ : t s since in the dative m o v e m e n t analysis presented here one must be mindful o f a c l a ~ o f utterances in which what otherwise appears to be simple dative m o v e m e n t demonstrably a|ters meaning - e . g . ,

t F o r a proposal concerning the t y p o l o g y o f optional t r ~ n . ~ o n n a t i o m - that is, ~ ,~y we

them in language. (e.g. to reduce redundancy, for phonotactic conformity, fog syntactk:a| variety, and for grammatical ¢oftsistency) - see Fraser t973.

44

R. M c L M n / N o w y o u see it, n o w y o u d o n Y

(I 4)

i gave John's face a s h p

is n o t e q u i v a l e n t t o (I 5)

I gave a slap to J o h n ' s face.

Similarly, (! 6) J o h n gave Alice a kiss and (I 7)

I gave a kiss t o A l i c e

are not eq~v~lent. Both (14) and (15) involve inanimate no, ms in the dative position; by implication so do ( t 6 ) and ( 1 7 ) - that is, it is ~ l)oint on Alice's body which is kissed, not Alice. ! have consciously omitted such &:ntences from my discu.~on here.) I asked students to comment on any difference:, which they sensed in the ~ n ~ of the ~ g c s . When the passages were presented orally the movement of the d=tive object went unnoticed; when the same p~ssage~ were presented or~togr~ph~cally l©s~ than three per cent claimed to have per~:eived a shift in meaning. The magnitude o f such a response might of itself be convincing for the perceived s y n e m y . ~ y of dative movement pairs, but this one-sided reacti, m is vitiated by other evidence-.. Fo~ example, when orally presented with is~ated sentences, such as (t 8a3 The prisoner has given me more than twenty names and addresses t o me and (18b) The prisoner has given more than twenty names and addresses to me or with isolated sentences from any of the pairs (5) through (13) a substantial number 2 of students claimed that s o m e shift in meaning had o~:cu~red from the first sentence to its variant. When these pairs of sentences were presented orthographi c i l y the percentage went even higher. With the pairs of isolated sentences most stud¢~nt~ would ~rgue for some "subtle change" in meaning; but when ~ k e d to char2 The survey was casually elicited, and for my purposes exact figures t r ~ not terribly i m p o t e n t . This ~ not meant as a statistk~t e ~ y s i s o f the range and strength o~" th© phenomenon | am

de~fi~n~. My only inte~*s~ in the data is in pomfl~ ~o tho ~ i ~ t ~ e ,~" the phenomenon. My su~ covers o ~ literary ~udents, and their p c ~ u ~ r t r ~ n ~ d~'zmat~ mhift in pet~:entages - no n t z ~ p t was made to ~ control ~roup.

p r o l ~ M y con~|~l~ut~ to the s no~lJt~ry ~ ~~e~0

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actefiz~, as specifically as possible, the difference ir~ meaning between the two utterances in a pair, they failed to produce, as a group, consistent readings. For the purposes o f this paper I shall focus only on the responses to dative movement p a i r s - i.e. sentences similar to pairs ( 5 a - b ) , ( 6 a - b ) , and ( 1 8 a - b ) since a m o n g sere,anticists these are likely to be the most controversial pairs in my list, and since the reactions to these were particularly interesting. A few of the respondents aegued a shift in topic or focus between the paired sentences, something analogous to the demonstrable shift which takes place in pas~ve-active pairs. in other words, i~ is a generally accepted view that a passive sentence like (19)

Georgio's ear was struck by lightning

is a more p|ausable response to the question (20)

What happened to Georgio's ear2

than is an active sentence like (2 I)

Lightning struck Georgio's ear.

Thai is, (19) is an utterance a b o u t Georgio's ear while (2~) is an utterance a b o u t lightning. Passivization, therefore, does not prese~e meanL,~g - in fact, it may not be an operation at all in the classical transformational sense. Passivization produces predictable, consistent alterations in the meanings o f utt--rances. In English, the initial sentence position is special; it marks the topic o f an utterance, and a~y transformation which "fronts' some constituent preverbally may provide that constituent with a spcciat semantic force. Essentially, the meaning changes. But dative movement does n o t front or topicalize material, and there is no shift in the perspective of utterance pairs such as (5) and (6) which is analogous to that in { t 9 ) a n d (21). [:or example, (23a) and (23b) have equivalent potential as responses to (22): (22) (23a) (22) (23b)

To whom did John mail the briefcase? He mailed the b n e f c a ~ to Mary To whom did John m~] the briefcase? He rmfiled Maw the b~efcase.

There is no focal ~r topic~J position., analogous to initial position, f o l l o w i n g t h e verb, (However, it has been argued by both Chomsky (197J: 203) and Kuroda (I 970: 46) that questions which involve dative movement, such as

(24a) Did John give the book to Bin?

and

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(24b) Did John give Bill the book? differ "'presuppositionaily", in as much as the responses to these questions might differ :~yntactically. Thus, Chomsky argues that the "natural" responses to (24a) and (24b) include, respective'.y, (25) ~,nd (26): (25) (26)

No, to someone else No, something else

That is, it is argued that (24a) and (24b) are the respective presuppositions to (25) and (26). But it has not been shown that sentences like (24a) and (24b) have themselves differing presuppc~itions- presuppositions that can be factored out in any paraphrase of ~he sentences. The "nazuralnes," o f these question-answer pairs seems very different from the strong presuppositional bond between (! 9 ) a n d (20). Both (25) and (26) are perfectly happy responses to (24a). Chomsky's "natural" ordering would seem to have. more to do with some discourse pnnciple such ~ conversationM "'syntax matching" than with presuppositional relations.) In a reversal on the claims of the first group who percebed a version of topicalization of the indirect object in sentenc~ like (i 8b), a second group of respondents argued that sentences structured like (18a) were more emphatic than those strut. tured like (tSb); all felt that the f i n a l posit~on in the sentence held some special semantic significance. Of course, the latter greup found it difficult to generali2-" this principle to sentences in which surface material fogows the object noun phrase, thus closing out the final position - e.g., sentences (6a) and (6b). Other respondent, claimed that sentences like ( 1 8 b ) e x h i b i t e d more "immediacy" than those like ( 1 8 a ) - or as one student put it, "this sentence [(! 8a)] suggests that the prisoner is standing or sitting closer to the speaker than the other sentence [(18b)]". Others were unable to specify the meaning change which they, nevertheless, claimed to occur between members of the pair,~, some replying simply that "'they are just different". Another group of students found no change in the "meanings'" of the utterances, only a shift in the "Mttitml¢'" or "'tone" of the speaker/writer. The responses of the remaining students varied widely. To repeat, those who did make a claim for a shift in me.ruing, however hedged, were, as a group, unable to make c o n s i s t e n t statements about the nature of that dig ference (consistent in the sense that an overwhelming percentage of interpreters are able to agree on the difference in meaning between pairs like ( 2 a ) a n d (2b), (3a) and (3b), or (27) and (28): (27) (28)

$ohn was not eager to perform John was eager not to perform).

tt should also be reported that most students strongJy r ~ t e d any ¢ u ~ t J o n ~ t they w~.re tin~ntJng" private meaning,, in fact, they were often able to attract

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those who had previously found no shift in meaning over to their point of v~ew. That is, the latter group was less resistant to suggestions for semantic interpretation. The phenomenon ! have just described is a famfiair irritant to transformational grammarians, particularly those engaged in presenting papers on specific syntactical ~u|es: a considerable amount of the discussion time at linguistic conferences is taken up with disagreements over whether or not two sentences "'mean the same thing". The phenomenon also frequently dominates classes in autonomous syntactic theory and is enhanced when the generative grammarian is presenting syntactic material to an audience of other than pre-professional l i n g u i s t s - particularly students of literature. Nevertheless, on-again, off-again perceptions of meaning change are often ignored or triviaiized in linguistic pedagogy, perhaps because of the difficulties which such perceptions present to language theory and description. 3 That is, how can inconsistent information about the relationship between syntactica| form and meaning be incorporated into formal models of natural language? Moreover, how can such information be incorporated into a theory of |anguage? Rather than being assim|lable, the information is more probably evidence to support the assumption, shared by many critics o f modern linguistic m e t h ~ o ] o g y , that the relationship between syntax and semantics is not systematic, or to undercut the notion that a model of the speaker's linguistic competence (unconsious, internalized knowledge of language) is tenable. These counter arguments are no longer taken seriously by linguists since a logical extension of the assumption that there is no systematic (i.e., no conventional or 'ruled') relationship between form and meaning would be that language can have only private meanings, if linguistic meaning is private, then it presumably is not accessible to analysis or interpretation either by linguists or speakers. It flfllows then that u p to this point in the development of language descriptions linguists have found it necessary to assume that linguistic meaning is conventional an¢f systematic. That language is ruled, public behavior appears to be a necessary cor, elative to its communicative function. But on the other side o f t~e linguist's competence coin is performance, the *real" act of saying something, the use to which speakers put their knowledge of the Linguistic system. The usual list of performance factors includes the limits of memory, the ira.nediate physical conditions of ~he speech act, the speaker's or Lnterpreter's private beliefs about the situation, or the mood of the speaker/interpreter - in other words, unpredictable and transitory factors inconsistently affecting the production or interpretation of a speech act. This being the case, we might

3 A n o t h e r problematic issue in linguisgic theory is the 'acceptability ° of utterances. Some Unt i e s , particuL~rJy those working in syntactic variation, discourse studies, and ~oc~otinguistics. have a t t e m p t e d to e a ~ the difficu|ties of acceptability by shifting their attention toward eccumttteted language, toward evidence of actual 5 n ~ t ~ performance, and awmy from "intuitive" erJter~ of accept~bRity ( L a b o r |971 ). However, the problem o f syno,tymy can not be appromchod by the same methods.

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attribute the inconsistent interpretations received in response to txansformational sentence pairs to the unique ~scourse conditions under which interpreters were most apt to make claims for a shift in meaning. By isolating sentences, by not providing discourse continuity, or by using orthographic ~epresentations of the utter~mces, I have artificially focused the interpreter's attention on details of form ordinarily ignored in e~eryd~ , speech situations. Thus, the responses to ( I n ) a n d (1 b), where dative movement was buried in sustained discourse, are the responses predicted by the competence model: on the other hand, the variety of responses to (! 8a) and (i 8b) are predictable from the performance-competence dichotomy. However, the phenomenon that I have presented poses a somewhat different case to the traditional dichotomy. First of all, I have taken a biased view in regard to the relationship between form and m e a n i n g - that is, the interpr.~ter's. None of the interpreter's observations have any' relationship to the speaker+s semantic intentions in the production of sentences. Chomsky's competence-performance dichotomy, on the other hand, was meant to capture a kind of neutzaI grouted, somewhere between the speaker's intentions to utter a meaning and the audJ'or's interpretation of the utterance. Some recent work has shown the fuzziness of th.. ~erformancecompetence model as the linguist moves closer to the reality of the speaker (Lakoff 1973). It becomes increasingly difficult to make judgements about w!lat is a performance principle and what a competence rule when both appear to t,e consistently applied throughout the linguistic communily. The phenomenon in interpretation reveals a comparable problem when we move closer to the hearer. Just as some observers have argued that there are consistent, formutatable principles that play on and affect the system from the speaker's side of the sentence~ there may be such factors that affect the system from the interpreter's perspective. As described abe',e, a large group of interpreters perceive meaning alterations where the standard competence modt:l argues that there should be none. More importantl~r, the perception of meaning change is correlated to a principle openly expressed b~, the students I have interviewed; that is, nearly all (over ninety per cent) o f ¢,hose who argued a meaning change in sentence pairs (5)through (j 3)expressed a personal belief in the principle that a n y alteration in the f o r m o f an utterance m u s t p r o d u c e an alteration in ,~at u tterance "s meaning.

The principle on which these speakers agree is well.known to literary criticism; it is the principle of absolute form: that every form has a unique meaning and every meaning has its unique form. The principle is pronounced repeatedly in the documents of nineteenth and twentieth.century philosophy and aesthetics. (F.H. Bradley 1897; A.C. Bradley 1961 ; Brooks 1947; Ellis 1974:155-210; Harris 1973; Hirsch 1975). It accepts as synonymous expressions only those which manifest absolute identity of form and meaning (absolute synonymy), all other pain of expression are by definition non.synonymous. But though this may be, and has been, a powerful philosophical or aethetJc position, rich in its imp~catio~s fca inlerpretatlon and creativity, it appears contradictory to the functions of natural language. First of all, it runs head on into the literary aesth©t~eian's other favorite

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linguistic concept .....a m b i g u i t y (Empson l q 3 0 ) . The principle of ambiguity presumes that a given word or sentence can have more than one interpretation But this would be inconsistent with the argument that every meaning has its ur,tique form. Yet nearly all o f those interpreters w h o profess their belief in the p r i n c i # e o f absolute form also profess it in the principle of ambiguity. Secondly, the principle o f absolute form appears unfeasable as a linguistic principle. If we can irna#ne a language which embodies the principle o f absolute form, that language can not be conventionally ruled. Such a language can have no fixed postulates for interpreting sentence structures. For every fi~rm there would have to be a new set o f interpretive rules for relating form to meaning. Speakers o f such a language would have to invent and communicate these n o n c e r u l e s of meaning as rapidly as they invent and communicate the new forms. Clearly, the notion of language entails that the relation between form and meaning be conventional, not nonce in the way that the principle of absolute form would demand. So it would appear that absolute form must be ruled out as a defining principle of the linguistic system, or o f our competence with language. Yet the correlation o f perceived changes in meaning and the perceiver's belief in a one-for-one corre,spondence between the surface form of a sentence and its meaning points up the complex inter-connections of an internalized, unconscious linguistic system and the conscious factor~ which affect the use of that system. The belief in absolute form may be highly effective, it is one of a very special set o f beliefs which can affect our interpretations o f utterances,: special in that they are not like the usual beliefs attached to lists of performance factors, they are beliefs about the nature of the linguistic system and for that reason may seem unfactorable from the system itself. in fact the belief in absolute form may be only one o f a large group of "misleading" or "false' theories which speakers and interpreters maintain about the linguistic system. Language philosophers are foreve~ contending with the wide-spread "lay" notions about the origin, acquisition, structure, and function o f language. Anyone who has considered the effects of their speech or writing on their auditors - and I presume that the number is nearly isomorphic with the n u m b e r o f speakers - has formed some hypotheses about how language functions, how words refer, how sentences mean, how humans acquire language, what the first tanguage was like, and so forth. Thumbnail theories o f language are ubiquitions in literary criticism, in language pedag~, gy, in philosophy, ,and in psychology; moreover, the supposed relation o f form to mt ~ning is frequently the battleground for educational philosophies, it is a fact that n o s t educated speakers have strongly held, ready opinions on these mat te rs. The pervasiveness of such linguistic hypotheses ought not surprise us. The need for such strate~es appears universal. Language is, loosely speaking, a "tool'. and one which we us~ with great frequency; as with any other too|, we need to have some consicious sense of how it works. What this means is that when using a complex tool, the operation o f which is not obvious to us, we must have sorrm confidence ihat the device will function. One way that we can come by this :onfidcnce

$0

R. M c L a # t / N o w y o u see it, ~o ~' y o u d o n "t

is to construct for ourselves hypotheses o f just how that device accomp|izhes what we !:ltend it to accomplish. Our "woriOng' hypotheses of how a device operates need be neither true nor very specific. We are perfectly satisfied with vague approxiron'.ions of ca~L~¢ l n d effect; we accept the limitations of our knowledge and are willing to re-asses and change our theories whenever facts overwhelmingly cont r a ~ c t our hypotheses. For instance, many driver~ are unfamiliar with the specifics of how an automobile functions. Many know how the steering wheel, the brake pedal, the transmission stick, and the gas pedal operate -~ at least, ~hos¢ portions of those devices that they can see in the cab; but most drivers probably do not understand the exact, causal relationships that connect, say, the acce|elator pedal's downward movement with the actual increase in the speed of the automobile. But in order to drive an automobile we need some working theory which is sloppily consistent with our phy.~ical input and the automobile's physical output. Thus, ig is not uncommon, and it ough ~" not ~urprise us, to find experienced drivers who believe that the accelerator pedal is directly connected to all four wheels of their American sedans - though lhey might well puzzle over the special 'four-wheel drive" designation attached to some models. One can imagine a few situations in which this particular belief could affect a driver's performance with an automobile; however, the belief would have no effect on the actual machinery (the m e c h ~ i c ~ l system) o f the car. In the case o f an automobile, and in the case of most tools, excluding language, we can draw a sharp line between the tool's consti*~utive system and the perform~nce factors which affect the use of the t o o l - that is, I~rforrnance factors such as one's belief as to how the tool operates cannot, o f themselves, affect the system. As speakers we think about language in much the same way we think about complex devices like an a u t o m o b i l e - we construct working hypotheses about how meaning is embodied in a concatenation of sounds or letters. However, lhere is an important distinction to be made between our working theories o f language and our hypotheses about the functioning of an automobile. Unless we are willing to ac~:ept psycho-kinesis, we must presume that a driver's beliefs can in no way affect the functioning of an automobile's mechanical system; as far as we know m~nd has no direct effect on matter. There can be no interaction o f our beliefs and a mechanical system, only a meeting point, in the case o f language, howev,~r, we are not dealing with mind, on one hand, and inanimate and remote matter on the other; our only disthnction is between conscious mind (beliefs) and unconscious mind (the linguistic system). It is not so clear that these are discrete, mutually uninforrrgng systems. |n fact, among psychologists it is a widely-accepted principle of perceptual theory that our conscious knowledge, our mental constructs, or our hypotheses about an object or a system directly affect our unconscious perceptual strategies in relation to that object or system (Fodor, Beret and Garrett 1974: 7 - 8 ; Brunet

1957). What we find in the above is that there is n o c o n v e n t t o n a t shift in meaning brought about by the syntactical transformation, though auditors believe ~here to

R. M c L a i n / N o w y o u s e e it, n o w y o u d o n "t

5|

be a conventional shift in meaning. The belief in absolute form is difficult to label as a 'private" belief, particularly when it is shared by such a large number of speakers; it becomes public, even though it contradicts the public convention of language. How, then, do listeners or readers go about interpreting features of form which they perceive to be significant when the linguistic system denie.~ their significance and offers no conventional meaning postulate to work with? One answer might be that in the absence o f public meanings we supply private meanings, though these ought not to be confused with arbitrary meanings. These listener/readers are, after all, interpreting under the assumption that their interpretations are public, thal they are inherent (conventionally) in the structures they are interpreting. That is, they assume that they are interpreting the speaker's retentions rather than their own. Therefore. they invent meaning, presuming conventions to exist where none do. However, the interpreter is most likely to invent meaning postulates within the limits of already existing syntactic/semantic principles: he will not, for example, contradict or radically change the conventional readings of an utterance. Thus, a n interpreter is not likely to argue that sentence ( t 4 b ) is the negation of sentence (14a). As ! have already noted, an interpreter, when made aware o f the Mteration in form of dative movement pairs, might make use o f the conventional form-meaning relations which signal topicalization as an analogy for the movement o f the dative object and interpret dative movement as topicalization. In other words, it is reasonable to assume that interpreters will attempt to be consistent with other aspects o f the linguistic model. Nevertheless, the interpretations of dative movement are private and since no convention f-or interpretation exists the readings are not predictable from the form. I have found the principle of absolute form to be more prevalent in one mode of discourse interpretation than in any other: literature. When literature students are presented with examples of dative movement in obvious poetic f o r m - such as (25a) and (25b),

(25a)

Such pious ~crifice to give You all you could demand o f pain: Receive this haddock's body, slain For you, old tyrant; take this blood Of a tomato, shed that you might live. You had that costly food.

(25b) Such pious sacrifice to give All to you you could demand of pare: Receive this haddock's body, slain For you, old tyrant; take this blood Of a tomato, shed that you might live. You had that costly food.

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most argue that a shift in meaning has occurred between the two passages. But again, the readings were inconsistent, private interpretations. I would propose that the inteq~retive response to poetry is a manifestation of both ghe modern critical traCt|on and the specific use of language in literary discourse. The principles of absolute form, and its correlative iraRative form (see McLain, in press), have dominated our m o d e m literary aesthetic in the guise of the form-content heresies (A.C. Bradley 1961; Brooks 1947). On tile surface the fonrn--con. tent discussion has been directed at the relationship between literary structure and meaning. And, of course, the forms of literature, the discourse structures, are sub. jcct to the intentions (meanings) they embody; but discourses, like sentences, evince conventiona| and ruled relationships between meaning and form (Labor and Waletsky 1967; van Dijk 1972). Nevertheless, it may be that the principle of absolute form and the range of private interpretations that follow from that prin. cipie are basic to our sense of literary response. That is. interpreters of poems may go beyond the parameters of conventional, public meaning postulates, beyond the systematic interpretations proscribed by the linguistic system, and into the arena of private meanings. When most interpreters "read' a poem they perform an act of conventional paraphrase interspersed with contributions of private unconventional meanings. The art of m o d e m formal critical interpretation, th~ , is in part the art of invention and persuasion: persuading other readers, who th~..nseives are willing to accede to the principle of absolute form, that certain private readings are consistent with the known semantics of the work and are. therefore, inherent in the language of the work as well as in the intentions of the author. Of course, to make such claims abou', the nature of modem criticism poses some serious questions, it may suggest that there is something fraudulent ~n the act of literary interpretation, tL~t a successful reading of a poem combines a statement of what the poem is actually about with a statement of what is in the individual interpreter's psyche. Quite the opposite. For one thing ! am arguing that poems are not necessarily about what is conventionally encoded in them. Secondly, | am proposing that the interpretive act is a creative act, that it estab|ishcs a relationship between the interpreter and the poem which recreates the re|ationship between the poet and the poem. Presumably, the principle of absolute form is a g~:neral principle on which many readers interpret poems and on which many works of literary art are themselve~ ~ n s t r u c t e d . Thus, ninny of the intentions which the author perceives that he h~s ,~ncoded in the linguistic and literary form of the work are in fact not encoded (in the conventional sense). Instead, the author "encodes" through such devices as multiguity and 'vagueness" (in the linguistic sense of senmnticaUy inexplier predications) the parameters of private meaning. Using these markcd areas of language the reader estabfish©s Iris own link with the principle and cr.~ates new meaning. Thus, the interpreti~ act can always give new substance to the work by suggesting the wealth of possible layers of private meanings which surround and conne,:t public language. -

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References Bradley, A.C. 1961. Oxford lectures en poetry. Bloomington: indiana University Press. Bradley, F.H. 1897. Appearance and reality: a metaphysica! essay. London: Oxford U~versity Press. Brooks, C l e a n t h 1947. The well wrought urn: studies in the structure of poetry. New York:

Harcourt, Brace and World. Brunet, J,S, | 9 5 7 . On perceptual readiness. Psychological review 64: t 2 3 - 5 2 . C h o m s k y , Noam. | 9 7 1 . 'Deep structure, surface structure, and semantic interpretation', in: Danny D. Steinberg and i.con A. Sakobovits, eds., Semantics: art interdi~ipUnaty reader in philosophy, linguistics and psychology, 1 8 3 - 2 1 6 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Di~k, Teun A. run. 1 9 7 2 , Some aspects of text grammars: a study in theoretic;~| linguistics and poetics. The Hague: Mouton. Ellis, J o h n M. | 974. The theory of literary criticism: a logical analysis. Berkeley: UniveL,sity of California. Empson, William. 1930. Seven types of ambiguity. Norfolk, Conn.: New Directit, ns. I:odor, J.A.. T.G. Beret, and M.F. Garrett. 1974. The psychology of language: =~ inUoduction to psycholinguistics and generative grammar. New York: McGraw Hill. I.'ra~r, Brm.~e. ',973. 'Optical rules in grammar'. In: Roger Shuy. ed., Report of 1he 23rd Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguist ics and Language Studies, 1 - t 5 . W a ~ i n g t o n , D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Harris, Roy. t973. S y n o n y m y ~nd linguistic analysis. Toronto: University of T o r o n t o Pre~. Hirsch, E.D., Jr. 1975. Stylistics and s y n o n y m i t y . Critical inquiry l: 559-79. Kuroda, S.Y. 1970. Grammatical transformations and changes of meaning. Linguistic notes from Le loRa 3 : 4 1 - 6 5 . Labor, William. 197 l. 'Methodology'. in: William Orr Dingwall. ed., Survey of linguistic s~-ience. 4 ! 3 -91. College Park, Maryland: University of Maryland Linguistg's P~rog;r~'~. Labor, William, and Joshu~ Waletsky. | 9 6 7 . "Narrative analysis: versions of p~ --~nal experience'. In: June Helm, ed., Essays on verbal and vis,,a| arts, ! 2 44. Seattle: University of W~shin~ ton Press. Lakoff, George. 1973. "l:uzzy grammar and the pefformance/competance terminological game*. in: Claudia Corum ¢ t a | . , eds., Papers from the ninth regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society, 27 ! - 29 l, Chicago' Chicago Linguistics Society. McCawleyo James. 1974. *Prelexical syntax*. In: Picter A.M. Seuren, Semantic syntax, 2 9 - 4 2 . London: Oxford University Press. McLain, Richard. t 9 7 6 . Literary criticism versus genen~th, e grammars. Style ~ 0 : 2 3 1 - 5 3 . McLain, Richard. In p~ess. The problem of 'style': another case in fuzzy grammar. Language and style. Partee, Barbaza Hall. 1971. "On the requh'ement that transformations preserve meaning'. Charles ]. l:iUmore and D, Terence Langendoen, eds., Studies in linguisOc ~ n ~ n t i c s . ! - 2 t . New York: ttolt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.

Richard McLain is an Assistant Profess,or o f English, General Literalure, and Rhetoric at the State University o f New Y o r k ~t B~ngh~mton.