·

·

Permanent Dynamic Synchrony (2)

More excerpts selected from the writings of Roman Jakobson, having something or other to do with PDS (Permanent Dynamic Synchrony). This set focuses on synchronicity and multiformity.

Jakobson, Roman 1985[1927b]. Two Old Czech poems on death. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings VI: Early Slavic Paths and Crossroads. Part 2: Medieval Slavic Studies. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton Publishers, 589-658. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110863901.589

Poetic works are so tied to language, are to such a degree a linguistic fact, that the remoteness from modern linguistic customs of the linguistic structure on which the medieval poem was based remains an important hindrance to a vivid perception of it. It is easier to feel the aesthetic value of ancient painting or architecture than to enter into the linguistic consciousness of a poet or reader of that distant epoch. This may explain why the revival of the medieval poetic oeuvre as an aesthetically experienced fact lags behind in comparison with our ability to overcome the archaeological conception of the medieval visual arts. Literary art of the Middle Ages is, however, so rich and multiform, constitutes such a colossal body of technical expertise, and as in the visual arts, raises and solves so many problems of form which later were long neglected and pushed into the background by secondary, heterogeneous tasks and often by the later mixing of genres clearly demarcated in medieval art, that, despite the inherent difficulties, one may approach this art as a fertile impulse for modern creation in many respects. If we examine Old Czech poetry from some particular point of view, say from a rhythmic standpoint, and if we are not biased, we involuntarily carry away the impression that it is a genuine tradition which could be reassumed without fearing one would end up in a blind alley, that verse would be impoverished - such are its suggestive, unexhausted possibilities.

It would be, of course, an absurdity to advocate a repetition of outlived forms, a stylization or imitation. A perfect form should not be transplanted to new soil. Gothic spires mounted on New York skyscrapers are hideous. Picasso did not copy African idols and the French Impressionists did not paint Hokusais. Rather, the former rebounded from the latter as from a springboard.

In approaching medieval poetry, we must first of all dispense with the standard literary-historical conception, which arose partly under the influence of the universalized and oversimplified Darwinian scheme, and partly under the influence of a persistent and mistaken analogy with the development of technology. Such schemes led to an erroneous, though vivid analogy: the modern, refined poem is to the medieval work as a machine gun is to a bow and arrow. Such a conception makes it possible to declare everything that is remote from recognizable modern poetic forms as the result of a beginner's artlessness, and to work out a scale of artistic forms according to their distance from the accepted canon. What [|592|] is not taken into account is that the distance of many an ancient form from this canon is conditioned rather by a different center of gravity, a different artistic task. The advocates of the "progressive" conception of the history of art remind one of the ducks in the Andersen fairy tale who declared the newborn swan to be an ugly duckling and took her differences from ducks to be mere deficiencies. (Jakobson 1985[1927b]: 591-592)

["Two Old Czech poems on death"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110863901.589]

Jakobson, Roman 1962[1932a]. Phoneme and phonology. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings I: Phonological Studies. s-Gravenhage: Mouton, 231-233. Online access: https://archive.org/details/selectedwritings01jako/page/230/mode/2up

A second task of phonology, along with the synchronic description of individual phonological systems, is the characterization of their development. In contradistinction to traditional historical phonetics, historical phonology is based on the following principles: a) no sound change can be comprehended without reference to the system which undergoes that change; b) each change in a phnological system is purposeful. Historical phonology extends the application of the comparative method to genetically unrelated languages and in this way arrives at a typology of the phonological evolution of languages, whereas synchronic phonology works toward a typology of the systems themselves. Similarly, the study of the geographic distribution of different phonological types is not confined to cognate dialects or languages, but ascertains that the boundaries between different phonological features often do not coincide with the boundaries between languages and language families. (Jakobson 1962[1932a]: 232)

["Phoneme and phonology"] [Online access] ["Published in the Second Supplementary Volume to the Czech Encyclopedia - Ottùv slovnik naučný (Prague, 1932)."]

Jakobson, Roman 1979[1936d]. Marginal notes on Puškin's lyric poetry. In: Rudy, Stephen; Taylor, Martha (eds.), Selected Writings IV: On Verse, Its Masters and Explorers. The Hague; Paris; New York: Mouton, 281-286. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110803068.281

Puškin's lyric includes several points of contact with the prior development of Russian poetry. Undoubtedly this fact led Puškin to begin with the lyric, to begin with it in his schoolboy years and to abandon it later, just as, on the contrary, the fact that Puškin began precisely under the sign of the lyric is connected with the wealth of the Russian lyric tradition. The eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth comprise the period of the sweeping rise of Russian lyric poetry. Puškin the lyric poet is the heir of the multiform Russian classicism. What especially influenced him were the so-called lower forms of Classical literature which belonged to the sphere of "light poetry" and the attempts at overcoming Classical norms which were closely linked to these "lower" forms. Neither in the drama, nor in the epic, nor in prose did Puškin by any means have such masterful and diverse Russian models as G. Deržavin, K. Batjuškov, and V. Žukovskij in lyric poetry. Puškin is tied to his eminent predecessors in the conception and the elaboration of individual lyric genres. Of course, the young Puškin also learned a great deal from foreign lyric poetry, especially from the French writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and, somewhat later, from the new English lyric, but no effective borrowing would have been possible without a well-developed local tradition. If Puškin was not as much a pioneer and founder of the new forms of Russian literature in his lyric poetry as he was, for example, in the historical drama or in epic forms, his lyric nevertheless synthetically summarized the hundred year evolution of Russian Classical poetry, culminated it, and exhausted its creative possibilities. Neither the Romantic melodious lyric (Baratynskij, Lermontov, Tjutčev), the development of which the Symbolists concluded, nor the realist Nekrasov's parodistically-tuned lyric poetry proceeded by way of Puškin, whereas Onegin, The Bronze Horseman, Godunov, and the poet's attempts at prose became landmark in the history of Russian literature and pointed towards new artistic conquests. (Jakobson 1979[1936d]: 282)

["Marginal notes on Puškin's lyric poetry"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110803068.281]

Jakobson, Roman 1979[1937f]. The statue in Puškin's poetic mythology. In: Rudy, Stephen; Taylor, Martha (eds.), Selected Writings IV: On Verse, Its Masters and Explorers. The Hague; Paris; New York: Mouton, 237-280. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110803068.237

Vladimir Majakovskij once remarked that the verse form of every really new and hence original poet can be mastered only if some of his basic intonation penetrates to the reader and takes hold of him. It then spreads and recurs, and the more the poet takes root, the more his admirers and adversaries become accustomed to the sound of his verse, the more difficult it is for them to abstract these original elements from his works. They are essential, irreplaceable components of his poetry, just as intonation is the basic cement of our speech, and it is interesting that just as elements are the most difficult to analyze. If we move from the one aspect of poetry to the other, from sound of meaning, we encounter an analogous phenomenon. In the multiform symbolism of a poetic oevre we find certain constant organizing, cementing elements which are the vehicle of unity in the multiplicity of the poet's works and which stamp these works with the pet's individuality. These elements introduce the totality of a poet's individual mythology into the variegated tangle of often divergent and unrelated poetic motifs; they make poems by Puškin - Puškin's, those by Mácha - truly Mácha's, those by Baudelaire - Baudelairean.

It is self-evident to every reader of a poet's work that certain elements constitute an irremovable, inseparable components of its dynamics, and this intuition on the part of the reader is trustworthy. The scholar's task is to follow this intuition and to extract these invariable components or constants directly from the poetic work by means of an internal, immanent analysis or, if it is a question of variable components, to ascertain what is [|238|] consistent and stable in the dialectical movement, to determine the substratum of the variations. Whether it concerns the rhythm, the melodics, or the semantics of a poetic work, the variable episodic, optional elements will differ substantially from its "invariants". There are verse components that vary from line to line and thus ste off and individualize each line; there are other components that do not mark single lines but the verse of the whole poem or a poet's verse in general. They produce the verse design, they create the ideal metrical scheme without which the verse could not be perceived and the poem would disintegrate. In the same way, scattered symbols are in themselves mute; they can be understood fully only in their relation to a whole symbolic system. A fixed mythology, binding for a poetic cycle and often for a poet's entire oeuvre, operates in addition to the varying elements specific to individual poems.

In studying theatre, one distinguished the emploi from the rôle; the emplois (within the limits of a certain stage genre and style, of course) are fixed; for example, the emploi of the jeune-premier, of the intriguante, of the raisonneur does not depend on whether an officer or a poet is the jeune-premier in a given play or on whether he commits suicide or marries happily at the end. In linguistics we distinguish the general meaning of a grammatical form from single partial meanings conditioned by a given context or situation. In the combination domogat'sja čego-libo ('to solicit something') the genitive designates the object to which the action is directed, whereas in the combination storonit'sja čego-libo ('to avoid, to shun something') the same case designates the object away from which the action moves. This means that only the verb, on which the case depends, introduces the meaning of direction into the genitive; the case in itself does not have this meaning: the general meaning of the genitive, therefore, does not include the meaning of direction. If two contrary definitions are valid, and it can often happen that they are valid at one and the same time, it means that neither one of them really is valid, or more precisely, that both are insufficient. It means therefore, for example, that neither the acceptance of god's existence or of revolution nor their rejection is specific to Puškin's works. It is impossible to understand properly the partial meanings of a grammatical form and their mutual relationship if we do not pose the question of their general meaning. Likewise, if we wish to master a poet's symbolic pattern, we must first of all ascertain the symbolic constants which comprise the poet's mythology.

We must not, of course, artificially isolate a poet's symbol; rather we must start from its relationship to other symbols and to the whole system of the poet's work. [|239|]

We must not, of course, succumb either to vulgar biographism, which takes a literary work for a reproduction of the situation from which it originated and infers an unknown situation from a work, or to vulgar antibiographism, which dogmatically denies any connection between the work and the situation. The analysis of poetic language can profit greatly from the important information provided by contemporary linguistics about the multiform interpenetration of the word and the situation, about their mutual tension and mutual influence. We do not wish mechanically to derive a work from a situation, but at the same time, in analyzing a poetic work, we should not overlook significant repeated correspondences between a situation and the work, especially a regular connection between certain common characteristics of a poet's several works and a common place or common dates, nor should we overlook the biographical precondutions of their origin if they are the same. The situation is a component of speech; the poetic function transforms it like every other component of speech, sometimes emphasizing it as an efficient formal device, sometimes, on the contrary, subduing it, but whether a work includes the situation positively or negatively, the work is never indifferent to it. (Jakobson 1979[1937f]: 237-239)

["The statue in Puškin's poetic mythology"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110803068.237]

Jakobson, Roman 1971[1944a]. Franz Boas' approach to language. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 477-488. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110873269.477

Among linguists Boas was often held to be interested solely in synchronic study, and some approval of him, others did not. He himself, however, never wearied of repeating that such as tudy is merely a way toward history. For him, every social science was in the final analysis a historical science: "Anthropology deals with the history of human society" (1938) and the study of language purposes "to unravel the history of the growth of human language" (1920). This maxim evidently carries on Whitney's tradition. In Boas' opinion, the diachronic, historical approach transcended the synchronic method, not only as the aim of inquiry transcends its means, but likewise as explanation transcends mere description. From such a viewpoint one could scarcely understand a phenomenon without knowing "how it came into being". And under these circumstances an exact classification of the now existing types could "only be a substitute for the genesis and history". Boas did not look for general laws beyond the historical aspect of language. For him, synchrony was merely a domain of casual particularl.

However, Boas was rather disappointed by the search for the general laws that govern and explain the historical evolution of culture and particularly the development of language: although linguistic data offer us many strikingly similar phenomena in remote parts of the world [|487|] and disclose their independent origin, any attempt to ascribe them to similar, unilinear developments fails. Quite similar structures can arise in altogether different ways from dissimilar sources and can evolve in divergent directions. Similarity of structure does not imply a similar line of development. As this discrepancy became clearer, Boas found the search for the evolutionary laws of language (and of social life in general) ever less profitable and more hopeless.

Such an experience was indeed discouraging for some linguists who held to the belief that the only conceivable laws of language are evolutive. But Boas saw that the conditions determining the course of historical happenings "are logically entirely unrelated" (1930), and on the other hand his attention was attracted more and more by "general forms" of language "that are determined logically" (1924). He had a clear inkling of these general devices which - either positively or negatively - underlie every linguistic pattern, and which determine the typology of language. A further step had to be made, and actually in the recent development of linguistic thought a new problem claims our attention: research on the laws thta govern and explain the structure of languages. Such synchronic or more correctly panchronic laws are superimposed on historical linguistics: without understanding a linguistic structure as such, we could scarcely explain "how it came into being". (Jakobson 1971[1944a]: 486-487)

["Franz Boas' approach to language"] [Online access] ["Written in Cornwall Bridge, Conneticut, summer 1943, for the International Journal of American Linguistics, X (1944)."]

Jakobson, Roman 1971[1943a]. Polish-Russian cooperation in the science of language. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 451-455. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110873269.451

Baudouin launched schoals of suggestive working hypotheses. Before the neogrammarian he discovered the leading principles of their doctrine; before Hugo Schuchardt he posed the crucial problem of mixed languages; and he was one of the first among the linguists of our epoch to tackle linguistic structure from the point of view of its functions and to strive to find the basic phonological and grammatical units. However, the sharpsighted savant was not able to found and synthesize his revealing ideas under the pressure of the predominant scientific and philosophic creed of his time. This marked discrepancy was a source of continuous dissatisfaction for Baudouin and drove him from one field to another, from linguistics to political journalism, from town to town. The untimely death of Kruszewski, dis disciple and inspiring collaborator, aggravated Baudouin's tragic loneliness.

Kruszewski's thinking was more philosophical, exact, bold, and penetrating. [|453|] He knew how to draw all the inferences from the premises of his teacher. Less dependent on the contemporary ideology, he clearly foresaw the further development of his science. His letter to Baudouin of May 21, 1882 is an eloquent example of his clairvoyance: "Besides the present science of language another one, more general, is necessary, something in the nature of phenomenology. [...] The principles preached by the neogrammarians are either unsuited to building up such a science or insufficient. The constant bases of this science may be found in language itself."

F. F. Fortunatov (1848-1914), the leader of the so-called Moscow school, improved the methods of historical linguistics, whereas Baudouin's essential achievements concern the synchronic aspect of language. In general linguistics Fortunatov's main contributions belong to the field of morphology, and Baudouin's, to phonologic problems. Fortunatov's search was also far ahead of his time, but often he felt handicapped by the naive empiricism typical of the second half of the nineteenth century. Never satisfied with his results, he published little and wrote no conclusive work. (Jakobson 1971[1943a]: 452-453)

["Polish-Russian cooperation in the science of language"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110873269.451] ["This summary of a paper read May 23, 1943 in the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America appeared in the Bulletin of this Institute, I (1943)."]

Jakobson, Roman 1971[1949g]. The phonemic and grammatical aspects of language in their interrelations. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 103-114. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110873269.103

Consequently the problem of phonemic differentiation of diverse grammatical layers confronts us both in the synchronic and diachronic aspects. The grammatical and the phonemic structures mutually readjust each other. The relative internal autonomy of both patterns does not exclude their perpetual interaction and interdependence. As we have already mentioned, the reshaping of the phonemic pattern may give new stimuli to the grammatical system which the latter can either adopt or reject. Conversely, the grammatical processes sometimes successfully offer innovations to the phonemic system and even serve to engender new phonemes. In Byelorussian the use of the opposition palatalized vs. nonpalatalized in grammatical alternations (/rv-ú/ ~ /rv'-óš/, /vr-ú/ ~ /vr'-óš/) calls into being a new pair /tk-ú/ ~ /tk'-óš/ and introduces a new phoneme, the palatalized /k'/, which formerly was a mere positional variant of the phoneme /k/. In White Russian, on the model of pairs like /l'ac'-iš/ ~ /l'ač-ú/, analogical levelling builds corresponding voiced pairs, such as /hl'a3-íš/ ~ / "hl'až-ú/, and enriches the phonemic pattern by a new phoneme, the voiced hushing affricate /ž/.

To conclude: using the multifarious suggestions contained in the answers to the questionnaire, our report has tried to give a summary survey of one of the pivotal issues raised by the Committee of the Congress. Our limitation has been the word-grammar, as the reference to "morphology" in the title of the formulated question suggests. Our intention was to avoid as much as possible equivocal and ambiguous terms, as well as terminological discussion, and to seek out the gist of the problem. Our answer has been: both synchronic and diachronic study shows an intimate link of solidarity and interdependence between the two autonomous structures - the phonemic and the grammatical. The recent progress of phonemic studies on the one hand, and of semantic research in grammatical concepts on the other, brings us close to the intersection of these two fields, to the problem of grammatical form. The technics of cataloguing the "grammatical processes" is now highly developed, yet the next urgent task is to undertake an explicit structural analysis of these processes. (Jakobson 1971[1949g]: 114)

["The phonemic and grammatical aspects of language in their interrelations"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110873269.103] ["Report to the Sixth International Congress of Linguists (Paris, July 1948), published in the Actes du Sixième Congrès International des Linguistes (Paris, 1949)."]

Jakobson, Roman 1971[1949f]. Comparative Slavic grammar. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 115-118. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110873269.115

The autonomy of the word and the distinctness of word boundaries are preserved both in Protoslavic nad in the modern Slavic languages; and there is a clear-cut difference between the treatment of affixes on the one hand, and proclitic conjunction or enclitic particles on the other. The root plus derivational and inflexional suffices forms a simple word. A root precedes by another root or by a prefix produces a complex word. Prepositions are phonemically treated as prefixes. Derivational suffixes remain an extremely productive means of neology in Slavic languages. Prefixes play only a derivational role, but prefixation as such has an important part in the building of Slavic verbal aspects. Alternations of phonemes are relevant auxiliary means in Slavonic inflection; pivotal are prosodic alternations both in Protoslavic and in those Slavic languages which maintain in their word structure such distinctive features as pitch, quantity, or place of accent; as a result of the loss of 'jers', alterations of vowel and zero as well as zero desinences occupy a great place in all Slavic languages. Autonomous alternations of different vowels in the root are in part the residue of Indo-European or Protoslavic processes, and in part essential innovations of sparate Slavic languages, e.g., Ukrainian, Polish, Czech. In desinences vocalic alternations conditioned by the stem-end (a characteristic feature of late Protoslavic) remain, in spite of all analogic changes, a pertinent factor in the morphologic structure of modern Slavic languages. Due to various palatalization processes, the alternations of the last stem-consonant are partly inherited from Protoslavic, partly developed in the separate Slavic languages. There is still a pronounced tendency (particularly striking in Russian) to differentiate the alternations used in declension and those used in conjugation. (Jakobson 1971[1949f]: 115)

["Comparative Slavic grammar"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110873269.115] ["The last chapter of a condensed survey Slavic Languages which was written in Hunter, NY, summer 1948, and published by Columbia University Press in 1949."]

Jakobson, Roman 1985[1954b]. Slavism as a topic of comparative studies. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings VI: Early Slavic Paths and Crossroads. Part 1: Comparative Slavic Studies. The Cyrillo-Methodian Tradition. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton Publishers, 65-85. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110863895

Before the dissolution of Common Slavic into separate Slavic tongues, it had passed through a long evolution. This Slavic linguistic prehistory, covering at least two millenniums, can to a certain extent be traced: the comparative study of Slavic languages reveals the relative chronology of some Common Slavic phonological and grammatical changes; and, moreover, a few of them may be dated by the evidence of lexical borrowings from and by Common Slavic. As the late Meillet, the great French linguist, repeatedly stressed, comparative historical studies must surmount, once and for all, the traditional over-simplified approach which postulated an original unity and subsequent differentiation. In reality, the two forces, centripetal and centrifugal, may also work in reverse order and bring about a secondary unification, or act simultaneously [|] with the result that a group of dialects undergoes divergent developments in one respect and convergent developments in another. When this concept was applied to the Slavic field, mainly by Trubetzkoy and Durnovo, it became evident that up to the beginning of our millenium, dialectal differentiation within Common Slavic did not impede the diffusion of certain innovations throughout the whole Slavic territory. It would be incorrect, therefore, to project the dissolution of Common Slavic to a more remote date.

With the gradual development and expansion of comparative linguistics, the comparative method can no longer limit itself to the problems of the ancestral language and stop at the stage of its dissolution. The question of elements of unity and differentiation is extended to include the period of independent Slavic languages that followed the dissolution of Common Slavic. The investigation is faced with new tasks: what part of the common patrimony was preserved by all the Slavic languages and, on the other hand, what convergent or divergent innovations did they undergo in their separate histories? Are convergent innovations predetermined by similar premises of the common patrimony, or are they induced by the geographic propinquity of any two given Slavic languages? Verbal behavior on its various levels is conceived by the modern science of language as a continuous tension between two opposite tendencies: integration, conformism, solidarity on the one hand, and differentiation, particularism, individualization on the other. Both these movements in their interaction require probing study.

The modern inquiry is not confined to the genetic, or as the linguists say, the diachronic aspect of language. What does the notion of Slavic-speaking peoples mean from the synchronic vantage point? Any exchange of verbal messages requires a common code between the addresser and the addressee. The degree of communality may vary. People belonging to the same circle, social group, locality, share the most homogeneous linguistic code. Verbal intercourse between speakers of different dialects is less fluid in proportion as the difference between the two codes in sounds, forms and vocables increases. Confusion ensues when speech communities involved in verbal intercourse use, not two dialects of one and the same language, but two different languages, although cognate and similar. If a Dane, Norwegian and Swede, inexperienced in inter-Scandinavian relations, meet and converse, they are at first strongly handicapped by considerable differences in sounds, forms and vocabulary. For such alistener these differences represent what communication engineers call "semantic noise". After some training, however, the listener learns the main differences and, in order [|67|] to grasp what is being said, performs what the engineers have aptly labeled "code switchings".

This important phenomenon of verbal behavior, most corefully studied in the Scandinavian field, is of equal importance in Slavic intercommunication. "Mountain", in Czech, is hora, with initial stress, and gará, with final stress, in spoken Russian. After a brief experience in code switching, a Czech listener learns to substitute h for the Russian's g, an initial stress for the Russian final accent, and, consciously or subconsciously, realizes that the Russian unstressed a corresponds to both a and o in Czech. The codes witching, which in general plays a considerable role in human verbal relations, becomes decisive in such inter-lingual communications as between diverse Scandinavian or Slavic speakers. Thus, Scandinavian or Slavic in its synchronic aspect is a code with numerous variables. The "Czechoslovak language" of the Constitution of the first Czechoslovak Republic was a legally recognized example of such a mobile code with two variants - Czech and Slovak. (Jakobson 1985[1954b]: 65-67)

["Slavism as a topic of comparative studies"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110863895.65] ["Written in Cambridge, Mass., 1953 and presented as a paper on June 27, 1953, at the inaugural meeting of the Conference of American and Canadian Slavists at the University of Michigan."]

Jakobson, Roman 1971[1956d]. Sergej Karcevskij: August 28, 1884-November 7, 1955. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 517-521. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110873269.517

Nurtured on Saussure's ideas of synchronic linguistics, Karcevskij rigorously circumscribed his scope of observation to his native tongue: contemporary, urban Russian. Material from other languages is only incidental in his studies, and even his book reviews deal almost uniquely with investigations of modern Russian. "In my work I am a man of one love - he used to say - and this love is the Russian language." Any scission between the linguistic explorer and the native informant was profoundly alien to this scholar. The negative side of such a self-imposed limitation was the excessive influence of the Russian language pattern on Karcevskij's approach to some problems of general linguistics. But for the language under observation, this ascetic limitation guaranteed the highest accuracy and thoroughness of analysis. Karcevskij was the first linguist of the Saussurian trend to attempt a systematic description of such a typically "grammatical" language as Russian; the earlier research of this school was concentrated on the more "lexicological", occidental languages. This circumstance necessitated the search for new analytic and descriptive devices, and modern linguistics owes to Karcewskij more than one illuminating discovery.

His gradual dissolution of Russian speech from its amplest to its minutest constituents enabled him to outline several cardinal processes and to discern their semantic values. His grasp of intonations in their relation to syntactic structure, and to the various roles of the utterance within the dialogue, surpasses the limits of Russian philology and has influenced the theory and concretes tudy of intonation in international study. Linguistics will respond to his appeal to pursue the pivotal inquiry into the structure of the dialogue as the primary form of discourse. (Jakobson 1971[1956d]: 519)

["Sergej Karcevskij: August 28, 1884-November 7, 1955"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110873269.517] ["Written in Nassau, Bahama Isls., January 1956, for the Cashiers Ferdinand de Saussure, XIV."]

Jakobson, Roman 1971[1962d]. On the Rumanian neuter. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 187-189. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110873269.187

Within the Rumanian pair of masculine and feminine the latter is more specified than the former. A masculine noun is applied to a woman rather than a feminine noun to a man, except for epreciatory words: un om şi o femeie fericiţi (masc. plural), 'happy man and woman'; femeie advocat 'female lawyer'. Likewise the plural, as it has been repeatedly observed, is more thoroughly specified than the singular. Accordingly, [|189|] we rather substitute singular for plural than plural for singular. Here lies the synchronic explanation for the different distribution of gender forms in singular and plural. A simultaneous signalling of two particularly specified categories is avoided; therefore, the more specified Rumanian feminine is delimited only in the less specified singular, and, vice versa, the less specified masculine only in the more specified plural. (Jakobson 1971[1962d]: 188-189)

["On the Rumanian neuter"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110873269.187] ["Written in the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford, California, 1959, for the Mélanges Linguistiques offerts à Emil Petrovici = Cercetări de Lingvistică, III."]

Jakobson, Roman 1971[1963e]. Implications of language universals for linguistics. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 580-592. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110873269.580

Our century has witnessed the gradual stages of a spectacular rapproachement between linguistic and mathematical thought. The gratifying concept of invariance, which in synchronic linguistics has first been applied to intralingual comparison of variable contexts, was finally expanded to intelingual comparison. Typological confrontation of diverse languages reveals universal invariants; or - to quote the inaugural charter of the present conference, the Memorandum concerning language Universals prepared by J. H. Greenberg, C. Osgood, and J. Jenkins - "admidst diversity, all languages are, as it were, cut from the same pattern". We see emerging ever new, unforeseen, but henceforth perfectly discernible "uniformities of universal scope", and we are happy to recognize that [|581|] the languages of the world can actually be approached as manifold variations of one world-wide theme - human language.

This outlook is particularly agreeable after the stern opposition to any typological comparison of language which was current among American linguists during the 1940's and mutatis mutandis corresponded to the simultaneous Soviet Russian ban on comparative historical studies by the then dictatorial Marrist dogma.

The tension between two polar trends - parochial particularism and all-embracing solidarity - which Saussure observed in language, is true for linguistics as well: "individual-language-oriented definitions" and concentrated on differentials alone alternate here with a search for common denominators. Thus among scholastic theoreticians of language the renowned Paris savant of the 12th century, Pierre Hélie, declared that there are as many kinds of grammar as there are languages; whereas in the 13th century, grammatica universalis was considered indispensable to give grammar a scientific status. Roger Bacon taughT: Grammatica una et eadem est secundum substantial in omnibus linguis, licet accidentaliter varietur. Only today, however, does linguistics have at its disposal the necessary methodological prerequisites for constructing an adequate universal model.

The strictly relational, topological character of the cross-language invariants under study has been repeatedly pointed out in the course of our deliberations. Previous endeavors to define the interlingual invariants in absolute metrical terms could only fail. There is an inventory of simple relations common to all tongues of the world. Such relations pertain both to the early acquisitions of children's language and to the most stable verbal properties in those types of aphasic regress which display a mirror picture of infants' development. This repertory may be exemplified in phonemics by such simple relations as compact/diffuse (universally displayed in vocalism, and for most languages also in consonantism), grave/acute (universally displayed in consonantism and/or in vocalism, in the former almost universally), and nasal/non-nasal (near-universal in consonantism). To instance simple relations among grammatical universals, we may cite the difference between the classes of nouns and verbs (which assign to their referents the roles of 'existents' and 'occurrents' respectively, as Sapir used to call them. This difference is correlated but never merges with the likewise universal difference of two syntactic functions - subject and predicate. A few more examples: the particular class, pronouns (or in Charles Peirce's terms, 'indexical symbols'; the category [|582|] of number, with its basic distinction between singular and plural; and the category of person, with its opposition of impersonal ('third person') and personal forms, which in turn include an opposition of addressee ('second person') and addresser ('first person'): the two numbers and the three persons are universally displayed by pronouns, as J. H. Greenberg observes. (Jakobson 1971[1963e]: 581-582)

["Implications of language universals for linguistics"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110873269.580] ["Concluding Remarks at the Conference on Language Universals, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., April 1961, and published in its Report (1963) jointly with the other papers of the same conference which are cited above."]

Jakobson, Roman 1971[1964d]. Results of the ninth international congress of linguists. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 593-602. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110873269.593

A thorough integration of linguistic studies requires an earnest concern with the diverse functions of language. For the first time a special section of a linguistic congress has dealt with stylistics and poetics: the study of poetry has been conceived as inseparable from linguistics and as its pertinent task. A quantitative expression of today's lively interest in poetics is the eloquent fact that even on the stairs of the large Kresge auditorium, there was no place left vacant during the meeting of this section. "The description of a poem" has become an appropriate and honorable topic; verses of Wallace Stevens, Yeats, Tennyson, and Moses ibn Ezra were analyzed and talked over (by de Groot, Halliday, Chramm), and, according to the spirited conclusion of Benveniste, henceforth any periodicals or societies of linguistics should carry the supplementary words, "and of poetics".

It was repeatedly pointed out that diversity among and within languages can and must "be studied along three synchronic dimensions - geographical, social, and stylistic", in Bright's and Ramanujan's formulation. These three aspects of variations and their interplay were intently discussed especially in connection with diasystems, interdialectal and interlingual borders, contacts, borrowings, mutual adjustment, "tolerance or intolerance of variation", the role of bidialectal (and multidialectal) or bilingual (and multilingual) individuals or communities. Several instructive "sociolinguistic" papers (e.g., by Gumperz and Read) disclosed the promising development of this vital field of research, first outlined by Lévi-Bruhl at the plenary session of the Copenhagen Congress of 1936. Yet one can hardly view the socio-linguistic influences of language as merely extrinsic factors. If we approach linguistics as just one among the conjugate sciences of communication, then any difference in the role of communication may evidently have "a potent effect" upon verbal communication. Thus the role assigned to the wider radius of communication by a nomadic society leads both to technological improvements in transportation and to a coalescence of language.

In Martinet's report, "Structural Variation in Language", variations in space and time have been confronted, and their explicative study "beside a purely descriptive one" has been demanded. In addition to his sound emphasis on the indissolubility of temporal and spatial variations, now one will have to examin and clarify the inseparability of temporal variations from the stylistic ones, and the transition from reversible fluctuations to the irreversible mutations, which is still far from being apprehended in recent treatises on historical phonology.

The strenuous and continuous advance of synchronic research gave the [|599|] impulse to a new discussion of linguistic changes: the degree of their lawfulness, their nature and types. In particular, the pressing need for syntactical reconstruction in comparative linguistics was convincingly exemplified both with Indo-European (Watkins) and with Eskimo-Aleut material (Bergsland). The present state of general and Indo-European linguistics urgently requires, as Georgiev rightfully claimed, a new Grundriss and a new etymological dictionary, up to date both in their methods and factual data, particularly as to the inventory of languages referred to.

Kuryłowicz's report to the plenum, "On the Methods of Internal Reconstruction", offered us a fascinating outlook upon the Indo-European grammatical prehistory. These are, as the rapporteur has clearly shown, "diachronic conclusions that may be drawn from a synchronic analysis of linguistic data".

In the foundations of this inquiry there are thee salient features which unite the report in question with the reports on the level of linguistic analysis and on the logical basis of linguistic theory. One of these cardinal features is the primary concern with the paradigmatic axis, in contradistinction to the exclusive care for the syntagmatic axis in the distributionalists' approach of the recent past.

A second feature, closely connected with the first one and no less important, is the recognition and investigation of the hierarchical order within the paradigmatic set, an attitude diametrically opposed to the depreciation of ordering in the dogma of the orthodox distributionalists. Is "hierarchy" not the catchword of this Congress? - There proved to be distinctly hierarchical ties not only between different levels of language but also between correlated units of one and the same level, and it is not by chance that the asymmetrical relation between the marked and unmarked opposites in language again and again emerged in the course of the deliberations. The principle of irreversible predictability has been exhibited as an efficient inference from this hirarchical arrangement.

The third feature unifying the cited report is a steady and consistent search for the universal, panchronic foundation of this order. That means a definitive rejection of such paradoxical, defeatist - well, simply antiscientific - slogans as "Languages can differ from each other without limit and in unpredictable ways". Such an alleged want of predictability would have meant inevitably the ruin of linguistic science. The bankruptcy of this gloomy paradox permits us safely to anticipate further Congresses of linguists. It is to be noted that the search of our days for language [|600|] universals found expression in our Congress, where, for instance, word order (Greenberg) and intonation (Bolinger) were examined from this point of view.

Benveniste's report devoted to the levels of analysis and splendidly synthesizing decades of his personal and international research gave insight into the hierarchy of all the coded linguistic units (le système de la langue), from the lowest, the distinctive feature - or merism, as he proposes to term this ultimate entity - to the highest, the sentence, which at the same time functions as a constituent of the free, no longer coded discourse. Special papers were concerned with some problems of this hierarchy, especially the ranks of submultiples (Buyssens) and their immediate frame of reference (Seiler). The complex question of verbal phenomena transcending the sentence level, i.e., relationships between the sentence and its context, were likewise tackled (Reichling and Uhlenbeck; Winburne), as well as the opposite, correlated problem of "context-free language" (Schützenberger). (Jakobson 1971[1964d]: 598-600)

["Results of the ninth international congress of linguists"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110873269.593] ["Concluding Address to the Congress, Cambridge, Mass., August 31, 1962."]

Jakobson, Roman 1971[1964c]. Visual and auditory signs. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 334-337. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110873269.334

Both visual and auditory perception obviously occur in space and time, but the spatial dimension takes priority for visual signs and the temporal one for auditory signs. A gobprex visual sign involves a series of simultaneous constituents, while a complex auditory sign consists, as a rule, of serial successive constituents. Chords, polyphony, and orchestration are manifestations of simultaneity in music, while the dominant role is assumed by the sequence. The primacy of succesivity in language has sometimes been misinterpreted as linearity. Yet phonemes, simultaneous bundles of distinctive features, reveal the second axis of any verbal sequence. Moreover, it is the linearity dogma which prompts its adherents to associate such a sequence with the Markov chain and to overlook the hierarchical arrangement of any syntactic construction.

There is a striking difference between a primarily spatial, simultaneously visible picture and a musical or verbal flow which proceeds in time and successively excites our audition. Even a motion picture continually calls for simultaneous perception of its spatial composition. The verbal or musical sequence, if it is to be produced, followed and remembered, fulfills two fundamental requirements - it exhibits a consistently hierarchical structure and is resolvable into ultimate, discrete, strictly patterned components designed ad hoc (or, in Thomas Aquinas's terminoolgy, significantia artificialiter). No similar components underlie visual sign sets, and even if some hierarchical arrangements appears, it is neither compulsory nor systematic. It is the lack of these two properties that disturbs and rapidly fatigues us when we watch an abstract film, and which inhibits our perception and mnestic abilities.

In the Ciba Foundation Symposium of 1963, the present author discussed two opposite types of aphasic impairment - simultaneity and succesivity disorders - and, in accordance with A. R. Luria's and K. H. Pribram's research, sought to tie the former disturbances to dorsolateral and the latter to mediobasal lesions. The work of Luria, and in particular his latest book, brilliantly develops the fundamental distinction between simultaneous and successive syntheses [|337|] introduced by I. M. Sečenov in 1878. Both varieties participate not only in verbal behavior but also in visual experience. While simultaneous synthesis proves to be the determinant of visual perception, this final stage, as stressed by Luria, is preceded by a chain of successive search processes. With regard to speech, simultaneous synthesis is a transposition of a sequantial event into a synchronous structure, whereas in the perception of paintings such a synthesis is the nearest phenomenal approximation to the picture under contemplation. (Jakobson 1971[1964c]: 336-337)

["Visual and auditory signs"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110873269.334] ["Written in Cambridge, Mass., 1963, for E. Zwirner Festschrift (= Phonetica XI/1964)"]

Jakobson, Roman 2002[1965a]. Information and redundancy in the common Slavic prosodic pattern. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings I: Phonological Studies. s-Gravenhage: Mouton, 693-699. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110892499.693

The morphophonemic use of Slavic accentuation and the great role played by this factor in accentual alterations have been shrewdly delineated by Jerzy Kuryłowicz. The rigorous distinction between grammatical and strictly phonemic processes is one of the chief attainments of his prosodic studies. Kuryłowicz research focuses primarily upon the accentual particularities of Balto-Slavic and Slavic morphology and gives us thorough insight into the grammatical aspect of Common Slavic accentuation. The following notes, on the other hand, will be devoted to the phonological framework of Slavic prosodic phenomena. On the diachronic level, Kuryłowicz has been concerned mainly with the morphological amendments of the accentual system (transformations indirectes); here, however, it is its intrinsic phonological evolution (transformations directes) which alone will be touched upon. (Jakobson 2002[1965a]: 693)

["Information and redundancy in the common Slavic prosodic pattern"] [Later edition of SW I] ["Written in Cambridge, Mass., 1964, and published in Symbolae linguisticae in honorem Georgii Kuryłowicz (Kraków, 1965)."]

Jakobson, Roman 1971[1965d]. An example of migratory terms and institutional models (On the fiftieth anniversary of the Moscow Linguistic Cirde). In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 527-538. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110873269.527

First the name of the newly launched association and two years later the title of its journal aroused an onomastic debate in the steering committee of the circle. It was objected that the strong extralinguistic connotations of the English vocable "word" inhibits the use of this term as a synecdochic representation of "language." Therefore the editorial declared that "the title seemed to some of our friends too ambiguous": Why WORD? "Because the word, in its various aspects, is a focal point of the science of language." (F. de Saussure, E. Sapir and V. V. Vinogradov were quoted to reinforce this assertion). Moreover, "not only linguistics but also sociology, anthropology, and logic deal with the word. With the title WORD we intend to emphasize the multiform natural structure of linguistic reality and the necessity of studying language in all the fulness of its various functions and relations." This attempt was exemplified by opening the sequence of articles with two interdisciplinary studies - one on the social frame of language (Alf Sommerfelt) and the other on the similar application of structural analysis in linguistics and anthropology (Claude Lévi-Strauss). Hardly anyone today would fret over the title which reflects the name of the Czech journal started by PLK ten years earlier - Slovo a slovenost (Word and Literature). Incidentally, the Russian term slovenost', designating oral and written production as well as [|737|] the study of it, has been introduced into literary Czech in the early nineteenth century by V. Hanka and J. Jungmann. When it was proposed for the title of our Prague journal in order to stress the intimate ties between the word and verbal art and correspondingly between linguistics and poetics, it also met initially with bitter criticism in the kroužek as being bookish, vague and uncustomary. (Jakobson 1971[1965d]: 536-537)

["An example of migratory terms and institutional models"] [Online access] ["A revised and expanded version of the paper written in Cambridge, Mass., 1964-1965, for Omagiu lui Alexandru Rosetti (Bucharest, 1965)."]

Jakobson, Roman 1971[1966d]. Quest for the essence of language. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 345-359. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110873269.345

Saussure descried two drifts in language - the tendency to use the lexical tool, that is, the unmotivated sign, and the preference given to the grammatical instrument, in other words, to the constructional rule. Sanskrit appeared to him a specimen of an ultragrammatical, maximally motivated system, whereas in French as compared to Latin he found that "absolute arbitrariness which, in point of fact, is the proper condition of the verbal sign." It is noteworthy that Saussure's classification had recourse to morphological criteria only, while syntax was actually laid aside. This oversimplified bipolar scheme is substantially amended by Peirce's, Sapire's, and Whorf's insights into wider, syntactic problems. In particular, Benjamin Whorf, with his emphasis on "the algebraic nature of language", knew how to abstract from individual sentences the "designs of sentence structure" are argued that "the patternment aspect of language always overrides and controls the lexation or name-giving aspect." Thus the distinctly diagrammatic constituents in the system of verbal symbols are universally superimposed upon the vocabulary.

When abandoning grammar and approaching the strictly lexical problems of roots and further indissociable one-morpheme words (the lexicon's στοιχεια and πρωτα όνόματα, as they are labeled in Cratylus), we must ask ourselves, as did the participants of Plato's dialogue, whether at this point it would be advisable to stop and abandon the discussion of the internal connection between signans and signatum or whether, without clever evasion, one must "play the game till the end and investigate these questions vigorously."

In French, ennemi, as stated by Saussure, "ne se motive par rien", yet in the expression ami et ennemi a Frenchman can hardly overlook the affinity of both juxtaposed rhyme words. Father, mother, and brother are indivisible into root and suffix, but the second syllable of these kinship terms is felt as a kind of phonemic allusion to their semantic proximity. There are no synchronic rules which would govern the etymological connection between ten, -teen, and -ty, as well as between three, thirty, and third or two, twelve, twenty, twi- and twin, but nevertheless an obvious paradigmatic relationship continues to bind these forms into serried families. However opaque is the vocable eleven, a slight connection with the sound shape of twelve supported by the immediate neighborhood of both numerals is still seizable.

A vulgarized application of information theory could prompt us to expect a tendency toward dissimilation of contiguous numerals, like the change of zwei (2) into zwo introduced by the Berlin telephone directory to avoid any confusion with drei (3). However, in various languages an opposite, assimilatory tendency prevails among adjacent cardinals. Thus Russian attests a gradual attraction within every pair of simple numerals, e.g., sem' (7) - vosem' (8), devjat' (9) - desjat' (10). The similarity of signantia enforces the junction of the paired numerals.

Coinages such as slithy from slimy and lithe, and multiform varieties of blends and portmanteaus display a mutual adhesion of simple words resulting in a joint interaction of their signantia and signata.

D. L. Bolinger's paper cited above convincingly documents "the vast importance of cross influences" between sound and meaning and the "constellations of words having similar meanings tied to similar sounds" whatever the origin of such constellations may be (e.g., bash, mash, smash, crash, dash, lash, hash, rash, brash, clash, trash, plash, splash, and flash). Such vocables border upon onomatopoetic words where again the questions of origin are quite immaterial for synchronic analysis. (Jakobson 1971[1966d]: 353-354)

["Quest for the essence of language"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110873269.345] ["Address to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, February 10, 1965, published in Diogenes, 51."]

Jakobson, Roman 1981[1966f]. Grammatical parallelism and its Russian facet. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings III: Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry. The Hague; Paris; New York: Mouton, 98-135. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110802122.98

Strange as it may seem, during the more than eighty-five years that separate us from Šafranov's draft, no systematic effort has been made to fathom the system of Russian grammatical parallelism. In Žirmunskij's monograph on the history and theory of rhyme the chapter "Rhyme in the Bylina" surveys the homoioteleuton, a typical by-product of morphologic, particularly epiphoric, parallelism, without considering the over-all problems of parallelistic texture in Russian epic folklore, although it is only in this context that terminal phonemic correspondences receive a thorough explication. The statistics of rhymed lines are hardly informative without numerical data baout all forms of parallelism in the byliny. I have demonstrated the diverse semantic interrelations between two parallel clauses from Russian wedding songs. Synonymy is parallel verses was touched upon in Evgen'eva's recent book on the language of oral poetry. But as a rule current writing on Russian folklore still underrates or disregards the functions performed by grammatical parallelism in the semantic and formal structure of oral epics and lyrics. Before attempting a methodical treatise on the whole of this subject, with particular reference to the specific aspects it acquires in different poetic genres, one must examine the complex parallelistic texture of a single song in order to observe the concrete interplay of the multiform devices, each with its praper task and aim. (Jakobson 1981[1966f]: 108)

["Grammatical parallelism and its Russian facet"] [Online access] ["Written in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia in autumn, 1965, and published in Language, XL (1966)."]

Jakobson, Roman 2002[1966a]. The role of phonic elements in speech perception. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings I: Phonological Studies. s-Gravenhage: Mouton, 705-717. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110862744.241

Various cases of overlapping collected by Blach (1941) concern only the status of phonemes but find no analogue in application to features. Each feature displays its own binary opposition different from the oppositions displayed by the other extant features unless in certain contexts one of the features changes into another (diachronic overlap) or unless in certain elliptical subcodes of the given language both features merge (stylistic overlap).

The concurrent and sequential bits of information implemented in an utterance stand in a one-to-one relation with the distinctive features, provided that the nonelliptical, explicit phonemic code has been used by the utterer. Certainly any distinctive feature undergoes manifold variations dependent on both the concurrent and the sequential phonemic environment. Under all these variations any given feature is, however, represented by its relational, polarized, topological invariant, as long as the feature is not obliterated in the utterance, and as long as the phonemic code is common to the encoder and decoder, so that the latter can promptly match the percept to the familiar model which exerts a normalizing tendency in his percepts.

An instructive example of the relational invariance of a feature under the contextual variations is presented by Bondarko & Zinder (1966): the upward shift of pitch remains an unaltered invariant mark of the Russian consonantal opposition sharp ~ plain, whatever are its varying implementations conditioned by combinations with different [|249|] concurrent and/or subsequent features (higher spectral level at least in one of the consonantal phases or an i-/ike formant transition to the following vowel). Further observations of the same authors prove once more the imperative necessity of matching the opposites solely within identical phonemic contexts (ceteris paribus), e.g. the grave ~ acute continuants in the sequence afa-asa, ufu-usu. Although "on a relational basis the grave/acute opposition is still retained" in natural speech (Fant 1970), the artificial cutout of the prevocalic f, s from their vocalic environment distorts their authentic phonemic relation. Similarly the forcible cutout of an English interconsontantal lax l from its compulsory consonantal environment naturally impedes the perceptual discrimination (K. Stevens 1966). (Jakobson 2002[1966a]: 248-249)

["The role of phonic elements in speech perception"] [Later edition of SW I] ["R. Jakobson's paper presented at the 18th International Congress of Psychology, Moscow, August 8, 1966, in Symposium 23: Models of Speech Perception, and reproduced in Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 21, 1968, 9-20."]

Jakobson, Roman 1971[1967b]. On the relation between visual and auditory signs. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 338-344. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110873269.338

In his new book on the Human Brain and Mental Processes (1963), Luria shows that it was wrong to connect all the disturbances in the visual perception of such objects as paintings solely with the so-called visual centers at the back of the cortex. He discloses that its frontal, pre-motor part is also responsible for certain distortions, and he has analyzed the essence of these impairments. In our perception of a painting, we first employ step-by-step efforts, progressing from certain selected details, from parts to the whole, and for the contemplator of a painting integration follows as a further phase, as a goal. Luria observed that certain pre-motor impairments affect precisely this process of passing from one stage to the next in such preliminary perception, and he refers to I. M. Sečenov's pioneering studies of the 1870's. In connection with speech and similar activities, this great neurologist and psychologist of the last century outlined two distinct, cardinal types of synthesis, one sequential and the other simultaneous.

The problem of the two types of synthesis plays a very great role in linguistics. Today we heard allusions to this dyad in the various papers [|343|] about models of speech perception. The interrelation of successivity and simultaneity in speech and language has been vividly discussed by linguists of our century, but certain paramount aspects of the same problem were sagaciously approached already in the old Indic science of language. In the fifth century Bhartṛhari, the great master of Indic linguistic theory, distinguished three stages in the speech event. The first is the conceptualization by the speaker which implies no time sequence; the message as a whole may be simultaneously present in the mind of the speaker. What follows is the performance itself which, according to this scholar's treatise, has two faces - production and audition. Both of these activities are naturally sequential. This stage yields to the third one, namely the stage of comprehension, where the sequence appears to be changed into a concurrence. The sequence must be seized and experienced by the interpreter at one and the same time. This conception is akin to the modern psychological problem of "immediate memory", astutely examined by George Miller, or in other terms the "shortrate memory", as we heard it outlined today in this Symposium. At this stage the whole sequence, whether it be a word, a sentence, or a group of sentences, emerges as a simultaneously present totality which is decaded by means of "simultaneous synthesis".

These vital questions reappear again and again in world literature, and similar principles have been applied repeatedly to verbal art. Two centuries ago a fascinating discussion took place in Germany, where the famous master and theoretician of literature, G. E. lessing, tried to fix a rigid boundary between verbal art and the fine arts. He taught that painting is an art based on simultaneity (räumliches Nebeneinander), whereas poetry operates solely with time sequence (zeitliches Nacheinander). Another remarkable German writer and thinker, J. G. Herder, answered Lessing that the idea of a mere literary succession is fictitious, and an art based on mere Zeitfolge is impossible. In order to comprehend and evaluate a poetic work, we must have, according to Herder, a synchronic insight into its whole, and he gives the Greek name energeia to the simultaneous synthesis which enables us to comprehend the entirety of a verbal flow.

It is clear that between visual, spatial signs, particularly painting, and on the other hand verbal art and music, which deal primarily with time, there are not only a number of significant differences but also many common traits. Both these divergences and convergences must be carefully [|344|] taken into account, and whatever the import of simultaneous synthesis, nonetheless there exists a profound dissimilarity between the spatial and temporal arts, and between spatial and temporal systems of signs in general. When the observer arrives at the simultaneous synthesis of a contemplated painting, the painting as a whole remains before his eyes, it is still present; but when the listener reaches a synthesis of what he has heard, the phonemes have in fact already vanished. They survive as mere afterimages, somewhat abridged reminiscences, and this creates the essential difference between the two types of perception and percepts. (Jakobson 1971[1967b]: 342-344)

["On the relation between visual and auditory signs"] [Online access] ["Published in Proc. AFCRL Symposium on Models for the Perception of Speech and Visual Form (1967)."]

Jakobson, Roman 1985[1975f]. Glosses on the medieval insight into the science of language. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings VII: Contributions to Comparative Mythology. Studies in Linguistics and Philology, 1972-1982. Preface by Linda R. Waugh. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton, 185-198. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110855463.185

The insistence upon the creative power of language, which is peculiar to the whole movement of modistae, appears particularly outspoken in Boethius Dacus and somewhat differently in Raymundus Lullus with his conception of language as ars inveniendi. This resolute emphasis shows homologous features with the powerful poetic trend which enveloped the various countries of Europe precisely through the late twelth and most of the thirteenth century and which displayed an intent concentration on the inner creativity of verbal art. In a brief commentary to the so-called "parabolic-figurative style" cherished during that epoch in Russia, I was faced with such striking parallels as "the Golden Age of the French medieval literature" with its meridional poésie recluse (Provençal trobar clus) of Raimbaut d'Aurenga and Arnaud Daniel de Ribérac, on the German blüemen in Wolfram's epics. Amon further "synchronic international correspondences", one had to evoke the subtle symbolism and hermetism cultivated in the skaldic poetry of the late twelfth century, similar tendencies in the Irish poetry of the same time, enigmatic speech (significatio) and ornatus difficilis advocated in the contemporaneous Latin manuals of ars poetica, especially by Canfredus de Vinosalvo, and practiced in the international Latin poetry after the First Crusade, and finally the same epoch in the Byzantine literary mastery with its "multiplex semantic structures". (Jakobson 1985[1975f]: 193)

["Glosses on the medieval insight into the science of language"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110855463.185] ["Based on the author's concluding paper at the Newberry Conference on Historical Linguistics, February, 1968, and elaborated in Cambridge, Mass., Fall 1973 for Mélanges linguistiques offerts à Émile Benveniste (Paris, 1974)."]

Jakobson, Roman 1971[1970d]. Language in relation to sther communication systems. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings II: Word and Language. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 697-708. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110873269.697

Nicolas Ruwet, who combines a keen sense for language, especially verbal art, with a rare scientific insight into music, states that musical syntax is a syntax of equivalences: the diverse units stand in mutual relations of multiform equivalence. This statement prompts a spontaneous answer to the intricate question of musical semiosis: instead of aiming at some extrinsic object, music appears to be un langage qui se signifie soi-même. Diversely built and ranked parallelisms of structure enable the interpreter of any immediately perceived musical signans to infer and anticipate a further corresponding constituent (e.g., series) and the coherent ensemble of these constituents. Precisely this interconnection of parts as well as their integration into a composition whole acts as the proper musical signatum. Should one cite the plentiful corroborative testimony given by composers of the past and present? Or Stravinski's conclusive aphorism may suffice: "All music is nothing moret han a succession of impulses that converge toward a repose". The code of recognized equivalences between parts and their correlation with the whole is to a great degree a learned, imputed set of parallelisms which are accepted as such in the framework of a given epoch, culture, or musical school. (Jakobson 1971[1970d]: 704)

["Language in relation to sther communication systems"] [Online access] ["Lecture delivered October 14, 1968 in Milan at the International Symposium "Languages in Society and in Technique" under the sponsorship of Olivetti."]

Jakobson, Roman 1985[1975c]. The fundamental and specific characteristics of human language. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings VII: Contributions to Comparative Mythology. Studies in Linguistics and Philology, 1972-1982. Preface by Linda R. Waugh. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton,, 93-97. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110855463.93

3.1. The third and, definitely, the most decisive stage on the path from infancy (infantia = speechlessness) to a command of language generates an aptitude for building independent clauses, syntactical constructions which comprise both an explicit grammatical subject and an explicit grammatical predicate. Any referential holophrase or two-word phrase of both previous stages acted as a verbal appendage to the immediate situation and was correspondingly interpreted and labeled in the centenary scholarly tradition as a "psychological predicate" to an outward, hic et nunc observable and nonverbalized stimulus. But as soon as predication obtains its grammatical counterpart in a subjection, and herewith a mutual attachment of subject and predicate takes place in the clause itself, then and only then does referential speech cease to be a mere apprehension of the child's synchronous percepts and changes into a free and variable, mutable assignment of subjects and predicates to [|95|] each other, with a detachment of his verbal performances from local and momentary circumstances. The young child acquires the ability to speak of things and events distant in space and/or time, or fictitious, irreal, perhaps even inconceivable. He gradually develops an intuitive insight into the significant difference between words as wholly and utterly coded units, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the syntactical code. The latter superimposes definite matrices upon combinations of words into groups of diverse hierarchy, but the speaker retains a considerable freedom in selecting words with which he may fill these matrices in his actual speech. Often this relative freedom appears to be sensed quite patently by two- and three-year-old children. (Jakobson 1985[1975c]: 94-95)

["The fundamental and specific characteristics of human language"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110855463.93] ["Written in the summer of 1969 in La Jolla, California, for the Salk Institute Conference on the Biological Foundations of Language"]

Jakobson, Roman 1985[1971h]. The world response to Whitney's principles of linguistic science. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings VII: Contributions to Comparative Mythology. Studies in Linguistics and Philology, 1972-1982. Preface by Linda R. Waugh. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton, 219-236. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110855463.219

Bloomfield retained his admiration for Whitney's linguistic essentials and once, in the early 1940's, he said that his first guide to a synchronic study of languages was Hitney's Sanskrit Grammar of 1879. It is worthy of note that A. Hillebrandt's review of 1880 recognized the novelty of this grammar in its inquiry into a state of language (Erforschung des Sprachzustandes), and the best translator and commentator of Saussure's Corso di lungiistica generale (Bari, 1967), Tullio De Mauro, compared this feature of Whitney's textbook with Saussure's synchronic approach to language.

Linguistic structures are "context-sensitive": they shift their meaning correspondingly to their variable surroundings. In a similar way linguistic theories undergo modifications according to the historical environment and personal ideology of their interpreters. Thus Whitney's doctrine is differently viewed and treated by Brugmann, by Saussure, by Terracini, by Bloomfield, and presumably also by the present-day critical readers. Hithero in all interpretations of Whitney's contributions to general linguistics, the invariant idea is that on the subjects he discussed, he made no fallacious statements, and thus in questions of general linguistics, he remarkably surpassed his predecessors and contemporaries. The variables in the appraisal of Whitney's legacy concern not so much what he said as what and how much remains to be said "dans un autre sens" and what is the relative pertinence for the science of language of that which was revealed in comparison with that which remained unvoiced. (Jakobson 1985[1971h]: 236)

["The world response to Whitney's principles of linguistic science"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110855463.219] ["Written as a preface to Whitney on Language: Selected Writings of William Dwight Whitney, ed. M. Silverstein (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1971)."]

Jakobson, Roman 1985[1975g]. A glance at the development of semiotics. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings VII: Contributions to Comparative Mythology. Studies in Linguistics and Philology, 1972-1982. Preface by Linda R. Waugh. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton, 199-218. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110855463.199

Now, at the same time, Saussure puts the "particularly complex nature of the semiology of spoken language" (loc. cit.) in opposition to the other semiological systems. According to the Saussurean doctrine, these systems of signs which have at least a basic link of reference between the signatum and the signans, icons in Peirce's terminology, symbols as Saussure's Course will call them later: "The symbol is a sign, but not always completely arbitrary" (1: 155). On the contrary, language is "a system of independent symbols", signs are those which Peirce called symbols (or legisigns). "The independent symbols", according to the old notes of Saussure, "possess the particular major characteristic of not having any sort of perceivable connection with the object to be designated". The result is that "whoever sets foot on the terrain of language may say to himself that he is abandoned by all the analogues of heaven and earth".

Although Saussure is inclined to see the primary concern of semiology in "arbitrary systems", this science, he affirms, will always see its field grow, and it is difficult to predict where semiology will stop (1: 153ff.). The "grammar" of the game of chess, with the respective value of its pieces, authorizes Saussure to compare the game of language and not to conclude that in these semiological systems "the notion of identity meshes with that of value, and vice versa" (1: 249).

It is precisely questions linked to identities and values which, according to an astute note made by Saussure at the beginning of the century, appear to be decisive in mythological studies, as in the "parental domain of linguistics": on the level of semiology

all the incongruities of thought stem from insufficient reflection about what identity is, or what the characteristics of identity are, when we talk about a nonexistent being, like a word, or a mythic person, or a letter of the alphabet, which are only different forms of the sign in a philosophical sense.

[|211|] "These symbols, without realizing it, are subject to the same vicissitudes and to the same laws as are all the other series of symbols [...] - They are all part of semiology." Theidea of this semiological being which does not exist in itself, "at any time" (à nul moment) (2: 277) is adopted by Saussure in his 1908-09 course where he proclaims "the reciprocal determination of values by their very coexistence, while adding that there are no isolated semiological beings, and that such a determination can occur only on a synchronic level, "for a system of values cannot stay astride a succession of epochs" (2: 304).

Saussure's semiotic principles during the last twenty years of his life demonstrate his striking tenacity. The 1894 sketches, cited above, open with an inflexible assertion:

The object that serves as sign is never "the same" (le même) twice: one immediately needs an examination or an initial convention to know within what limits and in the name of what we have the right to call it the same; therein lies its fundamental difference from an ordinary object.

These notes insist on the decisive role of the "plexus of eternally negative differences", the ultimate principle of non-coincidence in the world of semiological values. In approaching semiological systems, Saussure tries to "take exception to what preceded", and as of 1894 he gladly refers to comparison between the synchronic states in language and the chessboard. The question of the "antihistorical character of language" will even serve as title to Saussure's last notes in 1894 (2: 282), and, one could add, to all of his thoughts on the semiological aspects of language and of all the créations symboliques. These are the two intertwined principles of Saussurean linguistics - l'arbitraire du signe and the obstinately "static" conception of the system - which nearly blocked the development of the sémiologie générale that the master had foreseen and hoped for.

Now, the vital idea of semiological invariance which remains valid throughout all of its circumstantial and individual variations is clarified by Saussure thanks to a felicitous comparison of language to the symphony: the musical work is a reality existing independently of the variety of performances made of it; "the performances do not attain [|212|] the status of the work itself". "The execution of as ign is not its essential characteristic", as Saussure points out; "the performance of a Beethoven sonata is not the sonata itself" (1: 50, 53ff.). We are dealing with the relationship between langue and parole and with the analogous link between the "univocality" (univocité) of the work and the multiplicity of its individual interpretations. Mistakenly, in the text arranged by Bally and Sechehaye, these interpretations are represented as "errors that [the performers] might commit".

Saussure must have thought that in semiology the "arbitrary" signs were going to occupy a fundamental place, but it would be useless to look in his students' notes for the assertion that the Bally-Sechehaye text gives, that is: "signs that are entirely arbitrary actualize the ideal of semiological process better than other signs" (1: 154).

In his expansionist view of the science in the process of becoming (science en devenir) Saussure goes as far as to admit that "everything comprising forms must enter into semiology" (loc. cit.). This suggestion seems to anticipate the current idea of the topologist Réné Thom, who wonders if one must not immediately attempt to develop a "general theory of forms, independent of the specific nature of substratum space". (Jakobson 1985[1975g]: 210-212)

["A glance at the development of semiotics"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110855463.199] ["Opening report at the First International Congress of Semiotics, Milan, June 9, 1974 [...]"]

Jakobson, Roman 1985[1979c]. The twentieth century in European and American linguistics: movements and continuity. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings VII: Contributions to Comparative Mythology. Studies in Linguistics and Philology, 1972-1982. Preface by Linda R. Waugh. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton, 265-278. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110855463.265

According to the aforesaid review, the nineteenth century "took little or no interest in the general aspects of human speech", so that Saussure in his lectures on general linguistics "stood very nearly alone", and his posthumous work "has given us the theoretical basis for a science of human speech". In reviewing Sapir's Language, Bloomfield realizes that the question of influence or simply convergent innovations is "of no scientific moment", but in passing he notes the probability of Sapir's acquaintance with Saussure's "book, which gives a theoretical foundation to the newer trend of linguistic study". In particular, he is glad to see that Sapir "deals with synchronic matter (to use de Saussure's terminology) before he deals with diachronic, and gives to the former as much space as to the latter".

Bloomfield subscribes not only to the sharp Saussurian distinction between synchronic and diachronic linguistics, but also to the further dichotomy advocated by the Cours, namely a rigorous bifurcation of human speech (langage) into a perfectly uniform system (langue) and the actual speech-utterance (parole). He professes full accord with the "fundamental principles" of the Cours:

For me, as for de Saussure [...] and, in a sense, for Sapir [...], all this, de Saussure's la parole, lies beyond the power of science. [...] Our science can deal only with those features of language, de Saussure's la langue, which are common to all speakers of a community, - the phonemes, grammatical categories, lexicon, and so on. [...] A grammatical or lexical statement is at bottom an abstraction.

But in Bloomfield's opinion, Saussure "proves intentionally and in all due form: that psychology and phonetics do not matter at all and are, in principle, irrelevant to the study of language". The abstract features of Saussure's la langue form a "system, - so rigid that without any adequate physiologic information and with psychology in a state of [|271|] chaos, we are", Bloomfield asserts, "nevertheless able to subject it to scientific treatment".

According to Bloomfield's programmatic writings of the twenties, the "newer trend" with its Saussurian theoretical foundation "affects two critical point". First, and once more he underscores this point in his paper of 1927 "On Recent Work in General Linguistics", Saussure's outline of the relation between "synchronic" and "diachronic" science of language has given a "theoretical justification" to the present recognition of descriptive linguistics "beside historical, or rather as precedent to it". In this connection it is worth mentioning that even the striking divergence between the search for new ways in Saussure's synchronic linguistics and his stationary, nearly Neogrammarian attitude toward "linguistic history", was adopted by Bloomfield, who was disposed to believe that here one could hardly learn "anything of a fundamental sort that Leskien didn't know". (Jakobson 1985[1979c]: 270-271)

["The twentieth century in European and American linguistics: movements and continuity"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110855463.265] ["First presented as the opening paper at the Golden Anniversary Symposium of the Linguistic Society of America, New York, Dec, 27, 1974."]

Jakobson, Roman 1985[1976f]. Pëtr Bogatyrëv (29.I.93—18.VIII.71): Expert in transfiguration. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings VII: Contributions to Comparative Mythology. Studies in Linguistics and Philology, 1972-1982. Preface by Linda R. Waugh. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton, 293-304. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110855463.293

From the early twenties on, Bogatyrëv was strongly influenced by Saussure's emphasis on synchronic linguistic descriptions, but at the same time - and the more his work progressed, the more strongly - dynamic elements in the synchronic view of folklore played the decisive role in his observations and conclusions. What he saw with particular clarity was the competition between different, even opposite functions attached to one and the same folklore act, especially conflicts between the aesthetic and magical functions, both in folk theatre and in religious ritual. In this respect his French paper on jocular and erotic plays in the funerary rites of Carpathian Rus' (1926) contains immensely rich material and comments. The proximities and distances between the play (jou) and the magical act (acte magique) led Bogatyrëv to look for the theatrical element in the performance of ritual and for the magical aspects of the theatrical realm, and he even devoteda special paper to "the superstitions of actors" (1927).

The study of functional hierarchy, namely of the dominant and secondary functions and the laws of their changes, is among the strongest attainments of Bogatyrëv's research, as is shown for instance in his study "The Christmas Tree in Eastern Slovakia" (Germanoslavica, 1932-33), where he demonstrates how a folk borrowing lost its aesthetic character and took on instead a magic-religious function. As another example of borrowing with a change in the dominant function, he cites galoshes, which when adopted by the Russian peasantry lost their original function of guarding one's feet against rain and mud and became instead purely decorative footwear which had itself to be protected from the elements. (Incidentally, a Russian satirical ditty [častuška] goes as follows: "I have galoshes and I'm saving them for the summer weather, but, as a matter of fact, i don't have them at all"; here the alleged change of function becomes a disguise for the actual lack of galoshes.)

The changeability and variety of functions attributed to a ritual, and its frequent obligatoriness, coupled with a complete lack of motivation or a subconscious one, compel Bogatyrëv to warn against oversimplified historical or synchronic interpretations. From this point of view, his richest collection and discussion of material is found in his monograph Polaznik (Kraków, 1933-34), where the South Slavic, Hungarian, Slovak, Polish, and Ukrainian beliefs concerning the earliest Christmas visitor to the house are examined and the whimsical metaphoric and metonymic connections of the visitor's person and conduct with the omen he brings to the house for the forthcoming year are attentively catalogued and interpreted.

The folk theatre, which Bogatyrëv studied from his youngest years until his last writings, was for him marked by the greatest multiplicity of meanings, by the greatest variability of constituents taken over from diverse arts, and was believed to exhibit the highest syncretism. In this connection the inquirer disclosed the greatest divergences between the director, the actors and the spectators, and at the same time the convergences of their roles. Here the attention of the analyst was focused on "the dialectical opposition of the stage and the audience" and on its removal. Such typical phenomena of the folk theatre as the lack of the three classical unities or the substitution of gestures for decorations and the interweaving of buffoonery and tragedy led Bogatyrëv to interesting juxtapositions of the folk drama with the medieval stage and with Chaplin's films, a topic he first approached as early as 1923 and to which he returned in 1938. Bogatyrëv's intensive cooperation with such outstanding representatives of the avant-garde Czech theatre as J. F. [|297|] Burian and Jindřich Honzl were most fruitful, both for the scholar and for Czech theatrical life, especially for Burian's remarkable experiments in staging Czech folk plays. This collaboration also resulted in several instructive essays which Bogatyrëv wrote especially for the Programs of Burian's theatre from 1936 through 1939, with one more after the war, in 1946. (Jakobson 1985[1976f]: 295-297)

["Pëtr Bogatyrëv (29.I.93—18.VIII.71): Expert in transfiguration"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110855463.293] ["Written in Peacham, Vermont, in the summer of 1975 and published in Sound, Sign and Meaning: Quinquagenary of the Prague Linguistic Circle, ed. L. Matejka (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1976)."]

Jakobson, Roman 1985[1975e]. On aphasic disorders from a linguistic angle. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings VII: Contributions to Comparative Mythology. Studies in Linguistics and Philology, 1972-1982. Preface by Linda R. Waugh. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton, 128-140. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110855463.128

We cannot but agree with Dr. Goodglass in his rejection of the recent assumptions according to which aphasic losses affect only performance, [|139|] but not competence. These surmises are built on a very narrowed and arbitrary conception of what competence is. Competence is far from being a static and uniform phenomenon. Every speech community and each of its members dispose of a multiform competence, and the competence for speech production is quite different from that for speech perception; moreover, there is a substantial difference between competence in spoken and written language, again with a crucial subdivision into reading and writing. It would be an oversimplification to view these differences are mere varieties of performance. The codes themselves differ. Our competence for the explicit style of language is to be distinguished from our competence for different degrees of ellipsis. We must distinguish the verbal losses of an aphasic as speaker and as listener, and they can hardly be reduced by the scientific interpreter to questions of performance. The changes in an aphasic's speech are not mere losses, but also replacements, and these replacements may be systematic, as for instance, the regularization of irregular verbs in the standard language, a phenomenon akin to the successive competences of a child in his approach to the mother tongue. The peculiar forms of interrelation between the explicit and elliptic codes in children or in aphasics are an intricate and imminent problem for the inquirer. (Jakobson 1985[1975e]: 138-139)

["On aphasic disorders from a linguistic angle"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110855463.128] ["First published in French translation, under the title "Les règles des dégâts grammaticaux", in Langue, Discours, Société, ed. J. Kristeva, J.-C. Milner and N. Ruwet (Paris, 1975) [...]"]

Jakobson, Roman; Waugh, Linda R. 1988[1979d]. The spell of speech sounds. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings VIII: Major Works 1976-1980. Completion Volume 1. Berlin; New York: Mouton, 181-234. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110862744.181

As we gradually acquire our mother tongue, "our feeling etymologizes, so to speak, without any regard to historical linguistics (Gabelentz 1891: 218). According to the ingenious comparisons advanced in 1879 by Mikołaj Kruszewski, "grammatical analogy" and so-called [|183|] "popular etymology" are two varieties - one morphological and the other lexical - of one and the same "integrating power" in the life of language: both of them display a mutual adjutsment between competing paradigmatic items. Gabelentz, followed by Schuchardt, detected "a fruitful concept" in these historically "false" but synchronously valid etymologies, which are based on mass agreement within a given speech community. Words linked together by both sound and meaning manifest "elective affinities" (Wahlverwandtschaften), able to modify the shape and the content of the vocables involved. The sound affinity may be provided by the similarity of initial and/or final sounds and clusters. The verb stehen 'stand' is felt to be related to the alliterative forms steif 'stiff', starr 'staring', Stock 'stick', Stamm 'stalk', steil 'steep', stopfen 'stuff', stauen 'stow away', Stab 'staff', stützen 'stay, sustain', stemmen 'stem', "whatever they have to do with the root *sthā. There is a simultaneous concord in rhyme and sense between stemmen and hemmen 'hem' or klemmen 'squeeze' (p. 219).

[...] A decade later the French explorer Maurice Grammont (1866-1946) also overcame the attitude of an external onlooker, distant in time and/or space, and announced a strictly synchronic view of "expressive" or "impressive" phonetics, according to his varying terms. In [|184|] Grammont's studies (from 1901 to 1913 and 1933) the same close interplay between sound and meaning underwent a careful examination in terms of the syntagmatic (sequential) axis: chief attention was focused on the order of alternating phonemes in reduplicated or triplicated word forms and upon reiterated phonemes within syntactic groups. In his programmatic paper "Onomatopoées et mots expressifs" (1901), Grammont persuasively declared that "the domain of onomatopoeia is much vaster than it seems to have been generally believed; the scope of expressive words, which are to be added, is not less considerable; and between the two fields there is no clear-cut boundary" (p. 319). (Jakobson & Waugh 1988[1979d]: 182-184)

["The spell of speech sounds"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110862744.181]

Jakobson, Roman 1985[1978d]. On the linguistic approach to the problem of consciousness and the unconscious. In: Rudy, Stephen (ed.), Selected Writings VII: Contributions to Comparative Mythology. Studies in Linguistics and Philology, 1972-1982. Preface by Linda R. Waugh. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton, 148-162. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110855463.148

By pointing to an analogy with biology, Kruszewski enlarged upon his teacher's idea of disappearance as an essential condition of development, and in his Očerk nauki o jazyke ("An Outline of The Science of Language") he held consistently to the notion that "destructive factors" are exceedingly beneficial for language". Somefifteen years later the issue of "oblivion" as a regular base of linguistic transformations, the issue courageously posed by Baudouin for the threshold of his scientific activities, was once again raised for discussion by Arsène Darmesteter (1846-1888) in the chapter "Oubli ou Catachrèse" of his probing semantic book.

In Baudouins lecture of 1870 "unconscious generalization" was characterized as "apperception, i.e. a force by the action of white people subsume all the phenomena of their mental life under certain general categories", and to this he added a comparison of the systems of categories in language, which are "joined together by the force of unconscious generalization", with "the system of the celestial bodies which operate under the influence of the force of gravity". If the connection between a given linguistic entity and related formations is "forgotten in the feeling of the people", it stands to the side until it falls under the influence of "a new family of words or category of forms". Baudouin insists that "people's feeling for language is no fiction, no subjective illusion but a real and positive category (function); it may be defined in terms of its properties and effects, as it can be verified [|151|] objectively and proved by fact". In the interest of terminological accuracy, Baudouin and, following him, Kruszewski preferred not to speak of "consciousness" of language but precisely of "a feeling for language", i.e. its unconscious, intuitive apprehension.

If "unconscious generalization, apperception", in accordance with Baudouin's classification, "represents the centripetal force in language", then, conversely, "unconscious abstraction, the unconscious tendency toward division and differentiation", allows a comparison with the "centrifugal force", and the "struggle of all the forces enumerated conditions the development of language".

Later, in Baudouin's "Obščij vzgljad na grammatiku" ("A General View of Grammar"), a section of his Podrobnaja programma lekcij ("Annotated Program of Lectures") given at the University of Kazan' during the academic year 1876-77, their author returned to an examination of all the forces acting in language which he had previously identified, insisting anew on their unconscious character. This time laws and forces were subjected to parallel examination as "static, i.e. operating in a synchronic position (state) of language" and "dynamic, giving rise to the development of language". In connection with the question of the influence of books "on the language of people with a literary education", Baudouin, both in his Kazan' program of 1876-77 and in his lecture of 1870, was prepared to acknowledge yet another of the forces acting in language but this time a force "comparatively not very powerful", namely "the influence on lnaguage of the human consciousness": "Although the influence of the consciousness on language makes a fully conscious appearance only among certain individuals, its effects are, nevertheless, imparted to the whole people, and in that way the influence of the consciousness can and does impede the development of a language; it counteracts the influence of unconscious forces - forces which by and large promoted a more rapid development of language - and does so precisely for the purpose of making language a common instrument for the unification and mutual comprehension of all contemporary members of a nation, and its forebears and descendents, as well. What results from this is a certain degree of inertness in language exposed to the influence of the human consciousness in contradistinction to the rapid natural movement of languages unaffected by that influence." [|152|]

In Kruszewski's theory "language is something that stands entirely by itself in nature" due to the co-participation of "unconscious-psychical phenomena" (unbewusstpsychischer Erscheinungen) which are governed by specific laws. The attempt to characterize the laws underlying linguistic structure as well as its development was one of the most original and, at the same time, most fertile contributions mady by the linguist during his all too brief career.

As for Baudouin, at the very start of the new century, he, in contrast to his own earlier insistent references to "unconscious factors", began attributing more and more significance to "the irrefutable fact of the intervention of consciousness in the life of language". In his words, "the tendency toward an ideal linguistic norm" is coupled with "the participation of human consciousness in the life of language", in particular, "any linguistic compromise occurring between peoples speaking different languages" inevitably involves "a certain portion of conscious creativity" (from an article of 1908, "Vspomogatel'nyj meždunarodnyj jazyk" ["An Auxiliary International Language"]). (Jakobson 1985[1978d]: 150-152)

["On the linguistic approach to the problem of consciousness and the unconscious"] [DOI: 10.1515/9783110855463.148] ["Presented asa a lecture at the International Symposium on the Unconscious, Tbilisi, October 3, 1979, and published in Russian in Bessoznatel/noe: Priroda, Funkcii, Metody, Issledovanija 3, ed. A.S. Prangišvili, A. E. Šerozija, F. V. Bassin (Tbilisi, 1978)."]

| Labels: , , ,

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)