ETHNOLINGUISTIC NOTE 19

Links to pages: 316, 318, 320, 322, 324

Comments Welcome

George W. Grace

University of Hawaii

March 5, 1984

ETHNOLINGUISTIC NOTES

Series 3, Number 19

MORE ON THE REALITY OF PHONEMES

There seem to be three (1) main points which come up in the comments which I have received on my ELN17 (Grace 1983c ). They can be stated approximately as follows:

1. Does not the very fact that alphabetic writing was invented prove that the languages in question already had units for the letters to represent? Isn't it necessary to infer that they had phonological units very like our phonemes?

2. Are my articulatory "subroutines" actually anything more than phonemes in a slightly different guise?

3. Why is the validity of the phoneme dependent upon its being psychologically real? Cannot languages be thought of as having formal structures which have nothing to do with psychological reality and which can be perfectly proper objects of study in their own right?

I will try to answer each of these in turn:

1. Of course, we in linguistics have long been accustomed to the assumption that the invention of alphabetic writing was a simple response to the phonological structure of languages. However, I do not think that there is any obvious reason to believe that that was necessarily the case. As far as I know alphabetic writing has not been invented independently more than once; moreover, forms of writing based on other principles have also been invented. It is my impression that the mode in the case of truly independently invented systems would be either a syllabic base or one in which only consonants are represented as segmental units with vowels not represented at all, or represented as something which we might equate with suprasegmentals. But writing systems do not have to be based at all exactly on already-existing linguistic units. For example, it seems that Chinese characters do not correspond very exactly to any kind of linguistic structural units.

I suggest that cartography would provide a better metaphor for the problem of representing the utterances of a language in writing. I suggest cartography because it also presents a problem for which there is no perfect solution--in this case the problem of representing the curved surface of a sphere on a flat surface. The response to the problem has been a number of different projections, each being more appropriate than the others for some particular uses. I suggest that the problem of representing a language in writing is similar--there are several different projections that have been tried, and none is equally satisfactory for all languages. In fact, none is completely satisfactory for any language.

2. I think my subroutines differ from phonemes in a number of important ways. (1) They are not part of a generalized theory of the language which is supposed to be invoked in both the production and the interpretation of speech. Rather, they are part of the motor skill involved in fluent pronunciation. Therefore, they probably are to be thought of as having their neurological connections with the motor functions. Moreover, according to my hypothesis the signantia need be known only as gestalts; i.e., although individuals are free to analyze them in any way they desire, analysis of any sort is not a necessary part of linguistic competence. (2) The subroutines are not conventionalized--that is, nothing requires that they be at all alike from one individual to another except that they must generate the same output within tolerable limits (whatever these are). (3) They are not typically one segment (in the sense of articulatory phonetics) in length. I am not very clear on this, but I imagine them typically to be considerably longer--some comprising whole words--and quite variable in length--some probably containing one or more others within them. I imagine their numbers not to be at all constrained by any principle of parsimony. (4) These subroutines are supposed to account just for our highly skilled pronunciations. I imagine that many of us have signantia which we produce in normal speech which involve coordinated movements of the speech organs which have not been fully "grooved"--that is, which we pronounce less fluently. There would be a strict conception of a person's phonological system in which it would be possible for that system not to provide for some word or words which that person habitually uses. E.g., That might be the case with some Americans who pronounce "Bach" with an [x]. Some of them may not pronounce it with quite the practiced ease with which they pronounce the bulk of their vocabularies--i.e., which is characteristic of words which fall fully within their systems. I have discussed some such phenomena in my own speech in Grace 1981 (cf. pp. 79-81).

I should repeat that what I intend to be proposing is a more parsimonious hypothesis, one which is intended to account with the simplest assumptions possible for those facts which must be accounted for. I put it forward most tentatively with the hope that it will help to show that the phoneme may not be a necessary assumption and to stimulate the re-thinking that I think is required.

3. Does language have a formal structure which is independent of the structure which is psychologically real for its speakers? Frank Lichtenberk has suggested a framework in which to put this question. He invokes Karl Popper's concepts of "World 2" ("the psychological world"-Popper 1982 :114) and "World 3" (the world of the products of the human mind"--ibid. ["World 1" is the physical world--the world of matter and energy]). Lichtenberk suggests that language can be studied both as a World 3 phenomenon, as has usually been the practice of linguistics, and also as a World 2 phenomenon, perhaps most appropriately under the rubric of psycholinguistics.

I do not find Popper's conceptualization as I understand it entirely adequate for the problem under discussion, but it provides a useful beginning. He makes it clear (at least in Popper and Eccles 1977 : 16) that he regards human language as a World 3 phenomenon. However, it is clearly among the very earliest of the World 3 phenomena to emerge, and in fact is surely prerequisite to most of the rest. It seems clear to me that for Popper the quintessential World 3 phenomena are "linguistically formulated thoughts". (For example, he says [1982: 116] "I will take the world of linguistically formulated human knowledge as being most characteristic of World 3."). He speaks frequently of the contents of libraries as examples of World 3 phenomena. I think that what Popper is most concerned with under the heading "World 3" are realities (scientific theories and the like) created by humans through the medium of language. Therefore, I will attempt to illuminate the question before us by introducing a further distinction.

I will propose that language is not one, but two different, products of the human mind--i.e., that we habitually use the term "language" to designate the products of two different creative processes. I will call these, respectively, Language 1 and Language 2. To put the matter simply, I will say that humankind created language by using it, thereby giving us Language 1, and subsequently created language in a new guise by talking about it. Thus was born Language 2. The creation of Language 1 was what we ordinarily think of as the evolution of language. I describe it as "creation through use" on the assumption that speaking evolved at least in part out of things which our prehuman ancestors used to do which performed some of the functions which language now performs. However, this assumption is not essential to anything else in my argument.

As I understand Popper, Language 2 is more like the other things he usually has in mind when he talks about World 3 phenomena than is Language 1. World 3, he tells us (1982: 116) "is the world of problems, theories and arguments". As I conceive of it, linguists did not invent Language 2, but they have elaborated it and, to a considerable extent, taken possession of it and come to assert proprietary rights over it. I will try to give an account of how phenomena like Language 2 come into being.

To the extent that a community discusses a given topic with regularity, their manner of speaking of it is likely to become conventionalized. With sufficient use, as in the case of a formal scientific discipline, this conventionalization will lead to what Richard Rorty calls "normal discourse". Rorty writes (Rorty 1979 : 320), "...normal discourse is that which is conducted within an agreed-upon set of conventions about what counts as a relevant contribution, what counts as answering a question, what counts as having a good argument for that answer or a good criticism of it. Abnormal discourse is what happens when someone joins in the discourse who is ignorant of these conventions or who sets them aside."

I take discourse about language within the framework of linguistics to be an example of normal discourse. (2) It is a set of conventions for talking about language. Such a set of conventions by implication embodies certain assumptions about the nature of the object of discussion. That is, the agreed-upon conventions about what counts as a contribution, what counts as an answer, a good argument, etc., imply agreed-upon assumptions about the nature of the object. Another way to put this would be to say that we talk about language as if it had the characteristics that our agreed-upon conventions imply.

I have suggested that Language 2 is a way of talking about language rather than suggesting that it is a way of thinking about it. An important point lurks therein, I believe, but one which I have been very slow to grasp. I can identify three main sources which led me to an appreciation of this point.

The first is the following quote from Benjamin Lee Whorf: "The revolutionary changes that have occurred since 1890 in the world of science--especially in physics but also in chemistry, biology, and the sciences of man--have been due not so much to new facts as to new ways of thinking about facts....

"I say new ways of thinking about facts, but a more nearly accurate statement would say new ways of talking about facts. It is this use of language upon data that is central to scientific progress." (Carroll 1956 : 220)

The second source is Rorty, with what is implied in his substitution of the concept of "normal discourse" for Kuhn's "normal science".

The third is the following statement by Berger and Luckmann (1967 : 152-53): "The most important vehicle of reality- maintenance is conversation....It is important to stress, however, that the greater part of reality-maintenance in conversation is implicit, not explicit. Most conversation does not in so many words define the nature of the world. Rather, it takes place against the background of a world that is silently taken for granted. Thus an exchange such as, 'Well, it's time for me to get to the station,' and 'Fine, darling, have a good day at the office' implies an entire world within which these apparently simple propositions make sense. By virtue of this implication the exchange confirms the subjective reality of this world."

What I take to be the significant message in what Whorf and Rorty say is that what a science most essentially is, is a way of talking about something--it is a set of conventions governing a ("normal") discourse. What it is most essential to learn in order to become a qualified professional in a scientific discipline (and I certainly intend to include linguistics here) is the required manner of discourse. The manner of talking of a discipline is much more accessible to observation than its manner of thinking (if, indeed, there is any common manner of thinking). For that reason it, rather than a manner of thinking, is what apprentices may observe and imitate, and it, rather than a manner of thinking, is what the apprentices can be required to display and be judged upon. In principle, we always retain our freedom to think as we see fit, no matter how we must talk. (3)

What Berger and Luckmann bring home to me is that the explicit statements that we make about the nature of reality (or of our particular subdomain of it) are rather insignificant in comparison with what we convey about it by implication. Everything we say implies that we believe in the existence of a kind of world in which what we are saying makes sense. A whole way of talking, such as the conventions governing the normal discourse of a scientific discipline, says by implication a lot about the nature of the world--or at least of that part of the world which the discipline involves itself in. We talk as if the world were this way. (I am sure, by the way, that this is the primary means by which children acquire the world view of their society. They project from what they hear said the kind of world in which all of that makes sense--to put it in other terms, they construct an appropriate reality.)

Now we can get back to the main point. It is (and that is what ELN17 was mainly about) that when we talk about what we call "language", we're actually talking about Language 2, although we may be inclined to assume that we are talking about Language 1, or that what we are doing is equivalent to talking about Language 1. Of course, Language 2 is a constructed reality which attempts faithfully to reflect the characteristics of Language 1, and it does so to a considerable extent. Unfortunately, however, we do not know exactly how much.

What I am suggesting is that phonemes are phenomena of Language 2, but not of Language 1. Language 2 is what linguistics has created to serve as its object (in the sense that all sciences create their objects). It stands in the relation of a model to Language 1, but it is a model designed, consciously or unconsciously, to highlight what was taken to be of particular interest. It seems to me that what Language 2 is designed to bring out and develop fully about language (i.e., Language 1) are those properties in the design of human languages which give them the potential to serve as repositories of decontextualized information. Even the languages of pre-literate peoples are looked at in this perspective--in terms of how they structure information. Questions which are not relevant to this concern are much more likely not to get asked. (I have said something about this perspective in my remarks on "the intertranslatability postulate and its consequences" [in Grace 1983a ] and "the Carnapian model of language" [in Grace 1983b ]).

My answer to the third question is, therefore, that it is indeed possible to think (and more especially, talk) of languages as having formal structures which have nothing to do with psychological reality and to study these structures. However, what is required in order to do so is to create a model of language structure--to create what I call "Language 2", and to study that. To subject Language 2 phenomena to scientific linguistic analysis, of course, requires that we observe complex rules about the kinds of observations to make and which of the possible observations authorizes which of the possible descriptive statements. In other words, this analysis is subject to the normal discourse conventions of linguistics.

That does not mean that any structural features which are posited in this framework are necessarily false. In fact, if they are posited validly while playing the game according to the conventions, they are true within the framework of the conventions (wherever those as if conditions hold). But there is no general answer to the question of their status outside the framework of the conventions--where the basic assumptions of the conventions do not hold--the question may be uninterpretable or the unanswerable except on a case by case basis.

It seems that we are left in this situation; there is no problem about the reality of the phoneme as an element of Language 2. It was built into Language 2 when the latter was created. On the other hand, it has seemed to me over the past several years, when I have been wanting to raise the question of the language-1-reality of the phoneme, that there was no clear way within the normal discourse of linguistics to raise and discuss it. If it is assumed that appeals to psychological reality are not relevant, but that the question is one of formal structure, then it is still not clear to me what conventions could apply--what could count as a relevant contribution or what would be accepted as a good argument (a dilemma of somewhat Goedelian cast).