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1Published originally in John Odmark (ed), Language, literature & meaning, Amsterdam, Benjamins (1979): 71-98
Three phenomenological trends
2On the occasion of Findlay’s translation of Husserl’s Logische Unter|suchungen, Sokolowski (1971, 318) undertook an analysis of the current state of the phenomenological movement, that offers an opportunity also to examine the relationship between phenomenology and structural linguistics.1 Sokolowski thinks that the phenomenological movement today is returning to its origins in Husserl: “With the decline of existential phenomenology, there has also been a sharper awareness of the logical and formal elements in Husserl’s philosophy, his affinity to and influence on logic and the philosophy of language.” Sokolowski expresses the hope that the return to Husserl will become “a second journey ... to find the historical function that phenomenology might have had under its own force.” The following discussion concerns the historical function which phenomenology already has had, namely, in the establishment and development of structural linguistics as well as serving as an incentive to its fruitful application in the new field of psycho-linguistics.
3Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen may be viewed as the point of departure of three different trends in phenomenology, each of which emphasizes different parts of this epoch-making work. The first of these trends is the so-called Munich-Göttingen School, which focuses attention in particular on the “Prolegomena” and the “Second Investigation” on the abstraction of essence from the Logische Untersuchungen. The Munich-Göttingen phenomenologists were especially concerned with the refutation of psychologism and with the intuition of autonomous eidetic essences.
4The second trend, Transcendental Phenomenology, is the product of a further radical development of the theory of the intentional structure of consciousness dealt with in the “Fifth” and “Sixth Investigations”. The dominant idea of Transcendental Phenomenology is the correlation of the subject and the object. The transcendental movement divides into two subgroups: on the one hand the Husserlian Phenomenology—an objective idealism, in which the priorities lie on the side of the objects of consciousness and their a priori structure; on the other hand the Existential Philosophy of the early Heidegger—a subjective decisionism, in which priority is accorded to the freedom of the subject to constitute himself and the world. French Phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty) may be thought of as an attempt to reunite these two diverging tendencies.
5In the period between the wars, the third trend, East European Structural Linguistics, dealt in particular with the “Third” and “Fourth Investigations” of the Logische Untersuchungen, that is, with the studies of the formal relations between the part and the whole and of the idea of a universal grammar together with the introductory “First Investigation” into expression and meaning. What the Russian and Czech linguists were examining was not so much the ontological nature of invariants and their presence in intuition and introspection but their structural character. The so-called anti-psychologism of the “Prolegomena”, whose function in opening up the way to the recognition of the autonomous character of mental and cultural phenomena—which is what logic and language are—is not regarded by them as a complete rejection of psychology by linguistics, but as a replacement of the old mechanistic psychology by a new structural psychology, in which the internal autonomy of the phenomena that they are investigating is respected.
6This short sketch is a simplification. It gives prominence to the main sources and the dominant features of the three trends. It should not be taken as an exhaustive exposition. It is especially important to express a word of caution concerning the widely held belief that Structuralism represents a positivistic disregard of the fundamental concern of Tran|scendental Philosophy: the immanent correlation of the subject and the object. Structuralism does not leave out the subjective pole of constitution. What Structuralism does reject is the “egocentrism” of classical Transcendental Philosophy. Like Husserl himself in his later years, Structuralism concerns itself primarily with the unconscious and with the intersubjectivity of linguistic constitution.
7Although the fundamental concepts of East European Structuralism were developed under the direct influence of Husserl’s Logische Unter|suchungen or at least show a close affinity to it, the proponents of Eidetic and Transcendental Phenomenology disregarded the phenomenological origin and approach of the East European Structuralists to the extent that when this work gained a significant foothold in France it was regarded as being a- or even anti-phenomenological (Ricoeur 1963).
8In what follows I limit myself to a consideration of three specific questions, which illustrate the influence of a phenomenological approach in the treatment of linguistic problems, in particular, as this influence is manifest in Roman Jakobson’s work. These questions concern the role of the subject in the constitution of language, the role of language in the constitution of the world and the theory of relations.
The role of the subjective attitude in structuralism
9The two disciplines from which East European Structuralism developed are poetics and phonology. Both of these fields of study are defined with reference to the subject.2
10What according to Jakobson and the Russian Formalists differentiates poetry from everyday prose is the “set towards the expression” (1921, 80f.). In everyday language and in the language used to express emotion the object that is being discussed and the feelings that are supposed to be communicated dominate, whereas the form of the language is neglected. “The form of the word is about to die off” (ibid., 82f.). In every language there are numerous so-called “dead-metaphors”, expressions that no longer evoke the matrix of associations from which they originated. The overdetermination which language owes to its many levels and points of reference, gives way to only one designation. In contrast poetry draws attention to verbal medium as such through unusual or, more simply, through a systematically ordered pattern of structures that constitute language as a verbal medium as such. “The set (Einstellung) toward the message as such, focus on the message for its own sake, is the poetic function of the language” (1960, 356). The German concept Einstellung reveals the source of this methodological tool, with which Jakobson approaches an analysis of language. Einstellung [set or attitude] and also apperception] is a concept central to phenomenological philosophy.
11In the phenomenological literature from Husserl to Sartre, the experience that in ordinary language usage we neglect the sign in favour of its reference is frequently dealt with. “The sign is that which is surpassed toward meaning, that which is neglected for the sake of meaning, that which is never apprehended for itself, that beyond which the look is perpetually directed” (Sartre 1943, 395). The phenomenologists commonly use this fact to illustrate the experience of the body. “The consciousness of the body is comparable to the consciousness of a sign” (ibid., 395). Just as the sign is neglected in ordinary language so is the body neglected in everyday experience. In the act of perception we do not perceive in terms of the body but in terms of the things perceived. At work we do not think in terms of our body—the instrument of our work—but in terms of the materials we are working on. The body as such is passed over.
12French Phenomenology in particular has concerned itself with the description of an unusual experience of one’s own body, which is comparable to the experience of poetry where the language loses its instrumental character and is viewed as an autonomous and independent form. In sexual experience the body becomes an absolute and is manifest as such. “All sexual mimic aims at the reduction of the body to itself . . . . Every part of the body that can be considered a tool, that is, everything that refers to a separate ego (je séparé) , that directs it, and that which refers to objects which I can make use of, disappears in sexuality. The arms, legs, hands, fingers, joints . . . appear to be relieved of their function as tools and are now only seen in terms of their mass, their lines or their éclat” (De Waehlens 1958, 207f.).
13The Phenomenologists point to the light thrown on the common experience of the body by the usual consciousness of the linguistic sign. Jakobson views this relationship the other way around. In order to illustrate the unusual experience of language as it occurs in poetry, he refers to the unusual experience of the body. What makes poetry into poetry is not some additional linguistic elements, the famous epitheta ornantia, which are added to the common elements, but a different attitude that involves a revaluation of all of the components of speech. Jakobson cites an anecdote: “A missionary blamed his African flock for walking undressed. “And what about yourself?” they pointed to his visage, “are not you, too, somewhat naked?” “Well, but that is my face.” “Yet in us”, retorted the natives, “everywhere is face.” So in poetry any verbal element is converted into a figure of poetic speech" (Jakobson 1960, 377). The sexual mimic and the poetic process have an analogous effect. They both evoke a change of attitude.
14In the area of speech sounds Jakobson rejects the same kind of attempt to explain the unique character of linguistic phenomena in exclusively additive and material terms. The sounds of language cannot be distin|guished from other articulated sounds because of the additional presence of sensory data. There is no material or acoustic feature that would differentiate the sounds of language from other auditory phenomena. What is crucial in Jakobson’s opinion is the “subjective” interpretation of the sensory raw material with reference to the relevant system of language. The same is more or less true of music. A European who attends to the pitch of a sound as he is accustomed to in his own culture when listening to African music is not going to comprehend the African musician. For the African doesn’t concentrate on the pitch but on the colouring of the sound. Where the European hears two different melodies, there is only one melody for the African being played on two different instruments. “What is important in music is not the natural characteristics of specific sounds that are performed but those of the sounds that are meant” (1932b, 551).
15In support of his phonological concept, Jakobson refers to Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen. He cites the comparison of the symbolic sign with the figure in a game of chess. This well-known comparison is used by Husserl as a preliminary to introducing his theory of apperception. The origin of a theory of apperception lies in the fact that the same pheno|menon may be differently perceived. Husserl’s favourite example is figures which when we first see them appear to be arabesques until we suddenly realize that they are letters of the alphabet. Husserl explains this pheno|menon by reference to a different “mode of consciousness”, a different conception or attitude. He rejects a sensory conception of a theory of apperception, which attempts to reduce all the differences in perception to the “influx of new sensory data” (1913, II/i, 381). It is the same approach from which Jakobson distanced himself in phonology and phonetics. However, it is characteristic that Jakobson, much more rigorously than Husserl, reveals the classificatory and systematic character of apperception. Every attitude is an ordering of the relevant content into a system of values and categories.
16Subject and system appear as correlative factors. The subject is not done away with as many critics of Structuralism have argued. It is only relativised. In two respects: as the bearer of constitution there functions not only the individual ego, acutely conscious of itself, but just as much, if not more, the intersubjective community and the unconscious. In the relationship between the subject, what it has at its disposal, and the world, there is a noticable shift of emphasis. In the idealistic philosophy of the modern period, stress is given to the fact that it is the subject (with its forms of perception and thought categories) that constitutes the world. Kant discovered that the structures of the world reflect the structures of the human mind. In Structuralism on the other hand stress is given to the fact that the subject in its constitution is bound to an “apparatus” of forms and categories. In considering the criticism of the Kantian philosophers of Structuralism, it is important to keep in mind that it was no one else and no one less that the Neo-Kantian Ernst Cassirer, who in 1945 in the Linguistic Circle of New York recommended to the adherents of a structural method Kant as a “philosophical authority”, not with the purpose of more or less drawing attention to the abstract subjectivity beyond all understanding and bonds, but to Kant’s conception of the rational and systematic character of all experience. Cassirer and Jakobson had become personally acquainted four years earlier. Under rather unusual circumstances they found that they had two weeks for exhaustive discussion. They both fled on the same Swedish freighter in 1941 from Göteborg to New York.
17The theme of Kantian philosophy is the limitations of human knowledge. The theme of Structuralism is the limits of human freedom. To the extent that the model of language has general validity it is possible to say that the limits open up as the level of constitution advances. The freedom to combine increases in language as one progresses successively from the distinctive features of the phoneme, the morpheme, the words and the phrases to the sentences and the texts. In (he combination of the distinctive features of the phoneme the freedom of the individual is practically non-existent. In the combination of sentences into texts the obligatory linguistic rules fall away almost completely. The creation of the individual is subject to virtually only freely chosen and very flexible rules.
The linguistic constitution of the world
18Where and how does the role of language manifest itself In the consti|tution of the world? It is illuminating to juxtapose the favourite example of the French phenomenologists on the one hand and Jakobson’s response to this question on the other. In both instances the example concerns an anecdote told about children.
19The anecdote which has been very popular among French phenomeno|logists as well as among followers of Lacan occurs in Freud’s work (1920, 11ff.). A one-and-a-half-year-old boy is playing with a wooden spool, which is fastened to a string. He throws the spool over the edge of his little bed and pulls it back again. He repeats this action again and again. He accompanies the vanishing of the spool with a drawn out “o” sound (an elliptical way of saying fort [gone]). He greets the reappearance of the spool with a joyous da [here]. According to Freud’s interpretation in carrying out this action the child is repeating the departure and return of his mother. At play he succeeds in gaining control over this unpleasant situation. When he is playing, the child is able to decide whether his mother is present or not. The phenomenological interpreters transfer—or, more accurately, restrict the interpretation to language (De Waelhens 1972, 35ff.). Accor|ding to them, the anecdote reveals a threefold achievement, which language enables the child to realize. By rejecting his immediate situation and accepting negativity, the child gains a certain dominance over reality. The child is not “glued to” his situation “like an insect near a lamp”. The introduction of language constitutes on the one hand the subject and on the other reality. In its reference it becomes doubly independent. The subject succeeds in freeing himself from his examination; and the reality which up to now has only been experienced becomes objectified. Even if the subject deviates from reality or if it withdraws from the subject. This reality remains an independent datum.
20In the example above the degree of mastery of the situation and the simultaneous bipolar constitution of the subject and reality is very limited. Usually this is also pointed out by the phenomenologists. At the stage of one-word utterances the child is always referring to his actual situation. In our example the situation is characterized by the absence or presence of the desirable object. In making his utterance the child either wants to show an object which he possesses or he wants to acquire an object that he desires. The child does not succeed in overcoming the situation, in which he finds himself. Without being familiar with the situation in which the child makes his utterance, the listener is unable to understand the child’s utterance.
21Jakobson places the revolutionary contribution of language to the constitution of the world at a later stage, when the child at the age of two to two-and-a-half begins to form sentences that contain a subject and a predicate. Such formations are first necessary before the child can free himself from his immediate situation. It is now capable of doing more than just assigning attributes to its situation. It can now also talk about things which are at a distance in time and space. When the child has subjects and predicates at his disposal, he is able to group a particular subject with various actions or a specific action with different subjects. As soon as the child has grasped the possibility of varying the context, it begins playing with this possibility. (In lectures) Jakobson refers to the anecdotal report of nonsensical and obviously invalid sentence construc|tions which are to be found in children of this age. The children take pleasure in forming sentences such as “Dog, meow, meow”. It is demon|strable that they are well aware of the truth-value of such formulations. There are children who protest when “understanding” grown-ups confirm the validity of these utterances. In their view it is the exclusive privilege of the child to prefer such verbal creations.
22The child now has at his disposal abstract categories, which he can fill in according to his needs and desires. The child now learns to make utterances about things, which are only appropriate from another stand|point in time or space or only in fanstasy. Now the child has the ability to actively create a world, but also to destroy one. Language no longer has just an appel function, nor does it simply function as a means of communication. It is now in addition a means for planning. Planning is the primary function of “inner language”. Confronted with a difficult problem the child first begins to analyse the problem verbally and then to solve it 3 in order to organize his active mastery of the situation.3
On “The primal sense of antithetical words”
23Structuralism derives its name from the fundamental thesis that the objects with which the various sciences concern themselves do not represent an accidental agglomeration; that, on the contrary, they represent a unity, which is based on the specific nature of the relations that bind the individual elements together. Therefore the task that presents itself is the description of these relations.4 What is their nature? Husserl’s answer (1913, II/i, 279), which Jakobson chose as a motto for his study Child Language, Aphasia and Phonological Universals (in German 1941 and in English 1968): “The only true unifying factors are relations of ‘foun|dations’.” Husserl differentiates two relations of foundation. A foundation can be “a) reciprocal or b) one-sided, according to whether the law is reversible or not”. Husserl’s laws of foundation may be reformulated as laws of implication: if a exists, then b exists too; if a exists, then b doesn’t exist; if a is absent, then b is absent too, etc.
24Jakobson first used foundation relations of boundedness like these to demonstrate the structure of the phonological system and, later, the structures of the morphological and syntactic systems. All of the sounds of a language can be ordered according to such rules. So, for example, frictive consonants only follow stop consonants. There is no language in which an /f/ occurs but no /p/ and/or /b/. And there is no child that first learns the phoneme /s/ before it has learned the phoneme /t/.
25The most important example of reciprocal foundation is the relation of opposition. This relation of opposition provides an excellent example for comparing a purely logical and a phenomenological description of structures. In handbooks of logic opposition is defined as formal exclusion. The adherents of a positivistic logicism in linguistics adopt the definition: “Opposition means incompatibility at some point” (Martinet 1960, §4.8.). A phenomenological analysis distinguishes itself from a purely logical analysis in that not only are all of the data studied in themselves but also how they appear to our consciousness. From this typical pheno|menological point of view, the opposition simultaneously represents an exclusion as well as an inclusion. In the consciousness of opposites such as light and dark or coloured and uncoloured also exclude each other, though the excluded complementary is still at the same time of necessity present in the consciousness. “The one implies the other” (Pos 1939, 76). The perception of something bright can only occur with the simultaneous awareness of something dark from which the bright object distinguishes itself. It is characteristic of phenomenological optics that Husserl for many phenomena introduced the distinction “presence – appresence” (or “co-presence”); whereas, followers of Hegel and also some of the French Structuralists favour the terms “presence – absence” (Holenstein 1972, 157). The emphasis is placed by Husserl on the fact that what is excluded remains present to the consciousness.
26Next to the recourse to the consciousness a second characteristic feature of phenomenological definitions is their reliance on qualitative (or substantial) moments. The final criterion of the definition of a concept is not the extent, the breadth or even necessarily the use of a concept, but its content. Jakobson’s explanation of a particular form of the relation “presence – absence” is oriented at qualitative moments. What is meant is the relation “marked – unmarked”, one of the most significant phenomena in the structure of language revealed by Prague Structuralism and, although already a focus of attention in psycholinguistics (E. Clark 1973; H. Clark 1973), it was yet to be recognized by philosophers.
27With the relation “marked – unmarked” the opposites are not of equal value. The marked term indicates the presence of a certain (positive or negative) property P. With the unmarked term it is important to differ|entiate between a general and a restricted, specific usage. In its general meaning nothing is said about the property P. In its specific usage the absence of the property P is indicated. The meaning of the unmarked term varies between “the non-signaling of P and the signaling of non-P” (Jakobson 1932a, 15). The masculine and feminine forms of the nomi|native in many instances are defined in such a way with respect to one another, marked and unmarked. Usually the masculine form is unmarked and the feminine form marked. There are however also exceptions. If an animal is more likely to make a female impression, the feminine form is sometimes unmarked. If I speak of a goose, I don’t indicate whether I’m referring to a male or a female animal. But, if I use the term gander, the gender of the animal is contained in the utterance. In this case the masculine form is marked. It is more informative than the feminine form. Linguistic forms that are related to one another in such a manner behave in a remarkable way. In language acquisition the unmarked usage is learned earlier than the marked usage. If a language contains only one of the two terms, then this term becomes unmarked. In contrast the aphasic tends to reduce an existing oppositional pair to its unmarked term.
28For many linguists this regularity is a criterion for ordering the terms marked and unmarked. In contrast Jakobson sees in this only a secondary criterion which can be derived from the primary criterion, the content of the terms or, more precisely, he sees in it the explanandum, which finds its explanans in the qualitative structure of the term. Only a qualitative analysis makes it possible to establish why with vowels the feature “compact” is unmarked and the feature “diffuse” marked; whereas, with consonants just the reverse is the case. The vowels distinguish themselves from the consonants in their compactness. An affinity exists between vowels and compactness and between consonants and diffuseness. A vowel /u/ that is compared to the optimal vowel /a/ is diffuse and, as a conse|quence, appears as an unusual and highly differentiated representative of its class, which explains its later occurence in a child and its earlier loss in an aphasic.
29The qualitative explanation of the relation “marked – unmarked” can be given more substance and confirmed with examples taken from semantics. Polar opposites (big – small, long – short, much – little, etc.) all have the relation marked – unmarked. The sentence “The guild hall of the tanners is just as big (wide, old, etc.) as the town hall” is less informative than the sentence “The guild hall of the tanners is just as small (narrow, new, etc.) as the town hall”. The first sentence doesn’t say anything about the size of the town hall. The second sentence indicates that the town hall is comparatively small. Small as compared with large is the marked term. In an analogous manner the following sentences can be distinguished from each other: “Bridgetown is just as far from New York as Fairfield” and “Bridgetown is just as close to New York as Fairfield”. From the first sentence I don’t know anything about the distance of the two towns from New York. The second sentence informs me that both are relatively close to the city. However, now consider such sentences as “Mary is as close (emotionally) to Bob as to Joe" and “Mary is as far (emotionally) from Bob as from Joe”, or “Mary is as closely associated with Bob as with Joe” and Mary is as loosely associated with Bob as with Joe”. In each instance the first sentence of these pairs of sentences doesn’t indicate anything about the degree of Mary’s relationship with the two men. The relationship may be close. It is however possible that there is “no rela|tionship” as one says. On the other hand the second sentence in each case reveals that the relationship is not particularly intimate. It now becomes evident that the same word (close) , which in utterances concerning spatial relations is marked and informative, in utterances concerning social relations is unmarked and relatively uninformative; and, similarly, a word (far) is marked in the first instance that is unmarked in the second. The explanation for this inversion can be found when we take into consideration the semantic content of the words. In the first examples introduced, the adjectives specify a spatial or temporal dimension. The adjective which corresponds more with the generic term “extension”, i.e., which indicates more extension than its polar opposite is unmarked. On the other hand in the second group, the genus which is specified by the polar adjectives is a kind of connection. The optimal form of connection is unity. Whatever approaches this therefore (close near and not far, distant) appears to be unmarked and less informative. In contrast a relatively large restriction or negation of connectedness is clearly marked. That the marked forms occur less frequently in colloquial speech is completely consistent with this line of theorizing, according to which the unmarked forms have genetic priority.
30It is possible to multiply the examples. The question “How late is it?” is unmarked. It refers to the amount of time that has past and includes no indication as to whether the one asking the question has any idea whether it is still early or already late. The question “How early is it?”, in contrast, signals markedness, namely, that the one asking the question considers that it is still relatively early. Different again is the question “How early is he coming?” and “How early is Easter this year?” Both of these questions refer to a rank or sequence. The optimal position in a rank or sequence is the first position, the “earliest” point. For this reason early and no longer late is unmarked in these two questions and limited in its informativeness. The question does not reveal with either of these questions whether the speaker making the inquiry knows something about the time in question or not; however, if the question is “How late is he coming?” or “How late is Easter this year?”, then just the contrary is true.
31The content of words determines how the usage of a term is to be viewed—whether as a restricted or a more general usage. Frau [woman] designates a sexual difference in its unmarked usage. The use of the same term in the expression Das ist meine Frau [That’s my wife] in describing one’s spouse is marked. The meaning of a distinction is subordinated to the meaning of a combination. The second usage represents a narrowing of the fundamental meaning. It signifies a counter-tendency to the unmarked meaning. Just the reverse is the case with kinship terms, whose basic meaning concerns a tie. The closest relationship that can be designated with a kinship term is always correspondingly its original and unmarked meaning. So, for example, the term brother in its original usage refers to a son of the same parents; the application of this term in referring to a cousin or even—speaking metaphorically—to friends is a derived and broadened usage.
32With the term Frau, the secondary, marked usage represents a nar|rowing of the meaning; with the term brother however a broadening of the meaning. No child has at its disposal at first a term to designate marital relationships and then only later terms to differentiate the sexes. The sexual difference is a presupposition of the marital state. And no child is capable (cognitively and as a rule also verbally) of first handling terms used to designate family relationships of the second degree and only later terms of the corresponding first degree. How should the child be able to handle the concept grandmother [mother of mother] before it has a concept for mother? It is entirely possible that the word grandma is used before the word mother. It is also possible that this word is used in a “broadened” sense not just for the grandmother but also for the great grandmother and for all older women. In this instance we have an example of a “category mistake”. The word grandma in the language of this child does not have the same meaning that it has in the language of adults and other children.
33A work that at first glance makes a very abstruse impression, written by the scholar of language Carl Abel, Über den Gegensinn der Urworte [On the Antithetical Sense of Primal Words, 1884] became known through Freud.5 According to Abel’s thesis the oldest words of human language have two poles with mutually exclusive meanings. Abel thought that he had found relics of this semantic Ur-structure in both dead and living languages, for example, Lat. altus, which is used to specify high as well as deep, Eng. cleave, which is supposed to correspond to the Ger. kleben, Eng. without, in which only one of the original polar meanings (cum “with” and sine “absent”) has survived, etc. Abel’s etymologies can easily be shown to be untenable constructions (Benveniste 1956, 80f.). Altus designated the spatial direction in Latin from below to above, regardless of the standpoint of the spectator; whereas, in the usage of the German adjectives hoch [high] and tief [deep], the standpoint of the spectator is determining. The English word cleave does not correspond to the German word kleben [to adhere] but to klieben [to cut through] (cf. Kluft, “crevice”). The morpheme with in without does not mean “together (with)” but “against” (cf. withstand or within, which is the opposite of without).
34Freud thought that he had found in Abel’s study support for the ambivalence of ideas and concepts that he ran into in the context of another mode of expression, which may also be called an Ur-language, namely, the dream. The contradictory application of the content of a dream is a means of repressing the significances which in fact emotionally preoccupy the patients.
35From linguists who are critics of Freud comes the statement that “no qualified linguist” (Benveniste 1956, 80), either a contemporary or a more recent linguist has ever adopted Abel’s theses. It is however worth noting that the contemporary psycholinguist Preyer as well as a psycholinguist as “qualified” as Vygotsky in dealing with the phenomena of the language of children refers to Abel’s thesis. Preyer introduces some examples (1895, 293), according to which children use auf [up] for herab [down], zuviel [too much] for zuwenig [too little], nein [no] for ja [yes] and ich [I] for du [you]. Vygotsky (1934, 140) reports of children who use before for after and tomorrow for yesterday. What these language psychologists view as a confir|mation of Abel’s thesis is nothing more than examples of a child’s reduction of a marked meaning to its corresponding unmarked presup|positional and prior meaning.
36For one of the introduced examples, the confusion of nacher and vorher, there is now an experimental study carried out by Eve Clark (1971), who has also investigated a number of other polar expressions. In a first stage the child understands before but not yet after, in a second stage it uses after as if it meant before, and not until a third stage does the child succeed in correctly understanding both. The structure of the child’s concept of time is represented by Clark in the following conceptual hierarchy: 1. + time, 2. + simultaneous, 3. - simultaneous, 4. + prior, 5. - prior. Before implies the characteristics + time, - simultaneous, + prior, and therefore comes in front of after, which has the characteristics + time, - simultaneous, - prior. There still remains the priority of prior as opposed to posterior to explain. Just as the oppositional pair that has already been analysed early and late shows, before and after also reveal a ranking of sequential relationship. The optimal unmarked position in a ranking relationship is the ranking in front, which in fact does have priority. Before corresponds to this unmarked ranking position, after implies its negation. Before therefore is correspondingly simpler to grasp than after, which as a designation of a temporal rank has a complicated structure.
37The confusion of too little with too much is somewhat more transparent. The two expressions refer to quantities. If I want to teach someone the concept of “quantity”, I make use of the largest number of objects possible in order to make the concept concrete. Much is a more optimal realization of “quantity” than little, which signals a limit to the quantity. Experiments (Donaldson and Wales 1970) have shown that children master more before less and, as with before and after, at a certain stage less is used in the sense of more. In a literal sense for children at this stage less is more.
38Parallel phenomena are to be found in the speech of aphasics. An aphasic observed by Goodglass (1973, 210f.) confused the prepositions referring to spatial relations (in, on to, from). He reduced the past and future forms of the verb to the present. Similarly, the conditional “I could be rich” became the declarative “I can be rich”. In testing the expressions yesterday – today – tomorrow, it was revealed that the patient was capable of finding the correct page of the calendar for the day’s date, but was not able to consistently distinguish between tomorrow and yesterday.
39What is evident in the results of these psycholinguistic studies — interpreting them in the sense of the relation “marked – unmarked” — is less the “primal sense of antithetical words” than the original sense of the opposing word. The polar expressions are reduced to their “basic meaning”. The child and the aphasic do not actually confuse—as it appears to adults—the marked term (after, little) with the specific meaning of the unmarked term (before, much). They are content with the indefinite, general meaning of the unmarked term [priority, quantity]. What now becomes obvious is the presupposition of every contrastive description, namely, a relation or dimension that can be specified polarly. So, for instance, long and short as contrastive adjectives have semantically as a precondition a spatial dimension. The child speaking of a long object is using the adjective primarily in its basic (presuppositional) sense as a designation for a spatial dimension, as it occurs, for example, in the sentence “The train is 50 m. long”, and not as a designation of a contrast as in the sentence “The first train was long whereas the second was short”. Since long objects more readily exemplify the linear dimension which is designated by “length” in opposition to “breadth” and “height” than short objects, the designation of this dimension by “length” rather than “shortness” is only natural, as well as the fact that the child and the aphasic tend to use the adjective that coincides with the unmarked usage of long instead of its polar opposite short.
40Considered from the point of view of the traditional categories “form – substance”, there has been a tendency to view Structuralism as a movement that has made a one-sided commitment to form, neglecting the substance as a quantité, négligeable et variable. It is true, that in Prague Structuralism formal structures are given priority. However, it is not at all valid to claim that the phenomenological view, that, apart from logical and mathematical relations, every form depends on the substance that is formed, has been bypassed. This is in fact the prerequisite for bringing in qualitative-content determinants into the system of relations.
- 1 Translation from the German by John Odmark.
- 2 On the role of the set in Structuralist Poetics and Phonology and on the scale of freedom of the subject in the constitution of language see E. Holenstein, Roman Jakobson’s Approach to Language (Bloomington 1976), 51ff., and 164ff.
- 3 Concerning the planificatory function of the sign see E. Holenstein, Linguistik – Semiotik – Hermeneutik (Frankfurt am Main, 1976), 165ff.
- 4 Cf. E. Holenstein, Roman Jakobson’s Approach to Language (Bloomington 1976), 122ff., where opposition and the relation “marked – unmarked” are considered from another perspective, in part, in their historical context.
- 5 For a detailed discussion of Freud’s response to Abel s study see Herma C. and Sebastian Goeppert, Redeverhalten und Neurose (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1975), 123ff.
