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November 1910] Part One: Languages

This heading contrasts with that of my second chapter: the language. There is no point in giving a more detailed specification and the meaning of these two contrasting headings is sufficiently self-evident. Just as, although comparisons with the natural sciences must not be abused, it would likewise be immediately evident what was meant in a work on natural history by contrasting 'the plant' with 'plants' (c.f. also .'insects, versus 'the insect').

These divisions would correspond reasonably well even in content to what we shall get in linguistics if we distinguish between 'the language' and 'languages'. Some botanists and naturalists devote their entire careers to one approach or the other. There are botanists who classify plants without concerning themselves with the circulation of the sap, etc., that is to say, without concerning themselves with 'the plant'.

Considerations relevant to the language (and equally to some extent to languages as well) will lead us to consider languages from an external point of view, without making any internal analysis; but the distinction is not hard and fast, for the detailed study of the history of a language or of a group of languages is perfectly well accommodated under the heading 'languages', and that presupposes internal analysis. To some extent one could also say that in my second part 'the language' could be expanded to read 'the life of the language', that this second part would contain things of importance for the characterisation of the language, and that these things are all part of a life, a biology. But there are other things that would not be included: among others, the whole logical side of the language, involving invariables unaffected by time or geographical boundaries. Languages constitute the concrete object that the linguist encounters on the earth's surface; 'the language' is the heading one can provide for whatever generalisations the linguist may be able to extract from all his observations across time and space.

 

[30 June 1911]

Reversing the order of the two series I have considered, we can say that the mind establishes just two orders of relations between words.

1) Outside speech, the association that is made in the memory between words having something in common creates different groups, series, families, within which very diverse relations obtain but belonging to a single category: these are associative relations.

2) Within speech, words are subject to a kind of relation that is independent of the first and based on their linkage: these are syntagmatic relations, of which I have spoken.

Here of course there is a problem, because the second order of relations appears to appeal to facts of speech and not linguistic facts. But the language itself includes such relations, even if only in compound words (German Hauptmann), or even in a word like Dummheit, or expressions like s'il vous plait ['if you please'] where a syntagmatic relation holds.

When we speak of the structure of a word, we are referring to the second kind of relation: these are units arranged end to end as exponents of certain relations. If we speak of something like a flexional paradigm (dominus, domini, domino) we are referring to a group based on associative relations. These are not units arranged end to end and related in a certain way in virtue of that fact.



Magn-animus: the relation involving animus is syntagmatic. Idea expressed by juxtaposition of the two parts in sequence. Nowhere, either in magn or in animus do you find something meaning 'possessing a great soul'.

If you take animus in relation to anima and animal, it is a different order of relations. There is an associative family:

animus
anima
animal

Neither order of relations is reducible to the other: both are operative.

If we compare them to the parts of a building: columns will stand in a. certain relation to a frieze they support. These two components are related in a wax which is comparable to the syntagmatic relation. It is an arrangement of two co-present units. If I see a Doric column, I might link it by association with a series of objects that are not present, associative relations (Ionic column, Corinthian column).

The sum total of word relations that the mind associates with any word that is present gives a virtual series, a series formed by the memory (a mnemonic series), as opposed to a chain, a syntagma formed by two units present together. This is an actual series, as opposed to a virtual series, and gives rise to other relations.

The conclusion I should like to draw from this is as follows: in whichever order of relations a words functions (it is required to function in both), a word is always, first and foremost, a member of a system, interconnected with other words, sometimes in one order of relations, sometimes in another.

This will have to be taken into account in considering what constitutes value. First, it was necessary to consider words as terms in a system.

As soon as we substitute term for word, this implies consideration of its relations with others (appeal to the idea of interconnections with other words).

We must not begin with the word, the term, in order to construct the system. This would be to suppose that the terms have an absolute value given in advance, and that you have only to pile them up one on top of the other in order to reach the system. On the contrary, one must start from the system, the interconnected whole; this may be decomposed into particular terms, although these are not so easily distinguished as it seems. Starting from the whole of the system of values, in order to distinguish the various values, it is possible that we shall encounter words as recognisable series of terms. (Incidentally: associatively, I can summon up the word dominos just as easily as domino, domine, domin-?; syntagmatically, I have to choose either dominos or domini.)

Attach no importance to the word word. The word word as far as I am concerned has no specific meaning here. The word term is sufficient; furthermore, the word word does not mean the same in the two series.

 


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October 1910] Introductory chapter: Brief survey of the history of linguistics | Chapter V. Value of terms and meanings of words. How the two coincide and differ.
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