THE INGENUITY OF LANGUAGES; AND WEEDING IN LIBRARIES
Written Sat. June 30th, 2018; posted Sun. July 8th, 2018
1. The Ingenuity
of English
Different languages are ingenious in different ways.
When you study another language – some language other than the language you
already speak – you will encounter some of this ingenuity. The way to
master the ingenuity, so you can wear it lightly, is to practice. “Wearing a
language lightly” means carrying it around with you, without it feeling like a
burden.
An example of the ingenuity of
English is the distinction between sky and heaven. Sky is the sky in
general, whatever is above you when you go out of doors, without it being
attached to the earth. (For the purpose of this discussion, we will
ignore falling objects.) Heaven, in contrast, is the sky where you go
when you die, if you have religious faith. In many of the other languages
of Europe – other than English, whose history makes it a language of Europe –
there is only one word that covers the meaning of “heaven” and “sky.”
2. The Ingenuity
of Menominee
An example of an ingenuity not
found in English, and not found in European languages in general, but found in
perhaps an eighth of the world’s languages, is a distinction between the
exclusive and inclusive meanings of “we.” “We” means “I and
others.” If the others include “you,” linguists call that kind of “we” “inclusive
we” or “first person plural inclusive.” If the others referred to by “we”
do not include “you,” linguists call that kind of “we” “exclusive
we” or “first person plural exclusive.” By leaving off the prefix ex- or
in-, and adding a suffix, linguists derive the word “clusivity,” which can be
explained as a noun which stands for a question. “Clusivity” is a
linguists’ word meaning “Does your ‘we’ include the person you are talking to?”
The sentence “Does your ‘we’
include the person you are talking to?” follows an American rule of writing,
which is this: If a quotation contains another quotation inside of it, then the
inner quotation is surrounded by single quotation marks, and the outer
quotation is surrounded by double quotation marks. The British rule of
writing is the other way around, or the exact opposite of that.
Most of the languages which are
spoken by large groups of people do not distinguish between exclusive and
inclusive “we.” A single word is used for “we” both exclusive and
inclusive in the European languages, English, Russian, Spanish, French, German,
and the rest. Likewise, a single word is used for “we” both
exclusive and inclusive in many other languages around the world, including
Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Swahili, Turkish, and others. But you
find one word for inclusive “we” and a different word for exclusive “we” in
Indonesian (a major world language) and in a third to a half of the Native
American languages, and in almost all the native languages of Australia (most
of which are endangered languages).
In Menominee, a Native American
language of Wisconsin, the difference between exclusive “we” and inclusive “we”
is expressed by a subtle interplay of prefixes and suffixes. Here are the
Menominee personal pronouns, from Leonard Bloomfield's two books The Menomini Language and Menominee Lexicon. (Bloomfield used the spelling Menomini, but
the tribe prefers Menominee.)
Person
Menominee singular pronouns Menominee plural pronouns
1st
n-en-ah (I, me) n-en-a'
(we, us) [exclusive, not you]
1st & 2nd (inclu.)
----- k-en-a' (we, us) [inclusive, including
you]
2nd
k-en-ah (you) k-en-ua'
(you all)
3rd
w-en-ah (he, she, him, her) w-en-ua' (they, them)
In Menominee, -en- is the root of all personal pronouns (meaning
"this is a personal pronoun").
The prefix n- marks first person; prefix k- marks second person; and
prefix w- marks third person. The ending
-ah marks singular pronouns; the ending -a' marks plural pronouns which include
the first person; and the ending -ua' marks plural pronouns which do not
include first person. (The difference in
pronunciation between -ah and -a' is not huge, but it reappears in other
Menominee words. The Menominees, when
they spoke their native language, could pronounce an -h at the end of a
word, something not done in English; it sounds like a short sigh after the
vowel. But the apostrophe represents a
sudden choking off of the sound after the vowel, called a glottal stop.) Here is how the prefixes and suffixes are combined:
to make the pronoun for inclusive "we", one combines the second
person prefix with the first person ending.
Since inclusive "we" includes both the first person (I) and
the second person (you), there is a logic to having a prefix for one, and a
suffix for the other!
3. Grammar as
Generalizations and Patterns
That is certainty an ingenuity of
language! It is also what linguists mean
when they talk about “grammar.” In the experience of some people,
“grammar” means “being ashamed of the way your mother and father talked.”
But for linguists, “grammar” means “putting into words the patterns which
people usually follow when they speak their native language” or “analyzing
sentences and words into their meaningful component parts, and specifying how
those meaningful parts are combined.”
More specifically, what we just
analyzed about the Menominee pronouns is “articulating in words one particular pattern which Menominee
speakers follow when they speak their native language.” When we
articulate in words one particular grammatical pattern in a language or languages,
linguists call that “capturing a generalization.”
4. Languages of
the Past, and Universal Grammar
Now, what if in the future, people
stop speaking the Menominee language entirely? That leads us to discuss
the relevance of well-described dead languages to universal grammar.
There is a rhyme used by
English-speaking students who are studying Latin, which goes like this:
“Latin is a dead language, it’s
plain enough to see:
It killed off all the Romans, and
now it’s killing me.”
But, when linguists describe the
grammar of an ancient or dead language, they (that’s the linguists) permit
themselves to use the Present tense, which can be called the “eternal
present.” Here is an example: “In Latin, the direct object is expressed
by the accusative case.” (An example of what "accusative case" means
is given at the end of this essay.) Notice
the word “is.” That’s Present tense. Regardless of whether people
stop speaking Latin entirely; or stop speaking it entirely, then start speaking
it again; or stop speaking it entirely, then start speaking it again, and then
stop a second time – it is always going to be a fact about Latin grammar, that
the direct object is expressed by the accusative case. Something similar is
true of Menominee grammar (with different particulars). So, linguists use the present tense when
capturing generalizations. Linguists have studied the concept of a
“possible spoken human language” fairly extensively -- but so far, linguists
have shown no interest in the concept of a “possible future spoken human
language.” The idea that linguists appear to have been following is “once
a possible human language, always a possible human language.”
In the abstract, linguists can
believe in the existence of a prehistoric language of Europe or the Ancient
Near East, a very distant ancestor of the Latin language, which did not have an
accusative case to express the direct object. If such a prehistoric
language existed, then it would follow logically that there was some mechanism
by which a language which does not have an accusative case can evolve an accusative case. Now,
linguists reason, if there was a mechanism by which a prehistoric distant
ancestor language to Latin could have evolved an accusative case, then
that same mechanism could operate again on some language or other in the future.
Such a mechanism can actually be glimpsed in Modern Spanish, where the Spanish
word “a” which is equivalent in meaning to the English preposition “to” (as in
“to the city”) seems to be evolving
into a marker of the direct object, or accusative case. This is an
example of why linguists assume, or implicitly assume, “Once a possible human
language, always a possible human language.”
One possible future linguistic scenario – no one knows for sure, not
even the most brilliant linguist now alive can be certain – might be that the
English language would continue influencing all other spoken human languages
more and more, until at some point in the future a state is reached where there
is not a single living spoken language which has different words for exclusive
“we” and inclusive “we.” But the assumption “Once a possible human
language, always a possible human language” could still lead linguists to believe,
that such a future state of affairs could in turn be followed by an even later
stage in which English developed a new
way to have separate words for exclusive “we” and inclusive “we.”
That is the idea running in the
background when a linguist or a grammarian -- it does not matter which -- uses
what we have designated the “eternal Present “ in making this grammatical
statement, “In Latin, the direct object IS expressed by the accusative case.”
5. Weeding in
Libraries
Therefore, if a
certain language ceases to be spoken, that does not mean that we can throw away
all the grammars of that language. The grammars of that language in the
plural – meaning, the books or monographs written about the grammar of that
language in the singular – have stored up and preserved information about one
of the numerous eternally possible spoken human languages.
Generally, old nursing books and
old law books are considered by librarians (and nurses and lawyers) to be
creepy in a particular sense, meaning that if you follow the advice contained
in them, you are not using up-to-date information, and as a consequence, you might
hurt or harm yourself. Old linguistic and grammar books never become
creepy in this specific sense, and as a result, librarians should not make an
effort to prevent people from reading old linguistic books and grammar books
which are being taken out of the library to make room for newer linguistic
books and grammar books. In this sense, linguistics is one of the
humanities, or to use the word in its singular form, linguistics is a
humanity. “Linguistics is a humanity” is a college administrator way of
saying that linguistics, like literature and history and art and music and
religion, is concerned with eternal and nearly eternal truths about human
beings. Walt Kelly the comic strip author remarked that “The things that
make us human are always close at hand.” Human language is one of the
things that make us human, and wherever there are communities of people, human
language is always close at hand. Even though linguistics (or comparative
grammar) does not feel like the study
of an art form such as literature and visual art and music, nevertheless,
linguistics is one of the humanities in the college administrator sense of the
word humanities. Linguistics (or comparative grammar) is the study of one
of the things that make us human.
Thus, when we use the eternal
present and say “In Latin, the direct object IS expressed by the accusative
case” we are also implying, When librarians remove an old Latin grammar from
the library to make room for some newer books or to make room for more
computers so more people can read E-books at the same time, the librarians
removing the old Latin grammar should not try in any way to prevent people from
reading the old grammar book which is going out the back door of the
library. Old grammar books never become creepy in the specific and
technical way in which old nursing and law books become creepy.
In conclusion, whatever it is that
people mean when they say “linguistics is a science,” it does NOT mean “librarians
should prevent people from reading old grammar books, when they go out the back
door of the Library.”
Postscript. An
Example of the Accusative Case in Latin
Mārcu-s vide-t.
[Latin for] "Mark sees."
Mārcu-m vide-t.
[Latin for] "He sees Mark" or
"She sees Mark" or "It
sees Mark."
The -m at the end of Mārcum is the ending of the accusative
case. As indicated above, the accusative
case is used to mark the direct object in Latin. So Mārcum is the object of vide-t (He, she,
it sees). By contrast, the -s at the end
of Mārcus is the ending of the nominative case, used to mark the subject of the
verb in Latin.
"Accusative" is certainly an odd word! R. H. Robins in his book A Short History of Linguistics on page 35 says it came about from
Romans misunderstanding an Ancient Greek word.
Frank
Newton
