The Ingenuity of Languages; and Weeding in Libraries

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