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Original Articles

Categories of the Theory of Grammar

M. A. K. HallidayDepartment of English Language and General LinguisticsUniversity of Edinburgh.
Pages 241-292 | Published online: 04 Dec 2015

  • It is in no way to deny the fundamental importance of Chomsky's work, in Syntactic Structures (Janua Linguarum no. 4, 1957) and elsewhere, if we suggest that the readiness of linguists who had previously worked in the “Bloomfieldian” tradition to abandon these methods in favour of Chomsky's is in part due to their lack of theoretical foundation. The point of view adopted here is that transformation-generation is a type of description which, like other types, depends on but does not replace a theory.
  • Even Chomsky (“Generative Grammar,” Word XVII (1961), 219–239), seems to imply that a textual study cannot be theoretical. But a grammar of one short text may be based on theory; and any theory-based grammar, transformational or not, can be stated in generative terms.
  • Those linguists who have followed up the work of Firth have always tended to give more weight to textual description than have those following Bloomfield, since for the former meaning and the statement of meaning have always been integrated in the theory. Cf. Firth, “Synopsis of Linguistic Theory” (Studies in Linguistic Analysis (Special Volume of the Philological Society) Oxford, Blackwell, 1957), p. 11, and p. 23: “The object of linguistic analysis as here understood is to make statements of meaning so that we may see how we use language to live.”
  • Professor Firth died on 14 December 1960. I had just completed this paper and was planning to show it to him on the following day. Although he had not seen it and was in no way directly responsible for any of the opinions formulated here, the influence of his teaching and of his great scholarship will, I hope, be clearly apparent.
  • See especially Firth, “Synopsis,” passim; also “Papers in Linguistics 1934–1951,” London, Oxford University Press, 1957, chapters 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, “Structural Linguistics” (Transactions of the Philological Society 1955) and “Applications of General Linguistics” (Transactions of the Philological Society 1957).
  • Of major importance to me have been discussions, both on linguistic theory as a whole and on the specific subjects mentioned, with J. C. Catford, J. O. Ellis, A. McIntosh (lexis and “delicacy”—the latter concept is of his origination), J. M. Sinclair (English grammar) and J. P. Thorne (logical structure of linguistic theory, and the work of Chomsky).
  • As used by Firth, loc. cit.; cf. “Papers” p. 225. Here “text” refers to the event under description, whether it appears as corpus (textual description), example (exemplificatory) or terminal string (transformative-generative).
  • The set of these abstractions, constituting the body of descriptive method, might be regarded as a “calculus,” since its function is to relate the theory to the data. It is important to distinguish between calculus (description) and theory; also between description and the set of generalizations and hypotheses by which the theory was arrived at in the first place. The latter precede the theory and are not susceptible of “rigorization;” though we may distinguish the logical stages of observation—generalization—hypothetization—theory, keeping Hjelmslev's distinction between “hypothesis” and “theory” (Prolegomena to a theory of language. (International Journal of American Linguistics, Memoir no. 7, 1953), p. 8; cf. W. S. Allen, “Relationship in Comparative Linguistics” (Transactions of the Philological Society 1953), p. 53). Here we are concerned with the stages, once the theory is formulated, of theory—description—text.
  • Since the theory is a theory of how language works, it does not matter whether the levels are considered levels of language or levels of linguistics (theory or description): it comes to the same thing. Cf. Firth, “Papers,” p. 143: “We must expect therefore that linguistic science will also find it necessary to postulate the maintenance of linguistic patterns and systems… within which there is order, structure and function. Such systems are maintained in activity, and in activity they are to be studied. It is on these grounds that linguistics must be systemic;” and cf. pp. 187, 192.
  • Cf. A. McIntosh, “The analysis of written Middle English” (Transactions of the Philological Society 1956). Professor McIntosh has recently followed this up with a further, so far unpublished, study of the underlying theoretical problems.
  • 1.5–1.7 may be summarized schematically as follows:
  • Cf. Firth, “Papers,” p. 227: “A nominative in a four-case system would in this sense necessarily have a different ‘meaning’ from a nominative in a two-case or in a fourteen-case system, for example.” The article from which this is quoted, “General Linguistics and Descriptive Grammar,” was published in 1951; but Firth's view of the “dispersal of meaning,” that (i) form is meaningful and (ii) formal meaning is distinct from contextual meaning, antedates this by some time; it is in fact already clear, though without the precise formulation of formal meaning, in “The Technique of Semantics” (1935) (also reprinted in “Papers”).
  • Some of what has been written on information theory and language is vitiated by the confusion between these two levels of meaning; cf. my reviews of Whatmough: Language: A Modern Synthesis and Herdan: Language as Choice and Chance in Archiuum Linguisticum 10 (ii) and 11 (ii). It is doubtful whether, even if contextual meaning can ever be quantified, it has anything to do with “information;” the latter is a function of the operation of (a term in) a system, and a linguistic item can never be a term in a contextual system even if such a thing can be rigorously described. Cf. below, 10.7.
  • The reason why “context” is preferred to “semantics” as the name of this interlevel is that “semantics” is too closely tied to one particular method of statement, the conceptual method; cf. Firth, “Synopsis” pp. 9–10, 20. The latter, by attempting to link language form to unobservables, becomes circular, since concepts are only observable as (exponents of) the forms they are set up to “explain.” The linguistic statement of context attempts to relate language form to (abstractions from) other (i.e. extratextual) observables.
  • Cf. Firth, “Synopsis,” p. 15: “References to non-verbal constituents of situations are admissible in corroboration of formal linguistic characteristics stated as criteria for setting up… word-classes.” The approach to context from the other end, that is from non-language, has been developed in an important monograph by William E. Bull: Time, tense and the verb (Univ. of California Publications in Linguistics no. 19, 1960), as what he (perhaps unfortunately, in view of the formal use of “system”) calls “systemic linguistics.” The difficulty of this method lies in deciding on what Bull calls (p. 3) “those features of objective reality which are pertinent to the problem,” since this can only be known by reference to linguistic forms: cf. e.g. p. 17 “it may be assumed that normal people automatically divide, on the preverbal level, all events into three categories: those anterior to PP (point present)…, those simultaneous with PP…, and those posterior to PP;” p. 20 “The languages of the dominant world cultures use vector formulas, and the discussion which follows is therefore concerned only with the structure of a hypothetical tense system based on the vector principle;” p. 24 “The system, of course, would break down if a plus form were to be used to describe a minus event or if a form indicating anticipation were used for recollection.” This does not invalidate the approach; it does suggest that it will have to be part of a study of context which starts from form as well as from “objective reality,” as phonology works both from form and from substance; context, like phonology, is in a real sense an interlevel.
  • Theoretical validity implies making maximum use of the theory (see below, 2.3 and 6.2). It is not necessary to add a separate criterion of “simplicity,” since this is no use unless defined; and it would then turn out to be a property of a maximally grammatical description, since complication equals a weakening of the power of the theory and hence less grammaticalness. It should perhaps also be mentioned here that the distinction between methods of description and discovery procedures is here taken for granted throughout (cf. below, 2.3). We are not concerned with how the linguist “finds out” how an event is to be described. This is no more capable of scientific exposition than are the steps by which the theory was arrived at in the first place—in fact less, since the latter can at least be formulated, while the former can only be summed up in the words of the song: “I did what I could.”
  • Cf. Firth, “Synopsis,” p. 22 (and above 1.8 n. 11); R. H. Robins, “Some Considerations on the status of grammar in linguistics” Archiuum Linguisticum XI (1959), 101; Garvin, see below (6.3 n. 60).
  • “Grammar” is also the name for the study of grammar; as with “level” (above, 1.4 n. 8), it is unnecessary to distinguish between “the grammar” of a language and “grammar” in theory and description—though a distinction is often made between “lexis” and “lexicology,” the latter being the study of lexis. Again, not a set of discovery procedures, but a set of properties of what the linguist accounts for grammatically. The grammar of a language can only be “defined” as that part of the language that is accounted for by grammatical description.
  • The reference is, of course, to formal meaning: it is form that is under discussion. It may always happen that the addition of a new term changes the contextual meaning of at least one of the others, since terms that are formally mutually exclusive are likely to carry contextual distinctions; but this is not a property of a system. The “addition” of a new term is not of course considered as a process (though historical change is one type of instance of it): it may be displayed in any comparison of two related systems. For example, two possible systems of first and second person pronouns used by different speakers of Italian (quoted in oblique disjunct form; I=”interior to social group,” E “exterior…”): (The distinctions made in written Italian are ignored, since they would not affect the point.) The difference in formal meaning is a function of the different number of terms: in system one me excludes five others, in system two only three. In contextual meaning only terms of the 2 group are affected.
  • Cf. Firth, “Synopsis,” p. 2: “Moreover, these and other technical words are given their ‘meaning’ by the restricted language of the theory, and by application of the theory in quoted works.” This is true of descriptive categories too: “noun” can no more be defined in a glossary than “structure.”
  • I should therefore agree with Palmer that linguistic levels do not form a hierarchy: (F. R. Palmer, “Linguistic Hierarchy,” Lingua VII (1958), 241. His view is “that there are levels, but only in the widest sense, and that these are related in specific, but different, ways. The set of relationships cannot be regarded as a hierarchy, except in the loosest sense of the word.” Palmer however appears to reintroduce procedural hierarchy when he says (p. 240), “The procedure is not from phonetics via phonology to grammar, but from grammar via phonology to phonetics, though with the reminder that the phonetic statement is the basis, i.e. the ultimate justification for the analysis.” I would rather say that there is order among the levels, determined by their interrelations, but (a) no hierarchy, in the defined sense of the word, and (b) no procedural direction. Unfortunately Palmer excludes this use of “order:” (pp. 231–232) “There is a statable order of levels… and, therefore, a hierarchy” (in reference to Hockett).
  • Immediate Constituent analysis, for example, yields a hierarchy that is not a taxonomy: it does not fulfil criterion (ii). (It may not always fulfil (i): cf. C. F. Hockett, “Two models of grammatical description,” Readings in Linguistics (ed. M. Joos, Washington, ACLS, 1957), p. 391: “There must be also at least a few utterances in which the hierarchical structure is ambiguous, since otherwise the hierarchical structure would in every case be determined by form and order, and hence not a ‘primitive’.”)
  • The theory thus leads to “polysystemic”-ness in description—both syntagmatically and paradigmatically. Syntagmatic polysystemic statement follows from the linking of classes and systems to places in structure (see below, 4–6), so that the question “how can we prove that the b of beak and the b of cab are occurrences of one and the same phoneme?” (C. L. Ebeling, “Linguistic Units,” Janua Linguarum XII (1960), p. 17) is regarded as an unreal one; cf. Palmer “Comparative Statement and Ethiopian Semitic” (Transactions of the Philological Society, 1958), pp. 122–124); Firth “Papers,” p. 121, “Structural Linguistics,” p. 93; J. Carnochan “Glottalization in Hausa” (Transactions of the Philological Society, 1952), p. 78; R. H. Robins, “Vowel Nasality in Sundanese,” Studies in Linguistic Analysis, p. 96; and Eugenie Henderson, “The Phonology of Loanwords in Some South-east Asian Languages” (Transactions of the Philological Society, 1951), p. 132.
  • Paradigmatically, the “simplicity” referred to here follows from the requirement of making maximum use of the category of “system” by polysystemic or “multidimensional” statement in grammar; cf. my “Grammatical Categories in Modern Chinese” (Transactions of the Philological Society, 1956), p. 192.
  • “Manifestation” (in substance) and “realization” (in form) are introduced here to represent different degrees along the scale of exponence (see below, 7.3). In this paper I have used “exponent” as indicating relative position on the exponence scale (a formal item as exponent of a formal category, and a feature of substance as exponent of a formal category or item); this departs from the practice of those who restrict the term “exponent” to absolute exponents in substance. As used here, “formal item” is a technical term for the endpoint of the exponence relation (“most exponential” point) in form: the lexical item “cat,” the word “cat” as member of the word class of noun, the morpheme “-ing” (as class member operating at the place of an element) in word structure, etc.; it is thus already an abstraction from substance and will be stated orthographically or phonologically. In this formulation, exponence is the only relation by which formal category, formal item and feature of substance are linked on a single scale: hence the need for a single term to indicate relative position on the scale. Two defined positions on this scale can then be distinguished as “realization” and “manifestation.”
  • Cf. Firth, “Synopsis,” p. 5: “In these structures, one recognizes the place and order of the categories. This, however, is very different from the successivity of bits and pieces in a unidirectional time sequence.”
  • Cf. above, 3.1 n. 23.
  • The two latter restrictions represent an important addition to the power of the “unit” as a theoretical category. The first toleration is required to account for “regressive” structures: cf. Victor H. Yngve, “A Model and an Hypothesis for Language Structure,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 104 (v), p. 19. As Chomsky has said (“Syntactic Structures,” pp. 23–24), “the assumption that languages are infinite is made in order to simplify the description of these languages… If a grammar does not have recursive devices it will be prohibitively complex.” Yngve makes the important distinction between “progressive” and “regressive” structures, accounting for them separately in his model. Whether or not he is right in postulating a depth limit (of about 7) for “regressive” structures, while allowing “progressive” structures to be infinitely expanded (p. 21), they do represent very different types of “infiniteness,” and are separately accounted for in the present theory, the former with, the latter without, rank shift. This determines the nature, but does not restrict the use, of the perfectly valid arbitrary limit on delicacy which the grammar can set in each case without loss of comprehensiveness.
  • Such as the status of “being the smallest.”
  • Cf. below, 8. The item for lexical statement is not to be identified on the grammatical rank scale; nor is it a “unit” at all in the sense in which the term is here used in grammar, since this use presupposes a rank scale (as well as the other terms “structure,” “class,” and “system” in a system of related categories), which is absent from lexis. It is probably better to restrict the term “unit” to grammar and phonology: cf. C. E. Bazell, “Linguistic Form” (Istanbul, University Press, 1953, p. 11)—though Bazell does not here consider lexical form.
  • So, for the description of English:
  • Statistical work on grammar may yield a further unit, above the sentence: it will then be possible to set up sentence classes, and account for sequences of them, by reference to this higher unit. Similarly in phonology we need a unit in English above the tone group to account for sequences of different tones. The grammatical and phonological “paragraph” (and perhaps “paraphone?”) is probably within reach of a team of linguist, statistician, programmer, and computer; cf. Firth, “Synopsis,” p. 18 “Attention must first be paid to the longer elements of text—such as the paragraph…”; Zellig S. Harris, “Discourse Analysis” (Language 28 (i, iv)); for Hill, and others, this is “stylistics” (A.A. Hill, Introduction to Linguistic Structures, p. 406), but in the present theory it would come within exactly the same general framework of categories.
  • The “simple/compound” opposition is thus one of structure. It may, of course, happen that a given realization yields simple membership all the way up and down the rank scale. Yes may be (i.e. may be an exponent of) one sentence which is one clause which is one group which is one word which is one morpheme.
  • Cf. Firth, “Synopsis,” esp. pp. 17, 30, and “Structural Linguistics,” esp. pp. 89, 91; Robins, “Formal Divisions in Sundanese” (Transactions of the Philological Society 1953), p. 109: my, “The Language of the Chinese ‘Secret History of the Mongols’” Publications of the Philological Society 17 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1959), p. 49.
  • Cf. Firth, “Synopsis,” p. 17: “Elements of structure… share a mutual expectancy in an order which is not merely a sequence.” Since sequence is a variable, and may or may not be an exponent of structure, we find difference in sequence without difference in structure (cf. below, 4.3 n. 42), or difference in structure without difference in sequence. I am indebted to J. M. Sinclair for a recent conversational example of the latter: orthographically, “The man came (,) from the Gas Board.” Phonologically (relevant units: “tone group,” bounded by //, and “foot,” by /—these are unit boundaries and have nothing to do with juncture): what was said was (tonic syllable underlined): // 1 the/man/came//1 from the/Gas/Board// Grammatically, one clause, structure SP; exponent of P “came,” of S “the man… from the Gas Board,” being a nominal group, structure MH + Q. What might have been said was //1 the/man/came from the/Gas/Board// Grammatically, one clause, structure SPA; exponents, S “the man”, P “came”, A “from the Gas Board”. The two are different in grammatical structure, and this difference has its exponent in phonic substance which can be stated phonologically. (That the phonological patterns, and the distinction between them, abstracted from the substance along one dimension correspond regularly (though not one/one) with the grammatical patterns, and the distinction between them, abstracted along another dimension from the same substance can be shown by the construction of other partially like clauses.) But though the difference in structure has its manifestation in substance (there can of course be ambiguity in substance, as in Hockett's “old men and women”, “Two Models” p. 390n.), in form the difference is not realized in sequence. In sequence, “from the Gas Board” occupies the same place in both instances; in order, S and A stand in different relations to P, and “from the Gas Board” is exponent of (part of) S in the one case and of (the whole of) A in the other.
  • Sequence is presumably always manifested in phonic substance as linear progression; the distinction is then one of exponence, “sequence” being the name for that formal relation between formal items of which linear progression is the manifestation in phonic substance.
  • It is useful to make a distinction in the use of symbols between an inventory of elements of a structure and a structure, by the use of commas in the former. Thus, X, Y, Z is an inventory of elements, XYZ a structure composed of these elements.
  • Since a unit that carried only one-place structures would be unnecessary: if, for example, all words consist of one morpheme (i.e. the unit “word” has no structure containing more than one place), “word” and “morpheme” would be one and the same unit.
  • For the name and nature of this grouping, see below, 5.
  • Since the morpheme (i) is a grammatical unit and (ii) carries no grammatical structure, it has no structure. Cf. Palmer, “Linguistic Hierarchy,” pp. 229–230 (quoting Hockett, Manual of Phonology, p. 15): “'Morphemes are not composed of phonemes at all. Morphemes are indivisible units. A given morpheme is represented by a certain more or less compact arrangement of phonologic material… If we call any such representation a morph, then it becomes correct to say that a morph has a phonological structure—that it consists of an arrangement of phonemes'. (Hockett) recognizes that the units established at each level differ in kind, and not merely in size, from those established at other levels.” The “morph” does indeed accommodate the theoretical point (but cf. below, 10.1 n. 83), that the units differ in kind; but in accepting Hockett's view Palmer has not noted that, since they differ in kind, “size” cannot be abstracted as common to the two dimensions of abstraction for them to differ in. That is, a grammatical unit can only be exponentially coextensive (or not) with a phonological one: when it is, this is a descriptive accident for which the linguist can be thankful (cf. reference to Allen in 7.1 n. 64 below), but the grammar cannot be made to define the units for phonological statement (cf. the example in 4.1 n. 33 above, where two exponents of the same grammatical unit “clause” may be (systemically contrasted by being) coextensive either with one tone group or with two). And, even though we may use the categories of “unit” and “structure” both in grammar and in phonology, these are not shown to be comparable unless the two theories have the same system of primitive terms with the same interrelations.
  • As used by Hill, Linguistic Structures, pp. 256 ff. The “definitions” of these terms (i.e. the categories themselves) are of course different, since the theory differs from Hill's. Cf. below, 10.6.
  • This formulaic presentation is useful as a generalized statement of an inventory of possible structures: a list H, MH, HQ, HMQ can be generalized as (M)H(Q). This particular instance is an oversimplification, since there may be more than one exponent of M and Q: the formula would then read (M…n)H(Q…n), where‥, n allows infinite progression (not regression).
  • The real point is to avoid taking two distinct theoretical steps at once. As said below (5), the relation of “class” to “structure” is such that a class of a given unit stands in one/one relation to an element of structure of the unit next above: thus, the exponent of the element P in the structure of the unit “clause” is the class “verbal” of the unit “group”. We could—provided we did so consistently—replace the symbol P here by V, thus conflating two statements. But not only are there descriptive reasons for not doing so (cf. below, 5.4); it is theoretically invalid, since two sets of relations are involved (element of clause structure to unit “clause,” class of group to unit “group”), and if the two steps are taken at once the crucial relation of structure to class on the rank scale is obscured.
  • If, instead, an inventory of elements is stated first, the arrow can be added (where it really belongs) in the inventory: C, A. It is then no longer required in the statement of structures, since it is presupposed.
  • Cf. above, 4.1. In a Latin clause of structure SOP (O = object), sequence plays no part in the definition of the elements: so no arrow. But rearrangements of the elements, to give SPO, OSP etc., can be usefully employed to state the more delicate distinctions between “puer puellam amat,” “puellam puer amat” etc. In English, where sequence is crucial to the definition of S (though various arrangements of C and A are possible), more delicate grammatical distinctions, such as those carried by intonation, must be shown secondarily.
  • For example the following two exponents of the (class) nominal (of the unit) group: all the ten houses on the riverside and the finest old houses on the riverside have the same primary structure M. HQ (or MMMHQ). But a more delicate statement of M, still at group rank, shows distinct secondary structures, the first example having DaDbO, the second DbOE.
  • When Hockett writes (Manual of Phonology, p. 17). “In general, then, if we find continuous-scale contrasts in the vicinity of what we are sure is language, we exclude them from language (though not from culture),” this applies (i) only to grammar and phonology, not to lexis or context (cf. Bazell, “Linguistic Form,” p. 11), and (ii) only to one type of contrast, that between terms in systems. It is, indeed, a defining characteristic of a system that it cannot be a cline. But units and classes are not crucially discrete: in exponence, units display syntagmatic non-discreteness (syncretism); classes, paradigmatic non-discreteness (statable in various ways, such as multidimensional classification, assignment of an item to different classes with variable probability etc.).
  • I would class it with other dichotomies that Firth rejects: cf. “Papers,” p. 227, “My own approach to meaning in linguistics has always been independent of such dualisms as mind and body, language and thought, word and idea, signifiant et signifyé, expression and content. These dichotomies are a quite unnecessary nuisance, and in my opinion should be dropped.” Cf. “Applications,” pp. 2, 3—though here, I must admit, Firth also rejects “form and substance,” which I find crucial (as levels) to an understanding of how language works.
  • Cf. Firth, “Synopsis,” p. 14: “It follows that the distinction between morphology and syntax is perhaps no longer useful or convenient in descriptive linguistics.”
  • i.e. languages in which inflexional systems are a regular feature of word structure. “Free” and “bound” are generalized class categories, linked to the generalized structure categories of “simple” and “compound” (above, 2.3): “free” is “able to stand as exponent of one-element structure of the unit next above,” “bound” is “unable to stand, etc.” A member of a “free” class can thus be exponent of a “simple” structure, while a member of a bound class can operate only in “compound” structures.
  • Other terms are of course available, like Haas' “synthetic classification” and “analytic classification” (W. Haas: “On defining linguistic units,” Transactions of the Philological Society, 1954, pp. 68 if.). The terminological objection to the use of “class” in both (as in “form class” and “function class”) is however theoretically founded: if we say, with Haas (p. 68), that “we distinguish two ways of classifying” linguistic units, we imply two things, (i) a choice of (ii) procedural direction. But this is not a procedural matter, and there is no choice. All forms are to be accounted for, and this means stating both their class (linking them to the unit next above) and their own structure (linking them to the unit next below). Whether the “syntactic” groupings, of items operating alike in the structure of the units next above, and the “morphological” groupings, of items alike in their own structure, coincide or not is a descriptive variable; other things being equal, a form of description will be chosen in which they do, since the more they coincide the more grammatical the statement. But they must be terminologically permitted not to coincide without prejudice to their both being stated. Cf. Robins, “Status of grammar,” p. 109: “When there is a conflict of classification by morphological paradigm and syntactic function, the latter is given preference in assigning words to word classes”—I would add “groups to group classes, etc.”
  • E.g. in the structure of the English verbal group, the words “work,” “play” operate at the same element: they are members of the same word class. The words “works,” “working,” “worked” do not operate at the same element: they are not members of the same word class. They have themselves, however, the same (primary) structure: they are members of the same paradigm. Likewise in the structure of that class of the word containing the words “worked,” “played,” the morphemes “work,” “play” operate at the same element: they are members of the same morpheme class.
  • More delicate classes derived from secondary structures are referable both as exponents to secondary structures and as subdivisions (same degree of exponence, but more delicate) to primary classes. Diagrammatically:
  • Or nearly coextensive: the criteria for the setting up of one primary class or two are descriptive. For example, in English clause structure S and C are different elements standing in different relation to P. There is a high degree of overlap between their exponents: one primary class (class “nominal” of unit “group”) can be set up as exponent of both S and C. The lack of exact coextensiveness will be stated by secondary elements and classes, to account for (for example) the occurrence of “the old hall,” “the old town,” “the old town hall,” “this hall/town/town hall is old,” “this is a hall/town/town hall,” and the non-occurrence of “this old is a hall,” “this is an old,” or “this hall is town.”
  • Cf. Firth, “Papers,” p. 144: “Various systems are to be found in speech activity and when stated must adequately account for such activity. Science should not impose systems on languages, it should look for systems in speech activity, and, having found them, state the facts in a suitable language.” Cf. also references given in 4.1 n 32, above.
  • Again, abstraction on the exponence scale. The formal item “the old man” is exponent of (is a member of) a class (“nominal,” of the unit “group”). The class “nominal group” is exponent of (operates at the place of) an element of structure (S or C, of the unit “clause”). The formal item itself, of course, has its own (and ultimate) exponents in phonic or graphic substance.
  • Diagrammatically (axes as in 5.4 n. 50, above):
  • As already stressed (above, 2.2), the order of presentation here is for convenience of exposition; the relations among the theoretical categories do not involve logical precedence.
  • Since the categories are set up precisely to account for the data that are stated as their exponents, this is not surprising. Cf. Firth, “Synopsis,” p. 1: “A theory derives its usefulness and validity from the aggregate of experience to which it must continually refer in renewal of connexion.” The relation of category to exponent can be generalized as one of abstraction; one endpoint of this relation may be any one of four categories, but there is no scale of abstraction among the categories—their relation to each other is such that the move from any category to its exponent may be made either directly or via any or all of the other categories. As said below (6.2), the route may involve rank shift; but this does not mean that rank is to be equated with exponence or that there is any distinction between different units as regards the kind or degree of their relation to their exponents. (That is to say, even if one chooses to move from “clause” to exponent via “group,” this does not mean that the group is in any sense “nearer” to the data than the clause: indeed, the move from clause to exponent via group presupposes the possibility of moving from group to exponent via clause.)
  • So, for example, the formal item “were driven” may be exponent of: (i) the unit “group,” (ii) the element P in structure, (iii) the class “verbal,” and (iv) the term “passive” in a system of secondary classes. All these statements are interdependent: the link of exponent to each theoretical category depends on its link to all the others and on their own interrelations in the theory. Thus the unit “group” is linked to the structure of the “clause;” the class “verbal” is a class of the unit “group” and is linked to the elements of structure of the clause; the system “voice” has as terms classes of the verbal group; these classes have their own structures, etc.
  • Thus:
  • Without in any way affecting the syntactic nature of the “class”.
  • Cf. Paul Garvin, in Georgetown University Monograph Series No. 9, 1957, p. 55: “Morphemes of limited membership class should be listed in the grammar and morphemes which belong to classes of unlimited membership should be exemplified in the grammar and listed in the dictionary.”
  • Except in the sense that the description will always try a move down the rank scale as a possible way of extending its power (“remaining in grammar”). But wherever the lexical item is greater than a morpheme, its further analysis by grammar into morphemes will leave its lexical relations unaccounted for. For example, in “the train left ten minutes late, but made it up,” “made up” is a discontinuous verbal group analyzed as two words, one (“made”) of two morphemes, the other simple; but it enters into an open set qua lexical item “make up,” which itself is here assigned to no grammatical unit.
  • See below, 8.
  • Regressive structures can of course be regarded as forming a scale; but their description does not require the introduction of a separate scale into the theory. Cf. above, 3.2 n. 26.
  • Cf. Allen, “Structure and system in the Abaza verbal complex” (Transactions of the Philological Society 1956), pp. 143–145, from which the following is taken: “It frequently occurs that an appropriate ‘bit’ of the corresponding phonological statement (or of the orthography) is used as a label for the grammatical unit in question… The price of using such labels is constant vigilance… Where the phonological analysis permits of alternatives, that alternative is to be chosen which is most congruent with the grammatical analysis;… important correspondences may be observed between phonology and grammar, in so far as different phonological systems… may be required for the exponents of different grammatical categories—but the relation between them… is an indirect one via the phonic data.” In spite of the different formulation, and the difference between Allen's diagrammatic representation and those used here (above, 1.7 n. 10, and below, 10.3 n. 88), I do not think that there is any conflict between Allen's view and the view put forward here.
  • In which (i) one set of units is set up for grammar, and their structures, classes, and systems described, and (ii) one set of units is set up for phonology and these also appropriately described. Other things being equal, a form of phonological statement will be preferred which simplifies the statement of the relations between phonology and grammar. It is here that one asks such questions as: “Is it possible to generalize any phonological features as recognition signals of a given grammatical category?” and “Is it possible to specify under what conditions a phonological unit, such as the tone group, is exponentially coextensive with one or other grammatical unit, such as the clause or group?”
  • One may want to compare primary and secondary structures of the same (class of the same) unit: shift in delicacy only. One may want to compare classes of one unit with classes of the unit next below: shift in rank only. Or one may want to state and exemplify the classes of a given unit: shift in exponence only.
  • Cf. Firth, “Synopsis,” taken from pp. 15–16: “The term exponent has been introduced to refer to the phonetic and phonological ‘shape’ of words or parts of words which are generalized in the categories… The consideration of graphic exponents is a companion study to phonological and phonetic analysis… The phonetic description of exponents which may be cumulative or discontinuous or both, should provide a direct justification of the analysis. It may happen that the exponents of some phonological categories may serve also for syntactical categories. But the exponents of many grammatical categories may require ad hoc or direct phonetic description… The exponents of the phonological elements of structure and of the… terms of systems are to be abstracted from the phonic material… The exponents of elements of structure and of terms in systems are always consistent and cannot be mutually contradictory.” I would regard the concept of exponents as one of Firth's major contributions to linguistic theory. References will be found throughout the writings of Allen and of Carnochan, Eugenie Henderson, Mitchell, Palmer, Robins, and other linguists of the School of Oriental & African Studies, London, many of which are referred to elsewhere in this paper.
  • Strictly speaking the relation of the formal item to its exponent in substance entails a two-fold relation of abstraction, one of whose dimensions is exponence (and is therefore a prolongation of the scale which relates category to formal item). The other dimension is the abstraction, by likeness, of a “general” event (class of events, though not in the technical sense in which “class” is used here) from a large number of “particular” events, the individual events of speech activity. For theoretical purposes the exponence scale can be regarded as comprehending this dimension of abstraction, which takes place then in that part of the scale which relates formal item to exponent in substance. Cf. Firth, “Synopsis,” p. 2; “Papers,” pp. 144, 187.
  • For example, the statistical study of sequences of clause classes, which is necessary both to the statement of sentence structures and to the description of a unit above the sentence, would reveal the range, and cline, of the determination of probabilities by the occurrence of a member of each class. (Cf. my (review of) Whatmough: Language: A Modern Synthesis in Archiuum Linguisticum X.)
  • For example, a preliminary study of about 1,000 items of the “put up” type, the purpose of which is to reveal the systems (dimensions) relevant to the identification and classification of so-called “phrasal verbs” in English, shows that fifteen different formal criteria yield fifteen different sets of classes.
  • That is, have not yet been shown to be dependent on grammatical categories, and must therefore be postulated to be independent until shown to be otherwise: on the general theoretical principle that heterogeneity is to be assumed until disproved by correlation. Recent (unpublished) work by McIntosh suggests that lexical relations may, in some cases, be better described by reference to grammatical restrictions of variable extent; if so, this will affect both the theory of lexis and the relations between the levels of lexis and grammar. Cf. below, 8.2.
  • Two familiar examples may be cited, both exponents of the grammatical unit “clause:” (i) “John ran up a big hill” and (ii) “John ran up a big bill:” Primary structure: (i)SPA (ii) SPC Exponent of P: class: verbal verbal of unit: group group formal item: “ran” “ran up” Down the rank scale, verbal groups “ran” and “ran up”: Primary structure: (i) F (ii) FPo Exponent of F: class: verb finite verb finite of unit: word word formal item: “ran” “ran” In (i), the lexical item is “ran,” exponent of both the unit “group” and the unit “word.” If after further analysis “ran” is a compound word with two elements of structure whose exponents are morphemes, then the lexical item is “run” which is an exponent of the unit “morpheme.” In (ii) the lexical item is “ran up” which is exponent of the unit “group” but above the rank of the word. (Orthography does not of course provide criteria for grammatical units; like phonology, it must be stated separately and then related to grammar, though if a one/one correspondence between orthographic and grammatical categories is found to work at any point, so much the better. The space in fact will not do in every case as exponent of the boundary of the grammatical unit “word” in English. Here however to treat (things like) “run up” as a single word, the only purpose of which would be to maximalize the in any case very partial correspondence between “word” and lexical item, considerably complicates the description of the verbal group.) If the analysis is taken to the morpheme, the lexical item is “run up,” which contains one morpheme (but not the other) from the structure of the word “ran” plus another word from the structure of the group—it is both more and less than a grammatical word. Even if this type of morphemic analysis is rejected, the grammatically discontinuous lexical item will appear in “John was running up a big bill,” where the analysis of “running” as a two morpheme word structure presumably would be accepted; and even where all words have simple structure, as in “John may run up a big bill,” the lexical item, though not discontinuous, is an exponent of no grammatical unit, since it is more than a word but less than a group.
  • Cf. Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, pp. 15 ff.
  • e.g. by Chomsky, loc. cit. Chomsky, however, does not countenance the formal study of lexis. In the present view, the concept of “grammatical” and “ungrammatical” is paralleled by that of “lexical” and “unlexical,” this being the basic reason why (Chomsky, op. cit., p. 16) “the notion ‘grammatical in English’ cannot be identified in any way with the notion ‘high order of statistical approximation to English’:” “colourless green ideas sleep furiously” is “unlexical.” “Lexical meaning” in the present theory is thus not the same as is meant by Chomsky on p. 108; it is one part (“grammatical meaning” being the other) of the formal meaning of language, and “formal meaning” is one part (the other being “contextual meaning”) of the total meaning of language.
  • This view (that linguistics excludes the study of (non-formal) meaning) is probably no longer widely held. It is not within the scope of the present paper to discuss contextual meaning; but briefly, since context relates form to extratextual features, and is (like phonology) an interlevel, the categories of context, like those of phonology, are not determined by (still less, of course, do they determine) the categories of form; but contextual statement is required to account for all (instances of the) reflexion in form of extratextual features. For the statement of context, as distinct from either “content” or “concept,” see especially Firth, “Synopsis,” pp. 5–13 (and, in connexion with this, “Papers,” p. 227, “Applications,” pp. 2, 3) and “Ethnographic Analysis and Language” (Man and Culture, ed. Raymond Firth, London 1957).
  • Cf. Firth, “Synopsis,” pp. 11–13, 26–27 and 31; T. F. Mitchell “Syntagmatic Relations in Linguistic Analysis” (Transactions of the Philological Society 1958), pp. 108 ff.; my “Secret History,” pp. 156–175.
  • Analogous to the morphological grouping (the “paradigm”) of grammar is the lexical “ordered series of words”: cf. Firth, “Papers,” p. 228—though Firth's “ordered series of words” includes what I should consider a “lexical set,” namely his “lexical groups by association,” these being (by analogy) “syntactical.”
  • The traditional vehicle of lexical statement, the dictionary, states formal meaning by citation and contextual meaning by definition. The theoretical status of lexicographical definition (Firth's “shifted terms”—”Synopsis,” p. 11) needs to be carefully examined.
  • Cf. above, 7.4 n. 71. The point, however, is: what is to be regarded as “one” lexical item? Dictionaries, in general, mix grammatical and lexical criteria: in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, for example, “cut v.” (defined as “to penetrate so as to sever the continuity of with an edged instrument”) and “cut sb.” (“the act of cutting”) are shown as separate items having the same relation to each other as “bear v.” (“to support and remove; to carry”) and “bear sb.” (“a heavily-built, thick-furred plantigrade quadruped…”). But formally (quite apart from the fact that one contextual statement will cover both cut v. and cut sb. but not both bear v. and bear sb.) the pairs are quite distinct: there is a high degree of overlap in the range of collocation of cut v. and cut sb., which is not the case with bear v. and bear sb. Collocation provides a formal criterion for the identification of the lexical item.
  • An analogy which Bloomfield did use was that of the signal: “Accordingly, the signals (linguistic forms, with morphemes as the smallest signals) consist of different combinations of the signalling-units (phonemes), and each such combination is arbitrarily assigned to some feature of the practical world (‘sememe’)” (Language, p. 162). This runs the risk of suggesting the anology of a code—or even that language “is” a code. If language is a code, where is the pre-coded message? Cf. my (review of) Herdan: Language as Choice and Chance in Archiuum Linguisticum XI (ii).
  • Detailed references are not given in this section. It is recognized, as already remarked, that what is here called “Bloomfieldian” method is an abstraction from a large body of descriptive work by different linguists, within which there is considerable variety and disagreement even on basic issues. Roughly it covers the work based on what Hockett called the “item and arrangement” model. It is not of course suggested that all the points made in this section are applicable to all such studies, nor all of them to any one study, within this type of linguistics. Since I have been concerned to apply the present theory in the description of English, many of the points made here were in fact first formulated with reference to A. A. Hill's Introduction to Linguistic Structures, which incorporates what is probably the best comprehensive account of English grammar yet published and is an example of the method here referred to. Hill's book has recently been the subject of a review article by Haas (“Linguistic Structures,” Word XVI (ii)); my present aim differs from Haas' in that I want to consider certain features of an approach in descriptive linguistics, exemplified by Hill's work but also by many other studies, in the light of the theory here outlined.
  • Especially since a language may make systemic use of this variable (cf. 4.2 n. 37 above, where it is suggested that it is desirable to recognize in English a grammatical system the exponent of which is precisely the contrast between coextensiveness of the grammatical unit with one and with (a sequence of) two exponents of a phonological unit).
  • Cf. above, 4.2 n. 37. Hill's proportion, however, is morph: morpheme: allomorph:: sound: phoneme: allophone. “Every morpheme must contain one phoneme and may contain several” (p. 89) and, for English, “the occurrence of any juncture always marks the boundary of an entity larger than a phoneme. The entity thus bounded may be word, phrase or sentence, but must always be at least a morph” (pp. 93–94). The phoneme thus enters into the statement both of the unit “morpheme” and of its structure.
  • That is, the final step of the formal statement, the move to the formal item. Strictly, since formal statement includes the placing of all forms at all units, it would be more accurate to say “though it is by no means always at morpheme rank that systems of formal items are to be found.” For example in English the items “when,” “because,” “if,” “in case,” “provided that,” etc., though they can of course be analyzed into words and morphemes, operate as items at the rank of the group and, as such, are members of a particular class of the group.
  • So if we find in three languages items in substance statable phonetically as [pata] and [pate], these may yield:
  • (Phonologically restricted variants may be of either type: the language might have [pata] and [pete], never [pate] or [peta], without prejudice to whether the contrast between [pata] and [pete] is formally meaningful (L2,3) or not (L1).)
  • It does not matter, of course, what type of distinction is made in substance: the pair above could equally be replaced by e.g. [pàt] and [pàt], or [|pata] and [pa|ta], etc.
  • Again it does not matter where: the following grammatical contrasts in English are carried by substantial features requiring very different phonological statements: Form I work: I worked the y've worked: they'd worked he was working: was he working he was/working: he/was working // 1 he was/working//://4 he was/working// Phonology (unit) (contrast) phoneme: addition of segment /t/,: replacement of/v/ by /d/syllable: change in sequence foot: shift of unit boundary (so redistribution of strong and weak syllables—change of tonicity) tone group: replacement of one term in intonation system by another The phonological statement cannot necessarily be expected to cover the systems concerned: it would be absurd, for example, to state the affirmative: interrogative system in phonological terms—though, as said below, it must carry the potentiality of being so stated, since it presupposes a distinction in substance.
  • Phonology relates form to substance by providing for a separate statement of abstraction from substance for those features that are formally meaningful. The relevant section of the diagram in 1.7 n. 10 above could be more delicately represented as: with the dotted line representing the (logically) final stage in which two separate statements of abstraction are related. Cf. Robins, “Status of grammar,”p. 103: “(grammatical distinctions are) not deducible from the phonetic shapes, as such, of the words concerned nor from phonological rules based on these shapes and the phonetic categories involved in them…. While both phonological and grammatical categories are abstraction from the phonic material of utterance, their relation to the phonic material is entirely different.”
  • For example the phonological system of intonation in English, operating at the rank of the phonological unit “tone group,” carries a number of different grammatical systems operating at different units in the grammar.
  • Thus, the clause in English is defined by its operation in sentence structure, and by its own classes and their structures. The difference between two instances, such as an affirmative clause “he saw them” and an interrogative clause “did he see them?”, is of course ultimately statable in terms of substance; but grammar is not grammar if it tries to define the class system in this way—or even to state the difference phonologically at all. No linguist would ever try to state the grammar of clause classes by reference to phonology; yet the attempt to define the unit “clause” by reference to phonological features such as juncture is no less objectionable—and leads, not surprisingly, to a phonology in which any substantial feature is a possible exponent of any term in the phonological system!
  • A phonological description will, in this view, be prosodic if (i) it incorporates a rank scale, with a hierarchy of units to which contrasts are assigned, and (ii) it is polysystemic, so that, for example, the /t/ in 10.3 n. 87 above is not “the phoneme /t/” of “the English language” (no such entity will be postulated) but a phoneme identified by reference to its place in the structure of the unit concerned: this would still be true whether the phonological units concerned are (partly) taken over from grammar or are set up independently in the phonology. Firth stresses the very different nature of the “phoneme” in a description of this type, and prefers to use the distinct term “phonematic unit” (cf. “Papers,” Chap. 9, passim).
  • Cf. Haas' reference to “a structure of a number of pyramids, all inverted” (“Linguistic structures,” p. 267).
  • I personally feel that English requires a totally different set of phonological units not derived from the grammatical units. Intonation in English needs a carrier unit “tone group” to display the (phonological) system of intonation; this system, and the terms in it, can then be related to the grammar. The attempt to describe intonation in a framework of “the intonation of the clause,” “of the group,” etc. is complicated and may lead to a misunderstanding of the operation of the intonation system. But the attempt is not theoretically sinful, as would be the attempt to describe the “grammar of the tone group.”
  • As in Hill's description of the English personal pronouns (“Introduction to Linguistic Structures,” pp. 145–148). This “playing games,” or “party linguistics,” is again linked to the confusion of levels. Cf. Haas, “Linguistic Structures,” p. 273.
  • I should thus agree with Robins, “In defence of WP” (Transactions of the Philological Society, 1959) pp. 127–128: “The morpheme must be recognized as the minimal element of grammatical structure; but this does not imply that it is the most suitable element to bear the assignment of all the grammatical functions fulfilled by the word into whose composition it enters.” I would not follow Robins, however, when he says (p. 137) that “In many ways… the word is a unique entity in grammar, and not just a stage in the progression ‘from morpheme to utterance’.” Robins rejects morpheme-based grammar but suggests replacing it by word-based grammar; what is here suggested is a “multi-unit” grammar in which no unit is “more unique” than any other.
  • On the implications of upward description cf. Haas, “Linguistic Structures,” pp. 263–269.
  • In which both the first unit and the first step must be primitive terms of the theory; cf. Quirk (review of) “W. Nelson Francis: ‘The Structure of American English’” Archiuum Linguisticum XI (1959), 155: “We are left with the impression, if only because nothing is said to the contrary, that ‘the first split… into immediate constituents’ (409) is achieved intuitively.” Similarly the binarity is, as Bazell points out (“Linguistic Form,” p. 5), a feature of IC theory. For Chomsky likewise the sentence is a primitive term (Syntactic Structures, pp. 30, 46), though this is not necessary to transformative-generative description as such (e.g. if it incorporated a rank scale, with rules for rank transformation).
  • Cf. the section “Surface and deep grammar” (and the concept of “valence”) in Hockett: Course in Modern Linguistics, pp. 246–249. The scale of delicacy is introduced to account for what Hockett calls “deep grammar” (the “grammatical” nature of which he rightly stresses). It is worth insisting, however, that delicacy is a cline; and that a secondary statement, while accounting for the 10% of instances not accounted for in the primary statement, at the same time yields a further set of categories and relations, and these are likely in turn to account for only 80% of instances (these being now more delicately differentiated); these now demand a further step in delicacy—and so on.
  • Of these four, only one does: “the dog is chasing the cat”, “the dog is chasing the cats”, “the dog chased the cat”, “the dog chased the cats”.
  • Hockett's statement of the link between the two (Course, p. 87), “In everyday parlance, this word means saying more than is strictly necessary… In modern information theory, the term has much the same meaning, but freed from the connotation of un-desirability, and theoretically capable of precise quantification,” may I think be taken as underlying the uses of the term referred to in this section. In my view this formulation reduces a potentially powerful concept to a status where it is neither rigorous nor useful in linguistics.
  • Harris recognizes this in his use of the “broken morpheme” (Methods in Structural Linguistics, pp. 165–167).
  • e.g. in the contrast between l'oeil and les yeux, or between have gone and were going. If, in Old English, a nominal group consisting of a noun alone may carry four case/number distinctions, one with adjective and noun six and one with deictic, adjective, and noun seven, how can any two case/number forms be considered exponents of “the same” category when they occur in different structures?
  • Harris states this distributionally (Methods, p. 205). Hill (Introduction to Linguistic Structures, p. 477) rejects the redundancy of concord in Latin, on the grounds that it “sorts out the members of the sentence element or construction for us,” but accepts it in Bantu “where there are repeated suffixes of agreement but in which the members of the same sentence element are continuous.” Quite apart from the arbitrary choice of assignment of redundancy, this is simply a shift of criteria: Bantu concord is still the exponent of a relation (since not all contiguous items are members of the same sentence element). But even if concord and contiguity were completely mutually determined, the problem would still not arise, since there would then be no valid reason for not treating the whole complex as a single exponent.
  • Cf. Hill's statement of the English affricates (op. cit., p. 44): “In the system we have adopted, therefore, affrication has not been mentioned, since /c/ is distinguished from /t/ by its position, and the affrication is redundant.” Ebeling (“Linguistic Units” p. 30) rightly rejects redundancy in substance: “A choice of one of the equivalent features as relevant and the other as redundant is in such cases arbitrary and, therefore, senseless.”
  • They might perhaps be acoustic, so that all but one of the formants which distinguish [a] from [i] would be redundant?
  • By assigning contrasts where they belong. Cf. for example Camochan (“Glottalization in Hausa”, Transactions of the Philological Society, 1952, esp. p. 94); and all works by linguists of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, some of which are referred to throughout this paper. Cf. also Robins, “Aspects of Prosodic Analysis” (Proceedings of the University of Durham Philosophical Society 1 (series B), 1957).
  • If polarity in English, which belongs to the group, is assigned to the word, or morpheme, “redundancy” arises: one can ask unreal questions such as “is the negative in ‘didn't go’, in contrast to positive ‘went’, carried by the ‘did’ or the ‘n't’ or the ‘go’?” If the category of number is assigned to the unit “word” in any language that has a nominal group which can select only one number at a time, there will be artificial “redundancy” whether there is concord, negative concord or no concord at all, the “redundancy” of complementary distribution. Again, as in phonology: Cantonese, for example, has pairs of syllables in which in final position short vowel plus long nasal consonant contrasts with long vowel plus short nasal consonant. If these are phonemicized as (e.g.) /a:n/,/an:/,/a/ contrasts with /a:/ and /n/ with /n:/; if as /aan/,/ann/,/a/ contrasts with /n/ in penultimate position, but /an/ and /aann/ are absent: “redundancy” in either case. If the contrast is referred to an element in the structure of a higher unit, it can be stated as a single contrast of relative duration.
  • Another use of this same “redundancy” which has not been mentioned here is contextual redundancy. This is used, for example, by Bull (“Time, tense and the verb”), p. 16: “Unless a language is needlessly redundant, there is little or no likelihood that any tense system uses the point tensor formulas;” p. 27: “English is extremely redundant. It almost always defines the axes while Mandarin is extremely parsimonious. It defines the axes only to avoid confusion.” In other words, the form is said to have reflected more of the context than it need have done. This has the merit of having nothing whatever to do with the redundancy of information theory. What it has to do with is not yet clear; but it does pose interesting problems for contextual description and for comparison and typology.
  • In fact, all description of language is the description of this “redundancy”. A language without it would presumably have to have only one sound, variable in duration, and only one unit with either no structure or no class. Language activity is a progression of events in environments; and as soon as we have stated the event (as one among a defined number of possible events, this number being always less than the total number of possible events in that language—”class”) and the environment (this being defined as not the same as all other environments—”structure”) there is “redundancy”.
  • An extreme instance is found in Hill (Introduction to Linguistic Structures, p. 26n.), where we are told that every audible exponent of /+/ is redundant, the one contrastive exponent being inaudible. Cf. Haas, “Zero in linguistic description” (Studies in Linguistic Analysis), p. 37.
  • Syntactic Structures, p. 55n.
  • Cf. Firth, “Structural Linguistics,” pp. 93, 99; “Synopsis,” p. 1.
  • Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, p. 52.

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