An analytic language is one that either does not combine concepts into single words at all (Chinese) or does so economically (English, French). In an analytic language the sentence is always of prime importance, the word is of minor interest. In a synthetic language (Latin, Arabic, Finnish) the concepts cluster more thickly, the words are more richly chambered but there is a tendency, on the whole, to keep the range of concrete significance in a single word down to a moderate compass. A polysynthetic language, as its name implies, is more than ordinarily synthetic. The elaboration of the word is extreme. Concepts which we should never dream of treating in a subordinate fashion are symbolized by derivational affixes or "symbolic" changes in the radical element, while the more abstract notions, including the syntactic relations, may also be conveyed by the word. A polysynthetic language illustrates no principles that are not already exemplified in the more familiar synthetic languages. It is related to them very much as a synthetic language is related to our own analytic English. The three terms are purely quantitative -- and relative, that is, a language may be "analytic" from one standpoint, "synthetic" from another. I believe the terms are more useful in defining certain drifts than as absolute counters. Edward Sapir (1921: p. 128 [paper bound edition])(Passages like this will be of relevance later when we come to talk about typology and "parameters".) Talking about concepts or ideas is not quite right, as I am sure Sapir would have agreed. Here's a simple root again from one of Sapir's favourite languages, Nuuchahnulth (Nootka):
Swadesh (1939: p. 78) on Nootka: The expression "internal syntax," used in the title is based on the recognition of the fact that the combination of morphemes into a single word in a synthetic language has the same function as the juxtaposition of independent words in an analytic language. This function is the putting together of semantic units or "lexemes" into semantic complexes expressing communications or parts of communications. If this process of piecing together is of the same order whether the combination is a phonetic unit (a word) or a sequence of phonetically independent units, then we may apply the term syntax to the process in general, and designate the semantic [sic EB] theory of unit-word combination as internal syntax, that of the pluriverbal combination as external syntax. Since synthetic as well as analytic languages make some use of juxtaposition of words, all languages employ external syntax. Not all languages make use of internal syntax. [my emphasis: EB](See Greenberg's essay on the definition of the word for a summary of earlier thinking about words (in Greenberg, 1957) and di Sciullo and Williams (1987) for some more recent ideas about the question. We'll get back to this cluster of questions in a bit.)
I will try to use lexical item or lexeme for category (iv). A basic division of items, rules, processes, then will be between those that go into making or analyzing lexemes, and those that do not, syntax in one sense. Generally, I will be following a view of a language that makes a sharp distinction between Lexicon and Grammar (compare Dowty 1978, 1979). The regularities of the Lexicon invoke derivational items and processes (including compounding), as opposed to inflectional items and processes This distinction is not the same as the distinction between morphology and syntax. In much literature, there has been a confusion (imho: "in my humble opinion") between the notion of a lexical rule (process etc.) and a morphological rule (process etc.). Examples like (10) show that lexical items are not the same as morphological or syntactic or phonological words:
- phonological word;
- morphological word;
- syntactic word;
- lexical word (lexeme, "listeme").
Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar.
Willard van Orman Quine
Precisely constructed models for linguistic structure can play an important role, both negative and positive, in the process of discovery itself. By pushing a precise but inadequate formulation to an unacceptable conclusion, we can often expose the exact source of this inadequacy, and consequently, gain a deeper understanding of the linguistic data....I think that some of those linguists who have questioned the value of precise and technical development in linguist theory have failed to recognize the productive potential in the method in rigorously stating a proposed theory and applying it to strictly linguistic material with no attempt to avoid unacceptable conclusions by ad hoc adjustments or loose formulations. N. Chomsky, Syntactic Structures: p.5.
I reject the contention that an important theoretical difference exists between formal and natural languages. (Montague 1970a: Montague 1974: 188)(And a famous continuation: "On the other hand I do not regard as successful the formal treatments by certain contemporary linguists." Unnamed linguists, but compare in Universal Grammar a famous footnote disparaging Chomsky and transformational grammarians, on grounds of "adequacy, mathematical precision, and elegance." A challenge to produce substantial "fragments" continues. Semantics chases meaning up the tree of grammar.
The meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meaning of the parts and the manner in which they are combined.There is a large literature on the status and interpretation of this idea, including whether it is properly attributed to Frege. A recent reference with pointers to this literature is Dowty (2007).
Think of a diagram, something like a schematic of the solar system. Ask: what is the Sun and what are the Planets? In one view, some language is in the center, arranged around it are various theories and subdisciplines. In the other, linguistic theory is the sun and the planets are languages and subdisciplines and related areas. These diagrams are supposed to represent crudely two kinds of linguistics: descriptive and theoretical.Now another truism:
There is no such thing as a theory-free description.
Whenever you undertake to describe a language you carry with you a set of expectations about what languages are like. These are really hypotheses about Universal Grammar. They may be completely formal: you expect phonemes, recurrent structures of form and meaning. They may include much more specific, but still formal, hypotheses about the form of a grammar for arbitrary languages. And they may include substantive hypotheses about the content of a language, at all levels: phonological, phonetic, syntactic, semantic.
What are the results of these two kinds of activities?
- Primary Linguistic Description
Primary descriptions of languages are the basis for everything else:
There is no such thing as a language-free theory of language. Descriptive linguistics traditionally results in descriptive grammars, dictionaries, texts, recordings -- nowadays, audio and video, one hopes. In the United States and Canada, the great descriptive grammars, dictionaries, and text collections of the late nineteenth and twentieth century are the heritage of Boas and his tradition. True, there are many questions left unanswered in the products of this stream, but there is not nothing: the results are a rich mine for successive workers. Think, for example, of the careers that have been built on the grammars and text collections of this heritage.
- Linguistic Theory
The results of linguistic theorizing are theories or bits of theories (hypotheses). In line with the schematic I drew in your minds, languages are drawn upon to give evidence for or against some point of theory or, in grander attempts, a whole theory. So the typical result of a graduate work in linguistic theory might be a dissertation with a title like: "The ABC Principle in Language X," where X might be some language that had not been dealt with in depth by theoreticians. Such a study might be followed by a whole string of papers or dissertations taking the same material to argue against the ABC Principle in favor of the A'B'C' Principle, or for a whole new approach or theory. But usually there is no new data, often not even checking of the original sources, and only in rare cases are these studies based on new primary work.It would seem that both of these activities would share a concern about accuracy, "getting the facts straight." This concern for accuracy is central to a third kind of actitivity.
- Philology
Besides the activities just mentioned -- descriptive and theoretical linguistics -- there is another kind of study devoted to languages. Unlike those two disciplines, philology is devoted not to uncovering the system of a language or coming to understand the general abilities of humans to acquire and use such systems. It is devoted rather to the products of users of the languages, memorable products for the most part. The name is apt: `lovers of the word.'
The proper cultural matrix for philological efforts should be the community most directly associated with the texts or oral traditions in question. But in the colonialistic and post-colonialistic world in which we live, it is more often than not up to linguists from outside these communities do the primary work that is a necessary foundation for such activity. Why is this so? It is clearly because the healthy functioning of the native traditions of story-telling or recording have become debilitated for reasons that are too familiar to need rehearsing. Languages and cultures change and sometimes die as a matter of human history. But sometimes they are killed.
Ken Hale's life work on many languages was distinguished by one insistent maxim: the best work on any language could only come from native speakers of that language. Therefore, it was incumbent on the foreign linguist to try as hard as possible to teach as well as take, to treat speakers of the language not as "informants" or "consultants" but as fully equal co-workers, linguists in their own right.
The activity of fieldwork, primary linguistic description has changed as the result of political change, the insistence by many First Nations people, that the work of linguists be responsive to community needs. Thus in the contemporary world, fieldwork of the old style is usually just not an option.
i. function/argument application;Semantic type theory: I assume as a base (to be built upon) a standard model structure with types e (entities), t (truth values), w (worlds) and all functions built on these. I will notate the functional types in this fashion: (a, b) (or <a, b >) for functions from a-type things to b-type things. For expository purposes I will use lambda-expressions of the form λX[p] to name functions from X-type things to p-type things. Generally, however, I will avoid heavy use of formalisms and often give meaning-rules in English. Examples of the operations mentioned:
ii. function composition;
iii. type lifting.
ʔinikʷiłm̓inih̩ʔisita
`several small fires were burning in the house'
analysis: (forms from Sapir and Swadesh, 1939)
ʔink(ʷ)- `fire; burning'
`-ił(.-) m. ... `in the house, on the floor' [m : momentaneous]
-m̓inh̩ plural [incremental suffix]
-ʔis, -ʔic- diminutive [incremental]
-(m)it past [incremental]
-ma / -a (w. past -(m)it)