STRUCTURE AND TEXTURE:
TOWARD AN UNDERSTANDING OF REAL LANGUAGES

Emmon Bach
UMass(Amherst) / SOAS(ULondon)
ebach@linguist.umass.edu

Abstract About: the tensions between the inner and outer view of R-languages ("real languages"), the language-centered and theory-centered study of languages, the (often foreign) linguist and the (sometimes linguist) native speaker, description and theory, a language as a set of choices and extensions of universal grammar and as a concrete realization in a particular culture and history. The materials for this paper are drawn mostly from First Nations languages, especially those of the Pacific Northwest.

Let's start with two views of language:

I. Languages are "basically" all the same, the differences between them are superficial.
II. Languages are "basically" very different.

These two views have predominated at different times and among different people:

I: Chomsky, 1995; Pinker, 1994
II: Bloomfield, 1933; Joos, 1957: the "Boas tradition."

For example, Chomsky has written:

The primary [task at hand for the Minimalist Program] is to show that the apparent richness and diversity of linguistic phenomena is illusory and epiphenomenal, the result of interaction of fixed principles under slightly varying conditions.'' (N. Chomsky, 1995: 8)

One may ask: Why is the richness and diversity only "apparent"?

Languages are not all the same. Do contemporary linguistic theories deal adequately with linguistic diversity? Some writers say No (Nichols, 1992; Bach, [1995]; Baker, 1988)

Theories of Universal Grammar are calculated to deal with the ways in which languages are similar. But if the Language Faculty is supposed to offer a basis for understanding language acquisition then it must have some room for quite deep and surprising differences among languages.

It used to be that linguists were enjoined to describe each language on its own terms. Now it is often presumed that all languages are basically the same.

Ordinary people who speak one or another of the languages of the world will be surprised to hear that all languages are basically one ("Earthese"), not to say chagrined, especially if they have struggled as adults to learn a new language that is very different from their own.

Linguistic theories have to deal with two questions:

A. How come languages are so different?
B. How come languages are so similar?

The attention paid to these two questions has varied a lot over the years. If you start from the sense that languages are basically very similar, then Question B should be uppermost, if you start from the sense that they are very different then it is Question A that burns. In fact, both questions presuppose that we have some way of characterizing differences and similarities among languages as well as some expectations about what is expected in the way of variation. In my opinion, neither presupposition is met at present, a view expressed by Johanna Nichols:

....standard historical method ... has no theory of diversity and no way of scientifically describing diversity. Hence, diversity has no theoretical status in historical linguistics (or, for that matter, in synchronic linguistics). (Nichols, 1992: 5)

Here, I want to emphasize that languages can be pretty different, and that linguistic theories that do not accomodate these differences are not adequate.

The main questions of this talk:

i. How different or similar are languages anyhow?
ii. Where are the differences and similarities in languages?
iii. Can the two views be reconciled?

We need to ask the question: What do we mean by "language" anyway?" Kinds of language:

Chomsky introduced a distinction between two sense of language:
E-languages
(Think: Extensional language.)

I-language
(Think: Ideal or Intensional language.)

We might add:
R-languages
(Think: Real language, Bach [1995], Bach, [2001].) I mean by this a language in the sense that a speaker "has" a language with all its special quirkiness, in a cultural context, and in many of its aspects present in consciousness (more on this toward the end of the essay).

These questions are not just theoretically or academically relevant. They have a practical, ethical, and political resonance as well, especially in the context of First Nations languages, and the crisis of minority and dominated languages in the face of continuing linguistic imperialism.

• Sounds:

  Inventory: Front and back velar (uvular) sounds contrast in many languages of British Columbia:

  Smalgyaxian (Tsimshianic): Coast Tsimshian, Nisg̱aʼa, Gitxsan.
  Wakashan: Nuuchahnulth, Makah, Kwakʷ'ala, Heiltsuk, Ooweky'ala, Haisla, Henaaksiala
  Salishan
  NaDene: Tlingit

  The contrast is represented in various ways in the practical orthographies of the languages:
  

  x vs x̄ x̱
  c vs x
  k vs q (ḵ)
  g vs ḡ (g̱)

  Structurally, these languages all differ from English. Phonetically, English also has front and back velar sounds:
  

  keep vs cool have a predictable difference in pronunciation of "k" sound (front vs back).

  Structural change: Coast Tsimshian x becomes i so in the spelling "x" means back x (x̱)

  Phonetic realization of structural difference:

  Northern Wakashan:
  Haisla/Henaaksiala and Smalgyaxian have palatalized front sounds: k , g = ky, gy.

  Southern Wakashan (Ahousat) does not palatalize.

  But: palatalization gone in rounded versions: kʷ, gʷ in N. Wakashan
  compare: Haisla: gʷia `wake someone up' or ḡʷix̄em bread, flour

  Compare labialized palatals in Gyong (Nigeria): [dyʷu gyʷu], Ngamambo (Cameroon).

  Contextual variants:

  Northern Wakashan: Kwakʷʼala, Haisla, Henaaksiala unround before u sounds, but not Ooweky'ala:
  Haisla: guxʷ [gyuxʷ] vs Ooweky'ala: gʷukʷ `house'

• Words:

  The exuberant use of lexical suffixes is an areal feature shared by Wakashan, Salishan, Chemakuan (Quileute), etc. e.g.:

  (Haisla) X̅aʼislakʼala `Haisla language':
  x̅aʼ =is -(e)la -[k]!al -a
  downstream/downchannel -on beach -to live -sound/language completive

  (Details on the formal structure of Haisla words can be found in Bach, [2001a].) Here -[k]!ala is a typical lexical suffix (sometimes referred to as "semantic suffixes"). It is typically used to make words for speaking a particular language or for the language itself. We might think of an English analogue like the suffix -ese, but the meaning of -[k]!ala is considerably broader as the following comparisons show:
  

  1. English -ese in Burmese (Burma), Chinese, Japanese like Haisla -[k]!al(a) ? Compare:
     Qʷʼemksiwakʼala `English' etc. BUT:
     qʼalʼala `sound of footsteps' from √qʼalh- `walk' + -[k]!al(a) `sound of X': English *walkese, *footstepese
  Here are some other typical examples of derivational affixes or processes with meanings that seem to be quite common in various languages of the area:
  2. going after X, gathering X, hunting X
     Smalgyaxian: xhoon `going after fish/salmon (hoon)'
     Haisla: mamiy̓a `going after fish, salmon (mia)'
     
  3. -[g]ila: `to make, get, become X, something in the form of X' gukʷila `build house
     ( gukʷ- ), X̅esduakʷila `go to the Kitlope area',
     begʷenemgila `figure of a person' (in story, made by putting cloak onto a digging stick).
  4. sick with, hurting, dying of...
     `Haisla: -sdana
     ' l̓ex̄auˈbisdana `catch a cold'
     ʼaziqʼesdana `having a nightmare' (̓eziqʼ `bug, ghost')
     pualisdana `really hungry'
  5. called X:
     Haisla: Emmon-kelasunugʷa: `my name is Emmon'
     also: -tla, Kwakw'ala: -xtla
     Ahousat: -(č)ła :suffix with this meaning only used with referential root √ʼu-
  6. Other characteristics that differentiate various languages in Pacific Northwest: some have suffixes only, some have prefixes and suffixes, some have compounding, some have no compounding (Wakashan, Eskimo-Aleut), some have elaborate systems of reduplication and root extensions, some not.
  7. Comparisons with other languages:

     English -itis as in tendinitis, sinusitis and similar affixes have the sorts of meanings that might be found with lexical suffixes in Northwest languages.
     An important difference is this: in English, the vocabulary is divided into learned/Greco-Latinate vs native English. Compare also Japanese: Yamato vs Sino-Japanese

  8. Are these processes examples of Incorporation? (Baker, 1988)
     Complex words derived from syntactic structures or syntax-like lexical-conceptual structures.
     going X-ing (fishing, etc.), meat-eating, baby-sit,..

     I think not, in such analyses polysynthetic languages (in the classical sense) are assimilated to isolating languages.
     Why not do the opposite? English compounds might be looked at as reductions of free forms to affixes.

  9. Against incorporation:
     
     1. Wakashan has no compounds except for these supposedly incorporated complex words.
     2. Wakashan (at least): lexical suffixes semantically not arguments (objects, etc) but adjuncts: Haisla =ilh does not mean `house' but `in house, inside' etc. Hence the analysis as Head movement from and argument position is not appropriate.
     In any event, the topic of how to deal with these lexical affixes obviously requires a fuller discussion.
• Sentences:
  Languages of the area show a variety of syntactic characteristics:

  Verb-Final: Tlingit, Haida:
  Verb-Initial: Smalgyaxian (Tsimshian), Wakashan, Salishan, Chemakuan;
  free word order: Alaskan Yup'ik Eskimo
  But again: details vary a lot: compare Smalgyaxian (Tsimshianic) with Wakashan:

  1. Haisla: Verb - Subject - Object - Oblique
  2. Coast Tsimshian: Ergative - Absolutive, with variation; preverbal elements, placement of agreement markers: Ergative suffixed to preverb, or prefixed to verb.
  3. Do all languages use the same syntactic categories: Verbs - Nouns - Adjectives?? Some Northwest languages (Wakashan, Salishan) have been at the center of discussion of this point, since they have been claimed not to have a lexical distinction between nouns and verbs. (Bach, 1968, forthcoming; Demirdache and Matthewson, 1995; Jacobsen, 1979)
     If all languages have the same syntactic categories: why should we take the Indo-European set as "unmarked / null-hypothesis"?
• Meanings:
  1. What can be translated and what can't.
     Example: words like Haisla nuyem, Smalgyax: adawx `story, tradition, law, ...'
     
  2. Universal and parochial semantics (Stein, 1981).
  Linguists often assume that the basic structure of meanings must be the same in all languages. This may be true at the most abstract level, but at the level of R-language: it seems likely that:
  3. A real language encodes and helps shape a culture.
  The availability of particular words and meanings is a definite part of a language as it presents itself to a user of the language. Cultural change brings language change at least at this level. In the full sense of "meaning," including not denotations, but connotations, associations, and so on, different languages have different resources and limitations. Linguists believe that all languages are equivalent in their expressive potential, this does not mean that they are equally expressive of particular content at a particular moment. Hence, you can always explain but you can't always translate.

• Style:
  1. How many nominals in a sentence?
  It seems that in some NW languages, the use of more than one nominal phrase as a core argument -- subject, object -- is highly marked at best, and possibly outright ungrammatical.
  2. Narrative markers: clumsily translate as `And then..., and then...'
  Literal translations of texts often lead to unnatural sentences and sequences of sentences in the translation.
• Global parameters?
The idea here is that language diversity can best be captured by positing "parameters" that govern the language as a whole. But it often seems that within a language different corners of the language work in different ways with repect to such posited parameters. More on this below.

A good theory of Universal Grammar is supposed to help explain how kids acquire their particular languages. Such a theory must have room for the diversity of Parochial Grammars. The actual diversity we find cannot, in my opinion, be solely attributed to global parameters, in the sense of setting properties for a language as a whole. Finally, there must be a place in this picture for linguistic creativity at the level of grammar creation.

Evidence for this creativity lies both in the retention of special characteristics of a language or language group over time and in the (sometimes quite rapid) changes of languages (Thomason, 2001).

Differences among languages as perceived and used by real speakers have to do both with the basic structures of the language and with the texture of the language as used among groups of people and in particular contexts.

Likewise: individual languages, "real languages," show individual characteristics as well, in the choices that they make within and even in the ways that they stretch the limits of Universal Grammar.

Acknowledgements:

References:

Bach, Emmon. [1995.] The politics of universal grammar. LSA presidential address.

Bach, Emmon. [2001a] Building words in Haisla. UMOP 20:51--73. [Elena Benedicto, ed. Indigenous languages.]

Bach, Emmon. [2001b] Eventualities, grammar, and linguistic diversity. Presented at conference Perspectives on Aspect (Utrecht). To appear in proceedings.

Bach, Emmon. Forthcoming. Categories and pronominal arguments: Two notes for Eloise Jelinek. To appear in a festschrift for Eloise Jelinek, eds Andrew Carnie and Heidi Harley.

Baker, Mark C. 1988. Incorporation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Baker, Mark C. 1996. The Polysynthesis Parameter. New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Henry Holt.

Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass. and London: The MIT Press.

Davidson, Matthew. 2002. Studies in Southern Wakashen (Nootkan) Grammar. SUNY Buffalo Ph.D. Dissertation.

Demirdache, Hamida and Lisa Matthewson. 1995. On the universality of the Noun Verb distinction. NELS 25:79--93.

Jacobsen, William H., Jr. 1979. Noun and verb in Nootkan. In Barbara S. Efrat, ed., The Victoria Conference on Northwestern Languages (Victoria: B.C. Provincial Museum), pp. 83-155.

Joos, Martin, ed. 1957. Readings in Linguistics. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Ladefoged, Peter, and Ian Maddieson. 1996. The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Nichols, Johanna. 1992. Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Pinker, Steven. 1994. The Language Instinct. New York: William Morrow.

Stein, Mark J. 1981. Quantification in Thai. Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Thomason, Sarah G. 2001 Language Contact. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Wiredu, Kwasi. 1996a. Cultural Universals and Particulars: an African Perspective. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Wiredu, Kwasi. 1996b. Formulating modern thought in African languages. In Wiredu, 1996, pp. 81-104.