Anatomy Of Language

In order to understand the anatomy of language, it is imperative to know the nature of language, and how is it constituted. what different kinds of rules in language have to be recognized? and how a language such as English may be broken down into various levels of organization, and how these levels combine together. There are as many ways in which such an account could be given as there are different theories of how language works. The following sketch is a composite one, which aims to be non-controversial. One thing on which there seems to be little disagreement nowadays is that the traditional method of breaking language down into two components, form and meaning, is inadequate. Instead, a roughly tripartite model is usually preferred:

This diagram may perhaps be best understood by imagining oneself in the position of someone trying to learn the language for the first time, and asking oneself, ‘What different kinds of knowledge do I have to acquire before I can say I know English and am able to use it properly?’

The Three Main Levels: Realization, Form, Semantics

Since knowledge of a language is traditionally condensed into two kinds of book, the dictionary, and the grammar book, it may be observed that to know a language competently, a speaker is required to have memorized a vocabulary in that language and to have learned a set of rules showing how the items of the vocabulary are to be used in constructing sentences. These two parts, the lexicon and the grammar, together comprise the formal aspect of the language.

But dictionaries and grammar books do not entirely restrict themselves to specifying the lexicon and grammar in this sense. They also give other kinds of information a learner needs to know: how to pronounce and write the forms of the language, that is, how to give them physical realization; and also what they mean. Thus three main types of rules have to be known: rules of form, of realization (phonological or graphological), and of semantics.

The same three-level model applies both to the productive and receptive processes of language: to listening and reading as much as to speaking and writing. The only difference between these processes is that the types of rules are applied in the reverse order.

There is no point in going into details as to why language has come to be analyzed on three major levels rather than two. But it may be useful to give examples of locutions that are identical on one level and different on
another, neighboring level. These will illustrate the functions of each level, and will also go some way towards suggesting why it is necessary to have three levels at all. There are four possibilities to consider which are listed with corresponding numbers below:

1. Homophony. Same pronunciation, different form (e.g. light adj. and light noun).

2. Differentiation. Same form, different pronunciation (e.g. the noun envelope pronounced either as ‘ envelope’ or as if’ envelope; in poetry, over and o’er, etc.).

3. Synonymy. Same meaning, different form (e.g. nonetheless, nevertheless, all the same).

4. Multiple Meaning (Polysemy). Same form, different meaning (e.g. light=(i) ‘undark’, and (2) ‘unheavy’).

These four many-one relations apply not only to words but to sentences and longer utterances. The remark ‘His designs upset her’, for example, has four possible meanings: [«] ‘His drawings disturbed her’; [i] ‘His intentions disturbed her’; [c] ‘His drawings disturb her’; [d ‘His intentions disturb her’. One ambiguity arises from the homophony of the two forms upset (present tense) and upset (past tense), whereas the other arises from the polysemy of designs. Hence lurking in ‘ His designs upset her’ there are two homophonous sentences, and each of these has two distinct meanings.

Phonology and Graphology

As English sentences can be transmitted by writing as well as by speech, a competent performer needs to know both how to pronounce and how to write the language. The term ‘graphology’ is somewhat wider than the more usual term ‘orthography’, as it refers to the whole writing system: punctuation and paragraphing as well as spelling. To a great extent, English graphology imitates phonology – that is, the written version of the language is a visual coding of its spoken version. But as everyone knows, English spelling does this in a very irregular manner and sometimes makes distinctions that are not heard in speech (e.g. between ceiling and sealing). Moreover, punctuation does not mirror features of spoken English in any obvious manner; it has not so far been shown, for instance, that there is anything in speech corresponding to the paragraph. Because graphology has to some extent its own rules and structure independent of pronunciation, it is perhaps best treated as a separate level of realization side by side with phonology. The two levels are thus in an ‘either-or’ relationship, in contrast to the ‘both-and’ relationship between grammar and lexicon. But this does not mean that a written text has no implications for spoken performance. Indeed, we know well enough that in poetry, phonological effects, including those of versification, can be appreciated in silent reading, as well as in reading aloud.

Meaning and Significance

It is clarified that the word meaning is to be used here in the narrow sense of ‘ cognitive ‘, ‘ logical ‘, or ‘ denotative ‘ meaning: that is, the kind of meaning which is the concern of the dictionary-maker. This contrasts with a very broad use of the term often encountered in literary studies, where the ‘meaning’ of a poem, a line, a word, etc., may include everything that is communicated by it. This is preferably called the significance or (more explicitly) total significance of a piece of language. This distinction is made to avoid confusion which has sometimes accompanied the use of such words as ‘meaning’ with reference to literature.

The (cognitive) meaning of an utterance or text is a part of its total significance, but how important that part is depends very much on the communicative situation. Scientific and technical varieties of English approach as close as they can to a type of communication in which nothing is significant except cognitive meaning. In personal conversation, however, allowance has to be made for other, non-cognitive elements, especially of emotive and attitudinal import. In poetry, so many special avenues of communication between writer and reader are used, that cognitive meaning may seem to be only a small part of the entire communication. Yet it would be quite absurd to insist that cognitive meaning counts for nothing in poetry. Whilst we can reasonably assert that the word cloud in Wordsworth’s ‘I wander’d lonely as a cloud’ conveys something additional to what it would convey in a weather forecast, there is no need to go to the extreme of claiming that the meteorologist’s and poet’s uses of the terms have nothing in common. If all words were deprived of cognitive content in poetry, they would be reduced, in communicative power, to the level of exclamations like alas, ouch, and tally-ho.

It has been a widely accepted doctrine for some time in literary criticism that a poem or piece of poetry cannot be paraphrased. The debates that have revolved around this doctrine show how confusion can result from an undiscriminating use of terms like ‘ meaning’ in literary discussion. But if we bear in mind the above distinction between meaning and significance, the whole issue is clarified. Of course, on the plane of cognitive meaning a poem can be paraphrased: representing the ‘sense’ of a passage (i.e. its cognitive content) in different words is in fact a recognized classroom exercise. But if by ‘paraphrase’ we understand ‘giving the whole significance of a passage in different words’, then the doctrine which attacks the ‘periphrastic heresy’ is no doubt correct.