Meaning in Language

Abstract

C OMPONENT and componential analysis are terms more popular these days among general ethnologists than among linguists. Nevertheless, notions involved seem to me to be basically linguistic and to call for elucidation within framework of a linguistic theory. Linguists have in past spoken of in several contexts: sometimes in relation to phonology (Harris 1944; Hockett 1955:126-137), and sometimes in relation to grammar (Harris 1948). In an earlier article (Chafe 1962) I tried to show a parallelism between what I called phonological components and grammatical components. I would like now to clarify, expand, and revise some of points made there with relation to area of language of most concern to ethnologists, area of meaning. There has long existed a school of thought within linguistics which has approached this area warily, believing that investigation of sound is our only avenue to knowledge of mental linguistic substances (Hill 1962:38). My own view is rather at other extreme: that meaning is in every way as important as sound in our approach to an understanding of language as a whole. The remarks that follow are a sketchy attempt to define role of meaning within language, and along way to pin down place of semantic within this larger picture. When people speak or when they listen to speech, they make use of a very complex set of habits that enable them to relate to sound. I am using these terms as Edward Sapir used them when he wrote that the essence of language consists in assigning of conventional, voluntarily articulated, sounds, or of their equivalents, to diverse elements of experience (Sapir 1921:11). Either a person attempts to communicate a part of his own to others by making sounds, or he perceives sounds and from them modifies his own to accord in some way and to some degree with which producer of sounds wished to communicate. The habits underlying this kind of behavior generally and fruitfully are assumed to involve imposition of on both universe of and universe of sound. Structure is usually thought to involve, first, an inventory of discrete units, and, second, a network of patterns within which these units co-occur. We might use term semology to refer to total complex of linguistic habits that involve structuring of experience, and phonology to refer to habits of structuring sound. There is a third, and equally important set of habits that determines way units of semological structure are phonologically symbolized; it may be called morphophonemics. Figure 1 gives a rough indication of relationships between semology, phonology, morphophonemics, experience, and sound. We are concerned here first and foremost with semological structuring, but morphophonemic factors have to be brought