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    Bloomfield, Leonard. Linguistic Aspects of Science

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    Susurro de Hermes

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    Linguistic Aspects of Science BY LEONARD BLOOMFIELD I J also in a special way, because the scientist, as ¥ part of his method, utters certain very peculiar }) speech-forms. The linguist naturally divides scientific activity into two phases: the scientist ing” actions (observation, collecting of speci- mens, experiment) and utters speech (report, classification, hy- pothesis, prediction).!. The speech-forms which the scientist utters are peculiar both in their form and in their effect upon hearers. ‘The forms of the scientist’s speech are so peculiar in vocabulary and syntax that most members of his speech-community do not understand them, If one wants to read an English treatise on mechanics, it is not sufficient that one be a native speaker of English: one needs also a severe supplementary training. The effect upon hearers of the scientist’s speech is even more remarkable. In a brief utterance the scientist manages to say things which in ordinary language would require a vast amount of talk. He “manages to say things’—thatis, his hearers respond uniformly and in a predictable way. Indeed, their response is even more uniform and predictable than is the hearers’ response to ordinary speeches. This appears strikingly in self-stimulation: 1 This division is the natural one for a linguists it is necessary also for psychologys see ALP. Weiss, A theoretical basit of human behavier, second edition, Columbus, 1929, p. 307. 499 500 Linguistic Aspects of Science by the use of scientific speech-forms (notably, mathematical calculation) we may successfully plan procedures which we could not plan in ordinary language. Moreover, the scientist manages to say very complex things: if his statements were put into ordi- nary language, the phrases would become so involved (especially in the way of box-within-box syntactic constructions) that the hearers would not “understand”—that is, they could make no conventionally adequate (uniform and predictable) response. Also, it is a remarkable fact, and of great linguistic interest, that many of the scientist’s utterances cannot be made in actual speech, but only in writing: their structure is so complex that a visual record, for simultaneous survey and back-reference, is indispensable. It is evident that the speech-forms of the scientist constitute a highly specialized linguistic phenomenon. To describe and evaluate this phenomenon is first and foremost a problem of lin- guistics, The linguist may fail to go very far toward the solution of this problem, especially if he lacks competence in branches of science other than his own. It is with the greatest diffidence that the present writer dares touch upon it. But it is the linguist * Te is necessary that we understand that writing is not “language,” but a device for recording language utterances. The utterances that are made in any one language consist structurally of a finite number of recurrent units, and this on two levels. In the first place, the utterances in a language consist of various combinations of smallest units (words) that can be spoken alone, Of these there are in any one speech-community some tens of thousands. Hence a language can he replaced by some tens of thousands of unit signals (sy, visual marks), each of which replaces the utterance of one word, This is the principle of Chinese writing. In the second place, the words in any one language consist of various combinations of a few dozen typical sounds (phonemes), Hence a language can be replaced by a few dozen unit signals (say, visual marks), each ‘of which replaces the utterance of aphoneme. This is the principle of alphabetic writing, All writing is a relatively recent invention, whose use until yesterday, was confined to a few favored persons. A system of writing opens the possibility of graphic notations that cannot be successfully paralleled in actual speech. This is true because visual symbols possess characteristics that are foreign to the sound.waves of speech: chiefly, they pro- vide an enduring instead of an immediately vanishing stimulus, and offer possibilities of arrangement (tabulation) that cannot be matched in the succession of acoustic stimuli, Graphic notations that eannot be matched in actual speech have arisen in the ease of classical Chinese (Which is unintelligible in modern pronunciation, but is read and written by Chinese scholars} ef B, Karlgren, Sound and symbol in Chinece, London, 1923) and in the case which here interests us, of mathematical and allied notations. L. Bloomfield 501 and only the linguist who can take the first steps toward its solution; to attack this problem without competence in linguistics is to court disaster. The endless confusion of what is written about the foundations of science or of mathematics is due very largely to the authors’ lack of linguistic information. To mention an elementary point: the relation of writing to language appears in a peculiar and highly specialized shape, as we have seen, in the utterances of the scientist. It would be easy to show by examples that a student who blunders as to the relation of ordinary writing to language cannot be expected to make clear formulation of this complex special case.* Among the confusions of this sort there is one which runs deep- est,—so deep, in fact, that some non-linguistic students have dis- covered it for themselves and in more recent discussions have managed to avoid it: the naive transition from speech to inner goings-on. In everyday life, upon the instant that a speech strikes our ears, we respond only to its meaning; that is, we very properly respond to the speech upon the basis of the normal habits of language, and we do not stop to examine the sounds of the speech or to analyze its grammatical structure. When someone says “I’m thirsty,” we all say ‘He is thirsty,” and proceed to treat him as one in need of drink. The linguist alone, when acting in his professional capacity, responds to the structure 4 Alless elementary point of the same sort appears in the “heterological”” contradiction: ‘An adjective which describes itself is autological (e.g., shorts autological, since the adjec- tive stort is actually a short word). An adjective which is not antological is heteralogical (e.g., long isnot along word). Is the adjective heferclogical heterological? Lf it is heter- ological, it describes itself and is therefore autological. If it is autological, it does not describe itself and therefore is heterological.—The fallacy is due to misuse of linguistic terms: the phrase “‘an adjective which describes itself” makes no sense in any usable terminology of linguistics; the example of short illustrates a situation which could be described only in a different discourse. We may set up, without very rigid bound. aries,

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