Sign and System of Language: A Reassessment of Saussure's Doctrine

Author(s): Roman Jakobson and B. Hrushovski

Source: Poetics Today, Vol. 2, No. 1a, Roman Jakobson: Language and Poetry (Autumn, 1980),
pp. 33-38
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1772350
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SIGN AND SYSTEM OF LANGUAGE

A Reassessment of Saussure's Doctrine*

ROMAN

JAKOBSON

It is remarkable that Suassure's Cours de linguistique generale was frequently

mentioned in this symposium, as if one wished to establish what has changed in
the basic assumption of general linguistics over the fifty years which separate us
from the lectures of the Genevan master. For the theory of language and for
linguistics as a whole it was indeed half a century of cardinal transformations. It
seems to me that our fruitful discussion conveys a clear notion as to what in this
famous heritage requires far-reaching revisions, and which parts of Saussure's
teaching - in the version edited by his pupils - remains valid to this day.
Of the two basic prinicples of the Cours, les deux principes generaux, as
Suassure labeled them, one may see today the first basic proposition I'arbitrairedu signe, the "arbitrariness"of the language sign - as an arbitrary
principle. As Beneviste has shown it beautifully in Acta Linguistica I, from the
synchronic point of view of a language community using the language signs, one
must not ascribe to them an arbitrary nature. It is not at all arbitrary but rather
obligatory to say fromage for "cheese"in French, and to say cheese in English. I
believe that one may conclude from the whole discussion on "arbitrariness"and
"unmotivated" signs, that l'arbitraire was a most unfortunate choice of a term.
This question was dealt with much better by the Polish linguist M. Kruszewski, a
contemporary of Saussure (and highly estimated by the latter), as early as in the
beginning of the 1880s. Kruszewski made a distinction between two basic factors
in the life of a language, two associations: by similarity and by contiguity. The
relation between a signans and a signatum, which Saussure arbitrarily described
as arbitrary, is in reality a habitual, learned contiguity, which is obligatory for all
members of a given language community. But along with this contiguity the
principle of similarity, la ressemblance, asserts itself. As it was mentioned here,
and as Kruszewski already saw it, this principle plays an enormous role in the
area of derivations and in the area of word families, where similarity between
*Lecture in Erfurt, East Germany, 2 Oct. 1959, at the 1st International Symposium "Sign and System
of Language,"published in German in R. Jakobson's Selected Writings, Vol. 1 (The Hague: Mouton,
1971). Authorized translation from German by B. Hrushovski.
? Poetics Today, Vol. 2:la (1980), 33-38

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ROMANJAKOBSON

words of one root is decisive, and where it becomes impossible to speak about
arbitrariness. In morphophonological issues, the question of similar structures is
of primary importance when we recognize that there exist certain models, certain
structural types of the distribution and selection of phonemes in roots, and other
types of prefixes or suffixes of derivation and conjugation. Finally, the issue of
sound symbolism, on which I shall not further dwell here, remains, in spite of all
skepticism voiced in the past, an important and fascinating problem in the study
of language. And so are all questions concerning the foundation of language
symbols in image and indication (or, as Charles Sanders Pierce, the pioneer of
the theory of signs, would have said: the problem of iconic or indexical symbols).
It seems to me that the second principle in Saussure's Cours, the so-called
linearite, must also be seen as a dangerous simplification. Actually we encounter
two-dimensional units not only on the level of the signatum, as demonstrated by
Ch. Bally, but also in the field of the signans. If we recognize that the phoneme is
not the ultimate unit of language, but can be decomposed into distinctive features, then it becomes self-evident that we may speak in phonology too about two
dimensions, (as we have accords in music), the dimensions of successivity and of
simultaneity. This, however, must lead to abandoning a number of Saussure's
theses on basic laws of language structure. Thus, I believe that the term "syntagmatic" is often misleading, since when referring to syntagmatic relations we think
of successivity in time; however, besides the combination in temporal succession,
we must deal also with combination of simultaneous features. It would be advisable in this respect to speak simply about combination, seen as contrasted by
another factor, namely, selection. Selection of units or of combinations, in
contrast to combination per se, belongs to the paradigmatic level of language. It
is substitution, as distinguished from both simultaneity and successivity. In
selection, the principle of equivalence, or association by similarity, asserts itself.
While observing the paradigmatic axes rather than successivity and simultaneity,
I do not believe that we abandon the domain of the objective and plunge into
subjectivity. Linguistic researches of recent years have shown that in this area an
objective stratification, a hierarchy of components, exists. One encounters here
the problem of predictability, the problem of primary and secondary functions,
which has been outlined brilliantly by Kurytowicz in the thirties and which has
been recently developed in America in the theory of syntactical transformations
- one of the most topical problems of linguistic analysis. At the same time, the
even more important and indispensable question arises, as to the relationship and
the difference between paradigmatic series and combinational series (chains or
clusters).
We deal here, apparently, as in all modern sciences, with the significant idea of
invariance. We speak about combinational, context-dependent variants on the
level of sound as well as on the level of grammar. But it would be impossible to
speak about variants as long as we have not clarified the nature of the basic
invariant, the unit to which all these variants are related. The search for the
invariants is now the most substantial problem not only in phonology, but in
grammar as well. When dealing with the sign, the bilateral signum as a link

SIGN AND SYSTEMOF LANGUAGE

35

between the signans and signatum, how do we discover such invariants on one
hand in the domain of the signans and on the other hand in the field of the
signatum? The basic difference between the two, from a linguistic point of view,
is that the signans must necessarily be perceptible whereas the signatum is
translatable. In both cases the principle of equivalence obtains. In the domain of
the signans the relative equivalence must be externally perceivable; it can be
ascertained, however, only in respect of the function of these sound relations in a
given language. We recognize such distinctive features and, by means of a spectrograph, we are able to translate them from the acoustic field into the visual
level. And like the signans, the signatum too must be studied in a purely linguistic
and objective manner. A purely linguistic semantics can and must be constructed, if we agree with Peirce that the basic property of any verbal sign lies in
its capability of being translated into another verbal sign, either a more
deployed, explicit sign, or, on the contrary, a more elliptical sign, of the same
language system or of a different one. This translatability lays bare that semantic
invariant for which we are searching in the signatum. In such a way it becomes
possible to submit semantic problems of language to distributional analysis.
Metalinguistic identifying sentences, such as "A rooster is a male of a hen" belong
to the text inventory of the English language community; the reversibilityof both
expressions - "A male of a hen is a rooster" - demonstrates how the meaning of
words becomes a real linguistic problem through a distributive analysis of such
common metalingual utterances.
Among the basic features of the Cours de linguistique generale is the split
nature of linguistics: the separation of synchrony from diachrony. The thorough
work done over several decades in both partial areas, as well as the refined
methodology developed in this research, brought about a serious danger of a
flagrant gap between these two descriptions, and also the necessity of
overcoming this gap. Saussure's identification of the contrast between synchrony
and diachrony with the contrast between statistics and dynamics turned out to be
misleading. In actual reality synchrony is not at all static; changes are always
emerging and are a part of synchrony. Actual synchrony is dynamic. Static
synchrony is an abstraction, which may be useful to the investigation of language
for specific purposes; however, an exhaustive true-to-the facts synchronic
description of language must consistently consider the dynamics of language.
Both elements, the point of origin and the final phase of any change, exist for
some time simultaneously within one language community. They coexist as
stylistic variants. When taking this important fact into consideration, we realize
that the image of language as a uniform and monolithic system is oversimplified.
Language is a system of systems, an overall code which includes various
subcodes. These variagated language styles do not make an accidental,
mechanical aggregation, but rather a rule-governed hierarchy of subcodes.
Though we can tell which of the subcodes is the basic code, it is nevertheless a
dangerous simplification to exclude the discussion of the other subcodes. If we
consider langue as a totality of the conventions of a language, then we must be
very careful not to be researching fictions.

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ROMANJAKOBSON

I believe that today our chief task should be to become realists, to build a
realistic study of language and combat any fictionalism in linguistics. We must
ask ourselves: what is the real linguistic convention that enables exchange of
speech in a given language community and serves effectively the various tasks of
communication? Some linguists ask, why should linguistics differ from physics
in its methodology? Why could not the scholar of language impose his own
system of symbols, his creative model, upon the investigated material, as is
common in the natural sciences? Indeed, one observes, in many respects, an ever
more meaningful and fruitful contact between the natural sciences and linguistics; nevertheless one must keep in mind the specific differences as well. In
the London school of mathematical information theory the cardinal difference
was clearly recognized and the problem of communication was separated from
other aspects of information. First of all, one must distinguish between two
classes of signs - indices and symbols, as Pierce called them. Indices, which the
physicist extracts from the external world, are not reversible. He transforms
these indices given in nature into his own system of scientific symbols. In the
science of language the situation is cardinally different. The symbols exist
immediately in language. Instead of the scientist, who extracts certain indices
from the external world and reshapes them into symbols, here an exhange of
symbols occurs between the participants of a communication. Here the roles of
addresser and addressee are interchangeable. Hence the task of the science of
language is quite different. We are simply trying to translate into metalanguage
this code, which is objectively given in the language community. For the natural
scientist symbols are a scientific tool, whereas for the linguist they are beyond
that, and first of all, the true object of his research. The physicist Niels Bohr
understood perspicaciously this natural realism of the linguist's position.
Having mentioned Niels Bohr, I would like to recall his methodological dictum
essential both for physics and linguistics. Namely, that, when an observation is
made, it is imperative to determine exactly the relation between the observer and
the observed thing. A description that does not comply with this requirement is
imprecise from the point of view of today's physics, as it is from today's linguistics. It is our task to clarify the various positions of scholars vis-a-vis language.
The so-called crypto-analytical position is the point of view of an observer who
does not know the language code, and who could be compared to a military
crypto-analyst, attempting to decipher an enemy's encoded message. He tries to
break the foreign code through a careful analysis of the text. In the study of
unknown languages such devices may obviously bring fruitful results. This,
however, is merely the first stage of research, and it is by no means the only, but
rather one of many methodologies, a first approximation. Then the observer
attempts to reach the second, more advanced stage, the stage of a pseudoparticipant in the given language community. He does not any more move from
the text to the code, but rather absorbs the code and tries to use the code for a
better understanding of the message.
Such is the essential assumption of descriptive linguistics. But here a difference
emerges, which is rarely considered. We must not hypostatize the code, but

SIGN AND SYSTEMOF LANGUAGE

37

rather envisage it from the point of view of the speech exchange. One must
distinguish sharply between two positions, of the encoder and the decoder, in
other words: between the role of the addresser and that of the addressee. This
seems to be a banality, but indeed, banalities are most often disregarded. The
whole mode of observing a message is cardinally different for the two participants in a speech event. The hearer is lead through the distinctive features,
through the phonemes he recognizes, to the grammatical form and to
understanding the meanings. In this process the probability factor plays an
enormous role. The probabilities of the transition help one to perceive a text, its
phonology and then its grammar; after certain units other units follow, endowed
with higher or lower probabilities, and many are a priorily excluded. The
perceiver is endowed with a subliminal statistical set; homonymy is for him an
essential process. On the other hand, for the speaker, the order of the language
stages is reversed. His road leads from the sentence through the hierarchy of
immediate constituents, and finally through the morphological units to the
sound form in which they are manifested. Both orders occur equally in language
exchange; their mutual relations lie, as Bohr would have said, in the principle of
complementarity. Both language aspects exist for the encoder as well as for the
decoder, but the direction that is primary for one becomes secondary for the
other. For the speaker qua speaker no homonymy exists. For example, when he
pronounces in English /SAN/ he knows precisely whether he meant a son or a sun;
whereas the hearer must use a different method of probability in order to solve
this question. Both attitudes, production and perception, have equal claims to be
described by the linguist. It would be a mistake to reduce this two-sided language
reality to merely one side. Both methods of description participate and have
equal rights. Using only one of the two without keeping in mind whether one
represents the position of the speaker or the hearer is like playing the role of
Jourdain, who spoke prose without having known that it is prose. The real
danger arises when one makes compromises between both positions,
contradictory to the rules of each side. For example, if a linguist selects encoding
as the point of departure of his language description and analysis, and hence
forgoes the use of statistics and theory of probability, proceeds with a grammatical analysis of immediate constituents, and observes the primacy of
morphology over phonology, then he cannot - if he follows a logical direction
- exclude meaning. Meaning can be excluded
only when one works from the
position of the decoder, since for him meaning emerges only as a conclusion,
whereas for the speaker meaning is primary. The speaker proceeds de verbo ad
vocem, whereas the hearer proceeds in the opposite direction, as Saint Augustine
had already stressed in his deliberations on the theory of language.
Many things will become clearer in liguistic descriptions and in the theory of
language when a clean demarcation is undertaken and the proper attention paid
to the different modes of observation of the encoder and decoder. The modes of
observation, however, are not exhausted by those two kinds. One should also
take into account the considerable process of "recoding": in this case one
language is interpreted in the light of another language, or one style of speech in

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ROMANJAKOBSON

the light of another one; one code or subcode is translated into another code or
subcode. This is a most illuminating problem, since translation is one of the most
essential and increasingly important linguistic activities, and the methodology of
translation, as well as the consistent analysis of translation, are placed on the
daily order of contemporary pure and applied linguistics.