• Monthly Archives: October 2017

Teleology, Markedness, and Linguistic Change (Strong Verb Ablaut)

October 22, 2017

Markedness values are asymmetric. The value MARKED means relative narrowness of conceptual scope, whereas its counterpart UNMARKED means relative breadth of conceptual scope. These basic definitions are aligned respectively with greater and lesser complexity. When languages change, there is a general tendency to change from the more complex value (= marked) to the corresponding less complex value (= unmarked).

This teleology can explain the tendency in contemporary American English speech (and in American dialects) to collapse the three ablaut vowels of strong verb conjugation, as in sink/sank/sunk, drink/drank/drunk, etc. such that the simple past vowel is eliminated and replaced by the vowel of the past passive participle. Thus one constantly hears speakers saying things like “Honey, I shrunk [instead of the correct shrank] the dog,” etc.

The markedness values of the vowels involved underwrite this change in grammar. The [ae] of the simple past is marked, whereas the schwa [ə] of the past participle is unmarked, and thus the teleology is unmistakably from marked to unmarked, which corresponds to the empirical facts.

MICHAEL SHAPIRO

Stress Retraction and the Principle of Marked Beginnings

October 13, 2017

Contemporary American English has a peculiar device at its disposal for expressing emphasis, whereby the stress is retracted onto a preposition in a prepositional phrase, as in the following statement and response: “You need to tell him to dó it.” “Tó do it isn’t so easy.” The stressed preposition can only be explained as an implementation of the PRINCIPLE OF MARKED BEGINNINGS, which was first enunciated by Y-H-B as applying to metric structure in an article on verse theory (“The Meaning of Meter,” Russian Verse Theory [UCLA Slavic Studies, 18], ed. B. Scherr and D. S. Worth, 331-349. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1989; revised version in Michael and Marianne Shapiro, The Sense of Form in Literature and Language, 2nd, expanded ed., 259-77. Scotts Valley, Calif.: CreateSpace, 2009).

In a larger semiotic context going beyond verse and even language, beginnings, middles, and ends always have a value such that beginnings are marked, ends less marked by comparison––but still marked––and middles unmarked. These markedness values need to be taken into account whenever there is a stretch of semiotic space that has this fundamental tripartite structure.

MICHAEL SHAPIRO

The Second Amendment Revisited (Anent the Recent Events in Las Vegas)

October 5, 2017

The terrible atrocity and loss of life in Las Vegas last Sunday night have brought the Second Amendment into public view yet again, with some persons calling for its repeal. In that connection, Y-H-B wishes to repeat verbatim his post of December 24, 2012, to remind readers of the Second Amendment’s correct interpretation, the Supreme Court and its originalist faction notwithstanding. Here it is:

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Gun owners assert a right to own and use firearms on the basis of the main clause of the amendment. In the so-called Heller case, the United States Supreme Court has sustained their right, ignoring in 2007 the well-reasoned amicus brief filed by professional linguists that argued that the grammar of the amendment does not allow such an interpretation. Here is a summary (from Dennis Baron, “Guns and Grammar: the Linguistics of the Second Amendment” (www.english.illinois.edu/-people/faculty/debaron/essays/guns.pdf):

“In our amicus brief in the Heller case we attempted to demonstrate,
• that the Second Amendment must be read in its entirety, and that its initial absolute functions as a subordinate adverbial that establishes a cause-and-effect connection with the amendment’s main clause;
• that the vast preponderance of examples show that the phrase bear arms refers specifically to carrying weapons in the context of a well-regulated militia;
• that the word militia itself refers to a federally-authorized, collective fighting force, drawn only from the subgroup of citizens eligible for service in such a body;
• and that as the linguistic evidence makes clear, the militia clause is inextricably bound to the right to bear arms clause.
     18th-century readers, grammarians, and lexicographers understood the Second Amendment in this way, and it is how linguists have understood it as well.”

What is paramount in the correct interpretation is something Baron et al. do not discuss, namely the order of the two clauses. The participial first clause, even in 18th-century English, could just as well have been placed second, in a familiar pattern that can be seen, for instance, in a sentence like: “There will be no swimming today at the recreation center, the pool being closed on Mondays.” Clearly, there is a cause-and-effect relation between the fact of no swimming and the particular day of the week, regardless of the placement of the two clauses vis-à-vis each other, but what is at stake here is a form of grammatical government that is best captured by their ORDER, which is to say their HIERARCHICAL relationship. The first clause occurs where it does because the writer/utterer deems it to be MORE IMPORTANT than the second clause.
The same obtains in the element order of the Second Amendment. The word militia of the first clause governs––is hierarchically superordinate to––the phrase the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The framers of the Constitution had the grammatical option to invert the two clauses but did not. The element order speaks for itself, rendering militia the pragmatistic scope (i. e., in the Peircean sense of the philosophical doctrine of pragmatism) under which right to keep and bear arms is restricted.

MICHAEL SHAPIRO