LINGUIST List 6.411

Wed 22 Mar 1995

Sum: Jakobson reference

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  • Dietmar Zaefferer, Sum: Jakobson reference

    Message 1: Sum: Jakobson reference

     Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 16:18:09 Sum: Jakobson reference
    From: Dietmar Zaefferer <ue303bhsun1.lrz-muenchen.de>
    Subject: Sum: Jakobson reference


    Two months ago (sorry for the delay) I posted the following query on the LINGUIST list (with a horrible spelling error in the subject line):

    )The following is, I believe, a more or less literal quote from Roman Jakobson:

    )Languages differ less in what you can express in them than in what you must )>express in them.

    )Does anybody out there have the exact reference?

    1. Reaction to the query ======================== Six hours later it appeared on the list and three more hours later the first answer was in!!! Thank you all, that's really great!!!

    Within the following four weeks I received ten replies, 5 of them giving the first quotation below, 2 with the second one, 3 asking me to forward the requested information.

    Thanks to all who responded:

    Birgitta Englund Dimitrova Bob Fradkin Eloise Jelinek Hans Lindquist Nili Mandelblit Bruce Mannheim Bert Peeters Larry Rosenwald Deborah Ruuskanen Martha Thunes

    2. Answers ========== A. The first quotation is:

    Jakobson, Roman (1959) 'On linguistic aspects of translation' In Reuben A. Brower (ed.), On translation, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, Press. 232-239. Reprint New York: Galaxy Books 1966. The quoted sentence is on p. 236. Also in Jakobson, Roman (1971) Selected Writings vol. II, The Hague: Mouton. 260-266. The quoted sentence is here on p. 264. (Birgitta Englund Dimitrova mentions that this article has ever since been widely quoted in research on translation.)

    The context is the division of labor between lexical and grammatical means, which may vary considerably from language to language, and the problems this poses for translation:

    "If some grammatical category is absent in a given language, its meaning may be translated into this language by lexical means. ... It is more difficult to remain faithful to the original when we translate into a language provided with a certain grammatical category from a language devoid of such a category. ... As Boas neatly observed, the grammatical pattern of a language (as opposed to its lexical stock) determines those aspects of each experience that must be expressed in the given language. ... In order to translate accurately the English sentence "I hired a worker," a Russian needs supplementary information, whether this action was completed or not and whether the worker was a man or a woman...

    )Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they )>_may_ convey.

    Each verb of a given language imperatively raises a set of specific yes-no-questions ..."

    B. The second quotation is:

    Jakobson, Roman (1959) 'Boas' view of grammatical meaning' in W. Goldschmidt (ed.), The anthropology of Franz Boas, Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association 89. 139-45. Reprinted in Jakobson, Roman (1971) Selected Writings vol. II, The Hague: Mouton. 489-496. The quoted sentence is on p. 492.

    Here the context is Boas' obligatoriness criterion for the distinction between grammatical and lexical meaning. Jakobson quotes from Boas:

    "... 'a paucity of obligatory aspects does not by any means imply obscurity of speech. When necessary, clarity can be obtained by adding explanatory words.' To denote time or plurality, those languages which have no tense or grammatical number resort to lexical means.

    )Thus the true difference between languages is not in what may or may not be )>expressed but in what must or must not be conveyed by the speakers."

    (Am I right as a non-native speaker of English in suspecting that my fellow non-native speaker has possibly confounded 'must not' with 'need not'?)

    3. Motivation for the query ======================== I am using the (first) quote in a typological context, as motto for a paper where I discuss some of the consequences the obligatoriness of definiteness and number marking has for those cases of use where the speaker wants to evade these constraints. I argue there that languages with a high degree of explicitness (many obligatory choices) also provide for standard weakening strategies.

    If any typologist out there wants to engage in a discussion about the explicitness parameter, I would be happy to hear from him. To trigger the appropriate keywords, let me just mention that James Huang's 'temperature' parameter (the metaphor goes back, via Haj Ross, to Marshall McLuhan) is just a special case of the explicitness parameter. According to Huang (LI 15, 1984, pp. 531-574), languages with a high degree of obligatoriness in the expression of anaphoric elements are 'hot' (little audience participation required), whereas languages with a preference for zero anaphora are 'cool' (more audience participation required).

    Let me conclude with another quote from the first paper of RJ: "Equivalence in difference is the cardinal problem of language and the pivotal concern of linguistics." (233)

    Dietmar Zaefferer Institut fuer Deutsche Philologie Phone: +49 89 2180 2060 (office) Universitaet Muenchen +49 89 36 66 75 (home) Schellingstr. 3 Fax: +49 89 2180 3871 (office) D-80799 Muenchen Germany Email: ue303bhsun1.lrz-muenchen.de