André Martinet

Double articulation as a criterion of linguisticity

Abstract The difference between language in general and individual languages should always be kept in mind. The Saussurean dichotomy of langue vs. parole should yield before linguistically relevant vs. linguistically irrelevant. Languages should not be identified with codes. Proceeding inductively when trying to define the object of our science has proved impracticable. We should rather stipulate what we want to call a language. From a language we expect that it be actually used for communicating experience by means of a succession of vocal products analyzable into segments equated with some features of the total experience; each of those segments being analyzable into a succession of well-defined vocal units. Speaking here of dual patterning would obscure the fundamental hierarchy of the double articulation of language. The economical nature of double articulation is obvious: the vocal auditory nature of language, determining the linearity of speech, will automatically lead to it. But there is more to it than sheer economy: the analysis of experience into features corresponding to the significant units of a language makes it possible to communicate new experience by means of unexpected combinations of these units. The second articulation into phonemes is instrumental in stabilizing the perceptible forms by making them independant of the correspponding meanings.

Functional Grammar*: Martinet

In the course of the 20th century, the term ‘functional’ has been applied, on several occasions, to different types of linguistic practice. First of all, by members of the Prague Linguistic Circle, from the late 1920s onward, with a value close to the one that will be retained here. Later on, by Louis Hjelmslev with a sense reminiscent of its mathematical use and akin to that found in ‘grammatical functions,’ i.e., pointing to relations between items. More recently, it has been used by some followers of the transformational and generative trends, or by people initially influenced by, but departing from, them. As this article shows, the functional linguistics recommended employ ‘functional’ in its most usual meaning of ‘adapted to achieve some end.’ This use has been adopted, to some extent at least, by the members of the International Society for Functional Linguistics (= SILF, standing for the French Societe internationale de linguistique fonctionnelle).

Continuum and Discontinuity

are tempted to yield to the lure of binarism: when we are no longer concerned with the details of a system, but rather with our vision of the relationship between man and the world. Without going any further it can already be said that the problem of existence is presented to us in terms of a man/world duality, as though we were unable to exceed our subjective vision of things so as to assess their intrinsic reality. When linguists discovered that they could isolate discrete units called phonemes, they were tempted to oppose the discontinuity of these phonemes reflecting the underlying discontinuity of the signifiers to a continuum of prelinguistic experience, a continuum that is not arranged as discrete elements except with reference to

The Indo-Europeans and Greece:

Even in scientific usage there are terms that we believe we understand and when we try to pinpoint what they refer to we notice that these terms do not have a precise meaning. This applies, in linguistics, to the term Indo-European. Mostly, when used as an adjective, it seems to apply to those languages that derive, hypothetically, from a disappeared idiom which some scholars for nearly two hundred years have been trying to reconstruct. Thus, it is said that Sanskrit, Greek and Latin are Indo-European languages. When this epithet is applied to French it causes surprise. From a comparative viewpoint, French is usually seen as a Romance language and only Romance languages taken together or, better said, Latin from which they derive, seem to merit the epithet. When used as a noun, &dquo;Indo-European&dquo; may designate the disappeared language itself. But serious scholars give it a precision in this case like commun in French, proto in English

“Le zed à ventre” or A functional approach to phonetic notation

An international or, better, a universal phonetic alphabet is a set of conventions where each letter is equated with a physically well-identified speech sound. In scientific practice, the use of such an alphabet is imperative when an auditory or mechanical recording of vocal utterances is to be given a visual rendering. It must be kept in mind that the latter, a succession of discrete symbols, cannot be considered the exact equivalent of the former, a continuous flux.