STUDY OF PLURALITY PARADIGM IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS

COMPARATIVE-HISTORICAL, TYPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS

STUDY OF PLURALITY PARADIGM IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS

Sevinj Zulfiyar qizi Nametova

PhD researcher, Azerbaijan Republic, Ministry of Education, Khazar University,

Azerbaijan, Baku

ИЗУЧЕНИЕ ПАРАДИГМ МНОЖЕСТВЕННОСТИ В ОБЩЕЙ ЛИНГВИТИКЕ

Наметова Севиндж Зулфияр кызы

диссертант Университета «Хазар» Азербайджанской республики,  Министерство образования Азербайджана,

Азербайджан, г. Баку

ABSTRACT

Background

This article discusses some background issues about the questions related to the history of paradigm and paradigm of plurality in English in general linguistics. It notes that, linguistics is multifaceted   branch of research, and for this reason, the methods of investiagation and levels of plurality are also not the same. Linguists usually use diverse - descriptive, expressive, generative, anthropocentric and other possibilities to expalin plurality in language system. The article tries to shed light on this paradigm from the perspective of general linguistics which deals with general nature of a language, its origin, development, function, structure, classification, linguistic universals, typology, semantics, etc. It shows that, the morphological distinctions serving to distinguish the demaracations between the singulars and plurals are not enough to solve the problem and are not the only ways for identification. There are some other approaches as markedness and unmarkedness theory which was first introduced by the Prague School of Linguistics. 

Unlike the American linguists who gave a negligible value to the phonemes or phonology, this school considered the phonemes to have distinctive logical, grammatical and semantic features to influence the paradigm of plurality.

The paper indicates that the phonological relevance - expressivity and demarcativeness are opposite to cognitive approach.  Expressivity depends on the mood and attitude of individual speakers, whereas the demarcativeness is applied to the stream of speech, the logical structural set of grammatical units. This was a new way of combining structuralism and functionalism in linguistics while overestimating the roles of phonems.

The author brings a lot of examples from the famous works of the world linguists and compares their various stands on this end.

Method

The author has used various methods of investigation as analyses and syntheses, historical approach and comparisons of intralingual levels and structures for obtaining maximum level of knowledge authenticity.

The history of development of language level is connected with the history of paradigmatic plurality.  Comparative approach to the typological diversity of languages and their morphological, semantic and grammatical structures can consolidate the authenticity of this method

Result

Major case studies make testimony that the paradigm of plurality cannot be analysed on one level because along with overt devices there also exist some covert means to denote this paradigm in the world languages. It leads us to the results that, not only a noun, a pronoun, a verb, etc., directly refer to the counts of things which they involve, but as well as they include the covert elements as agreements and other means or devices.

Conclusion

Along with formal morphological structure to indicate plurality, a certain type of irregular formal structures also exist.

АННОТАЦИЯ

Цель

В этой статье обсуждаются вопросы связанными с историей парадигмы и парадигмы множествен-ности в английском языке в общем языкознании. В нем отмечается, что лингвистика является многогранной отраслью исследовании, и по этой причине методы разработки и уровни множественности исследования также могут не совпадать. Лингвисты обычно используют разнообразные описательные, выразительные, генеративные, антропоцентрические и другие возможности для раскрытия парадигмы множественности. В статье делается попытка пролить свет на эту парадигму с точки зрения общей лингвистики, которая имеет дело с общей природой языка, его происхождением, развитием, функцией, структурой, классификацией, лингвистическими универсалиями, типологией, семантикой и т.д. Автор отмечает что, различия, служащие для разграничения единственного и множественного числа, не являются единственным способом идентификации. Существуют и другие подходы, такие как теория маркированности и немаркированности, которая была впервые предложена Пражской  школой лингвистики.

В отличие от американских лингвистов, которые придавали незначительное значение фонемам или фонологии, эта школа считала, что фонемы имеют отличительные логические, грамматические и семантические особенности, влияющие на парадигму множественности.

В статье указывается, что фонологическая релевантность, выразительность и демаркационная способность противоположны когнитивному подходу. Выразительность зависит от настроения и отношения отдельных говорящих, тогда как демаркационный элемент применяется к потоку речи, логическому структурному набору грамматических единиц. Это был новый способ сочетания структурализма и функционализма в лингвистике при переоценке роли фонем.

Автор приводит множество примеров из известных работ мировых лингвистов и сравнивает их различные позиции в этом отношении.

Методы

Автор использовал различные методы исследования, такие как анализ и синтез, исторический подход и сравнения уровней и структур языков, чтобы получить максимальный уровень достоверности знаний.

История развития языкового уровня тоже обуславливает  историю парадигматического множественности. Компаративный подход к типологическому разнообразию языков и их морфологическим, семантическим и грамматическим структурам может закрепить аутентичность этого метода.

Результат

Основные тематические исследования свидетельствуют о том, что парадигмы множественного числа не могут быть проанализированы на одном уровне, потому что наряду с явными приемами существуют также некоторые скрытые средства для обозначения этой парадигмы на разных языках. В результате получается, что не только существительное, местоимение, глагол и т. д. напрямую относятся к количеству вещей, которые они включают, но также включают скрытые элементы в качестве соглашений и других средств.

Вывод

Наряду с формальной морфологической структурой, указывающей на множественность, также существует определенный тип нерегулярных формальных структур.

Keywords: Paradigm, morphological plural structure, generative phonology, markedness, unmarkedness, theme and rheme.

Ключевые слова: Парадигма, морфологическая структура множественного числа, генеративная фонология, маркированность, немаркированность, тема и рема.

V.A. Maslova writes: “The comparative historical paradigm was the first one in linguistics... That is why, the entire 19th century was dedicated to this problem. At the initial point there emerged a systematic structural paradigm. Its focus was object, thing, generally, name and word” [5, p. 61]. The formation of this paradigm is associated with the ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure. At that time, the main attention of linguists was directed to the characteristics of language systems, the specificity of their units and levels, common and different in the organization of systems of different languages. Evidently, “the question of the nature of the modern scientific paradigm is complex due to its versatility.

First, in modern linguistics, the notion of language as a system-structural formation is still preserved [2, p. 273].

Second, there is a transition from descriptivism to generativism. Representatives of generative linguistics are trying to reveal the generative power of language, which determines the diverse possibilities of using the language system. [2, p. 275]

Third, the defining feature of the modern linguistic paradigm is, on the one hand, anthropocentrism, that is, an orientation towards a person, and, on the other hand, the influence of extralinguistic factors on the person speaker. Within this paradigm, there emerged such areas in linguistics as psycholinguistics, communicative linguistics, cognitive linguistics, discursive linguistics, pragmalinguistics, sociolinguistics, semiotics, etc. [2, p. 278].

Apparently, lingusitic study of plurality paradigm is one of the complex questions dealt by various fields of science and humanities. Russian Australian linguist Alexandra Yurievna "Sasha" Aikhenvald states: “Number is a referential property of an argument of the predicate. A grammatical system of number can be shown either

• Overtly, on a noun, a pronoun, a verb, etc., directly referring to how many people or things are involved; or

• Covertly, through agreement or other means.” [3, p.1]

She also indicates that number may be marked within a noun phrase, on the head of noun phrase, by agreement process on a modifier (article, adjective, demonstrative) or by the help of agreements on verbs or special suppletive or semi-suppletive verb forms, where a coded number of one or more verbal arguments, or additional marker on the verb may be inherent. 

 General linguistics deals with general nature of a language, its origin, development, function, structure, classification of languages, as well as includes linguistic universals, typological linguistics, lingua-semantics, real linguistics, etc. Universals or “invariants” are neither forms nor meanings. They usually represent the relationship between the words’ forms and their semantic meanings, however, these meanings can be different – morphological, lexical, pragmatic, communicative, semantic, ets.

Keith Allan notes that, “the notions of singularity and plurality are most clearly revealed in the morphological distinctions between the singular noun, such as girl, and its plural, girls. Through nouns they are introduced into well formedness constraints as controlling conditions on co-occurrent constituents, both within NP (noun phrases-N.S.) and outside of it. For example, in “Those girls are playing hookey there is concord of "those" and "are" with "girls"; and neither could occur in a well formed sentence of standard English if singular girl were to replace "girls". Well formedness conditions which block singular girl from being pronominalized by “they”, or quantified by a number greater than one, or predicated by a verb like disperse or scatter used intransitively, but which allow any of these to happen to plural girls, must refer to singularity and plurality.” [4, p.2] Evidently, co-occurent plurality is a complex matter, though the morphological structure is much clearer in its visual expressivity. That is why, in order to shape the identification of singularity and plurality, first, we need to review the morphological structure of nouns. The feature of numbering is essential in Romance and Latin to indicate this category. It is quite simple to compare the plurals in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian languages. The famous Swedish linguist Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke (1861-1936) in his “Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen” (1890) studied Indo-European languages and their grammatical features. For example, in Spanish it is the way of adding singular form + (e)s (e.g., sg gato - pl gatos 'cats'; sg casa - pl casas 'houses'; sg mes - pl meses 'months'. In the rest of western Romance languages, for instance in Portuguese and French, the same system (plural -s) historically underlies to serve for plural identity. In Italian language where the singular ends in an unstressed vowel -i in the plural (or in -e, if they are feminine and end in -a in the singular) is similary compared with historical final -s”. “In Latin, the inflectional marker of accusative plural was -s, in all non-neuter nouns; given the general loss of the neuter gender, and the tendency for case-forms other than that which originally expressed the accusative to disappear, many Romance languages emerge simply with a plural in -s.” [9] So, in most cases ‘root allomorphy’ has become the common feature in vareties of singularity and plurality.

However, morphem is not the only way to decide the about the full-range of plurality. If we look through the existing approaches to plurality in general linguistics, we may arrive to such kind of opinion that, these are usually divided into two dictinct groups.  But why do we distinguish only two approaches? It is because they seem to assume the more generalized methods. The theoretical view of the first rank uncludes the proponenets of the Markedness Theory, whereas the second group is called the supporters of Unmarkedness Theory. 

“Markedness Theory proposes that in the languages of the world certain linguistic elements are more basic, natural, and frequent (N.S.) (unmarked) than others which are referred to as marked. The concept of Markedness is first proposed by the Prague School scholars Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson.” [10]

Unlike the American linguists who gave a negligible value to the phonemes or phonology, this school considered the phonemes to have a clearcut and distinctive logical, grammatical and semantic features. They viewed that as in English, /b/ and /p/ are different, it the same with /d/ and /t/, with /g/ and /k/, etc. Thus the voicing (vibration of the vocal cords) is essential here. However, apart from voicing, there is also a clear cognitive function of phonemes, which serves as the support for the structural duality.  Prague school realated this trait of voicing not only related with cords, but also with the cognitive structural analyses. It was later furthered by Russian-American linguist and literary theorist Jakobson which became the theory of generative phonology. Meanwhile, they distinguished two types of functional phonological relevance - expressive and demarcative. The expressive one is opposed to cognitive because they deemed this feature to depend on the mood and attitude of the individual speakers, whereas the demarcative is applied to the stream of speech, the logical structural set of grammatical units. They combined structuralism and functionalism in linguistics and many parts of their research overestimated the phonems. In fact, we may deduce that, the way of inolunatrily pronouncing the words (Where does it come from? Does it come from the feature of dialects? May we assume that the smallest unit of the phonetic system of a language changes the words’ menaing? -N. S.) On the contrary, the stream of a speech, like “conformity of the phoneme/s to the preceding one/s” (in Azerbaijani we may call it “ahəng qanunu”-changing the place of articulatiion under the influenece of the preceding vowel) may serve as a device making plural; what the scholars call it as expressivity to change the meaning. They note: “There are, for example, many languages in which the set of phonemes that can occur at the beginning of a word differs from the set of phonemes that can occur at the end of a word. These and other devices were described by the Prague school phonologists as having demarcative function: they are boundary signals that reinforce the identity and syntagmatic unity of words and phrases.”

By other words, depending on the general mood and attributed situation, a set of phonem structure can be used to change the meaning (expressivity), depending on a speaker’s use of the same phoneme at the beginning or at the end they may serve as “boundary signals to reinforce the identity and syntagmatic unity of words and phrases.” [6] This case, by their opinions identified the demarcation of the speakers’ intent or in linguistics it is named as demarcative function. Interstingly, this study later was extended to morphology and syntax. Finally, the plurality much depends on the phonological use or structure of the phareses, rather than on their endings as “-s, -es”, “-en” (book–books, watch-watches, ox-oxen) in English and “-lar, -lər” in Azerbaijani (məktəb-məktəblər, hamam-hamamlar). Thus, the phonemes in one position may serve for the purposes to make plurality as in book and books (markedness), and in the second instance as in in the instances, bass, mass, case, hose, etc, they cannot (unmarkedness) do the same.

Evidently, morphological unmarkedness is more common to be used rather than markedness in their occurences comparing with distinctive plural –s in all cases. In Azerbaijani language, when we say “it-dog”, “pişik-cat”, “ev-house”, we provide the instances of markedness in their lexical menaing. However, “it-dog”, “pişik-cat” are alive species, but “ev-house” is not alive. Besides this, in the first two examples we may identify masculinity or femininity of the animals, whereas in the third example “ev-house” it will be restricted to “zero” to make the same. So, if the first two examples refer to Theme, the third example refers to Rheme if we start analyzing them in the sentences.

The markedness theory was generally accepted by the majority of linguists, nevertheless, there also emerged some related enrichments in this method of application.

Post Prague school contributions were mainly connected with the theories of theme and rheme. Thus, Prague school work remained characteristically functional in its later developments operating through the bases of “functional sentence perspective” or “communicative dynamism” where, as they mentioned, ”the theme does not always correspond with the grammatical subject of the sentence. The Theme is the element which serves as the point of departure of the message, it is that with which the clause is concerned. The rest of the message, the part in which the Theme is developed is called the Rheme.” [7]

Azerbaijani scholars professor A. Abdullayev, N.K. Abbasov, A. A. Akhundov, K.N. Veliyev, F.F.Alizade and foreign scholars as N.Chomsky, Fr.Danes, P. Hartmann, V.V. Bogdanov, A.I. Smirnitskiy and many others have expressed their opinions about distinctive features of plurality in phonology, morphology, synatax, semantics and pragmatics. The opinion referring to the methods of extracting meaning was differen in their work, however there is unanimity among the representative of general linguistics that, “the inherent meanings in the text are not equivocally dependent.”  [1, p.7] and the structure of the text is based on the model ”directing the flow of speech from theme to rheme.” [1, p.7]

There is a group of linguists that they mainly highlite the communicative, functional and grammatical aspects of plurality in the language. That is why, it is quite justified that nowadays “one of the approaches among those studies is related to the method of Reference Functional Semantic Field (FSF). It is based on morphological, syntactic, lexical or combined in variations and categorical attributes…, so referencing the fuctionalities in the semantic structures remain identical, despite the expressions are given as in singularity, as well as in plurality.” [8, p.86]  We very often refer these functionalities to “functional sentence perspective” where the syntactic structure of a sentence is in part determined by the communicative function of its various constituents.  Some linguists tend to call this position “individual grammatical function”. Such kind of grammatical case studies cases are usually founded on variety of syntactic functions, such as locative, agentive, instrumental and so on. These functional syntactic expressions may serve as determinants in grammatical structure of sentences.

Some proponents of the markedness theory overestimate this approach and reckon this approach be semantically valuable in both ends – formally and unformally. From the semantic angle they identify the case as formal markedness, distributional markedness, and semantic markedness. It means that, this type of way to generate plurality in general linguistics stresses out not only the structural forms of a language but also the “hidden” implications of the meaning in the contextual language.

Next, when we analyze the history of plurality in general linguistics, we also encounter the ways of nominal plural functionalty in English and in Azerbaijani languages, which evitably indicates the limits of the traditional singular / plural opposition.

References:

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