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Language as Symbolization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Wallace L. Chafe
Wallace L. Chafe*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Abstract

Language is viewed as a system in which semological structures, manifested in experience, are symbolized by phonological structures, manifested in sound. Other animal communication systems exhibit a one-to-one symbolization of semological units by phonological units. The evolutionary expansion of human experience was accompanied by developments through which language came to diverge radically from the one-to-one model. Shorter term (non-evolutionary) change also has led language away from one-to-one symbolization, as exemplified here by the effects of phonological change and (on the semological side) of idiom formation. In consequence of both its evolutionary and non-evolutionary history, language exhibits an initial organization of experience within deep semology, a set of mutations which lead to surface semology, an initial phonological symbolization, and another set of mutations which lead to a final phonological organization manifested in sound. The place of separate semantic and syntactic components within such a system is questioned.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , March 1967 , pp. 57 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © 1967 by Linguistic Society of America

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