¹ Italic colons represent periods between sentences of the original text; cf. Lg. 28.17 fn. 10a.

² If we take a member of a class, say A, we can always find at least one other member (B) which at least once has the same environment that A has once. (They both occur before F, though B also occurs before E, while A also occurs before G.) Not every member of the class does this: M occurs only before E and H, while A occurs only before F and G. But if M and A have nevertheless been put in the same class, then they must at least once occur in equivalent if not identical environments. The E environment of M and the F environment of A are equivalent because both appear among the environments of some one member (B). These formulaic statements may be hard to apprehend intuitively; but the examples which will come out of the sample text below should make the relations clear.

³ This is a complete and separate section of an article by L. Corey, entitled Economic democracy without statism (Commentary, August 1947, 145–6). The bracketed sentences will not be analyzed here. They are of the same general structure as the others, but are left out in order to keep the present paper within reasonable limits. In a forthcoming publication of a group of analyzed discourses, this text will be analyzed in toto, so that the reader can satisfy himself as to the application of the present results to the whole text.

This text has been selected, not because it is particularly easy to analyze, but—quite the contrary—because it exhibits the problems and techniques of discourse analysis in great variety. Many discourses, such as scientific writing and conversational speech, are simpler to analyze. The first three unbracketed sentences here are particularly complicated, but the reader will find that the rest of the text is quite readily analyzable after these have been worked through.

Reprinted by permission of Nathan Glazer, Associate Editor of Commentary.

⁴ Since this analysis is presented as an empirical attempt, each step will be justified with a minimum of theoretical grounding; and at the same time only such operations will be developed as are required for this particular text. Therefore we will not raise at this point the question whether different occurrences of the same morpheme may turn out to be homonyms belonging to two different classes of the text, and so in some sense not substitutable for each other.

⁵ More generally, a sequence consisting of any segment + conjunction + another segment of the same grammatical class is replaceable by a single segment of that class (XCX = X). This holds whether a comma intonation encloses the conjunction + second segment or not: i.e. both for nationalization, or socialization, and for nationalization or socialization.

⁶ This treatment will have to be justified in the fuller analysis of the text which will be published elsewhere.

⁷ Problems of validity are raised when we draw, here and at some points below, upon substitutions which occur elsewhere in the article, outside the quoted section analyzed here. For a complete analysis we would have to treat a text long enough to contain within itself all the required substitutions.

⁸ A more careful analysis of phrases beginning with which would show that such adjectival phrases serve as repetitions of the phrases that precede them, so that our present phrase is equivalent to (or a repetition of) monopoly enterprises, and therefore substitutable for it. This, with other grammatical considerations useful in discourse analysis, is mentioned in the paper cited in the first paragraph.

⁹ The inverted form is not stylistically equivalent to the original. In some cases, the derived equivalent forms are not stylistically acceptable at all. This does not nullify the use of the equivalence as an intermediate step in our analysis.

¹⁰ The boldface numbers are of course not in the text. They are used here only to facilitate reference to the sentences.

¹¹ The same is true of most occurrences of he, it, etc. As a simple example, consider the equivalence of I have a dollar watch: This is all I need, and I have a dollar watch: A dollar watch is all I need. Note that the plural morpheme stretches over the noun and the th which is a discontinuous extension or repetition of it: I have some dollar watches: They are all I need.

¹² In addition to can for convenience be replaced by some single preposition like with, because NPN = N and PNPN = PN, so that PNP (such as in addition to) can be replaced by a single P. Further use of the NPN = N formula enables us to consolidate industry (N ₁) with (P) the limitation to large-scale industry (N ₂ = L) into N ₂ alone, that is into our L. In all these changes we have not dropped any word which figures in the analysis of this text, but have merely performed certain grammatically equivalent substitutions in order that the words which follow socialize might be grammatically comparable to the words which follow socialize in sentences 1 and 2. The fact that these words turn out to be our old L is due not to our grammatical manipulations but to the recurrence here of the same morphemes: this (repeating large-scale) and industry.

¹³ The reduction is effected as follows. By the laws of English grammar, a relative pronoun (e.g. that) plus a verb (with or without a following object) constitutes an adjectival phrase to the preceding noun: N that V = AN (the tower that leans = the leaning tower). Then would still remain a limited power state is adjectival to the noun state. And within plus this adjectival element plus the noun state is a PAN phrase which is itself adjectival to the preceding nouns diversity, etc. An alternative method of obtaining this reduction can be based on the fact that, for a certain group V _i of English verbs (including is and remains), N ₁V _iN ₂ implies that N ₁ and N ₂ are substitutable for each other: e.g. in He is a man. In the parenthetical sentence that (N ₁) would still remain (V _i) a limited-power state (N ₂), we can therefore substitute a limited-power state (N ₂) for that (N ₁). But by fn. 11, that merely repeats the preceding a state, hence limited power state is substitutable for state in the phrase within a ...

¹⁴ Our original sentence had functional organizational (A ₁) forms that promote diversity (A' ₂). On grammatical grounds we have said that the first three words here are equivalent to forms that have functional organization. How does this equivalence connect grammatically with what follows? If we try to insert it in the sentence, we obtain forms that have functional organization that promote diversity. The subject of promote diversity is forms in the original sentence and therefore here too (since we are making no grammatical alteration); this is shown by the fact that the plural morpheme (which extends over subject and verb) extends both over forms (in the -s) and over promote (in the third-person lack of -s). Our only problem now is to discover why the phrase that we obtain does not read grammatically: where is the expected and after organization? We understand this as follows. The combination of a relative (that) plus a verb (have or promote) whose subject is forms has the grammatical standing of an adjectival phrase following forms, which in turn has the grammatical standing of an adjective preceding forms: thus forms that promote diversity is equivalent to forms with promotion of diversity, or to diversity-promoting forms. If we mark an adjectival phrase following a noun by A', we will find that we have here changed our original A ₁ forms A' ₂ into forms A' ₁A' ₂. The result reads peculiarly because we expect something like and after organization, between the two A'. But this is no problem, because the occurrence of conjunctions between adjectival segments is automatic. Conjunctions or commas (marking a special intonation) occur between adjoining adjectival segments of like syntactic structure: a long, dull book (A, AN), or the fellow who called and who asked for you (NA' and A‘). Commas sometimes but not always occur between adjoining adjectival segments of unlike syntactic structure: a fellow I know, who asked for you (NA’, A'), but also a fellow I know who asked for you (NA'A'). Conjunctions do not occur between adjectives preceding a noun and an adjectival phrase following the noun. Therefore, when we change ANA' into NA'A' we move from a form in which a conjunction does not appear to a form in which a conjunction appears automatically. If we supply this conjunction, we finally obtain forms that have functional organization and that promote diversity (NA' and A').

¹⁵ As an example of the chain of substitutions we note the following excerpts from the bracketed sentences of our text. The first step is to show that public enterprise is substitutable for public corporations. Compare They can and should be independent (where the They follows right after Public enterprise and hence repeats it): They are independent (where the They follows right after public corporations). To complete this substitution we must show the equivalence (for this text) of can and should be with are. First, can and should be is equivalent to can be (X ₁ and X ₂ can be replaced by either X alone); second, be is the same verb morpheme as are; third, can + verb is substitutable here for the verb alone, because we have cooperatives serve economic freedom in sentence 8 and in the next sentence They can serve freedom. The remaining step is to show that public corporations is substitutable for socialized industry. We have Socialized industry ... made to promote ... decentralization (sentence 3) and They provide ... decentralization (where They follows immediately after public corporations). The required equivalence of made to promote and provide is given by the fact that the addition of minus to either of these is equivalent to prevent: compare prevent from promoting in sentence 4 with made to promote in sentence 3. And compare in the bracketed sentences: public enterprises prevent absolute centralization (S L — I T), and in the next sentence they provide diversity (S L I — T); these two sentences are parallel to our 3 and 4 except that made to promote is replaced by provide. By this circuitous route we show that public enterprise is substitutable for socialized industry, which is our S L.

¹⁶ As in sentence 5. In other cases, however, the occurrence of economic may affect the status of a word which is not itself — T. In one of the bracketed sentences, for example, we have economic, not political, institutions. Here economic affects the standing of the phrase. Similarly, the word need in economic need does not occur by itself (hence has no standing by itself), and it is the whole AN phrase here which equals — T.

¹⁷ One might prefer to consider the words no bar as part of the object. This is immaterial; it would merely shift the position of two minus signs from the I to the T.

¹⁸ The argument can be stated as follows. Given S L I — T of sentence 2, let us consider the first part of sentence 6 analyzed as S — L I no — T (before we represent no by a minus). Here we have two sentences which are equivalent except that the second contains an extra minus and an extra word (in this case no); and the extra word turns out to be the same morpheme as one of the members (not) of the class marked minus. The two sentences therefore differ only in that the second has two minuses more than the first. We repeat this analysis when we compare — S — L — I bar — T with S — L — I — T. In this pair, minus + bar is substitutable for minus + no in the other pair. Hence bar is equivalent to no, and is a member of the class marked minus.

¹⁹ In breaking up this sentence into two, for convenience of analysis, we leave out since, which, like the hence of sentence 1, is outside the subject, verb, and object phrases, and serves to connect sentences.

²⁰ Our original sentence consisted of subject + verb + [object + conjunction + object] (where brackets indicate the domain of the conjunction, as at the end of sentence 5). This is equivalent to a double sentence: subject + verb + object, twice over. A similar equivalence was seen at the end of sentence 3.

²¹ Of course, this will not apply to all sentences of this form. In some cases VP Ving is substitutable rather for a single V: succeed in economizing is replaceable by economize alone, or the like. The specific conditions for this equivalence cannot be discussed here.

²² Note that when public enterprise occurs as the subject of I it is a substituent of S L. When it occurs as an adjectival phrase to a — T object it is simply included in the object phrase. This is an example of homonyms (in respect to substitution classes), such as were mentioned in fn. 4.

²³ In a somewhat different way the where also filled these two functions, as do many wh and th words.

²⁴ Or if we had marked diversity in object position as R (as we marked its substituent in sentence 1), absolute state control would be marked — R when in object position.

²⁵ In doing this, we assume that absolute state control has the same relation to diversity in the subject position as it has in the object position of the same sentence type (group of equivalent sentences). In object position diversity is — T and absolute state control is T. When we see that in subject position of the same sentence type diversity is —S, we take absolute state control in that position as S.

²⁶ More exactly: if we replace the limitation or suppression of ideas by T we obtain a possible sentence of this text. Let us call an analysis of a sentence ‘successful’ when each morpheme in it is assigned to a substitution class in such a way that the sequence of substitution classes represented by the sentence is a sequence which occurs elsewhere in the text. Then assigning the limitation or suppression of ideas to T yields a successful analysis of our sentence, though we have not shown that it is the only successful analysis.