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Phonetics, Semantics, and Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Wallace L. Chafe
Wallace L. Chafe*
Affiliation:
Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution
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Extract

The term semantic structure is one that is often encountered these days. Some very rewarding effort has gone into the study of phenomena embraced by this term, but there is still no clear picture of the relationship between semantic structure, whatever it is, and language structure as we know it. One view, and probably the most explicit, has been that ‘semology’ constitutes a third subdivision of language, on a par with phonology and grammar (or ‘morphology‘). I am going to present here a somewhat different view, based on a proposed parallelism between phonology and grammar and their respective ties to the nonlinguistic universe. If this view is found to have some validity, it may serve to help us in our understanding of the interrelationships of all three of the phenomena listed in the title above.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 38 , Issue 4: October-December , December 1962 , pp. 335 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © 1962 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 See Martin Joos's modification of George L. Trager's scheme in SIL 13.53–70 (1958), and Trager's subsequent remarks in IJAL 27.211–22 (1961).

2 ‘Ethnolinguistic implications of studies in linguistics and psychiatry’, Report of the Ninth Annual Roundtable, Georgetown University 180 fn. 5 (1960). I am indebted to Hockett for reading a draft of this paper, and for providing me with this reference.

3 Cf. Charles F. Hockett, Manual of phonology 43 (Bloomington, 1955).

4 Cf. Hockett, ‘Linguistic elements and their relations’, Lg. 37.36 (1961).

5 For example Roman Jakobson and Morris Halle, ‘Phonology in relation to phonetics’, in L. Kaiser, ed., Manual of phonetics 215–51 (Amsterdam, 1957).

6 Hockett's discussion of the relativeness of this term may be cited as pertinent here; see his Manual 162 ff. See also the questions raised by C. L. Ebeling, Linguistic units 77 ff. (The Hague, 1960).

7 With these last, where the properties involved are themselves relationships, it may be quite valid to say even at the component level that, for example, primary stress is to secondary as secondary is to tertiary.

8 Probably the current fad of generative grammar is symptomatic of this disillusionment. I can see, however, no more point in linguists trying to generate utterances and then evaluating what they have done than in botanists trying to generate trees and then deciding whether the result is a tree or a monstrosity.

9 This view is of course similar to that of the glossematic school.

10 Eric H. Lenneberg and John M. Roberts, The language of experience 16 (Bloomington, 1956).

11 Cf. especially Zellig S. Harris, ‘Componential analysis of a Hebrew paradigm’, Lg. 24.87 (1948), and Floyd G. Lounsbury, ‘A semantic analysis of the Pawnee kinship usage’, Lg. 32.159–62 (1956). Hockett would apparently prefer to extend the term morpheme to this level; see Lg. 37.43.

12 It may be that what Joos claims to have found, op.cit. (fn. 1 above), will necessitate a revision of this statement, but I do not yet know what to make of his finding.

13 Hockett, Lg. 37.29–32.

14 This point is stressed by Ebeling, op.cit. 91 ff.

15 Cf. Lounsbury, Lg. 32.190.

16 Lounsbury's discussion of metaphor is pertinent here; Lg. 192–3.

17 See Ebeling's interesting suggestion, op.cit. 93 ff.

18 Hockett, Manual 32–6.