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Visual Morphemes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Dwight L. Bolinger
Dwight L. Bolinger*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
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Extract

The fact that most writing is the graphic representation of vocal-auditory processes tends to obscure the fact that writing can exist as a series of morphemes at its own level, independent of or interacting with the more fundamental (or at least more primitive) vocal-auditory morphemes. Recognition of visual morphemes is also hampered by the controversy, not yet subsided, over the primacy of the spoken versus the written; the victory of those who sensibly insist upon language as fundamentally a vocal-auditory process has been so hard won that any concession to writing savors of retreat. Yet, so long as a point-to-point correspondence is maintained, it is theoretically possible to transform any series of morphemes from any sensory field into any other sensory field, and keep them comprehensible; the only condition is that contact with the nervous system be maintained at some point. More than theoretically: it is actually done for the congenitally deaf-and-dumb reader of Braille, who ‘reads’ and ‘comprehends’ with his finger-tips. Just as here is a system of tactile morphemes existing with no connexion (other than historical) with the vocal-auditory field, so there is nothing unscientific in the assumption that a similarly independent visual series may be found.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 22 , Issue 4-Part1: October-December , December 1946 , pp. 333 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © 1946 by the Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist 310 and 324 (Philadelphia, 1919).

2 Edna Rees Williams, The Conflict of Homonyms in English 15 (New Haven, 1944), recognizes the principle as possibly operative even in speech, in preserving otherwise conflicting homonyms, and quotes Henry Bradley in support of it. Such a spelling reflex in speech goes a step farther than the main thesis of this paper.

3 A complete phonetic record would probably, though not necessarily, have shown the difference. The intonations could be identical, with a high upskip followed by a downglide on the second and also on the third syllable.

4 The I-eye pair would seem to offer the most radical difference ; but what undoubtedly raises the number of identifications here is, more than the familiarity of the terms, the fact that this pair is an oft-noted example of homonyms.

5 Nation, 9 Nov. 1911, p. 443/2.

6 For some speakers, the differences here are phonemic. I have heard ['kamptrolr] spoken by university instructors. For the Century Dictionary and for Webster, compliment and complement are distinct; for the Standard, they are not.

7 See Raven I. McDavid Jr., Adviser and Advisor: Orthography and Semantic Differentiation, Studies in Linguistics 1.7 (1942).

8 The h may be, in some ridiculous way, phonemic, standing for a lingering of the initial sound, or for heavy breathing.

9 American Dialect Dictionary s.v. eye dialect (New York, 1944).

10 13 March 1939, p. 33/2.

11 New Republic, 12 Jan. 1942, p. 50.

12 Stephens [College] Standard, Dec. 1941, p. 31/1.

13 W. G. Clugston, Facts You Should Know about Kansas 22 (Girard, Kan., 1945).

14 Equivokes of this kind are the basis of much written humor: for instance, the advertisement of the British couple who announced that they ‘had cast off clothing of all kinds’ (Frank Colby column, Kansas City Journal, 7 Feb. 1942, p. 16/4).

15 So closely have quotation marks come to be identified with ‘something cut off from its environment’ that in direct discourse they are sometimes omitted by contemporary writers in-order to give the effect—especially if the speaker is talking to himself—of blending the quotation with the setting.

16 The scholastics, writes Erasmus (The Praise of Folly, Hudson translation 85 [Princeton, 1941]), ‘say it is a sacrilege ever to write MAGISTER NOSTER except in capital letters.’ Capitals are often used to burlesque the importance of something, as in They visited all the Interesting Places and got to know all the Best People. They are sometimes phonemic, as the following example shows: ‘One of the gayest and pleasantest expressions in any language is a Texas exclamatory expression of joy at seeing a friend: “Come in this house !” “Why, if it's not Johnny and Marylee—Come In This House !”‘ (American Speech 20.83 [1945]).

17 Quarterly Journal of Speech 31.83/1 (1945).

18 Modern Language Forum 29.75 (1944).