Correspondence: to be or not to be.

Sirs: In Korzybski's Science and Sanity it is pointed out that the verb "to be" is at the root of much of our neurosemantic psychopathology. The "is" of predication is peculiar to almost all major European languages. It does not, however, exist in all languages. In Chinese, for example, the verb "to be" does not exist at all, and ordinarily the subject precedes the predicate without intervention of any other word. Occasionally, for variation in meaning, a particle is inserted between subject and predicate. Nevertheless the Chinese have most of the ills described by Korzybski as due to semantic causes.

Today the western world's attention is centered on Russia. It seems that Russia is heir to the semantic ills described by Korzybski, and has been heir to them throughout its long and bloody history. A study of elementary Russian, however, reveals that Russian departs from other Indo-European languages in that, as in Chinese, the verb "to be" is not used in the copulative sense. Nor is any other verb so used. The predicate simply follows the subject. For example, to say, "She is a girl," the Russians say ona dievochka. Ona means "she," and dievochka means "girl." In its discussions of the word "is," Science and Sanity could not be translated into Russian.

The Russians, however, despite their resolution of a problem of semantics outlined by Korzybski, have exhibited all the individual and collective psychopathologies of other nations; they have had morons and madmen, thieves and murderers, poverty and war.

From this observation, one of two conclusions may be drawn:

1. The verb "to be" is not a semantic offender.

2. The Russian language is heir to certain semantic weaknesses parallel to but different from the semantic peculiarities of other Indo-European languages.

Only the former solution seems tenable to the author, and if this is correct, major changes in the basic theories of general semantics are necessary in order to validate it. It may be that if these changes are made, it would more closely approximate the optimistic predictions of its author.

HARRY F. DARLING, M.D.

AMESBURY, MASSACHUSETTS 

[Editors' Note. The absence of the predicative copula in many languages has been pointed out by several students and critics of general semantics. Common to the views not unlike those expressed by Dr. Darling is the assumption that the simple presence of the "is" of identity in a language is taken in general semantics to be a "root of neurosemantic ills." Such a theory would indeed be invalidated by linguistic facts. However, the assumptions of general semantics go deeper. A source of maladaptive semantic reactions is taken to be an orientation, of which the dominance of the "is" of identity is only an expression. The absence of an explicit "is" in no way indicates the absence of the identification habit. The Russian expression ona dievochka connotes the identification of a particular person with the class "girl" just as much as if the "is" were there.

It should be also pointed out that the "inadequacy" of the Indo-European predication model in no way implies the "adequacy" of other models, in which predication is not stressed. (The fact remains that the scientific orientation developed most rapidly among the Indo-European speaking peoples.) Therefore the somewhat romantic enthusiasms of Benjamin Lee Whorf and other metalinguists for the "non-aristotelian" orientation of some prescientific peoples should be taken, I believe, with a grain of salt. On the other hand, the discoveries of the metalinguists are valuable in that they point out by actual example the possibility of involved and "self-consistent" organization of reality on bases other than the metaphysical precepts of the Indo-European languages. Our readers are invited to consult S.I. Hayakawa's "What Is Meant by the Aristotelian Structure of Language?" in Language, Meaning and Maturity: Selections from ETC., 1943-1953 (New York: Harper, 1954).--Anatol Rapoport.]

It will be our contention that the usual effort to invest individual words with meaning has rested on the false assumption that words are self-sufficient elements of language. This assumption arose in part from our grammar in which subjects behave as constant bodies clothed in varying predicates, and thus gain a seeming independence from the rest of language. But, to anticipate some of the conclusions of our forthcoming analysis, there has been another, less noticed factor behind our attribution of meaning to separate words. This arises from the confusion of two distinct functions of our written word. On the one hand we have its phonetic function, by which it comes to stand for another symbol, namely, its corresponding speech word. In performing this task our written word often acquires the capacity to stand for other words indefinitely according to grammatical and logical rules. On the other hand, we have its designative function by which the word is said to name some "object." Our written word in every instance must fulfill the first function; it must stand for a speech word--that is why it is written. But only in some cases does it name an "object," that is, only when its corresponding speech word names an "object." In our highly literate culture we tend to forget to apply this basic test of a written word's nameability. If the written word is merely pronounceable it plays its primary role and, especially if it is a noun, we are prone to concede it the additional role of being a name as well. From this habit serious errors have arisen. In dealing with our so-called "higher abstract terms" we do not recognize that their "abstractness" often consists solely of an extension of their original phonetic function, in their acquired exchangeability for a plurality of other words. Hence we are apt to regard such words as the names of abstract things. By our historical argument we will attempt to clarify the basic linguistic conditions for these functions of naming and standing for. This will lead us to judge meaning through a pragmatic analysis of language rather than in the traditional terms of "ideas," "perceptions" or "objects." Many fine philosophic points will remain unresolved and certainly no adequate or final concept of meaning will be found, but we may be able to make some progress in attaining a more scientific and operational approach to the problem of meaning in our western languages.

What our culture today is in part confronted by is the collapse of a "picture theory" of language. While this theory best thrived during the great mathematico-deductive achievements of western thought, it was strongly supported by the image theory of mind developed in British empiricism. Now although "correspondence theories" of truth are not completely passe and are still being developed in increasingly subtle form, there is no longer an implicit assumption that all objects or events described in language are in some sense picturable. This leads to an important distinction.

The most completely picturable things are particular objects, like Mt. Blanc, President Eisenhower, the Empire State Building. To a lesser degree it is also possible to picture such objects as members of a class: we can picture mountains, men and buildings. The picturability of objects as class members depends on the amount of similarity between the members of the class. What is actually pictured in such cases is a low-order abstraction--but abstraction none the less. We can call such abstractions "perceptual abstractions" because they rest on the sensory similarities between particular "objects"--things which, like our three examples, are constantly peaked, two-legged, windowful. But these "perceptual abstractions" do not determine many of the other "groupings" we make from our experience: of wealth, equipment, honesty, intelligence, etc. Leaving aside for the moment the precise nature of these latter groupings, we can agree to call them "conceptual" and the terms that designate them "conceptual abstractions." What the members of these groups have in common is, in any case, not some thing that can be regarded as a "sensory similarity."

Now a "picture theory" of language is most plausible when linguistic abstractions are "perceptual." As we go up the abstraction ladder, however, the picture metaphor becomes less and less tenable. We can literally photograph any particular sensible object, like Hayakawa's "Bessie, the cow"; we can paint a reasonably communicable picture of cows generally; we can very roughly sketch quadrupeds, perhaps needing the aid of some conventional sign; but going beyond in any higher abstract direction--to mammals, organisms, farm assets--we are clearly stymied. No word, idea or image having any important physical or sensory resemblance to these latter classes is possible. Perhaps this is why the medieval "nominalists," the precursors of modern empiricism, agreed that such universals or classes were only "names" for collections of particulars. On the other hand, the scholastic "realists," who believed in the existence of classes or universals, had recognized the importance of these high-order abstractions in human thought, scientific as well as theological, and refused to dismiss them as mere "names," but instead, following Plato, reified them as conceptual entities. It is interesting to remember, however, that both of these Christian philosophies, in their polar opposition, nevertheless assumed that the function of language was somehow to reproduce, or re-present, that which it describes.

If we take the word "picture" too literally, of course, we can make all kinds of respectable philosophies look absurd. However, we are here primarily concerned with the criterion of meaning; and when we consider the historical development of language we shall see that the caricature we have drawn is not so far-fetched after all.

...

It is our demure little written word sitting there on paper as if it named, represented, or pictured something, which has sent philosophers scurrying for its external mate. In the non-Indo-European picture-scripts a word was a picture--it was meant to be. It was easy therefore to point out what kind of thing it pictured. This was the function of the word. And while the pictureword performed this function well, it was thereby prevented from engaging in complicated economizing and substitution relationships and developing "higher" theoretical disciplines. But our western script-words were devised to assist and supplement our speech. They were never constructed to usurp the function of the spoken sentence or to be vicars for events. In fact they have, as an extraordinary by-product of their original service, done something far more important. They have organized among themselves. They have acquired the function of levers for moving great masses of other words and so have done tasks they could never do separately as empirical delegates. In thus producing the miracle of western "abstract thinking," they have become our efficient servants either to remake or destroy our civilization.

RICHARD DETTERING, "WHAT PHONETIC WRITING DID TO MEANING"

EDITOR: NORA MILLER