The Language of Science / Word (Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay) Page | of 5 Polimetrica Word (Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay) Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay Indian Statistical Institute, India WOR(L)D-SPACES: DEFINITION OF “WORD” what -Clwhat is the word -Ciseeing all this -all this this -Clall this this here -Cifolly for to see what -Ciglimpse seem to glimpse -Lineed to seem to glimpse -Liafaint afar away over there what -Lfolly for to need to seem to glimpse afaint afar away over there what -Clwhat -Llwhat is the word ~ what is the word WHAT IS THE WORD, Samuel Beckett It is dialogic paper on the epistemological status of “word”, where a Proposer (P), a word-atomist, introduces three definitions of "word" or “sabda” (which is not an un-meaningful sound) per se and the Opponent (0), a discourse-holist, nullifies those three purvapaksa claims by mainly following Bhartrharian position. Let us hear/read their conversation on the divisibility of word. ©: I cannot understand the definition of word as I found that different writing-cultures represent the construct “word” differently and at the moment of speaking, I am totally oblivious about the existence of such thing as ding an sich, I cannot realize it, when I am speaking. P: You fool! Are you pretending that you are totally unaware of the existence of the word? Don’t you know word is a sub-unit of sentence, may be larger than morpheme and phoneme and smaller than sentence and discourse? 0: Therefore, your definition of word is: Word (W) Is subordinate to sentence (S) and thus W S. In addition, as a speaking subject, I do not even know the status of sentence, though I know, a tribe, called linguist tribe or grammarian tribe-they, out of their apodharabuddhi (technical intellect for analytical abstraction), are talking about, such hierarchical levels of analysis. Let me try to follow, for the time being, their analytical intellect as a strategic stance of my child's play (valanamupalalana), Now I wish to define written/printed “word” as something (visual black or any other colored figure) in between two (white or any other colors) spaces (grounds) and the boundaries of word depend on the particular literate community's way of manipulating blank (or, one may call it as “other” spaces, latter on I would call it as "silenceme’, which is coined with the analogy of phoneme, morpheme, lexeme—different unit-levels of traditional linguistic analysis ) spaces in their printing/writing, ! Thus, “word” is a culture-specific concept or a construct or a historical @ priori, which has only visual representation from the perspective of context-sensitive speaking subject. There is no Such representation in the game of speaking. I repeat with emphasis, a literate speaking subject, in his/her printing/writing culture, has only a visual sensation of word (in case of visually challenged person, the construct of “word” depends on the tangible intelligibility). The blank/other spaces or silencemes (please see the interplay of blank and written spaces in the above-cited Beckett's poem, where blank spaces are foregrounded and one may read printed word as a non- figure) may be perceived /cognized as a category called absence or abhava (absence is always designated in relation to “something”. One could perceive absence by assigning the absential qualifier/ counterpositive to the locus of empty locus/ referend, qualificand. ) I wish to show you a peculiar example from Bangla, where there is a confusion between word-boundary and bound morpheme boundary as it is represented in written discourse: Primarily, I have faced a problem with the bound (thus it is not a “free” form) morpheme classifier /-Ta/ in the Bangla sentences like . korchiSTa ki? do-present continuous (-Honorific)-classifier what? “what are you doing?” korchoTa ki? do-present continuous-(+-Honorific) classifier what? korchenTa ki? do-present continuous (+Honorifie) classifier what? HoccheTa ki ? happen-present continuous- classifier what? “What is happening?” In all these cases bound morpheme /-Ta/ is lonely as it is not a part of the preceding verbs which have already got inflections and thus are closed though ortho-formaily /Ta/ is “written with” those verb. In all these cases wh- abject (invariably a noun) Is missing as the speaker of these sentences does not have the cognition of that wh- object or otherwise s/he is cognizing the absence. The second possibility s that s/he may have the pragmatic ‘competence of cognizing that wh-object but s/he is pretending to be an ignorant. Whatever it may be the syntactic interpretation, what is noticeable here is the attached occurrence of so-called bound morpheme with the inflected (thus tis a closed word according to traditional morphology) verb. The gap (supposed locus of the noun ‘or wh-object) between verb and the bound morpheme is deleted in the Bangla ortho-formal convention. P: Oh! You are negating the existence of word. I am sympathetic to your view that words can be difficult to identify in actual speech in many languages and our ability to do so is colored by the conventions of type. However, in lots of languages, there are ‘word level’ phenomena like vowel harmony, that give clues to wordThe Language of Science / Word (Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay) Page 2 of 5 boundaries, and even for iliterate people, the word has some kind af essential psychological reality. More over, word-boundary is constrained by the occurrence/ non-occurrence of certain sounds in intial, medial or final Position, e.g., in Bangla, velar nasal /N/ and retroflex stop /R/ does nat occur in the initial position of the word. 0: As a naive speaking subject, I do not know the ontological levels of hierarchical linguistic analysis. At the vyavaharika (the pragmatic world of utility) level, there may be an essential existence of fragmentation of language per se as one member of grammarian-tribe can deploy analytical tools to teach or to preserve? a particular linguistic variety, but from the standpoint of na(t)ive speaking subject, s/he does not to know the procedural as well as prescriptive rules of grammar as for example, the pacers in the cricket do not need to know procedural rules of Aerodynamics to swing the ball. However, you are quite right about the fact of "boundary” in the context of supposed word. I wish to start questioning this boundary in relation to the ethico-political problems of constrained freedom. Let us start our child's play with the level of Phonology. What is "word" really in case of such pre-lexical studies? You can talk about so-called word-stress, however, at the moment of speaking, from the speaking subject's position, it is not (word-) stress, but its rather a harmonic intonation of a discourse, which the speaking subject is expressing as a continuum without being ontologically conscious about the grammarians’ order of things (different levels of language, viz. phoneme, morpheme, word, phrase, sentence...). As word does not exist af the time of speaking, the word-stress Is also an absentee at the moment of speaking, though the memory of these blank spaces may also influence the way of speaking of a literate speaker or even the contiguous Visible/audible elements (atyantasamsrsta) influence each others non-free pronouncement. It is meaningless to account stress by isolating a ‘word (which is actually a citation form as itis lemmatized in the dictionary produced by the print capitalism. 3) from the speech continuum. Thus, the typological differences (as designated in the order Polysynthetic, Synthetic, Agglutinating and Analytic languages) of languages on the basis of word- morpheme ratio hold no water at all (in case of universal truth-claim of the typalogical classification) if we do not consider the literate culture-specificty of something called "word" as, as per my hypothetical cultural writing convention, Icanwritelikethis if am not being controlled by the language-managers, language-judges or language polices of the civilized society (i.e, if Tam licensed by my civilized language guardians) of particular imagined linguistic nation state, though 1 know that this license is not being given to me as there is always an existence of referring in the linguistic imagination. P: Tt is correct that speech is a continuous string of sounds. However, I do not believe that you have demonstrated that the word does not exist. Word boundaries are relevant to the application of phonological processes in any number of languages, so they clearly have some sort of mental reality. Furthermore, how could speakers Identify a particular string of sounds (i.e., a word) as “the same,” even in different contexts, even when inflected, if there were no psychological reality to words? For stress-timed languages (like English), word stress is a fixed feature of a word that shows up regardless of environment, though it can be affected by adjacent stress and sentential intonation. Finally, the spaces between words in writing (in those systems that separate words by spaces) are an artifact of the existence of words, and not an artifical constraint imposed by literacy. In sum, although provocative, I do not find the arguments presented convincing, I do not believe they demonstrate the statement “As word does not exist” and therefore, the conclusions dependent on that statement are not supported, I am fairly content with defining ‘word’ as ‘a minimal free form’. It is usually easy to elicit minimal free forms by asking the right questions, e.g. ‘Where have you been?” ‘Out ‘What did you do?” ‘Nothing’. Once you have a few of these things, you can investigate their prosodic properties and see how they apply in connected speech O: What is the ethico-epistemological meaning of “freedom” of word as a minimal free form. Where does lay the essential “freedom” of word? What is “freedom”, when we are talking about word's freedom? Particularly speaking, what do you think about the freedom of the bound morpheme /-Ta/ in the above cited examples 1 to 4? If Lam taking, for the time being, existentialist position, I wish to make you remember that the anguish as well as anxiety of freedom, which is constrained by the stipulated boundary of my compulsive un-doing. Not only that, when you are imposing your own culture-specifc (even it may be of your so-called “scientific” culture) definition of words to other linguistic varieties’ speaking subject, you are hegemonizing the freedom of “other” speaking/hearing subjects and it is obviously a case of grammaticalization or grammatical colonization. I do not subscribe such referred dominance. Secondly, when you were asking me, “What're you doing?" I said, “Nothing.” This single word, “nothing” , a supposed minimal “free” form in this so-called single word-sentence, is not free at all—“nothing” ’s freedom was pervaded by “other” non-signs, nothingness, the unspoken or something unspeakable, the non-discursive sonority or unintended sounds (cf. John Cage’s musical compositions or in Rauschenberg and Robert Ryman’ Minimalist paintings with almost white surfaces.) The act of speaking is constrained, appropriated, approximated by the nspeakable/ unspoken spaces—so-called blank spaces(as itis perceived by the context-sensitive speaking/hearing subject) are controlling the revealed speech (non-silence, here, in case of silenceme, it is a counterpositive). These blank spaces are emitting different surplus meanings in different space-times and non- signs are endowed with the supposed sign-ness. That is the de-sign of "silenceme” as its de-sign-ated within the sign-ness. Silenceme is not absence of speaking, but itis a subjective spatio-temporal “perception” of absence of speaking. Let me reiterate Sartre: these silencemes itself are to be defined in relationship to speaking, as the pause in music receives its meaning from the group of notes round it. The silence is a moment of language; being silent is not being dumb; it is refuse to speak, and therefore keep on speaking. (Sartre, 1948/86: 14) P: According to your view, segmentation in the levels of linguistic analysis is a crime. Some Post-Formalists do not believe in the existence of the morpheme, though they are talking about word-morphology. Though they have a presupposition of a pre-given axiomatic entity called “word”, you are even now negating word, The domain of Analytical Science does not consider your naive arguments as a technically correct procedure for Linguistics. However, how do you then analyze suprasegments, when you are ignoring seaments? O: Existing literature on gauging intonational contours in Linguistics mainly depends on the three parameters (High, Mid, Lov) to be determined by the trained ears of the Phoneticians. Though, there are software and machines for analyzing sound waves that does not provide us with a generalized picture of intonational contours http://www. polimetrica.cu/site/?p=127 1/29/2010The Language of Science / Word (Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay) Page 3 of 5 with specific reference points along with calculated intervals. These parameters as reference points for Intonational contours do not tell us anything, as none exactly knows the proportionate distances or intervals among such naive parameters. Therefore, I am now talking about the differAnce (a la Derrida) between so-called normal speech and music. 1, for the time being, am now deferring the difference between speech and music Though the melody of music is “heavy” and the melody of speaking is “light’, still both of them follows the same aigorithm—-the algorithm of dot, re, mi, fa, so(|), la, tl and do2, |.e., the ad hoc hypothesis is that, any normal speech falls within the octave that has a definite range. If the lower DO 1 is x, upper Sa DO 2 is 2x and this x to 2x octave range is considered as y, the intermediate noticeable frequency-points, as per musical system, are 22 Therefore, the point of concentration is ¥/22. In a scale y that has a range of x to 2x (i.e., any points ony, say ysub>p, satisfies the relation x >y, <2x). And the interval between two notes follows logarithmic pattern as the 9ap between two notes (say x, and y, ) is 222 (please note the human love for binary-figures in this formulated as well as formal representation). Thus, this hypothesis leads to an activity—I.e., making notation of “normal” speech to understand the Intonation pattern of discursive speaking vis a vis musicking. P: Now, you are introducing a formalism by keeping aside your non-formalist arguments. This switch over is an Important move as it shows your inconsistency regarding your method. You are swinging from one pole to another and not only that you are also politicalizing the epistemological domain by introducing the concept of imagined Nation State and its subsequent civil society. However, my third argument for the existence of word is like this: Word as a signifier denotes matter or the order of world, i.e., a certain level of picturing is involved here. Pada (words as deployed in the sentences), rather than sabda(word in isolation), denotes padartha. ©: In case of this definition, that puts word as a signifier, which is signifying something (object, signified), I have two points to say: (a) word as signifying representation, represents other representative signifiers, not signified or Pada as signified or referent, thanks to the anthropocentric perceptive limit, is always unknown and unknowable and all wo(I)ds are not subservient to ostensive definition; (b) the order of supposed signified or the order of things is always subservient to the spatio-temporal de-sign-ation and therefore, bears different representations in different space and time and thus equating pada (word as deployed in so-called sentences) with padartha (matter) or wor(!}d-logic that pursues minimal substantive representation as the thetic (sthitalaksana) meaning of the wor(I)d cuts a sorry figure. There is no sthitalaksana of intimately attached (atyantasamsrsta) (supposed) words, if that linguistic society is not controlled by the regimented language police (e.g., the regimented society as depicted in Tagore’s Kingdom of Cards, Orwell's 1984 or Godard’s Alphaville. If you have objections against these political jibes in the domain of “pure” [?] epistemology, I am really sorry to mention such facts—I am again sorry, pardon me, fictions. Sometimes facts and fictions are synonymous to me. Sorry). Secondly, the searching for (original) signified triggers metaphysics of presence or logocentrism P: Your stand is an extremist one. You are not a subscriber of vyaiakaranika-hypothesis or word-atomist views (and anvitavidhanavada as well as abhihitanvayavada).* Even you do not utter anything on Bhartrhari’s sphota- theory. What's your own position? ©: Apparently, for the time being, I am a believer of discourse-holism(not the sentence-holism as proposed by Bhartrhari), j.e., the hypothesis of intimate attachment of sound-continuum in a given discourse that also bears the marks of scattered, fragmented blank loci of silencemes. Lastly, please allow me to become trivial and let me end with a joke. This joke may demonstrate the power of such silencemes in the written-discourse: An English professor wrote the words:C “A woman without her man is nothing”Don the chalkboard and asked his students to punctuate it correctly. C1CIAll of the males in the class wrote: "A woman, without her man, is nothing. ”CICiAlll the females in the class wrote:(] "A woman: without her, man is nothing.” © Silenceme is powerful P: Thave only one accusation against you: you do not have any definite universal truth-claims regarding word, Your arguments swing from one truth-room to another truth-room (e.g., from non-formalism to the formalism of segmenting suprasegmentals. You are cutting off something that cannot be cut off) and that generates inconsistency, which is not at all desirable in the domain of lingulstic science or philosophy. You are also ignoring the existence of polysemous words in case of tonal languages. O: Yes, that is my discrete charm for the anekantavada. You may also treat my enunciation as an instance of anti- logocentric discursive formation. O.K., let me pronounce my position on “word” following anekantavada: somehow (syat) "word" is and sometime word is not and somehow it is indeterminate and somehow it is and it is not and it is indeterminate etc. ENDNOTES 1, Banerjee, 1988: 111 noted these differences in culture-specific written order of things: “If showing means what It ordinarily means, then how can the sentence show it? When I write, ‘A is to the right of B’, in the sentence A occupies the left-side position, but to communicate this information I need not write like my friend Moulana Saheb in Arabic." 2, The questions are: Why grammars or/and vyakarana are written? What Is the purpose (vidyasamucidesa) of the grammar or/and vyakarana? Though Panini did not describe his vidyasamuddesa, Patanjali in his Mahabhasya, Clearly described the purposes of vyakarana and all of the purposes are extra-/non-epistemological as the main Purpose of this analytical procedure was to preserve a certain variety, which might not be contaminated by the languages of “other” (pisaca, mleccha, raksasa, anyavrata, sudra etc.) . For detailed discussion, cf. Cardona (1997: 543-56) or Dasgupta 1991. See also Bandyopadhyay, 1997, 2006, 3. Cf. Lass, 1984: 295-98 for detailed discussion on the “difference between Citation Forms (CFs) of lexical items http://www polimetrica.ew/site/2p=127 1/29/2010‘The Language of Science / Word (Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay) Page 4 of S ~the shape they take in isolation, or in the stressed positions in a very careful speech—and their form in (certain) syntactic contexts.” Lass (ibid) observed that in the casual speech, sequences of CFs (these are the extracts taken by the analyst after the event/process/state of speaking) are put together to constitute larger-than-the-word phenomena or syntactic constructions. In this paper, the opponent is proposing discourse (something in between two silencemes ) as the holistic unit from the perspective of speaking/hearing subject and thus s/he is subscribing subjective interpretation of language per se rather than that of analyst's objective perspective. 4. For the English versions of the detailed discussion on this polemic among Mimamsakas, Vyaiakaranikas and Vaidantins cf. Matilal, 2001, Bhattacharya, 1962, Sastri, 1983 Coward et al., 1990 etc. I do not venture to show the basic tenets of these schools regarding the status of "word” as ample English versions are avallable. Appendix To understand the culture-specificity of the construct "word" let us scrutinize the following translated discourse, cited from a Bangla text book of Grammar (Chattopadhyay, 1939:194) "Sanskrit compound words should be written as single pada (in Bangla). However in Bangla, the (Sanskrit) many- pada-compounds are written with divisible gaps to curtail thelr lengthy look. To overcome optic- obstacles/disturbances, hyphenated words are used, but (Bengali) writers are inattentive regarding the use of hyphens due to their unsettled practice and slow coach character. Therefore, in Bangla, there is a convention to write (Sanskrit) compound words with divisible gaps. Many-word-compounds are against the nature of Bangi and Bengali readers are not habituated to visualize the big many-word-compounds as single word. (On the other hand) It is very tedious to maintain analytical divisibility of (Sanskrit) word (in written Bangla). Thus its possible to write with such divisible spaces/gaps in Bangla and this convention of writing (with gaps in Sanskrit words, when those many-word-compounds are represented in Bangla writing system) may be designated as loose ‘compounds or asamlagna samasa (compound of un-intimated/ unattached padas).” (emphasis added, translated by the author of the paper) The following observations can be made on the above discourse 1. The discursive formation shows high ambivalent tension for making decision on the two/three types of convention/custom/culture of writing word in separation/hypenation/incorporation 2, It considers something as “natural” (for Bangla) and immediately switches over to so-called culture-specific terms like “unsettled practice (or not get into the habit)", “optic-obstacles/disturbances”.This aporia regarding the ature-culture dichotomy reveals the metaphysics of presence. 3, How do we manipulate gaps in between “two words”? This problematic question leads to a birth of a new undecidable categoreme "asamlangna samamsa” or unattached compound, It is at a time a compound and it is not a compound. Colophon: Harry Feldman, Blaine P. Erickson. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bandyopadhyay, D, 1997. “Towards a Praxis of Anti-Grammar.” International Journal Of Dravidian Linguistics. Vol . XXV, No.1. (pp.126-132). Thiruvanthapurarn. http://linguistlist.org/pubs/papers/browse-papers-action.cfm? PaperID=7862 and http://cat. nist fr/?aModele=atficheN&cpsidt=2457511 2006. ” eY je amar bhaSar rOktakto Sorir: bEkaron.” (This Is The Blooded Body Of My Language: Grammar ) Prasanga Bangla Byakaran 2 A Collection of Articles on Bengali Grammar. Bangla Academy, Govt. of West Bengal, Kolkata. (pp. 112-146) ISBN: 81-7751-137-8 http://linguistlist.org/pubs/papers/browse-papers- action.cfm?PaperID=8002 a _ 2006. "Silenceme: the silent other in Linguistics” LINGUIST List 17.2149, Eastern Michigan University and Wayne State University. http ://linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-2149.html# Banerjee, K.K. 1988. “Wittgngenstein versus Naiyayika”. Sengupta, K. et al ed, Language, Knowledge and Ontology. New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research. Bhattacharya, B, 1962. A Study In Language and Meaning. Kolkata: Progressive Publisher. Cardona, G. 1997. Panini: His Work and its tradition. New Delhi: Motilal Banrasidas. Chattopadhyay, S. K. 1939/1987. bhaSa prokaS baNgala bEkOron Kolkata: Rupa & Co Coward, G.H., Raja, K.K. 1990, Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophy. The Philosophy of Grammarians. New Delhi: Motilal Banrasidas. Dasgupta, P.1996. “The Word And Not the Morpheme”, Studies in Humanities and Social science, Vol. IIT. (pp.81- 85) Dasgupta, 5.N. 1991. The Mahabhasya of Patanjali. New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research. Derrida, J. 1976/1994. Of Grammatology. (Tr. G.C. Spivak) Delhi: Motilal Banarasidas. Ganguly, H.K, 1963. Philosophy of Logical Construction. Kolkata: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar. Lass, R. 1984, Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . http://www polimetrica.ew/site/?p=127 1/29/2010The Language of Science / Word (Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay) Page 5 of $ Matilal, B. K, 1985. Logic, Language and Reality. Delhi: Motilal Banarasidas, Matilal, B.K, 2002, The Word and the World. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, Sartre, J.P, 1948. What is Literature? London: Mithuen. Sastri, G. 1983. The Philosophy of Word and Meaning. Kolkata: Sanskrit College. Comments closed — Trackback URI RSS 2.0 feed for these comments This entry (permalink) was posted on Tuesday, August 28, 2007, at 11:04 amby admin and categorized in Word.