form and function

[Edith A Moravcsik]

In his message of Friday, February 25, Jon Aske wrote: "...you cannot
separate form and function/meaning... The formal pole of any linguistic
unit... does not exist without the functional pole. They are the two
sides of the coin."

There are two claims that emerge from this statement:

  (1) Linguistic form and linguistic function cannot occur separately.
  (2) Linguistic form and linguistic function cannot be described
      separately.

These are of course very important "foundational" issues and I am
trying to think through them carefully.

Let us first consider the two points in GENERAL terms - i.e., not
specifically in relation to language.

  (1) DISTRIBUTIONAL SEPARABILITY
      What does it mean to say that two things occur separably or that
they are occur inseparably? (In)separability claims are about the
distribution of things. If two things are said to be separable in
occurrence, that means each can occur without the other: they are not
mutually cooccurrent (i.e., they are not mutually dependent on each other
for occurrence). If, on the other hand, they are said to be inseparable in
occurrence, that means neither can occur without the other: they are
mutually coocurrent or mutually dependent on each other for occurrence.

      For example, as Jon mentioned, the two sides of a coin are
inseparable: one side cannot occur without the other.
Similarly, a living head and its living body are inseparable. A man and
his shadow are also inseparable because, under the same light conditions,
neither can occur without the other. On the other hand, two different
coins, somebody's body and someone else's head, and one person's body and
somebody else's shadow are separable.

     Inseparable occurrence thus rules out a one-to-zero relationship
between the two things (i.e., one occurring without the other).
It also rules out one-to-many relationships: if two things are
inseparable, neither can vary without the other varying. Thus, each
coin can only have ONE other side; each person can only have ONE shadow
(given that light conditions remain the same and they involve a single
light source); and bodies cannot have varying heads and vice versa.

     Thus, inseparability of two objects means there is a constant
one-to-one relation between the two. One-to-zero and one-to-many relations
(where "many" means "many alternatives") are ruled out by
inseparability.

  (2) DESCRIPTIVE SEPARABILITY

      What does it mean to say that two things are independently
describable or that they are not describable independently? The
independent describability of two objects would mean that one can describe
one without describing the other. If two objects are not independently
describable, that would mean one cannot describe one without describing
the other.

      Can one think of ANY two things that are not independently
describable? Perhaps the only things that would meet this criterion
would be things that are in a type-subtype (or type-token) relationship.
For example, if I want to describe the concept "bird" and the concept
"whooping crane", they are not independently describable because I cannot
give a full description of the whooping crane without including the
description of birds in general; and I cannot give a valid description
of birds unless I know about all the different kinds of birds including
whooping cranes.

      If two things are independently describable, that does not mean that
the two descriptions cannot jointly serve in statements, such as as terms
in an explanatory argument. For example, a man and his shadow are
independently describable but in order to EXPLAIN the shape of the shadow,
one needs to make reference to properties of the man. Similarly, each side
of a coin is independently describable but the shape of one side depends
on the shape of the other side and thus explains it. Also, the size of a
head and the size of its body may be mutually explanatory (e.g., an
insect-size body could not support an elephant-size head).  But claiming
an explanans-explanadum relationship between two things does not mean that
they are not independently describable; in fact, it PRESUPPOSES that they
are (Talmy Givo'n' point).

     More generally, almost any statement ABOUT two objects - whether it
is a statement of an explanatory relationship or simply a distributional
relationship such as that they are separable or inseparable - presupposes
that the two objects are independently describable. For example,
when we say that the two sides of a coin are inseparable, what this means
is that we operate in terms of the separate concepts of one side and
the other side. Similarly, in order for the statement according to which
the man and his shadow are inseparable to make sense, we need to have a
separate concept (a separate description) of the man and of the shadow.

     In sum:

     (A) Re descriptive separability:
         Two things are descriptively inseparable if neither can be
         described without describing the other; they are descriptively
         separable if either can be described without describing the
         other. - Almost(?) any two things seem to be separately
         describable.

     (B) Re distributional separability:
         Two things are distributionally inseparable if neither can
         occur without the other; they are distributionally separable if
         either can occur without the other. - Some things are
         distributionally separable, other things are not.

     (C) Re the relationship between descriptive and distributional
         separability:
         The statement of any distributional claim about two things,
         whether saying that they are separable or that
         they are inseparable, presupposes that the two are
         separately describable.

Let us now apply these points to FORM AND FUNCTION in LANGUAGE.
The two questions to which we are looking for answers are these:

     (1) Are form and function distributionally separable or
         or descriptively inseparable?
     (2) Are form and function descriptively separable or
         descriptively inseparable?

If the above general considerations are valid, then even just raising
the first question about distributional separability implies that we are
talking about two different things when we say "form" and "function"
(Talmy Givo'n's point again) - that is, that the two are separately
describable. Thus, if question (1) makes sense both to
formalists and functionalist to the extent that both have it on their
agenda to try to answer it, this necessarily implies that both
formalists and functionalist subscribe to form and function as being
descriptively separate concepts. Thus, the answer to question (2) about
the DESCRIPTIVE independence of form and function would need to be in the
affirmative for linguists of both persuasions.

Acknowledging that form and function are descriptively
independent leaves question (1) about their DISTRIBUTIONAL independence
entirely open: the two may or may not be distributionally separable and
in fact one could design languages where the two are separable and
languages where they are inseparable. As suggested above, we can seek the
answer to whether form and function are distributionally independent or
not in actual languages by checking whether either can occur without the
other (one-to-zero relationship) and whether forms can occur with
alternative functions and functions can occur with alternative forms
(one-to-many relationship). If any of these hold, then the relationship is
that of separability rather than inseparability.

The separability of form and function (or meaning) for functional objects
in general can be easily demonstrated. A string of beads has a
describable form regardless whether it has a meaning (such as when it is
used as a rosary, with every bead standing for a prayer) or whether it has
no meaning (such as when it is used as a necklace). Similarly, a function
can occur without form in toolmaking; for example, the inventor of the
knife must have had in mind the function before he found the right form to
perform that function. Similarly, an object with the form of a knife
can be used for different alternative purposes (to cut things, to pry
something open, etc.); and each of these functions can be served by
different alternative forms.

What about language? Is there linguistic form without function? Is there
function without linguistic form? Are there multiple alternative
functions for a form? And are there multiple alternative forms for a
function? It seems to me that the answer to at least three of these four
questions is affirmative. Linguistic form without function is a string of
words that do not make sense. The existence of meaning without linguistic
form appears to be indicated by the "groping-for-words" phenomenon. And
examples of ambiguity and synonym (IF it exists...) bear out the
one-to-many relationship between form and meaning and thus the mutual
detachability of the two. Thus, the answer to question (1) above is that
form and meaning are not only descriptively but also distributionally
separable.

What is WRONG with this train of thought? (I am somewhat tentative
about it since I feel I am treading on "dangerous" grounds - I
shudder to think how a philosophically-trained person would evaluate it.)
Exactly which are the assumptions or the logical steps that are false or
at least questionable? Exactly WHERE would a CONTRARY argument part ways
with the one above - an argument that would lead us to the opposite
conclusions which I think Jon Aske and others hold true: that form and
function are both descriptively and distributionally inseparable?

Edith M.


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                         Edith A. Moravcsik
                         Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
                         University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
                         Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
                         USA

                         E-mail: edith at uwm.edu
                         Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
                                    (414) 332-0141 /home/
                         Fax: (414) 229-2741