Language Universals [3rd printing. Reprint 2019 ed.] 9783110802528, 9789027932457

Table of contents :
Preface
Table Of Contents
1. Introduction: Marked and Unmarked Categories
2. Phonology
3. Grammar and Lexicon
4. Common Characteristics in Phonology, Grammar, and Lexicon
5. Universals of Kinship Terminology
References

Citation preview

JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA

MEMORIAE

NICOLAI VAN WIJK

DEDICATA

edenda curai C. H. VAN S C H O O N E V E L D Indiana University Series Minor,

59

w

LANGUAGE UNIVERSALS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO FEATURE HIERARCHIES

by

JOSEPH H. GREENBERG

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Second

printing

MOUTON PUBLISHERS • THE HAGUE • PARIS • NEW YORK

First edition: 1966 Second printing:

1976

Third printing:

1980

ISBN 90 279 3245 X © Copyright 1966 by Mouton Publishers, The Hague, The Netherlands No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print,

photoprint,

microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers

Printed in Great Britain

PREFACE

The work presented here is a somewhat revised and expanded version of the paper "Language Universals" which appeared in Volume III of Current Trends in Linguistics. Like most of the other papers in that volume, it arose out of a group of four lectures delivered in the Forum series of the Linguistic Institute at Indiana University held during the summer of 1964. Discussion with students and staff at the Institute and comments from colleagues regarding the version later submitted to Current Trends have been of value to me in preparing the present version. I wish to express my appreciation of all those whose reaction to the paper in its earlier form assisted me in the present revision. I wish particularly to express my gratitude to Professor Cornelius van Schooneveld for his assistance in carrying through arrangements for the publication in its present form.

TABLE O F CONTENTS

Preface

5

1. Introduction: Marked and Unmarked Categories . . .

9

2. Phonology

13

3. Grammar and Lexicon

25

4. Common Characteristics in Phonology, Grammar, and Lexicon "

56

5. Universals of Kinship Terminology

72

References

88

1

INTRODUCTION MARKED AND UNMARKED CATEGORIES

The problem of universals in the study of human language as in that of human culture in general concerns the possibility of generalizations which have as their scope all languages or all cultures. The question is whether underlying the diversities which are observable with relative ease there exist valid general principles. Such invariants would serve to specify in a precise manner the notion of 'human nature' whether in language or in other aspects of human behavior. They would, in effect, on the lowest level correspond to the 'empirical generalization' of the natural sciences. On higher levels they might be dignified by the name of laws. The search for universals, therefore, coincides on this view with the search for laws of human behavior, in the present context more specifically those of linguistic behavior. It was pointed out in an earlier study that for a statement about language to be considered fully general it is sufficient that it have as its logical scope the set of all languages.1 The logical form may vary. It is typically, though not invariably, implicational. For all values of X, if X is language, then, if it contains some feature u, it always contains some further feature P, but not necessarily vice-versa. Statements of this form, it is maintained, satisfy all of the usual requirements for fully general statements. The logical equivalence of such statements to certain typological ones has also been indicated.2 Thus if all languages with the feature a, also have P, then a typology defined by the four logically possible types 1 J. H. Greenberg, J. J. Jenkins, and C. E. Osgood, "Memorandum concerning language universals", Universals of language, ed. J. H. Greenberg 258 (Cambridge, Mass.. 1963). 2 J. H. Greenberg, ed., "Introduction", Universals of language x (Cambridge, Mass., 1963).

10

INTRODUCTION: MARKED A N D UNMARKED CATEGORIES

produced by the combinations of a and not-a with (5 and not-P (i.e. 1. Languages with both a and p, 2. Languages with a and with not-P, 3. Languages with not-a and P, 4. Languages with not-a and not-P) when applied to the empirically existing languages will give the following result. One of the types, namely a and not-P will have no members since if a language has a, ex hypothesi it always has p also, and thus never not-p. It may be pointed out that the unrestricted (non-conditional) universals can be considered a logically limiting case in which a single feature only is involved. In this case there are two typological classes, languages with a and languages with not-a, and the latter class has no members. Though in previous studies all of the generalizations stated have been synchronic in nature, it has been proposed that some connections between diachronic process and synchronic regularities must exist since no change can produce a synchronically unlawful state and all synchronic states are the outcome of diachronic processes. In the present study, which is frankly speculative and exploratory, the questions just mentioned are the subject of further investigation. The topic of universals is here approached through the consideration of a single, but as it will turn out, rich and complex set of notions, those pertaining to marked and unmarked categories. What at first might seem very limited subject matter in relation to the more general one of universals, will in fact lead to the proposing of a considerable number of specific universals. The concept of the marked and unmarked will be shown to possess a high degree of generality in that it is applicable to the phonological, the grammatical, and the semantic aspects of language. Moreover, the topic is of such a nature that it will afford the opportunity of illustrating from concrete materials a number of the general methodological problems already mentioned: the relation between typology and universals; the relation of synchronic regularities to diachronic processes; and the problems of levels of generalization. In particular, it will be shown that the concept of marked and unmarked categories provides the possibility of formulating higher level hypotheses with deductive consequences in the form of more

INTRODUCTION : MARKED AND UNMARKED CATEGORIES

11

specific universals commonly arrived at by a more purely empirical consideration of the evidence. Moreover, as is usual in such cases, it will in certain instances suggest hypotheses which might not have occurred to the investigator outside of the more inclusive theory. In the final section, a specific application of this kind is made to the highly organized semantic area of kinship terminologies. Although this subject matter no doubt presents a more systematic semantic structure than is to be found by and large in language, nevertheless it is reasonable to suppose that the principles to be found here are operative elsewhere to the extent that a similar, even if usually lesser, degree of such organization is to be found. The idea of marked and unmarked categories is chiefly familiar to linguists from Prague school phonology. The best known instance is doubtless Trubetzkoy's classic Grundziige der Phonologie, in which the notion plays an important role. 3 In "Signe zéro" and other writings Jakobson showed that these ideas could be applied to the study of grammatical categories and to semantics. 4 In the present study we shall be chiefly concerned with the following problems: what, if any, are the common features which would justify the equating of the concept of unmarked and marked ciitetories in fields as diverse as phonology, grammar, and semantics? Is it possible to isolate some one characteristic which might serve as definitional for this notion which tends to take on Protean shapes? What is the connection between marked and unmarked categories and universals? In the discussion of these

* N . S. Trubetzkoy, Grundziige der Phonologie (Prague, 1939). It is not the purpose here to give a detailed historical account. The first occurrence of the terminology marked and unmarked (in phonology) appears t o be by Trubetzkoy in 1931, "Die phonologischen Systeme", TCLP, 4, 96-116, especially p. 97. The first explicit use of this terminology for grammatical categories is probably by Jakobson in "Zur Struktur des russischen Verbums", Charistera Guilelmo Mathesio ... 74-84 (Prague, 1932). Cf. also with a different terminology Hjelmslev in La Catégorie des Cas (Aarhus, 1935), particularly p. 113. Earlier adumbrations of these ideas in reference to inflectional categories are to be found in certain Russian grammarians, e.g. Peshkovskij, Karcevskij. 4 R. Jakobson, "Signe Zéro", in Mélanges Baity 143ff. (Geneva, 1939).

12

INTRODUCTION: MARKED AND UNMARKED CATEGORIES

subjects, applications will first be considered in phonology and then in grammar and semantics. The treatment will be at least partly in terms of the history of the subject, but it should be understood that the historical material is purely illustrative and merely incidental to the main purpose.

2

PHONOLOGY

The first use of the concept of marked and unmarked categories was in Prague school phonology. It arose in the context of the problem of neutralization and the archiphoneme. It was noted that in certain environments the contrast between correlative sets was neutralized in that both could not occur. By correlative set is meant a group of phonemes, usually two in number, which differ only in a single feature of the same category (e.g. voice, when one is unvoiced and the other voiced) and whose remaining shared features are not found in any other set. Thus, in English b and p are a correlative pair since they differ in voicing only and in regard to their remaining features they are the only non-nasal bilabial stops. In environments in which they do not contrast, the representative of the so-called archiphoneme, that is, the unit defined by the common features, may either be externally determined, that is, be conditioned by adjacent phonemes, or be internally determined. This last case is one in which a single phoneme always appears regardless of the environing sounds. A good example of external determination, found in many languages, is the neutralization of the contrast among nasals before stops where the choice is determined by the following homorganic consonant. A commonly cited example of internal conditioning is the neutralization of voice in final position for obstruents in German. Here it is always the unvoiced phoneme which appears regardless of the environment. The choice is thus internally conditioned. Another well-known example is classical Sanskrit where, in sentence final the opposition among voiced and unvoiced stops and aspirated and non-aspirated stops is neutralized and the unvoiced, unaspirated phoneme appears as the representative of the archiphoneme.

14

PHONOLOGY

Although, in principle, no doubt, neutralization is viewed as a phenomenon specific to each language, one cannot help noting that in different languages it is generally the same category which appears in the position of neutralization. Thus in both German and Sanskrit it is the unvoiced member of the unvoiced/voiced opposition which is found. The feature which occurs in such instances is called the unmarked feature and the other the marked. Thus voicing is a marked feature; unvoicing an unmarked feature in German. Again for Sanskrit the unaspirated feature and the unvoiced feature are both unmarked as against the aspirated and voiced which are marked features. It may be noted in passing that in both these instances the unmarked feature is described phonetically by a term itself having a negative prefix un- while the marked feature lacks it. This turns out to be generally true. Thus nasality is a marked feature while non-nasality is the corresponding unmarked feature. It is as though the marked feature is a positive something, e.g. nasality, aspiration, while the unmarked feature is merely its lack. This aspect, not explicitly noted by Trubetzkoy, will reappear very importantly in our later consideration of marked and unmarked features in grammar and lexicon. Another important characteristic of unmarked and marked categories noted by Trubetzkoy is that of text frequency. In general the unmarked category has higher frequency than the marked. It is of some interest to note that George K. Zipf, in his pioneering studies of language frequency phenomena, had arrived at the same hypotheses by a different, but, as can be shown, ultimately related route, and some of his results are quoted by Trubetzkoy. For, if the marked feature contains something which is absent from the unmarked, it is relatively more complex and by Zipf's well known principle of least effort the more complex should be used less frequently. 1 Most of Zipf's data refer to the categories of voiced and unvoiced consonants and aspirated and unaspirated consonants. He also cites data regarding vowel length from Icelandic on the assumption that long vowels are more complex than the corre1

G. K. Zipf, especially Psychobiology of language (Boston, 1935) and Human behavior and the principle of least effort (Cambridge, Mass., 1949).

PHONOLOGY

15

sponding short vowels, that is, that length is the marked feature. In general Zipf's hypotheses regarding aspirated and voiced consonants hold although there are a few exceptions, it may be noted that Ferguson's hypotheses regarding the relatively greater text frequency of non-nasal over nasal vowels is consonant with the general thesis of the greater frequency of unmarked features. 2 Additional data on the less frequently considered cases of marked and unmarked phonologic features compiled by myself are presented here, along with some evidence already published in other sources and cited here for purposes of comparison. My own data are to be considered tentative insofar as the samples are small, usually 1000 phonemes. The results, nevertheless, are obviously significant and unlikely to be seriously modified by subsequent work. The following are examples of counts, all done by myself, on the relative frequency of glottalic and non-glottalic consonants in the following languages: Hausa, in West Africa, and the Amerind languages Klamath, Coos, Yurok, Chiricahua Apache, and Maidu. In the case of Hausa, voiced implosives contrast with ordinary voiced consonants in the pairs b/6 and d/cf, and glottalized consonants contrast with non-glottalized in the pairs k/k', s/s' (in Kano and some other dialects usually ts'), and y/'y. In Maidu voiced implosives as well as glottalized contrast with ordinary unvoiced consonants in certain positions. In the other languages a single series of unvoiced, unglottalized consonants occurs, but for Chiricahua 1 have counted the three series unaspirated, aspirated, and glottalized. The results for each language are found in Tables I, II, III, IV, V and VI, and the results for the six languages are summarized and compared in Table VII. 3 2

C. A . Ferguson, "Assumptions about nasals; a sample study in phonological universals", in Universals of language ed. J. H. Greenberg 46 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963). 3 The Hausa count consists of the first J000 phonemes on pages 1, 5 and 9 of R. C. Abraham Hausa literature and the Hausa sound system (London, 1959) [Greenberg]; Klamath from M. A. R. Barker, Klamath texts (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963), first 1000 on pages 6, 16 and 26 [Greenberg]; C o o s from L. Frachtenberg, Coos texts (Leyden, 1913) first 1000 from pages 5, 7, 14, 17, 20 and 24 (14 from commencement of new story on middle of page) [Greenberg]; Yurok from R. H. Robins, The Yurok language (Berkeley and Los Angeles,

16

PHONOLOGY TABLE I Hausa

(1000

phonemes)

b

17.0

5

00.2

d

19.8

cf

03.7

k

21.9

k'

02.8

s

14.2

ts'

00.3

y

19.3

y'

00.8

TABLE II Klamath

(1000

phonemes)

P t

02.8

b

01.8

d

04.7

P' t'

00.3

07.6

6

08.7

j

00.2

Ò'

01.5

k

10.4

g

06.1

k'

02.1

q l

02.4

02.4

05.4

g L

00.5

q' r

00.7

m

04.0

M

00.4

m'

01.3

n

13.9

N

00.1

n'

00.8

w

08.3

W

00.2

w'

00.4

y

08.6

Y

00.0

y'

00.6

01.9

01.9

TABLE III Coos

(1000

P t

02.9

TABLE IV

phonemes)

Yurok

00.0

23.9

P' t'

01.1

P t

ts

12.8

ts'

00.0

5

15.8

V

01.9

k

03.8

k-'

01.0

k

07.7

k'

02.0

q 1

09.9

q' r

00.6

11.4

(1000

08.9

phonemes) 01.0

14.3

P' t'

00.2

c

12.9

c'

00.8

k

38.3

k'

10.1

k

w

11.4

w

k '

02.1

05.2

1958) first 1000 on pages 162, 164 and 166 [Greenberg]; Chiricahua from H. Hoijer, Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache texts (Chicago, 1938), first 1000 on pages 5 , 1 0 , 1 5 , 2 0 , 2 3 and 25 [Greenberg]; Maidu from W. F. Shipley, Maidu texts and dictionary (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963) first 1000 on pages 10, 20, 30 and 40 [Greenberg].

17

PHONOLOGY TABLE V

Chiricahua (1000 phonemes) aspirated unaspiratedjunglottalized t 05.3 d 28.2 03.0 c 05.8 z z 07.7 01.8 c % 00.1 X 02.3 21.4 k 13.4 g

glottalized t' 03.3 c' 00.0 5' 02.8 V 01.2 k' 03.7

TABLE VI

P t ts k

Maidu (1000 09.3 P' 19.6 t' 00.2 ts' 19.2 k'

phonemes) 00.5 6 01.4 cf 19.9 11.4

05.9 13.1 — —

TABLE VII

Summary Hausa: non-glottalic 92.2; glottalic 07.8 Klamath: unvoiced stops/voiced sonants 72.1; voiced stops/ unvoiced sonants 16.4; glottalized 11.5 Coos: unvoiced non-glottalized 88.2; glottalized 11.8 Yurok: unvoiced non -glottalized 85.8; glottalized 14.2 Chiricahua: unaspirated 62.6; aspirated 26.4; glottalized 11.0 Maidu: unvoiced unglottalized 48.3; glottalized 32.7; implosive 19.0 The material just cited displays a decisively greater over-all frequency for non-glottalized over glottalized consonants and, in the case of Chiricahua, also the unaspirated over aspirated as is evident from the summary in Table VII. Further, with the single exception of the Maidu pair ts/ts' this relationship holds for every single pair. In Chiricahua where the second and third column consist of consonants with the different marked features aspiration and glottalization the usual hierarchy is unaspirated, aspirated, glottalized as though glottalization were an even more marked

18

PHONOLOGY

feature than aspiration. However, for the sets with the lowest over-all frequency c/5' and %¡V this is reversed. There is, however, no exception in Chiricahua to the rule that in each set the consonant in the first column is more frequent than that in either the second or third. For vowel nasalization, Ferguson and Chowdhury report a short count on Bengali vowels in which the ratio of non-nasalized to nasalized vowels was 50:1. 1 counted the first thousand vowels in Stendhal's Le rouge et le noir and found 82.5% oral vowels to 17.5% nasal. 4 In connection with vowel length, further data are given below for Chiricahua Apache in which the vowel system involves both length and nasalization. Here the ratio of oral vowels, whether short or long, was 12.8:1 to the number of nasalized vowels, whether short or long. Data are now presented for vowel length for Icelandic, Sanskrit, Hungarian, Finnish, Karok, and Chiricahua. 5 TABLE VIII

a e i o 4

Icelandic 9.724 a: 5.728 e: 7.028 i: 1.488 o:

TABLE IX

1.560 1.612 1.476 .632

a i u e

Sanskrit 19.78 a: 5.85 i: 2.61 u: 2.84 a:i

8.19 1.19 .73 .51

C. A. Ferguson and M. Chowdhury, "The phonemes of Bengali", Language, 36, 22-59 (1960). A. Valdman, in "Les bases statistique de l'antériorité articulatoire du français", Le Français Moderne 27.102-10 (1959) reports a frequency of 16.2% for nasal vowels in a sample of 12,144 from a variety of oral texts. 5 Icelandic, reported in G. K. Zipf, Psychobiology of language 318 (Boston, 1935), (sample size 25,000); Sanskrit, W. D. Whitney, Sanskrit grammar 26 (Cambridge, Mass., 1889) (sample size 10,000); Czech, H. Kucera, "Entropy, redundancy and functional load in Russian and Czech", American contributions to the 5th International Congress of Slavists 191-218 (Sofia, 1963), (sample size 100,000); Hungarian, J. Lotz, "Vowel frequency in Hungarian", Word 8.227-35 (1952) (17,760 from writings of Petôfi); Finnish, count by J. H Greenberg from R. Austerlitz, Finnish reader and glossary (The Hague, 1963) (first 5000 in pages 1, 3, 6 and 16); Karok by J. H. Greenberg from W. Bright, The Karok language (Berkeley and' Los Angeles, 1957) (first 1000 on pages 162 and 182); Chiricahua, by J. H. Greenberg from H. Hoijer, Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache texts (Chicago, 1938) (first 1000 from pages 5, 10 and 15).

19

PHONOLOGY

u ö

4.336 .600

u:

o

.524

1.88

Czech 6.83 9.40 6.49 8.24 3.07

a: e: i: o: u:

a e i o u ö ü

2.08 1.11 3.70 0.00 0.60

Hungarian 22.48 a: 26.64 e: i: 09.30 11.00 o: 02.63 u: 02.95 ö: 01.08 ii:

Finnish a: 21.4 16.7 e: i: 23.7 o: 11.3 07.9 u: 07.5 ä: 00.3 ö: ü: 02.9

11.62 07.57 01.06 01.95 00.70 01.62 00.32

TABLE XIII

TABLE XII

a e i o u ä ö ü

.18

TABLE XI

TABLE X

a e i 0 u

a:u

—

Kar ok (1000 phonemes a 40.3 a: 7.2 e: 3.2 i 20.6 i: 3.1 o: 2.1 u 19.1 u: 2.1

03.0 01.4 01.3 00.2 00.8 01.3 00.0 00.3 TABLE XIV

a: a 31.8 e 07.7 e: i 19.4 i: o 08.1 o: vocalic nasals: n

Chiricahua 06.8 ä 05.0 e 02.5 I 04.4 ö 07.4; n: 00.1

00.8 00.0 03.5 00.8

ä: e: I: ö:

00.7 00.0 00.9 00.1

For Icelandic, Sanskrit, and Czech the frequencies have been given in reference to the entire set of phonemes; for the others the percentages are of the vowel total. In Table XV the figures are all reduced to percentages of vowel occurrences:

20

PHONOLOGY TABLE XV

Icelandic: Sanskrit: Czech: Hungarian: Finnish: Karok:

short short short short short short

vowels 83.3; vowels 74.8; vowels 82.0; vowels 75.2; vowels 91.7; vowels 80.0;

long long long long long long

vowels vowels vowels vowels vowels vowels

16.7 25.2 18.0 24.8 08.3 20.0

Chiricahua: short non-nasal vowels 67.0; long non-nasal vowels 18.7; short nasal vowels 05.1 ; long nasal vowels 01.7; short syllabic nasal 07.4; long syllabic nasal 00.1 The Chiricahua results are particularly noteworthy since we have two marked features, length and nasality, in combination, and the prediction is borne out that the vowels with two unmarked features should show the highest frequency, and those with the two marked features, the lowest frequency, while the other two categories have intermediate values. As a final piece of evidence for the normally higher frequency of unmarked features, data concerning the palatalized and unpalatalized consonants of Russian are presented in Table XVI. TABLE XVI

p b f v t d s k m n 1 r

100 samples, 1000 each 23.090 p' 4.750 10.960 b' 3.680 f' .590 9.470 v' 10.160 29.780 t' 18.850 42.660 16.650 d' 10.390 30.930 s' 18.630 31.750 k' 5.340 23.170 m' 8.050 41.000 n' 22.970 26.640 1' 20.810 29.070 r' 13.810

PHONOLOGY

21

Thus far two characteristics of unmarked features have been considered, appearance in internally conditioned neutralization and higher frequency. Certain additional observations may be offered. For example, Hockett notes two criteria of the unmarked member, which he calls the simple as opposed to the complex. 6 The first, wider distribution in terms of environment, seems to resolve itself into the already mentioned phenomenon of neutralization. For insofar as the unmarked (simple) member has a wider distribution it appears in environments in which the marked (complex) member does not. Such environments are, precisely, environments of neutralization in which the unmarked member appears as the representative of the set. The other, however, is genuinely new, namely, the greater variety of subphonemic variation. Thus in the example mentioned by Hockett, the stops in Nootka, 'the unglottalized stops are unaspirated before vowels, aspirated finally or before consonants; the glottalized stops and the spirants show no such variations. From this, the conclusion is drawn that the unglottalized stops are the unmarked or simple series. Further, a connection exists, as a general rule, between the more basic, that is, the implied feature in universal implicational statements of phonology, and the unmarked feature. For example in statements of the type that in any language the number of phonemes with a particular feature is never greater than the number of phonemes with some other feature, it generally seems to be the set characterized by the marked feature which is less than or equal in number to the set with the unmarked feature. Thus in Ferguson's already cited statement that the number of nasal vowels is never greater than the number of non-nasal vowels, it is nasality which is the marked feature. It will be noted that other evidence for the marked states of nasal vowels, of a frequency nature, has already been adduced. The weaker form of such statements, namely that all languages with nasal vowels have oral vowels, will, of course, also have the marked feature as implicans and the unmarked feature as implicatum; nasality implies nonnasality in vowels. There is one fairly common exception to this general principle, namely •

C. F. Hockett, Manual of phonology 166-7 (Baltimore, 1955).

22

PHONOLOGY

vowel length. It is not unusual for the number of long vowels to be larger than the number of short vowels. The usual type of exception is one in which midfront and back vowels e and o~ exist without a short partner, as in Karok cited above, in many colloquial forms of Arabic, and elsewhere. 7 These quite possibly always arise from the monophthongization of the diphthongs ai and au as is known to have occurred in Arabic. Again it will be found that in generalizing statements regarding sound sequences it is usually the unmarked feature which figures in the implication of conditional statements. Thus in the statement that the existence of clusters containing at least one glottalized member implies the existance of clusters containing exclusively non-glottalized members, it is the unmarked feature, non-glottalized, which is the implied one. 8 One further phonological peculiarity of the marked/unmarked opposition may be noted. In some cases, a particular allophone of a phoneme may be looked upon as basic compared to one or more others. I believe that it will always turn out that the basic variant is the most frequent, but since frequency counts are always made in terms of phonemes, rather than allophones, there are no available data. An alternative method for accounting for this choice is that the non-basic allophone occurs in environments which share specific features with the allophone, i.e. are assimilative, while the basic allophone is independent of the phonetic nature of its environment. It is hypothesized that the non-basic allophone differs from 7 However, in certain cases at least more detailed consideration may suggest a different analysis. Thus Egyptian Arabic is usually described in terms of a vowel system a, i, it, a:, i\, e:, o: but according t o T. F. Mitchell, An introduction to colloquial Arabic 112, (London, 1958) there is a qualitative distinction in unstressed syllables between /' proper and i in alternation with the i: of stressed syllables and similarly for some speakers with u. Besides this, shortened form of e: and o: exist in unstressed syllables. Phonetically then there would be six (or for some speakers seven) short vowels as against five long vowels. Perhaps the system can be interpreted as qualitative rather than quantitative. On these questions, cf. C. F. Hockett, Manual of phonology 76-8. (Baltimore, 1955). ' 8 J. H. Greenberg, "Nekotoryje obobscenija kasajuscijesja vozmoznyx nacal'nyx i konecnyx posledovatelnostej soglasnyx", Voprosy Jazykoznanija, 4.41-65 (1964).

PHONOLOGY

23

the basic allophone by possession of a marked feature, while the basic allophone has the corresponding unmarked feature. An example is conversational Dutch where, to quote Daniel Jones, "the sound g exists, but only before voiced consonants, e.g. before d in [zagduk] (zakdoek, handkerchief) ... g is therefore a member of the k phoneme in that language". 9 It is psychologically interesting that Jones here indentifies the phoneme with its basic allophone, the unvoiced k as against the marked and assimilative voiced allophone g. I believe that in general where phonemicists are forced to a choice of symbols for a phoneme with a number of differing allophones, they choose one which phonetically represents the unmarked feature. It may be further noted that the concept of the basic allophone is closely related on the allophonic level to that of the internally conditioned representative of the archiphoneme on the phonemic level. If, for example, k and g contrast in certain classes of environments they are separate phonemes. If in some other environment ¡k/ appears as there presentative of the archiphoneme where its occurrence is not determined by the unvoiced nature of the environment, it is internally conditioned. If [/c] and [g] do not contrast in any environment they are allophones of the same phoneme but the (usually unmarked) allophone which is independent of the phonetic nature of the envoronment is the basic allophone as here defined. The characteristics of the marked/unmarked oppositions in phonology have, no doubt, been drawn in very broad strokes. It is in order, however, to call attention to the fact that certain oppositions show these characteristics more clearly and coherently than others, e.g. the glottalized/non-glottalized opposition in consonants and the nasal/oral opposition in vowels, while others, e.g. aspiration in consonants and length in vowels, are less consistent. However, it is reasonable to assert a general predominance of evidence for the view presented here. It is also realized that the criteria of the marked/unmarked oppositions have been presented very much as an empirically arrived at cluster. To what extent there exists an •

D. Jones, The phoneme: its nature and use 20 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962).

24

PHONOLOGY

inner connection among these and to what extent they are logically independent has not been treated. This matter will be taken up later after the problem of the marked and unmarked in grammar and semantics has also been considered. One additional observation may be offered before going on to these other topics. It should be noted that in some cases we had what might be called conditional categories for marked and unmarked. For example, whereas for obstruents, voicing seems clearly the marked characteristic, for sonants the unvoiced feature has many of the qualities of a marked category.

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As was noted earlier, Jakobson in his article "Signe Zéro" indicated the wide applicability of the marked/unmarked concept already current at that time in phonology. In a much later formulation an over-all definition is attempted. "The general meaning of a marked category states the presence of a certain property A; the general meaning of the corresponding unmarked category states nothing about the presence of A and is used chiefly but not exclusively to indicate the absence of A." 1 This definition may be illustrated by a number of examples. In English 'man' has two meanings, the masculine being the unmarked category. Thus, in Jakobson's terms, 'woman' states the presence of the marked category, 'feminine', while 'man' is used chiefly but not exclusively to indicate the absence of'feminine'. 'Man' thus has two meanings, to indicate the explicit absence of'feminine' in the meaning 'male human being' but also to indicate 'human being' in general. It is this ambiguity of 'man' which is exploited by Shakespeare in Hamlet's interview with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern when he says, "No! Man delights not me, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so." In the earlier part of his speech Hamlet had described his reactions to nature so that the opposition first in mind is nature vs. man, but immediately the possibility of the opposition man vs. woman also occurs to Hamlet. The pervasive nature in human thinking of this tendency to take one of the members of an oppositional category as unmarked so that it represents either the entire category or par excellence the opposite member to the marked category can be shown to operate even within the 1

R. Jakobson, Shifters, verbal categories and the Russian verb 5 (Cambridge Mass., 1957).

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austere confines of mathematical and logical symbolism. Thus negative is always taken as the marked member of the positivenegative opposition; -5 is always negative, but 5 by itself is either the absolute value of 5, that is 5 abstracted from its sign value or + 5 as the opposite of the marked negative category. So, in logic p was used ambiguously either as the proposition p abstracted from its truth value as either true or false or, on the other hand, for the assertion of the truth of p. Note that logicians use the term 'truth value', involving the unmarked member, not 'falsity value' to express the over-all category which has truth and falsity as members so that, as usual the unmarked member stands for the whole category in the position of neutralization. It is probable that the observation widely reported in the ethnographic literature that the term for 'human being' and the tribal name are the same words is not to be set down to feelings of tribal superiority as is often assumed, but is rather an example of the same principle. Thus for the Maidu of California in whose language majdy indicates both a member of the Maidu tribe and human being in general, Maidu is the unmarked member of a category in which all other human groupings are separate marked members referred to by phrases in which majdy has a modifier: Paviotso folommam majdy, Negro pibutim majdy, white man wolem majdy, Yana kombom majdy etc. but majdy either human being, or Maidu. The at first sight rather tenuous connection between this notion and that of marked and unmarked in phonology might be stated in the following terms: the ambiguous nature of the unmarked term, as indicating both the generic category and the specific opposite of the marked member, is paralleled by the likewise ambiguous status of the unmarked member of the phonological opposition which in the position of neutralization represents the archiphoneme, that is the common features of both the marked and unmarked, as well as, by its physical nature, the unmarked member. An important further characteristic of the marked/unmarked opposition is indicated by the title of Jakobson's earlier article, "Signe Zero"; I shall refer to it as zero expression of the unmarked category. We have already encountered this in the Maidu example

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27

quoted above. Thus, parallel to the example man (unmarked), woman (marked), we have author (unmarked), authoress (marked) in which 'author' indicates either a writer regardless of sex or specifically a male writer, whereas 'authoress' designates only a female writer. In this latter instance the unmarked term author has a zero where the marked term authoress has an overt affix -ess. A third characteristic of the unmarked/marked distinction, also pointed out by Jakobson, is syncretization. By this is meant that distinctions existing in the unmarked member are often neutralized in the marked categories. To illustrate this point, and a number of others, reference will be made to the category of number within which the unmarked status of the singular as against the marked status of the plural provides a 'classic' example of the distinction between marked and unmarked. In German the article and both weak and strong forms of the adjectival declension have the same forms for all three genders in the plural. In Hausa with two genders, the masculine-feminine distinction is maintained in the singular but neutralized in the plural. In classical Latin the dative and ablative cases, in general distinct in the singular, are syncretized in the plural. In the same language the vocative is different from the nominative only for certain members of the two unmarked categories masculine and singular but is the same for both cases in the feminine and neuter and throughout the plural. Exactly the same holds for the vocative in Bulgarian a language with only two genders. Many other examples could be cited. Among the writers besides Jakobson who have discussed the unmarked-marked distinction in grammar are Hjelmslev and Trnka. 2 Hjelmslev in the Prolegomena considers what is essentially the unmarked/marked distinction under the terms extensive (unmarked) vs. intensive (marked). In the systematic discussion of the various criteria for marked and unmarked in grammatical categories which follows there will be occasion to mention some of

2

L. Hjelmslev, Prolegomena to a theory of language (Baltimore, P. Trnka, "On Some Problems of Neutralization", Omagiu lui Jorgu 861-6 (Bucharest, 1958).

1953); Iordan

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those suggested by Hjelmslev and to make some use of his terminology. The criterion of syncretism has already been illustrated for the generic category of number. That of zero expression is also easily exemplified for the same category. The singular frequently has no overt mark while the plural is marked by an affix as in English, except for plurals of the type 'sheep'. A more careful statement would therefore be that in no language is the plural expressed by a morpheme which has no overt allomorph, while this is frequently true for the singular. Another example is the marked status of the adjectival comparative and superlative as against the unmarked positive, e.g. in English where the positive has no overt mark while the comparative and superlative have the suffixes -er and -est respectively. A third criterion is that equivalent to the definition of Jakobson quoted above with semantic and derivational exemplification. We will call it facultative expression. An example for the category of number is Korean which has a plural suffix -tul which need not always be used. Thus the form labelled singular in Korean grammars, which incidentally has zero expression, may be either specifically singular, or on occasion be used when more than one object is involved, while the plural form is only used with plural meaning. The phenomenon which corresponds to facultative expression from the viewpoint of the hearer may be called par excellence interpretation. Thus it may be presumed that the Korean listener interprets the zero form usually or par excellence as singular but as plural where the situation demands it. Indeed it is precisely in such cases that the zero form will be used to express the plural rather than -tul because the plural interpretation is forced by the context. The suffix -tul, on the other hand, is always interpreted as plural. I therefore consider facultative expression and par excellence interpretation as statements of the same fact from two points of view and usually refer to it by the first of these expressions. A fourth criterion is that called participation by Hjelmslev. I prefer to call it contextual neutralization or simply neutralization

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where the context makes it clear that we are dealing with nonphonological matters. In certain environments the opposition between two or more categories is suppressed, and it is the unmarked member which appears. In Hungarian, Turkish and certain other languages only the singular form of nouns may appear with cardinal numbers. This is obviously the closest analogue to neutralization in phonology. A fifth characteristic is the lesser degree of morphological irregularity in marked forms. For example, in the verbs of classical Arabic, the basic form as against such derived forms as the causative and intensive shows variation in the internal vowel of the imperfect, i.e. the forms yaqtilu, yaqtulu, and yaqtalu all exist so that there are three allomorphs in the discontinuous morpheme of the imperfect tense forms. In all the derived forms there is a single allomorph, e.g. in yuqattilu in the corresponding form of the intensive. In German all dative plurals have uniformly -n or -en depending on phonological factors while the dative singular varies with gender and declensional class. In Sanskrit, the dual which is so to speak even more marked than the plural has not only extensive case syncretism so that there are only three distinct forms but also greater regularity than plural or singular, particularly in the oblique cases. It may be observed that in general the oblique cases have a marked character as against the direct cases. A sixth characteristic will be called, in conformity with Hjelmslev's terminology, defectivation. The marked category may simply lack certain categories present in the unmarked category. In fact for inflectional categories, defectivation can be considered a form of syncretism. Thus one might say that in the marked subjunctive category, French lacks a future. This would be in conformity with the usual terminology of grammars of French, but one might also argue that there has been syncretism of the present and future in the subjunctive and that the concept of defectivation rests in the identification of the subjunctive as a form of the present rather than the future because of its greater formal resemblance to the present indicative. It is of interest to note here that the present as an unmarked category in relation to the future is taken as the

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representative of both. Indeed whenever defectivation occurs in a category of a set which intersects with another set, we get simultaneous evidence for the marked character of two categories. Thus in the above example the absence of a future subjunctive shows both the marked character of the future since it lacks a subjunctive and of the subjunctive since it lacks a future. Somewhat different are instances where certain items have fewer categories than others and these can be identified on formal grounds with one category rather than another which is then to be considered unmarked. Thus in the example cited below of the Hebrew nominal category of number, some nouns, the majority, have two forms while others have three. For those that have two the categories are singular and a category which on formal grounds as well as by adjective agreements can be identified with the plural rather than the dual of nouns with three forms. I shall also consider periphrastic forms which supply forms for 'expected' inflectional categories as instances of defectivation. Thus in the Latin verb, the tenses of the perfective system (perfect, pluperfect, future perfect) are supplied in the passive by a syntactic construction of past passive participle + verb 'to be', e.g. amatus sum 'I have been loved'. However this may be, the concept of defectivation has a useful application in the area of derivation which is, by definition perhaps, not compulsory. Thus in classical Arabic practically all verbs occur in Form I, the basic form, but hardly a single verb possesses all of the derivational forms, and most are defective for a majority of them. A seventh characteristic of marked and unmarked category is perhaps confined to the category of number. Where a heterogeneous collection is to be named, that is one which has members of two or more categories, one of them is often regularly chosen as representative in the plural, or in the dual where that is appropriate. The Arab grammarians call this taghlib or 'dominance'. An example cited by them is Pabawani literally 'the fathers (dual)' with the meaning 'father and mother', where once more the unmarked masculine functions as a surrogate for the gender category.

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Another instance is Sanskrit aharti 'the days (dual)' for 'day and night'. Compare also such usages as Spanish lospadres for 'parents' lit. 'the fathers'; los hijos 'the children' lit. 'the sons'. A related phenomenon is agreement a potiori in which words from two or more selective categories such as gender have a common modifier and the modifier is in the unmarked category, e.g. Spanish el hijo y la hija son buenos 'The son and the daughter are good' (masculine plural). Finally the question may be raised whether an analogue to the frequency phenomenon in phonology exists likewise for grammatical categories. Data here are very sparse, for there are very few word frequency studies which give information about the frequency of the grammatical categories to which the words belong. Data will be presented at this point only in regard to the category of number in the noun where there is much evidence for a hierarchy singular, plural, dual from the most unmarked to the most marked. Corresponding to the situation in phonology we might expect that the text frequency for nominal categories of numbers will be singular (most frequent), plural (less frequent), and dual (least frequent). The data that I have been able to collect are: (1) for the noun in the Rigveda by C. H. Lanman; (2) for the Russian noun by Josselson ; (3) for the Latin noun by using the data in the exhaustive concordance of Terence by Edgar B. Jenkins. 3 Zipf's list of word frequencies compiled from four plays of Plautus was not suitable for this purpose because homonymous forms are lumped together (even forms which differ in vowel quantity), thus the occurrences of eô '1 go, thither, in him, in it' are all under one undifferentiated entry. (4) I have recorded for the first thousand nouns in François Mauriac's Le chair et le sang whether they were singular or plural. Data from these and other studies will be cited later in regard to other grammatical categories. The results for number in the noun are set forth in Table XVII.

3

C. H . Lanman, " N o u n inflection in the Veda", Journal of the American Oriental Society 10.325-601 (1880); H. H. Josselson, The Russian word count (Detroit, 1953); E. B. Jenkins, Index verborum Terentianus (Chapel Hill, 1932).

32

GRAMMAR A N D LEXICON TABLE XVII

Language Sanskrit Latin (Terence) Russian French

Size of Sample 93,277 8,342 8,194 1,000

Singular 70.3 85.2 77.7 74.3

Plural 25.1 14.8 22.3 25.7

Dual 04.6

The results are therefore in accordance with expectations. Taking into account the criteria just discussed and thus far illustrated chiefly from the category of number in the noun, the evidence for the marked or unmarked character of a number of generic grammatical categories will now be considered. It will appear that the various criteria tend to converge in a large number of cases so that particular categories can be said to be marked or unmarked on a cross-linguistic basis. The present conclusions are not based on a formal sample and may therefore seem to be unsystematic and anecdotal. However, whenever exceptions are known to me or there is no clear evidence for ttfie marked or unmarked of a particular set of categories, this is pointed out. It should be noted that for hypotheses of the type presented here certain languages will not provide relevant evidence or will provide evidence which is compatible though not confirmatory. Consider, for example, evidence that the singular is unmarked as against the plural on the basis of syncretization. Relevant evidence will not be forthcoming from a particular language (1) if it does not have the category of number in the noun; (2) if it does have number, but there are no intersecting categories such as gender that are susceptible of syncretization. Even if number exists and intersects with another inflectional category, the language may not show syncretization in either the singular or plural. In this case the facts of the language are compatible with the thesis but not confirmatory in the strong sense.4 If there is syncretization in the plural but not the singular, * This has been called the paradox of confirmation, that is, that a hypothesis of the form p -* \|/ on the formal interpretation of implication is true for all truth values of (p and v except truth of cp combined with falsity of v . Hence it holds if both

h having no partner, b could lose its marked feature of aspiration, although it became a voiced fricative rather than a voiced stop in most environments. In this schematic statement various complications are not considered, notably those concerning Verner's law. The Grimm's law changes do not, in general, involve merger. In other cases of complete or conditioned merger under conditions where, typically but not always, functional yield is low, it seems to be the general rule that the merger is produced by the marked feature losing its mark. Conditional mergers will evidently produce neutralization. Thus in German and other languages voiced and unvoiced obstruents have merged in word or sentence final by the loss of voicing in this position. Of course not all sound changes operate in this direction. For example, by assimilative changes a complex may acquire a marked feature of an adjacent sound as in assimilative voicing. There are further sources of phonemes with marked features. An important one is surely the development of complex articulations from previous

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sequences. A typical instance is nasalized vowels, conjectured by Ferguson to arise in all cases from sequences of oral vowel and nasal consonant. In such instances it would presumably be the case that first the oral vowel is nasalized non-distinctively before the nasal consonant, and the consonant is subsequently lost. In their relation to marked and unmarked features then, two major classes of regular sound changes may be distinguished. The first includes unconditioned changes, particularly mergers, and those conditioned changes in which the specific class of environing sounds is irrelevant, e.g. changes in word final. In these which may be assigned to the paradigmatic aspect of language the overall tendency is for the marked or phonetically complex series to give way to the unmarked or simpler. Thus it may be asserted as a diachronic universal that a glottalized series may merge with the corresponding unglottalized series in an unconditional merger but not vice versa. If the opposite occurred it would produce a phonological system in which glottalized consonants occurred without an unglottalized series and such is not known to occur. The other class of changes which may be considered syntagmatic consists of the mass of assimilatory conditioned changes which often give rise to marked features. Thus the answer to the objection that 'ease' of articulation, an expression which is avoided here, but which can be given objective content should produce constantly simpler phonologic systems in the evolution of language is that there are two kinds of'ease', paradigmatic which favors simplification by loss of additional articulatory features regardless of context and syntagmatic which favors the genesis of new assimilatory modifications conditioned by the phonetic environment and so gives rise to articulations which taken in isolation are more complex. The greater frequency of the unmarked set can be largely explained as a resultant of the two processes just described. In positions of neutralization only the unmarked member appears. Where a set of marked phonemes arises from a sequence, the original frequency of the undifferentiated protophoneme would presumably be smaller before the limited set which furnished the second members of the sequence, and this lesser frequency will

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be reflected at a later stage by the correspondingly smaller frequency of the marked set. Thus in Latin the frequency of any vowel before all the non-nasal phonemes was presumably greater than before the nasals alone. This same hypothesis will also explain another characteristic of the marked category in phonology; namely, that the number of marked phonemes of a set of correlative pairs is usually less than or equal to the number of unmarked. When they arise in this fashion they will in the beginning be equal in number. They may then decrease by mergers, as with the French nasal vowels. Given their initially smaller frequency, their functional yield with each other is necessarily small. A further psychological factor is the probably greater acoustic similarity of sets which share a marked feature as against an unmarked feature. In a psycholinguistic experiment of Greenberg and Jenkins, subjects judged each pair distinguished by voice as closer together than correlative pairs distinguished by voicelessness.1 Thus b.d was closer than p:t\ b:g than p:k, etc. It is remarkable, to cite the example of nasality as the marked feature, that a change m > n is not uncommon, but b > d or p > t is practically unheard of. The greater frequency of the unmarked then would be a resultant of certain common diachronic factors. Where other diachronic factors are at work, however, discrepancies may arise. Thus as was pointed out, some languages have a larger number of long vowel phonemes than short vowels because of the common monophthongization of the diphthongs a j and au. Of course, e and o having no short partner may be expected to become shorter, but various morphological or canonical form factors may serve to maintain length. For these reasons, while there is a far better chance tendency not only for the total text frequency of an unmarked set to be greater than that of the corresponding marked, but even for each individual pair, there are occasional exceptions. While frequency is thus merely a resultant, though a very important one, of overall diachronic tendencies in phonology, it is tempting to adjudge its role in grammar-semantics as primary. 1

J. H . Greenberg and J. J. Jenkins, "Studies in the Psychological Correlates of the Sound System of American English", Word 20.157-177 [esp. 177] (1964).

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There is a real difference between frequency phenomena in phonology and in the grammatical-semantic sphere. For the former, we do not choose our expression in terms of sounds, except perhaps marginally in poetry so that phonologic frequency is an incidental characteristic which bears the marks of past diachronic changes. But we make grammatical and semantic choices based on the momentary situation. It is therefore plausible, insofar as there are constants in the human situation, that, for example, everywhere the singular should be more frequent than the plural and that this remains quite constant over time in spite of changes in the means of expression. Hence also generalizations regarding relative phoneme frequencies are more precarious and exceptions are to be expected. De Saussure here, perhaps anachronistical^ interpreted, had a real insight where he has sometimes been judged to be obviously wrong; namely, in his identification of the diachronic with the phonological and the synchronic with the grammatical. The important phenomena of zero and facultative expression can be understood in terms of frequency phenomena based on the situation in the world with which the users of language must deal. In fact there is here no real difference between semantic and grammatical phenomena. For example, it is not so much in English that male is in general the unmarked category in relation to female, but the frequency of association of things in the real world. 'Author' means facultatively a writer of either sex, but par excellence, male, because in fact most authors are male. We see this if we compare the term 'nurse'. Since nurses are usually female, nurse takes on the meaning of nurse in general, or non-male nurse. To express the maleness of the nurse, when relevant, we use the marked expression 'male nurse'. Just so we may compare the ordinary semantic interpretation of words with or without syntactic modifiers with the morphological expression of corresponding categories. In a language without a grammatical category of diminutives and augmentatives, where size is indicated by modifying adjectives, if we use 'house' in a sentence without modifiers, the size is unspecified but the house may in fact be unusually large or unusually small. We will usually assume that it is of normal size because most

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houses are of normal size. On the other hand, 'small house' or 'large house' exclude explicitly from interpretation as normal size. The frequent assimilates the ambiguous, save contrary indications. There are other advantages to a frequency interpretation of marked and unmarked in grammar and semantics by which marked simply means definitionally less frequent and unmarked means more frequent. To begin with there is the obvious methodological advantage that frequency phenomena can be explored for every language whereas the other criteria are more limited in this respect, e.g. neutralization of certain subcategories may not exist in a given language. Frequency data will allow of degrees of marked and unmarked by which the associated phonemes will be expected to be most common and least subject to exception where the frequency disparity is the greatest. This indeed seems to be the case insofar as, for example, the hierarchy of persons is both less certain and overwhelming in regard to frequency and also less clear in other matters, whereas the hierarchy of numbers shows almost no exception in non-frequency phenomena and great constancy together with large frequency disparity for singular, plural, and dual. In addition to gradualizing and quantifying the scale, it also allows the construction of a much more subtle and manifold hierarchy, for example, for the cardinal and ordinal numbers. In addition the frequency definition will cover at least one case in which none of the other criteria is present but which has been considered as an example of the marked/unmarked distinction by Jakobson; namely, normal (unmarked) versus emphatic (marked) word order. The so-called normal order, it would seem, is necessarily the most frequent. We may refer here to the well-known story of the boy who cried wolf. Finally it may help to overcome the problem of lack of interlinguistic comparability of categories. Thus, for gender categories, we may at least conjecture that the associated phenomena such as zero expression and neutralization will be present to the degree that frequency differences exist among the genders. Since these are largely or completely conventional semantically and differ in size of membership, it is entirely plausible that the gender labelled

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'masculine' in one language will be of much greater text frequency than the feminine in that language, while in another language, the relationship is reversed. We may hypothesize that in the first language the masculine will display the other characteristics of the unmarked category, while in the second it will rather be the feminine. Where the categories are not 'conventional', e.g. for cases, the way lies open to explain the frequencies of specific cases as a summation of a number of discrete uses, each substantially similar in frequency among languages but differently combined in different languages. For example, traditional grammar describes the uses of the ablative in Latin under such rubrics as the ablative of personal agent, separation, instrument, etc. If we had the frequencies of each of these, we could then, for example, compare it with the Russian cases by equating a component of separation with the genitive with prepositions ot and iz while agent and instrument would be equated with the Russian instrumental. There is at the moment a great practical difficulty here, of course, as well as the theoretic problems of sampling. It is rare to have frequency studies of grammatical categories, and even these do not specify the separate uses of the categories. But this can in principle, of course, be overcome in order to test the hypotheses presented here. The connection between frequency and the phenomena of grammatical or semantic neutralizations and morphological irregularities has not yet been discussed. It has often been noted that the most frequent forms are the most irregular. These are indeed now by our definition the unmarked forms. Where there is a complex set of intersecting categories, the frequency differences between combinations of unmarked categories and of marked categories are very great. For example, in Avery's study of the Rigvedic verb, the form which involves all of the most unmarked categories, singular, third person, present, active, indicative has 1404 occurrences, while the dual, second person, medio-passive perfect optative has zero frequency. Such enormous disparities must surely have an effect in thet such a highly infrequent formation must follow analogically other parts of the system, while

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only a fairly frequent form can preserve irregularities. Hence, also syncretisms produced by the accidents of sound change will in such cases not lead immediately or inevitably to new formations to reintroduce the lost distinctions. Thus the general course of the reduction of the case system in Indo-European languages leads to the coalescence of the marked oblique cases, and where the whole structure finally collapses, it seems to be one of the direct cases, nominative or accusative, which is the historical source of the nouns now undifferentiated for case. Thus in phonology, diachronic process explains frequency, while in grammar, frequency explains diachronic process. Frequency not included in la langue definitionally is in fact an ever present and poweful factor in the evolution of grammatical categories and thus helps in explaining the types of synchronic states actually found. That such things happen is not to be wondered at. Though we may justifiably define our subject in a coherent and consistent way, the world is under no obligation to respect these boundaries and it is a commonplace that we must often bring in external explanatory factors. A particular type of connection between marked categories in phonology and grammar may be pointed out, and its explanation will now be clear on the basis of the above considerations. Sometimes the marked category in phonology is the expression of a marked category in grammar. Thus certain Amerind languages use the marked feature of glottalization to express the marked grammatical category of the diminutive. In German umlauted vowels may be considered a marked phonetic category as against their non-umlauted partners. Rounded front vowels always imply rounded back vowels in a particular language; their number is never greater, and their text frequency is generally less. Umlaut is used in German as a grammatical process to express the marked categories of plurality in the noun, comparative and superlative in the adjective, and past subjunctive in the verb. These phenomena result from zero expression of the unmarked where a phoneme involved in the expression of the marked disappears after- having modified the simple preceding sound to produce a marked complex

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sound, e.g. umlauting produced by a former i or glottalization from a former glottal stop. Another example of phonological-grammatical connection is the widespread use of the marked category of final rising pitch for the expression of interrogation. Here the problem is somewhat different in that since the intonational pattern has this meaning directly we may seem to be tautologous in asserting that the less usual intonation expresses the less frequent category. However, there is further independent evidence for the 'normality' of tonal descent in that phonemes of pitch often have progressively lower allophones the later they occur in the sentence, but the phenonenon of allophonic raising never seems to occur. If it turns out that in fact frequency is an adequate unifying principle for the domain of the marked and unmarked in semantics and grammar, a great over-all simplification will have been achieved. But frequency is itself but a symptom and the consistent relative frequency relations which appear to hold for lexical items and grammatical categories are themselves in need of explanation. Such explanations will not, in all probability, arise from a single principle. Thus it may be noted that in adjectival opposites where a theoretical scale with an implied zero point is unmarked, e.g. heavy, large, wide, deep, etc., there is obviously a unifying principle but it will not even apply to all adjectival opposites, e.g. good/bad, and is irrelevant in a host of other examples. Again the center of a normal frequency distribution is unmarked in relation to the extremes, e.g. normal size as against diminutive or augmentative. This topic is left for future exploration. In phonology, a third level principle which, while requiring further refinement, is evidently sufficient to predict for a wide range which features will be marked and which unmarked is articulatory complexity which is correlated with acoustic complexity. This can be defined in an objective manner independently of the distributional and frequency phenomena employed here to distinguish marked and unmarked categories. A particular articulation is to be considered more complex than some other if it includes an additional articulation defined in terms of departure of an organ

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from the position it normally has in the absence of speech. This notion can be extended to include successive additional articulations in the case of length and diphongization. An apparent exception is nasality. Acoustically the nasal is more complex in that it involves additional nasal resonances but from the articulatory view it seems to be superficially the oral articulation that is complex since it requires a raising of the velum. Note however the remarks of Heffner regarding nasal vowels. "The contraction of the pillar of the fauces is a feature of the production of nasal vowels" and "... nasal vowels are produced by adding the vigorous lowering of the velum, accompanied by some constriction of the palatopharyngeal arch, to the usual movements of articulation peculiar to the analogous oral vowel." 2

•

R-M. S. Heffner, General phonetics (Madison, 1964), 31, 113.

5

UNIVERSALS O F KINSHIP TERMINOLOGY

In the discussion of universals of kinship terminology to which we now turn, the attempt will be made to apply the principles discussed earlier, in a particular semantic domain. In this connection it will be possible to illustrate from concrete materials the relationship between the over-all theory of the marked and unmarked and typologies which accompany the specific universals derived from the theory. It will then appear that such a theory is of a higher level in that it binds together within common a deductive structure various typologies which lack overt interconnections. In the foregoing discussion several examples were adduced from the kinship terminology of speakers of English as an illustration of the principle of marked and unmarked categories. Thus in the English term 'cousin' there is neutralization of sex reference as against 'brother' and 'sister'. Again there is zero expression of the consanguineal as against the affinal relation in such pairs as 'father' vs. 'father-in-law' and 'brother' vs. 'brother-in-law'. As a further example we might cite the absence of a term 'cousin-in-law', concocted here for illustrative purposes, which will exemplify defectivation, of the marked category 'affinal' which lacks, in ordinary usage, a term corresponding to 'cousin' among consanguineal terms. Of course all of these examples are taken from English. But as will be shown later, the specific hierarchy of categories in English kinship terminology such as lineal (unmarked) vs. collateral (marked), consanguineal (unmarked) vs. affinal (marked) are very widespread, and in fact for these, and others to be shortly mentioned, no significant exceptions have been found as yet. Let us then pursue the matter further, confining ourselves for the moment

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to English. In addition to the evidence we have already found for the marked or unmarked nature of the lineal/collateral and consanguineal/affinal categories, we have certain other evidence. In the direct descent line, i.e. among lineal ascendants and descendants, we see zero expression for the first ascending as against the second ascending in the pairs father/grandfather, mother/grandmother. A corresponding contrast exists between G - 1 and G~2 in the pairs son/grandson, daughter/grandaughter. This system, of course, extends further since G + 3 is marked as against G+2 by the prefix 'great-' and G + 4 as against G + 3 by an additional occurrence of 'great-' and correspondingly for descending generations. We have then, in English, a recursive device by which a more remote generation is always marked as against a less remote generation. These additional data already suggest a tentative hypothesis of the third level as defined in the previous section. Of two categories it is the more remote from the speaker which is always marked in relation to the less remote. In fact it can be shown formally by the counting of the number of occurrences in definitions reduced to a chain of successive applications of the relation 'parent' and its converse 'child' (abstracting from qualifiers such as sex, relative age, etc.) that collateral and affinal relatives are more remote than lineal and consanguineal respectively. In testing further these and similar hypotheses, I have not set up a formal sample. As the basic set, the Gifford study of California kinship terminologies which contains kinship terminologies of approximately 80 California Indian groups was utilized. 1 This was supplemented by approximately 40 additional terminologies from various other parts of the world. While it cannot be, of course, guaranteed that exceptions to the conclusions described here do not exist, their absence in the set examined gives reasonable assurance of at least statistical predominance. In what follows, therefore, I will illustrate with examples from this sample but without giving all the supporting instances from the sample. 1

E. W. Gifford, "California Kinship Terminologies", University of California Publication in American Archaeology and Ethnography 18.1-285 (1922).

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In the terminology of English speakers it was seen that the less remote generation has zero expression as against the more remote marked category. Neutralization for sex reference, not found in English, is fairly common elsewhere. Thus for the Bavenda, a South African Bantu-speaking group, a single term makhulu includes all four grandparents, father's father, father's mother, mother's father, and mother's mother in its reference, whereas there are separate terms for the male parent, khotsi 'father' and female parent, mme 'mother'. It is indeed a probable 'factual universal' that all systems distinguish male and female parent by separate terms even though very frequently other kin types are included in the referents of both, e.g. father's brother is often designated by the same term as father. The Bavenda example also involves neutralization of the distinction between lineal and collateral in the marked second ascending generation as against the unmarked first ascending. The just quoted term makhulu also comprehends siblings of grandparents, e.g. mother's mother's brother. In the first ascending generation there are separate terms for the mother's brother and the father's sister, malume and makhadzi, respectively. The Venda system is an example of the widespread bifurcate merging type in which the father and father's brother are referred to by the same term, while there is a separate term for mother's brother. Similarly mother's sister and mother have a single designation, while mother's brother has a separate term. A similar neutralization of the lineal-collateral distinction in the second ascending generation is found also in some systems which like English have a single term for both father's brother and mother's brother and another for father's sister and mother's sister. Thus Hanunoo in the Philippines has qamaq for 'father' and bapaq which designates all the kin types to which we apply the term 'uncle'. Likewise there is qinaq 'mother' and bayih 'aunt'. But for the second ascending generation a single term lakih includes both grandfathers and either grandmother's or grandfather's brothers or grandmother's or grandfather's sister's husband. The term qiduh 'grandmother' has a corresponding extension for females.

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The same Hanunoo system exhibits still further neutralization in the third generation in that the word qumput in addition to covering both lineals and collaterals as does the second generation term, makes no distinction in the sex of the referent. It covers, therefore, all lineal and collateral relatives of the third ascending generation. Returning to the Bavenda we find here also evidence of the relatively marked character of the third ascending as against the second ascending generation, in that the first is makhulukuku formed from the grandparental term by the addition of a suffix -kuku. Similarly there are numerous evidences for a corresponding hierarchy for the descending generations. Since the Hanunoo terms for aunts, uncles, grandparents, and great-grandparents are all self-reciprocal, that is whenever A calls B by one of these terms, the same term is the appropriate one for B to call A, neutralizations of successively increasing scope are found in the first, second, and third descending generations as in the first, second, and third ascending generations. A further example is the Sara dialect of Ainu in which the sex difference found in the first descending generation terms po 'son' and matne-po 'daughter' is neutralized in the second descending generation in the sex-undifferentiated term mitpo 'grandchild', which is, incidentally, also marked by a prefix to the term for son. The third generation appellation is likewise not distinguished for sex and has an additional prefix to the second generation term, i.e. mitpo 'grandchild', san-mitpo 'great-grandchild'. Similarly for the other categories already mentioned for which there is evidence in English, such as lineal-collateral, consanguineal/ affinal and, we may add, step-relatives as against non-step-relatives, examples of neutralization and non-zero expression in the marked members are not difficult to find. Thus for ego's generation in Malay of Singapore we have three terms abang 'older brother', kakak 'older sister', and adik 'younger sibling of either sex'. For cousin these distinctions of sex and relative age are all obliterated in the single term sa-pupu. As an example of neutralization in affinal as against consanguineal

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relatives we may cite Umbundu from Angola in which, as everywhere, father and mother are distinguished in the terminology. Here the term tata 'father' also includes male collaterals of the first and second degree, i.e. father's brothers and father's cousins, and mai includes 'mother' as well as female collateral relatives of the mother. However, there is a single parent-in-law term ndatembo embracing parents of either sex of either husband or wife and with collateral extensions like that of the consanguineal parental terms. There is thus neutralization for sex of the person addressed. Further observation of the generational hierarchy shows that an additional factor to that of remoteness from ego must be taken into consideration. There are many examples which show that ascending generations are unmarked as against descending generations of equal genealogical distance from ego. An example is from Logoli, a Bantu-speaking people of Kenya, where we have guga 'grandfather', guku 'grandmother', and omwitjuxulu 'grandchild' for a lineal descendent of the second generation and of either sex. For the first ascending as against the first descending generation it is fairly common to find systems in which the marked character of the latter is evidenced by neutralization for sex reference, whereas, as has been seen, the distinction of father and mother terms is universal. Thus in Bantu languages generally there is a single 'child' term. This same situation usually holds in Austronesian languages also. Thus in Malay we have both bapa 'father', emak 'mother', but anak 'child' without distinction in gender. Of course both here and in the Bantu cases a qualifier can be added when necessary to specify the sex of the child, but this is not usual. At any rate, there are distinct morphemes for father and mother and a monomorphemic term of the first descending generation designates the child regardless of sex. That seniority is involved as an additional factor distinct from genealogical distance from ego is also shown in sibling terms. When relative age is indicated in the terminology, which is quite frequent, there are often indications that the terms designating older siblings are unmarked whereas those indicating younger

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siblings are marked. It may be noted that in the earlier example cited in a different connection of sibling terms from the Malay of Singapore, older siblings are distinguished for sex while younger are not. The terms are abang 'older brother', kakak 'older sister', and adik 'younger sibling of either sex'. Further evidence for the factor of seniority is the marked character of ego's own generation G° as against the first ascending generation. For example, it is not uncommon to find systems in which father is distinguished from father's sister and mother from mother's brother but in which their respective offspring, the siblings and cousins of the speaker, are all merged in a single term, thus eliminating the lineal-collateral distinction. In this particular instance, however, it might be claimed that kinship distance to a sibling is greater than to a parent. This would follow from the uniform procedure of reckoning kinship distance by the number of occurrences of the relation 'parent' or its converse 'child' in the relational product required to define the terms. Thus for either father or mother of ego the relation parent obviously occurs once, whereas for brother or sister it occurs twice, since my sibling is my parent's child. Taking the two factors of seniority and genealogical distance from ego, then, the hierarchy of generations will begin with the first ascending as unmarked in relation to all others, then ego's generation and the first descending generation as about equal, the first descending being lesser in seniority but closer genealogically. After these we have successively, second ascending generation, second descending generation, third ascending generation, third descending generation, etc. The marked character of descending generations in relation to corresponding ascending generations is also shown in the phenomenon of reciprocal terms. Two terms may be defined as reciprocals if whenever x refers to y by the first term, y refers to x by the second. If x and y are identical, then we say the term is self-reciprocal. Our English system of terminology has only one true reciprocal term 'cousin' and it is self-reciprocal. Take, for example, grandfather and grandson. If x calls y grandfather then y calls x grandson

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only if x is male. Therefore these terms are only partial reciprocals. On the other hand, uncle and grandfather are non-reciprocal since if x calls y uncle, y never calls x grandfather. The reason that complete reciprocity fails in the case of the English terms grandfather and grandson is obviously that for both the speaker may be of either sex while the person addressed is distinguished for sex. Where reciprocity holds, the following cases are possible: Both speaker and addressee may be of either sex, as with English 'cousin'. In such instances, the term may be self-reciprocal as in the case with 'cousin'. Both speaker and addressee may be of the same sex. Here also self-reciprocity is possible. Thus many Bantu languages have a sibling term commonly glossed as 'sibling of the same sex'. This word may be used by males to refer to males and by females to refer to females. These are necessarily self-reciprocal. Finally sex of the speaker and addressee may be different by the definitional requirement of the term. The same Bantu languages which have a term 'sibling of the same sex' normally have also a term meaning 'sibling of the opposite sex', naturally also self-reciprocal. Now very many kinship systems, of which our own is an example, only contain terms which do not involve sex of the speaker in their definition. Other systems contain some terms in which the sex of the speaker is involved, but only along with terms of the former type which are thus universal. In the present connection what is significant is that commonly, though not always, terms involving sex of the speaker are reciprocal or self-reciprocal terms. They are, as it were, secondary, arising from the reciprocal use of the extremely common type of term in which sex of the speaker is not specified but sex of the addressee is, as with all English terms except cousin. Thus the true reciprocal of the term grandfather will be child's child where the speaker is necessarily male and of grandmother will be child's child with the speaker specified as female. In such instances we will gloss the terms as man's child child and woman's child child. Logically we could have reciprocals or self-reciprocals either of the type grandfather with its reciprocal man's child's child or

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grandson with its reciprocal man's parent's parent. The remarkable fact seems to be that examples of the first type in which the so-tospeak normal situation that the sex of the speaker is not specified occurs for the ascending generation term but never, as for the second type, in the descending generation term. This tentative universal may be stated as follows: whenever there are two terms differing in generation which are true reciprocals, or there is one which is a self-reciprocal term with two referents, and one involves the sex of the speaker in its definition and the other does not, it is always the term of lower generational reference which contains the sex of the speaker in its definition. It may at first seem rather far-fetched to interpret the association of the normal situation of lack of reference to speaker's sex in the higher generation as a further evidence for the unmarked status of higher generation in distinction from lower generation terms. However, there are cases in which two distinct words are used, that is the terminology is not self-reciprocal and the ascending generation term, here interpreted as unmarked, has zero expression while the lower generation term with sex of speaker specified has an affix. Kawaiisu, a Shoshonean language of California, may serve as an example. We have a whole series of paired terms of the following type: sinu- 'mother's brother', sinuci- 'man's sister's child', togo- 'mother's father,' 'spouse's mother's father', togoci'man's daughter's child', 'man's daughter's child's spouse', etc. Such reciprocals are most common in grandparental and unc!e-auntterms but are also found in great-grandparental and parental terms and for in-laws. The generalizations thus far offered have all been based on the concept of marked and unmarked categories. It may be observed that at least one very important category, sex, has not been considered from this point of view. It may well be that neither male nor female can be described as the unmarked category on a universal basis. In a number of instances the male term has zero expression where the corresponding female term has an additional morpheme, but the data on neutralizations give conflicting evidence. Further, Lounsbury, in a pioneering contribution on the subject,

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describes the feminine as unmarked in Iroquois, in consonance with purely linguistic facts concerning Iroquois sex gender. in view of the earlier observations regarding the higher text frequencies of unmarked forms, it will be of interest to consider the data from English based once more on the Lorge magazine count and data from Spanish by Bou. We approach these data with the following expectations: among lineal terms the generational hierarchy leads to the predicted ordering 1. parental terms; 2. sibling terms and first descending generation terms; 3. grandparental; 4. grandchildren; 5. great-grandparental; 6. great-grandchildren. On the basis of the discussion of the sex category we will not expect a consistent preponderance of either male or female terms. The results conform fully to these expectations. In category two, the children terms are more frequent than the sibling terms, except for Spanish hija and hermana, suggesting that generational remoteness is here more important than seniority as a factor. The results are subsumed in Table XXXIII. TABLE XXXIII

G+1 G-1

G° G G" 2

G" 3

father mother son daughter child brother sister grandfather grandmother grandson granddaughter great-grandfather great-grandmother great-grandson great-granddaughter

3235 3993 993 865 1574 659 590 173 346 32 33 8 19 0 0

padre madre hijo hija

5631 5598 3765 1749

hermano hermana abuelo abuela nieto nieta bisabuelo bisabuela bisnieto bisnieta

3120 1811 1234 1540 94 58 83 10 4 4

Data from English, Spanish, French, German and Russian from the earlier mentioned sources in which terms of the same generation

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with different sex reference are consolidated shows that the predicated hierarchy holds for these languages without exception. 2 TABLE XXXIV

G+ 1 G1 G° G+2 G-2 G+3 G"3

English 7,228 1,858 1,249 519 65 27 0

Spanish 11,229 5,514 4,931 2,774 152 93 4

French 1,260 1,030 419 83 31 — —

German 9,428 6,047 3,449 614 242 31 29

Russian +721 721 703 293 20 — —

A second set of hypotheses predicts greater frequency for lineal than corresponding collateral terms. This is also verified in the figures of Table XXXV. TABLE XXXV

G+ 1 G+1 G1 G1 G° G° G+2 G+2 2

G" G"2

lineal collateral lineal collateral lineal collateral lineal collateral lineal collateral

English 7,228 1,504 1,858 148 1,249 316 519 0 65 0

Spanish 11,229 4,717 5,514 361 4,931 867 2,774 0 152 0

French 1,260 511 1,030 140 419 151 83 —

31 —

German 9,428 1,219 6,047 464 3,449 427 614 6 242 6

Finally, as would be expected there is overwhelmingly greater frequency for consanguineal terms over corresponding affinal ones. 2

English, E. L. Thorndike and I. Lorge op. cit.\ Spanish, I. R. B o u , op. cit.; German, Kaeding, op. cit.; Russian, H. H . Josselson op. cit. Blanks indicate items not concluded in the count. In Russian both 'father' and 'mother' otets and mat' are in Josselson's group of words (Group I) whose frequency was s o great that they were not counted after a certain point. The figures are therefore not comparable with the rest but are necessarily greater than any of the others in the first sources counted.

UNIVERSALS OF KINSHIP TERMINOLOGY

82 father mother brother sister son daughter

3235 3993 659 590 993 590

father-in-law 17 mother-in-law 53 brother-in-law 23 sister-in-law 18 son-in-law 27 daughter-in-law 19

padre madre hermano hermana hijo hija

5631 5598 3120 1811 3765 1749

suegro suegra cuñado cuñada yerno nuera

15 37 50 16 17 16

T h e a p p r o a c h t o universals of kinship has thus far been t h r o u g h the concept of m a r k e d and u n m a r k e d categories. There has been n o overt mention of typologies. Yet it is easy to see that implicit typologies are involved. Thus, to take one example a m o n g many, the neutralization for sex of referent in the m a r k e d category of second descending generation f o r lineal terms as against second ascending generation can be restated in terms of a typology. We classify kinship terminologies into those which distinguish sex of referent in second ascending generation lineal terms and those which d o not. We similarly classify systems into two types for second descending generation lineal terms. T h e operation of these two sets of criteria simultaneously produces f o u r logically possible types of language. Type one, in which both ascending and descending generations distinguish sex, is exemplified by English. Type two, in which neither second ascending nor second descending generations distinguish sex of referent, is represented by Lunda, a Bantu g r o u p . Type three, with sex distinguished in the ascending but n o t descending generation, has as one of its members Sara Ainu. T h e f o u r t h type, however, with sex distinction in the second descending generation but not in the second ascending generation, apparently has no members. F r o m this we restate our universal in the c o m m o n implicational f o r m , distinction of sex in the second descending generation implies the same distinction in the second ascending generation, but not vice versa. T h e a p p r o a c h t h r o u g h typologies in these a n d similar instances is clumsy a n d rather unrevealing because a separate typology is required for almost every universal a n d because the connections a m o n g these universals t h r o u g h the master principle of m a r k e d and u n m a r k e d categories d o n o t appear. In other instances the

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sheer number of possible typologies makes this approach inadvisable. Consider, for example, the question of sex of speaker and addressee discussed earlier. A full typology will be based on the existence of nine possible classes of terms according to whether the speaker is male, female, or either sex and the addressee male, female, or either sex. Of these 9 types of terms, any system might theoretically contain a single type only, some combination of two types, and so on up to use of all 9. Of course, some of these are excluded by certain considerations. For example, a system consisting exclusively of terms with addressees of male sex only would lack all designations for female kin. The theoretical possibilities are 2 9 or 512 types, and even the exclusion of some of these for reasons such as those just described will leave several hundred types. On a pure sampling basis some of these will be expected to be lacking. A large variety of unenlightening implications will be possible. However there are some instances in which a typological approach is useful. There was earlier current a typology of kinship systems, the main lines of which continue to be followed in more recent work. 3 Kinship systems were classified on the basis of parental and parents' sibling terms, in other words, those of the first ascending generation. The key terms here are for males — father, father's brother, and mother's brother. We may distinguish four types of kinship terminologies. In the generational type all three of these relatives are referred to by the same terms. In the lineal type, to which our system belongs, the father is distinguished f r o m the two collateral relatives which are merged in a single uncle term. In the bifurcate collateral system all three — father, paternal uncle, and maternal uncle — are designated by separate terms. Finally in the bifurcate merging systems the paternal line relatives, father and father's brother, receive the sample appellation, while a second term is used for the mother's brother. There are thus four types, generational, lineal, bifurcate collateral, and bifurcate merging, and no other type is even considered. But, in fact, there are five logical possibilities. 3

R. H. Lowie, "Kinship Terminology", Encyclopaedia Britannica (date of first edition in which this article appears was not obtainable).

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For we can have either one, two, or three terms for these three kin types. Obviously the use of a single term or three separate terms each give one type. But for systems with two terms, any one o f the three can receive a unique designation, while the other two fall under a second term. There are therefore three additional types producing a total o f five not four. The missing type is the one in which the father and mother's brother are covered by a single kin term, while the father's brother is given a separate name. The fact that this type is not even mentioned is sufficient evidence o f its extreme rarity or non-existence. In fact, I do not know of a single instance o f this type. Its usual absence leads to the following implicational universal: whenever the father and mother's brother are designated by the same term the father's brother is likewise designated by the same term. Note that the father and mother's brother are the two most divergent, as it were, o f the three relatives in that they differ both in the lineal/collateral dimension and in line of descent paternal/maternal. Analogous typologies can be constructed in other cases, and their complexity, in the sense o f number o f possible types, will depend of course on the size o f the basic set of relatives. The earlier observation that all languages distinguish father from mother was an example of the simplest possible case. Here there are only two kin types, father and mother, and therefore only two logically possible types, those which use two terms and those which use one, that is have no separate father and mother term. O f these two types, apparently all languages belong to the first and none to the second. An example of a more complex typology is one based on grandparent terms, for here there are four kin types to be considered — father's father, mother's father, father's mother, and mother's mother. In this instance there are fifteen logically possible classifications. With one term there is one possibility. With two terms either term covers two relatives, or one covers three and the other a single kin type. The former occurs three ways, the later four, making a total of seven. For three terms the only possible division is two, one, one; and this can occur in six ways. There is only one

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possible way of applying four terms. This gives us a total of 1 + 7 + 6 + 1 or fifteen types. Of these fifteen types, only six types occur in Gifford's survey of California kinship systems. Two other types occur in my material, one being common elsewhere but not found in California. In the following table each type is listed, together with a judgement as to whether it is frequent, uncommon, or, at least to my present knowledge, non-existent: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A.

FaFa, FaMo, Mo Fa, MoMo FaFa, FaMo B. MoFa, MoMo FaFa, MoFa B. FaMo, MoMo FaFa, MoMo B. FaMo, MoFa FaFa B. FaMo, MoFa, MoMo FaMo B. FaFa, MoFa, MoMo MoFa B. FaFa, FaMo, MoMo MoMo B. FaFa, FaMo, MoFa FaFa, FaMo B. MoFa C. MoMo FaFa, MoFa B. FaMo C. MoMo FaFa, MoMo B. FaMo C. MaFo FaMo, MoFa B. FaFa C. MoMo FaMo, MoMo FaFa C. MoFa MoFa, MoMo B. FaFa C. FaMo FaFa B. FaMo C. MoFa D. MoMo

common occurs common not found not found not found not found occurs occurs occurs not found occurs not found not found common

A certain order is brought into this multiplicity of types if we search for those combinations of kin types which are never classified together in occurrent types, except in type 1 which involves a single term for all relatives. In fact, there is only one such set consisting of FaFa and MoMo. Among all terminologies which involve a classification, that is all outside of type 1, those for which I have found examples, namely 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 12, and 15, put FaFa and MoMo in different classes. For the converse there are only two types, 5, and 14 which put FaFa and MoMo in different classes, but which do not occur in my material. The explanation for the non-occurrence of these types is probably that both involve some terms in which sex of referent is specified and some which do not. This result is obviously consonant with the conclusion derived

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earlier from the consideration of first ascending generation terms. It will be recalled that the only theoretically possible type which did not occur was that in which father and mother's brother are classified together as against father's brother. Here, similarly, father's father differs f r o m mother's mother in the two coordinates of sex of connectiong relative and sex of referent. This is true of one other pair, mother's father and father's mother, and indeed there is only one occurrent type in which these are classified together, outside of type 1. Of course, this is type 12 for which I have thus far found only a single example, Wikmunkan in Australia. It may be noted that throughout this discussion free use has been made of number of categories, e.g. consanguineal vs. affinal, lineal vs. collateral, generation, etc. It is worth noting that these categories play much the same role in the analysis of kinship terminologies as features d o in phonological comparison. It is this analogy which underlies the current development of componential analysis. Like the features they are a finite set of categories, usually binary, in terms of which any kin term in any system may be adequately specified and which provide the indispensible analytic framework for comparative analyses, such as the present one. As with the phonological features, certain ones are utilized in all systems and certain ones are more restricted in their distribution. A consideration of these facts leads to universals of a kind analogous to those of Jakobsonian phonology, e.g. that all languages exhibit an opposition of vocalic and non-vocalic. This set of categories was first described in a fundamental study of A. L. Kroeber, in which he proposed eight categories: 1. generation; 2. lineal vs. collateral; 3. relative age within generation; 4. consanguineal vs. affinal; 5. sex of relative; 6. sex of speaker; 7. sex of connecting relative; 8. condition of life of connecting relative, i.e. whether living or dead. 4 A category may be said to be used in a system if it enters into the definition of at least one kinship term. Thus sex of relative (i.e. of referent) is present in the English system because of terms 4

A. L. Kroeber, "Classificatory Systems of Relationship", Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society 39.77-84 (1909).

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like 'brother' and 'sister' even though it is neutralized in 'cousin'. On this basis three of Kroeber's eight categories seem to be universal. All systems make some use of (1) generation; (4) consanguineal vs. affinal distinction; and (5) sex of relative. Conclusions such as those proposed here may seem of lesser interest to students of social structure than the current typological approaches in which differences in kinship types are the objects of attention because they lend themselves to the framing of hypotheses connecting terminology with social institutions. In fact, of course, the two enterprises are complementary. In seeking for differences we by the same token discover similarities as a negative result, and in seeking for similarities we uncover differences as a negative result. It may also be pointed out that in the wider context of social sciences in general, among which linguistics must be numbered, a correlation involving kinship and social institutions is a universal connecting linguistic and non-linguistic social data, while a universal within terminologies connects linguistic with other linguistic data, and these are also in the broad sense social. It is to be hoped that the present results, which will certainly both be amplified in scope and rectified in details in subsequent studies, will serve to show that at least one area of semantics can be treated with as great exactitude and can be as fruitful in conclusions of universal scope as the study of the more formal aspects of language such as phonology and grammar.

REFERENCES

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