BREV TIL: Charles Ernest Bazell FRA: Eli Fischer-Jørgensen (1956-01-08)

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8 Jan. 195$

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Dear Bazell,

(Isn’t it time to drop tiie professor-tit&é?). - Thank you for sending the manuscript and for your Letter from November last yeai ( dated 1^/9 2 • ^ was gl&d to get the ms., for in the mean time I had to'give-up finishing the planned article on tense and lsnr • vowels, and instead r decided'to use the paper on commutation. This I have not finished either, but i± will not take so long. ixHgxeex I first wanted tty have a look at Hockett’s new Manual of Phonology and a few other things. Hockett’s book is quite inter- esting, above all by showing tile convergent development of phonemic theory in different parts of th'e world, but also from other points of view, but it is rather loose in the definitions a lot of conclusions on units/which he does not de peak and coda og a syllable). —As fgr ..the.. Commutation; test with special refer ence to the content I ' ^ee with you to a;certain point: - It is evident that there is a lack of parallelism between expression and content sub- stance, since the expres ion fras a speech wet, whereas the content has want to start from content, w;e have to start from "things" or Ideas known to us from other languages, and to go from these through content substance (in the serisé of meaning attached to pxas definite sign expressions by the speakers of the language) to expression, I do not agree that these ideas or things should necessarily have a name in a language known to the investigator; ker I mentioned the possibility of pointing to various flowers asking for their names, and you answered that some flowers at any rate oxghfcxixx ffiust have different names in our own language . But how far would you go in abstracting to larger groups? Would it not be enough to heve names fo. different plants, or Living organisms etc.? - his ce not really be relevant. X might notice some curious things of which I did not know xkfc&kx wiÆTfrhr names nor use and ask for their names. - This is the way a small child learns a good deal of his language. J&hx But of course it would be silly trying to ±bxhx learn a new language only by this method. And the investi- gator

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facing an unknown lang.

would of course only askax

kksxsxpXESxiaKxiKxphysxKxi.iyxK'.axi: for the names of things which he assumes to have different, names in the given language, i.e. often things belonging to that par- ticular culture, and not known to his own culture, but definitely not things or i eas which he knows well but' does not expect to find. I would not ask members of a negro x± com unity in the middle of Africa what in their language wpuld be the names for "glosserne " and "commutation” (even if i could point to those thingsl). - Pike's monolingual approach starts with porting to things, but of course he does nbt continue this way.

Expression fortunately has a physical manifestation, and there- fore we need not start making funny sounds and asking whfehher these have a meaning • e.g. you distinguish pile and tiie and what do these words mean. This would of ceurse be an endless and rather impossible task. Here v;e can simply observe what pasqspeople say, and compare these soudd sequences, ^nd normally this will be the best way also to content. Words or sentences are taken down with eanings, and then compared, and perhaps tested directly. Of course Hjelmslev has never meant that in field wor* one should start first with expression end mar-e ail the commutations from this aspect and then with content and make all commutations

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from fcMs aspect. This would really be absurd. When he talks about analysing expression and content (and making commutations) separately, he thinks °£n£+-|in81 contr°l analysis, where ell expres ionxand cantentx or the language have been found by trial and error and set up in a provisional±y .hierarchy. - Here one might test v.hetherxeach separate content unit listed has a corresponding separate expression unit. fours sincerely

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