CHAPTER 8

Two Aspects of Language and Two

Types of Aphasic Disturbances

I. The Linguistic Problems ofAphasia

If aphasia is a language disturbance, as the term itself suggests,
then any description and classification of aphasic syndromes must be­
gin with the question of what aspects of language are impaired in the
various species of such a disorder. This problem, which was ap­
proached long ago by Hughlings Jackson,l cannot be solved without
the participation of professional linguists familiar with the patterning
and functioning of language.
To study adequately any breakdown in communications we must
first understand the nature and structure of the particular mode of
communication that has ceased to function. Linguistics is concerned
with language in all its aspects-language in operation, language in
drift,2 language in the nascent state, and language in dissolution.
There are psychopathologists who assign a high importance to the
linguistic problems involved in the study of language disturbances;3
some of these questions have been touched upon in the best treatises
on aphasia.4 Yet, in most cases, this valid insistence on the linguist's
contribution to the investigation of aphasia has been ignored. For in-

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stance, one book, dealing to a great extent with the complex and intri­
cate problems of infantile aphasia, calls for a coordination of various
disciplines and appeals for cooperation to otolaryngologists, pediatri­
cians, audiologists, psychiatrists, and educators; but the science of lan­
guage is passed over in silence, as if disorders in speech perception had
nothing whatever to do with language. 5
Linguists are also responsible for the delay in undertaking a joint
inquiry into aphasia. Nothing comparable to the minute linguistic ob­
servations of infants of various countries has been performed with re­
spect to aphasics. Nor has there been any attempt to reinterpret and
systematize from the point of view of linguistics the multifarious clin­
ical data on diverse types of aphasia. That this should be true is all the
more surprising in view of the fact that, on the one hand, the amazing
progress of structural linguistics has endowed the investigator with
efficient tools and methods for the study of verbal regression and, on
the other, the aphasic disintegration of the verbal pattern may provide
the linguist with new insights into the general laws of language.
The application of purely linguistic criteria to the interpretation and
classification of aphasic facts can substantially contribute to the science
of language and language disturbances, provided that linguists remain
as careful and cautious when dealing with psychological and neurolog­
ical data as they have been in their traditional field. First of all, they
should be familiar with the technical terms and devices of the medical
disciplines dealing with aphasia; then, they must submit the clinical
case reports to thorough linguistic analysis; and, further, they should
themselves work with aphasic patients in order to approach the cases
directly and not only through a reinterpretation of prepared records
which have been quite differently conceived and elaborated.
There is one level of aphasic phenomena where amazing agreement
has been achieved between those psychiatrists and linguists who have
tackled these problems, namely the disintegration of the sound pat­
tern.6 This dissolution exhibits a time order of great regularity. Aphasic
regression has proved to be a mirror of the child's acquisition of speech
sounds: it shows the child's development in reverse. Furthermore,
comparison of child language and aphasia enables us to establish sev­
eral laws of implication. The search for this order of acquisitions and
losses and for the general laws of implication cannot be confined to
the phonemic pattern but must be extended also to the gr ammatical
system. 7
 Two Aspects ofLanguage

II. The Twofold Character ofLanguage

Speech implies a selection of certain linguistic entities and their

combination into linguistic lll1its of a higher degree of complexity. At
the lexical level this is readily apparent: the speaker selects words and
combines them into sentences according to the syntactic system of the
language he is using; sentences in their tum are combined into utter­
ances. But the speaker is by no means a completely free agent in his
choice of words: his selection (except for the rare case of actual neol­
ogy) must be made from the lexical storehouse which he and his ad­
dressee possess in common. The commlll1ication engineer most prop­
erly approaches the essence of the speech event when he assumes that
in the optimal exchange of information the speaker and the listener
have at their disposal more or less the same "filing cabinet of prefabri­
cated representations ": the addresser of a verbal message selects one of
these "preconceived possibilities, " and the addressee is supposed to
make an identical choice from the same assembly of "possibilities al­
ready foreseen and provided for. " 8 Thus the efficiency of a speech event
demands the use of a common code by its participants.
"'Did you say pig orjig?' said the Cat. 'I said pig) ' replied Alice. "9 In
this peculiar utterance the feline addressee attempts to recapture a lin­
guistic choice made by the addresser. In the common code of the Cat
and Alice (spoken English), the difference between a stop and a contin­
uant, other things being equal, may change the meaning of the mes­
sage. Alice had used the distinctive feature stop versus continuant, re­
jecting the latter and choosing the former of the two opposites; and in
the same act of speech she combined this solution with certain other
simultaneous features, using the gravity and the tenseness of Ipl in
contradistinction to the acuteness of It I and to the laxness of Ib/. Thus
all these attributes have been combined into a blll1dle of distinctive
features, the so-called phoneme. The phoneme Ipl was then followed
by the phonemes Iii and Ig/, themselves blll1dles of simultaneously pro­
duced distinctive features. Hence the concurrence of simultaneous enti­
ties and the concatenation of successive entities are the two ways in
which we speakers combine linguistic constituents.
Neither such blll1dles as Ipl or If I nor such sequences of blll1dles as
Ipig l or lfig l are invented by the speaker who uses them. Neither can
the distinctive feature stop versus continuant nor the phoneme Ipl oc­
cur out of context. The stop feature appears in combination with cer-

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tain other concurrent features, and the repertory of combinations of

these features into phonemes such as Ip/, Ib/, It/, Id/, Ik/, Igl is limited
by the code of the given language. The code sets limitations on the
possible combinations of the phoneme Ipl with other following and/
or preceding phonemes; and only part of the permissible phoneme
sequences are actually utilized in the lexical stock of a given language.
Even when other combinations of phonemes are theoretically possible,
the speaker, as a rule, is only a word user, not a word coiner. When
faced with individual words, we expect them to be coded units. In
order to grasp the word nylon one must know the meaning assigned to
this vocable in the lexical code of modern English.
In any language there exist also coded word groups called phrase
words. The meaning of the idiom how do you do cannot be derived by
adding together the meanings of its lexical constituents; the whole is
not equal to the sum of its parts. Word groups which in this respect
behave like single words are a common but nonetheless only marginal
case. In order to comprehend the overwhelming majority of word
groups, we need be familiar only with the constituent words and with
the syntactical rules of their combination. Within these limitations we
are free to put words in new contexts. Of course, this freedom is rela­
tive, and the pressure of current cliches upon our choice of combina­
tions is considerable. But the freedom to compose quite new contexts
is undeniable, despite the relatively low statistical probability of their
occurrence.
Thus, in the combination of linguistic units, there is an ascending
scale of freedom. In the combination of distinctive features into pho­
nemes, the freedom of the individual speaker is zero: the code has
already established all the possibilities which may be utilized in the
given language. Freedom to combine phonemes into words is circum­
scribed; it is limited to the marginal situation of word coinage. In
forming sentences with words, the speaker is less constrained. And
finally, in the combination of sentences into utterances, the action of
compulsory syntactical rules ceases, and the freedom of any individual
speaker to create novel contexts increases substantially, although again
the numerous stereotyped utterances are not to be overlooked.
Any linguistic sign involves two modes of arrangement:
(I) Combination. Any sign is made up of constituent signs and/or
occurs only in combination with other signs. This means that any lin­
guistic unit at one and the same time serves as a context for simpler
 TwoAspects ofLanguage

units and/or finds its own context in a more complex linguistic unit.
Hence any actual grouping of linguistic units binds them into a supe­
rior unit: combination and contexture are two faces of the same oper­
ation.
( 2 ) Selection. A selection between alternatives implies the possibility
of substituting one for the other, equivalent in one respect and differ­
ent in another. Actually, selection and substitution are two faces of the
same operation.
The fundamental role which these two operations play in language
was clearly realized by Ferdinand de Saussure. Yet of the two varieties
of combination-concurrence and concatenation-it was only the lat­
ter, the temporal sequence, which was recognized by the Geneva lin­
guist. Despite his own insight into the phoneme as a set of concurrent
distinctive features (elements differentiels des phonemes) , the scholar suc­
cumbed to the traditional belief in the linear character of language
"which excludes the possibility of pronouncing two elements at the
same time. " 10
In order to delimit the two modes of arrangement we have de­
scribed as combination and selection, de Saussure states that the for­
mer "is in presentia: it is based on two or several terms jointly present
in an actual series;' whereas the latter "connects terms in absentia as
members of a virtual mnemonic series. " That is to say, selection (and,
correspondingly, substitution) deals with entities conjoined in the code
but not in the given message, whereas, in the case of combination, the
entities are conjoined in both or only in the actual message. The ad­
dressee perceives that the given utterance (message) is a combination of
constituent parts (sentences, words, phonemes) selected from the re­
pository of all possible constituent parts (the code). The constituents
of a context are in a state of contiguity) while in a substitution set signs
are linked by various degrees of similarity which fluctuate between the
equivalence of synonyms and the common core of antonyms.
These two operations provide each linguistic sign with two sets of
interpretants) to utilize the effective concept introduced by Charles
Sanders Peirce. II There are two references which serve to interpret the
sign-one to the code and the other to the context; whether coded or
free, and in each of these ways the sign is related to another set of
linguistic signs, through an alternation in the former case and through
an alignment in the latter. A given significative unit may be replaced by
other, more explicit signs of the same code, whereby its general mean-

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ing is revealed, while its contextual meaning is determined by its con­

nection with other signs within the same sequence.
The constituents of any message are necessarily linked with the code
by an internal relation and with the message by an external relation.
Language in its various aspects deals with both modes of relation.
Whether messages are exchanged or communication proceeds unilat­
erally from the addresser to the addressee, there must be some kind of
contiguity between the participants of any speech event to assure the
transmission of the message. The separation in space, and often in
time, between two individuals, the addresser and the addressee, is
bridged by an internal relation: there must be a certain equivalence
between the symbols used by the addresser and those known and in­
terpreted by the addressee. Without such an equivalence the message
is fruitless: even when it reaches the receiver it does not affect him .

ill. The Similarity Disorder

It is clear that speech disturbances may affect in varying degrees
the individual's capacity for combination and selection of linguistic
units, and indeed the question of which of these two operations is
chiefly impaired proves to be of far-reaching significance in describing,
analyzing, and classifying the diverse forms of aphasia. This dichotomy
is perhaps even more suggestive than the classical distinction between
emissive and receptive aphasia, indicating which of the two functions in
speech exchange, the encoding or the decoding of verbal messages, is
particularly affected.
Head attempted to classify cases of aphasia into definite groups, and
to each of these varieties he assigned "a name chosen to signify the
most salient defect in the management and comprehension of words
and phrases." 12 Following this device, we distinguish two basic types
of aphasia-depending on whether the major deficiency lies in selec­
tion and substitution, with relative stability of combination and con­
texture; or conversely, in combination and contexture, with relative
retention of normal selection and substitution. In outlining these two
opposite patterns of aphasia, I shall utilize mainly Goldstein's data.
For aphasics of the first type (selection deficiency), the context is the
indispensable and decisive factor. When presented with scraps of
words or sentences, such a patient readily completes them. His speech
is merely reactive: he easily carries on conversation but has difficulties

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in starting a dialogue; he is able to reply to a real or imaginary ad­

dresser when he is, or imagines himself to be, the addressee of the
message. It is particularly hard for him to perform, or even to under­
stand, such a closed discourse as the monologue. The more his utter­
ances are dependent on the context, the better he copes with his verbal
task. He feels unable to utter a sentence which responds neither to the
cue of his interlocutor nor to the actual situation. The sentence "it
rains" cannot be produced unless the utterer sees that it is actually
raining. The deeper the utterance is embedded in the verbal or nonver­
balized context, the higher are the chances of its successful perform­
ance by this class of patients.
Likewise, the more a word is dependent on the other words of the
same sentence and the more it refers to the syntactical context, the less
it is affected by the speech disturbance. Therefore words syntactically
subordinated by gr ammatical agreement or government are more te­
nacious, whereas the main subordinating agent of the sentence, namely
the subject, tends to be omitted. As long as beginning is the patient's
main difficulty, it is obvious that he will fail precisely at the starting
point, the cornerstone of the sentence pattern. In this type of language
disturbance, sentences are conceived as elliptical sequels to be supplied
from antecedent sentences uttered, if not imagined, by the aphasic
himself or received by him from the other partner in the colloquy,
actual if not imaginary. Key words may be dropped or superseded by
abstract anaphoric substitutes.13 A specific noun, as Freud noticed, is
replaced by a very general one, for instance ma chin or ch ose in the
speech of French aphasics. 14 In a dialectal German sample of "amnesic
aphasia" observed by Goldstein, Din g (thing) or Stuckel (piece) was
substituted for all inanimate nouns, and ube rfahren (perform) for verbs
which were identifiable from the context or situation and therefore
appeared superfluous to the patient.
Words with an inherent reference to the context, such as pronouns
and pronominal adverbs, and words serving merely to construct the
context, such as connectives and auxiliaries, are particularly prone to
survive. A typical utterance of a German patient, recorded by Quensel
and quoted by Goldstein, will serve as illustration: . "Ich bin doch hier
unten, na wenn ich gewesen bin ich weess nicht, we das, nu wenn ich,
ob das nun doch, noch, ja. Was Sie her, wenn ich, och ich weess nicht,
we das hier war ja." Thus only the framework, the connecting links of
communication, is spared by this type of aphasia at its critical stage.

IOI
 QUESTIONS OF LITERARY THE O RY

In the theory of language, since the early Middle Ages, it has re­
peatedly been asserted that the word out of context has no meaning.
The validity of this statement is, however, confined to aphasia or, more
exactly, to one type of aphasia. In the pathological cases under discus­
sion, an isolated word means actually nothing but "blab." As numerous
tests have disclosed, for such patients two occurrences of the same
word in two different contexts are mere homonyms. Since distinctive
vocables carry a higher amount of information than homonyms, some
aphasics of this type tend to supplant the contextual variants of one
word by different terms, each of them specific for the given environ­
ment. Thus Goldstein's patient never uttered the word knife alone but,
according to its use and surroundings, alternately called the knife
pencil-sha rpener, apple -parer, bread-kn ife) kn ife-and-fork; so the word
kn ife was changed from a free form, capable of occurring alone, into a
bound form.
"I have a good apartment, entrance hall, bedroom, kitchen;' Gold­
stein's patient says. "There are also big apartments, only in the rear live
bachelors." A more explicit form, the word group unmarried people)
could have been substituted for bachelors) but this univerbal term was
selected by the speaker. When repeatedly asked what a bachelor was,
the patient did not answer and was "apparently in distress." A reply
like "a bachelor is an unmarried man" or "an unmarried man is a bach­
elor" would present an equational predication and thus a projection of
a substitution set from the lexical code of the English language into
the context of the given message. The equivalent terms become two
correlated parts of the sentence and consequently are tied by contigu­
ity. The patient was able to select the appropriate term bachelor when
it was supported by the context of a customary conversation about
"bachelor apartments;' but was incapable of utilizing the substitution
set bachelor = unmarried man as the topic of a sentence because the
ability for autonomous selection and substitution had been affected.
The equational sentence vainly demanded from the patient carries as
its sole information: "ba chelor means an unmarried man" or "an un­
married man is called a bachelor."
The same difficulty arises when the patient is asked to name an ob­
ject pointed to or handled by the examiner. The aphasic with a defect
in substitution will not supplement the pointing or handling gesture
of the examiner with the name of the object pointed to. Instead of
saying "this is [called] a pencil;' he will merely add an elliptical note

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about its use: "To write." If one of the synonymic signs is present (for
instance, the word bachelor or the pointing to the pencil) then the other
sign (such as the phrase unmarried man or the word pencil) becomes
redundant and consequently superfluous. For the aphasic, both signs
are in complementary distribution: if one is performed by the exam­
iner, the patient will avoid its synonym: "I understand everything" or
"Ich weiss es schon " will be his typical reaction. Likewise, the picture
of an object will cause suppression of its name: a verbal sign is sup­
planted by a pictorial sign. When the picture of a compass was pre­
sented to a patient of Lotmar's, he responded: "Yes, it's a ... I know
what it belongs to, but I cannot recall the technical expression ...Yes
... direction ... to show direction ... a magnet points to the
north."15 Such patients fail to shift, as Peirce would say, from an index
or icon to a corresponding verbal symbol.16
Even simple repetition of a word uttered by the examiner seems to
the patient unnecessarily redundant, and despite instructions received
he is unable to repeat it.Told to repeat the word "no:' Head's patient
replied ''No, I don't know how to do it." While spontaneously using
the word in the context of his answer ("No, I don't ..."), he could not
produce the purest form of equational predication, the tautology
a = a: Inol is Inol.
One of the important contributions of symbolic logic to the science
of language is its emphasis on the distinction between object language
and metalanguage. As Carnap states, "in order to speak about any object
language) we need a metalanguage."17 On these two different levels of
language the same linguistic stock may be used; thus we may speak in
English (as metalanguage) about English (as object language) and in­
terpret English words and sentences by means of English synonyms,
circumlocutions, and paraphrases. Obviously such operations, labeled
metalinguistic by the logicians, are not their invention: far from being
confined to the sphere of science, they prove to be an integral part of
our customary linguistic activities.The participants in a dialogue often
check whether they are using the same code. "Do you follow me?Do
you see what I mean?" the speaker asks, or the listener himself breaks
in with "What do you mean?" Then, by replacing the questionable
sign with another sign from the same linguistic code or with a whole
group of code signs, the sender of the message seeks to make it more
accessible to the decoder.
The interpretation of one linguistic sign through other, in some re-

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 QUESTI ONS OF LITE RARY THEO RY

spect homogeneous, signs of the same language is a metalinguistic op­

eration which also plays an essential role in children's language learn­
ing. Observations have disclosed what a considerable place talk about
language occupies in the verbal behavior of preschool children.18 Re­
course to metalanguage is necessary both for the acquisition of lan­
guage and for its normal functioning. The aphasic defect in the "capac­
ity of naming" is properly a loss of metalanguage. As a matter of fact,
the examples of equational predication sought in vain from the pa­
tients cited above are metalinguistic propositions referring to the En­
glish language. Their explicit wording would be: "In the code we use,
the name of the indicated object is pencil"; or "In the code we use, the
word 'bachelor' and the circumlocution 'unmarried man' are equiva­
lent."
Such an aphasic can switch neither from a word to its synonyms or
circumlocutions nor to its heteronyms (equivalent expressions in other
languages). Loss of bilingualism and confinement to a single dialectal
variety of a single language is a symptomatic manifestation of this dis­
order.
According to an old but recurrent bias, a single individual's way of
speaking at a given time, labeled idiolect) has been viewed as the only
concrete linguistic reality. In one discussion of this concept the follow­
ing objections were raised:

Everyone, when speaking to another person, tries, deliberately or

involuntarily, to hit upon a common vocabulary: either to please
or simply to be understood or, finally, to bring him out, he uses
the terms of his addressee. There is no such thing as private prop­
erty in language: everything is socialized. Verbal exchange, like
any form of intercourse, requires at least two communicators, and
idiolect proves to be a somewhat perverse fiction.19

This statement needs, however, one reservation: for an aphasic who

has lost the capacity for code switching, the idiolect indeed becomes
the sole linguistic reality. As long as he does not regard another's
speech as a message addressed to him in his own verbal pattern, he
feels, as a patient of Hemphil and Stengel expressed it: ''1 can hear you
dead plain but I cannot get what you say . . . I hear your voice but not
the words . . . It does not pronounce itself." 20 He considers the other's
utterance to be either gibberish or at least in an unknown language.
As noted above, it is the external relation of contiguity which unites
the constituents of a context, and the internal relation of similarity
which underlies the substitution set. Hence, for an aphasic with im-

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 Two Aspe cts ofLangu age

paired substitution and intact contexture, operations involving similar­

ity yield to those based on contiguity. It could be predicted that under
these conditions any semantic grouping would be guided by spatial or
temporal contiguity rather than by similarity. Actually Goldstein's tests
justify such an expectation: a female patient of this type, when asked
to list a few names of animals, disposed them in the same order in
which she had seen them in the roo; similarly, despite instructions to
arrange certain objects according to color, size, and shape, she classi­
fied them on the basis of their spatial contiguity as home things, office
materials, etc., and justified this grouping by a reference to a display
window where "it does not matter what the things are" (they do not
have to be similar). The same patient was willing to name the primary
hues-red, yellow, green, and blue-but declined to extend these
names to the transitional varieties since, for her, words had no capacity
to assume additional, shifted meanings associated by similarity with
their primary meaning.
One must agree with Goldstein's observation that patients of this
type "grasped the words in their literal meaning but could not be
brought to understand the metaphoric character of the same words"
(p. 270). It would, however, be an unwarranted generalization to as­
sume that figurative speech is altogether incomprehensible to them. Of
the two polar figures of speech, metaphor and metonymy, the latter,
based on contiguity, is widely employed by aphasics whose selective
capacities have been affected. Fork is substituted for knife) table for
lamp) smoke for pipe) eat for toaster. A typical case is reported by Head:
"When he failed to recall the name for 'black,' he described it as 'What
you do for the dead'; this he shortened to 'dead.'" Such metonymies
may be characterized as projections from the line of a habitual context
into the line of substitution and selection: a sign (fork) which usually
occurs together with another sign (kn ife) may be used instead of this
sign. Phrases like "knife and fork;' "table lamp;' "to smoke a pipe;'
induced the metonymies fork) table) smoke; the relation between the use
of an object (toast) and the means of its production underlies the me­
tonymy eat for toaster. "When does one wear black?" -"When mourn­
ing the dead": in place of naming the color, the cause of its traditional
use is designated. The escape from sameness to contiguity is particu­
larly striking in such cases as Goldstein's patient who would answer
with a metonymy when asked to repeat a given word and, for instance,
would say glass for win dow and heaven for God.
When the selective capacity is strongly impaired and the gift for

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 QUEST I O NS OF LITERARY THEORY

combination at least partly preserved, then contiguity determines the

patient's whole verbal behavior, and we may designate this type of
aphasia similarity disorder.

Iv. The Contiguity Disorder

From 1864 on it was repeatedly pointed out in Hughlings Jack­
son's pioneer contributions to the modern study of language and lan­
guage disturbances:

It is not enough to say that speech consists of words. It consists

of words referring to one another in a particular manner; and,
without a proper interrelation of its parts, a verbal utterance
would be a mere succession of names embodying no proposi­
tion.21

Loss of speech is the loss of power to propositionize . .. Speech­

lessness does not mean entire wordlessness.22

Impairment of the ability to propositionize or, generally speaking, to

combine simpler linguistic entities into more complex units, is actually
confined to one type of aphasia, the opposite of the type discussed in
the preceding section. There is no wordlessness, since the entity pre­
served in most of such cases is the word, which can be defined as the
highest among the linguistic units compulsorily coded-we compose
our own sentences and utterances out of the word stock supplied by
the code.
This contexture-deficient aphasia, which could be termed the conti­
guity disorde1j diminishes the extent and variety of sentences. The syn­
tactical rules organizing words into higher units are lost; this loss,
called agramm atism) causes the degeneration of the sentence into a
mere "word heap;' to use Jackson's image.23 Word order becomes cha­
otic; the ties of grammatical coordination and subordination, whether
concord or government, are dissolved. As might be expected, words
endowed with purely grammatical functions, like conjunctions, prep­
ositions, pronouns, and articles, disappear first, giving rise to the so­
called "telegraphic style;' whereas in the case of a similarity disorder
they are the most resistant. The less a word depends grammatically on
the context, the stronger is its tenacity in the speech of aphasics with a
contiguity disorder and the earlier it is dropped by patients with a
similarity disorder. Thus the "kernel subject word" is the first to fall

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 TwoAspects ofLanguage

out of the sentence in cases of similarity disorder and, conversely, it is

the least destructible in the opposite type of aphasia.
The type of aphasia affecting contexture tends to give rise to infan­
tile one-sentence utterances and one-word sentences. Only a few
longer, stereotyped, ready-made sentences manage to survive. In ad­
vanced cases of this disease, each utterance is reduced to a single one­
word sentence. W hile contexture disintegrates, the selective operation
goes on. "To say what a thing is, is to say what it is like:' Jackson notes.
The patient confined to the substitution set (once contexture is defi­
cient) deals with similarities, and his approximate identifications are of
a metaphoric nature, contrary to the metonymic ones familiar to the
opposite type of aphasics. Spyglass for microscope or fire for gaslight are
typical examples of such quasi-metaphoric expressions, as Jackson
'
termed them, since, in contradis
phors, they present no deliberate transfer of meaning.
In a normal language pattern, the word is at the same time both a
constituent part of a superimposed context, the sentence, and itself a
context superimposed on ever smaller constituents, morphemes (min­
imum units endowed with meaning) and phonemes. We have dis­
cussed the effect of contiguity disorder on the combination of words
into higher units. The relationship between the word and its constitu­
ents reflects the same impairment, yet in a somewhat different way. A
typical feature of agrammatism is the abolition of inflection: there ap­
pear such unmarked categories as the infinitive in the place of diverse
finite verbal forms and, in languages with declension, the nominative
instead of all the oblique cases. These defects are due partly to the
elimination of government and concord, partly to the loss of ability to
dissolve words into stem and desinence. Finally, a paradigm (in partic­
ular a set of gr ammatical cases such as he-his -him or of tenses such as
he votes -he voted) present the same semantic content from different
points of view associated with each other by contiguity; so there is one
more impetus for aphasics with a contiguity disorder to dismiss such
sets.
Also, as a rule, words derived from the same root, such as grant­
grantor-grantee are semantically related by contiguity. The patients
under discussion are either inclined to drop the derivative words, or
the combination of a root with a derivational suffix, and even a com­
pound of two words become irresolvable for them. Patients who
understood and uttered such compounds as Thank g
s iving or Battersea)

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 QUEST I O NS OF LITE RARY THE O RY

but were unable to grasp or say than ks and giving or b atter and sea)
have often been cited� As long as the sense of derivation is still alive,
so that this process is still used for creating innovations in the code,
one can observe a tendency toward oversimplification and automatism:
if the derivative word constitutes a semantic unit which cannot be en­
tirely inferred from the meaning of its components, the Gestalt is mis­
understood. Thus the Russian word mokr-ica signifies ''wood-louse;'
but a Russian aphasic interpreted it as "something humid;' especially
"humid weather;' since the root mokr- means "humid" and the suffix
-ica designates a carrier of the given property, as in nelepica (something
absurd), svetlica (light room), temnica (dungeon, literally dark room).
When, before World War II, phonemics was the most controversial
area in the science of language, doubts were expressed by some lin­
guists as to whether phonemes really play an autonomous part in our
verbal behavior. It was even suggested that the meaningful (significa­
tive) units of the linguistic code, such as morphemes or rather words,
are the minimal entities with which we actually deal in a speech event,
whereas the merely distinctive units, such as phonemes, are an artificial
construct to facilitate the scientific description and analysis of a lan­
guage. This view, which was stigmatized by Sapir as "the reverse of
realistic;' 24 remains, however, perfectly valid with respect to a certain
pathological type: in one variety of aphasia, which sometimes has been
labeled "atactic;' the word is the sole linguistic unity preserved. The
patient has only an integral, indissolvable image of any familiar word,
and all other sound-sequences are either alien and inscrutable to him,
or he merges them into familiar words by disregarding their phonetic
deviations.One of Goldstein's patients "perceived some words, but ...
the vowels and consonants of which they consisted were not per­
ceived" (p. 218). A French aphasic recognized, understood, repeated,
and spontaneously produced the word cafe (coffee) or p ave (roadway)
but was unable to grasp, discern, or repeat such nonsensical sequences
as fica) fake) k ifa) p afi. None of these difficulties exists for a normal
French-speaking listener as long as the sound sequences and their com­
ponents fit the French phonemic pattern. Such a listener may even
apprehend these sequences as words unknown to him but plausibly
belonging to the French vocabulary and presumably different in mean­
ing, since they differ from each other either in the order of their pho­
nemes or in the phonemes themselves.
If an aphasic becomes unable to resolve the word into its phonemic

lO8
 Two Aspects ofL angu age

constituents, his control over its construction weakens, and perceptible

damage to phonemes and their combinations easily follows. The grad­
ual regression of the sound pattern in aphasics regularly reverses the
order of children's phonemic acquisitions. This regression involves an
inflation of homonyms and a decrease of vocabulary. If this twofold­
phonemic and lexical-disablement progresses further, the last resi­
dues of speech are one-phoneme, one-word, one-sentence utterances:
the patient relapses into the initial phases of an infant's linguistic de­
velopment or even to the prelingual stage: he faces aphasia universalisJ
the total loss of the power to use or apprehend speech.
The separateness of the two functions-one distinctive and the
other significative-is a peculiar feature of language as compared to
other semiotic systems. There arises a conflict between these two levels
of language when the aphasic deficient in contexture exhibits a ten­
dency to abolish the hierarchy of linguistic units and to reduce their
scale to a single leveL The last level to remain is either a class of signi­
ficative values, the word, as in the cases touched upon, or a class of
distinctive values, the phoneme. In the latter case the patient is still
able to identify, distinguish, and reproduce phonemes, but loses the
capacity to do the same with words. In an intermediate case, words are
identified, distinguished, and reproduced; according to Goldstein's
acute formulation, they "may be grasped as known but not under­
stood" (p. 90). Here the word loses its normal significative function
and assumes the purely distinctive function which normally pertains to
the phoneme.

V. The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles

The varieties of aphasia are numerous and diverse, but all of them
lie between the two polar types just described. Every form of aphasic
disturbance consists in some impairment, more or less severe, of the
faculty either for selection and substitution or for combination and
contexture. The former affiiction involves a deterioration of metalin­
guistic operations, while the latter damages the capacity for maintain­
ing the hierarchy of linguistic units. The relation of similarity is sup­
pressed in the former, the relation of contiguity in the latter type of
aphasia. Metaphor is alien to the similarity disorder, and metonymy to
the contiguity disorder.
The development of a discourse may take place along two different

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semantic lines: one topic may lead to another either through their sim­
ilarity or through their contiguity. The metaphoric way would be the
most appropriate term for the first case and the metonymic way for the
second, since they find their most condensed expression in metaphor
and metonymy respectively. In aphasia one or the other of these two
processes is restricted or totally blocked-an effect which makes the
study of aphasia particularly illuminating for the linguist. In normal
verbal behavior both processes are continually operative, but careful
observation will reveal that under the influence of a cultural pattern,
personality, and verbal style, preference is given to one of the two pro­
cesses over the other.
In a well-known psychological test, children are confronted with
some noun and told to utter the first verbal response that comes into
their heads. In this experiment two opposite linguistic predilections
are invariably exhibited: the response is intended either as a substitute
for or as a complement to the stimulus. In the latter case the stimulus
and the response together form a proper syntactic construction, most
usually a sentence. These two types of reaction have been labeled sub­
stitutive and predicative.
To the stimulus hut one response was burnt out; another, is a poor
little house. Both reactions are predicative; but the first creates a purely
narrative context, while in the second there is a double connection
with the subject hut: on the one hand, a positional (namely, syntactic)
contiguity and, on the other, a semantic similarity.
The same stimulus produced the following substitutive reactions:
the tautology hut; the synonyms cabin and hovel; the antonym palace;
and the metaphors den and burrow. The capacity of two words to re­
place one another is an instance of positional similarity, and, in addi­
tion, all these responses are linked to the stimulus by semantic similar­
ity (or contrast) . Metonymical responses to the same stimulus, such as
th atch) litte1; or poverty) combine and contrast the positional similarity
with semantic contiguity.
In manipulating these two kinds of connection (similarity and con­
tiguity) in both their aspects (positional and semantic)-selecting,
combining, and ranking them-an individual exhibits his personal
style, his verbal predilections and preferences.
In verbal art the interaction of these two elements is especially pro­
nounced. Rich material for the study of this relationship is to be found
in verse patterns which require a compulsory p arallelism between ad-

no
 TwoAspeas ofLanguage

jacent lines, for example in biblical poetry or in the Finnic and, to some
extent, the Russian oral traditions. This provides an objective criterion
of what in the given speech community acts as a correspondence. Since
on any verbal level-morphemic, lexical, syntactic, and phraseologi­
cal-either of these two relations (similarity and contiguity) can ap­
pear-and each in either of two aspects, an impressive range of pos­
sible configurations is created. Either of the two gravitational poles
may prevail. In Russian lyrical songs, for example, metaphoric con­
structions predominate, while in the heroic epics the metonymic way
is preponderant.
In poetry there are various motives which determine the choice be­
tween these alternants. The primacy of the metaphoric process in the
literary schools of Romanticism and Symbolism has been repeatedly
acknowledged, but it is still insufficiently realized that it is the predom­
inance of metonymy which underlies and actually predetermines the
so-called Realist trend, which belongs to an intermediary stage be­
tween the decline of Romanticism and the rise of Symbolism and is
opposed to both. Following the path of contiguous relationships, the
Realist author metonymic ally digresses from the plot to the atmo­
sphere and from the characters to the setting in space and time. He is
fond of synecdochic details. In the scene of Anna Karenma's suicide
Tolstoj's artistic attention is focused on the heroine's handbag; and in
War an a Pe ace the synecdoches (Chair on the upper lip" and (Cbare shoul­
ders" are used by the same writer to stand for the female characters to
whom these features belong.
The alternative predominance of one or the other of these two pro­
cesses is by no means confined to verbal art. The same oscillation oc­
curs in sign systems other than language.25 A salient example from the
history of painting is the manifestly metonymical orientation of Cub­
ism, where the object is transformed into a set of synecdoches; the
Surrealist painters responded with a patently metaphorical attitude.
Ever since the productions of D. W Griffith, the art of the cinema,
with its highly developed capacity for changing the angle, perspective,
and focus of shots, has broken with the tradition of the theater and
ranged an unprecedented variety of synecdochic close-ups and meto­
nymic set-ups in general. In such motion pictures as those of Charlie
Chaplin and Eisenstein,26 these devices in turn were overlayed by a
novel, metaphoric montage with its lap dissolves-the filmic similes. 27
The bipolar structure of language (or other semiotic systems) and,

III
 QUEST I O NS OF LITE RARY THEORY

in aphasia, the fixation on one of these poles to the exclusion of the

other require systematic comparative study. The retention of either of
these alternatives in the two types of aphasia must be confronted with
the predominance of the same pole in certain styles, personal habits,
current fashions, etc. A careful analysis and comparison of these phe­
nomena with the whole syndrome of the corresponding type of
aphasia is an imperative task for joint research by experts in psycho­
pathology, psychology, linguistics, poetics, and semiotics, the general
science of signs. The dichotomy discussed here appears to be of primal
significance and consequence for all verbal behavior and for human
behavior in general. 28
To indicate the possibilities of the projected comparative research, I
choose an example from a Russian folktale which employs parallelism
as a comic device: "Thomas is a bachelor; Jeremiah is unmarried"
(Foma xolostj Erj6m a nezenat). Here the predicates in the two parallel
clauses are associated by similarity: they are in fact synonymous. The
subjects of both clauses are masculine proper names and hence mor­
phologically similar, while on the other hand they denote two contig­
uous heroes of the same tale, created to perform identical actions and
thus to justify the use of synonymous pairs of predicates. A somewhat
modified version of the same construction occurs in a familiar wedding
song in which each of the wedding guests is addressed in turn by his
first name and patronymic: "Gleb is a bachelor; Ivanovic is unmarried."
While both predicates here are again synonyms, the relationship be­
tween the two subjects is changed: both are proper names denoting
the same man and are normally used contiguously as a mode of polite
address.
In the quotation from the folktale, the two parallel clauses refer to
two separate facts, the marital status of Thomas and the similar status
of Jeremiah. In the verse from the wedding song, however, the two
clauses are synonymous : they redundantly reiterate the celibacy of the
same hero, splitting him into two verbal hypostases.
The Russian novelist Gleb Ivanovic Uspenskij (184-0-1902) in the
last years of his life suffered from a mental illness involving a speech
disorder. His first name and patronymic, Gleb Ivanovi0 traditionally
combined in polite intercourse, for him split into two distinct names
designating two separate beings: Gleb was endowed with all his vir­
tues, while Ivanovic, the name relating a son to his father, became the
incarnation of all Uspenskij's vices. The linguistic aspect of this split

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 TwoAs pe cts ofLan guage

personality is the patient's inability to use two symbols for the same
thing, and it is thus a similarity disorder. Since the similarity disorder
is bound up with the metonymical bent, an examination of the literary
manner Uspenskij had employed as a young writer takes on particular
interest. And the study of Anatolij Kamegulov, who analyzed Uspen­
skij's style, bears out our theoretical expectations. He shows that Us­
penskij had a particular penchant for metonymy, and especially for syn­
ecdoche, and that he carried it so far that "the reader is crushed by the
multiplicity of detail unloaded on him in a limited verbal space, and
is physically unable to grasp the whole, so that the portrait is often
lost."29
To be sure, the metonymical style in Uspenskij is obviously
prompted by the prevailing literary canon of his time, late nineteenth­
century "realism"; but the personal stamp of Gleb Ivanovic made his
pen particularly suitable for this artistic trend in its extreme manifes­
tations and finally left its mark upon the verbal aspect of his mental
illness.
A competition between both devices, metonymic and metaphoric, is
manifest in any symbolic process, be it intrapersonal or social. Thus in
an inquiry into the structure of dreams, the decisive question is
whether the symbols and the temporal sequences used are based on
contiguity (Freud's metonymic "displacement" and synecdochic "con­
densation") or on similarity (Freud's "identification and symbolism") .
The principles underlying magic rites have been resolved by Frazer
into two types : charms based on the law of similarity and those
founded on association by contiguity. The first of these two great
branches of sympathetic magic has been called "homoeopathic" or
"imitative;' and the second, "contagious" magic.30 This bipartition is
indeed illuminating. Nonetheless, for the most part, the question of
the two poles is still neglected, despite its wide scope and importance
for the study of any symbolic behavior, especially verbal, and of its
impairments. What is the main reason for this neglect?
Similarity in meaning connects the symbols of a metalanguage with
the symbols of the language referred to. Similarity connects a meta­
phorical term with the term for which it is substinited. Consequently,
when constructing a metalanguage to interpret tropes, the researcher
possesses more homogeneous means to handle metaphor, whereas me­
tonymy, based on a different principle, easily defies interpretation.
Therefore nothing comparable to the rich literature on metaphor31 can

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 QUEST I O NS OF LITERARY THEORY

be cited for the theory of metonymy. For the same reason, it is gener­
ally realized that Romanticism is closely linked with metaphor,
whereas the equally intimate ties of Realism with metonymy usually
remain unnoticed. Not only the tool of the observer but also the object
of observation are responsible for the preponderance of metaphor over
metonymy in scholarship. Since poetry is focused upon the sign, and
pragmatical prose primarily upon the referent, tropes and figures were
studied mainly as poetic devices. The principle of similarity underlies
poetry; the metrical parallelism of lines or the phonic equivalence of
rhyming words prompts the question of semantic similarity and con­
trast; there exist, for instance, grammatical and antigramm atical but
never agr ammatical rhymes. Prose, on the contrary, is forwarded essen­
tially by contiguity. Thus for poetry, metaphor-and for prose, meton­
ymy-is the line of least resistance and consequently the study of po­
etical tropes is directed chiefly toward metaphor. The actual bipolarity
has been artificially replaced in these studies by an amputated, unipolar
scheme which, strikingly enough, coincides with one of the two
aphasic patterns, namely with the contiguity disorder.

II4