Port-Royal Grammar

Turning from the general conception of grammatical structure to specific cases of grammatical analysis, we find many other attempts in the Port-Royal Grammar to develop the theory of deep and surface structure.

Thus adverbs are analyzed as (for the most part) arising from “the desire that men have to abbreviate discourse,” thus as being elliptical forms of preposition-noun constructions, for example, “wisely” for “with wisdom” or “today” for “on this day” (p. 88; PRG 121). Similarly, verbs are analyzed as containing implicitly an underlying copula that expresses affirmation; thus, once again, as arising from the desire to abbreviate the actual expression of thought. The verb, then, is “a word whose principal use77 is to signify affirma- tion or assertion, that is, to indicate that the discourse where this word is employed is the discourse of a man who not only conceives things, but who judges and affirms them” (p. 90; PRG 122). To use a verb, then, is to perform the act of affirming, not simply to refer to affirmation as an “object of our thought,” as in the use of “a number of nouns which also mean affirmation, such as ‘affirmans’ and ‘affirmatio’” (p. 90; PRG 122). Thus the Latin sentence “Petrus vivit” has the meaning “Peter is living” (p. 90; PRG 123), and in the sentence “Petrus affirmat” “‘affirmat’ is the same as ‘est affirmans’” (p. 98; PRG 128). It follows, then, that in the sentence “Affirmo” (in which subject, copula, and attribute are all abbreviated in a single word), two affirmations are expressed: one regarding the act of the speaker in affirming, the other the affirmation that he attributes (to himself, in this case). Similarly, “the verb ‘nego’ … contains an affirmation and a negation”

Formulating these observations in the framework outlined above, what the Port-Royal grammarians are maintaining is that the deep structure underlying a sentence such as “Peter lives” or “God loves mankind” (Logic, p. 108; PRL 83) contains a copula, expressing the affirmation, and a predicate (“living,” “loving mankind”) attributed to the subject of the proposition. Verbs constitute a sub- category of predicates; they are subject to a transformation that causes them to coalesce with the copula into a single word.

The analysis of verbs is extended in the Logic, where it is maintained (p. 117) that, despite surface appearances, a sentence with a transitive verb and its object “expresses a complex proposition and in one sense two propositions.” Thus we can contradict the sentence “Brutus killed a tyrant” by saying that Brutus did not kill anyone or that the person whom Brutus killed was not a tyrant. It follows that the sentence expresses the proposition that Brutus killed someone who was a tyrant, and the deep structure must reflect this fact. It seems that this analysis would also apply, in the view of the Logic, if the object is a singular term; e.g., “Brutus killed Caesar.”

This analysis plays a role in the theory of reasoning developed later on in the Logic. It is used to develop what is in effect a partial theory of relations, permitting the theory of the syllogism to be extended to arguments to which it would otherwise not apply. Thus it is pointed out (pp. 206–207; PRL 159–160) that the inference from “The divine law commands us to honor kings” and “Louis XIV is a king” to “The divine law commands us to honor Louis XIV” is obviously valid, though it does not exemplify any valid figure as it stands, superficially. By regarding “kings” as “the subject of a sentence contained implicitly in the original sentence,” using the passive transformation79 and otherwise decomposing the original sentence into its underlying prepositional constituents, we can finally reduce the argument to the valid figure Barbara. Reduction of sentences to underlying deep structure is resorted to elsewhere in the Logic, for the same purpose. For example, Arnauld observes (p. 208; PRL 160) that the sentence There are few pastors nowadays ready to give their lives for their sheep, though superficially affirmative in form, actually “contains implicitly the negative sentence ‘Many pastors nowadays are not ready to give their lives for their sheep.” In general, he points out repeatedly that what is affirmative or negative “in appearance” may or may not be in meaning, that is, in deep structure. In short, the real “logical form” of a sentence may be quite different from its surface grammatical form.80

The identity of deep structure underlying a variety of surface forms in different languages is frequently stressed, throughout this period, in connection with the problem of how the significant semantic connections among the elements of speech are expressed. Chapter VI of the Port-Royal Grammar considers the expression of these relations in case systems, as in the classical languages, or by internal modification, as in the construct state in Hebrew, or by particles, as in the vernacular languages, or simply by a fixed word order,81 as in the case of the subject–verb and verb–object relations in French. These are regarded as all being manifestations of an underlying structure common to all these languages and mirroring the structure of thought. Similarly, Lamy com- ments in his rhetoric on the diverse means used by various languages to express the “relations, and the consequence and interconnexion between all the ideas that the consideration of things excites in our mind” (De L’Art de Parler, pp. 10–11). The encyclopedist Du Marsais also stresses the fact that case systems express relations among the elements of discourse that are, in other languages, expressed by word order or specific particles, and he points out the correlation between freedom to transpose and wealth of inflection.82 Notice that what is assumed is the existence of a uniform set of relations into which words can enter, in any language, these corresponding to the exigencies of thought. The philosophical grammarians do not try to show that all languages literally have case systems, that they use inflectional devices to express these relations. On the contrary, they repeatedly stress that a case system is only one device for expressing these relations. Occasionally, they point out that case names can be assigned to these relations as a pedagogic device; they also argue that considerations of simplicity sometimes may lead to a distinction of cases even where there is no difference in form. The fact that French has no case system is in fact noted in the earliest grammars. Cf. Sahlin, p. 212. It is important to realize that the use of the names of classical cases for languages with no inflections implies only a belief in the uniformity of the grammatical relations involved, a belief that deep structures are fundamentally the same across languages, although the means for their expression may be quite diverse. This claim is not obviously true – it is, in other words, a nontrivial hypothesis. So far as I know, however, modern linguistics offers no data that challenge it in any serious way.83

As noted above, the Port-Royal theory of grammar holds that for the most part, adverbs do not, properly speaking, constitute a category of deep structure but function only “for signifying in a single word what could otherwise be indicated only by a preposition and a noun” (p. 88; PRG 121). Later grammar- ians simply drop the qualification to “for the most part.” Thus for Du Marsais, “what distinguishes adverbs from other kinds of words is that adverbs have the value of a preposition and a noun, or a preposition with its complement: they are words which abbreviate” (p. 660). This is an unqualified characterization, and he goes on to analyze a large class of items in this way – in our paraphrase, as deriving from a deep structure of the form: preposition–complement. This analysis is carried still further by Beauzée.84 He, incidentally, maintains that, although an “adverbial phrase” such as “with wisdom” does not differ from the corresponding adverb “wisely” in its “signification,” it may differ in the “accessory ideas” associated with it: “when it is a matter of contrasting an action with a habit, the adverb is more appropriate for indicating the habit and the adverbial phrase for indicating the action; thus I would say ‘A man who conducts himself wisely cannot promise that all his actions will be performed with wisdom’” (p. 342).85 This distinction is a particular case of “the antipathy that all languages naturally show towards a total synonymity, which would enrich an idiom only with sounds that do not subserve accuracy and clarity of expression.”

Earlier grammarians provide additional instances of analysis in terms of deep structure, as, for example, when imperatives and interrogatives are analyzed as,

in effect, elliptical transforms of underlying expressions with such supplemen- tary terms as “I order you …” or “I request…”86 Thus “Come see me” has the deep structure “I order/beg you to come see me”; “Who found it?” has the meaning of “I ask who found it?” etc.

Still another example that might be cited is the transformational derivation of expressions with conjoined terms from underlying sentences, in the obvious way; for example, in Beauzée, op. cit., pp. 399f. Beauzée’s discussion of conjunctions also provides somewhat more interesting cases, as, for example, when he analyzes “how” [comment] as based on an underlying form with “manner” [manière] and a relative clause, so that the sentence “I know how it happened” has the meaning of “I know the manner in which it happened”; or when he analyzes “the house which I acquired.” In this way, the underlying deep structure with its essential and incident propositions is revealed.

An interesting further development, along these lines, is carried out by Du Marsais in his theory of construction and syntax.87 He proposes that the term “construction” be applied to “the arrangement of words in discourse,” and the term “syntax,” to “the relations which words bear to one another.” For example, the three sentences “accepi litteras tuas,” “tuas accepi litteras,” and “litteras accepi tuas” exhibit three different constructions, but they have the same syntax; the relations among the constituent elements are the same in all three cases. “Thus, each of these three arrangements produces the same meaning [sens] in the mind: ‘I have received your letter’.” He goes on to define “syntax” as “what brings it about, in every language, that words produce the meaning we wish to arise in the minds of those who know the language … the part of grammar that provides knowledge of the signs established in a language to produce understanding in the mind” (pp. 229–231).

The syntax of an expression is thus essentially what we have called its deep structure; its construction is what we have called its surface structure.88 The general framework within which this distinction is developed is the following. An act of the mind is a single unit. For a child, the “idea” [sentiment] that sugar is sweet is at first an unanalyzed, single experience (p. 181); for the adult, the meaning of the sentence “Sugar is sweet,” the thought that it expresses, is also a single entity. Language provides an indispensable means for the analysis of these otherwise undifferentiated objects. It provides a means of clothing our thought, so to speak, of rendering it perceptible, of dividing it, of analyzing it – in a word, of making it such that it is communicable to others with more precision and detail.

Thus, particular thoughts are each an ensemble, so to speak, a whole that the usage of language divides, analyzes and distributes into parts by means of different articulations of the speech organs which form the words. (p. 184) Similarly, the perception of speech is a matter of determining the unified and undifferentiated thought from the succession of words. “[The words] work together to produce the whole sense or the thought we wish to arise in the

minds of those who read or hear them” (p. 185). To determine this thought, the mind must first discover the relations among the words of the sentence, that is, its syntax; it must then determine the meaning, given a full account of this deep structure. The method of analysis used by the mind is to bring together those words that are related, thus establishing a “meaningful order” [ordre significatif] in which related elements are successive. The actual sentence may, in itself, have this “meaningful order,” in which case it is called a “simple construction (natural, necessary, meaningful, assertive)” (p. 232). Where it does not, this “meaningful order” must be reconstructed by some procedure of analysis – it must be “re-established by the mind, which grasps the meaning [sens] only by this order” (pp. 191–192). To understand a sentence of Latin, for example, you must reconstruct the “natural order” that the speaker has in his mind (p. 196). You must not only understand the meanings of each word, but, furthermore, you would not understand anything in it except by putting together in your mind the words in their relation to one another, and you can do this only after you have heard the whole sentence. (pp. 198–199)

In Latin, for example, it is the “relative word-endings which makes us consider the words in the completed proposition in accordance with the order of their interrelations, and hence in accordance with the order of the simple, necessary and meaningful construction” (pp. 241–242). This “simple construction” is an “order which is always indicated, but rarely observed in the usual construction of languages whose nouns have cases” (p. 251). Reduction to the “simple construction” is an essential first step in speech perception: The words form a whole that has parts. The simple perception of the relations between these parts makes us conceive the whole of them, and comes to us solely from the simple construction. Setting forth the words in accordance with the order of succession of their relations, this presents them in a manner that is best fitted to make us recognize these relations and to make the whole thought arise. (pp. 287–288)

Constructions other than the “simple constructions” (namely, “figurative con- structions” [constructions figurées]) are understood only because the mind corrects their irregularities, with the help of accessory ideas which make us conceive what we read and hear as if the sense were expressed in the order of the simple construction … (p. 292) In short, in the “simple construction” the relations of “syntax” are represented directly in the associations among successive words, and the undifferentiated thought expressed by the sentence is derived directly from this underlying representation, which is regarded, throughout, as common to all languages (and, typically, as corresponding to the usual order of French – cf., e.g., p. 193).

The transformations which form a “figurative construction” effect reordering and ellipsis. The “fundamental principle of all syntax” (p. 218) is that reordering and ellipsis must be recoverable by the mind of the hearer (cf. pp. 202, 210ff.,277); that is, they can be applied only when it is possible to recover uniquely “the strict metaphysical order” of the “simple construction.”89

Many examples of reduction to simple constructions are presented to illustrate this theory.90 Thus the sentence “Who said it?” is reduced to the simple construction “The one who said it is which person?” (Sahlin, p. 93); the sentence “Being loved as much as lovers, you are not forced to shed tears” is reduced to “Since you are loved as much as you are lovers, …”; the sentence “It is better to be just than to be rich, to be reasonable than to be wise” is reduced to four underlying propositions, two negative, two positive, in the obvious way (p. 109), etc.

A rather different sort of example of the distinction between deep and surface structure is provided by Du Marsais in his analysis (pp. 179–180) of such expressions as “I have an idea/fear/doubt,” etc. These, he says, should not be interpreted as analogous to the superficially similar expressions “I have a book/ diamond/watch,” in which the nouns are “names of real objects that exist independently of our thought [manière de penser].” In contrast, the verb in “I have an idea” is “a borrowed [empruntée] expression,” produced only “by imitation.” The meaning of “I have an idea” is simply “I am thinking” or “I am conceiving something in such-and-such a way.” Thus the grammar gives no license for supposing that such words as “idea,” “concept,” “image” stand for “real objects,” let alone “perceptible objects.” From this grammatical observa- tion it is only a short step to a criticism of the theory of ideas, in its Cartesian and empiricist forms, as based on a false grammatical analogy. This step is taken by Thomas Reid, shortly after.91

As Du Marsais indicates with abundant references, his theory of construction and syntax is foreshadowed in scholastic and renaissance grammar (see note 67). But he follows the Port-Royal grammarians in regarding the theory of deep and surface structure as, in essence, a psychological theory, not merely a means for the elucidation of given forms or for analysis of texts. As indicated above, it plays a role in his hypothetical account of the perception and production of speech, just as, in the Port-Royal Grammar, the deep structure is said to be represented “in the mind” as the utterance is heard or produced.

As a final example of the attempt to discover the hidden regularities under- lying surface variety, we may mention the analysis of French indefinite articles in Chapter VII of the Port-Royal Grammar, where it is argued, on grounds of symmetry of patterning, that de and des play the role of the plural of un, as in Un crime si horrible mérite la mort, Des crimes si horribles méritent la mort, De si horribles crimes méritent la mort, etc. To handle the apparent exception, Il est coupable de crimes horribles (d’horribles crimes), they propose the “rule of cacophony” that a de de sequence is replaced by de. They also note the use of des as a realization of the definite article, and other uses of these forms.

Perhaps these comments and examples are sufficient to suggest something of the range and character of the grammatical theories of the “philosophical grammarians.” As noted above, their theory of deep and surface structure relates directly to the problem of creativity of language use, discussed in the first part of the present work.

From the standpoint of modern linguistic theory, this attempt to discover and characterize deep structure and to study the transformational rules that relate it to surface form is something of an absurdity;92 it indicates lack of respect for the “real language” (i.e., the surface form) and lack of concern for “linguistic fact.” Such criticism is based on a restriction of the domain of “linguistic fact” to physically identifiable subparts of actual utterances and their formally marked relations.93 Restricted in this way, linguistics studies the use of language for the expression of thought only incidentally, to the quite limited extent to which deep and surface structure coincide; in particular, it studies “sound-meaning corre- spondences” only in so far as they are representable in terms of surface structure. From this limitation follows the general disparagement of Cartesian and earlier linguistics,94 which attempted to give a full account of deep structure even where it is not correlated in strict point-by-point fashion to observable features of speech. These traditional attempts to deal with the organization of semantic content as well as the organization of sound were defective in many ways, but modern critique generally rejects them more for their scope than for their failures.