Landmarks In Linguistic Thought Volume I

The Western Tradition From Socrates To Saussure

Professor Roy Harris, Roy Harris, Talbot Taylor

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134740987
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

By introducing the reader to the main issues and themes that have determined the development of the Western linguistic tradition, an evolution of linguistic thought quickly becomes apparent. Each chapter in this accessible book contains a short extract from a `landmark' text followed by a commentary which places the text in its social and intellectual context.The authors, who consider writers from Aristotle to Caxton to Saussure, have fully revised the original edition ofthis text. Complete with two new chapters on Bishop John Wilkins and Frege, a revised preface and updated bibliography, this book will be invaluable to anyone with an interest in the History of Linguistics, or the History of Western Thought.

Chapter 1

Socrates on names

HERMOGENES: Here is Socrates; shall we take him as a partner in our discussion?

CRATYLUS: If you like.

HERMOGENES: Cratylus, whom you see here, Socrates, says that everything has a right name of its own, which comes by nature, and that a name is not whatever people call a thing by agreement, just a piece of their own voice applied to the thing, but that there is a kind of inherent correctness in names, which is the same for all men, both Greeks and barbarians. So I ask him whether his name is in truth Cratylus, and he agrees that it is. ‘And what is Socrates’ name?’ I said. ‘Socrates,’ said he. ‘Then that applies to all men, and the particular name by which we call each person is his name?’ And he said, ‘Well, your name is not Hermogenes, even if all mankind call you so.’

(Cratylus 383)

So begins the earliest record of any extended debate on linguistic questions that survives in Western literature. Like all Plato’s dialogues, Cratylus presents an imaginatively reconstructed discussion between Socrates and his interlocutors on a philosophical topic of some importance to the Greeks of the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC. In this instance Socrates is represented as debating ‘the correctness of names’ with Hermogenes and Cratylus. Hermogenes was a follower of the school of Parmenides, and Cratylus a philosopher who, according to legend, came to mistrust language so profoundly that eventually he renounced speech altogether and communicated to others by means of gesture only.

Plato (427–347 BC) was born and brought up during the thirty-year Peloponnesian war, in which Sparta eventually defeated Athens, and Athenian democracy itself was put on trial as an effective form of government. These political circumstances shaped Plato’s life and work in three ways: (i) by leading to the death of his revered teacher, Socrates, condemned in 399 BC for his subversive views by the democratic leaders then in power, (ii) by occasioning Plato’s own twelve-year exile from Athens, to which he returned only in 387 BC, and (iii) by inspiring his rejection of democracy and his intellectual search for the best form of government and of personal conduct. On returning to Athens, Plato founded his own Academy school, and lectured there for the remainder of his career. As the philosopher whose writings have all survived, as the principal source of our knowledge of Socratic doctrines and methods, and as the teacher of Aristotle, Plato has three claims on the attention of historians, and any one of the three would have guaranteed him a unique position in the development of Western thought. In Plato’s quasi-fictional dialogues, culminating in the Republic and the Laws, Socrates usually appears as the spokesman of Plato’s own views. To what extent these conform in detail to the teachings of the historical Socrates it is, understandably, difficult to determine with any accuracy. Exactly when in Plato’s career the dialogue Cratylus was composed is not known.

Why Cratylus and Hermogenes are interested in the correctness of names does not become apparent until the arguments on both sides have unfolded. In order to follow them, two general points concerning (i) Greek puns, and (ii) Greek parts of speech, must be appreciated.

(i) Cultures vary in their attitude to wordplay. The early Greek delight in it will strike any reader accustomed to the norms of present-day Western education as either rather oriental or rather juvenile. In particular, joking about people’s names is nowadays regarded as unsophisticated (although not many generations ago writers of the calibre of Dickens still indulged in it). Making fun of a tall person whose name happens to be Short, or twitting a dull-witted one whose name is Bright, is today treated as being in rather poor taste. But Cratylus’ initial jibe in Plato’s dialogue falls into this category.

The claim that Hermogenes is not correctly called Hermogenes is based on the fact that in Greek the name means ‘born of Hermes’, and the Greek god Hermes was the patron deity of businessmen and bankers. Hence the implication that one would expect someone called Hermogenes to be favoured by fortune in financial matters. This was evidently not the case with the man to whom Cratylus is speaking. This Hermogenes, whose business ventures always fail, Cratylus suggests, has been given the wrong name: he is no true ‘son of Hermes’.

The rather feeble pun on the name Hermogenes seems a most unpromising point of departure for a serious discussion of the nature of language. But its sole purpose here is to lead to reflection on whether or not there is any sense in which names are ‘appropriate’ or ‘inappropriate’. This is certainly a question which still preoccupies many modern parents when choosing names for their children, and ensures a steady sale of books which purport to explain the ‘meanings’ of given names such as John, Mary, Peter, Alice, etc. If the popular belief that names have meanings is simply wrong, it is nevertheless widespread in many civilizations. On the other hand, if names do have meanings it seems reasonable to expect that their meanings should be apposite to the person or thing or place thus named. And if there are some names which do have meanings, while others have none, it is not absurd to inquire how this comes to be so.

(ii) In reading Plato’s dialogue, it is important to bear in mind that the term usually translated into English as ‘name’ (onoma) covers not only proper names such as Hermogenes and Socrates but also what would nowadays be classified as common nouns (man, horse, etc.). Furthermore onoma was also sometimes used in Greek as the general term for ‘word’. In any case, no systematic distinction between proper names and common nouns was drawn at the time when Plato was teaching in Athens. Plato himself appears to recognize only two ‘parts of speech’. One is ‘names’ and the other is rhe¯mata (usually translated as ‘verbs’ or ‘predicates’). So the question as to whether Hermogenes is correctly called Hermogenes is treated as being in principle no different from the question of whether, for example, water is correctly called water, or gold rightly called gold. All ‘names’ are in this respect on a par.

Hermogenes states his own position in the debate as follows:

For my part, Socrates, I have often talked with Cratylus and many others, and cannot come to the conclusion that there is any correctness of names other than convention and agreement. For it seems to me that whatever name you give to a thing is its right name; and if you give up that name and change it for another, the later name is no less correct than the earlier, just as we change the names of our servants; for I think no name belongs to any particular thing by nature, but only by the habit and custom of those who employ it and who established the usage.

(Cratylus 384)

Hermogenes’ allusion to servants reminds us that Athens in the time of Plato was a slave society. It was a common Greek custom to give slaves new names when they entered the service of a new master. Here it is interesting that Hermogenes cites this social practice not only as evidence bearing on the argument, but as a model which reveals more clearly than anything else the pure conventionality of names. His implied reasoning is: if names were not purely conventional, how would it be possible for me to change a slave’s name merely by an arbitrary decision? The fact that we can do this shows that names are in the end decided by the whim of individuals.

Socrates disagrees. His first contribution to the debate is to attack the thesis that names are given or changed by acts of individual volition. What is interesting is the argumentative strategy which Socrates chooses. He does not point out to Hermogenes that changing a slave’s name is an exceptional and marginal case. Nor does he point out that Hermogenes is not at liberty to change names like water or gold. Instead he opts for a more subtle and powerful argument.

SOCRATES: It may be that you are right, Hermogenes; but let us see. Whatever name we decide to give to each particular thing is its name?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: Whether the giver be a private person or a state?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: Well, then, suppose I give a name to something or other, designating, for instance, that which we now call ‘man’ as ‘horse’ and that which we now call ‘horse’ as ‘man’, will the real name of the same thing be ‘man’ for the public and ‘horse’ for me individually, and in the other case ‘horse’ for the public and ‘man’ for me individually? Is that your meaning?

HERMOGENES: Yes, that is my opinion.

SOCRATES: Now answer this question. Is there anything which you call speaking the truth and speaking falsehood?

(Cratylus 385)

Hermogenes agrees that there is, and thereby closes the trap which Socrates has carefully laid for him. The thrust of Socrates’ question is to point out that the volitional theory of names which Hermogenes champions leads directly to a conclusion which conflicts with common sense. For it validates the recognition of as many private languages as there are individuals. This, for one thing, makes nonsense of our normal understanding of the difference between truth and falsehood. Normally, when someone says ‘A horse has four legs’ we take this to be a true statement. But if Hermogenes is to be believed, we could be mistaken: for all we know, the speaker might be speaking a private language in which horse is the name for what we call man. Consequently A horse has four legs’ could be false.

Now once we admit that the word horse could mean ‘man’, or that Socrates could be the name of Hermogenes, then language as we normally understand it simply breaks down. We are unable to judge whether such statements as ‘A horse has four legs’ or ‘Socrates is married to Xanthippe’ are true or false. Worse still, it becomes unclear even how we would go about establishing their truth or falsity, if Hermogenes’ theory of names is correct.

Hermogenes is thus forced to beat a hasty retreat. Already by this stage in the discussion Socrates appears to have established incontrovertibly that whatever the relations may be between the person Hermogenes and the name Hermogenes, or between a horse and the word horse, one thing is at least clear: it is not a relation either established by or at the mercy of volitional acts by particular individuals. But now the question arises: ‘What, then, does establish this relationship?’ The remainder of the dialogue is devoted to exploring various possibilities.

First, says Socrates, we must inquire what kind of correctness a name might be expected to have. And in order to establish this, we must ask what purpose names serve. He persuades Hermogenes to agree that

things have some fixed reality of their own, not in relation to us nor caused by us; they do not vary, swaying one way and another in accordance with our fancy, but exist of themselves in relation to their own reality imposed by nature.

(Cratylus 386)

Actions too are ‘a class of realities’:

actions also are performed according to their own nature, not according to our opinion.

(Cratylus 387)

For example, we cannot cut this piece of wood or burn it unless we proceed in accordance with the nature of cutting and burning: we shall fail to cut anything unless we use a sharp instrument, and we shall not burn anything by pouring water on it. For such actions are not determined by human volition: rather, human volition must conform to the nature of the action if we wish to accomplish it successfully.

Then comes the crucial move in Socrates’ argument. Speaking is also an action; and names are the instruments of speech. To speak correctly is to use the instruments of speech in the proper way, just as the proper use of other implements is essential to the particular types of activity they are designed for.

How, then, do names function when properly used in the activity of speaking? Their function, Socrates claims, is to divide up reality for us; to distinguish one thing from another, one person from the next. The name Hermogenes distinguishes the individual Hermogenes from other individuals. Socrates draws an imaginative comparison between the activities of speaking and weaving. He describes a name as ‘an instrument of teaching and separating reality, as a shuttle is an instrument of separating the web’ (Cratylus 388).

In order to perform this function, a name must be designed in the right way, just as a shuttle must be appropriately designed for the purpose of weaving. It must have the right form: otherwise it will not work. The efficiency of a shuttle, as of any other instrument, depends on its shape. Here Socrates begins to attack the second principal idea in Hermogenes’ theory: that it does not matter which name is given to a person or a thing. That, according to Socrates, is not only a rash assumption but a ridiculous one.

The language we speak was already established long before we were born. We do not know who invented it, any more than the weaver knows who invented the loom. But in both cases we can to a certain extent tell what was in the inventor’s mind, simply by examining the design of the invention. For purposes of the discussion Socrates here introduces a mythical inventor of language, whom he calls simply ‘the name-maker’. The name-maker did not merely choose names at random, any more than the inventor of the loom assembled a random collection of objects and made them into a machine for weaving. If we wish to inquire into the correctness of names, therefore, we must try to discover how the name-maker originally designed them. For he knew ‘how to embody in the sounds and syllables that name which is fitted by nature for each object’ (Cratylus 389).

Before proceeding fu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface to the first edition
• Preface to the second edition
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Socrates on names
• 2 Aristotle on metaphor
• 3 The Bible on the origin and diversification of language
• 4 Varro on linguistic regularity
• 5 Quintilian on linguistic education
• 6 Thomas of Erfurt on the modes of signifying
• 7 Caxton on dialects
• 8 The Port-Royal Grammar: Arnauld and Lancelot on the rational foundations of grammar
• 9 Wilkins on a real character
• 10 Locke on the imperfection of words
• 11 Condillac on the origin of language and thought
• 12 Horne Tooke on etymological metaphysics
• 13 Humboldt on linguistic and mental diversity
• 14 Müller on linguistic evolution
• 15 Frege on sense and reference
• 16 Saussure on language and thought
• Bibliography and suggestions for further reading
• Index