Book Reviews

LINGUISTICS
readers that it cannot. In his eagerness to
The State of the Art. CHARLES
F. HOCKETT. succeed in this task, he has chosen a number

Janua Linguarum, Series Minor, LXXIII. of illustrations that do not serve him well.
The Hague & Paris: Mouton, 1968. 123 Consider for a moment, with Hockett, the
sets of possible one-team scores in a football
pp., references. G 14 (paper).
and in a baseball game. There will never be,
Reviewed by CHARLES
J. FILLMOREin either of these games, a total score of,
Ohio State University
say, one million points, but in the case of
Although this long-promised assault on football this is clearly because of the sixtythe linguistic theories of Noam Chomsky minute limit on playing time; no team could
shows Charles Hockett at his most deter- accumulate so many points in such a short
mined, it is written with more humor and time. In baseball, however, there is nothing
goodwill than its advance notices led one to in the rules that would put a limit on the
expect. Its first chapter sketches the back- total possible score. The probability of getground of the state of linguistics in America ting such a score in baseball is indistinat midcentury, for the purpose of showing guishable from zero, but only for such reain perspective Chomskys and Hocketts sep- sons as that the players would fall dead of
arate departures from the 1950 consensus. exhaustion, or the scorekeepers of boredom,
They have both rejected the item-and- on the second or third day of the game, in
arrangement model (Hockett 1954), but the already infinitesimally small likelihood
Chomsky, unlike Hockett, continues to as- that there are repeated tie scores in successume a separation between grammar and sive innings.
At question is whether the nonoccurrence
semantics, and he assumes that the structure
of a language (or, rather, an idolect) at a mo- of an English sentence of one million words
ment in time is rigid and stable (pp. 31, length is to be accounted for by analogy
37). Chapter 2 offers nineteen numbered with the football or with the baseball case
theoretical principles that represent, in cap- (pp. 47-48). Chomsky would see the analsule form, the linguistic theory Hockett sees ogy with baseball, Hockett with football.
in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Chom- Chomsky would say that sentences beyond a
sky 1965). Chapter 3 is a semiformal ac- certain length or complexity do not occur in
count, addressed to nonmathematicians, of speech, not because they are not in the lanthe logicomathematical notion of well-de- guage, but for such external reasons as imfinedness, and Chapter 4 presents the argu- patience, limitations on life expectancy, or
ment that natural languages are not well- lack of a need to communicate, in one sitdefined. In Chapter 5 the reader is ex- ting, messages that exceed a certain length
pected to see almost all of the Chomskyan or complexity. Hockett feels that there exist
principles tumble to their destruction as the limitations on sentence length that are part
result of the loss of their central support, of the language, in the same way that the
the property of well-definedness. The final time limit in football is one of the rules of
chapter is a repetition and paraphrase of the game. The difference in the case of lanHocketts well-known claims about anal- guage is that the constraints in question are
ogy, together with a proposal on the way in not explicit or specific but flexible and
which well-defined systems such as mathe- rubbery (pp. 60-61). When he is making
matics can originate in an ill-defined system the ball game comparisons, Hockett states
that it is just for these reasons languages
such as a language.
The crucial issue, then, is whether a lan- are ill-defined (p. 61). There may be a
guage can at any level be described as exem- difference between Chomskys and Hocketts
plifying a well-defined system, and the au- position, but the ballgame illustration fails
thors main goal was that of persuading his to capture any empirical difference at all.

71 1

712

American Anthropologist

[71, 19691

Neither party in this imagined dispute will like the chess-playing skills in sandlot chess,
argue that the constraints on sentence pro- then the construction of coherent formal
duction do not exist or that they should not grammars is in fact merely an approximabe studied. Whether they are or are not a tion. If one agrees with Hockett, one must
part of the language seems to hinge on indeed bring into question such Chomskyan
whether the disputants can agree to use the principles as the claim that a speaker of a
word language in the same way.
language has access to an infinite number of
Another of Hocketts illustrations reveals sentences, the competence/performance disthe difference he is after somewhat more tinction, the claim that linguistic structure
successfully. This is the comparison with is nonprobabilistic, the claim that there is a
two types of chess: ordinary chess and an discoverable, richly structured, innate lanimaginary game called sandlot chess. Or- guage-learning apparatus in the human indinary chess has a fixed initial state, explicit fant along the lines Chomsky has been sugrules about legitimate moves, and definite gesting, the claim that linguistic change is
criteria for determining the terminal state in best understood as a replacement of one
a game. The rules of ordinary chess do not, grammar by another, and a number of other
however, make up a predictive theory of assumptions that presuppose one or more of
chess-playing, behavior, because deviant these.
moves do occur, and these must be exI am much more inclined to sympathize
plained on other grounds, e.g., a player has with Hocketts position than I once was,
temporarily forgotten one of the rules, a though I tend to think of the observations
player has cheated successfully, a player he is making as relevant to the factors by
failed to notice that a terminal state had which one complete grammar can be rebeen reached, or a player forgot, by the placed by another, hitherto optional rules
time he put a piece down, where it had been can become partly obligatory, etc. In any
when he picked it up. I n sandlot, on the case I have at the moment no ideas about
other hand, there are no explicit rules that how the difference between these two posicharacterize the game once and for all. It is tions can be put to the test.
played according to prevailing fashions, and
Where our author is destructive, I can at
these fashions change in time with changes least understand him. Where he is construcin the success and popularity of individual tive, I am lost. In the final chapter he reiterplayers. The game is picked up by observa- ates but does not clarify his claims about
tion, and a player does what he has ob- analogies and blends. Novel expressions
served other players doing. At a given time -on the part of a mature adult who needs
certain particular moves are preferred over to coin a phrase, construct a sample senothers because everybody is doing it this tence, or merely say something he has never
way; and when a new style of playing be- needed to say before; or on the part of a
comes current within a particular group of child who is learning his first language-are
players, it is because some admired player all produced, we are to believe, by combintried it and nobody made a fuss.
ing parts of two expressions in a context
At question this time, of course, is that has features that partly call for each of
whether language is like ordinary chess or the two. The theory seems to depend on a
sandlot chess. Chomsky, we are to believe, persons actually remembering individual
would side with ordinary chess; Hockett expressions in their association with specific
sides with the sandlot. With ordinary chess types of real-world situations, finding in his
there is a valid distinction between the rules memory two expressions that are each partly
of the game (Chomskys competence) and associated with the situation he is now conthe ways in which people actually play the fronting, and producing, by taking approprigame (Chomskys performance). With ate parts of each, a new utterance that is
sandlot chess there are merely fashionable somehow understood to be appropriate to
ways of playing, and what there is to say the new situation. I am convinced that
about the game is only what one can say Hockett regards this as a fairly straightforabout the way people actually play it.
ward type of operation, but where he sugIf the linguistic skills of human beings are gests (p. 89) that Chomskys sample seman-

Book Reviews

713

Judged by the authors statement of his

purpose (to acquaint linguists and others
interested in the development of linguistics
in this century with the character of the
dominant school of descriptive linguistics in
Great Britain today, p. l ) , the book must
be declared a failure. Whether it is the first
historical account of the men and ideas of
the London school written from a critical
vantage point (as the blurb suggests) depends very largely on the sense in which the
epithet critical is taken. The vantage
point from which Langendoen criticizes
the London school, whether in phonology
or semantics or in matters of methodology
and linguistic theory in general, is that
adopted by Chomsky in such works as
Current Issues in Linguistic Theory
(1964) and Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965). Even when credit is given to
Malinowski or Firth, or one of Firths followers, for what (from the vantage point
References Cited
adopted) may be described as the correctCHOMSKY,
NOAM
ness of their insights on particular issues, it
1965 Aspects of the theory of syntax. tends to be somewhat grudging. One inM.I.T. Press.
stance will suffice to illustrate this feature of
HOCKETT,
CHARLES
F.
1954 Two models of grammatical descrip- the book (p. 5): [Firths] rejection of the
principle [of complementary distribution in
tion. Word 10:210-234.
phonology], unlike Halles and Chomskys
The London School of Linguistics: A Study rejection of it, was not for any logical reaof the Linguistic Theories of B. Malinow- son but for an aesthetic one.
ski and J . R. Firth. D. TERENCE
LANGEN- The first thing we look for in a historical
DOEN. Foreword by Howard W. Johnson.
account of any intellectual movement is a
Research Monograph 46. Cambridge: The sympathetic understanding of its aims and
M.I.T. Press, 1968. xii
123 pp., selected attitudes. This is conspicuously lacking in
bibliography, index. $5.95 (cloth).
the present work. Some of Langendoens
Reviewed by JOHN LYONS own sources (to which, incidentally, he
University of Edinburgh might have referred at times even for critiThis book is a revised version of an cisms he himself makes) give a much better
M.I.T. dissertation (1964), written under introduction to the work of the London
the supervision of Noam Chomsky. Accord- school. But we still need a full history of
ing to the preface: Except for the addition the movement.
To say that Langendoens book does not
of an appendix to Chapter 3 dealing with
John Lyons Structural Semantics . . . and fulfill its declared purpose is not to say that
the elimination of a chapter dealing with the it is entirely without interest. I will leave to
work of Sir Alan H. Gardiner, only rela- other reviewers the task of evaluating Lantively minor changes in the thesis have been gendoens reformulation of various promade. There are four chapters (in addition sodic analyses in terms of context-depento the short introduction) : The Linguistic dent rules operating upon matrices of disViews of B. Malinowski (pp. 7-36); The tinctive features (noting only that the simiEarly Views of J. R. Firth (pp. 37-48); larity between a prosodic analysis of vowel
The Later Views of J. R. Firth (pp. 49- harmony and Harriss long-component
75); and Exemplifications of Prosodic analysis was in fact mentioned in my paper
to which Langendoen refers on p. 115). AS
Analysis (pp. 76-1 15).

tically odd sentence, Colorless green ideas

sleep furiously, was itself constructed by
analogy, I wonder if he realizes that in this
case the process must be extended in such a
way as to operate on five sentences at a time
(since all two-word sequences in the sentence are presumably novel) and that
through this extension the notion loses its
equation-solving character altogether.
It would be easy to give a longer review
of this book. It contains a great many insights into the issues that American linguists
faced in the first half of this century, and it
presents many assumptions about the nature
of linguistic research that deserve to be challenged carefully. It makes clear at least,
though somewhat tediously, that reasoned
challenges to the validity of the competence/
performance distinction are conceivable. It
will help keep the conversation going for a
while.