A Basic Course in Anthropological Linguistics (Studies in Linguistic ...

90 A BASIC COURSE IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS
interpretation. A third way to explain it is, of course, in terms of Zipf’s Law.
Repetitions of any kind, but especially those that carry no new information (as
in the case of the repeated she), tend to be avoided. Indeed, Zipf’s Law would
also explain why deleting the auxiliary verb as well would not alter the meaning
of the sentence, making it simply shorter: She had been to Japan and traveled
to Russia.
Subordination is another main type of grammatical relationship, indicating
that one thing depends on another. The subordinate parts of most sentences
serve as modifiers. They change in some way the meaning of the passage to
which they are subordinate. In most English sentences, word order and function
words show subordination, as in After the peaches ripened, the farmer took
them to the local market. The clause the fanner took them forms the actor-
action-goal core of the sentence. The rest is subordination. The phrase afer
the apples ripened modifies the main action. The phrase to the local market is
a complement.
GRAMMAR AND USE
To use Saussurean terminology once again, grammatical knowledge is part of
langue, whereas the deployment of this knowledge in actual situations is part
ofparole. But grammar and use are hardly independent of each other. Consider
a sentence such as Old men and women love thatprogram, which has potentially
two meanings:
(1) Old men and women (who are not necessarily old) love that program
(2) Old men and old women love that program
These are elaborations which show, in effect, that the sentence is
ambiguous in meaning. The source of the ambiguity is the fact that in
coordination, as we saw above, repetition is discouraged. Sequence (2) oZd
men and old women has the form XY + XZ, where X = old, Y = men, and Z =
women. Style dictates that this be reduced to X(Y + Z) = Old men and women.
But, as the algebraic form shows, we still interpret the X as applying to both Y
and Z (as we do in mathematics). Sequence (l), on the other hand, has the
different algebraic form XY + Z, whch leads to a different interpretation of its
meaning: Old men and (not old) women. Now, communicative competence
provides us with the know-how for resolving the ambiguity in real situations.