Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

432 Roman Jalcobson
Sapir’s expectation was soon fulfilled by Karl Biihler’s book (zq), which still
is for linguists probably the most inspiring among all the contributions to the
psychology of language. Step by step, though with frequent relapses, psychol-
ogists dealing with language began to realize that mental operations connected
with language and semiosis are essentially different from any other psychological
phenomena. The necessity to master the foundation of linguistics became more
and more evident. However, George Miller’s ‘preliminary admonitions’ to
psychologists for an ever deeper penetration into this intricate science remain
quite opportune (z22; z2z).
The continuously growing number of instructive publications (see particu-
larly 130; 13z; zo9; 99; 163; 123) must stimulate a lively discussion between psy-
chologists and linguists. Such significant questions as the inward aspects of
speech, the so-called strategies of mind deployed by the interlocutors, require
psychological experimentation and elucidation. Among relevant questions,
partly discussed by psychologists and partly awaiting an answer, one may cite
speech programming and speech perception, the perceiver’s attention and fatigue,
redundancy as an antidote against psychological noise, immediate memory and
simultaneous synthesis, retention and oblivion of verbal information, genera-
tive and perceptive memory for the verbal code, interiorization of speech, the
role of different mental types in language learning, the interconnection of
speechless status and language acquisition with different grades of intellectual
development, and, on the other hand, relations between verbal impairments and
intellectual deficits or, finally, the significance of language for intellectual
operations as compared with the prelingual status.
Mutatis mutandis, analogous psychological problems arise with respect to
other forms of semiotic communication and to communication in general. In all
these cases there is a clearly delimited area for psychologists’ fruitful interven-
tion, and so long as experts in psychology do not intrude in the intrinsically
linguistic sphere of verbal form and meaning with alien criteria and methods,
both linguistics and psychology can and must derive considerable benefit from
mutual lessons. One must, however, constantly remember that verbal processes
and concepts, briefly, all the signantia and signata in their interrelations, require,
first and foremost, a purely linguistic analysis and interpretation. The still
occurring efforts to substitute a psychological treatment for indispensable lin-
guistic operations are doomed to failure; for instance, in the voluminous and
erudite grundriss by Kainz, his plan of a psychological grammar as an ‘explana-
tory and interpretative discipline’ opposed to the linguistic grammar, which
he believes to be merely descriptive and historical, reveals a glaring misconcep-
tion of the scope and aims of linguistic analysis (86, I, p. 63). For instance, when
claiming that from the use of conjunctions in a given language the psychologist
can infer ‘die Gesetze des Gedankenaufbaus’ (p. 62), the author demonstrates
a lack of insight into the essentials of linguistic structure and analysis. Similarly,
no psychological contrivances can replace a circumstantial and rigorous struc-
tural analysis of the infant’s gradual, daily growing mastery of language; such
an inquiry demands a careful application of a purely linguistic technique and
methodology, but, of course, the psychologist is called upon to correlate the