Double articulation

Double articulation, duality of patterning, or duality[1] is the fundamental language phenomenon consisting of the use of combinations of a small number of meaningless elements (sounds i.e. phonemes) to produce a large number of meaningful elements (words, actually morphemes).[1] Its name refers to this two-level structure inherent to sign systems, many of which are composed of these two kinds of elements: 1) distinctive but meaningless and 2) significant or meaningful.

Not to be confused with Coarticulation or Doubly articulated consonant.

Theory

Double articulation[2] refers to the twofold structure of the stream of speech, which can be primarily divided into meaningful signs (like words or morphemes), and then secondarily into distinctive elements (like sounds or phonemes). For example, the meaningful English word "cat" is composed of the sounds /k/, /æ/, and /t/, which are meaningless as separate individual sounds (and which can also be combined to form the separate words "tack" and "act", with distinct meanings). These sounds, called phonemes, represent the secondary and lowest level of articulation in the hierarchy of the organization of speech. Higher, primary, levels of organization (including morphology, syntax, and semantics) govern the combination of these individually meaningless phonemes into meaningful elements.

History

The French concept of double articulation was first introduced by André Martinet in 1949.[3] The English calque double articulation is sometimes replaced by duality of patterning.

According to Charles F. Hockett and other linguists, this duality is an important property of human languages, since it allows for the expression of a potentially infinite number of meaningful language sequences. Strictly speaking, however, such expressiveness follows from generativity or productivity (a finite number of components combining via rules to produce a potentially infinite arrangement of novel utterances), not of duality per se (one could have a system with 2 levels of the kind referred to as duality, and yet have only finite productivity). For further discussion, see figurae, as well as Hockett's design features, which treats productivity and duality as distinct essential properties of language.

Sign languages may have less double articulation because more gestures are possible than sound and able to convey more meaning without double articulation.[4]

See also

References
  1. Trask, R.L. (1999). Language: the basics. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-20089-X.
  2. Occasionally also "double segmentation".
  3. André Martinet, Éléments de linguistique générale, Colin, 1961.
  4. Sedivy, Julie. "The Unusual Language That Linguists Thought Couldn't Exist". Nautilus. Retrieved 23 September 2014.


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