Date:    Thu, 21 May 1998 14:18:29 -0400
<br>From:    Larry Horn <laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU>
<br>Subject: Re: Law/Principle of Least Effort
<br>
<br>At 12:06 PM -0500 5/20/98, Gerald Cohen wrote:
<br>>    Once again, I am grateful for Larry Horn's messages on the Law/Princple
<br>>of Least Effort.  Here now are some thoughts in regard to his second
<br>>message (5/19/98).
<br>>
<br>>     The overall picture I get is of an alleged law/principle with so many
<br>>exceptions that one wonders by what justification its existence as a
<br>>law/principle is advanced.
<br>At the risk of further alienating listees with no interest in these
<br>not-particularly-dialectal issues, let me push on.  I'm not sure what OTHER
<br>explanation can be offered for the wide range of cases generally attributed
<br>to the workings of some form of the law/principle of least effort, ranging
<br>from assimilation, elision, and coarticulation in phonetics and phonology
<br>to acronymy, initialism, and truncation in the lexicon to a variety of
<br>"fast speech phenomena" in parole.
<br>
<br>>Larry writes:
<br>>      "In many cases, least effort is violated in parole while maintained
<br>>in langue."
<br>
<br>And vice versa, as the reference to fast speech phenomena indicates:
<br>"Whyncha go?",  "Looks like it's gonna rain", "--Jeet jet? --No, jew?" and
<br>so on.
<br>
<br>>
<br>>      If this statement is true, it seems to shake the Law/Principle
<br>>severely.  After all, individuals speak individually;  and if their
<br>>individual speech isn't subject to the Law/Principle of Least Effort, then
<br>>how can one agree with Martinet  (_Elements_, p.167), when he writes:
<br>>      "...Here [G. Cohen: i.e, in communication] as elsewhere, human
<br>>behavior is subject to the law of least effort, according to which man
<br>>gives of himself only so much as is necessary to attain the end he has in
<br>>view."
<br>
<br>Nobody to my knowledge has claimed that "individual speech isn't subject to
<br>the Law/Principle of Least Effort".  My point was that quite often
<br>different correlates show up in langue from those that show up in parole.
<br>If I can't remember for the moment a particular lexical item and use a
<br>periphrastic construction instead (as a child uses "plant-man" or
<br>"tooth-guy" before she incorporates "gardener" or "dentist" into her
<br>lexicon), that's an asymmetry between langue and parole, just as in the
<br>deletion of certain predictable subjects ("Looks like it'll rain", "Think
<br>the rain'll hurt the rhubarb?") in parole where the rules of langue require
<br>a subject here.  In fact, the "null-subject parameter" dictating that
<br>English and French MUST have a subject in indicative sentences while
<br>Spanish, Italian and Japanese needn't (and will, in fact, dictate the
<br>elimination of predictable subjects via least effort) is another case where
<br>the operation of least effort will vary in accordance with other
<br>linguistic, cognitive, and behavioral principles.
<br>
<br>
<br>>     As for French "pleonastic ne" (where "pleonastic"  is synonymous with
<br>>"extraneous"), I fail to see how this  "ne" increases the semantic content
<br>>at all.
<br>
<br>As I tried to show in my last note, the current stage in which the (formal)
<br>language demands ne...pas is a stage on the way from a preverbal negation
<br>to a preverbal negation with postverbal reinforcer (necessitated, as
<br>Jespersen argues, by the least-effort tendency to reduce the phonological
<br>realization of the proclitic) to a postverbal negation with preverbal
<br>"forclusif", as the French grammarians call it, to the stage in which
<br>postverbal negation stands alone, the preverbal marker now being otiose.
<br>Claiming that the ne...pas stage vitiates the least effort principle
<br>strikes me as analogous to claiming that a snapshot of Michael Jordan at
<br>the apogee of a jump (or the existence of helium balloons) vitiates the law
<br>of gravity.  Indeed, the ongoing loss of the now vestigial _ne_ in
<br>colloquial French (parallelling its extinction in late Middle English) is
<br>an indication that semantically and grammatically empty markers do indeed
<br>tend to disappear.
<br>
<br>>     So, with the Law/Principle having holes like a sieve, I would ask:
<br>>What evidence do we have that this Law/Principle really exists?  Martinet,
<br>>_ibid._, in one same paragraph refers to this feature as a "law" and a
<br>>"tendency."  Which is it?
<br>Since it doesn't operate unchecked, I'm not sure what follows from the
<br>distinction.  Is there a law of self-preservation, or is it a tendency?
<br>Does the fact that people sky-dive and bungee-jump, commit suicide, or go
<br>off to war refute the existence of this law or tendency?  Does the fact
<br>that birds, airplanes, and rockets fly indicate that the law of gravity has
<br>holes like a sieve and should be abandoned?
<br>
<br>>Simply because a few linguists have assumed that
<br>>a given law or principle exists does not mean that its existence should  be
<br>>accepted without question in later generations.
<br>
<br>Among those seeking to establish functional motivation for structures,
<br>constraints, and effects of language change (lexical, grammatical and
<br>phonological), I'd say it's hardly (just) "a few linguists" who assume,
<br>either ex- or implicitly, some version of the least effort principle.  And
<br>since analogous principles of economy, as Zipf stressed, operate elsewhere
<br>in human behavior, why should we assume that language alone is exempt?
<br>Nobody (to my knowledge) claims that the principle (or tendency) to
<br>economize effort explains EVERYthing (in language or elsewhere), but it
<br>doesn't follow that it explains NOthing, especially in the light of both
<br>common sense and the difficulty of formulating a non-ad hoc alternative to
<br>account for what it encompasses (cf. again assimilation, anaphoric
<br>reduction, acronymy, truncation, contraction, coarticulation, etc., as well
<br>as various other phonological, lexical, and pragmatic phenomena attributed
<br>to least effort or to its interaction with other linguistic and social
<br>principles).
<br>
<br>>    Incidentally, here are two items I have written relevant to syntactic
<br>>blending and the Principle of Least Effort:
<br>>1) "Contributions To The Study of Blending," in: _Etymology and Linguistic
<br>>Principles, vol. l: Pursuit of Linguistic Insight_  (ed., Gerald Leonard
<br>>Cohen; Rolla, Missouri; published by the editor), pp. 81-94, esp. pp.90-91.
<br>>1988.
<br>>
<br>>2) _Syntactic Blends in English Parole_  (= _Forum Anglicum_, vol. 15).
<br>>Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. l78 pp., with bibliography, where mention is
<br>>made of Martinet and Zipf).
<br>>
<br>>--Gerald Cohen
<br>
<br>Thanks, Jerry; I'll look for them.  (I'll send you under separate cover an
<br>attachment of a relatively recent paper of mine on economy and redundancy,
<br>not that we're likely to sway each other.)
<br>
<br>Larry
<br>