1258 I ROMANJAKOBSON

From Linguistics and Poetics

. . .
I have been asked for summary remarks about poetics in its relation to
linguistics. Poetics deals primarily with the question, 'lWhat makes a verbal
message a work of art'?" Because the main subject of poetics is the differentia
specifica I of verbal art in relation to other arts and in relation to other kinds
of verbal behavior, poetics is entitled to the leading place in literary studies.
Poetics deals with problems of verbal structure, just as the analysis of
painting is concerned with pictorial struhure. Since linguistics is the global
science of verbal structure, poetics may be regarded as an integral part of
linguistics. .
Arguments against such a claim must be thoroughly discussed. It is evident
that many devices studied by poetics are not t;:onfined to verbal art. We can
refer to the possibility of transporting Wuthering Heights 2 into a motion pic-
ture, medieval legends into frescoes and miniatures, or L'Aprt!s-midi d'un
faune 3 into music, ballet, and graphic art. However ludicrous the idea of the
Iliad and Odyssey in comics may seem, 4 certain structural features of their
plot are preserved despite the disappearance of their verbal shape. The ques-
tion of whether W. B. Yeats was right in affirming that· William Blake was
"the one perfectly fit illustrator for the Inferno and the Purgatorio'" is a proof
that different arts are comparable. The problems of the baroque or any other
historical style transgress the frame of a single art. When handling the sur-
realistic metaphor, we could hardly pass by Max Ernst's pictures or Luis
Bunuel's films, The Andalusian Dog· and The Golden Age. 6 In short, many
poetic features belong not only to the scierice of language but to the whole
theory of signs, that is, to general semiotics.? This statement, however, is
valid not only for verbal art but also for all varieties of language, since lan-
guage shares many properties with certain other systems of signs or even
with all of them (pan semiotic features).
Likewise, a second objection contains nothing that would be specific for
literature: the question of relations between the word and the world concerns
not only verbal art but actually all kinds of discourse. Linguistics is likely to
explore all possible problems of relation between discourse and the "universe
of discourse": what of this universe is verbalized by a given discourse and
how it is verbalized. The truth values, however, as far as they are-to say
with the logicians-"extra-Iinguistic entities," obviously exceed the bounds
of poetics and of linguistics in general.

I. Speclfic difference (Latin). aUst. Blake (1757-1827). English poet and

2. An 1847 novel by Emily Brontl!; the best-known engraver.
film version was directed by WiIIlam Wyler (J 939). 6. Films (1928 and 1930. respectively). on which
3. The AjUmoml of a Faun (1876). a poem by the Spanish-born flImmaker Bulluel (1900-1983)
STtPHANE MALLARMt; It was set to music by collaborated with the surrealist painter Salvador
Claude Debussy (1894). and choreographed and Dall (1904-1989). Ernst (1891-1976), German-
danced by Vaslav Nijlnsky for Sergei Dlaghilev's born French painter. .
Ballets Russes (1912). Its original edition was illus- 7. S .....iolic•• a term derived from the work of the
trated by Edouard Manet. American philosopher C. S. Pelrce (1839-1914).
4. Homer's epic poem. (ca. 8th c. B.C.E.) were and semiology. from that of the Swl •• linguist FER-
among the many literary works presented as com- DlNAND DE SAUSSURE (1857-1913), both name
Ics In the American "Classic. Illustrated" series the general theory of signs. In practice ••emiolics
( 1940s-60s). refers specifically to the science of the Interpreta-
5. Inferno and P,,"S,,'orio are two of the three tion of signs (the study of whose meaning Is called
books of DANTE ALIGHIERI'S Divine Co .....dy semantic.) .
(1321). Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet and dram-
LINGUISTICS AND POETICS / 1259

Sometimes we hear that poetics in contradistinction to linguistics, is con-

cerned with evaluation. This separation of the two fields from each other is
based on a current but erroneous interpretation of the contrast between the
structure of poetry and other types of verbal structure: the latter are said to
be opposed by their "casual." design less nature to the "noncasual," purpose-
ful character of poetic language. In point of fact. any verbal behavior is goal-
directed, but the aims are different and the conformity of the means used to
the effect aimed at is a problem that evermore preoccupies inquirers into
the diverse kinds of verbal communication. There is a close correspondence,
much closer than critics believe, between the question of linguistic phenom-
ena expanding in space and time and the spatial and temporal spread of
literary models. Even such discontinuous expansion as the resurrection of
neglected or forgotten poets-for instance, the posthumous discovery and
subsequent canonization of Emily Dickinson (d. 1886) and Gerard Manley
Hopkins (d. 1889), the tardy fame of Lautreamont (d. 1870) among surrealist
poets, and the salient influence of the hitherto ignored Cyprian Norwid
(d. 1883) on Polish modern poetry-finds a parallel in the history of standard
languages that tend to revive outdated models, sometimes long forgotten, as
was the case in literary Czech. which toward the beginning of the nineteenth
century leaned toward sixteenth-century models.
Unfortunately, the terminological confusion of "literary studies" with "crit-
icism" tempts the student of literature to replace the description of the intrin-
sic values of a literary work with a subjective, censorious verdict. The label
"literary critic" applied to an investigator of literature is as erroneous as
"grammatical (or lexical) critic" would be applied to a linguist. Syntactic and
morphologic 8 research cannot be supplanted by a normative grammar, and
likewise no manifesto. foisting a critic's own tastes and opinions on creative
literature, can serve as a substitute for an objective scholarly analysis of
verbal art. This statement should not be mistaken for the quietist principle
of laissez faire; any verbal culture involves programmatic, planning, norma-
tive endeavors. Yet why is a clear-cut discrimination made between pure and
applied linguistics or between phonetics and orthoepy,9 but not between
literary studies and criticism?
Literary studies, with poetics as their focal point, consist like linguistics
of two sets of problems: synchrony and diachrony.l The synchronic des~p­
tion envisages not only the literary production of any given stage but also
that part of the literary tradition which for the stage in question has remained
vital or has been revived. Thus. for instance, Shakespeare, on the one hand,
and Donne, MarvelI. Keats. and Emily Dickinson, on the other, are experi-
enced by the present English poetic world, whereas the works of James
Thomson and LongfeIlow,2 for the time being, do not belong to viable artistic
values. The selection of classics and their reinterpretation by a novel trend
is a substantial problem of synchronic literary studies. Synchronic poetics,
like synchronic linguistics. is not to be confused with statics; any stage dis-
~. Pertaining to the forms taken hy word~ in usage English poets John Donne (1562-163 I), Andrew
!conjugations, tenses, declensions. etc.), {ISyntac- Marvell (l621-1678), John Keats (1795-1821),
tic'''; pertaining to the structure of phrases and sen- and the American Dickinson (who all. unlike
tences. Shakesr.eare, received relatively little attention in
9. The ~tudy of coneet pronunciation. "Phonet- their Ii etlmes) to the once popular but now criti·
in":the otudy of the sound. of language. cally scorned Scottish-born English poet Thomson
I. Chang" In a system o\'('r tin1e. "Synchrony": the (1700-1748) and American poet Henry Wad.-
relations of part!li within a ~ystem arrested in time. worth LonJ!fellow (1807-1882) .
.~. Jakob.on contrasts thl' now hil'hly regarded
1260 I ROMAN JAKOBSON

criminates between more· conservative and·more innovative forms .. Any con-

temporary stage is experienced in its temporal dyhamics, and, ort the other
hand, the historical approach both hI poetics and in linguistics is concerned
'not only with changes·but also with c·ontinuous;'enduring. static factors. A
thoroughly comprehensive historical poetics or history oflanguage isa super-
structure to be built on a series of sliccessive .synchroriic descriptions.
: Insistence on keeping poetics apart from linguistics Js·warrantedorily
,when the, peld of linguistics appears to be illicitly restricted; for example,
wheri the ·sentence is viewed by some linguists as' the: highest .analyzable
constructioni or when the scope· of linguistics· is confined to grammar· alone
or uniquely to nonsemantic questions of external form ·or to the· inventory of
'denotative devices with no reference to free variations. Voegeliri has clearly
pointed out the two most important and related problems that "face str.u.ctural
linguistics, namely, a revision of "the monolithic- hypothesis about language"
and a concern. with "the interdependence of diverse structures within ,one
language."~·No doubt,:for.any speech.community, for any speaker, there
:exists a unity of language, .but this over-all code represents a system of inter-
.connected subcodes; every language encompasses several concurrent pat-
terns, each charac;terized by different functions.
Obviously we must agree with Sapir that; .on the whole!. "ideation reigns
supreme in lariguage,"4 but this .supremacy does not authorize linguistics to
disregard the "'secondary factors .....'The emotive elements of speec;:h, which,
'as Joos is prone to believe,.cannot;be desoribed ~'with a:.finite,number.:bf
:absolutecategorles," ,are cla.llfted by· him ,".s nonllllgtilltic element. of th.e
ireal world." Hence; "for u. they..-emaln vague, protean, fbictuating phenom-
:ena," heconc::ludes. ','whlch,werefuse to t61erate.ln i our science.'" 10.05.15
indeed a brilliant expertin reduction experiments, and his.~mphatic demand
for the "expulsion" of emotive elemeiits I~from linguistic science" is a radical
experiment in ·reduction.........,.eductio ad absu.fdum; ·'1 ., .

, Language must be in.vestigatedin all the variety 'of its functions; Before
discussing the poetic .functiori:,we ..must define its place ..among. the other
functions .of language. An outline of these ·functions :demands a.concise· sur-
vey of the constitutive factors in any speech event) in· any act of verbal com-
munication. The ADDRESSER sends a MESSAGE to the ADDRESSEE. To' be
operative the message requires's CONTEXT referred to "(the. "referent" in
another, somewhat ambiguous,' nomenclature), graspable by the'addressee,
and·either verbal or capable of being verbalized; a'GODEJully, orat,leaiit
. paJ:tially, commOn to the addres,ser and addressee (or in other.words, to the
encoder and decoder of the message); and, finally, a CONTACT. a physical
channel and psychological connection ~etween the addresser and· the
addressee, enabling both of them. to enter and stay ihcommunication.· All
these factors inalienably involved in. verbal.communication maybesohe-
matized as follows: "

3: . Charles F, Voegeiln; '.'Casual ~nd 'Ndncasual G~rman7bomAmericalt1lngulst~ . . . . . ' .:;;

Uhetances wit"ln UniAed ·Strl.i:l'ures"," itl "S"rie,in 5. MlirtlnJoo~; "tl".crlptlon of Language De~IgJ1/,
'q.ngtlag~,.e(t Thomas Sebeok tCambr'~ge, i\tils~., Jo ..~1 of.the Aco...t!~! Society ofA,,",~ '~~
1960), p. 57 (Jilkobson'. hote):" .... '. , (1950): 7Ql-l (Jakob~()I1\notel. Joos ~b:,HI~7~.
'4." EdWard Saplt,' U.,.giicige. (New York, 1921), Amerlca~ lI?kUlst~ . ".. .. . '.
p,40 (Jakobsoii'S note). Sapit (1884-1939).
LINGUISTICS AND POETICS I 1261

CONTEXT
ADDRESSER MESSAGE ADDRESSEE
CONTACT
CODE

Each of these six factors determines a different function of language.

Although we distinguish six basic aspects of language, we could, however,
hardly find verbal messages that would fulfill only one function. The diversity
lies not in a monopoly of some one of these several. functions but in a dif-
ferent hierarchical order of functions. The verbal structure of a message
depends primarily on the predominant function. But even though a set (Ein-
stellung) toward the referent, an orientation toward the context~briefly, the
so-called REFERENTIAL, "denotative," "cognitive" function-is the leading
task of numerous messages, the accessory participation ,of the other func-
tions in such messages must be taken into account by the observant lingUist.
The so-called EMOTIVE or "expressive" function, focused on the addresser,
aims a direct expression of the speaker's attitude toward what he is speaking
about. It tends to produce an impression of a certain emotion, whether true
or feigned; therefore, the term "emotive," launched and advocated by Marty,6
has proved to be preferable to "emotionaI." The purely emotive stratum in
language is presented by the intetjections. They. differ from the means of
referential language both by their sound patteri1(peculiarsound sequences
or even sounds elsewhere unusual) and by their syntactic role (they are not
components but 'equivalents of sentences). ~ITutl Tutl uid McGinty": the
complete utterance of Conan Doyle'sr character consiata of two suction
clicks. The emotive function, laid bare in the interjections f flavors to some
extent all our utterances, on their phonic, grammatical, and lexical level. If.
we analyze language from the standpoint of the information it carries, we
cannot restrict the notion of information to the cognitive asp.ect of language.
A man, using expressive features to indicate his angry or ironic attitude,
conveys ostensible information, and evidently.this verbal behavior cannot be
likened to such .• nonsemiotic, nutritive ·activities.·, as "eating grapefruit'\
(despite Chatman's bold simile).R The difference between [bIg] and the
emphatic prolongation of the vowel [bl:g] is a conventional, coded linguistic
feature like the. difference between the short and long vowel in such Czeelr
pairs as [vi] "you" and [vi:] "knows," but in the latter pair the differential
information is phonemic and in the former emotive; As long as we are inter-
ested in phonemic invariants, the English lil and li:1 appear to be mere
variants of one and the same phoneme, but if we are concerned with emotive
units, the relation between the invariants and variants is reversed: length and
shortness are invariants implemented by variable phonemes. Saporta's sur-
mise that emotive difference is a non linguistic feature, "attributable to the

6. Anton . Marty, Untef"Sl'Chungen zur Grundle- 8. Seyniour Chatman (b. 1928) was another
gung Jer Allgemeinen GrAmmAlik und Sl'TAchphi- American participant in the Style conference." No
losophie, I (Halle, 1908) Uakohson's note). Marty reference to grapefruit occurs in his paper, which
( 1847-1914), Au.triah linguist. discusses the metrical contrasts between the poets
7. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), English John Donne and ALEXANDER POPE. Perhar. there
novelist, hest known for his tales featuring Sher- was some connection between fCsegmenta sound"
Jock Holmes; the quotation Is from The VAlley of and grapefruit segments.
FeAr (I915).
1262 / ROMAN JAKOBSON

delivery of the message and not to the message/,9 arbitrarily reduces the
informational capacity of messages.
A former actor of Stanislavskij's' Moscow Theater told me how at his audi-
tion he was asked by the famous director to make forty different messages
from the phrase Segodnja veC!erotn (This evening), by diversifying itsexpres-
sive tint. He made a list of some forty emotional situations, then emitted the
given phrase in accordance with each of these situations, which his audience
had to recognize only from the changes in the sound shape of the same tw.o
words. For our research work in the description and analysis of contemporary
Standard Russian (under the auspices of the RockefeIler Foundation) this
actor was asked to repeat Stanislavskij's test. He wrote down some fifty sit-
uations framing the same elliptic sentence and made of it fifty corresponding
messages for a tape recording. Most of the messages were correctly and
circumstantially decoded by Moscovite listeners. May I add that all such
emotive cues easily undergo linguistic analysis.
Orientation toward the addressee, the CONATlVE function, finds its purest
grammatical expression in the vocative and imperative, which syntactically,
morphologically, and often even phonemically deviate froin other nominal
and verbal categories. The imperative sentences cardinally differ from declar-
ative sentences: the latter are and the former are not liable to a truth test.
When in O'Neill's2 play The Fountain, Nano "(in a fierce totie of command)"
says "Drink!"-the imperative cannot be challenged by the question "is it
true or not?" which may be, however; perfectly well asked after such sen-
tences as "one drank," "one will drink," "one would drink." In t:ontradistinc-
tion to the imperative sentences, the declarative sentences are convertible
into interrogative sentences: "did one drink?," "will one drink?," "would one
drink?"
The traditional model of language as elucidated particularly by Bohler3
was confined to these three functions-emotive, conative, and referential-
and the three apexes of this model-the first person of the addresser, the
second person of the addressee, and the "third person" properly (someone
or something spoken of). Certain additional verbal functions can be easily
inferred from this triadic modeL Thus the magic, incantatory function is
chiefly some kind of conversion of an absent or inanimate "third person" into
an addressee of a conative message. "May this sty dry up, tju, tju, tju, tju"
(Lithuanian spell):4 "Water, queen river, daybreak! Send grief beyond the
blue sea, to the sea bottom, like a gray stone never to rise from the sea
bottom, may grief never come to burden the light heart of God's servant,
may grief be removed and sink away" (North Russian incantation).' "Sun,
stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Aj-a-Ion. And
the sun stood still, and the moon stayed" Qoshua 10.12). We observe, how-

9. Sol Saporta, 'The Application of LinguisticS to 3. Karl BOhler, "Die Axiorriatik der Sprachwissen-
the Study of Poetic Langua~e," in St"le in Lan- schaft," K" ..t-Studlen (Berlin) 38 (1933): 19-20
guage, p. 88 Uakobson's notel. Saporta (b. 1925), Uakobson's note). BOhler (1879-1963): German
American Jingulst. psychologist.
1. Konstantln Stanislavsky (1863-1938), Russian 4. V. J. Manslkka, Utau/sclte Zaubersprlklte
actor and director of the Moscow Art Theater, (Folltlore Fellows Communications) 87 (1929): 69
developed what became known in the United Uakobson's note).
States as "method acting." 5. P. N. Rybnikov, Pes..i (Moscow, 1910), Ill,
2. Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953), American play- 217-18 Uakobson's notel.
wright; The Fou ..t"l .. was staged in 1925.
LINGUISTICS AND POETICS / 1263

eyer, three further constitutive factors of verbal communication and three

corresponding functions of language.
There are messages primarily serving to establish, to prolong, or to dis-
continue communication. to check whether the channel works ("Hello, do
you hear me?"), to attract the attention of the interlocutor or to confirm his
continued attention ("Are you listening?" or in Shakespearean diction, "Lend
me your ears!"-and on the other end of the wire "Urn-hum!"). This set for
contact. or in Malinowski's terms PHATIC function,6 may be displayed by a
profuse exchange of ritualized formulas, by entire dialogues with the mere
purport of prolonging communication. Oorothy Parker? caught eloquent
examples: " 'Well!' the young man said. 'Well!' she said. Well, here we are,'
he said. 'Here we are,' she said, 'Aren't we?' 'I should say we were,' he said,
'Eeyop! Here we are.' 'WeU!' she said. 'Well!' he said, 'well.' " The endeavor
to start and sustain communication is typical of talking birds; thus the phatic
function of language is the only one they share with human beings. It is also
the first verbal function acquired by infants; they are prone to communicate
before being able to send or receive informative communication.
A distinction has been made in modern logic between two levels of lan-
guage: "object language" speaking of objects and "metalanguage" speaking
of language. 8 But metalanguage is not only a necessary scientific tool utilized
by logicians and linguists; it plays also an important role in our everyday
language. Like Moliere's Jourdain 9 who used prose without knowing it, we
practice metalanguage without realizing the metalingual character of our
operations. Whenever the addresser and/or the addressee need to check up
whether they use the same code, speech is focused on the code: it performs
a METALlNGUAL (i.e .• glossing) function. "I don't follow you-what do you
mean?" asks the addressee. or in Shakespearean diction, "What is't thou
say'st?" And the addresser in anticipation of such recapturing question
inquires: "Do you know what I mean?" Imagine such an exasperating dia-
logue: "The sophomore was plucked." "But what is plucked?" "Plucked means
the same asjlunked." "Andjlunked?" "To bejlunked is tofail an exam." "And
what is sophotnore?" persists the interrogator innocent of school vocabulary.
"A. sophomore is (or means) a second-year student." All these equational sen"
tences convey information merely about the lexical code of English; their
function is strictly metalingual. Any process of language learning, in part~·
ular child acquisition of the mother tongue, makes wide use of such meta-
lingual operations; and aphasia may often be defined as a loss of ability for
mctalingual operations.
I have brought up all the six factors involved in verbal communication
except the message itself. The set (Eiu.stellung) toward the message as such,
focus on the message for its own sake, is the POETIC function of language.
This function cannot be productively studied out of touch with the general

6. Rronislaw Malinowski. "The Problem of Mean- pmwdy w jezyhach _"It dedu/tcyjnych (Warsaw,
inR in Primitive Languages," in TIle j\.-Ieaning of 1933), and "Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den formali-
Meal/i ••g. ed. C. K. Ogden and J. A. Richards, 9th sierten Sprachen." S'udi.. Philosophica I (J 936)
ecl. I New York, J 953), pp. 296-336 Uakobson's Uakobson'$ note].
note]. Malinow.ki (1884-1942). Polish-born 9. M. Jourdain is the protagonist of Le Bourgeois
/\medcan anthropologist. ge ..Ulhomme f 1670. The Would-be Gentle",an), a
.... Anlerican writer of light verse and short stories play by Moli~re (pen name of Jean-Bar.tiste Poque-
(J f;93-J 967); the quoted dialogue is froln the sto ..y Iin, 1622-1673); he is surprised to earn that he
"~kr<' We Are" (J 93 I). has been speaking prose all his life without know-
R. T<'nn introduced by Alfred Tar.ki, Poje~ie ing it.
1264 I ROMANJAKOBSON

problems of language, and, on the other. hand, the scrutiny of language

requires a thorough consideration of its poetic function. Any attempt to
reduce the sphere of the poetic function to poetry or to confine poetry to
the poetic function would be a delusive oversimplification ... The poetic func-
tion is not the sole function of verbal art but only its dominant,determin-
ing function, whereas in all other verbal activities it acts as.a subsidiary,
accessory constituent. This function, by promoting the palpability of signs,
deepens the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects·. Hence, when
dealing with the poetic function, linguistics cannot limit itself to the field
of poetry.
'Why do you always say Joan. and Margery, yet never Margery and Joan?
Do you prefer Joan to her twin sister'?" ':Not at all, it just sounds smoother."
In a sequence of two coordinate' names, so far as no problems of rank inter-
fere, the precedence of the shorter name suits the speaker, unaccountably
for him, as a well-ordered shape for the message.
A girl used to talk about "the horrible.Harry." "Why horrible'?" "Because 1
hate him." "But why not dreadful, terribleJrjghtful, disgusting;" "I don't know
why, but horrible fits him better." Without realizing it, she clung to the poetic
device of paronomasia. 1
The political slogan "I like Ike"/ay layk ayk/, succinctly structured, consists
of three monosyllables and counts three diphthongs lay;, each of them sym-
metrically followed by one consonantal phoneme, 1.. I..k.. k/. The makeup of
the three words presents a variation:' no consonantal phonemes in the first
word, two around the diphthong in the second, and one final consonant in
the third. A similar dominant nucleus /ayl was noticed by Hymes in some of
the SOnnets of Keats. 2 Both cola 3 of the trisyllabic formula "I like/lke" rhyme
with each other, and the second of the two rhyming words is fully included
in the first one (echo rhyme), /layk/-/ayk/, a paronomastic·image of a feel-
ing which totally envelops its object. Both cola alliterate with each other,
and the first of the two alliterating words is included. 1n, the second: lay/-
laykl, a paronomastic image of the loving subject enveloped by the beloved
object. The secondary, poetic function.of this campaign slogan reinforces its
impressiveness and efficacy..
As 1 said, the linguistic study of' the poetic function must overstep the
limits of poetry, and, on the other hand, the linguistic scrutiny of poetry
cannot limit itself to the poetic function. The particularities of diverse poetic
genres imply a differently ranked participation of the other verbal functions
·along with the dominant poetic function. Epic poetry, focused bn the third
person, strongly involves the referential function of language; the lyric, ori-
ented toward the. first person, is intimately linked with the emotive function;
poetry of the second person 'i~ imbued with the conative function and is
either supplicatory or exhortative, depending on whether the first person is
subordinated to the second one or the second to the first.
Now that our cursory description of the six basic functions of verbal com-
munication is more or less complete, we may complement our scheme of
the fundamental factors with a corresponding scheme of the functions:

1. A play on words that sound alike. American anthropologist and linguist.

2. Dell H. Hyme •• "Phonological Aspects of Style: 3. Se.ction. of a sentence or rhythmical period (the
Some English Sonnet.... In SJyIe in Language. plural of colon).
pp. 123-26 lJakobson·. note). Hymes (b. 1927).
Two ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE / 1265

REFERENTIAL

EMOTIVE POETIC CONATIVE

PHATIC

METALlNGUAL

What is the empirical linguistic criterion of the poetic function? In par-

ticular, what is the indispensable feature inherent in any piece of poetryi' To
answer this question we must recall the two basic modes of arrangement
used in verbal behavior, selection and combination. If "child" is the topic of
the message, the speaker selects one among the extant, more or less similar
nouns like child, kid, youngster, tot, all of them equivalent in a certain
respect, and then, to comment on this topic, he may select one of the seman-
tically cognate verbs-sleeps, dozes, nods, naps. Both chosen words combine
in the speech chain. The selection is produced on the basis of equivalence,
similarity and dissimilarity, synonymy and antonymy, while the combination,
the buil4-upof the sequence, is based on contiguity. The poetic function
projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of
combination. Equivalence is promoted to the constitutive device of the
sequence. In poetry one syllable is equalized with any other syllable of the
same sequence; word stress· is assumed to. equal word stress, as unstress
equals unstress; prosodic long is matched with long, and short with short;
word boundary, equals word boundary, no boundary equals no boundary;
syntactic pause equals syntactic pause, no pause equals no pause. Syllables
are converted into units of measure, and so are morae4 or stresses.
It may be objected that metalanguage also makes a sequential use of equiv-
alent units when combining synonymic expressions into an equational sen-
tence: A = A ("Mare is the female of the horse"). Poetry and metalanguage,
however, are in diametrical opposition to each other: in metalanguage the
sequence is used to build an equation, whereas in poetry the equation is used
to build a sequence.
.. .. ..
1960
~"

From Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic

Disturbances
v. The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles
The varieties of aphasia' are numerous and diverse, but all of them lie
between the two polar types just described. Every form of aphasic distur-
bance consists i~ some impairment, more or less severe, of the faculty either
for selection and substitution or for combination and contexture. The former
affliction involves a deterioration of metalinguistic operations, while the lat-
ter damages the capacity for maintaining the hierarchy of linguistic units.
The relation of similarity is suppressed in the former, the relation of conti-

4. Short (unstressed) .yllahie•. I. Loss of the ability to use or understand speech.