In the previous article, we saw Arisaka Hideyo’s view that a phoneme is a social “standard,” a convention. In this article we read his answer to the question: who made that convention, and for what purpose?
The opponent: Trubetzkoy
In Part 1 of Onin-ron, the figure Arisaka argues against most strongly, alongside Saussure, is the Prague School’s Trubetzkoy. Trubetzkoy tended to see a language’s system of sounds as something “made by speakers for the purpose of conveying distinctions of meaning.” A distinction of sounds exists, in that view, because it serves that purpose.
Arisaka opposes this view head-on.
“Mission” and “reality” are different things
Arisaka first grants that a phonemic system certainly has a mission (an ideal) of “expressing distinctions of meaning.” But that merely states an ideal, he continues; it doesn’t follow that the actual system is built to fit that ideal perfectly. Actual social institutions are generally imperfect, and countless useless petty rules exist. In the same way, it would be no surprise if the phonemic system contained sound distinctions that serve no purpose in distinguishing meaning.
So where did the system come from? Arisaka says this.
現在の音韻制度を作り出したものは、我々とは異なる環境の中に在つた所の我々の祖先である。我々は、既に出来上つた音韻制度を親たちから受けついだのである。
(What created the present phonemic institution was our ancestors, who lived in an environment different from ours. We received the already-completed phonemic institution from our parents.)
The phonemic system was not born of our present needs and desires. It was shaped in the circumstances of ancestors who lived in a distant past, in a different environment. From the moment we’re born, Arisaka says, we merely receive it from our parents as something already finished.
It exists regardless of my desires
Arisaka goes on.
現実の社会制度たる音韻体系は、我々が何を欲しようとも、それとは無関係に、儼として我等の外に存在してゐる。
(The phonemic system, an actual social institution, exists sternly outside us, regardless of whatever we may want.)
Here Arisaka grasps the phonemic system as an “object” that stands firmly outside us. Even if I think “I don’t need this sound distinction,” or “I want a new sound distinction,” the phonemic system of Japanese doesn’t change for it. It is there regardless of my desires.
The analogy of a sweet
Arisaka explains this with a familiar analogy. That the phonemic system exists for the sake of our lives is beyond doubt. But the fact that the system actually exists is, he says, an objective fact unrelated to our desires — as if it were a sweet given to me as food. However badly I want to eat that sweet, that it sits there as it does is the sweet’s own affair. That it is a dark sweet, or a sweet sweet, is its own affair; my desire did not bring the sweet into being.
If I eat the sweet and like it, that is merely because the sweet’s taste happened to coincide with my desire. Even when the phonemic system seems to suit our needs, it is only a coincidence — that is what Arisaka wants to say.
Criticism of those who only shout “function”
From this view, Arisaka criticizes the Prague School’s claim. In Part 2 of Onin-ron (p. 130) there is this passage.
Prag 派の学者たちは、この点を忘却してゐる。ただ徒らに機能々々と絶叫するのみで、音韻体系が伝統的社会制度たる所以を忘却してゐる所から、彼等のすべての誤が生じて来るのである。
(The scholars of the Prague School forget this point. They merely shout “function, function” to no purpose, and it is from their forgetting why a phonemic system is a traditional social institution that all their errors arise.)
A rather harsh criticism. In stressing the “function” of sound distinctions (their work of distinguishing meaning), Arisaka says, the Prague School forgets the other side — that the phonemic system is a traditional institution handed down from ancestors.
ToL’s note: the relation to Hashimoto’s A/B distinction
This view is also suggestive for thinking about the Nara-period A/B distinction we saw in the first half of this feature set. Nara-period people actually distinguished two vowels and used them separately. That distinction was lost in later periods. Seen from Arisaka’s standpoint, it wasn’t something speakers of that period “made” in order to distinguish meaning; it was an institution inherited from still earlier times, which in the course of history broke down and vanished. A phonemic system is not something constantly reorganized to the optimum for speakers’ needs; it is there as a product of history.
Summary
| Point | Detail |
|---|---|
| Arisaka’s opponent | Trubetzkoy (Prague School), who tended to see the system as made by present speakers for a purpose |
| “Mission” vs. “reality” | Distinguishing meaning is the system’s ideal; the real system can include distinctions that serve no purpose |
| Origin of the system | Ancestors made it; we inherited it from our parents. It exists outside us regardless of our desires |
| The sweet analogy | The system is there like a sweet given to me, unrelated to my desires |
| Criticism of the Prague School | Shouting “function” while forgetting that the phonemic system is a traditional social institution |
In a nutshell — for Arisaka Hideyo, the sound system of Japanese was not something we made as we needed it. Distant ancestors made it, and we received it, like a sweet, as something already finished.