A Protolinguistic Fossil

One of the interesting scholars of protolanguage who consistently makes data-rich presentations is Ljiljana Progovac. She focuses on examples of “living fossils” of protolanguage. Living fossils are species like lungfish that have changed very little from their distant ancestors. Living language fossils are holdovers from the beginnings of syntax. Previously she reported on small clauses (see: Fossilized Syntax and The Eternal Duality). At the protolanguage conference held his week in Torun, Poland she discussed “imperative VN compounds” which, despite the jargon-rich terminology, are vulgar, lively phrases like: fuck-wind, squeeze-penny, and lick-boot.

Progovac began by looking at exocentric, verb-noun compounds. An exocentric compound is a compound word none of whose parts refer to what the compound as a whole refers to. A pickpocket for example is a thief, not a type of pocket. Contrast that with compounds like pigpen, thumbprint, or sandstorm in which the word does indicate what its about. These compounds defy the principles of modern syntactic theory. The parts (e.g., pick and pocket) are not hierarchical or functionally related. The relationship between the two words is vague. In a sandstorm, sand modifies storm, but in a pickpocket, pick does not modify pocket or vice versa. Thus, exocentric compounds are built like living fossils, with forms that predate syntactic structure.

Progovac also looked at imperative forms. English users think of imperatives as commands, but in this presentation it has a more “Sanskrit” meaning commands, wishes, benedictions, possibility, and doubt. Examples from English include: follow me (command); help me (wish); bless you (benediction); seek simplicity and distrust it (advice). The standard English form is verb + noun, although this form can be expanded. It has been proposed before ( here ) that imperatives are a protolinguistic form.

Then Progovac pointed to words that use the imperative, verb + noun form to create compounds. She gave many examples from the Serbian (e.g., split-hair [hairsplitter], fuck-wind [charlatan], spin-butt [fidgeter]). Off the top of my head, I don’t many from English—fuckface, kickass, lickspittle—and would welcome examples from my readers. So these words seem to combine features already suggestive of protolanguage. Imperative VN  compounds thus appear to be great candidates for the very earliest word combination, a clear pre-syntactic protolanguage.

One thing bound to astonish many people is the vulgarity of the terms and Progovac considered reasons for this; however, it is not clear to me that the same tone and sense of crudeness was evident in the actual protolanguage. After all, part of the vulgarity comes from the very anti-syntactic structure of the phrase. In a sentence like ,“He’s a real kickass coach,” the crudity of the syntax supports the description. In an alternate sentence, “e’s a real strokecheek mother,” the compound is decipherable, but the crudity of the syntax contradicts the emotion.

Progovac did not mention it, but Washoe the chimpanzee once signed “water bird” when it saw a duckswan. There are quarrels about how to interpret the action. Was Washoe creating a compound or just signing two visible things? Whatever the answer, it appears that no extra intelligence needs to have evolved for protohumans to have had the sense to put words together appropriately but asyntactically.

Comments

[Rick S]

A few more exocentric VN compounds:
killjoy
?spendthrift
kiss-ass
hangdog
singsong
pinchpenny

And some that seem related, though they're not VN:
bootblack
do-little
?flapjack
speakeasy

[Jesús Sanchis]

In the post I read the following sentence: "These compounds defy the principles of modern syntactic theory". I think that the problem here is 'modern syntactic theory' and its 'principles'. It is not that these compounds defy any principles, I think linguists should definitely defy these supposed principles, e.g. the ones born in the context of the Chomskyan doctrine. In my opinion, most of what is said and written in 'modern syntactic theory' is rather useless in practical terms, particularly if one is trying to study the origins of human language. 'Modern syntactic theory' has more to do with pure logic and formal languages than with real human languages.

On the other hand, the idea that imperatives are a 'protolinguistic form' is not new. It is obvious, and common sense.

[Slawomir Wacewicz]

My gut reaction is to agree with Mr Sanchis' post above.
One more comment that immediately springs to mind is that while exocentric VN compounds may be simple syntactically, *conceptually* they seem to be quite elaborate - certainly not like something we'd expect in protolanguage.
I still think it was an excellent presentation, but I disagree with the conclusions.

[Dave Timpe]

English isn't a terribly good language to test this in, since it lacks clearly defined forms that identify such things as verbs, let alone imperatives. In any event, couldn't "pickpocket" be analyzed as shorthand for "a person who picks pockets"?
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BLOGGER: I used English examples for my mostly English speaking audience. Progovac gave extensive lists from Serbian and some Polish as well as a few English examples.

As for the revision of the pickpocket term—yes, it could be expanded to a person who picks pockets but we only know that because we know the word, but if we did not there would be no reason to favor that expansion over "a pocket that holds picks." The term is vague. (Progovac distinguished between between vague and ambiguous. An ambiguous term can be assigned various contradictory structures; a vague compound has no such structures to fall back on.) If you don't take syntactic structure seriously, it all sounds like the most absurd kind of nitpicking. If you do take it seriously, it's serious.

[Ken Randall]

The word "pickpocket" is not a "living fossil" since it is perfectly logical.

It is not a type of pocket since it is a description of the action, which has no physical reality.

The action is picking someone's pocket - perceived negatively by society and especially by the victim (presumably). For that reason the action is noteworthy (notorious) and has a name describing the action.

The other VN compounds cited at the end are the same - actions which have no physical reality, unlike a sandstorm, but which are viewed negatively by others.

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BLOGGER: Is it true that the action of "picking someone's pocket" is transparent? The phrase strikes me as idiosyncratic in the extreme. The American Heritage dictionary includes as the 9th definition of to pick: "to steal the contents of," but the example given is "My pocket was picked." I don't know of alternate phrases: My cash register was picked; The food locker was picked. The bank was picked. I know the phrase "to pick a lock" but that means to open a lock, not steal it.

The Oxford English Dictionary does report that "pick" used to mean plunder and that later it became a euphemism for petty theft. Those usages were in the Middle Ages. Back in those days, by the way, people did not have pockets, but there was a term "pickpurse." One can imagine the humor of the coinage--pick an apple, pick a purse. Pickpocket followed that form, without actually making sense. Meanwhile, we still have people who steal purses, but we call them by the more syntactically proper, "purse snatcher."