The proposition is to
language what representation is to thought, at once its most general
and most elementary form, since as soon as it is broken down we no longer
encounter the discourse but only its elements, in the form of so much
scattered raw material. Below the proposition we do indeed find words,
but it is not in them that language is created. It is true that in the
beginning man emitted only simple cries, but these did not begin to
be language until they contained - if only within their monosyllable
- a relation that was of the order of a proposition. The yell of the
primitive man in a struggle becomes a true word only when it is no longer
the lateral expression of his pain, and when it has validity as a judgement
or as a statement of the type 'I am choking' [27]. What constitutes
a word as a word and raises it above the level of cries and noises is
the proposition concealed within it. If the wild man of Aveyron did
not attain to speech, it was because words remained for him merely the
vocal marks of things and of the impressions that those things made
upon his mind; they had acquired no propositional value. He could, it
is true, pronounce the word 'milk' when a bowl of milk was put in front
of him; but that was merely 'the confused expression of that alimentary
liquid, of the vessel containing it, and of the desire produced by it'
[28]; the word never became a sign representing the thing, for at no
point did he ever wish to say that the milk was hot, or ready, or expected.
It is in fact the proposition that detaches the vocal sign from its
immediate expressive values and establishes its supreme linguistic possibility.
For Classical thought, language begins not with expression, but with
discourse. When one says 'no', one is not translating one's refusal
into a mere cry; one is contracting into the form of a single word 'an
entire proposition: ... I do not feel that, or I do not believe that'
[29].' Let us go directly to the proposition, the essential object of
grammar' [30]. In the proposition, all the functions of language are
led back to the three elements that alone are indispensable to the formation
of a proposition: the subject, the predicate, and the link between them.
Even then, the subject and predicate arc of the same nature, since the
proposition affirms that the one is identical to or akin to the other;
it is therefore possible for them, under certain conditions, to exchange
functions. The only difference, though it is a decisive one, is that
manifested by the irreducibility of the verb: as Hobbes [31] says:
In every proposition
three things are to be considered, viz. the two names,
which are the subject and the predicate, and their
copulation; both which names raise in our mind the thought
of one and the same thing; but the copulation makes us think of
the cause for which those names were imposed on that thing.
The verb is the indispensable
condition for all discourse; and wherever it does not exist, at least
by implication, it is not possible to say that there is language. All
nominal propositions conceal the invisible presence of a verb, and Adam
Smithy] thinks that, in its primitive form, language was composed only
of impersonal verbs (such as 'it is raining' or 'it is thundering'),
and that all the other parts of discourse became detached from this
original verbal core as so many derived and secondary details. The threshold
of language lies at the point where the verb first appears. This verb
must therefore be treated as a composite entity, at the same time a
word among other words, subjected to the same rules of case and agreement
as other words, and yet set apart from all other words, in a region
which is not that of the spoken, but rather that from which one speaks.
It is on the fringe of discourse, at the connection between what is
said and what is saying itself, exactly at that point where signs are
in the process of becoming language.
It is this function
that we must now examine - by stripping the verb of all that has constantly
overlaid and obscured it. We must not stop, as Aristotle did, at the
fact that the verb signifies tenses (there are many other words, adverbs,
adjectives, nouns, that can carry temporal significations). Nor must
we stop, as Scaliger did, at the fact that it expresses actions or
passions, whereas nouns denote things - and permanent things (for
there is precisely the very noun 'action' to be considered). Nor must
we attach importance, as Buxtorf did, to the different persons of
the verb, for these can also be designated by certain pronouns. What
we must do before all else is to reveal, in all clarity, the essential
function of the verb: the verb affirms, it indicates 'that
the discourse in which this word is employed is the discourse of a
man who does not merely conceive of nouns, but judges them' [33].
A proposition exists-and discourse too-when we affirm the existence
of an attributive link between two things, when we say that this is
that [34]. The entire species of the verb may be reduced to the single
verb that signifies to be. All the others secretly make use
of this unique function, but they have hidden it beneath a layer of
determinations: attributes have been added to it, and instead of saying
'I am singing', we say "I sing' [35]; indications of time have
been added, and instead of saying 'before now I am singing', we say
'I sang'; lastly, certain languages have integrated the subject itself
into their verbs, and thus we find the Romans saying, not ego
vivit, but vivo. All of this is merely accretion and
sedimentation around and over a very slight yet essential verbal function,
'there is only the verb to be . . . that has remained in
this state of simplicity' [36]. The entire essence of language is
concentrated in that singular word. Without it, everything would have
remained silent, and though men, like certain animals, would have
been able to make use of their voices well enough, yet not one of
those cries hurled through the jungle would ever have proved to be
the first link in the great chain of language.
In the Classical period,
language in its raw state - that mass of signs impressed upon the
world in order to exercise our powers of interrogation - vanished
from sight, but language itself entered into new relations with being,
ones more difficult to grasp, since it is by means of a word that
language expresses being and is united to it; it affirms being from
within itself; and yet it could not exist as language if that word,
on its own, were not, in advance, sustaining all possibility of discourse.
Without a way of designating being, there would be no language at
all; but without language, there would be no verb to be,
which is only one part of language. This simple word is the representation
of being in language; but it is equally the representative being of
language - that which, by enabling language to affirm what it says,
renders it susceptible of truth or error. In this respect it is different
from all the signs that may or may not be consistent with, faithful
to, or well adapted to, what they designate, but that are never true
or false. Language is, wholly and entirely, discourse; and
it is so by virtue of this singular power of a word to leap across
the system of signs towards the being of that which is signified.
But from where does this power derive? And what is this meaning, which,
by overflowing the words containing it, forms the basis of the proposition?
The grammarians of Port-Royal said that the meaning of the
verb to be was affirmation - which indicated well enough
in what region of language its absolute privilege lay, but not at
all in what it consisted. We must not imagine that the verb to
be contains the idea of affirmation, for the word affirmation
itself, and also the word yes, contain it equally well [37];
what the verb to be provides is rather the affirmation of
the idea. But is the affirmation of an idea also the expression of
its existence? This is in fact what Bauzee thinks, and he also takes
it to be one reason why variations of time have been concentrated
into the form of the verb: for the essence of things does not change,
it is only their existence that appears and disappears, it is only
their existence that has a past and a future [38]. To which Condillac
can observe in reply that if existence can be withdrawn from things,
this must mean that it is no more than an attribute, and that the
verb can affirm death as well as existence. The only thing that the
verb affirms is the coexistence of two representations: for example,
those of a tree and greenness, or of man and existence or death; this
is why the tenses of verbs do not indicate the time when things existed
in the absolute, but a relative system of anteriority or simultaneity
between different things [39]. Coexistence is not, in fact, an attribute
of the thing itself; it is no more than a form of the representation:
to say that the greenness and the tree coexist is to say that they
are linked together in all, or most of, the impressions I receive.
So that the essential
function of the verb to be is to relate all language to the
representation that it designates. The being towards which it spills
over its signs is neither more nor less than the being of thought.
Comparing language to a picture, one late-eighteenth-century grammarian
defines nouns as forms, adjectives as colours, and the verb as the
canvas itself, upon which the colours are visible. An invisible canvas,
entirely overlaid by the brightness and design of the words, but one
that provides language with the site on which to display its painting.
What the verb designates, then, is the representative character of
language, the fact that it has its place in thought, and that the
only word capable of crossing the frontier of signs and providing
them with a foundation in truth never attains to anything other than
representation itself. So that the function of the verb is found to
be identified with the mode of existence of language, which it traverses
throughout its length: to speak is at the same time to represent by
means of signs and to give signs a synthetic form governed by the
verb. As Destutt says, the verb is attribution, the sustaining power,
and the form of all attributes:
The verb to be
is found in all propositions, because we cannot say that a thing
is in such and such a way without at the same time saying
that it is... But this word is which is in all propositions
is always a part of the attribute [predicate] in those propositions,
it is always the beginning and the basis of the attribute, it is
the general and common attribute [40].
It will be seen how
the function of the verb, once it had reached this point of generality,
had no other course but to become dissociated, as soon as the unitary
domain of general grammar itself disappeared. When the dimension of
the purely grammatical was opened up, the proposition was to become
no more than a syntactical unit. The verb was merely to figure in
it along with all the other words, with its own system of agreement,
inflections, and cases. And at the other extreme, the power of manifestation
of language was to reappear in an autonomous question, more archaic
than grammar. And throughout the nineteenth century, language was
to be examined in its enigmatic nature as verb: in that region
where it is nearest to being, most capable of naming it, of transmitting
or giving effulgence to its fundamental meaning, of rendering it absolutely
manifest. From Hegel to Mallarme, this astonishment in the face of
the relations of being and language was to counterbalance the reintroduction
of the verb into the homogeneous order of grammatical functions.
NOTES
[27] Destutt de Tracy, Elements d'ldeologie,
t. II, p. 87.
[28] J. Itard, Rapport sur les nouveaux developpements
de Victor de 1'Aveyron, 1964 edn., p. 209.
[29] Destutt de Tracy, Elements d'ldeologie, t. II,
p. 60.
[30] U. Domergue, Grammaire generate analytique, p.
34.
[31] Hobbes, Logic, chap. Ill, section 3.
[32] Adam Smith, Considerations concerning the formation
of languages.
[33] Logique de Port-Royal, pp. 106-7.
[34] Condillac, Craimmaire, p. 115.
[35] In the French this phrase reads:'. . . au lieu
de dire "je suis chantant", on dit "je chante"'.
The significance of the author's remark is lost on the English reader
since he can indeed say 'I am singing' whereas the Frenchman cannot
say 'je suis chantant'. This form, often known as the 'progressive',
is not to be found in French, or in most other languages. [Translator's
note.]
[36] Logique de Port-Royal, p. 107. Cf. Condillac,
Grammaire, pp. 132-4. In his L'Origine des connaissances, the history
of the verb is analysed in a somewhat different fashion, but not its
function. D. Thiebault, Grammaire philosophique, t.1, p. 216.
[37] Cf. Logique de Port-Royal, p. 107, and Abbe Girard,
Les Vrais Prindpes de la langue francaise, p. 56.
[38] Bauzee, Grammaire generale, I, p. 426 et seq.
[39] Condillac, Grammaire, pp. 185-6.
[40] Destutt de Tracy, elements d'ldeologie,
t. II, p. 64.
Excerpt from:
THE ORDER OF THINGS
An
Archaeology of the Human Sciences
By Michel Foucault
ISBN 0-679-75335-4
