Meaningful nothings that linguists somehow spot in languages, those were the topic of my recent
animation. After your comments, I don't know whether I owe you a "you're welcome" or an "I'm
sorry" for that video. Maybe both? Today, how about, let's slow down and do two things:
I will appreciate your feedback, then we'll spend most of our time taking a second look,
studying together what one mustached linguist had to say in a pivotal book. Give me one more
chance, without the esoteric rhymes and intricate references, to talk zeros again.
Are there silent words and unspoken grammatical zeros in languages? I
wondered about this in an unusual piece of animated linguistic storytelling,
complete with a spooky twist, packed with references, topped with homemade
music. I sent that out into the world. You responded with love ~ and confusion.
After audience feedback and a patron poll, clearly a followup was called for. It's not the first
time you've asked me to stop and explain. More about me and explaining in a moment. Yeah, I get really
into complex things I feel are on the verge of overwhelming but I'm just starting to understand.
Now if you had told me that what I was shaping would leave many of
us lost at the rabbit hole entrance, well I, nooo. So, learning experience.
I'll snap up this chance to catch up with your feedback in a video that'll fall somewhere in
this many hours to animate instead of another that, for good reasons, takes that many hours.
While I show off your comments, the animator in me wants to keep your screen animated.
Join in on my daily glyph writing practice, a study routine background for some thoughtful
commentary. Then, after, we'll read some linguistics together.
Many commenters just plain liked the video. Found it fascinating as a non-linguist,
or appreciated the spooky charm, or the poetic style,
or even the original music I wrote for it. Thank you for telling me!
Some likes came with additions, filling out the story, adding more and better perspectives. Others
came with corrections: Saussure is not French but Swiss! And missed opportunity to rhyme with zed.
Oh and one unique like thanked me for citing the comment's author in the video.
As comments rolled in another trend appeared. Sometimes "liked but", sometimes "meh actually".
It could've been the style. Maybe what I saw as an outlet for creative
expression came off more meditation than presentation. Or was it pretentious?
Eurocentrism surfaced feels, wow aggressive, won't quote in full. Just to say two things:
didn't exactly go out of my way to forcefit, it's the subject one of the first three papers
I read in researching. And much is already written about the "Indigenous turn", but it was and will
be reflected on this channel. Now I didn't think I focused on means of production and exploitation,
but ok we can get to how those connect to language. Thanks though, this gives me one
more opportunity to recognize the people and link again below to ways to support. Please consider.
These comments almost made it sound fruitful to spend today
walking through an article on power and its impacts on languages, were it
not for one common concern that absolutely submerged the rest: the sheer difficulty.
Why make Zeros so hard to follow? So confusing? Why take extra steps to shroud a complex topic
in poetry? Why didn't I explain the basics?
Explain. Ah, that word. It's where I'm torn. I'm still here because I hope to leave narrative,
visual impressions that somehow feel a bit timeless, special.
For starters, may I point to this commenter who clearly summarized the video's trajectory?
It's also in my sources. Oh I can be subtle, that probably fed the confusion. Since I'm
being direct today: I type up beat-by-beat sources for my videos including this one.
I also recommend the Lingthusiasm episode "When nothing means something". They discuss different
nothings in English, from pauses to sheepish zero morphs to the surprising case of wanna. If
you want answers or need to start from a place of English examples, they do it better than I would.
So no, I won't sit here in front of you explaining. But I didn't realize I was
making something where you'd need required reading just to attend. Now that I have,
let's make an exception, not to explain but to work through, study alongside, learn together.
Let's sit in a quiet space and reflect on one of the old works on the Zeros
shelf: the Cours de linguistique générale, which bundles lectures by Saussure. Who, yes, was Swiss.
I've been using two editions with matching page numbers,
both linked below. Pause a moment to follow a link or search and pull
it up if you want to go through with. It is in French. English translations
exist. I'll put parallel page numbers in my notes and sources.
Start with one bit of background. Somewhere around here. There's a chance you've heard
this one before, so anyone out there bursting with I-know-I-know, while I draw this, say the
terms then wait impatiently for us to catch up. Saussure says we're liable to dupe ourselves
into thinking a word is a name for a thing, "un nom" linked to "une chose". It's not. Instead it,
flip, flip; a word binds together two elements: some concept and some sensory sound or
sight. An arbitrary connection of meaning and expression. Together these make up a signe,
sign. What's meant and expressed are signified and signifier.
Next, onto page 114. The mustache is after something, honestly it's *the thing* that attracted
many of us to a deeper science of language in the first place: language history and language change.
Looking at my most watched videos that seems like it's no less true of us on this channel!
The author is trying to prove a point. Unlike other studies, what time does to language pulls
us in two divergent directions. "Voilà pourquoi nous distinguons deux linguistiques", that's
why we distinguish two linguistics. Studying a language at one point in
time is unlike comparing it over different stages in history. So look along two contrasting axes,
horizontal with two words at stage A, and separately two at stage B,
and then, vertically with changes across the two stages or eras.
The results of these historical changes are "fortuit", happenstance.
Apparent deteriorations are actually creating what will at each horizontal slice feel like
its own intact mechanics. It'll just be how that language works at that stage.
We'll slide past the example of how French systematically accents final syllables
because of that historical crumbling of words, a result he calls chancy and involuntary.
And ah, now here's where our zeros finally come in. I like probably most of us don't
know Czech. If you do, please play along and imagine you're experiencing your language for
the first time. Saussure gets to a particularly striking "case" – grammatical pun intended, heh. Noun
cases in Paléoslave, I'd guess that's Old but not Proto Slavic, work like this. The word for
a word is slovo, but there are different endings for slovemъ with a word, the plural slova words,
slovъ of words, and so on. Each case has its own ending. But today the weak vowels, including
that symbol (ъ), looks like b with a tail, have disappeared. Now when we learn this noun in Czech,
it's, forgive my tongue, slovo, slovem, slova, and slov. The same thing happens with the noun žena:
it has forms like ženu, ženy and žen. The genitive plurals, meaning of the words and of the women,
today appear endingless! So, a signe matériel, a sign with substance, isn't needed to,
turn the page, to express an idea. Languages can make do with opposing something with nothing.
(That's a quote from my last video, and it's a common requote in the zeros literature.)
So here slov and žen have a recognizable zero ending because they are not in any of the other
forms. It's a sign with no expression, no sound but still a meaning, and he calls it a zero sign.
Crucially, this is still purely the result of happenstance. Summarizing but with much commentary
from me, these may have and did come from these nouns changing vertically through time,
but if we switch and look at them horizontally,
only compared to other Czech noun forms, we get this nice contrast of meaningful grammatical
somethings versus one meaningful grammatical nothing. The thing about this, for Saussure,
is that over time particular changes affect this or that point, but never the entire block of
the system of language as a whole. The history that gave Czech this zero doesn't define how
it works. Its use in the noun system does. I guess that's fortunate for students because it
means you don't need to know the changes leading up to Czech just to learn the language today.
Hold this zero firmly in one hand and with the other turn back the pages to
signifier and signified. We studied for this moment. The basics are about to dawn on us.
So, what is a Czech genitive plural ending that doesn't have any sound? Well, what is a sign that
still represents some mental concept, signified, but has no sensed expression, signifier?
Ah, a zero sign! And from there this whole debacle spirals out.
But for today let's take a breath and pack our backpacks.
Since you're still here, and assuming Saussure made sense, we're in a better
position to give that animation one more try, or better yet that podcast.
After your feedback, I'm glad we took a moment before closing the book on zeros. I'm eager to
make progress on two aspiring future tales and tinker with my animation toolkit to
prepare it for whichever's next. In the meantime, please support those whose
languages and cultures anchor the content of this channel within an ocean of – ah, still too poetic,
be direct: visit the links, press the buttons, I'll catch you next time.