ON  THE  ARBITRARINESS  OF LANGUAGE

INTRODUCTION

Language, according to Ferdinand de Saussure  is a system of signs, and each sign is a combination of a form (which is the “signifier”) and a particular meaning (which is the “signified”). The signifier is the sound and the signified is the idea. Idea and sound are like the front and back of a piece of paper ( the paper is the linguistic sign); the head and tail of a coin (the coin is the linguistic sign) or the chestboard and chess pieces (the chess is the linguistic sign). We can distinguish between the two, but we can't separate them. Signs are both material/physical (sounds) and intellectual (ideas). This is important because language is not a thing, a substance, but a form, a structure, a system.

SIGN, SIGNIFICATION AND VALUE

Saussure referred the individual relationship established between a signifier and a signified as SIGNIFICATION, which we commonly think of as ‘meaning’. VALUE, on the other hand, is the relation between various signs within the signifying system. In other words, value is the collective meaning assigned to signs, to the connections between signifiers and signified. The value of a sign is determined, however, not by what signifiers get linked to what particular signifieds, but rather by the whole system of signs used within a community. It is actually the product of a system or structure, not the result of individual relations of signifiers and signifieds (signification). The arbitrarily chosen ‘signifier’ has no value, and the idea or ‘the signified’ does not have true value by itself because it exists within a language system. Instead, the linguistic value of a sign is determined by other factors within its environment, by the other linguistic signs.

Saussure pointed out that the value of signs is culture-specific. The French ‘mouton’ may have the same meaning as the English ‘sheep’, but it does not have  the same value, because English has the terms mutton and sheep, a distinction which is not available in French. The following examples shows that it is also true  in Indonesian.

SIGNIFICATION		VALUE
The starchy seeds of an annual southeast Asian cereal grass (Oryza sativa) used for staple  food;	English : rice	Any of the kind
	Indonesian : 1)    Beras 2)    Nasi	Uncooked grain Cooked & ready to be served
That one who is neither the speaker nor the hearer (3rd singular)	English : 1)   She 2)    He	Female Male
	Indonesian 1)  Dia 2)  Beliau	Either female or male Highly respected female or male
To move on a course or be away from a place	English : 1)     go 2)    went 3)    has gone 4)    going	at certain  time In the past completed now
	Indonesian pergi	Any location in time

VALUE is always composed of two kinds of comparisons among elements in a system. The first is that dissimilar things can be compared and exchanged.  A word can be exchanged for something dissimilar,an idea; the second,  is that similar things can be compared and exchanged.  A word  can be compared with something of the same nature, another word. Its value is not fued so long as one simply states that it can be "exchanged" for a given concept, i.e. that it has this or that signification: one must also compare it with similar values, with other words that stand in opposition to it. Its content is really fued only by the concurrence of everything that exists outside it.

ARBITRARY NATURE OF THE SIGNS

Essentially, language is a symbol system. The choice of symbols used by a language is arbitrary. This is because there is no direct relationship between signifier and signified, between form and meaning; there is no intrinsic connection, in other word, it is unmotivated. This is understandable since  language is not a nomenclature. If this were so, translation would be easy. In fact, each language articulates its conceptual universe differently. ‘Bold and beautiful’, in Indonesian; ‘cantik dan berani’, do not simply name existing categories but articulate their own. Ideas evolve just as much as signifiers do. If language were a set of names applied to independently existing concepts, then in the historical evolution of a language, the concepts should remain stable, even if signifiers evolved. However, this isn't so. Different signifiers can be used to symbolize the same signification; different significations can be symbolized by the same signal. There are so many different words with little or no similarity of form in different languages meaning the same thing. “Book": in French is  ‘livre’, in Spanish: ‘libro’, in Japanese: ‘hon’, in Indonesian: ‘buku’, Turkish ‘kitap’. Even within the same language, the form of words changes over time. In Javanese, people used to call their mother ‘biyung’, this word has been changing overtime : ‘emak’ – ‘ibu’ – ‘bunda’ – ‘mama’. We would not expect this if there was a direct link between a word's meaning and its form, since the constancy of the meaning should prevent the form from changing. Conversely, we have words which change meanings over time, so that the same form comes to be associated with a different meaning. The word ‘teras’ in Indonesian formerly means ‘wood’, then: ‘the front part of the house’, now, it means ‘an important governmental position’.  This is, again, making the existence of a link between the two highly unlikely. The followings are other examples :

English          Indonesian             Javanese

Rice                 beras                        beras

Rice                 nasi                            sego

She                  dia                             dekne

She                  beliau                        piyambakipun

He                    dia                             dekne

He                   beliau                       piyambakipun

Shortly, signs is not in any way predictable from the form, nor is the form dictated by the meaning. In the opposite case, if a symbol is nonarbitrary, then we should be able to deduce its meaning from the form of the symbol, like iconicity which describes the most extreme examples of nonarbitrary form-meaning connections, where the form is directly representational of the meaning.  One such example might be a "no-smoking" sign. The sign effectively "contains" its meaning in its form. There is a direct link between the sign and its meaning, that link being the shape of a cigarette. If cigarettes looked different, the sign would then also have to look different. Another similar example is a blind-crossing sign, which is directly linked to the figure of a blind with a white cane.

Moreover, human language is completely arbitrary with very few  exceptions. The exceptions to the claim that human language is arbitrary fall under two restricted categories: onomatopoeia and sound symbolism. Onomatopoetic words have a definite relationship to what they represent, thus they are not entirely arbitrary. However, different languages represent the same natural sounds in slightly different ways, meaning that they are not completely nonarbitrary either. The following are examples of onomatopoetic words in English and Indonesian.

 English                                Indonesian

hiss                                       mendesis

bark                                      menggonggong

buss                                      berdengung

mew                                      mengeong

moo                                      melenguh

The above examples, again, shows that language is not completely nonarbitrary. If so, every language would have to have precisely the same word to represent the same natural sound.  This is also true in sound symbolism, one of which is called interjection: spontaneous expressions of reality dictated by natural forces.  Let’s see the examples below.

   

English                  Indonesian

 Ouch!                     Aduh!             : expressing pain

 Er....!  / uhmm..!    ehm...!            : expressing hesitation

 Alas!                      Ya Tuhan !     : exprssing grief/pity

 Oops!                    Yah!                : expressing mild apology

 Yuck                       Hiii..!              : expressing disgust.

We can clearly see in the above examples that there is no fixed bond between the signified and their signifier. We need only compare two languages to see how much such expression differ  from one another.

Although onomatopoetic and sound symbols are of secondary importance, the idea of arbritrariness is a plus because it frees a communication system to use the most convenient means available to communicate by removing the constraint that the form of signals must bear a relationship to their meanings. It also makes it much easier for a communication system to refer to abstract entities, since it is hard in any case to make a link between a symbol and an abstract meaning.

REFERENCES

de Saussure, F. (1983). Course in General Linguistics. G. Duckworth, London.

Dardjowidjojo, Soenjono. (2003). Psikolinguistik:Pengantar Pemahaman Bahasa Manusia. Yayasan Obor Indonesia. Jakarta

Gasser, Michael . On the Origin of  Language Arbritariness. www.cogsci.northwestern.edu.