On Binary Relations in Linguistic and Other Semiotic and Social Systems

Abstract

Common principles of binary organization have been discovered in different sign systems. If the total number n of all the elements of the system (or of a subsystem, for instance, of a certain level of the natural language) does not exceed 10² (n ≤ 10²), the relations between them may be described as binary: each element is opposed to another one having the same set of binary features and differing from the first one depending on the value of one feature. In a natural language such a binary principle is characteristic of certain levels with relatively small number of elements — the total number of linguistic elements exceeding by far the above given limit. Common to the levels of phonemes (and phonological differential features), tonemes (in languages where tonemic differences are phonologically relevant), and grammemes (grammatical meanings) is the binary principle of structural organization that is valid not only for the synchronic description of a system but for its diachronic investigation as well. It is considered either as the main structural characteristics of the natural object-language itself (as in early pioneering works on binary differential features, (Jakobson, 1971)) or as the result of the classificatory use of the artificial linguistic metalanguage (Chomsky and Halle, 1968, pp. 65, 295–297).