What is directly observable (markers) and what is not-so-directly observable (linguistic operations)

Henri Adamczewski and Claude Delmas consider that "surface utterances contain observable traces of an invisible activity" (1982: 5–transl. ours). These traces are markers of mental operations whose main object is not to enable the speaker to refer to the world, but to indicate how the utterance was built up (e.g., with reference or not to the preceding text), what the speaker's position is relative to what s/he is saying and also relative to the addressee. Such linguistic operations form a finite class, and are apparently common to all languages.

An utterance is therefore the product of a number of operations performed by the speaker, i.e. the person who builds up the utterance and endorses it; grammatical items are traces of those operations, and as such give access to them. Put slightly differently, grammatical markers are key items making it possible to encode and to decode the underlying linguistic operations. To describe this, Adamczewski has coined the expression ‘natural metalanguage’; a natural metalanguage is a means of uncovering ‘the deep grammar’ of a natural language (1995: 35).

Yet, the surface order in which the constituents of the utterance appear does not necessarily correspond to the order in which the mental operations underlying utterance construction were performed by the speaker. Further, the surface order of the constituents varies from language to language while linguistic operations, as has been said before, are supposed to form a stable class common to all languages.

Let us take DO as an example: in a metaoperational theoretic approach, it is a fundamental marker because "it makes plain, in the most direct way possible, the existence of a natural metalanguage in human languages […], it materializes at the surface level the relationship between subject and predicate, and occurs whenever such a material target is necessary" (Adamczewski 1999: 42–transl. ours). DO therefore relates to one of the most fundamental linguistic operations, i.e. predicating, "an operation which represents the very basis of utterance construction" (Adamczewski & Delmas 1982: 79–transl. ours).

Invariance and variation

Adamczewski posits that each grammatical marker has a core meaning which is stable (‘unvarying’) at a given moment in the history of the language concerned, i.e. in synchronic perspective. Although itself stable, this core meaning can embrace different interpretations of the marker in context, and sometimes widely varying or even contradictory ones. The core meaning of a marker can therefore be determined only through careful analysis and comparison of all the different uses of the marker in context.

The Metaoperational Theory is thus a theoretical framework within which questions as the following may find an answer: What makes it possible for the English modal auxiliary SHOULD to express distinct notions like advice (a), fear (b), doubt (c), etc.?

(a) We should make better use of wind-power.

(b) Fiona did physics in case she should fail in one of the other subjects.

(c) I should think this happened 15 years ago.

In other words, how is the core meaning of SHOULD to be formulated if the theory is to account for the marker's many different uses and meanings (or ‘sense effects’) in context? Or again, how come the French verbal form called ‘the imperfect tense’ (Fr. imparfait, whose grammatical marker can be symbolized -AIT) can express a durative process (i), or a punctual one (ii), and can express a process whose endpoint is reached (iii) or not (iv), etc.?

(i) Le roi ménageait ses sujets pour ne pas les mécontenter.

(ii) Le lendemain même, une lettre arrivait.

(iii) Dans la gare, le train déraillait, causant la mort de 12 personnes sur le quai.

(iv) On entendait jouer du violoncelle dans la pièce attenante.

Adamczewski describes markers such as English SHOULD or French -AIT as ‘protean’ (cf. Fr. opérateurs-protées, a phrase he coined in Adamczewski 1999: 87). Only systematic comparison of the different uses of a marker and careful observation of the formal constructions where it can occur will enable the linguist to get at its core meaning (its ‘invariant’, Fr. invariant). The core meaning is not couched in semantic terms but in metalinguistic ones, i.e. it is a description of the linguistic operation which the marker is a trace of.

The pedagogical advantages of the concept of ‘core meaning’ are numerous. Learning a language is no longer about learning long lists of possible uses of that language's markers and of their particular meanings in context (or ‘sense effects’); it is no longer about learning disparate and often contradictory descriptions, such as ‘punctual imperfect tense’ and ‘durative imperfect tense’; learners can develop a more coherent view of the grammatical system of the language they are studying. Finally, given that core meanings are metalinguistic descriptions of the operations encoded by markers, and also that linguistic operations form a finite class apparently found cross-linguistically, a core-meaning approach should make it easier to learn other languages: the more languages you learn, the more familiar you get with the set of operations, and the simpler the process of language-learning should become.

The two-phase theory or the "double-keyboard theory"

Adamczewski writes that "the grammatical system of all natural languages is based on the same organizing binary principle, i.e. ‘open/closed paradigmatic choice’" (1999: 45–transl. ours). This single principle underlies the two-phase theory, which is the main constituent of the Metaoperational Theory. The construction process of an utterance, or of any constituent part of an utterance, can go through two phases; Phase 1 is described as the phase of open paradigmatic choice, and Phase 2 as that of closed paradigmatic choice. This principle accounts for the apparent diversity of grammatical microsystems throughout languages, and therefore can be grasped through any binary opposition such as Fr. UN/LE or VOICI/VOILÀ, Eng. TO/-ING or THIS/THAT, Sp. SER/ESTAR, Germ. WOLLEN/SOLLEN, etc.

Any speaker can and does make use of his/her ‘double keyboard’. Thus, in French two prepositions, À and DE, can be selected by the speaker to relate two nouns into a complex NP: N1 À N2 and N1 DE N2. The marker À, e.g. une boîte à pilules ("a pill box"), indicates that the paradigmatic choice of N2 (pilules) is open, which means i) that pilules is selected in the relevant paradigm (that of things for which a box can be designed), and ii) that it is selected by contrast with the other nouns that might have been chosen by the speaker (but finally were not). Such an NP will serve for instance to inform the addressee of what a particular box is intended for (for pills and not cachous or tobacco or...), although in fact the box could very well contain cachous or tobacco. In the NP une boîte de pilules, the preposition DE marks that the paradigmatic choice of N2 pilules is closed, i.e. that paradigmatic contrast between the noun pilules and the other nouns that were eligible candidates is no longer the case. Therefore, at the moment of utterance, quantification (cf. une boîte de "a box of") operates on the result of that ‘closed paradigmatic choice’. In these conditions, the box can actually contain nothing but pills.

In Adamczewski's view "[…] languages have two parallel series of grammatical markers, from which the speaker alternately chooses according to his/her strategy in terms of meaning" (1999: 72–transl. ours). Phase 1 markers are those grammatical items which indicate open paradigmatic choice, while Phase 2 items, marking closed paradigmatic choice, enable the speaker to use the result of that operation to express his/her own standpoint relative to what s/he is saying and relative to the addressee (this for instance could be warning, or regret, or justification...). Phase 2 markers will therefore appear in what is referred to as ‘presupposing contexts’ in the theory. Let us take the example of the French microsystem VOICI/VOILA. In Voici le Professeur X ("This is Professor X"), the NP le Professeur X is non-predictable (open paradigmatic choice), hence the element of surprise that more or less accompanies such utterances; in Voilà le Professeur X ("Here comes Professor X"), somehow the NP le Professeur X is already part of the linguistic context and/or situation of utterance, for instance because it has been mentioned before ("Why! We were just talking about Professor X, and here he comes.").

The principle of cyclicity

Henri Adamczewski has always rejected the theory according to which children acquire their native language thanks to an unconscious process based on repetition and imitation. He has also consistently opposed the theory of Universal Grammar (UG) put forward by Noam Chomsky; according to that theory, UG is an innate property of the mind, therefore inherited by all children, and in that perspective grammar is an organ that grows in the mind.

Adamczewski claims that the utterances produced by the people around a child (in the family circle, etc.) contain enough evidence for him/her to decipher the grammatical code of their native language. It is the grammatical items found in the utterances which, as traces/markers of linguistic operations, serve as landmarks guiding the child and helping him/her acquire the grammar of their language. "Children find in the linguistic data around them the keys necessary for building up their grammatical system" (Adamczewski, 1995: 76–transl. ours).

In a metaoperational theoretic approach, children first have to get at one of the keys of the double keyboard, i.e. to grasp how a microsystem, just any microsystem, works. Once they have that key, they progressively gain access to the whole grammatical system of their language, because it is based on a single organizing binary principle (cf. preceding paragraph, The two-phase theory or the "double-keyboard theory"). Children infer the rules organizing their language from the structural regularities they detect in the data, even if the conditions in which they gain access to the fundamental principle (‘the principle of cyclicity’) can vary not only from individual to individual but also from language to language.

A contrastive approach to the investigation of language and languages

At a time when multilingualism is promoted among adults and children, contrastivity, which is one of the major components of the Metaoperational Theory, is an approach making it easier for learners to understand and appropriate the grammatical system of other languages. On a more theoretical level, among other things, a contrastive approach to the investigation of languages enables linguists to evaluate the validity of their theoretical concepts and analyses.

In Adamczewski's words (2002: 55), such an approach opens up "new horizons for an ancient quest" by uncovering the existence of a ‘universal grammar’ based on a number of mental operations common to all natural languages. These operations are marked by grammatical items specific to each individual language, and naturally variation from language to language in the way a particular operation is marked can be quite impressive. But quite naturally too, within a given family of languages (say the Indo-European, the Sino-Tibetan, the Austro-Asiatic, or the Niger-Congo (etc.) family), the items marking the same operation may also happen to display striking resemblances, e.g. Eng. TO and Germ. ZU; Fr. DE and It. DI etc.

Synchronic contrastive study, whether of different languages or of one language (e.g. comparing two dialects of a language), and diachronic contrastive study (e.g. comparing two states in the history of a language) can be a very motivating activity in the language class. Not only does it plug the (apparent) gaps between different languages, it is an opportunity for (re)discovering one's native language as well.

An utterer-centered approach

In the conception of how language works promoted by the Metaoperational Theory, the speaker – sometimes also referred to as the utterer – is the most important factor in the construction process of an utterance. Even if s/he has no choice but to observe the language-specific rules concerning the way utterances are formed, such as the rule(s) governing word-order in the clause (in those languages that have a fixed word-order), the speaker nevertheless enjoys a certain amount of latitude in building up his/her utterances (Adamczewski 1999: 53). This is the source of what can be called ‘speaker strategy’, which is reflected in the speaker's choice of certain operations. A metaoperational-theoretic approach places focus on speaker strategy. This feature is shared with the other utterer-centered theories, but distinguishes it from the traditional prescriptive approach to grammar, which tends to oversimplify some questions while ignoring others and whose objectives are not of a scientific nature. A teacher who adopts a metaoperational perspective will not teach what should be said (in such and such a situation), but will explain the different strategies, based on distinct linguistic operations, open to the speaker (in such and such a situation). The learner will not learn what should be said but what can be said, what the consequences of the different options are on the making of meaning, and that approach is meant to be quite reassuring.