Classification Systems

Language and Communication

Language is a basic tool for the human communication. It is structured, interconnected, and composed of various classification systems. For this reason, human beings are able to infer and produce an infinite number of messages from a limited number of signs. That is, all forms have to be part of some system or subsystem, as implied by structuralism; thus, the distribution of linguistic [Page 340]signs is nonrandom and can be explained in terms of human and communication factors. The communication factor implies the creation of systematic, meaningful, and distinct perceivable oppositions in the language system. The human factor suggests the following components for such a system:

• Human intelligence—an ability to draw far-reaching abstract conclusions from minimally salient concrete cues through the cognitive process of inference
• Human efficiency—the ability to invest minimal effort for maximal results
• Memory limitations—that human beings have large though limited memories directly related to human intelligence and human efficiency

That is, language may be defined as a symbolic tool whose structure is shaped both by its communicative function—the communication factor and by the characteristics of its users—the human factor. One example of linguistic systems that reflect specific communicative functions semantically motivated in terms of the communication factor and systematically expressed by individual forms is English “irregular” noun and verb forms with internal vowel alternation (IVA), which can be efficiently identified, classified, and remembered in terms of the human factor. These well-known irregular plural nouns and past tense verb forms are based on the phonological IVA process (e.g., sing/sang in verbs and goose/geese in nouns), which is phonologically and semantically systematic.

Verbal and Nominal Systems

These IVA forms originally were part of a grammatical system; the IVA was a classification system in the English language, as far as English belongs to the Teutonic branch of the Indo-European language family that possessed two major classes: a “weak” versus a “strong” declension of nouns and a weak versus a strong conjugation of verbs beside the other minor classes in both the nominal and verbal system. In nouns, there was a vowel (strong) and consonant (weak) declension with different subdivisions within each of these types.

The distinctions in the noun declension system of Old English were determined by the different kinds of stems belonging to either strong or weak type of the nouns. The declension, or variation, of nouns in terms of the three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), four cases (nominative, dative, genitive, accusative)—or five (if addressing a vocative) cases—affected the multiple varied forms of the strong and weak declension that underwent radical simplification in Modern English, reducing the more varied historical forms to plural form -s/es. However, there remained a few nouns of minor classes, the most important of which is the class of nouns with vowel mutation or, as termed by Jacob Grimm, umlaut (e.g., man–men, foot–feet).

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