The Sphere of Influence and Linguistic Explanation with Reference to English

Abstract

The main point of this paper is that there is a sphere of influence in human language such that it is of crucial importance to the explanation of numerous otherwise baffling linguistic phenomena. The present paper is designed to specifically demonstrate that this sphere of influence is indeed operative in contemporary English. It is also designed, albeit secondarily, to help validate (and build upon) many of the points of relevance that I have already discussed in considerable depth and detail in a number of my earlier publications, especially Park (l977a. 1977b. 1978, 1979, 1980, 1983, and 1985). A sphere of influence may be defined in terms of two linguistic elements, i.e. an influencer and its influencee. It may be said that an influencer has such and such an influencee in its sphere of influence. For example, a transitive verb may be said to have such and such an object noun phrase in its sphere of influence. For another example, a preposition may be said to have such and such a complement in its sphere of influence. For still another example, old (or given) information may be said to have the sentence-initial position of the subject in its sphere of influence. Other things being equal, the power of an influencer in relation to its influencee may be said to be in direct proportion to the proximity between the two. In other words, the general tendency here is: the more proximate an influencer to its influencee, the more powerful the influence of the former on the latter. It is interesting that this linguistic sphere of influence is not much different in nature from such spheres of influence as may be encountered in the real world, be they physical, psychological, social, or otherwise. It may also be noted that this sphere of influence is an apparent linguistic universal in that it appears to be applicable to all languages, not just to English on which the current paper happens to focus. It may be in order at this point to observe that a linguistic sphere of influence is generally directional in that an influencer is usually either antecedent, or is otherwise superordinate to, its influencee. What this means is that the influencer normally comes before, or occurs in a higher-level structure than, its influencee. If the sphere of influence in question operates counter-directionally, that is, if the said tendency of directionality is not complied with, an influencer may suffer a loss of power vis-a-vis its influencee. In a sphere of influence, the influence exercised by the influencer on its influencee may be either positive or negative. On the positive side, the influence may take the form of government, concord, attraction, absorption, assimilation or the like. On the negative side, it may manifest itself in the form of rejection such as dissimilation.