Linguistic Schools

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Linguistic Schools
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Brief Introduction

• Saussure---- modern linguistics (Structuralism)
• The Prague School
• The London School
• American Structuralism
• Transformational-Generative Grammar
• Cognitive Linguistics

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1. Saussure

• Ferdinard de Saussure (1857-1913)
• --- He is the father of modern linguistics
• --- a master of a discipline which he made
  modern." (Jonathan Culler)

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Structural theory--Sign

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• 1.) language is a system of signs, each of which
  consists of two parts SIGNFIED (concept) and
   SIGNIFIER (sound image).

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• He showed that the principles of langue must be
  described as a system of elements composed of
  lexical,grammatical, and phonological components.
  The terminology of linguistics was to be
  considered relative to each other, and
  linguistics was really the study of signs and
  their relationships. The linguistic sign is
  constituted by the structural relationship
  between the concept (signified) and the sound of
  the word (signifier).

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• 2.) language is a SYSTEM or SIGNS.

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• To communicate ideas, we must be part of system
  of conventions, part of system of signs. The
  sign, for him, is the basic unit of
  communication, the central of language.
  Therefore, we must start from the nature of the
  sign itself.

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• 3.) The sequence which a sign forms with those it
  is in a syntagmatic relation is sometimes called
  a STRUCTURE. Any structure is formed by two
  principal types of relations which Saussure
  identified are SYNTAGMATIC and PARDIGMATIC
  relations. The former is a relation between one
  item and other in a sequence, or between elements
  which are all present.

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• Syntagmatic relationships of a word are those
  relationships that can obtain with neighboring in
  a sentence. Associative structural relations
  pertain to the ways in which words can replace
  one another, and the ways in which they do not.
  These relationships are about how words and
  sounds are associated with each other and form
  part of the synchronic relationship within the
  language structure.

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• 4.) meaning was to be found within the structure
  of a whole language rather than in the analysis
  of individual words.

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Synchronic Diachronic
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• Saussure was determined to delimit and define the
  boundaries of language study. To this end he
  began by distinguishing between historical
  linguistics and descriptive linguistics, or
  diachronic and synchronic analyses respectively.

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• Linguistic was a pervasive interest of the
  Darwinist in 19th century. Diachronic linguistics
  deals with the evolution of a language through
  time, as a continually changing medium without
  end. They study the change from Old English to
  Middle English, then to modern English or from
  A Grammar of Modern Greek to The Structure of
  Shakespeare's English.

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• A language has an existence separate from its
  history. Language system is complete and operates
  as a logical system or any point in time
  regardless of influence from the past. In other
  words, there is no relation between Diachronic
  analyses and language system.

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• Synchrony is a fiction, for language changes as
  the minutes pass and grammar-writing is a lengthy
  enterprise. How ever, the fiction of synchronic
  description is essential of linguistics
  (Fowler).

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• If the signs of language had no changes, the
  distinction between Synchronic analyses and
  Diachronic analyses is meaningless. But a
  language is evolving continually, the distinction
  is significant because synchronic analyses were
  either ignored or overlooked in the past, and
  most importantly, the distinction drew attention
  to the current structural properties of language
  as well as historical dimensions.

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Langue parole
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• Language is such a complex and varied phenomenon
  that it would be impossible to study it without
  assuming some basic operating principles.
  Saussure distinguished the linguistic competence
  of the speaker and the actual phenomena or data
  of linguistics as LANGUE and PAROLE.

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• Langue is an abstract system that all of us has
  in common and enables us to speak. When a man
  learns a language, he should assimilate the data
  of the langue and to some extent, obey the
  linguistic rules, including the lexicon, grammar,
  and phonology. It is the social product whose
  existence permits the individual to exercise his
  linguistic faculty., For language (langue) is
  not complete in any speaker it exists perfectly
  only within a collectivity.

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• On the other hand, PAROLE is the executive side
  of language." Parole, is the actualization of
  langue. It is a personal, dynamic and social
  activity, which exists at a particular time and
  place and in a particular situation, as opposed
  to LANGUE, which is a corporate, social
  phenomenon, existing apart from any particular
  speeches.

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• The distinction between Langue and parole is very
  important. In distinguishing them, we are
  separating what is social from what is
  individual, and what is essential from what is
  accessory and more or less accidental.

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• The distinction between langue and parole also
  has important implications for other disciplines
  as well. It is essential for any field of
  research to distinguish what belongs to the
  underlying system which makes possible various
  types of behavior and what belongs to actual
  instances of such behavior.

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The Prague School
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• 1. The History of the Prague School Phonology

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Forerunner

• The forerunner of the Prague School was the
  Moscow Linguistic Circle founded in 1915. It is a
  circle consisted of a group of young scholars
  such as Trubetzkoy (25yr) and Jakobson (20yr),
  who is the president from 1915-1920. The issues
  that this circle concerns are of both language
  and linguistics including problems of poetics,
  literature analysis, and general artistic
  structure under the influence of Slavic and
  historical linguistics. The sources of their
  study are based on Saussure and Baudouins works.
  When the Revolution broke out on October 1917 the
  members of this circle fled and this circle
  nearly dismissed.

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Foundation

• By the 1920s, the terms phoneme and phonology
  were well known to European linguistics. More
  importantly, de Saussure had left a legacy of
  modern structuralism which greatly influenced
  linguistics in general. Working within this
  structuralist tradition were, among others, a
  group of scholars known from 1926 as the
  Linguistic Circle of Prague. In phonology, two
  members of the Circle stand out Roman Jakobson
  (1896-1982), who began his career in Moscow but
  moved to Czechoslovakia and worked there in the
  1930s before fleeing via Scandinavia to the USA
  and Nikolai S. Trubetzkoy (1890-1938), also of
  Russian origin, who was a professor in Vienna
  from 1923 until his death

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Chronicle of the Prague School Phonology

• a.   1915.  The foundation of the Moscow
  Linguistic circle, Jakobsons being the president
• b.   1917  Members fleeing Moscow due to October
  Revolution
• c.    1926  The foundation of the Prague School
  Linguistic Circle, Jagobsons being the vice
  president
• d.   1928  Presenting the Prague Circle
  manifesto( drafted by Jakobson and cosigned by
  Trubetzky and Karcevskij) at the first
  International Congress of Linguistic at Hague.
• e.   1938  Trubetzkoy died.
• f.      1982  Jakobson died in Massachusetts

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The Representative Characters

• Roman Jakobson (1896-1982)
• Jakobsons contribution to linguistics can be
  represented as the concept such as feature,
  binary  opposition, markedness, redundancy, and
  universals. He also focuses the importance of
  linguistics on language acquisition, aphasia, act
  of communication, meaning in grammar, poetry, and
  the systematicity of language change. Jakobsons
  greatest insight, distinctive feature, (after the
  phoneme) belongs to the (Functional)
  Structuralist Phonology. So, for more
  information, you may consult functional
  phonology. Jakobsons contribution in the Prague
  school phonology can be represented as the Prague
  Circle manifesto, which changes the direction of
  the development of the European phonology.

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• Trubetzkoy, Nikolai Sergeyevic (1890-1938)
• Trubetzkoys chief contribution in phonology was
  taken in the sense of functional phonology. (So,
  for more information, see the functional
  (structuralist) phonology. Trubetzkiys notable
  contributions made to phonological theory are as
  follows
• a.      Clarifying the distinction between
  phonetics and phonology by the criterion of
  function
• b.      Investigating insistently on phonic
  substance in terms of its various functions in
  individual languages
• c.      Emphasizing on the concept of
  phonological opposition (primary) over phoneme
  (secondary)
• d.      Classifying phonological oppositions
  typologically instead of binaristic

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Main Theories
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• Following de Saussures emphasis on the
  differential function of linguistic elements,
  both Jakobson and Trubetzkoy attached great
  importance to the oppositions among phonemes
  rather than to the phonemes themselves. Thus to
  say that English has phonemes /s/ and /z/ is a
  statement about a distinction which English
  speakers make and recognize rather than a claim
  about phonemes as mental images or phonetic
  entities. This was a significant insight, which
  seemed to accord with linguistic experience. By
  the very nature of spoken language, a speaker is
  aware of differences and reacts to
  mispronunciation or interference with the system
  of oppositions. But the isolation of individual
  phonemes from their spoken context is neither a
  typical nor an easy task. Most speakers seem
  incapable of doing it in any systematic way, and,
  in literate societies, usually resort to naming
  letters and spelling out a word rather than
  attempting to articulate separate phonemes.

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• Jacobson (and others of the Prague School)
  published actively during the 1920s and 1930s,
  but it was Trubetzkoy who provided the Schools
  most comprehensive and widely consulted work on
  phonology, GrundzÜge der phonologie (Principles
  of Phonology), which first appeared in 1939, the
  year after his death. Besides discussing the
  nature of distinctive oppositions in theoretical
  terms, Trubetzkoy also surveys analytical
  procedures and gives extensive examples of the
  different oppositions of various languages. He
  follows through the implications of the
  structural approach in a number of ways,
  particularly in the classification of
  oppositions. He is also responsible for the
  concepts neutralization and archiphoneme which
  are consistent with a functional view of the
  phoneme.

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• Jacobson and Trubetzkoy also initiated modern
  distinctive feature theory. The notion of
  component features is already implicit in the
  idea of opposition. The notion was made explicit
  by Jakobsons and Trubetzkoys recognition of
  such features as differential qualities or
  relevant properties. This further strengthened
  their point that phonemes represented points in a
  system rather than physical or mental entities.

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Distinctive Features

• Jakobson (1939, 1949) drawing on earlier
  phonological concepts of de Saussure and
  Hjelmslev, pointed to the limited number of
  differential qualities or distinctive
  features that appeared to be available to
  languages. Jakobsons interest was in showing hoe
  oppositions as the constitutive features of
  relations among phonemes reflected a hearers
  response to an acoustic signal. Just as this
  signal contains a limited number of variables, so
  perceptual response to it operates with a limited
  number of categories.

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• The most famous elaboration of this approach is
  clarified in works by Jakobson, Fant and Hlle
  (1952) and Jakobson and Halle (1956). This scheme
  uses perceptual terms which reflect acoustic cues
  rather than articulatory mechanics. In 1939,
  Jakobson took Grammonts terms acute and
  grave representing opposite ends of a scale
  that measures the predominance of upper or lower
  components of the acoustic spectrum. The
  acute-grave feature distinguishes both high
  front vowels (i, y) from back vowels (u, o, a)
  and palatal consonants from velar consonants.

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• Jakobson and Halle employed only 12 features,
  which were listed with articulatory correlates as
  well as acoustic cues. All of the features are
  polar oppositions, allowing relative values. So
  the acute vowels of one language need not to be
  identical in nature with the acute vowels of
  another, provided that they are more acute than
  the grave vowels to which they are opposed.
  Moreover, the same acoustic effect can be
  achieved by different articulatory means. Lip
  rounding, pharyngealization and retroflexion, for
  instance, may all be covered by the one
  distinctive feature of flatness. Each feature
  is binary, with only two opposed values along a
  single dimension.

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Neutralization

• For any particular system, biuniqueness is a
  requirement that phonemes and allophones can be
  unambiguously assigned to each other. A problem
  in this connection is that contrastive systems
  are often unequally exploited. This means, for
  example, that two phonemes may be distinguished
  in some structures but not in others. Following
  Trubetzkoy (1939) we may say that some phonemic
  oppositions are suspended or neutralized under
  certain conditions. Trubetzkoy distinguishes
  three kinds of neutralization.

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• Firstly, a language has a contrast but only one
  of the relevant phonemes occurs under
  neutralization. Suppose a language has a contrast
  of voiced and voiceless plosives in word-initial
  and word-final positions, nut only voiceless
  plosives occur word-finally. Since the word-final
  plosives are not in contrast with voiced
  plosives, the contrast of voicing is inoperative
  or neutralized word-finally.

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• Secondly, neutralization may be represented by
  some kind of variation or alternation among the
  otherwise contrasting phonemes. For example, in
  Indonesian, there are four nasal consonant
  phonemes (bilabial, alveolar, palatal and velar).
  But sequences of nasal plus other consonants are
  homorganic, that is the nasal and following
  consonants are at the same point of articulation.
  So, we can find clusters such as /mb/ and /nd/,
  but not /md/ and /nb/.

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• Thirdly, neutralization may be represented by a
  sound which is distinct from both of the
  otherwise contrasting phonemes. One of the most
  common instances of this kind of neutralization
  is where vowel contrasts are reduced under
  certain conditions.

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Historical Status

• a. Prague school linguistics success essentially
  changed the character of European linguistics.
• b. Trubetzkoys contributions were inherited and
  further elaborated by Martinet and his associates
  who found the Functionalist School, i.e., Prague
  School is the cradle of Structuralism.

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      Influence 

• The concept of neutralization and the theory of
  markedness is expanded in generative grammar as
  well as nowadays.

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The London School
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American Structuralism

• It became popular and influential in the 1930s
  and 40s through the world.
• Two forerunners
• Franz Boas Edward Sapir
• The father
• Leonard Bloomfield

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• Franz Boas the traditional grammatical model
  could not be used to analyze the structures of
  those languages.
• Edward Sapir Although Indians languages had no
  written forms, they were very communities.

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• Leonard Bloomfield
• Accepted the theories and principles of
  behaviorism
• Characterized language and language acquisition
  in terms of behaviorist terminology. Language was
  a habit of verbal behavior which consisted of a
  series of stimuli and response.
• Argued that to acquire a language was to form a
  habit of verbal behavior and learning a L2 was
  learning a new habit.
• Thought speech was primary and writing was
  secondary.

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Transformational-Generative Grammar

• Put forward by Norm Chomsky in 1957.
• Wrote a book Syntactic Structures to spread his
  theory.

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• Main points
• 1) Children are born with a LAD. This is made up
  of general principles called UG. Once the child
  is born, the particular environment will trigger
  the LAD. The child will use and text the
  principles again and again until his hypotheses
  agree with the actual grammar of the language.

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• 2) Made the distinction between linguistic
  competence and linguistic performance. He
  believes that linguistics should study the
  linguistic competence, not the performance, of
  the native speaker so as to set up a system of
  rules that will generate an infinite number of
  grammatical sentences. To gain the goal, he
  argues we should use a deductive,
  hypothesis-testing approach.

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Cognitive Linguistics