lunes, 30 de abril de 2012

Leonard Bloomfield and the American structuralism

During the XIX century and at the beginning of the XX century, linguistics in USA followed the same direction of the linguistic in Europe but after the end of the World War I, American linguists wanted to show their own linguistic characteristics.

Like in European studies, American linguistics also developed theories about synchronic linguistics. The importance of Saussure’s course in the development of that process has been a great deal of discussion. In 1922, Leonard Bloomfield wrote that Saussure had constructed the basis of the new linguistics.

For many American linguists, the beginning of their research was the study of indigenous languages due to fact that they were unknown in their previous phases so, there weren’t susceptible to diachronic investigation. This was precisely the fact that formed and distinguished the American structuralism and its methods.

As those languages couldn’t be described with the categories that were established by the traditional linguistics (noun, adjective, verb, etc.) researchers had to find new categories and, at the same time, noticed the ‘weaknesses' of the old languages that were based on the European ones. This conducted the American linguists to make studies that were more advanced than those of their European colleagues. Like a result of this, Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield became the two most important and influential linguists of their time.

Sapir established the basis of the phonologic structuralism while Bloomfield left mark in the study of morphology and syntax. However, both got separate to their respective conceptions of language. Sapir is on the top of what is called ‘American mentalism’ that is an interpretation of language which is strongly related to the mind. On the other hand, Bloomfield was the master and creator of the ‘anti mentalism’ that conducts to the dissociation of the signifiant and the signifié.

Although Bloomfield’s investigations have been of great importance for the American linguistics, his most relevant work was the development of the American structuralism.
The structural linguistics, also called descriptive linguistics, had its beginning in the USA with the apparition of Leonard Bloomfield’s paper (1887-1949, Language) and the studies of linguists such as Zelling Harris and Charles Hockett. The most notable aspects that distinguish the American Structuralist school are:

  • It was inspired in the empiricism. That means that it recognized experience as the unique source of language, in this case, the results of language. This conducted a descriptivist method that is based strictly in the facts that have been registered (corpus) not in any other hypothetical possibility.
  • It was related to the conductivism’s theory (behaviorism) of the time of Watson and Skinner until the point of explaining the sign as the response of a intermediate stimulus (S→R). For example, a person that is hungry can have two reactions if there is an apple in front of him/her: get close and take the apple or ask for it using the language. In the second case, besides the stimulus and response, there was an intermediation of another stimulus (the verbal expression) and another response (the comprehension of the request that finishes with the delivering of the apple): S → S → R → R.
  • It was thought that the structure of the language was upheld for two classes of subsystems: centrals and peripheries. The first were concerned about the grammatical system, the phonological system and the morphological systems while the other was concerned about the phonetic and the semantic systems.
  • It’s usually presented as a reaction against traditional grammar.
  • American structural linguists based their descriptions on objectively observable data, paying special attention to current speech.
American structuralists made claims for a scientific approach to language. Language should be studied to know and to understand how language works. There is a desire to make the study of language both scientific and autonomous.  According to the American structuralists, there could be no correctness apart from usage. For them, language should be described as it is spoken.

Grammar has to do with the way English is spoken, and not with how it 'should' be spoken, differences in language practice should be accepted and different registers should be established. American structuralists clearly differentiated synchronic description of languages from diachronic studies. For them, it was important to define the stages of description and to distinguish between descriptive and historical linguistics.  

Every language must be described in and by itself. In this sense, there are no universal categories. The concepts "noun" or "adjective" in English must be different from those in French, since their real value does not lie in themselves but in their specific position within the system. Every language should be considered as a system of relations. Every unit, every element in this system has no value by itself, if isolated. Its meaning has to be established in relation to all the other elements in the language.

The general types of devices that English has to express structural meaning are the use of form-words (inflections and derivations), the use of function words (prepositions, determiners, subordinators, etc.), the use of word order, and in some cases the use of stress and intonation.
Considering phonology as the starting point of any investigation, Bloomfield claims that "linguistic study must always start from the phonetic form and not from the meaning." And probably for this reason phonology is the field where structuralists made more advances.

American structuralists limited the area of language to be described by emphasizing language form as the single, objective, observable and verifiable aspect of language, thus relegating meaning to a subordinate place. For them, linguistic analysis should begin with an objective description of the forms of language and move from form to meaning.

domingo, 22 de abril de 2012

Glossary


    1.    Mere: is a syncategorematic expression used to emphasize that something is not large or important. Its use informs us about attitudes, not facts. Ex. The plane crashed mere minutes after take-off.

    2.    Scientist/scientific:  an expert who studies or works in one of the sciences. Relating to science, or using the organized methods of science. This expression condemns the confusion of technical jargon and empirical trappings either whatever 'real' science is.

    3.    Meaning: The meaning of something is what it expresses or represents. The word meaning locates a task without telling us how to go about its study.

    4.    Linguistics: the systematic study of the structure and development of language in general or of particular languages

    5.    Legitimate data: Real information.

    6.    Method: a particular way of doing something.

    7.    Evidence: one or more reasons for believing that something is or is not true.

    8.    Fasible goals: an aim or desired result possible to do easily or conveniently.

    9.    Mentalism: of or relating to any school of psychology or psychiatry that in contrast to behaviorism values subjective data (as those gained by introspection) in the study and explanation of behavior.

   10.   Behaviorism: is a theory of learning based upon the idea that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning. According to behaviorism, behavior can be studied in a systematic and observable manner with no consideration of internal mental states.

   11.   Dualistic: a view of human beings as constituted of two irreducible elements (as matter and spirit).

   12.   Monistic: a view that there is only one kind of ultimate substance (material).

   13.   Ethnography: the study and systematic recording of human cultures.

   14.   Anthropology: the study of the human race, its culture and society and its physical development

   15.   Postulates: to suggest a theory, idea, etc. as a basic principle from which a further idea is formed or developed

   16.   Postulation method: is a method of clarifying and simplifying the whole process of argumentation.

   17.   Form: to begin to exist or to make something begin to exist

   18.   Morpheme, word phrase: the smallest bit of language that has its own meaning, either a word or a part of a word , a single unit of language which has meaning and can be spoken or written

   19.   Assumption: something that you accept as true without question or proof.

   20.   Phonemes: any of the abstract units of the phonetic system of a language that correspond to a set of similar speech sounds which are perceived to be a single distinctive sound in the language

   21.   Alternation: change, usually a slight change, in the appearance, character or structure of something

   22.   Historical linguistics: is the branch of linguistics that focuses on the interconnections between different languages in the world and/or their historical development.

   23.   Literary standard: is accessible through general or personal educational effort, transcends geographic and social barriers, and is used on occasions described as formal.

   24.   Colloquial standard: is observed in situations lacking formal behaviors among observably privileged classes within a larger speech meaning.

   25.   Provincial standard: is observed among those remote geographically from the formative environments of cultural centers.

   26.   Sub-standard: speech behavior is found among those who must interact daily as peers with each other, but only occasionally, and as subordinates, to the privileged; their goals, satisfactions, reinforcement, and opportunities differ markedly from those of standard speakers, although they may occupy identical territory.

   27.   Local dialect: is that of an interacting group with which others have so little contact that dialect speakers are incomprehensible without considerable attention. The occasions od difference are time, plus geographic and/or educational isolation.

   28.   Palatalization: during the production of a consonant, the tongue and lips take up, as far as compatible with the main features of the phoneme.

   29.   Velarization: the tongue is retracted as for a back vowel.

   30.   Contrasts: an obvious difference between two or more things

   31.   Reference: something that refers as a ALLUSION, MENTION; as something that refers a reader or consulter to another source of information; as a consultation of sources of information

   32.   Sense:  a meaning conveyed or intended: IMPORT, SIGNIFICATION.

   33.   Expression: when you say what you think or show how you feel using words or actions

   34.   Referent: one that refers or is referred to; especially: the thing that a symbol (as a word or sign) stands for

   35.   Denotation: a direct specific meaning as distinct from an implied or associated idea

   36.   Connotations: a feeling or idea that is suggested by a particular word although it need not be a part of the word's meaning, or something suggested by an object or situation

   37.   Situation: the set of things that are happening and the conditions that exist at a particular time and place the economic/political situation

   38.   Syntax:  the grammatical arrangement of words in a sentence

   39.   Ethnocentric: believing that the people, customs and traditions of your own race or nationality are better than those of other races

   40.   Exocentric: two or more parts of a phrase that are different parts of speech and, when combined, form another part of speech which is different from all of the parts.

   41.   Structure: the aggregate of elements of an entity in their relationships to each other.

   42.   Pattern: an artistic, musical, literary, or mechanical design or form

   43.   Design: an underlying scheme that governs functioning, developing, or unfolding.

   44.   A priori: stipulating or proclaiming beforehand something, deduction.

   45.   A posteriori: Induction of certain information

   46.   Structural description: Description based in the structure of something.

   47.   Form-classes: a group of words distinguished by common inflections, such as the weak verbs of English.

   48.   Lexicon: the vocabulary of a language, an individual speaker or group of speakers, or a subject

   49.   Cultural borrowing: is taking ideas, customs, and social behaviors from another culture or civilization.

   50.   Intimate borrowing: the borrowing of linguistic forms by one language or dialect from another when both occupy a single geographical or cultural community.

   51.   Dialect borrowing: It usually shows up, however, in detailed comparative work as inconsistent sound correspondences and/or as dialect chaining. Chaining occurs when a string of communities share sets of features with each other in an overlapping fashion so that community A shares some features with community B, which in turn shares some features with community C, and so on.