Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia to immigrant Russian parents, both of whom were Hebrew scholars and teachers. He studied linguistics at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Harvard. In 1957, while a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he published ‘Syntactic Structures’ a theory of transformational grammar that revolutionized the scientific study of language. He first set out his abstract analysis of language in his doctoral dissertation (1955) and Syntactic Structures (1957). Instead of starting with minimal sounds, as the structural linguists had done, Chomsky began with the rudimentary or primitive sentence; from this base he developed his argument that innumerable syntactic combinations can be generated by means of a complex series of rules.

According to transformational grammar, every intelligible sentence conforms not only to grammatical rules peculiar to its particular language, but also to “deep structures,” a universal grammar underlying all languages and corresponding to an innate capacity of the human brain. Chomsky and other linguists who built on his work formulated transformational rules, which transform a sentence with a given grammatical structure (e.g., “John saw Mary”) into a sentence with a different grammatical structure but the same essential meaning (“Mary was seen by John”). Transformational linguistics has the 1990s Chomsky formulated a “Minimalist Program” in an attempt to simplify the symbolic representations of the language facility.

Chomsky's generative mentions that the Syntax of natural language was described by context-free rules combined with transformation rules. The framework idea for formulating a grammar consisting of explicit rewrite rules was abandoned. The formalist propositions of Chomsky regard innateness and stimuli do fit extensively with the cognitive opposition to behavioristic psychology. His position can be considered as a continuation of the essential principles of structuralism exposed by Saussure.

Through time, Chomsky has written several books as a result of their studies in linguistics and his theories of formalism. Some of them are:

•             Syntactic Structures (1957)

•             Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (1964)

•             The Sound Pattern of English (with Morris Halle, 1968)

•             Language and Mind (1972)

•             Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar (1972)

•             Knowledge of Language (1986)

•             American Power and the New Mandarins (1969)

According to Chomsky, there is a strong connection between language and mind. As language is an exclusive characteristic of the human beings Chomsky says that the study of language contributes to the comprehension and knowledge of our human condition and the development and operation of our minds.

Chomsky emphasizes that language is a fundamental activity of the human beings, and that it distinguishes us from animals. Also, he defeats Bloomfield’s position and stresses the creativity of language, how each speaker use language in an infinite way while using a finite number of elements. That’s what Chomsky considers as the most creative part of the language: the verbal interaction in different and brand new situations.

For Chomsky, language is not restricted to its communication functions. In this sense, he is not concerned about the verbal interaction among speakers but the way those speakers use language. 

According to Chomky’s, a formal grammar consists of a group of rules that are used to transform abstract symbols (morphemes, words, etc.) according to the mathematical language. It means, language is considered as a set of symbols that are put into groups in order to generate a sequence and create phrases. In this sense, we do not repeat phrases that we’ve heard before; we are creating new sentences according to the patterns that have been established.

Although Chomsk’s formalism began with the study of language and linguistics, his philosophy of formalism has been applied in many other sciences such as psychology.

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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.

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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.

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About ethnographic linguistics

1-What is ethnography?
A branch of anthropology dealing with the scientific description of individual cultures.

2-What is linguistic ethnography (ethnolinguistics)?
The study of language as an aspect or part of culture, especially the study of the influence of language on culture and of culture on language.

3-Who have been the most representative in linguistic ethnography studies?
Edward Sapir. A founder of ethnolinguistics, which considers the relationship of culture to language, he was also a principal developer of the American (descriptive) school of structural linguistics.From 1910 to 1925 Sapir served as chief of anthropology for the Canadian National Museum, Ottawa, where he made a steady contribution to ethnology. Sapir suggested that man perceives the world principally through language. He wrote many articles on the relationship of language to culture.

Franz Boas: the founder of the relativistic, culture-centred school of American anthropology that became dominant in the 20th century. Boas was an innovative and prodigiously productive scholar, contributing equally to statistical physical anthropology, descriptive and theoretical linguistics, and American Indian ethnology, including important studies of folklore and art. Boas established the International Journal of American Linguistics, was one of the founders of the American Anthropological Association, and served as president (1931) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.It is largely because of Boas’s influence that anthropologists and other social scientists from the mid-20th century onward believed that differences among the races were a result of historically particular events rather than physiological destiny and that race itself was a cultural construct.

Benjamin Lee Whorf, under the influence of Edward Sapir, at Yale University, Whorf developed the concept of the equation of culture and language, which became known as the Whorf hypothesis, or the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.

4-Where did ethnographic linguistics has taken the most of research?
Most of the researches of ethnographic linguistics have been made by analizing remote small civilizations.This may be becuase the language of these cultures is not as contaminated by other languages as in other cultures, so they can study it without the influences of other civilizations.

References:
dictionary.com
http://www.uklef.net/linguisticethnography.html http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/523671/Edward-Sapir

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London School of Linguistics

The London School of Linguistics had three main representatives:

Henry Sweet (1845 - 1912). English philologist and phonetician. An authority on Anglo-Saxon and the history of the English language, Sweet was also a pioneer in modern scientific phonetics. His History of English Sounds (1874) was a landmark in that study. In 1901 he was made a reader in phonetics at Oxford. Among his other writings are A Handbook of Phonetics (1877), A New English Grammar (2 parts, 1892–95), The History of Language (1900), The Sounds of English (1908), and works on Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, and Icelandic. Sweet was the model for Professor Higgins in G. B. Shaw's play Pygmalion.

Daniel Jones (1881 - 1967). British phonetician. He was involved in the development of the International Phonetic Alphabet from 1907 and went on to invent the system of cardinal vowels and produce the English Pronouncing Dictionary (1917).

J. R. Firth (1890 - 1960): professor of English at the University of the Punjab, Lahore (1920-1928), senior lecturer at University College London (1928-1938), then senior lecturer, reader and Professor of General Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (1938-1956). An important figure in the foundation of linguistics as an autonomous discipline in Britain; known for his original ideas on phonology and the study of meaning.

The London School of Harry Sweet (1845-1912) and Daniel Jones (1881-1967) stressed the practical side of phonetics, and trained its students to perceive, transcribe and reproduce each minute sound distinction very precisely — far more than the American behaviourists, for example, and of course the Chomskians, who are extending models rather than testing them. And this phonetic competence was much needed when J.R. Firth (1891-1960) and others at the School of Oriental and African Studies helped to plan the national languages and their writing systems for the new Commonwealth countries. Overall, the School has been very far ranging — noting, for example how stress and tone co-occur with whole syllables, and developing a terminology to cope: a basis for poetic metre. Firthian analysis also finds a place for aesthetic considerations and develops a system of mutually exclusive options, somewhat like Saussure but more socially and purposively orientated.

Firth himself tried to base a theory of meaning on such choice-systems, but the approach has not been generally accepted. Not only was it rather simplistic, but confused the scientific invariance of linguistic rules with the unregimented and creative way that human beings get their meaning across.

The London approach to phonology has bequeathed many fruitful ideas to current theorizing and the theory of syntax known as systemic grammar also owes its origins to the London School.

Bibliography

Chapman, S. & Routledge, P. (eds) (2005) Key Thinkers in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pp 80-86.

Encyclopedia: Sweet, Henry. (s.f.). Recuperado el 29 de febrero de 2012, de Infoplease: http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0847401.html

Jones, Daniel. (s.f.). Recuperado el 29 de febrero de 2012, de Oxford Dictionary: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/Jones,+Daniel

Linguistics: a brief history. (s.f.). Recuperado el 29 de febrero de 2012, de Textetc: http://www.textetc.com/theory/linguistics.html

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The Copenhagen School: Crosswords

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Copenhagen School

PRINCIPAL IDEAS ABOUT THE COPENHAGEN SCHOOL
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