Transcript Chapter Twelve Theories and Schools of Modern Linguistics

Chapter Twelve
Theories and Schools of Modern Linguistics
• 12.0 Introduction
• Ferdinand de Saussure: father of modern linguistics
• Course in General Linguistics: C. Bally, A.
Sechehaye
• Saussure’s ideas were developed along three lines:
linguistics: W. D. Whitney, Neogrammarian tradition
sociology: E. Durkheim
psychology: S. Freud
Language is a system of signs. A sign is the
union of a form and an idea.
Saussure and Western economy of his time
Dichotomies by Saussure:
LANGUE vs. PAROLE
SYNTAGMATIC vs. PARADIGMATIC
ABSENCE vs. PRESENCE
VIRTUAL WORLDS vs. ACTUAL WORLDS
Saussure’s influence on modern linguistics:
1.
2.
• Functionalism
• Formalism
1. The functional perspective
• The Prague
School
• The London
School
1.1 The Prague School
• Prague Linguistic Circle:
– Started by V. Mathesius (1882-1946) in 1926,
with such activists as R. Jacobson (18961982), N. Trubetzkoy (1890-1938) and later J.
Firbas (1921-2000).
– The Circle stood at the heart of important
developments in structural linguistics and
semiotics in the 1930's.
• Three important points:
– Stressed synchronic linguistics, but not
rigidly separated from diachronic studies.
– L is systemic in that no element of L can be
satisfactorily analysed or evaluated in
isolation and assessment can only be made if
its relationship is established with the
coexisting elements in the same language
system.
– L is functional in that it is a tool for
performing a number of essential functions
or tasks for the community using it.
Prague School Phonology
• N. Trubetzkoy: Principle of
Phonology (1939).
– Phonetics & phonology:
different for parole & langue.
– Phoneme: an abstract unit of
the sound system.
– Distinctive features:
phonological oppositions.
Trubetzkoy’s contributions
• Showed distinctive functions of speech
sounds and gave an accurate definition of
the phoneme.
• Defined the sphere of phonological studies.
• Revealed interdependent syntagmatic and
paradigmatic relations between phonemes.
• Put forward a set of methodologies for
phonological studies.
• Analysis of utterances (or texts) in terms of
the information they contain.
• The role of each utterance part is evaluated
for its semantic contribution to the whole.
• A sentence contains a point of
departure and a goal of discourse. The
point of departure, called the theme, is
the ground on which the speaker and
the hearer meet.
• The goal of discourse, called the rheme,
presents the very information that is to
be imparted to the hearer.
– Movement from theme to rheme reveals
the movement of the mind itself.
• Therefore, the functional sentence
perspective (FSP) aims to describe how
information is distributed in sentences.
• It deals particularly with the effect of the
distribution of known (given) info and
new info in discourse.
– New info: to be transmitted to the reader or
hearer.
– Sally
stands on the table.
Theme
Rheme
– On the table stands Sally.
Theme
Rheme
Three levels of a sentence
• Grammatical Sentence Pattern (GSP)
• Semantic Sentence Pattern (SSP)
• Communicative Sentence Pattern (CSP)
• John
has written a novel.
Subject
Verb
Object
(GSP)
Agent
Action
Goal
(SSP)
Theme Transition
Rheme (CSP)
Communicative dynamism (CD)
• J. Firbas
• Linguistic communication is
dynamic, not static.
– CD measures the amount of info
an element carries in a sentence.
The degree of CD is the effect
contributed by a linguistic
element. For example,
• He was cross.
– CD: The lowest
degree of CD is
carried by he, and the
highest degree of CD
is carried by cross,
with the degree
carried by was
ranking between them.
• Normally the subject carries a lower
degree of CD than the verb and/or the
object and/or adverbial provided either
the verb or the object and/or adverbial are
contextually independent.
– This is because a known or unknown agent
expressed by the subject appears to be
communicatively less important than an
unknown action expressed by the finite verb
and/or an unknown goal (object or adverbial
of place) at or towards which the action is
directed.
• For example,
– A man broke into the house
and stole all the money.
• The ultimate purpose of the
communication is to state
the action and/or its goal,
not the agent.
• However, if the subject is followed by a
verb expressing “existence or
appearance on the scene” and is
contextually independent, then it will
carry the highest degree of CD,
because an unknown person or thing
appearing on the scene is
communicatively more important than
the act of appearing and the scene
itself, e.g.
– An old man appeared in the waiting room
at five o’clock.
• If the subject is
contextually dependent, a
contextually independent
adverbial of time or place
becomes an important
local and temporal
specification, carrying
greater degree of CD than
both the subject and the
finite verb, as in
– The old man was sitting in
the waiting room.
1.2 The London School
• B. Malinowski (1884-1942),
professor of anthropology
(1927).
• J. R. Firth (1890-1960), the first
professor of linguistics in the
UK (1944).
• M. A. K. Halliday (1925- ),
student of Firth.
– All three stressed the importance
of context of situation and the
system aspect of L.
Malinowski’s theories
• Language “is to be regarded
as a mode of action, rather
than as a counterpart of
thought”.
• The meaning of an utterance
comes from its relation to
the situational context in
which it occurs.
• Three types of situational context:
– situations in which speech interrelates
with bodily activity;
– narrative situations;
– situations in which speech is used to fill a
speech vacuum—phatic communion.
Firth’s theories
• Regarded L as a social
process, a means of social
life.
– In order to live, human beings
have to learn and learning L is
a means of participation in
social activities.
– L is a means of doing things
and of making others do
things, a means of acting and
living.
• L is both inborn and acquired.
• The object of linguistic study is L in use.
• The goal of linguistic inquiry is to analyse
meaningful elements of L in order to
establish corresponding relations
between linguistic and non-linguistic
elements.
• The method of linguistic study is to
decide on the composite elements of L,
explain their relations on various levels,
and ultimately explicate the internal
relations between these elements and
human activities in the environment of
• Firth attempted to integrate linguistic
studies with sociological studies:
– because human beings are inseparable
from cultural values, and L is an important
part of cultural values, linguistics can help
reveal the social nature of human beings.
• Meaning is use, thus defining meaning
as the relationship between an element
at any level and its context on that level.
• Therefore the meaning of any sentence
consists of five parts:
– the relationship of each phoneme to its
phonetic context;
– the relationship of each lexical item to the
others in the sentence;
– the morphological relations of each word;
– the sentence type of which the given
sentence is an example;
– the relationship of the sentence to its
context of situation.
• In analysing typical context of situation,
one has to carry out the analysis on four
levels:
• Internal relations of the text:
– syntagmatic relations in structure
– paradigmatic relations in system
• Internal relations of the context of
situation:
– relations between text and non-linguistic
elements
– analytical relations between elements of the
text and elements within the situation
• A model covering both the situational
context and the linguistic context of a
text:
• The relevant features of the participants:
persons, personalities
– verbal action of participants
– non-verbal action of participants
• The relevant topics, inc. objects, events,
and non-linguistic, non-human events.
• The effects of the verbal action.
• Prosodic analysis: prosodic phonology
– Since any human utterance is continuous
speech flow made up of at least one syllable,
it cannot be cut into independent units. Mere
phonetic and phonological descriptions are
insufficient.
– It is not phonemes that make up the
paradigmatic relations, but Phonematic Units,
the features of which are fewer than those of
phonemes and are called prosodic units.
• He did not define prosodic units, but
his discussion indicates that they
include such features as stress, length,
nasalisation, palatalisation, and
aspiration.
• In any case, these features cannot be
found in one phonematic unit alone.
Systemic-functional grammar
• M A K Halliday (1925- ).
• Two components and
inseparable parts:
– systemic grammar: internal
relations in L as a system
network, meaning potential.
– functional grammar: L as a
means of social interaction,
uses or functions of
language form.
Systemic grammar
finite…
clause
group
word …
nonfinite…
nominal-group…
adjectival-adverbial-group…
prep-phrase…
Functional grammar
• Ideational function (experiential &
logical): to convey new info,
communicate a content unknown to the
hearer
• Interpersonal function: to express social
and personal relations
• Textual function: to make any stretch of
spoken or written discourse into a
coherent and unified text and make a
living passage different from a random
list of sentences.
2. Generative Grammar
• NOAM CHOMSKY
(1928- ), institute
professor at MIT.
Linguist,
philosopher, and
political activist.
• The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory
(1955/1975)
• Syntactic Structures (1957)
• Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965)
• Cartesian Linguistics (1966)
• The Sound Pattern of English (1968)
• Language and Mind (1968/1972/2006)
• Reflections on Language (1975)
• Rules and Representations (1980)
• Lectures on Government and Binding (1981)
• Knowledge of Language (1986)
• Barriers (1986)
• Language and Problems of Knowledge (1988)
• Language and Thought (1993)
• The Minimalist Program (1995)
• New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind
(2000)
• On Nature and Language (2002)
2.1 Early theories (1957)
• Innateness hypothesis
– Language acquisition mechanism
– Competence and performance
• Transformations: generating an infinite
set of sentences from a finite set of
elements
– Deep structure and surface structure
– Phrase structure rules
– Transformations
Phrase structure rules
•
•
•
•
•
S  NP VP
VP  V NP
NP  Det N
V  act, beat, catch, dive, …
N  man, boy, book, flower, ...
Transformational rules
• NP1 + Aux + V + NP2 
• John + will + write + a story
• NP2 + Aux + be + en + V + by + NP1
• a story + will + be + en + write + by +
John
2.2 The standard theory (1965)
• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
–  Subcategorization
– N  [+N, Common]
– [+Common]  [Count]
– [+Count]  [Animate]
– [-Common]  [Animate]
– [+Animate]  [Human]
– [-Count]  [Abstract]
• sincerity
– [+N, +Common, -Count,
+Abstract]
• boy
– [+N, +Common, +Count,
+Animate, +Human]
2.3 Extended standard theory
• Trace theory: a phonetically null
element to occupy the position from
which a syntactic element has been
moved.
– I really love Mary 
– Mary I really love t
• Indexing:
– Whoi said Mary kissed himi?
– whoi [S ti said Mary kissed himi]
– *Whoi did hei say Mary kissed?
– *whoi [S hei said Mary kissed ti]
– Johni said Mary kissed himi
– *hei said Mary kissed Johni
2.4 GB/PP theory (1981)
• Government and Binding Theory (early)
• or
• Principles and parameters Theory
(later)
• 1980s
Principles
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
X-bar theory
Government theory
Binding theory
Case theory
-theory
Bounding theory
Control theory
Government
• speak the language (speak governs the
language)
• speak about the language (about
governs the language, speak governs
about the language)
C-command
Binding
• The logical relation between a quantifier
and a variable.
• Binding Theory:
– A. An anaphor is bound in its governing
category.
– B. A pronominal is free in its governing
category.
– C. An r-expression is free.
• Anaphora
– ‘oneself’ and ‘each other’
– John1 likes himself1.
– They1 hit each other1.
– John1 doesn’t like Bill’s2 criticism of himself2.
– John1 likes him2.
– Bill1 says John2 likes him1.
– Bill1 says John2 likes the man3.
Parameters
• The null subject parameter
• Head parameter
• Wh-parameter
2.5 The Minimalist Program
Merge
(1) He has become very fond of Mary.
TP
PRN
He
T′
VP
T
has
AP
V
become
A′
ADV
very
PP
A
fond
P
of
N
Mary
Move
(2) You will marry me.
(2a) Will you marry me?
CP
CP
C
Ø
C
Will+ Q
TP
PRN
you
PRN
you
T′
T
will
T′
T
will
VP
V
marry
TP
N
me
VP
V
marry
N
me
(3) I care not for her. (Shakespearean English)
CP
C
Ø
TP
PRN
I
T′
T
care
VP
V′
ADV
not
V
care
PP
P
for
PRN
me
(3a) Know you not the
cause?
CP
TP
C
Know
PRN
you
(2)
T′
VP
T
know
ADV
not
(1)
V′
V
know
DP
the cause