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Structural linguistics, or structuralism, in linguistics, denotes schools or theories in which language is conceived as a self-contained, self-regulating semiotic system whose elements are defined by their relationship to other elements within the system.[1][2] It is derived from the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and is part of the overall approach of structuralism. Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (French: Cours de linguistique générale, CLG), published posthumously in 1916, stressed examining language as a dynamic system of interconnected units. Saussure is also known for introducing several basic dimensions of semiotic analysis that are still important today. Two of these are his key methods of syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis (paradigmatic is a later term, Saussure used a wider notion associative)[3], which define units syntactically and lexically, respectively, according to their contrast with the other units in the system.
Structuralism as a term, however, was not used by Saussure, who called the approach semiology. The term structuralism is derived from sociologist Émile Durkheim's anti-Darwinian modification of Herbert Spencer's organic analogy which draws a parallel between social structures and the organs of an organism which have different functions or purposes.[4] Similar analogies and metaphors were used in the historical-comparative linguistics that Saussure was part of.[5][6] Saussure himself made a modification of August Schleicher's language–species analogy, based on William Dwight Whitney's critical writings, to turn focus to the internal elements of the language organism, or system.[7] Nonetheless, structural linguistics became mainly associated with Saussure's notion of language as a dual interactive system of symbols and concepts. The term structuralism was adopted to linguistics after Saussure's death by the Prague school linguists Nikolai Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson[8][a], with the first usage of the terms like "structural principle of the phonological system" going back to the Prague Circle's theses presented at the first International Congress of Linguists in Hague, 1928 and the first International Congress of Slavists in Prague, 1929.[9]
Structural linguistics begins with the posthumous publication of Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics in 1916, which his students compiled from his lectures given between 1906 and 1911 (still going through the process of development each year). The book proved to be highly influential, providing the foundation for both modern linguistics and semiotics. Structuralist linguistics is often thought of as giving rise to more or less independent European and American structuralist traditions due to ambiguity in the term and the development of these traditions. Both traditions were influenced by Saussure's ideas; but over time Saussure's influence was weakened in the American school (vide infra).
In Europe, structural liguistics was represented by: (1) the Geneva School of Albert Sechehaye and Charles Bally, (2) the Prague linguistic circle, (3) the Copenhagen School of Louis Hjelmslev, (4) the Paris School of André Martinet and Algirdas Julien Greimas[10], (5) Daniel Jones and the separate London School of Linguistics of John Rupert Firth, and (6) the Dutch school of Simon Dik.[11] Structural linguistics also had an influence on other disciplines of humanities bringing about the movement known as structuralism.
Some confusion[12][b] is caused by the fact that an American school of linguistics of 1910s through 1950s is also often nicknamed 'American structuralism'.[13] This American school is alternatively called distributionalism, 'American descriptivism', or the 'Bloomfieldian' school – or 'post-Bloomfieldian', following the death of its leader Leonard Bloomfield in 1949. Another founding figure of this school was Edward Sapir; other notable linguists customarily included in this group are Zellig Harris, George Trager, Bernard Bloch, Martin Joos, Henry Lee Smith Jr., Henry Allan Gleason and Charles Hockett.[14]
The relationship of this school to Saussure and European structuralists was complex and changed over time. There is no indication that Sapir ever read CLG, but Bloomfield considered himself indebted to Saussure. Bloomfield's first book Introduction to the Study of Language[15] was written under the influence of Wilhelm Wundt's psychological ideas, especially those pertaining to the psychology of language. However, from the early 1920s onward Bloomfield abandoned his mentalistic positions, mainly under the behaviorist influence of Albert Paul Weiss, his colleague at the Ohio State University (even though Bloomfield retained some Wundtian ideas, e.g. the idea of constituent structure, later developing into the Immediate constituent analysis in syntax)[16][c]. No longer being able to ground language in psychology, Bloomfield found rescue in Saussure, from whom Bloomfield "acquires his dictum that linguistics does not need psychology"[17]. Bloomfield praised Saussure's distinction between "synchronic" and "diachronic" linguistics; separation of linguistics from physiology and psychology; the trichotomy of le langage (human speech) – la langue (the language) – la parole (speech-utterance); and the view of language as an "arbitrary system of social habit"[18]. While Bloomfield did not adopt the Saussurean terminology of signifiant and signifié and considered "the statement of meanings the weak point in language study", he essentially agreed with Saussure on the importance of the joint consideration of form and meaning, calling it "the fundamental assumption of linguistics, namely: In certain communities (speech-communities) some speech-utterances are alike as to form and meaning"[19], with the language system arising from the relational consideration of differences between utterances (especially in phonology).
At the same time, notwithstanding this influence, Saussure is mentioned just once in Bloomfield's influential book Language[20][d], and the later generation of American structuralists almost never referred to Saussure and often didn't even read him.[21][e] Zellig Harris took distributionalist ideas even further, claiming that "the structures of language can be described only in terms of the formal, not the semantic, differences of its units and their relations"[22], operationalizing the meaning consideration into the techniques like 'paired utterance test'[23] for distinguishing phonemic contrasts where reference to meaning was unavoidable.[13]
The strongest link between American and European structuralists was phonology (most commonly called phonemics in America at the time). In his impactful 1925 paper "Sound Patterns in Language"[24] Edward Sapir independently arrived at the modern conception of phonemes not as speech sounds but as abstract elements defined by their place in a language system, i.e. language's sound pattern (though he did not use the term "phoneme" in this sense at the moment, adopting it only later in the 1933 paper[25]). Vilém Mathesius, the founder of the Prague Circle, wrote approvingly of the paper in 1926[26] and in other articles, as did Josef Vachek.[27][f] Trubetzkoy and Sapir held each other in high regard and maintained a lively written correspondence;[28][g] the same can be said of Trubetzkoy's relationship with Bloomfield, with whom he studied together in Leipzig in 1913.[h]
The following generation of American structuralists were more skeptical of the work that was being done in Europe. The Americans' positivistic, empiricist and behaviorist outlook and the orientation on the fieldwork with the indigenous languages of the Americas lead to the reciprocal disdain between the Americans and Europeans. Many American linguists often believed European theories to by mystical[14][i] and lacking in terminological rigour[29][j]. At the same time Europeans critiqued Americans of the neglect of the questions of meaning and functionality.[30][k] Nevertheless, the most basic tenets of both Europeans and Americans remained the same.[31][l][32][m] The separation of synchronic and diachronic linguistics; the distinction between parole (speech-act) and langue (linguistic system); the relational, structural and autonomous nature of such systems.[33][n] It can be said that American structuralists often viewed these tenets in the methodological and operationalistic light, rather that the theoretical and philosophical European point of view, even if the difference was one of degree rather than absolute.[13][o]
In the generative or Chomskyan conception, a purported rejection of 'structuralism' usually refers to Noam Chomsky's opposition to the anti-mentalism of the post-Bloomfieldians; Chomsky's critique of Saussure consisted of (1) the view of language as a mere store of signs[34][p]; (2) placing the sentence and syntax mostly in the domain of parole[34][q]; (3) focus on the social nature of langue instead of the individual's competence/I-language[35][r]. Most notably, Chomsky's early transformational-generative grammar broke the Saussurean unity of the linguistic sign because the semantic module is said to interact with deep structure instead of surface structure[32][s] and because of the introduction of the notion of empty category[36][t] In the light of more recent lexicalist developments of the Chomskyan theory this discrepancy narrows.[37][u].
The foundation of structural linguistics is a sign, which in turn has two components: a "signified" is an idea or concept, while the "signifier" is a means of expressing the signified. The "sign", e.g. a word, is thus the combined association of signifier and signified. The value of a sign can be defined only by being placed in contrast with other signs. This forms the basis of what later became the paradigmatic dimension of semiotic organization (i.e., terms and inventories of terms that stand in opposition to each other). This is contrasted drastically with the idea that linguistic structures can be examined in isolation from meaning, or that the organisation of the conceptual system can exist without a corresponding organisation of the signifying system.
Paradigmatic relations hold among sets of units, such as the set distinguished phonologically by variation in their initial sound cat, bat, hat, mat, fat, or the morphologically distinguished set ran, run, running. The units of a set must have something in common with one another, but they must contrast too, otherwise they could not be distinguished from each other and would collapse into a single unit, which could not constitute a set on its own, since a set always consists of more than one unit. Syntagmatic relations, in contrast, are concerned with how units, once selected from their paradigmatic sets of oppositions, are 'chained' together into structural wholes.
Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations provide the structural linguist with a tool for categorization for phonology, morphology and syntax. Take morphology, for example. The signs cat and cats are associated in the mind, producing an abstract paradigm of the word forms of cat. Comparing this with other paradigms of word forms, we can note that, in English, the plural often consists of little more than adding an -s to the end of the word. Likewise, through paradigmatic and syntagmatic analysis, we can discover the syntax of sentences. For instance, contrasting the syntagma je dois ("I should") and dois-je? ("Should I?") allows us to realize that in French we only have to invert the units to turn a statement into a question. We thus take syntagmatic evidence (difference in structural configurations) as indicators of paradigmatic relations (e.g., in the present case: questions vs. assertions).
The most detailed account of the relationship between a paradigmatic organisation of language as a motivator and classifier for syntagmatic configurations was provided by Louis Hjelmslev in his Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, giving rise to formal linguistics. Hjelmslev's model was subsequently incorporated into systemic functional grammar, functional discourse grammar, and Danish functional grammar.
In structuralism, elements of a language are explained in relation to each other. For example, to understand the function of one grammatical case, it must be contrasted to all the other cases and, more widely, to all other grammatical categories of the language.[38]
The structural approach in humanities follows from 19th century Geist thinking which is derived from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's philosophy.[39][40] According to such theories, society or language arises as the collective psyche of a community; and this psyche is sometimes described as an 'organism'.[41] In sociology, Émile Durkheim made a humanistic modification of Herbert Spencer's organic analogy. Durkheim, following Spencer's theory, compared society to an organism which has structures (organs) that carry out different functions. For Durkheim a structural explanation of society is that the population growth, through an organic solidarity (unlike Spencer who believes it happens by a self-interested conduct) leads to an increase of complexity and diversity in a community, creating a society.[42] The structuralist reference became essential when linguistic 'structuralism' was established by the Prague linguistic circle after Saussure's death, following a shift from structural to functional explanation in the social anthropology of Alfred Radcliffe-Brown and Bronisław Malinowski.[5][43]
Saussure himself had actually used a modification of August Schleicher's Darwinian organic analogy in linguistics; his concept of la langue is the social organism or spirit. It needs to be noted that, despite certain similarities, structuralism and functionalism in humanistic linguistics are explicitly anti-Darwinian.[5] This means that linguistic structures are not explained in terms of selection through competition; and that the biological metaphor is not to be taken literally.[44] What is more, Saussure abandoned evolutionary linguistics altogether[6] and, instead, defined synchronic analysis as the study of the language system; and diachronic analysis as the study of language change. With such precaution, structural explanation of language is analogous to structuralism in biology which explains structures in relation with material factors or substance.[45] In Saussure's explanation, structure follows from systemic consequences of the association of meaning and expression.[46] This can be contrasted with functional explanation which explains linguistic structure in relation to the "adaptation" of language to the community's communicative needs.[44]
Hjelmslev's elaboration of Saussure's structural explanation is that language arises from the structuring of content and expression. He argues that the nature of language could only be understood via the typological study of linguistic structures. In Hjelmslev's interpretation, there are no physical, psychological or other a priori principles that explain why languages are the way they are. Cross-linguistic similarities on the expression plane depend on a necessity to express meaning; conversely, cross-linguistic similarities on the content plane depend on the necessity to structure meaning potential according to the necessities of expression.
"The linguist must be equally interested in the similarity and in the difference between languages, two complementary sides of the same thing. The similarity between languages is their very structural principle; the difference between languages is the carrying out of that principle in concreto. Both the similarity and the difference between languages lie, then, in language and in languages themselves, in their internal structure; and no similarity or difference between languages rests on any factor outside language." – Louis Hjelmslev[47]
According to André Martinet's concept of double articulation, language is a double-levelled or doubly articulated system. In this context, 'articulation' means 'joining'. The first level of articulation involves minimally meaningful units (monemes: words or morphemes), while the second level consists of minimally distinct non-signifying units (phonemes). Owing to double articulation, it is possible to construct all necessary words of a language with a couple dozen phonic units. Meaning is associated with combinations of the non-meaningful units.[48] The organisation of language into hierarchical inventories makes highly complex and therefore highly useful language possible:
Louis Hjelmslev's conception includes even more levels: phoneme, morpheme, lexeme, phrase, sentence and discourse. Building on the smallest meaningful and non-meaningful elements, glossemes, it is possible to generate an infinite number of productions:
These notions are a continuation in a humanistic tradition which considers language as a human invention. A similar idea is found in Port-Royal Grammar:
Another way to approach structural explanation is from Saussure's concept of semiology (semiotics). Language is considered as arising from the interaction of form and meaning. Saussure's concept of the bilateral sign (signifier – signified) entails that the conceptual system is distinct from physical reality. For example, the spoken sign 'cat' is an association between the combination of the sounds [k], [æ] and [t] and the concept of a cat, rather than with its referent (an actual cat). Each item in the conceptual inventory is associated with an expression; and these two levels define, organise and restrict each other.[52]
Key concepts of the organisation of the phonemic versus the semantic system are those of opposition and distinctiveness. Each phoneme is distinct from other phonemes of the phonological system of a given language. The concepts of distinctiveness and markedness were successfully used by the Prague Linguistic Circle to explain the phonemic organisation of languages, laying a ground for modern phonology as the study of the sound systems of languages,[12] also borrowing from Wilhelm von Humboldt.[53]
Likewise, each concept is distinct from all others in the conceptual system, and is defined in opposition with other concepts. Louis Hjelmslev laid the foundation of structural semantics with his idea that the content-level of language has a structure analogous to the level of expression.[54] Structural explanation in the sense of how language shapes our understanding of the world has been widely used by the post-structuralists.[55]
Structural linguist Lucien Tesnière, who invented dependency grammar, considered the relationship between meaning and form as conflicting due to a mathematical difference in how syntactic and semantic structure is organised. He used his concept of antinomy between syntax and semantics to elucidate the concept of a language as a solution to the communication problem. From his perspective, the two-dimensional semantic dependency structure is necessarily forced into one-dimensional (linear) form. This causes the meaningful semantic arrangement to break into a largely arbitrary word ordering.[56]
Saussure's model of language emergence, the speech circuit, entails that la langue (language itself) is external to the brain and is received via la parole (language usage). While Saussure mostly employed interactive models, the speech circuit suggests that the brain is shaped by language, but language is not shaped by the brain except to the extent that the interactive association of meaning and form occurs ultimately in the brain.
Such ideas roughly correspond to the idea of language that arises from neuroimaging studies. Event-related Potential (ERP) studies have found that language processing is based on the interaction of syntax and semantics rather than on innate grammatical structures.[57][58] Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) studies have found that the child's brain is shaped differently depending on the structural characteristics of their first language.[59] By contrast, research evidence has failed to support the inverse idea that syntactic structures reflect the way the brain naturally prefers to process syntactic structures.[60] It is argued that Functional Grammar, deriving from Saussure, is compatible with the view of language that arises from brain research and from the cross-linguistic study of linguistic structures.[61]
Those working in the generativist tradition often regard structuralist approaches as outdated and superseded. For example, Mitchell Marcus writes that structural linguistics was "fundamentally inadequate to process the full range of natural language".[62] Holland[63] writes that Chomsky had "decisively refuted Saussure". Similar views have been expressed by Jan Koster,[64] Mark Turner,[65] and other advocates of sociobiology.[66][67]
Others however stress the continuing importance of Saussure's thought and structuralist approaches. Gilbert Lazard has dismissed the Chomskyan approach as passé while applauding a return to Saussurean structuralism as the only course by which linguistics can become more scientific.[68] Matthews notes the existence of many "linguists who are structuralists by many of the definitions that have been proposed, but who would themselves vigorously deny that they are anything of the kind", suggesting a persistence of the structuralist paradigm.[69]
In the 1950s Saussure's ideas were appropriated by several prominent figures in continental philosophy, anthropology, and from there were borrowed in literary theory, where they are used to interpret novels and other texts. However, several critics have charged that Saussure's ideas have been misunderstood or deliberately distorted by continental philosophers and literary theorists and are certainly not directly applicable to the textual level, which Saussure himself would have firmly placed within parole and so not amenable to his theoretical constructs.[70][71]
Nous pensons que l'étude des phénomènes linguistiques externes est très fructueuse ; mais il est faux de dire que sans eux on ne puisse connaître l'organisme linguistique interne.
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Nous exigeons par exemple de la théorie du langage qu'elle permettre de décrire non contradictoirement et exhaustivement non seulement tel texte français donné, mais aussi tous les textes français existant, et non seulement ceux-ci mais encore tous les textes français possibles et concevables
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Structural linguistics, or structuralism, in linguistics, denotes schools or theories in which language is conceived as a self-contained, self-regulating semiotic system whose elements are defined by their relationship to other elements within the system. It is derived from the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and is part of the overall approach of structuralism. Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (French: Cours de linguistique générale, CLG), published posthumously in 1916, stressed examining language as a dynamic system of interconnected units. Saussure is also known for introducing several basic dimensions of semiotic analysis that are still important today. Two of these are his key methods of syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis (paradigmatic is a later term, Saussure used a wider notion associative), which define units syntactically and lexically, respectively, according to their contrast with the other units in the system. Structuralism as a term, however, was not used by Saussure, who called the approach semiology. The term structuralism is derived from sociologist Émile Durkheim's anti-Darwinian modification of Herbert Spencer's organic analogy which draws a parallel between social structures and the organs of an organism which have different functions or purposes. Similar analogies and metaphors were used in the historical-comparative linguistics that Saussure was part of. Saussure himself made a modification of August Schleicher's language–species analogy, based on William Dwight Whitney's critical writings, to turn focus to the internal elements of the language organism, or system. Nonetheless, structural linguistics became mainly associated with Saussure's notion of language as a dual interactive system of symbols and concepts. The term structuralism was adopted to linguistics after Saussure's death by the Prague school linguists Nikolai Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson, with the first usage of the terms like "structural principle of the phonological system" going back to the Prague Circle's theses presented at the first International Congress of Linguists in Hague, 1928 and the first International Congress of Slavists in Prague, 1929.
Evolutionary linguistics or Darwinian linguistics is a sociobiological approach to the study of language. Evolutionary linguists consider linguistics as a subfield of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. The approach is also closely linked with evolutionary anthropology, cognitive linguistics and biolinguistics. Studying languages as the products of nature, it is interested in the biological origin and development of language. Evolutionary linguistics is contrasted with humanistic approaches, especially structural linguistics. A main challenge in this research is the lack of empirical data: there are no archaeological traces of early human language. Computational biological modelling and clinical research with artificial languages have been employed to fill in gaps of knowledge. Although biology is understood to shape the brain, which processes language, there is no clear link between biology and specific human language structures or linguistic universals. For lack of a breakthrough in the field, there have been numerous debates about what kind of natural phenomenon language might be. Some researchers focus on the innate aspects of language. It is suggested that grammar has emerged adaptationally from the human genome, bringing about a language instinct; or that it depends on a single mutation which has caused a language organ to appear in the human brain. This is hypothesized to result in a crystalline grammatical structure underlying all human languages. Others suggest language is not crystallized, but fluid and ever-changing. Others, yet, liken languages to living organisms. Languages are considered analogous to a parasite or populations of mind-viruses. There is so far little scientific evidence for any of these claims, and some of them have been labelled as pseudoscience.
This is a list of schools in linguistics. Columbia School of Linguistics Copenhagen School Formal linguistics Functional linguistics Systemic functional linguistics Sydney School Kharkiv Linguistic School Lancaster School of Linguistics Leiden school Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) London School of Linguistics Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics Prague linguistic circle Structural linguistics
Roman Osipovich Jakobson (born Roman Iosel-Berovich Yakobson; 10 October [O.S. 28 September] 1896 – 18 July 1982) was a Russian linguist and literary theorist. A pioneer of structural linguistics, Jakobson was one of the most celebrated and influential linguists of the twentieth century. With Nikolai Trubetzkoy, he developed revolutionary new techniques for the analysis of linguistic sound systems, in effect founding the modern discipline of phonology. Jakobson went on to extend similar principles and techniques to the study of other aspects of language such as syntax, morphology and semantics. He made numerous contributions to Slavic linguistics, most notably two studies of Russian case and an analysis of the categories of the Russian verb. Drawing on insights from C. S. Peirce's semiotics, as well as from communication theory and cybernetics, he proposed methods for the investigation of poetry, music, and the visual arts including cinema. Through his decisive influence on Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes, among others, Jakobson became a pivotal figure in the adaptation of structural analysis to disciplines beyond linguistics, including philosophy, anthropology and literary theory; his development of the approach pioneered by Ferdinand de Saussure, known as "structuralism", became a major post-war intellectual movement in Europe and the United States. Meanwhile, though the influence of structuralism declined during the 1970s, Jakobson's work has continued to receive attention in linguistic anthropology, especially through the ethnography of communication developed by Dell Hymes and the semiotics of culture developed by Jakobson's former student Michael Silverstein. Jakobson's concept of underlying linguistic universals, particularly his celebrated theory of distinctive features, decisively influenced the early thinking of Noam Chomsky, who became the dominant figure in theoretical linguistics during the second half of the twentieth century.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
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