Structuralism

Teachers L-02
“Linguistic Methodology (Structuralism)”
Friday, September 27, 2019
Contents
04
Linguistic Methodology (Structuralism)
2
Linguistic Methodology (Structuralism)
Structuralism
5 dichotomies of Saussure’s
theories in GLC (1916)
Structuralism Methodology
The language is best regarded as a
structured system of elements, in
which the place of each element is
defined chiefly by how it relates to
other elements.
Ex: [ d ] and as [ð].
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2.
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4.
5.
Structuralism
Structuralist circles and
movements
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The Prague Circle (founded in 1926)
The Copenhagen Circle (founded in 1931)
American structuralism (founded in 1930)
Synchronic vs Diachronic
Prescriptive vs Descriptive
Langue vs Parole
Signifier vs Signified
Syntagmatic vs Paradigmatic
Structuralism in linguistic
subdisciplines
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Structuralism and phonology
Structuralism and morphosyntax
Structuralism and semantics
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Linguistic Methodology (Structuralism)
Structural units
Here is an example of structuralism analysis. Among the speech sounds found in English are two which we represent as [ d ] and as [ð].
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The sound [ d ] occurs at the beginning of the word den,
while the sound [ ð ] occurs at the beginning of the word then.
Since these words are otherwise identical in pronunciation, and since they have different meanings, we may therefore conclude that these two
sounds “count” as different in English. That is, they behave as two different structural units for the purpose of building English words. We
therefore say:
that [ d ] and [ ð ] belong, in English, to two different structural units, or phonemes, which we represent as /d/ and /ð/, so that den and then are
represented phonemically as /den/ and /ðen/.
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Linguistic Methodology (Structuralism)
5 dichotomies of Saussure’s theories in “Cours de Linguistique Générale”
Ferdinand de Saussure
1.
Synchronic vs Diachronic
Chronic  Time
Syn  Together, Simultaneously
Dia  Through
2.
Prescriptive vs Descriptive
Prescriptive: What is right & Wrong.
Descriptive: Describing What is (rather than what should be).
3.
Langue vs Parole
Langue: Social institution composed of a system of signs; conventions needed to
communicate.
Parole: Individual and psychophysical manifestation of langue.
4.
Signifier vs Signified
Signifier: Acoustic image.
Signified: Concept.
5.
Syntagmatic vs Paradigmatic
Syntagmatic: Each sentence is a sequence of signs that contribute its full meaning. The
presence of certain elements determines the presence of others.
Paradigmatic: a sign present in a sentence contrasts with other signs in the same category.
Personal information
Birth
November 26 , 1857
Geneva , Switzerland
Death
February 22, 1913 (55 years old)
Morges , Switzerland
nationality
Swiss
Mother tongue
French
Notable works
General linguistics course ,
"Philosophers Course" (posthumous
work, published by his students Charles
Bally and Albert Sechehaye in 1916)
Firm
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Linguistic Methodology (Structuralism)
Structuralist circles and movements
1.
The Prague Circle (founded in 1926) - Czechoslovakia
• Members
• R. Jakobson, B. Havránek, V. Mathesius, J. Mukařovský, N. S. Trubetzkoy, B. Trnka.
• Principles of Phonology, published in 1939, was perhaps the Circle’s most influential publication (phonology is the study of sound
systems in languages).
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Linguistic Methodology (Structuralism)
Structuralist circles and movements
2.
The Copenhagen Circle (founded in 1931) - Denmark
• Members
• L. Hjelmslev, V. Brøndal, J. Holt, P. Diderichsen, H. C. Sørensen
• The principal ideas of the school are:
• Glossematics: the double duality of the linguistic sign.
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Linguistic Methodology (Structuralism)
Structuralist circles and movements
3.
American structuralism (founded in 1930)
• Members
• L. Bloomfield and his student Z. S. Harris
• The principal ideas of the school are:
• Demonstrating that the techniques of historical linguistics, already applied so successfully to European and Asian languages.
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Linguistic Methodology (Structuralism)
Structuralist circles and movements
9
Linguistic Methodology (Structuralism)
Structuralist circles and movements
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Phonology
• In Europe, the Prague Circle (Trubetzkoy, Jakobson) was the frontrunner in the elaboration of the basic principles of phonology in
the 1920s and 1930s.
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Morphosyntax
• American linguists, faced with the urgent task of describing the rapidly disappearing American Indian languages, developed from the
1920s onwards a descriptive morphosyntax.
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Semantics
• Although the works of Trier (1931) , Hjelmslev (1935 ; 1937a ) and Jakobson (1936) had proven that structuralist methodology was
readily applicable to problems of semantics.
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Thanks!!!
• Jorge Nicolás Ruiz
e-mail: nirjorge@gmailcom