STRUCTURALISM

Linguists tried to reconstruct dead languages on the basis of the similarities that were found to exist
between languages thought to be related historically to those dead languages.
In short, during the 19th century scholars in linguistics worked from a historical, diachronic,
perspective.
European Structuralism
Ferdinand De Saussure(1857 – 1913) was not satisfied with the historical comparison of language.
He stated that such comparison only answered where a language comes from,
but not what language is.

The idea of language as system of signs is usually associated with Ferdinand

de Saussure, a Swiss linguist who lived in the latter part of the 19th century
and whose views on language were published posthumously from the lecture
notes of his students. For this reason, Ferdinand de Saussure is usually
referred to as “The Father of Modern Linguistics” and for bringing about the shift
from diachronic (historical) to synchronic (non-historical) analysis, as well as for introducing
several basic dimensions of semiotic analysis that are still important today, such
as syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis.
Structural linguistics is an approach to linguistics originating from the work of Ferdinand de
Saussure and is part of the overall approach of structuralism. Structural linguistics involves
collecting a corpus of utterances and then attempting to classify all of the elements of the
corpus at their different linguistic levels: the phonemes, morphemes, lexical categories, noun
phrases, verb phrases, and sentence types
Saussure was a historical linguist who studied the evolution of sound patterns in the Indo-
European languages. Historical linguistics in the 19th century and earlier was devoted
mainly to find out the proto- type (or mother) languages from which modern languages were
thought to have evolved. This devotion to the past was based on empirically derived premise
that some languages evolved from the same ancient language.
For example, the Indo- European languages like English, German, Sanskrit and Latin share
structural similarities, causing theorists to assume that they actually were, at some point in
the past, just one language. The same can be said of other families of languages, including
the Malayo- Polynesian family to which Philippine Languages belong.

The origins of structuralism connect with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure on linguistics,
along with the linguistics of the Prague and Moscow schools. In brief, Saussure's structural
linguistics propounded three related concepts.
 1. Saussure argued for a distinction between langue (an idealized abstraction of
language) and parole (language as actually used in daily life). He argued that the
"sign" was composed of both a signified, an abstract concept or idea, and a
"signifier", the perceived sound/visual image.
2. Because different languages have different words to describe the same objects or
concepts, there is no intrinsic reason why a specific sign is used to express a given
signifier. It is thus "arbitrary".
3. Signs thus gain their meaning from their relationships and contrasts with other signs.
As he wrote, "in language, there are only differences 'without positive terms.'
In Course in General Linguistics the analysis focuses not on the use of language (called
"parole", or speech), but rather on the underlying system of language (called "langue"). This
approach examines how the elements of language relate to each other in the
present, synchronically rather than diachronically. Saussure argued that linguistic signs were
composed of two parts:

1. a "signifier" (the "sound pattern" of a word, either in mental projection—as when one
silently recites lines from signage, a poem to one's self—or in actual, any kind of
text, physical realization as part of a speech act)
2. a "signified" (the concept or meaning of the word)
This was quite different from previous approaches that focused on the relationship between
words and the things in the world that they designate.Other key notions in structural
linguistics include paradigm and syntagm.

Main tenets
1) Language has a structure. (Language is a structure in which each element interacts.)
2) Language is a system of signs. (Noise is language only when it expresses
or communicates ideas.)
3) Language operates at two levels: langue and parole

Diachronic V.S. Synchronic

Saussure came to a point where he became disillusioned with historical linguistics.

Saussure abandoned his historical orientation and, instead, set his sights on the
system of language itself. In other words, while his earlier works focused on the
study of language through time, his new concern dealt with the study of language
at a particular point in time. While earlier he worked on the diachronic aspect of
language, he now started working on its synchronic dimension.

Signifier and Signified

 According to Saussure, language is a system of signs. A sign functions like
a coin with two sides. The first side consists of the form of the sign. The concept of
the sign, on the other hand, refers to a mental image which registers in the mind.

The relation between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary, which means that
there is no intrinsic or natural reason why a particular form signifies a particular
concept.
For example:

Signifier Signified
Teacher, Maestro, Guro

Signified
Signifier
/ka:r/
Physical dimension of language

Car

Sign

Langue and Parole

Saussure’s proposition is for us to stick to the study of the abstract system, which is
called langue, and disregard the many ways we use the system in real contexts,
which are called parole.
Langue
Parole
(system of knowledge in a society) (individual use of language)

Because Saussure wants us to study language in a systematic, scientific way, it is

therefore understandable that his linguistics would focus on the langue, rather than
the parole. The langue is abstract and is therefore easily systemized parole is
messy, forever changing and therefore extremely difficult to capture in any scientific
investigation.

Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic

Aside from the synchronic and diachronic dimensions of the sign, we can approach
language through its syntagmatic and paradigmatic aspects. These aspects actually
refer to different types of relations that sign can have with one another. On the other
hand, sign relate each other in a syntagmatic way- that is according to their
positions in a given sentence or utterance. On the other hand, signs relate to each
other in a paradigmatic way- that is, according to the membership in particular types
or classes of signs.
 Language, according to Saussure, is a system of arbitrary signs. A signifier and a
signified constitute a sign which, in turn, has both synchronic/ diachronic and
syntagmatic/ paradigmatic dimentions.
• The system is both abstract (langue) and concrete
(parole).
• Since the goal of linguistics is to look for a system in language in a scientific and
empirical way, then the focus of this approach is tha langue of language as well as
sign’s synchromatic and syntagmatic dimensions.

North American Structuralism

Saussure's Course influenced many linguists between World War I and World War
II. In the United States, for instance, Leonard Bloomfield developed his own
version of structural linguistics, as did Louis Hjelmslev in Denmark and Alf
Sommerfelt in Norway. In France Antoine Meillet and Émile Benveniste continued
Saussure's project, and members of the Prague school of linguistics such as Roman
Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy conducted research that would be greatly
influential.

Leonard Bloomfield
1887-1949

First, in America, linguist Leonard Bloomfield's reading of Saussure's course proved

influential, bringing about the Bloomfieldean phase in American linguistics that lasted
from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s. Bloomfield "bracketed" all questions
of semantics and meaning as largely unanswerable, and encouraged a mechanistic
approach to linguistics. Those working in more or less the tradition of Bloomfield
included Charles Hockett, Robert A. Hall, Jr., and Zellig Harris. Bloomfieldean
linguistics in America was challenged by generative grammar, initially articulated in
the publication of Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures in 1957.

Main tenets

1) Linguistics is a descriptive science.

2) The primary form of language is the spoken one.
3) Every language is a system on its own right.
4) Language is a system in which smaller units arrange systematically to form
larger ones.
5) Meaning should not be part of linguistic analysis.
6) The procedures to determine the units in language should be objective and
rigorous.
7) Language is observable speech, not knowledge.

1) Linguistics is a descriptive science.

Describe what people say, not what people should say.
2) The primary form of language is the spoken one.
Reasons:
i. Not every language has a written form.
ii. Everybody learns an oral language.
iii. The spoken form comes first than the written one.
3) Every language is a system on its own right.

Language should not be described in terms of another language, but rather, it should be
described on its own terms.

4) Language is a system in which smaller units arrange

systematically to form larger ones.

These linguists proposed a procedure in which they began analyzing the smallest units and
classifying them, and describing the patterns into which they combined to form larger units.

/l/

[lang-gwIʤ]

Language is a system
 5) Meaning should not be part of linguistic analysis.

Bloomfield and many other structuralism followers consider meaning as

abstract and unobservable, therefore, unscientific.

6) The procedures to determine the units in language should be

objective and rigorous.

North American Structuralism rejected traditional definitions of, for example, a noun as “the
word that refers to persons, animals or things” (definition based on meaning).

In this respect, they provide two observable criteria for defying the items of
language: Form and Distribution.

7) Language is observable speech, not knowledge.

Langue and parole were rejected as unscientific abstractions. The main objective
would be to make a taxonomy of language based on observable samples of speech
(corpus/corpora)

Phonemes-morphemes-sentences patterns.