LINGUISTICS

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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION | HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS | THE 19TH CENTURY | THE 20TH CENTURY | SITE LINKS

INTRODUCTION
Linguistics - the study of languagefirst used in mid - 19th century to distinguish from the traditional approach of philology. The differences
were and are largely matters of attitude, emphasis, and purpose. Primarily philologists are concerned with historical development of
languages as manifest in written texts and in the context of the associated literature and culture. The linguist gives priority to spoken
languages and to the problems of analyzing them as they operate at a given point in time. The content of linguistics may be divided in
terms of three dichotomies: synchronic vs. diachronic, theoretical vs. applied, micro-linguistics vs. macro-linguistics
The first approach to the study of linguistics will be historical

HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS
Earlier History

Non-Western traditions
Mesopotamian, Chinese, and Arabic grammatical learning had virtually no impact on Western linguistic tradition until recently. This is
because, despite Chinese linguistic and philological scholarship that stretches back for more than two millennia, the treatments were so
enmeshed in the particularities of the languages and so little known to the Western world until recently
The most interesting most original and independent non-Western grammatical tradition is that of India, which dates back at least 2,500
years and which culminates with the grammar of Panini, of the 5th century BC. There are three major ways in which the Sanskrit tradition
has had an impact on modern linguistic scholarship
As soon as Sanskrit became known to the Western learned world the unraveling of comparative Indo-European grammar ensued and the
foundations were laid for the whole 19th-century edifice of comparative philology and historical linguistics. But, for this, Sanskrit was simply
a part of the data; Indian grammatical learning played almost no direct part

Nineteenth-century workers, however, recognized that the native tradition of phonetics in ancient India was vastly superior to Western
knowledge; and this had important consequences for the growth of the science of phonetics in the West
Thirdly, there is in the rules or definitions [sutras] of Panini a remarkably subtle and penetrating account of Sanskrit grammar. The
construction of sentences, compound nouns, and the like is explained through ordered rules operating on underlying structures in a manner
strikingly similar in part to modes of contemporary theory. As might be imagined, this perceptive Indian grammatical work has held great
fascination for 20th-century theoretical linguists. A study of Indian logic in relation to Paninian grammar alongside Aristotelian and Western
logic in relation to Greek grammar and its successors could bring illuminating insights

Greek and Roman antiquity

The following is a much-simplified account. Greek philosophy was largely occupied with the distinction existence by nature and by
convention. So in language it was natural to account for words and forms as from nature [imitation of natural sounds] or from social
convention. Thus the anomalists saw languages lack of regularity as a facet of the irregularities of nature while the analogists viewed
language as having an essential regularity derived from nature. Anomalist study looked for deeper regularities underneath the surface
irregularities and so showed similarity to the modern transformationalist school; the concern of the analogists with showing surface
regularity is very similar to the modern school of structural grammatical theorists
The Romans were transmitters rather than originators
The European Middle Ages
Very little is known of linguistics or its precursors in this period
The Renaissance
Two new sets of data that modern linguists tend to take for granted
The newly recognized vernacular languages of Europe, for the protection and cultivation
The exotic languages of Africa, the Orient, the New World, and, later, of Siberia, Inner Asia, Papua, Oceania, the Arctic, and Australia
In the grammar, the Renaissance did not produce notable innovation or advance. Generally speaking, there was a strong rejection of
speculative grammar and a relatively uncritical resumption of late Roman views as stated by Priscian
Down to the present day the grammar taught in the schools - in contrast to the study of linguistic scholars - and as understood by most
educated persons is the same prescriptive grammar

THE 19TH CENTURY

Development of the comparative method
Development of the comparative method was the outstanding 19th century linguistic achievement
A set of principles to could be systematically compare languages with respect to their sound systems, grammatical structure, and vocabulary
and shown to be genealogically related. As all Romance languages evolved from Latin, so Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit Celtic, Germanic,
and Slavic languagesmany other languages of Eurasian languages had evolved from some earlier Proto-Indo-European language
The main impetus for the development of this comparative philology came toward the end of the 18th century, when it was discovered -

English orientalist Sir William Jones is generally given the credit - that Sanskrit bore striking resemblances to Greek and Latin
In the next 50 years the idea of sound change was made more precise, and, in the 1870s, a group of scholars known collectively as the
Junggrammatiker or Neogrammarians made the thesis - at first regarded as most controversial - that all changes in the sound system of a
language through time were subject to the operation of regular sound laws

The role of analogy

The Neogrammarians recognized analogy as inhibition of regular operation of sound laws in particular word forms. This was how thought of
it. In the 20th century it is recognized for a far more important role in the development of language
Other 19th-century theories and development

Inner and outer form

The Prussian statesman, Wilhelm von Humboldt [1767 - 1835] conceived a theory of inner and outer form in languagea structural
conceptionouter - the raw sounds the forge of language; inner - the pattern of grammar - meaning imposed upon the raw material and
differentiated languages. Another idea of Humboldt language as dynamic - an activitynot the product of activitynot a set of actual
utterances produced by speakers but the underlying principles or rulestaken up by physiologist-psychologist Wilhelm Wundt so influenced
c. 1900 theories of psychology of language. These ideas influence - or emerge again in - Ferdinand de Saussures structuralism and Noam
Chomskys transformational-generative grammar

Phonetics and dialectology

Research in phonetics and dialectology was promoted by the Neogrammarians concern with sound change and by their insistence that
kinds of change are uniform over history and pre-history of language. Phonetics was strongly influenced by discovery of the works of the
Indian grammarians who, from the time of the Sanskrit grammarian Panini [600 - 500BC] or before, had arrived at a much more
comprehensive and scientific theory of phonetics, phonology, and morphology

THE 20TH CENTURY

Structuralism
Structuralism has somewhat different implications according to context
Structural linguistics in Europe
Begins 1916 with posthumous publication of the Cours de Linguistique Gnrale of Ferdinand de Saussure. The general structural principles
with respect to synchronic linguistics had been applied 40 years before [1879] by Saussure himself in a reconstruction of the Indo-European
vowel system. Saussures structuralism can be summed as two dichotomies [1] langue versus parole and [2] form versus substance. Langue
is the totality of regularities and patterns of formation that underlie the utterances; by parole means the actual utterances. Two utterances
can be identical in form that is in principle independent of the variant substance or raw material.
Structuralism, in the European sense is the view that there is an abstract relational structure underlying and different from actual
utterances and that this is the primary object of study for the linguist
Two important points: [1] The structural approach is not restricted to synchronic linguistics; and [2] the study of meaning, as well as the
study of phonology and grammar, can be structural in orientation. In both cases structuralism is opposed to atomism in the European
literature. Paradoxically, Saussure, despite the structural orientation of his early work in the historical and comparative field, maintained

that, whereas synchronic linguistics should deal with the structure of a language system at a given point in time, diachronic linguistics
should be concerned with the historical development of isolated elements--it should be atomistic. This point was not generally accepted, and
scholars soon began to apply structural concepts to the diachronic study of languages. The most important of the various schools of
structural linguistics to be found in Europe in the first half of the 20th century have included the Prague school, most notably represented
by Nikolay Sergeyevich Trubetskoy [1890 - 1938] and Roman Jakobson [1896 - 1982], both Russian migrs, and the Copenhagen [or
glossematic] school, centered around Louis Hjelmslev [1899-1965]. John Rupert Firth [1890 1960] and his followers, sometimes referred to
as the London school, were less Saussurean in their approach, but, in a general sense of the term, their approach may also be described
appropriately as structural linguistics

Structural linguistics in America

Regarding each language as a coherent and integrated system, European and American linguists of this period tended to emphasize
structural uniqueness of individual languages. This was further emphasized in America due to the hundreds of indigenous American Indian
languages never previously described - many spoken by a handful of speakers and likely to become extinct and, if not recorded,
permanently inaccessible. So linguists such as Franz Boas [1858 - 1942], also an anthropologist were less concerned a general theory of the
structure of language than they were with prescribing sound principles for the analysis of unfamiliar languages. They were also concerned
about distortion by analysis in categories from analysis of Indo-European languages
After Boas, the two most influential American linguists were Edward Sapir [1884 - 1939] and Leonard Bloomfield [1887 - 1949]. Like his
teacher Boas, Sapir was equally at home in anthropology and linguisticsand this alliance endured till today in many American universities.
Boas and Sapir were both attracted by the Humboldtian view of the relationship between language and thought, re-expressed by one of
Sapirs pupils, Benjamin Lee Whorf as the thesis that language determines perception and thought and known, since the republication of
Whorfs more important papers in 1956, as the Whorfian hypothesis
Bloomfield prepared the way for the later phase - the most distinctive manifestation of American structuralism. In his first book in 1914,
Bloomfield was strongly influenced by Wundts psychology of language. In 1933 he published a drastically revised version with the new title
Language - that dominated the field for 30 years. Bloomfield explicitly adopted a behaviorist approach to the study of languageincluding a
behaviorist theory of semantics in which meaning is the relationship between stimulus and verbal response. One of the most characteristic
features of post-Bloomfieldian American structuralism was the almost complete neglect of semantics
Another characteristic feature, one that was to be much criticized by Chomsky, was its attempt to formulate a set of discovery procedures-
-procedures that could be applied more or less mechanically to texts and could be guaranteed to yield an appropriate phonological and
grammatical description of the language of the texts. Structuralism, in this narrower sense of the term, is represented, with differences of
emphasis or detail, in the major American textbooks published during the 1950s
Transformational Grammar
The most significant recent development in was the rise of generative grammar - especially, of transformational-generative grammar, or
transformational grammar. Two versions were put forward in the mid-1950s, first by Zellig S. Harris and second by his pupil, Noam
Chomsky. Chomskys system has attracted the most attention. First presented in Syntactic Structures [1957], transformational grammar can
be seen partly as a reaction against post-Bloomfieldian structuralism and partly as a continuation of it. Chomsky reacted most strongly
against was the post-Bloomfieldian concern with discovery procedures. In his opinion, linguistics should set itself the more modest and more
realistic goal of formulating criteria for evaluating alternative descriptions of a language which should, however, be cast within the
framework of a far more precise theory of grammar that should be formalized in terms of modern mathematical ideas. Within a few years,
Chomsky had broken with the post-Bloomfieldians on other points. He had adopted a mentalist theory of language, meaning that proper

concern is with a speakers creative linguistic competence and not performance. He had challenged the post-Bloomfieldian concept of the
phoneme which many scholars regarded as the most solid and enduring result of the previous generations workthe structuralisms
insistence upon the uniqueness of every language, claiming instead that all languages were, to a considerable degree, cut to the same
pattern--they shared a certain number of formal and substantive universals
Chomsky believed that language is rooted in biology, not behaviorin a universal grammar that humans are born knowing that underlies all
languages despite the superficial variations that appear large. The generative grammar was complexit needed to satisfy descriptive
adequacy - to be able to describe or generate the variety as well as explanatory adequacy - to reflect the small number of inborn principles
This balance posed an impasse for years

Recent work of Noam Chomsky1999

In the 1980s Chomsky formulated a more streamlined framework called Principles and Parameters
Out of this grew the Minimalism of the 1990s. A basic point is that language is a system of connecting sound and meaning. Minimalism
speculates - and this is unorthodox - that this system is optimal. Further, it jettisons the most of the generative grammar that had become a
very complex machinery
The new program is controversial; some find it impossible to work in. The promise, Chomskians hold, is of doing what earlier models could
not: be both simple and complex enough to fulfill the competing demands of a true universal grammar
Tagmemic, Stratificational, and other approaches
All major theoretical issues in linguistics today are debated in Chomskys terms and every school of linguistics tends to define its position in
relation to his. Rival schools are tagmemics, Stratificational grammar, and the Prague school. Tagmemics, developed in the 1950s by U.S.
linguist Kenneth L. Pike and associates in connection with work as Bible translators has been used for analyzing a great many previously
unrecorded languages, especially in Central and South America and in West Africa. Stratificational grammar, developed by a U.S. linguist,
Sydney M. Lamb, has been seen by some linguists as an alternative to transformational grammar. Not yet fully expounded or widely
exemplified in the analysis of different languages, stratificational grammar is perhaps best characterized as a radical modification of post-
Bloomfieldian linguistics, but it has many features that link it with European structuralism. The Prague school has been mentioned above for
its importance in the period immediately following the publication of Saussures Cours. Many of its characteristic ideas [in particular, the
notion of distinctive features in phonology] have been taken up by other schools. But there has been further development in Prague of the
functional approach to syntax. The work of M.A.K. Halliday in England derived much of its original inspiration from Firth [above], but
Halliday provided a more systematic and comprehensive theory of the structure of language than Firth had, and it has been quite
extensively illustrated

A TOUR OF MODERN LINGUISTICS

Language and cognition

Vocabulary
The SOV [subject-object-verb] and SVO [of English] are the most common word orders but there is also VSO [Irish, Breton, many African
languages]

Linguistic competence vs. Performance

Linguistic competence universal tendencies in language are grounded in the way we are.

Question this. That we are the way we are is a result of the way the world is. So why are we not saying that linguistic competence is
grounded in the way the world is e.g. in some universal metaphysics? Well linguistic competence must have some such grounding but the
two statements are not contradictory. What is especially true of the more specific statement is that it implies that there could be other
beings with different universal tendencies and different linguistic competencies. Now even if that is true, what if the other kind of being
uses the same medium, single channel sound/vocalization that is apparently linear would such a being have the same kinds of linguistic
competencies as humans? Probably to some degree but there could be divergences as a result of species specific structure/context
Poverty of stimulus argument language is genetic and based in an autonomous organ a relatively autonomous computational device.
The alternative is that linguistic competence is based in a powerful all purpose device. The truth probably has elements of both. Anyway,
the autonomy of linguistic competence is one of the planks of generative grammar

Language structure
Phoneme the smallest unit of sound Polynesian has 12, Khoisan has 140 and this is about the range for human language

Phonetics
acoustics and articulation of speech sounds
e.g. vowels are back or front
and rounded or unrounded
hot back rounded
but back unrounded
feet high front unrounded
fsse [German] high front rounded
Some results
All the sounds in the worlds languages can be described by a small set of distinctive features [high / low, front/back, voiced/not voiced,
fricative] and phonetics provides an alphabet of sounds for all languages
The features are part of the implicit knowledge that native speakers have of their language

Phonology
the grammar of speech sounds
How phonemes combine as morphemes [the units of word structure]
Universal features e.g. all languages that have front rounded vowels also have back rounded ones
Grammar of words: e.g. Plural formation in English the voiceless s is added if the final consonant is voiceless but z if the final
consonant is voiced. Further this is an example of a phonological rule that is assimilated, not remembered mono-lingual English speakers
apply it automatically to new words

Morphology

study or word structure or grammar of words

E.g. [[[quick] ADJ]ly] AF]ADV
Morphology is relatively simple in Chinese, and relatively complex in Turkish and Japanese; the complexity of English morphology lies in the
mid-range
Polysynthetic languages: e.g., in Mohawk
ni-mic-tomi-maca
first person-second person-money-give
Ill give you the money
See morphosyntax [the concept of a word is fluid with the degree of fluidity being different in different languages; in some languages
sentences are formed by joining words, e.g. The example of Mohawk just given

Compounding

black board vs. blackboard

[stress]
black board, black board design, black board design school
In some languages, compounding is more fluid, less standardized and the difference between polysynthesis and compounding itself is
blurred
Word what is a word
a part of the lexicon: listeme: walk and walked are the same word in this sense
a syntactic unit: walk and walked are separate words or, word = S morphemes

Syntax
structure of phrases how words combine to make phrases
E.g. the most common S, O, V orders are SOV [English] and SVO [Hindi] but there is also VSO: Irish, Breton and many African languages.
Despite this there is evidence that there are universal deep structures
in the phrase John helped Bob [SOV], helped Bob is a unit called a verbal proform. A pronoun is a proform because, in he saw a rare
bird what he refers to requires a previous designation Sam went to the bird sanctuary and he saw a rare bird [or some other
specification of context: he saw a rare bird could be the caption of a picture helped Bob acquires definiteness when prefixed by
John the verbal proform is a universal deep structure that can be seen in the SVO grammars the verb phrase is always VO and not
SV this is true for all languages. But what of the VSO grammars? The head the verb of the verb phrase moves out of the OV / VO
and prefixes the SO. This is called head movement and this concept retains the significance of the verbal proform
In English, head movement occurs in the change of structure in going from assertion to question
Semantics
meaning interpretation of linguistic signs
Semantics is compositional i.e. the meaning of a sentence is a function of its immediate syntactic parts this is how knowledge of
meaning enables interpretation of an indefinite number of sentences

But what is meaning? Knowledge of meaning is knowledge of truth conditions. You know the meaning of a sentence if you know the
conditions under which it is true. Similar considerations can be given for sentences that are not assertions. The relevance of entailment is a
discovery, dating back at least to Frege
Consider the negative polarity item it is not just an example there is something to be learned from the consideration. Thus the two
sentences:
Choose any one the free choice any
He is not talking to any one the negative polarity any
The use of negative polarity items is governed by the fact that in negative judgment, entailment is from sets to subsets and this implies
implicit acquisition because no one goes through the logic of entailment in acquisition

Interfaces

Linguistics: Methods

Synchronic linguistics
Structural linguistics: phonology, phonetics, morphology, syntax, [morphosyntax,] and semantics
Transformational-generative grammar: Harris, Chomsky, modifications in Chomskys grammar
Tagmemics
Stratificational grammar
The Prague school functional sentence perspective
Historical linguistics
Linguistic change: sound, syntax or grammar, semantic or meaning, borrowing or cross-evolution
Comparative method: Grimms law; Proto-Indo-European reconstruction; comparative method methodology, criticisms;
internal reconstruction
Language classification
Related disciplines
Sociolinguistics
Anthropological linguistics
Computational linguistics

Mathematical linguistics
Linguistics: Sources

Dialectology and linguistic geography: dialect geography; [early] dialect studies, dialect atlases, value and applications of
dialectology, social dialectology
Goals of linguistic theory
Description a central goal in linguistics for the preservation of knowledge of the variety of human languages in the face of extinction,
illuminating [documenting] the forms and variety of language and the basis of other study: explanation and theory
Explanation of performance in the variety situations, of the structures of human language, the common aspects of all language, i.e., what
is language, why languages vary structurally, how languages change in time, how individuals produce and understand language generally
and in real time, the nature of native speakers knowledge of their language, how language is learned

Explanatory criteria, types; induction and deduction, hypothesis and data; alternative hypotheses at a given point in time: economy,
hypotheses that mesh with other disciplines vs. Ad hoc hypotheses, predictive ability
Explanatory or theoretical levels or modes of adequacy observational, descriptive, and explanatory; psychological, pragmatic and
typological adequacy
Explanatory or theoretical perspectives on linguistic theory the syntactocentric or Chomskian perspective language is an abstract object
that is independent of psycholinguistic, sociocultural, communicative considerations language is a system for free expression of thought
independent of pragmatic concerns, linguistic competence but not performance is important and it is this that transformational grammar
studies, there is an innate language acquisition device and this follows from the poverty of stimulus, language is a vague concept, syntax or
grammar alone is real; and the communication-and-cognition perspective that bands together, implicitly contra-Chomsky, characterized by
the acceptance of external criteria and essence and, therefore, naturally, but also reactionarily, empirical in contrast to the conceptual focus
of Chomsky
Communication-and-communication perspective, examples, that also reject the syntactocentric point of view: Functional Grammar [FG],
Role and Reference Grammar [RRG], Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar [HPSG], Constructive Grammar [ConG] Autolexical Syntax,
Word Grammar [WG], St. Petersburg school of functional grammar, Meaning-text theory, Cognitive Grammar [COGG], Prague School
Dependency Grammar, French functionalism
Understanding the cognitive basis of language; processing the cognitive and other processes involved, knowledge what constitutes
knowledge of language, acquisition the process
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