语言学流派总结

Theories and Schools of Modern Linguistics

Part One: Ferdinand de Saussure:

1. Nature of the linguistic sign: linguistic unit is a sign. It is the combination of the the two (a concept and a sound-image) that makes up the whole of the linguistic sign. Signified (the matter) and signifier (the sound image)

Characteristics of the linguistic sign:

1. The bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.

2. The linear nature of the signifier: the signifier is auditory and therefore is unfolded solely in time. As a result of this, the signifier represents a time span and the span is measurable in one single dimension, the dimension of time.

2. Langue and parole

3. Synchronic and diachronic studies

Part Two: The Prague School:

V. Mathesius:

The main emphasis of the Prague School theory is on the analysis of language as a system of functionally related units, an emphasis which shows Saussurean influence.

The emphasis has led to the distinction between the phonetic and phonological analysis of sounds and the analysis of phonemes into distinctive features.

Phonological oppositions

Influential scholar Trubetzkoy

principles of phonology

For each abstract sound there is a range than a point in which speakers are allowed to make the actual realization of it different from every other Realization by themselves and also distinct from every other realization by other people.

A phoneme can be defined as the sum of these differentiating functions. It has three characteristics:

1. It has discriminative power

2. It can not be analysed into smaller distinctive segments

3. It can only be determined by distinctive features.

Functional sentence perspective (FSP)

FSP is a theory of linguistic analysis which refers to an analysis of utterances or texts in terms of the information they contain. ( a theory that refers to a linguistic analysis of utterances in terms of the information they contain.) The principle is that the role of each utterance part is evaluated for its semantic contribution to the whole. From a functional point of view, some linguists believed that a sentence contains a point of departure and a goal of discourse. The point of departure is equally present to the speaker and to the hearer which it is their rallying point, the ground on which they meet. This is called the Theme. The goal of discourse presents the very information that is to be imparted to the hearer. This is called the Rheme.

It is believed that the movement from the Theme to the Rheme reveals the movement of the mind itself. Language may use different syntactic structures, but the order of ideas remains basically the same. Based on these observations, they created the notion of FSP to describe how information is distributed in sentences. FSP deals particularly with the effect of the distribution of known information and new information in discourse. The known information refers to information that is not new to the reader or hearer, and the new information is what is to be transmitted to the reader or hearer.

Sally stands on the table.(1)

On the table stands Sally.(2)

Sally is the grammatical subject in both sentences, but Sally is the Theme in (1) and the Rheme in (2).

We can approach a sentence at three levels and distinguish between the Grammatical Sentence Pattern(subject-berb-object), the Semantic Sentence Pattern

(agent-action-goal)

and

the

Communicative

Sentence

Pattern(theme-transition-rheme) . This shows that there is a distinction between sentence and utterance.

CD: J. Firbas developed the notion of communicative dynamism.

It is based on the fact that linguistic communication is not a static but a dynamic phenomenon.

CD is meant to measure the amount of information an element carries in a sentence.

Eg: He was angry

He carries the lowest degree of CD, angry carries the highest degree, and was will rank between them.

Normally the subject carries a lower degree of CD than the verb and the object or adverbial. This is because a known or unknown agent appears to be communicatively less important than an unknown action expressed by the finite verb, an unknown goal expressed by the object or by the adverbial element.

Part Three: American structuralism

Boas/ SPIE/ Bloomfield/Fries/Chomsky

1. Structural grammar: one point is that the grammatical categories should be defined in terms of distribution . The units of the analysis are defined internally in relation to each other.

The other point is that the sentence is seen as a sequence of immediate constituents.

IC analysis: it helps to account for the ambiguities of some structures, because IC analysis not only shows sequential relations but also hierarchical relations.

2. Behaviorist psychology in structuralism (Bloomfield and B.F Skinner)

1)Behaviourist holds that human beings cannot know anything they have not experienced.

2)Human learn language through “stimulus-response” manner.

Black box theory: put forward by Skinner. The basic position of radical behaviourism is that since we cannot observe the internal states, we cannot know anything about them. Any statements we make about internal states or processes are necessarily meaningless. Each organism should be regarded as a Black box that cannot be opened for observation. The only meaningful statements one can make about the organism concern what goes into it (stimuli) and what comes out of it.(response)

3)A comparison between traditional and structural grammars

Traditional grammar

Structural grammar

Part Four Transformational –Generative Grammar

1) The development of Chomsky’s TG Grammar: five stages. The Classical Theory aims to make linguistics a science. The Standard Theory deals with how semantics should be studied in a linguistics theory. The Extended Standard focuses discussion on language universals and universal grammar. The Revised Extended Standard Theory focuses discussion on government and binding. The latest is the Minimalist Program, a further revision of the previous theory.

The development of TG Grammar can be regarded as a process of constantly minimalising theories and controlling the generative powers. Although TG Grammar has involved putting forward, revising, and canceling of many specific rules, hypotheses, mechanisms, and theoretical models, its aims and purposes have been consistent to explore the nature, origin and uses of human knowledge on language.

2) Chomsky’s innateness hypothesis: Chomsky believes that children comes into the world with specific innate endowment, not only with general tendencies or potentialities, but also with knowledge of the nature of the world, and specifically with knowledge of the nature of language. is strongly against Bloomfield’s behaviorist psychology and empiricism and adopts cognitive psychology and rationalism.

Chomsky’s innateness hypothesis is baded on his observations that some important facts can never be otherwise explained adequately. First, children learn their native language very fast and with little effort. Second, there are other facts that are puzzling if language is not innate.

Third, the child learns the total grammar of the language during a limited period of time, from limited exposure to speech.

Language Acquisition Device: Chomsky believes that language is somewhat innate, and that children are born with what he calls a LAD, which is a unique kind of knowledge that fits them for language learning. He argues

the child comes into the world with specific innate endowment, not only with general tendencies or potentialities, but also with knowledge of the nature of the world, and specifically with knowledge of the nature of language. According to this view, children are born with knowledge of the basic grammatical relations and categories, and this knowledge is universal. The categories and relations exist in all human languages and all human infants are born with knowledge of them.

According to him, the study of language, or the structure of language, can throw some light on the nature of the human mind. LAD probably consists of three elements: a hypothesis-maker, linguistic universal, and an evaluation procedure.

3) TG Grammar: the starting point of Chomsky’s TG Grammar is his innateness hypothesis, based on his observations that some important facts can never be otherwise explained adequately.

Chomsky’s TG Grammar has the following features. First, Chomsky defines language as a set of rules or principles. Second, Chomsky believes that the aim of linguistics is to produce a generative grammar which captures the tacit knowledge of the native speaker of his language.

This concerns the question of learning theory and the question of linguistic universals. Third, Chomsky and his followers are interested in any data that can reveal the native speaker’s tacit knowledge. They seldom use

what native speakers actually say; they rely on their own intuition.

Fourth, Chomsky’s methodology is hypothesis-deductive, which operates at two levels: (a) the linguist formulates a hypothesis about language structure-a general linguistic theory; this is tested by grammars for particular languages, and (b) each such grammar is a hypothesis o the general linguistic theory. Finally Chomsky follows rationalism in philosophy and mentalist in psychology.

London School:

Lay stress on the functions of language and attaching great importance to contexts of situation and the system aspect of language. It is these features that have make this school of thought known as systemic linguistics and functional linguistics.

Malinowski’s theory of meaning: the meaning of an utterance does not come from the ideas of the words comprising it but from its relation to the situational context in which the utterance occurs.

Malinowski distinguishes three types of context of situation:1) situations in which speech interrelates with bodily activity; 2) narrative situations 3) situations in which speech is used to fill a speech vaccum—phatic cmmunion

Firth’s theory of meaning: meaning is use. He defines meaning as the

relationship between an element at any level and its context on that level.

(Malinowski distinguished three types of context of situation: situations in which speech interrelates with bodily activity, narrative situation, and phatic situations

Firth defined the context of situation as including the entire cultural setting of speech and the personal history of the participants rather than as simply the context of human activity going on at the moment.)

Halliday’s systemic grammar: 1) it attaches great importance to the sociological aspects of language;2) it views language as a form of doing rather than as a form of knowing.3) it explains a number of aspects of language in terms of clines.

4) It has as its central category the category of the system.

In systemic grammar, the notion of system is make a central explanatory principle, the whole of language being conceived as a “system of systems.”

Halliday’s functional grammar: language is what it is because it has to serve certain functions. Social demands on language have helped to shape its structure.

Three macrofunctions by Halliday:

1) The ideational function(意念功能）: to convey new information, to communicate a content that is unknown to the hearer. It is a meaning potential.

2) The interpersonal function(人际功能）

It embodies all uses of language to express social and personal relations. This function is realized by mood and modality.

3) The textual function（语篇功能）: it refers to the fact that language has mechanisms to make any stretch of spoken or written discourse into a coherent and unified text and make a living message different from a random list of sentences.

The relation: systemic grammar aims to explain the internal relations in language as a system network, or meaning potential. While functional grammar aims to reveal that language is a means of social interaction.