European structuralism

“If a paper on ‘the morphosyntax of medial suffixes in Kickapoo’, bursting with unfamiliar forms and descriptive difficulties, is typical of American linguistics, its European counterpart is likely to be a paper on ’l’arbitraire du signe’ whose factual basis is limited to the observation that tree means ‘tree’ in English, while arbre has essentially the same meaning in French.”

Dutch t has (among other things) the properties coronality and voicelessness. k does not have the latter property, since it is not in a unique oppostion to any sound in this dimension.

the thing denoted /t/ is part of 'langue', i.e. of the language system as a social construct. individuals may say all kinds of things to this /t/

syllable cut

the smallest unit of linguistic analysis is the phoneme;

but larger units are acknowledged, e.g the syllable.

stark geschnitten

'strongly cut'

schwach geschnitten

'weakly cut'

Opponents of structuralism have pointed out that neutralisation processes can be considered a problem.

E.g. voicing assimilation from Dutch:

The problem is that the first two processes involve a change from a phoneme into another phoneme, but the latter from a phoneme into an allophone. This is how most American structuralists would be forced to analyse it:

A central hypothesis of Jakobson is that the order in which children learn a language is mirrored in aphasia: the sounds which are learned earliest are most resistant to loss. They are both mirrored in typology: the earliest sounds are the ones which occur in most languages.

All of this can be described in terms of features.

“Einerseits ist die kindliche Schoepfung offenkundig keine Urschoepfung, keine Erfindung aus dem Nichts [. . . ], andererseits ist aber die Nachahmung keine mechanische und ratlose Uebernahme. Das Kind schafft, indem es entlehnt. [. . . ] Die Entlehnung ist keine genaue Kopie.”

We also have the beginning of a theory of language change!

Empiricism

School of thought, popular above all in Anglo-Saxon philosophy, according to which we extract all our knowledge from sensory experience.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism

John Locke

European Structuralism

American Structuralism

Primary goal: determining a formalized procedure for automatically extracting a scientific description of the language data

European Structuralism

Less empericist, more directed towards abstraction and uncovery of general principles of language.

Child language = - Aphasia = Typology

Feature Theory

Inspired by information theory, Jakobson proposed that the ultimate building block of language was smaller than the phoneme: the feature.

universal (all languages have the same features)

compact (only necessary information, cf. Trubetzkoy)

properties:

binary (following informatics)

Roman Jakobson (1896-1982)

Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1890-1938)

Nikolai Trubetzkoy

Moscow Life

Logical Positivism

As historians of linguistics like to recall, Trubetzokoy was a prince

At the age of 13, he started the study of ethnology, but he switched soon to linguistics, because it seemed more 'scientific'

He started his studies in a Neogrammarian school, but grew dissatisfied.

A view on the philosophy of science which holds that scientific theories should be verifiable against empirical observation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

Rudolf Carnap

Prague Circle

After having fled Russia in 1917, he went to Prague, where he became a member of the Prague circle. One of its members was Roman Jakobson, who convinced him or the importance of phonology.

The Prague Circle was known among other things for the development of positivism.

Grundzuege

Roman Jakobson

Life

Like Trubetzkoy, Jakobson came from Russia to Prague after the Russian Revolution

In the 1930s he had to flee the nazis, first to Scandinavia, then to the USA, where he became a mentor of a.o. Morris Halle and Noam Chomsky

He was extremely productive; he wrote in many languages about many aspects of linguistics, literary studies, cultural studies, etc.

Segmentation

b ra ss - b o ss: ra and o are distinctive

ra t - a t: ra can be further segmentized

the fundamental units of phonology (phonemes) are horizontally organized

Phonology

Getting rid of redundancy

Dutch consonant inventory

The study of the system as it is manifested in the langue

k

t

d

g (missing from Dutch)

Information Theory

Phonetics

The study of the concrete physical manifestations of sound

Information Theory is a branch of mathematics and electrical engineering, originally proposed by Claude Shannon, studying the way in which we can quantify information. We can do so in order to transmit information economically, for instance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory

Silbenschnittkorrelation

Neutralisation

Functions of language

Among many other things, Jakobson is well-known for his theory of the communicative functions of language, and the following model of language use:

Trubetzkoy however used the concept of an Archiphoneme (a sound which does not contrast), and solved the issue in this way:

Next to communication theory, Jakobson was also influenced by the emerging information theory.

European Structuralism