THE DESCRIPTIVISTS
Schools and Theories of
Linguistics
g
1
Synchronic Linguistics in America
Emerged independently and in a very
different style at the end of the nineteenth
and beginning of the twentieth centuries
when Saussure was working out his ideas
in Europe.
Europe
2
Linguists to discuss:
1. Franz Boas:
Boas: 2. Leonard Bloomfield:
Bloomfield:
1858--1942
1858 1887
1887--1949
Physics, geography, Studying linguistics in
anthropology, linguistics traditional style (a
Language is important nephew of Maurice
to understand and to Bloomfield, a leading
describe various aspects American historical
of a culture linguist)
The
Th status
t t off lilinguistics
i ti
as a science
3
Boas’
Boas Belief and Works Related to Language (1)
People are normally unconscious of the
principles on which their language operates
Organizer of Smithsonian Institution, focusing on
languages of America north of Mexico
His Handbook of American Indian Languages
g g
was published in 1911
Trainer of other language investigation; all the
great names of American linguists learned from
him at first or second hand
4
Boas’
Boas Belief and Works Related to Language (2)
Facing
ac g witht tthee se
severely
e ey ppractical
act ca p
problem
ob e oof
working out what the current structure of
various utterly alien languages was like
Th description
The d i i off an individual
i di id l language
l was an
end in itself, or a necessary first step towards
understanding the wider culture of a particular
community
Abstract linguistic theorizing as a means to the
end of successful practical description of
particular languages, and not vice versa.
5
Boas’
Boas Relativism (1)
Taking
a g the
t e ttheories
eo es for
o g granted
a ted a
and
d
concentrating on the data
His purely self-
self-taught linguist was necessary in
approaching
hi American
A i Indian
I di languages
l to
discard any presuppositions about the nature of
language inherited from a European background
Many orthodox linguists sometimes flatly refused
to believe the results he was publishing
There was no ideal type of language; human
languages were endlessly diverse
6
Boas’
Boas Relativism (2)
No basis of truth in saying that the
structure of language spoken by some
primitive tribes is ‘arbitrary’
arbitrary and irrational
Against the 19th century Romantics who
thought that race in the genetic sense
sense,
language and culture are three separate
issues by no means necessarily go
together
7
Boas’ Arguments that There are no
Primitive
i i i Languages (1)
( )
The human mouth can make manyy more different
sounds than the Roman alphabet has letters; if an exotic
language contains a sound falling between two sounds
familiar to a European,
p , he will hear the alien sound as
alternating between this two;
Exotic languages, like European ones, have groups of
allophones in complementary distribution; whereas each
of us has learned to ignore the differences between
allophones in his own language, we notice such
differences in alien languages because they often
correspond to distinctions which are phonemic for us,
and thus we perceive the alien language as confusing
separate sounds in an irrational way;
8
Boas’ Arguments that There are no
Primitive
i i i Languages (2)
Each of these sources of
misunderstanding between the speakers
of European and exotic languages is
perfectly symmetrical (speakers of an
American Indian language would equally
hear English as containing alternating
sounds.
sounds
9
About the Syntactic and Semantic
Aspects off Language
Two points are often claimed to be the
characteristics of ‘primitive languages’:
1 Many languages fail to distinguish
1.
singular from plural;
2. They
Th deal
d l onlyl in
i the
th concretet andd nott to
t
tolerate the formation of abstract
concepts.
t
10
Boas’ Assumption based on Kwakiutl (a
language of British Columbia he studied)
In Kwakiutl a noun can occur only with an inflection indicating the
possessor so that one can speak of ‘my love’ but not of ‘love’ as a
general phenomenon.
In every language there are certain logical categories which must be
obligatorily expressed whether relevant to a particular message or
not. Ex: a) the distinction between one and more-
more-than one for a
noun is obligatory in English; b) the use of inflection showing
whether
h th theth narrator
t personallyll witnessed
it d the
th action
ti reported,
t d or
he knows of it by evidence or by hearsay, or he merely dreamed it
for a verb is obligatory in Kwakiutl.
Logical
L i l terms
t suchh as quality
lit andd essence (abstract
( b t t nouns)) are
commonplace in European languages; the general notion of ‘love’
made sense to Kwakiutl speakers but it was quite unidiomatic.
11
Bloomfield
He was an American linguistg who led the development
p of
structural linguistics in the United States during the
1930s and the 1940s.
His influential textbook Language, published in 1933,
presented a comprehensive description of American
structural linguistics.
He made significant contributions to Indo
Indo--European
historical linguistics, the description of Austronesian
languages, the description of Sanskrit and description of
languages of the Alqonquian family.
family
He was one of the founding members of the Linguistic
Society of America.
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Bloomfield’s
Bloomfield s Career and Works
The study of American Indian languages of the Algonquian family,
and of certain languages of the Philippine Islands
Language, a book published in 1933
Theepprimee mover
o e bebehindd tthe
e foundation
ou dat o o of tthe
e Linguistic
gu st c Soc
Society
ety o
of
America in 1924, organizing linguistics as a profession
The main points of his theories are similar to Boas; however they
are often stated more explicitly
p y and with more elaboration
Influenced by logical positivism (by Rudolf Carnap and the Vienna
Circle: Either P or not P, empirical), but an active proponent of
positivist ideas as theyy applied
p pp to the studyy of human behavior,,
including language
A monograph on ‘Linguistic Aspects of Science’ 1939 (in
International Encyclopedia
y p of Unified Science))
13
Bloomfield’s
Bloomfield s Behaviorism
He emphasized on the status of linguistics
as a science.
He emphasized on formal procedures for
the analysis of linguistic data.
He was not merely passively influenced by
logical positivism but became an active
proponent
p p of positivist
p ideas as theyy
applied to the study of human behavior,
including language.
14
Bloomfield’s
Bloomfield s Early Studies
Indo
Indo-
do-European
u opea linguistics:historical
gu st cs sto ca GeGermanic
a c
studies, Indo-
Indo-European and Germanic phonology
and morphology, emphasized the
Neogrammarian principle of regular sound
change as a foundational concept in historical
linguistics
g
Sanskrit studies:palatal consonants in Sanskrit,
one article on the Sanskrit grammatical tradition
associated
i t d with
ith Pāṇini
Pā i i
Austronesian linguistics: research on Tagalog, an
Austronesianlanguage spoken in the Philippines
15
Bloomfield’s Algonquian
li
linguistic
i ti Studies
St di
Bloomfield’s
Bloomfield s work on Algonquian
languages had both descriptive and
comparative components
components.
He published extensively on four
Algonquian languages: Fox,
Fox Cree,
Cree
Menominee, and Ojibwe, publishing
grammars lexicons
grammars, lexicons, and text collections
collections.
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