FILMORE’S CASE GRAMMAR

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Generative Semantics

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Formalism: Noam Chomsky

Formal language theory, the discipline which studies formal grammar and language, is a branch of applied mathematics.

Its applications are found in theoretical computer science, theoretical linguistics, formal semantics, mathematical logic, and other areas.

Formalism or generative grammar is the third predominant linguistic school of the twentieth century. This theory is mostly influence by Noam Chomsky and his concept of generative grammar, which was firstly presented in Syntactic Structures (1957).

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, historian, political critic, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. In addition to his work in linguistics, he has written on war, politics, and mass media, and is the author of over 100 books. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem.

The linguistic formalism derived from Chomsky can be characterized by a focus on innate universal grammar, and a disregard for the role of stimuli.

The formalism concentrates on the set of rules a language has (competence), and not on the usage of this set when producing phrases (performance). Competence is determined on the basis of an abstract ideal speaker of language. Hence, there is no analysis of empirical data or corpora. Whereas language in functionalist approaches is contemplated as a "tool" with communicative functions, it is considered as "a setof sentences" in formalism.

Chomsky´s competence-performance distinction led to his formal approach. The formal approach focuses on the structure of the language, emphasizing the deductive properties of the language system (generative rules, algorithms): looking patterns within the linguistics elements.

A generative grammar is a system of explicit rules that assign to each sequence of phones, whetherof the observed corpus or not, a structural description that contains all information about how this sequence of phones is represented on each of the several linguistic levels - in particular, information as to whether this sequence of phones is a properly formed or grammatical sentence.ACTIVITY

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American Structuralism: Leonard Bloomfield

Behaviorism. It is a theory based on that behavior is acquired through conditioning. Some behaviors, such as acting, thinking, and feeling, can be scientifically observed and measured. Language, as a behavior, is a set  of habits acquired by operant conditioning and reinforcement.  

Binarism. A principle of analysis requiring that a linguistic system, as a phonological, case, or semantic system, be represented as a set of binary oppositions.

Constituent. A word, phrase, or clause forming a part of a larger construction. A linguistic element considered as part of a construction. 

Dialect. A regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting together with them a single language.

Endocentric. Having the same grammatical function as one of its immediate constituents that does not modify the other immediate constituent

Empirism. The view that experience, especially of the senses, is the only source of knowledge, and that knowledge cannot extend beyong experience.

Exocentric. When a phrase or construction does not follow the grammatical behavior of either constituent.

Hypostasis. Is a relationship between a name and a known quantity, as a cultural personification of an entity or quality.

Lexicon. The vocabulary of a particular language, field, social class, person, etc.

Mentalism. The doctrine that objects of knowledge has no existence except in the mind of the perceiver.

Syncategorematic. Not capable of being used as a term by itself.

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Anthropological Linguistics

The study of language within the context of anthropology and the inevitable overlap between the studies of language and culture has been long recognized by the fathers of the discipline of anthropology, which has been known as Ethnolinguistics. Sir Edward Taylor, Marett, and Malinowski works began with the conviction that language and culture need an integral study, particularly in case of the simple societies of the world.

     Anthropological linguist refer to a four field study of human beings that contains the fallowing fields: Physical Anthropology, Archeology, Socio Cultural Anthropology and Linguistic Anthropology.

     First fieldworks were done in linguistically oriented case studies and on the investigation of single languages concerning their association to culture or cultural modes of thought.

     There are different approaches within anthropological linguistics, Malinowski’s investigation of planting activities that combine language with physical activities led him to conclude that language is one of the main cultural forces – an adjunct of physical activities and by this an equivalent of gestures and movement. Malinowski furthermore concluded that:

-          Verbal acts are part of human behavior

-          Language is an autonomous cultural aspect with unique, unreplaceable function

-          A single language is determined by its users’ needs and interests

-          Language is part of planned behavior

     However, the single most outstanding contribution to the study of linguistic anthropology came from Franz Boas during the first quarter of the 20^th century. Boas, Sapir, Bloomfield and many others continued their interest in the study of language as an anthropological exercise with the rejection of mentalism and reinforcing the descriptive method.

     In 1911 Franz Boas published his Handbook of American Indian Language. Part 1, and set a direction for American linguistics. In this book Boas demonstrates the relationship between linguistics and anthropology. He discussed this in terms of two interrelated issues. One is the practical need for an anthropologist to learn the language of the indigenous people where (s) he intends  to work, because there are topics like poetry, prayers, oratory and personal and local names, which could be most effectively approaches through learning the local language. The second one is more theoretical, as there are a whole lot of ‘unconscious phenomena’ – such as the classification of ideas and expressed by same or related terms, metaphors and their uses etc.— which can only be best understood by learning the indigenous language.

     Boas empirically looked for the cultural root. The abstract linguistic theorizing, for him and others descriptivist, was a means to an end of practical description of particular language, rather than thinking of individual languages as sources of data for the construction of a general theory of language.

     Boas aptly remarked, “Whatever our literary and artistic or our philosophical and religious grasp of human ways, the scientific understanding of man will in all likelihood grow from our understanding of language…”

     Sapir and Whorf and the emergence of cognitive anthropology during the middle of 20^th century, connecting language with cultural analysis, consolidated into new areas of ethnolinguistics. Studies of the native perception of color, diseases, kinship etc. opened up a new dimension to understanding of culture with the help of language.

     Edward Sapir ranged widely through and around his subject, finding out its relations with literature, music, anthropology, and psychology, thus the influence of language on every department of human life. His Selected Writings in Mandelbaum’ Language, Culture and Personality shows the width of his scholarship. Descriptivism in general had a shortcoming in that one of its key principles was that a general theory of human language was unimportant and hence, less emphasis on theorization and more on the analytic practice.

     Between the main Sapir’s contributions are: Classification of Native American languages, Linguistic theory, Anthropological thought and Breadth of languages studied.ACTIVITY

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The London School

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The Copenhagen School

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Functional Linguistics: The Prague School

The Prague school practiced a special style of synchronic linguistics and although most of the scholars whom one thinks of as members of the school worked in Prague or at least in Czechoslovakia, the term also to cover certain scholars elsewhere who consciously adhered to the Prague style. The hallmark of Prague linguistics was that it saw language in terms of function, they analysed a given language with a view to showing the respective function played by the various structural components in the use of the entire language. Prague linguistics look at a motor, seeking to understand what jobs the various component were doing and how the nature of one component determined the nature of others. They used the notions ‘phoneme’ and ‘morpheme’ and to go beyond description to explanation, saying not just what language were like but why they were the way they were. One example of functional explanation in Mathesius´s own work concerns he use of terms commonly translated theme andrheme, and the notion which has come to be called Functional Sentence Perspective by recent writers working in the Prague tradition. According to Matheusius , the need for continuity means that a sentence will commonly falls into two parts: the theme which refers to something about which the hearer already knows and the rheme, which states some new facts about that given topic. The theme/rheme division will correspond to the syntactic distinction between subject and predicate, or between subject-plus-transitive-verb and object. Many Prague linguists were actively interested in questions of standardizing linguistics usages. The notion of ‘functional onomatology’, which treats the coining of novel vocabulary items as a task which different language solve in characteristically different ways. Trubetzkoy and the Prague school in general were interested in the paradigmatic relations between phonemes i.e the nature of the oppositions between the sequences phonemes that potentially contrast with one another at a given point in a phonological structure, rather than in the syntagmatic relations which determine how phonemes may be organized in a language. Trubetzkoy developed a vocabulary for classifying various types of phonemic contrast. In the Principles he established a rather sophisticated system of phonological typology – that is a system which enables us to say what kind of phonology a language has, rather than simply treating, its phonological structure in the take-it-or-leave-it American fashion as a set of isolated facts. Also he distinguished three functions that can be served by a phonological opposition. The obvious functions – that of keeping different words or longer sequences apart – he called the distinctive function, the delimitative function – the oppositions between presence and absence of stress—and the culminative function –the position of the stress. Karl Buhler distinguished between the representation function (i.e that of stating facts), the expressive functions (i.e that of expressing temporary or permanent characteristics of the speaker) and the connotative functions (that influenced the hearer). Another manifestation of the Prague attitude that language is a tool which has a job to do is the fact that members of that School were much preoccupied with the aesthetic, literary aspects of language use. Mathesius , and following him various other members of the Prague School, had the notion that sound changes were to be explained the result of a striving towards a sort of ideal balance or resolution of various conflicting pressures. The Prague School argues for system in diachronic too, and indeed it claims that linguistic change is determined by synchronic état de langue. Martinet was heavily influenced by Prague thinking from an early stage in his career. He set out his theories in the book Économie des ChangementsPhonétiques. The therapeutic view of sound-change is indeed reminiscent of the economists’ doctrine of the invisible hand, according to which the various countervailing forces in an economy tend towards an ideal equilibrium. One of the key concepts in Martinet´s account of sound-change is that of the functional yield of a phonological opposition. The functional yield of an opposition is the amount of work it does in distinguishing utterances which are otherwise alike. Martinet argues, the pronunciation of similar phonemes will overlap and will tend to merge. Roman OsipovichJakobson was one of the founding members of the Prague Linguistic Circle. The most important aspect of Jakobson´s work is his phonological theory. He is interested in thephonemes into their component features rather than in the distribution of phonemes. The essence of Jakobson´s approach to phonology is the notion that there is a relatively simple, orely, universal ‘psychological system’ of sound underlying the chaotic wealth of different kinds of sound observed by the phonetician. For him only a small group of phonetic parameters are intrinsically fill to play a linguistically distinctive role; despite surface appearances each of these parameters is of the rigidly two-valued type and precedence. Jakobson substantiate his belief that the phonological universals are determined by ‘deep’ psychological principles rather than by relatively uninteresting facts about oral discussion of synesthetic effects: that is, cases where perception in one sensory mode. One of the characteristics of the Prague approach to language was a readiness to acknowledge that a given language might include a range of alternative ‘systems’, ‘registers’, or ‘styles’ were American Descriptivists tended to insist on treating a language as a single unitary system. Prague scholars were particularly interested in the way that a language provides a speaker with a range of speech-styles appropriate to different social settings. This aspect has recently been developed into a rich and sophisticated theory by the American William Labov. Labov´s work is based on recorded interviews with sizable samples of speakers of various categories in some speech-community, the interviews being designed to elicit examples of some linguistic forms –a variable –which is known to be realized in a variety of ways in that community. The Prague Labov is among the linguists who have taken the social dimension of language most seriously; and they have ended by destroying Saussure’s sharp separation between synchronic and diachronic study. ACTIVITY

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The Study of Language

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