LINGUISTIC SCHOOLS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, nineteenth century linguistics development of linguistics structural linguistics characteristic of structural linguistics

LINGUISTIC SCHOOLS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

A Grammatical model of a language is an attempt to represent systematically and overtly what the native speaker of that language intuitively knows. A model is thus a system of rules that relates patterned sounds to predictable meanings and which reflects a speaker’s ability to ‘make infinite use of finite means’.

Traditional Latin-influenced models

Study ofthe nature and strcture of language goes back at least as far as Plato and Aristotle for western European languages.Latin grammarians adopted the Greek model for their own language and since Greek and Latin were stucturally very similar, the belief grew that grammatical categories which were valid for Greek and Latin were valid for all languages.In Latin, a noun like ‘dominus’ meaning ‘lord’ could be declined as follows:                                    Singular                       pluralNominative                  dominus                      dominiVocative                      domine                                    dominiAccusative                   dominum                     dominosGenitive                       domini                         dominorumDative                          domino                        dominisAblative                       domino                     

  dominis            Although Latin described six cases in the noun in both the singular and the plural, there are only eight distinct forms of ‘dominus’, the dative and ablative being the same and the vocative plural. Grammarians who followed the Latin model for English often declined English nouns as follows:                                    Singular                       pluralNominative                  lord                              lordsVocative                      O lord                          O lordsAccusative                   lord                              lordsGenitive                       lord’s                           lords’Dative                          to the lord                   to the lordsAblative                       by/with/from               by/with/from the lords                                    The lord          If we pronounce the genitive singular, we will notice that it is identical in sound to the nominative plural, a feature that is shared by many Indo-European Latin. If we consider only the simple present of ‘portare’ the equivalent of ‘carry’, we find that it is marked for person and number:

1st sing.                       Porto                           I carry2nd sing.                      Portas                          you (sing.) carry3rd sing.                      Portat                          he/she/it carries1st pl.                           Portamus                     we carry2nd pl.                         Portatis                        you (pl.) carry3rd pl.                          Portant                                    they carry

The equivalent English system has only two distinct forms, namely ‘carry’ and ‘carries’ but marks the gender o the subject (as being masculine, feminine or neuter) in the third person singular.Latin oriented grammars failed because they did not recognise that each language is unique in its organisation and patterns. Their strength lay in the fact that  they recognised that languages were complex and flexible and that, at some level, languages wre fundamentally similar.

Structuralism            In the early part of this century, grammars of languages produced in the US often differed considerably from those produced in Britain.Linguistic who worked on such languages carried over the skills and insights they acquired into their examination of English.            Structuralism had one of its clearest statements in Leonard Bloomfield’s Language, published in 1933. This model of grammar is still influential and worthy detailed comment. Structuralists began with the premise that each language was unique and must be described in trms of its own individual patterning.            Structuralists envisaged language as a highly structured, predictable system where one cuold move from suond to sentence, discovering the significant units at each level and providing rules for combininh them. They started with sound and defined a ‘phoneme’ as the smallest unit of a languages’s sound system. Each language had an inventory of sounds and a linguist’s task was to establish which phonemes were significant in the language being described.Nouns, for example diffred in form between singular and pural, with plurality being indicated by means of adding /s/, /z/ or /iz/ to the singular, thus:            Gnat + /s/        >  gnats            Tree + /z/         >  trees            Horse + iz/       >  horsesbut were less statisfactory for the irregular parts:            foot                 foot + plural    = feet               (and not ‘foots’)            man                 man + plural    =men

Scale and Category

            This model of grammars also referred to as ‘systemic’ grammar and it evolved mainly due to the work of the British linguist Michael Halliday. This model of English is based on the existence of choice wthin language. The esential idea is that at any given place in a structure the language permitss choice, a choice that may be extremely large or quite limited:            He                   saw                  his                    friend              on                    Monday            She                  met                  that                  person              last                   Tuesday            They                greeted                        the                   workman         on                    SundayIt is most resrricted with regard to ‘on’ and ‘Monday’ in that only ‘on’ and ‘last’ fit into the preposition slot and there are only seven weekdays. Generalising, we can show the choice by such a formula as:            Nominal + V

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