Ministry of Higher Education and

Scientific Research
University of Karbala
College of Education
English of Department

The Schools of Linguistics

Prepared by:
Fatima Hassan Al-Maliki

Supervised by:
Asst. Prof. Dr. Hussain Al-Nasrawi
2021

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Structuralism (European)
The scientific study of language did not begin in the18 century; but the years around
1900 happen to have marked an important turning-point in the history of modern
linguistics. Roughly that time independently in Europe and America, linguistics
shifted its orientation in such a way that much nineteenth century work in the subject
Ferdinand de Saussure tentatively suggested that language be seen as a game of
chess, where the history of past moves is irrelevant to the players. Saussure's
suggestion was very notional: his ideas were put together by students from lecture
notes and published posthumously in 1915. But they did prove immensely fruitful,
even in such concepts as langue (the whole language which no one speaker entirely
masters) and parole (an individual's use of language).

Saussure had a theory of meaning. He envisaged language as a series of contiguous

subdivisions marked off on the indefinite planes of ideas and sounds. A word (sign)
was a fusion of concept (signified) and sound-image (signifier) the two being
somehow linked as meaning in the mind. Both signified and signifiers independently
played on their own chess board of possibilities.

The re-orientation that occurred about then was a shift from the “historical
linguistics” or diachronic linguistics or philology that dominated the 19ths century
linguistic research that sought to uncover the relationship among languages for which
families of extant languages descend towards what became known as synchronic
linguistics or the analysis of languages as communicative systems as they exist at a
given point of time. (Sampson, 1980, p. 13).

Saussure defined the concept of (synchronic linguistics) as opposed to (daichronic

linguistics). If any one person can be held responsible for this change of emphasis, it
is the Swiss scholar Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 – 1913) who is sometimes called
‘the father of modern linguistics’. But he died in 1913 without having written any
major work on general linguistics. But his Two of his colleagues or students Charles
Bally and Albert Sechehaye, collected together his lecture notes after his death and
published them under the title Course in General Linguistics (1916). (ibid:39).

A.The Prague School

The Prague school can be traced back to its first meeting under the leadership of V.
Mathesius (1882- 1945) in 1926. Its most important contribution to linguistics is that
it sees language in terms of function.

Three important points concerning the ideas of prague school : first, it was stressed
that the synchronic study of language is fully justified. Second, there was an emphasis
on the systemic character of language. Elements are held to be in functional contrast
or opposition. Third, language was looked on as functional in another sense,that is as
a tool performing a number of essential functions or tasks for the community using it.

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Prominent members:

— Vilém Mathesius
— Roman Jakobson
— Nikolai Trubetzkoy
— René Wellek
— Jan Mukařovský
—

The Prague School’s Major Contribution

Function in the Prague conception:

Trubetzkoy followed his Viennese philosopher colleague Karl Buhler, who
distinguished (Buhler 1934) between the representation function (i.e. that of stating
facts), the expressive function (that of expressing temporary or permanent
characteristics of the speaker), and the conative function (that of influencing the
hearer).

1.The representation function:

It refers to the employment of language in the transmission of factual information.
It is fulfilled characteristically by 3rd person non modal utterances.e.g. John travelled
yesterday.
— The expressive function:
— It refers to the indication of the mood or attitude of the speaker ( or writer).
— Characteristically, it is fulfilled by 1st person utterances in the subjunctive.
— e.g. I am happy to see you.
— The conative function:
— It refers to the use for influencing the person one is addressing or for bringing
about some particular effect.
— It is fulfilled by 2nd person utterances in the imperative.
— e.g. come here.

2.The concept of opposition :

Trubetzkoyan phonology, like that of the American Descriptivists, gives a central role
to the phoneme; but Trubetzkoy, and the Prague School in general were interested
primarily in the paradigmatic relations between phonemes, i.e. the nature of the
oppositions between the 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 into sequences in a language.

Trubetzkoy developed a vocabulary for classifying various types of phonemic

contrast: e.g. he distinguished between
(i) privative oppositions, in which two phonemes are identical except that
one contains a phonetic 'mark' which the other lacks (e.g. / f / ~ / v /, the
'mark' in this case being voice).

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 (ii) gradual oppositions in which the members differ in possessing different
degrees of some gradient property (e.g. / i / ~ / e / ~ / a e / , with respect to
the property of vowel aperture). and
(iii) equipollent oppositions, in which each member has a distinguishing mark
lacking in the others (e.g. / p / ~ / t / ~ / k / ) .
Trubetzkoy's 'archiphoneme' idea is useful in dissolving pseudoproblems. For
instance, in English also the / t / ~ / d / opposition is neutralized, after / s / (there is no
contrast between e.g. still and *sdill); but the sound which occurs in the environment
of neutralization is identical to neither member of the opposition (the sound written t
in still is unaspirated like / d /, though it is voiceless like / t /.

3.Functional sentence perspective (FSP) :

Mathesius explained the terms ' theme' and ' rheme' , and the notion which has
come to be called ' Functional Sentence Perspective' (FSP). FSP is a theory of
linguistic analysis which refers to an 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.
Therefore , the functional sentence perspective (FSP) aims to describe how
information is distributed in sentences. It deals particularly with the effect of the
distribution known (given) (information that is not new to the reader or the hearer)
info and new info in discourse.
— Sally stands on the table .
— subject Predicate
— Theme rheme
— On the table stands Sally.
— Predicate subject
— Theme rheme
Therefore, the subject- predicate distinction is not always the same as theme-rheme
distinction.

4.The notion of neutralization: Archiphoneme

Phonemes that are contrastive in certain environments may not be contrastive in all
environments. In the environments where they do not contrast, the contrast is said to
be neutralized. The neutralized distinction is known as an archiphoneme.e.g. in
English the three nazal phonems are not neutralized.However, in other
environment /m, n, ŋ/ are not contrastive.
— e.g. /m, n, ŋ/ are not contrastive before plosives such as /p, t, k/
— limp
— lint
— link
— only /m/ occurs before /p/
— only /n/ before /t/
— only /ŋ/ before /k/.
—
— The three nazal sounds /m, n, ŋ/ are neutralized before each of the plosives /p, t,
k/.
— → the neutralized distinction is known as archiphoneme.
— → the neutralization of /m, n, ŋ/ before /p, t, k/ could be notated in capital letter as
|N|.

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—
— limp |lɪNp|
— lint |lɪNt|
— link |lɪNk|
—
5.The Theory of Markedness:
The notion of markedness was first developed in Prague school phonology but was
subsequently extended to morphology and syntax, semantics...etc. A marked form is a
non-basic or less natural form and an unmarked form is a basic or a default form.
Markedness in Phonology:
When two phonemes are distinguished by the presence or absence of a single
distinctive feature, one of them is said to be marked and the other unmarked for the
feature in question. e.g. /b/ is marked and /p/ unmarked with respect to voicing.
— Markedness in Morphology:
The regular English verb can be said to be marked for past tense (by the suffixation
of -ed) but to be unmarked in the present. e.g. jumped (the marked form) versus jump
(the unmarked form).
— Markedness in Vocabulary:
In vocabulary the sense of markedness is more abstract, which is independent of the
presence or absence of an overt feature or affix. For example:
— Lion is the unmarked choice in English.
— Lioness is marked.
— Brotherhood is unmarked.
Sisterhood is marked.

B.Universal Grammar
Universal grammar (UG) is the theory of the genetic component of the language
faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that a
certain set of structural rules are innate to humans, independent of sensory
experience. Chomsky and other generativists have argued that many of the properties
of a generative grammar arise from a universal grammar that is innate to the human
brain, rather than being learned from the environment. This means that the child is
born with a biological predisposition to learn language. There are rules of language
that all humans are born with, they are internal, not imitated. Despite superficial
differences, all human languages share a fundamental structure. This structure is a
universal grammar. We have an innate ability to apply this universal grammar to
whatever language we are faced with at birth.
However, the Universal Grammar has been criticized, as some linguists have
argued languages are so diverse that such universality is rare. It is a matter of
empirical investigation to determine precisely what properties are universal and what
linguistic capacities are innate.

Chomsky's theory
The goals of this theory are to describe language as a property of the human mind.
Chomsky has said of this property: “Universal Grammar (UG) is the system of
principles, conditions, and rules that are elements or properties of all human
languages …” . All human beings share part of their knowledge of language; no
matter which language they speak. UG is their common inheritance. IT is the

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description of their genetic endowment, i.e. their language. UG is concerned with the
internal structure of the human mind. According to UG theory the speaker (of any
language) knows a set of principles that apply to all languages.
Despite the traditional linguistics which made vague suggestion about properties of
the mind, UG attempts to offer precise statements based on specific evidence. Each
principle of language that is offered is a claim about the mind of the speaker and the
nature of language acquisition. UG tries to integrate grammar, mind and language
acquisition.

Competence and performance

Chomsky says that native speakers have grammatical competence (i.e. Tacit
knowledge) in their native language.  Chomsky made a distinction between
competence and performance of an ideal speaker-hearer of a language, between the
competence of a language user and the performance of this language user. Chomsky
uses competence to describe the knowledge processed by native users of a language
that enable then to speak and understand their language fluently. This knowledge is
internalized within speakers and not necessarily something they are aware of
possessing. All English speakers, for instance, will know the rules for forming
questions, statements, and commands, but, unless they have studied syntax, will be
unable to say what these rules are.
Performance, on the other hand, is used to describe the actual use of language in
concrete situation. It is the physical entity of the linguistic system in terms of actual
utterances. for instance, the sentence 'I hate literature' has an abstract entity
(competence) and physical entity, a sequence of sounds or letters capable of being
produced (Performance).
Universal grammar is concerned with competence in that it tells what someone
should know to have competence in a language. Theoretically Universal Grammar
(UG) generalises from the grammars of particular I-languages (i.e. Internalised
linguistic system) to the grammars of all possible natural I- languages.

I-Language and E-Language 

Chomsky distinguishes Externalized (E-) language from Internalized (I-)
language. Externalized Linguistic System (E-Language) aims to collect samples of
language and then to describe their properties. It brings order to the set of external
facts that make up the language. It is described in terms of properties of such data
through ’structures’ or ‘patterns.
Internalised Linguistic System (I-Language) , on the other hand, is concerned with
what a speaker knows about a language and where this language knowledge comes
from. It treats language as an internal property of the human mind rather than
something external.

C.Copenhagen School
Copenhagen School A group of linguists who constituted the Copenhagen Linguistic
Circle in the mid-1930s, and who developed an approach to linguistics known as
glossematics. Largely through the work of their main theoretician, Louis Hjelmslev

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(1899–1965), the school developed a philosophical and logical basis for linguistic
theory which was not to be surpassed until the formalization introduced by generative
.grammar ( Crystals(2008).)

The History of the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen

The Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen was founded at 8 p.m. on the 24th September,
1931, on the initiative of Louis Hjelmslev during a private meeting at his home. Prior
to this a preliminary meeting had taken place on the 24th June of the same year.
Present at that meeting were Kaj Barr, later professor of Iranian Philology at the
University of Copenhagen; professor of Romance Philology Viggo Brøndal and his
wife Rosally Brøndal, and Paul Lier, and others..
The inspiration to form such a Circle as an alternative to the more socially orientated
lecture clubs and the like that already existed undoubtedly came from the Prague
Linguistic Circle. Even the titles of the Circle’s publications were copied from the
Prague Circle. The purpose of this founding meeting was to create a study circle of
active members who would develop a new kind of linguistic research - later called
Structuralism.The Circle quickly acquired a wide membership, among them key
figures in Danish linguistics.
The history of the Circle falls into a number of eras: the period from the beginning
in 1931 until 1934, when Hjelmslev’s original plan to get the Circle to function as
both an alternative and a supplement to the Prague phonologists broke down; the
period from 1934 to 1937, when Viggo Brøndal was the Circle’s leader during
Hjelmslev’s stay in Århus, where he and Hans Jørgen Uldall worked together on their
glossematic project; and the period from 1934 to 1942, after Brøndal died and
Hjelmslev overtook the position as chairman. Hjelmslev continued as chairman until
shortly before his death in 1965, and from 1966 the Circle and its publication
activities were revitalised thanks to the great efforts of Henning Spang- Hanssen and
in particular Eli Fischer-Jørgensen (NET1).
Main principles
The school was one of the most important centres of structuralism together with the
Geneva School and the Prague School
Brøndal emphasised that formal properties of a sytemshould be kept apart from its
substance. Accordingly, Hjelmslev presented, as the key figure of Copenhagen
School, a formal linguistic fundament, which was later known as glossematics (the
double duality of the linguistic sign). He formulated his linguistic theory together with
Hans Jørgen Uldall as an attempt to analyse the expression (phonetics and grammar)
and the meaning of a language on a coherent basis. He assumed that language wasn't
the only instrument of communication (cf. the communication of deaf-mutes), and he
was interested in a general theory of the signs of communication, semiotics or
semiology.
More than the other schools, the Copenhagen School referred to the teachings of
Saussure (https://enacademic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/6532), even though it was in many
aspects connected with older traditions. Thus, it tried once more to combine logics
and grammar. At any rate, Hjelmslev has taken over the psychological interpretation

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of the linguistic sign and thereby extended his study of the sign further than language
as such.
The principal ideas of the school are:
A language consists of content and expression.1 .
A language consists of a succession and a system.2 .
Content and expression are interconnected by commutation.3 .
4. There are certain relations in the succession and the system
5. There are no one-to-one correspondents between content and expression, but the
signs may be divided into smaller components.

Even more than Saussure, the Copenhagen School is interested in the langue rather
than parole. It represented in a pure form the idea that language is a form and not a
substance. It studied the relational system within the language on a higher level of
abstraction (NET2).

To sum up:
- Their main Inspiration was the Prague Linguistic Circle, which had been founded in
1926.
- It was, in the first place, a forum for discussion of theoretical and methodological
problems in linguistics
3-Membership of the group grew rapidly and a significant list of publications resulted,
including an irregular series of larger works under the name Travaux du Cercle
Linguistique de Copenhague.
- Initially, their interest lay mainly in developing an alternative concept of the
phoneme, but it later developed into a complete theory which was coined
glossematics, and was notably influenced by structuralism( NET3).

D.Generative Phonology
GP is an approach of generative linguistics whose aim is to establish a set of rules,
principles or constraints efficient to produce the surface phonetic forms of a language
and to model the internalized linguistic knowledge of native speakers (Chapman and
Routlege, 2009:77). It was a central idea in linguistic research throughout the 1960s
and although it has undergone reforms and changes in subsequent decades, it
continues to be the dominant framework for many developments in phonological
theory (ibid.). It is a component of generative grammar that "assigns the correct
phonetic representations to utterances in such a way as to reflect a native speaker's
internalized grammar" .

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 This school of phonology was founded by N. Chomsky and M. Halle near the end
of the 1950s. It is built on N. S. Trubetzkoy's idea of phonemic opposition and R.
Jakobson's work on distinctive features. It draws on the general aspiration of
generative grammar to specify a set of rules capable of producing all and only the
surface forms of a natural language, focusing on its speech sounds.
In SP, three levels of representation are recognized: (1) allophonic or phonetic, (2)
phonemic, and (3) morphophonemic (ibid.). The allophonic or phonetic level offers a
more or less accurate transcription of the actual speech event [Kæ?ts] (cats). At the
phonemic level, only contrasting speech sounds are represented /kæts/. At the
morphophonemic level, every morpheme has a unique representation //kæt-p//,
where //p// is a morphophoneme that abstracts over the plural allomorphs /-s/, /-z/, /-
iz/.

GP and the Sound Pattern of English (SPE)

SPE is the major contribution of Chomsky and Halle to phonology; it is an attempt

to build a description of English phonology on a transformational generative theory of
language. In it, Chomsky and Halle attempt to state explicitly the phonological rules
underlying the speech sounds of native English speakers.

Levels of Phonological Representation

In SPE, a distinction is made between two significant levels of phonological
representation, both attribute with psychological reality. The first is the level of
systematic phonemic/phonological representation, otherwise known as underlying
representation. This level shows the most basic form of a word before any
phonological rules have been applied to it , thus , a level at which all redundant
(predictable) phonetic features were stripped away. Those features were then supplied
by phonological rules, which yielded a derived level of representation known as the
systematic phonetic level of representation (which is the second level ;
Carr ,2008 :148). The second level reflects the form of the word as it is spoken and
heard.
So , GP is based on the combined notions of rule and representation, coupled with
the idea that rules apply to underlying representations to yield derived
representations. The transition from an underlying representation to a surface
phonetic representation is known as a derivation. GP assigns the correct phonetic
representations to utterances in such a way that a native speaker's internalized
grammar is best reflected.

E.The London School

It is significant that British linguistics was founded in 1916 as a response by
Government to the need for an institute to study the languages and cultures of the
Empire. The British Empire was to the London School what the American Indian was
to American Descriptivists; however, there was a difference. The Americans were
dealing largely with languages on the edge of distinction, which needed to be
recorded for their scientific interest as a matter of urgency, while London linguistics

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were typically dealing with languages that had plenty of speakers and which faced the
task of evolving into efficient vehicles of communication for modern civilizations.
The London school of linguistics is involved with the study of language on the
descriptive plane (synchrony), the distinction of structural (syntagmatics) and
systemic (paradigmatics) concepts, and the social aspects of language. In the
forefront of it is semantics. The school’s primary contribution to linguistics has been
the situational theory of meaning in semantics (the dependence of the meaning of a
linguistic unit on its use in a standard context by a definite person.
In this school, emphasis has been put on phonetics. Phonetic study in the
modern sense was pioneered by Henry Sweet who based his historical studies on a
detailed understanding of the workings of the vocal organs. Sweet's phonetics was
practical as well as academic; he was concerned with systematizing phonetic
transcription in connection with problems of language-teaching and of spelling. His
general approach of phonetics was continued by Daniel Johns who invented the
system of cardinal reference-points which made transcription possible in case of
vowels.
The man who turned linguistics proper into a recognized distinct academic
subject in Britain was H.R. Firth. Until quite recently, the majority of university
teachers of linguistics in Britain were people who had trained under Firth's
sponsorship and whose work reflected his ideas.
Firth's own theorizing concerned mainly phonology and semantics. The main
characteristics that distinguish Firthian phonology from phonemic phonology are: (1)
the polysystemic approach and (2) the prosodies being the principal elements of
phonological representation. This implies the consideration of the phenomena
accruing to a sound: the number and nature of syllables, the character of sound
sequences, morpheme boundaries, stress, and so on. The distinctive function is
considered to be the primary function of a phoneme.
For Firth, a phonology was a structure of systems of choices, and systems of
choices were systems of meaning. Similarly, practitioners of London School
introduced grammatical considerations into their phonological analysis such as
devoting a good deal of attention to intonation, which an area of phonology for which
the claim of direct phonological\semantic correlation is more tenable.
Malinowski, another linguist in London School, has his own view of language
that exceeds being means of transfusing ideas from the head of speaker to that of the
listener. For him, words are tools, and the 'meaning' of a tool is its use. He coined the
term phatic communion whose function in speech is to create or maintain sentiment
between speakers. English examples of this are 'How do you do?' and 'Nice day
today.' Such expressions or phrases, for him, are empty ones, as they represent aspects
of 'telling' rather than 'doing'. Also, he stressed the existence of utterances which
Austin later on called 'performatives'.
'Context of situation' is the notion that Malinowski and Firth use to clarify their
idea of meaning . Utterances become comprehensible only in the context of the whole
life of which they form part. Lyons exposes this notion as acceptability or
appropriateness.

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 Another field of linguistics being considered in London School is syntax. Syntax
has been carried out by Halliday. In this school, a syntactic analysis is called
'systemic grammar'. A 'system' in Firthian terms is a set of options that one makes in
deciding to utter one particular sentence out of the infinite sentences one's language
makes available. In systemic grammar, the central component is a chart of the full set
of choices available in constructing a sentence, with a specification of the
relationships between choices. The London School is more interested in stating the
range of options open to the speaker than in specifying how any particular set of
choices is realized as a sequence of words. In addition, it aims at providing a
taxonomy for sentences in which they are descriptively classified.
At the end, there are two problems concerning systemic theory; one is related to
Firth and the other is to Halliday. First, Firth claims that phonological choices have
direct semantic correlates. However, A phonological system provides a set of choices
which is not even isomorphic to the system of alternative messages that humans want
to exchange; therefore, most relationships between sound and meaning are indirect.
Second, Halliday introduces into syntax the notion 'rank'. 'Rank' refers to a scale of
sizes of grammatical units: the lowest-ranking unit is morpheme, the highest-ranking
is the sentence, and for any given language there will be a fixed number of
intermediate ranks. This in fact appears as a new unexpected universal of syntactic
structure: but London School is not in general interested in linguistic universals. Thus,
Mathews argues that this notion is empty or false.

REFERENCES

 Chomsky, N. and Halle, M. (1968). The Sound pattern of English. New York:
Harper and Row.
 Clements, G and Hume, E. (1995). The internal organization of speech
sounds. In Goldsmith (1995), 245–306.
 Cléments, G., and Keyser, S. (1983). CV Phonology: A Generative Theory of
the Syllable. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
 Coleman, J. (1995). ''Declarative lexical phonology''. In J. Durand and F.
Katamba, (eds.)
 Crystal, D. (2003). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics.
London:Blackwell Publishing.
 NET1 : https://lingvistkredsen.ku.dk/english/about/. Retrieved at 15-11-2019
 NET2 : https://enacademic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/11070476. Retrieved at 15-11-
2019
 NET3: https://www.slideshare.net/JohanaFollowill/tema-2-the-copenhagen-
school. Retrieved at 15-11-2019
 Sampson< G. (1980). Schools of Linguistics: Competition and Evolution.
London: Hutchinson.

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