The document discusses the meaning and nature of language according to linguists B.M.H. Strang and Ferdinand de Saussure. It makes three key points:
1) Language is a structured system of signs realized primarily through speech, where the functioning parts are interdependent and condition each other like a network.
2) Ferdinand de Saussure was influential in distinguishing the synchronic and diachronic dimensions of language and the concepts of langue and parole. He viewed language as a system of interconnected elements.
3) De Saussure argued language must be described synchronically as a system, not as separate entities, and that elements are defined relationally within the whole
The document discusses the meaning and nature of language according to linguists B.M.H. Strang and Ferdinand de Saussure. It makes three key points:
1) Language is a structured system of signs realized primarily through speech, where the functioning parts are interdependent and condition each other like a network.
2) Ferdinand de Saussure was influential in distinguishing the synchronic and diachronic dimensions of language and the concepts of langue and parole. He viewed language as a system of interconnected elements.
3) De Saussure argued language must be described synchronically as a system, not as separate entities, and that elements are defined relationally within the whole
The document discusses the meaning and nature of language according to linguists B.M.H. Strang and Ferdinand de Saussure. It makes three key points:
1) Language is a structured system of signs realized primarily through speech, where the functioning parts are interdependent and condition each other like a network.
2) Ferdinand de Saussure was influential in distinguishing the synchronic and diachronic dimensions of language and the concepts of langue and parole. He viewed language as a system of interconnected elements.
3) De Saussure argued language must be described synchronically as a system, not as separate entities, and that elements are defined relationally within the whole
The document discusses the meaning and nature of language according to linguists B.M.H. Strang and Ferdinand de Saussure. It makes three key points:
1) Language is a structured system of signs realized primarily through speech, where the functioning parts are interdependent and condition each other like a network.
2) Ferdinand de Saussure was influential in distinguishing the synchronic and diachronic dimensions of language and the concepts of langue and parole. He viewed language as a system of interconnected elements.
3) De Saussure argued language must be described synchronically as a system, not as separate entities, and that elements are defined relationally within the whole
Dirección General de Cultura y Educación de la Provincia de Buenos Aires – DIEGEP 5649
THE MEANING OF LANGUAGE
Extract from: Modern English Structure by B M H Strang, Professor of English Language and General Linguistics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. (Middle 20th cent.)
STRUCTURALLY, language is an articulated system of signs, primarily realised in the medium
of speech. We shall spend the next few paragraphs considering what this means. It is a system, not a mere collection of parts, because in any given language the functioning parts hang together and condition each other. We can see this most clearly if we go outside our own language and compare its conventions with those of other languages. In vocabulary, for instance, the semantic spread or functional range of Modern English sheep is limited by the co-presence of mutton in the language, as contrasted with that of, say, mouton in French; the semantic spread of Swedish farmor (paternal grandmother) is limited by the presence of mormor (maternal grandmother) in the same vocabulary, as contrasted with that of English grandmother. Each unit is delimited by its neighbours, and therefore all are ultimately interdependent —like the English parochial system in which the borders are all mutually determined and no interstices are left over. The same features can be observed in the organisation of grammar: for instance in Modern English, which has no pronoun dual, the plural is used with reference to, or in connection with, more than one, but in Old English, which had, the plural was used in connection with more than two. A comparable type of mutual conditioning can be observed in the elements of the sound system; and again in the relationships between the various component systems of a language —the question of just what is expressed by means of vocabulary and what by means of grammar in a given language, for instance (consider how you would render Cosi fan tutte into English). By taking examples outside English I have tried to bring out aspects of English structure that might otherwise be overlooked; I do not mean to suggest that all languages somehow or other cover the same ground semantically, for this is not the case. The total semantic coverage of a language depends on the total experience of the speech-community using that language, and experience differs from community to community. When we compare languages, therefore, there are always some similar and some distinctive ranges of meaning expressed. The kind of system language is, is an articulated system. The word articulated is ultimately derived from Latin articulus, diminutive of artus "joint", and it is here used to refer to the property in languages of being able to build up units of one order into units of another order, that is, not merely something bigger, but something functioning in quite a different way from its component parts (compare the difference between single vertebrae and the backbone they compose. In English, for example, the two words but and bit are each made up of three sounds in a given order; the difference between them is made by the middle sound. Now the difference of sound between u and i does not have any significance in itself (see how differently it functions in other paired sequences like hut, hit; fun, fin; sun, sin), but these sounds are the means of making a distinction between two units of a different order from themselves (namely, words). You will notice that at this level the articulations are almost wholly governed by convention; we acquire whole words when we learn our mother tongue, and if we want to be understood we do not form too many new ones for ourselves. But words themselves can be articulated into units of another, more complex order, usually called sentences, and this is where an element of personal creativeness enters into our utterances. If we know a language we can always articulate from its words (if it has words) sentences we have never heard before, and we can count on their being understood by speakers to whom, likewise, they are new.
INSTITUTO SUPERIOR DEL TRADUCTORADO – Calle 6 No. 843 (48 y 49) – TRADUCTORADO OFICIAL 1 SET MATERIAL FOR UNIT 1 cont.
Extract from: A Short History of Linguistics by R H Robins, Professor of General Linguistics at London University, UK. (Middle 20th cent.)
SIGNIFICANTLY, the key figure in the change from nineteenth- to twentieth-century attitudes was the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who first made himself known to scholarship through an important contribution to Indo-European comparative linguistics. Though he published little himself, de Saussure's lectures on linguistics in the early twentieth century so impressed his pupils in Geneva that in 1916 they published his Cours de linguistique générale as far as they could reconstruct it from their own and others' lecture notes and such materials as survived in de Saussure's hand. In the history of linguistics, de Saussure is largely known and studied through what his pupils recollected of him. [...] Historically, de Saussure's ideas may be put under three heads. Firstly, he formalized and made explicit, what earlier linguists had either assumed or ignored, the two fundamental and indispensable dimensions of linguistic study: synchronic, in which languages are treated as self-contained systems of communication at any particular time, and diachronic, in which the changes to which languages are subject in the course of time are treated historically. It was de Saussure's achievement to distinguish these two dimensions or axes of linguistics, synchronic or descriptive, and diachronic or historical, as each involving its own methods and principles and each essential in any adequate course of linguistic study or linguistic instruction (a point that might perhaps be heeded by some latter-day descriptivists). Secondly, he distinguished the linguistic competence of the speaker and the actual phenomena or data of linguistics (utterances), as langue and parole (like so many others, these Saussurean terms have passed untranslated into international currency). While parole constitutes the immediately accessible data, the linguist's proper object is the langue of each community, the lexicon, grammar, and phonology implanted in each individual by his upbringing in society and on the basis of which he speaks and understands his language. Much influenced by the sociological theory of Emile Durkheim, de Saussure perhaps exaggerated the suprapersonal reality of langue over and above the individual, more especially as he recognized that changes in langue proceed from changes made by individuals in their parole, while he yet declared that langue is not subject to the individual's power of change. Thirdly, de Saussure showed that any langue must be envisaged and described synchronically as a system of interrelated elements, lexical, grammatical, and phonological, and not as an aggregate of self-sufficient entities (which he compared to a mere nomenclature). Linguistic terms are to be defined relatively to each other, not absolutely. This is the theory expressed in his statement that a langue is forme, non substance, and illustrated with his well-known metaphors of chessmen and trains, identified and known by their place in the whole system, of the game or the railway network, and not by their actual substantial composition. In a language these interrelations lie on each of the two fundamental dimensions of synchronic linguistic structure, syntagmatic, in line with the succession of utterance, and paradigmatic (associative), in systems of contrastive elements or categories.
Suggested reading: Course in General Linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure.
Enter the topic name in the Knowledge Base search box at the Campus to read it. [You may wish to focus on ‘Introduction’, Chapters III to VI, and ‘General Principles’ (Part I).]
INSTITUTO SUPERIOR DEL TRADUCTORADO – Calle 6 No. 843 (48 y 49) – TRADUCTORADO OFICIAL 2
