L3 Linguistics Dr.

Hadi

Lecture 1 : Revision
Modern Linguistics (Structuralism)

1- The Birth of Modern Linguistics

Although it is widely known that modern linguistics started with the publication of the
seminal work of Ferdinand De Saussure, “Course in General Linguistics”, the available
literature indicates that the real date of the emergence of modern linguistics goes back to the
late 19th century. That is, the nineteenth-century linguists developed perspectives and
assumptions that laid the groundwork for 20th-century linguistics. It is in the 19th century that
the shift of focus from purely historical concerns of changes in languages over time to the
idea that a language is a system of systems stimulated at a particular point in time could be
reviewed. Modern linguistics is often viewed to have to rise with those grammarian
philologists who, for some time, thought that to study a language in a scientific way; they had
to create the procedures of objectivity. This means they sought to abandon both prescriptive
grammar and the old tradition of philological investigation. Next, at the beginning of the 20th
century, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand De Saussure (1857-1913) put the real foundations of
modern linguistics. For this, he is acknowledged as the Founding Father of modern
linguistics. His work has proved a rich field for subsequent investigations and has inspired
numerous linguists.

2. Traditional Grammar versus Modern Linguistics

To understand the principles of modern linguistics better, it is appropriate to see the
similarities and differences between traditional grammar and modern linguistics:
▪ Modern linguistics regards the spoken, and not the written, language as primary. In the past,
traditional grammarians had overstressed the importance of the written form of language.
However, modern linguistics considers the spoken language more important since speech is
the natural and first medium of communication.
▪ Modern linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive. Modern linguistics is concerned with
what people actually say, not what people should say. This markedly contrasts with traditional

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grammar since traditional grammarians were more interested in what was wrong, and what
was not wrong in a language.
▪ Modern linguistics is synchronic. As opposed to traditional grammar, modern linguistics
claimed the crucial need to describe language at a particular point in time, not the search for
laws in language change over time, that is the diachronic description of language as De
Saussure described it.

3. Structural Linguistics
The available literature argues that structural linguistics came as a reaction to the comparative
study of language in its historical development, especially its actual use. The Swiss linguist
Ferdinand De Saussure initiated this new linguistic theory. The Swiss professor and linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure is sometimes thought of as the father of modern linguistics. Although
Saussure was well known in his lifetime for his work in the history of Indo-European
languages (comparative linguistics) , his most influential work was not published until after
his death, when some of his students got together and, on the basis of their lecture notes,
reconstructed the course in linguistics that he had taught in Geneva. The Cours de
linguistiquegénérale [1916] became one of the key texts in linguistics, and ushered in the era
of structuralism. In Europe there was a parallel development of structural linguistics,
influenced most strongly by Ferdinand de Saussure, his approach has been widely adopted in
other fields under the broad term "Structuralism".

Roman Jakobson first used the term “structuralism” in 1929. Roman Jakobson, (1896-
1982): Russian-American linguist and literary critic, from Moscow. He coined the term
structural linguistics. In Czechoslovakia in the late 1920’s and the 30’s. Jakobsonand few
colleagues, most notably N. S. Trubetzkoy, developed what came to be known as the Prague
school. Jakobson was influential in the development of structuralism.

Structural linguistics, an approach to linguistics which treats language as an

interwoven structure, in which every item acquires identity and validity only in relation to the
other items in the system. All linguistics in the 20 c is structural in this sense, as opposed to
much work in the 19c, when it was common to trace the history of individual words.
Structural linguistics was established in the 1920 ’s and 1930’s as an approach distinct
from that of the neogrammarian school, which predominated in the late 19 th century and
focused exclusively on the history of linguistic elements and sound changes.

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The basic principles of De Saussure’s structural linguistics are defined in his common
dichotomies: Langue and parole/Signified and signifier/Syntagmatic and
paradigmatic/synchrony and diachroniy

4.De Saussure Diachotomies

In the Cours, Saussure made a number of fundamental distinctions which are still basic to
linguistic thinking. Several of De Saussure revelations about the nature of language,
revolutionized the way linguistics is viewed and had a profound impact on language studies
up to these days, De Saussure distinguished (differentiated) clearly between certain items,
These are outlined below :

1-Langue vs Parole

Saussure says there are two sides to language: langue and parole. While the French terms
are generally used in English, they are sometimes translated as ‘language’ and ‘speech’
respectively, though not without some danger of ambiguity. LANGUE is that part of
Language which ‘is not complete in any individual, but exists only in the collectivity’
(Saussure [1916]: 30. PAROLE, on the other hand, is observable in the behaviour of the
individual. According to Saussure, it is not homogeneous. Langue is characterized as a
system and parole is the application of this system; langue is social and parole is individual.
De Saussure , suggests that when an orchestra plays a symphony, the symphony exists
externally to the way in which it is performed: that existence is comparable to langue in
language study. The actual performance, which may contain idiosyncrasies or errors, is to be
compared to parole.

2-Synchrony versus Diachrony

We can study a given language in two ways, Saussure maintains. The first is that we can
look at the language as it is (or was) at any particular point in time. Thus we might study the
syntax of American English in the early twenty-first century, or the phonology of
seventeenth-century French or the patterns of compounding in Classical Chinese. These are
all SYNCHRONIC studies (syn- ‘alike’, chronos ‘time’). The alternative is to look at the way
in which a language develops or changes over time. In this way we might consider the
development of the English verb system, or changes in Arabic phonology from the classical
period until today. These are DIACHRONIC studies (dia- ‘through’, chronos ‘time’).

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3- Paradigmatic versus Syntagmatic

Paradigmatic and syntagmatic are contrasting terms in structural linguistics. Every item of
language has a paradigmatic relationship with every other item which can be substituted for it
(such as cat with dog), and a syntagmatic relationship with items which occur within the same
construction. The relationships are like axes, vertical and horizontal

On the lexical level, paradigmatic contrasts indicate which words are likely to belong to
the same word class (part of speech): cat, dog, parrot in the diagram are all nouns, sat, slept,
perched are all verbs. Syntagmatic relations between words enable one to build up a picture
of co-occurrence restrictions within SYNTAX, On the semantic level, paradigmatic
substitutions allow items from a semantic set to be grouped together, for example Angela
came on Tuesday (Wednesday, Thursday, etc.), while syntagmatic associations indicate
compatible combinations. These differences are of two kinds: syntagmatic (concerning
positioning) and paradigmatic (concerning substitution). Saussure called them latter
associative relations.

4-Signifier (signifiant) and Signified (signifié)

Saussure insisted that the linguistic sign has two aspects : a sound side and a meaning
side. The two are tightly linked within a speech community, and can be seen as being the two
sides of the same playing card, but we must nevertheless keep these two aspects of the sign
separate from each other in our technical understanding of the way in which language
functions. The concept of a tree may be carried by the sounds /tri/, but that concept is not to
be equated with that series of sounds. The sign unites the physical set of sounds (the signifier,
or signifiant) with a particular mental image (the signified or signifié). Note that real-world
tree do not feature here. The sign links our mental image of a tree with a particular set of
sounds, not a real tree. The real tree has a very indirect relationship with the sound sequence
/tri/. The same argument could be repeated for the series of hand-shapes and gestures in sign-
languages and their link to a particular meaning.

The linguistic sign is arbitrary; the combination of signified and signifier is an arbitrary
one; by this De Saussure means there is no natural link between signifier and signified only
onomatopoeic words are less arbitrary because the sound of the signifier seems in some ways

imitative.