Lecture Two

Mila university Center
Linguistics third year

Teacher: Dr. BENNACER Fouzia
Lecture Two
The Rise of Structuralism
2. American Structural Linguistics
Franz Boas (1858- 1942) is considered the founder of American linguistics and American
anthropology. His major concern was to obtain information on Native American languages and
cultures before they disappeared.
Edward Sapir -Boas' student- (1884–1939) did first-hand fieldwork on many American
Indian languages, contributed to historical linguistics (in Indo-European, Semitic, and numerous
Native American families). Sapir defended the perception that each language has its own sound
system, within which a determinate set of speech sounds are distinguished by specific features.
The Whorf (or Sapir-Whorf) hypothesis (known also as linguistic determinism/ linguistic
relativism) holds that a speaker's perception of the world is organized or constrained by the
linguistic categories his or her language offers, that language structure determines thought, how
one experiences and hence how one views the world. Whorf (1956 p. 20) claimed that “ people
who use languages with very different grammars are led by these grammars to typically different
observations and different values for outwardly similar observations”.
Leonard Bloomfield (1887–1949) is credited with giving American structuralism its
fundamental form, making linguistics an autonomous field of science. Bloomfield's (1933)
“Language” is considered a milestone in linguistics in which he put rigorous methods ‘discovery
Procedures’ (Immediate Constituent Analysis ICA) which are rules and principles that would
enable a linguist to discover in an exact way the description of any language. This book showed
that Bloomfield was influenced by both De Saussure's thinking and behaviorist psychology. He
defended that language study should deal objectively and systematically with observable data
and describe what is being seen -external not internal-, hence, linguistics should focus on form
not meaning. Henceforth, Bloomfield’s ICA was criticised for neglecting meaning, not being
able to give clear directions in the case of binary cuttings such as: (That nice, efficient, old-
fashioned secretary) and the problem of pre-position and post-position, not being able to show
the relationship between sentences (passive/ active, affirmative/ negative…), not being able to
explain ambiguities in sentences.
Till then, structural linguistics was influenced by psychological behaviourism; in other
words, the psychologist can account for mental states through observing behaviour, the linguist
similarly can discover and describe language through describing already produced patterns.
However, this linguistic model was rejected by Chomsky who clarified that the corpus may
contain errors as is may not include enough illustrations of the phenomenon under investigation
(Sadiqi & Ennaji, 1999).
Linguistics since 1957 (the publication of Chomsky's Syntactic Structures), has been
dominated by Chomsky’s (1928-) ideas. Unlike the Bloomfieldians, Chomsky brought back
mentalism. He criticized Bloomfieldian linguistics for being too ambitious and too limited in
scope; ambitious in that it was unrealistic to expect providing rules for a perfect description from
a corpus (revolution against discovery procedures), and it was too limited because it concentrated
only on already produced utterances while the language has infinite number of utterance
(linguistic creativity). Therefore, a grammar -for Chomsky- should be more than a catalogue of
old utterances, it should also take into account possible future utterances.
Similar to De Saussure’s notion of langue/Parole, Chomsky introduced Competence/
performance. “Competence” id what a native speaker knows, implicitly, of his or her language.
Performance is the individual production of actual utterances, the latter can be affected by
physical and psychological situations of the native speakers including memory limitations,
distractions, shift of attention …, hence, performance is not an accurate realization of
competence.
For him, a grammar which describes actual utterances is a descriptive grammar, and a
grammar which consists of a set of rules which specify sequences of language that are possible
and those impossible is a generative grammar. Thus, the goal of a grammar is to account for the
native speaker's “competence” which enable them to produce or generate new sentences. The
notion of generative grammar was invented to make explicit the notion of “competence”; a
generative grammar is a formal system (of rules, later of principles and parameters) which makes
explicit the finite mechanisms available to the brain to produce infinite sentences in ways that
have empirical consequences and can be tested as in the natural sciences.
Initiating the era of transformational generative grammar, Chomsky redirected the goal of
linguistic theory towards attempting to provide a rigorous and formal characterization of the
notion “possible human language,” called “Universal Grammar.” In his view, the aim of
linguistics is to go beyond the study of individual languages to determine what the universal
properties of human language in general are, and to establish the “universal grammar” that
accounts for the range of differences among human languages. The theory of grammar relies on
certain general principles which govern the form of the grammar and the nature of the categories
with which it operates. These principles are conceived of as universal properties of language,
properties that are biologically innate.

Chomsky maintained that rather than being born blank slates, children have a genetic
predisposition to acquire linguistic knowledge in a highly specific way. In other words, the
child’s construction of if the internalized grammar of his/ her language (or the I- Language) is
predetermined by the human genetic endowment, a “language Faculty” containing “Universal
Grammar” which provides the nature and number of choices that need to be made when
internalizing the grammar of a particular language.
Since this theory began, it has evolved through versions called “Standard Theory,”
“Extended Standard Theory” (and “The Lexicalist Hypothesis”), “Trace Theory,” “Government
and Binding” (later called “Principles and Parameters” approach), and finally “the Minimalist
Program.”
References
Bally,C. ,Sechehaye,A., & Riedlinger,A (ed.) (1915). Course in general linguistics: Ferdinand
de Saussure. McGraw-Hill Book Company. New York Toronto London.
Trask R.L. (2007). Language and linguistics: The key concepts (2nd ed). Routledge.
Sadiqi, F. & Ennaji, M. (1999). Introduction to modern linguistics (2nd ed.). Afrique- Orient.
Strazny, P. (ed). (2005). Encyclopedia of linguistics (Vol 1). Fitzroy Dearborn /the Taylor &
Francis Group.
Whorf, B.L. (1956). Language, thought, and reality: selected writings. Technology press of
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Cambridge, Massachusetts.


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Mila university Center

Linguistics third year

The Rise of Structuralism

2. American Structural Linguistics

cultures before they disappeared.

observations and different values for outwardly similar observations”.

Leonard Bloomfield (1887–1949) is credited with giving American structuralism its

fundamental form, making linguistics an autonomous field of science. Bloomfield's (1933)

“Language” is considered a milestone in linguistics in which he put rigorous methods ‘discovery

explain ambiguities in sentences.

Till then, structural linguistics was influenced by psychological behaviourism; in other

(Sadiqi & Ennaji, 1999).

distractions, shift of attention …, hence, performance is not an accurate realization of

have empirical consequences and can be tested as in the natural sciences.

properties that are biologically innate.

predetermined by the human genetic endowment, a “language Faculty” containing “Universal

internalizing the grammar of a particular language.

de Saussure. McGraw-Hill Book Company. New York Toronto London.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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