The development of linguistic theory

What's a linguistic theory, anyway, and why do we need one? Linguists studying the way language works can observe what people say or write, but they can't tell what's going on in someone's mind. To oversimplify greatly, that's what a linguistic theory tries to figure out--the mental processing behind language. The reason for doing this varies from one linguist to the next: some are searching for the origins of a particular language or evidence that language is basically hard-wired in the brain; others want to find easier ways to learn or teach languages, or improve computer speech recognition. But whatever the motivation, a linguistic theory--a model that describes how language is put together and predicts how new words and sentences will be formed--is an essential starting point.

Traditional grammar, the more familiar of the two, is based on the notion that language is a manifestation of thought. From this representational orientation, language consists of a priori word classes which represent universal categories of thought. The sentence, a complete thought, is the basic unit of analysis and is comprised of elements that relate to one another in a logical, abstract way, independent of content meaning. Traditional grammar, then, describes the elaborate rules of realization which determine when and how word classes function within the sentence.

Another linguistic theory that exerted considerable influence in second language education was American Structuralism. AS rejected the mentalist orientation of traditional grammar in favor of a rigorously empiricist view of language. Rather than positing a relationship between the observable forms of language and invisible thought, the structuralist saw language as operant human behavior acquired through the conditioning model of behavioral psychology. As a result, linguistic inquiry was strictly limited to observable phenomena. With a strong preference for spoken as opposed to written language, the structuralist's analysis proceeded from raw sound to phonemes to morphemes and ultimately to syntactic patterns. Morphemes, the basic linguistic unit, were divided into classes which could, in turn, fit into certain positions in sentence patterns. In essence, the American structuralist arrived at the same destination as the traditional grammarian; the former arriving by induction from empirical observation; the latter by deduction from a priori assumptions.

From the structuralist orientation, there were no universal linguistic categories. Rather each language was unique in the way it classified the world around it.

In a sense, the Chomskyan revolution represented a return to the mentalistic approach of traditional grammar with a vengeance. The communicative function of language was of little interest to Chomsky. His main interest in language was what he claimed it revealed about the human mind. Initially, Chomsky defined language as an infinite set of sentences comprised of finite length. The object of study was not what speakers said (performance), but rather the knowledge (competence) of native speakers that enabled them to make grammaticality judgments (Chomsky, 1971, p. 13). During the early years, Chomsky and his students attempted to write generative grammars that would represent all the possible grammatical sentences of specific languages. These grammars described formal syntactic relationships between sentence constituents independent of content meaning.

However, in later years, Chomsky moved in the direction of seeking basic structural principles underlying all languages (Universal Grammar).

Thus Chomsky posited a discontinuity between the theoretical construct that linguists used to describe language and the active cognitive processes that speakers employed when they used language in communication. In a 1974 article, Dulay and Burt highlighted this discontinuity when they made the distinction between product (what linguists describe) and process (how language is acquired ), and, in essence, severed second language acquisition from its previous linguistic moorings (Dulay & Burt, 1974b). Any connection between theory and practice was to be found, not in the Chomskyan notion of what language was (the ability to make grammaticality judgments), but rather in how language was acquired (via an innate language processing device).

By concentrating on the acquisition/learning process rather than its product, Krashen and Terrell obscure the basic conflict between their natural approach and Chomskyan theory. Whereas Chomsky assumed that the formal aspects of language were not related to its use in communication, Krashen and Terrell insist that only within the context of communication can the formal aspects of language be acquired. How comprehension facilitates an automatic process is a question they do not address.

The second requisite assumption in Krashen and Terrell's model of second language learning is that there is a natural order for the acquisition of grammatical structures in communication (p. 28). Thus, while we cannot differentiate between what is learned and what is acquired, the latter distinguishes itself by following a natural order.

The third underlying principle of the Natural Approach is that learned grammatical rules can serve only as an editor or “monitor” to utterances initiated by the speaker's acquired competence in those instances where the student has the time, is focused on form and knows the rule

The fourth and perhaps most crucial presupposition is that language is acquired when a learner understands input that is slightly beyond her current level of acquired competence (i). This (i + 1) utterance is termed comprehensible input. Natural acquisition can only occur in the context of an understood message, or comprehensible input. Thus, comprehension precedes production in the process of language acquisition (p. 32).

While Krashen and Terrell assert that comprehensible input is necessary for language acquisition, their fifth hypothesis stipulates that it is not always sufficient

Grammars de?ne the space of possible and impossible expressions in a language and thus capture a key component of linguistic knowledge. While its generally agreed that introspective acceptability judgments are a product of lexical resources, structure-generating functions, and output constraints, grammatical models typically leave unspeci?ed the relation of these components to the mechanisms that generate or recover linguistic representations in real time. However, that relation constitutes another crucial aspect of linguistic knowledge, and, in order to characterize it, we ?rst must establish how tightly real-time mechanisms are linked to grammatical distinctions.

It's generally known, that language is a system. First of all, the system of 3 constituent parts: PHONOLOGY, LEXICOLOGY & GRAMMAR. According to the traditional point of view, phonology & grammar deal with general categories, such as vowels, consonants, nouns, words, subjects etc. That means that statements, concerning such phenomena may be related to a whole class of homogenious things. In other words, such phenomena are of the general character. Lexicology, on the contrary, deals with individual units: words( or linguistic signs).Hence it follows that lexicological statements are of a special character, for such statements refer to every single unit of the vocabulary. E.g.: ,,Dog'' - denotes a certain domestic animal, a friend to a man. It's an individual pet. But if we use the word in the form ,,Dogs"(pl.), it becomes a general pet; that concerns the great number of other words: tigers, students... . Each of the above mentioned constituent parts of language is investigated by a corresponding linguistic discipline.

Lexicology is closely connected with other branches of linguistics: phonetics, for example, investigates the phonetic structure of language & is concerned with the study of the outer sound-form of the word. Grammar is the study of the grammatical structure of language. It is concerned with the various means of expressing grammatical relations between words as well as with patterns after which words are combined into word-groups & sentences. There is also a close relationship between lexicology & stylistics, which is concerned with a study of a nature, functions & styles of languages.

Lexicology - 'science of the word', a branch of linguistics, which basic task is a study and systematic description of vocabulary in respect to its origin, development and current use.

Phonology is described by the science of phonology.The lexical description of language is described by lexicology. Grammar is described by grammar. No language can exist without vocabulary, but only Grammar gives a human thought a material linguistic form, thanks to its abstract character. It's a kind ofself-tuning system. Grammar is the result of a long time abstracting work of human mind. Grammar abstracts itself from the particular & concrete and builds its rules & laws, taking into consideration only the common features of groups & words. That's why Grammar is always compared with Geometry. Abstract character is the 1st characteristic feature of Grammar. Another characteristic feature of Grammar is Stability, which manifests itself in the fact, that laws & categories of Grammar exist through ages without considerable changes, because Gr. is a product of many epochs.

1. The distinctions between language & speech, which were first introduced by Ferdinant de Saussure, have since become one of the corner stones of Modern Linguistics. ,, Language is a system''. It's the phonological, lexical & grammatical system, which lies at the basis of all speaking. It's the sourse, which every speaker & writer has to draw on if he wants to be understood by other speakers of the language. Speech, on the other hand, is the manifestation of language or its practical use by various speakers & writers of the given language. Thus, what we have before us in oral or written form as material for analysis is always a product of speech. There is no other way for linguists to get to language than through speech. Language characterizes a certain human community. It's used in the community; it's understood by all the members of the community; so it's called a social code. And by its nature, Language is social. Speech, on the contrary, is individual, but it's based upon language which exists in the minds of all speaking community. We can't see language, neither hear it. We can get to it only through speech. As we're concerned with Grammar only, we don't have to deal with phonological and lexical parts of language. We shall only concentrate on the system of Grammar & its manifestation. Language & Speech are closely connected & intermingled. They may come a unity. Language is realized through Speech. The life of language consists in oral & written intercourse within 2 or more people. This linguistic intercourse is manifested through connected communications chiefly in the form of sentences, though not always so complete & well-arranged. The object in teaching Grammar is not only rules, which must be obeyed if one wants to speak & write the language correctly. It also aims at finding out what is actually said & written by the speakers of the language. According to Ferdinant de Saussure: ,, Language is a treasure, formed by way of speaking practice & preserved in the minds of the people who belong to a certain speaking community." ,, Язык -- это клад, отлагаемый в памяти всех членoв данного языкового коллектива." It's a system of 3 systems (lex., gram., phon.), potentially existing in every mind & at the same time, in the minds of the whole speaking community, for, language can't exist wholly in one individual. 6. There're certain relations within the language. They say, the language is a system of paradigmatic relations. We mean the structure of various means & the classes they form. E.g.: boy, boys, boy's, boys'. They are written down with a vertical way. Paradigmatic relations are vertical. Speech is a system of syntagmatic relations. They're always linear (horizontal). Syntagmatic chains - we mean the combinations, the same units form in the process of communication. E.g.: voice of phoning machine. Originally, the differentiation between paradigmatics & syntagmatics was based on recognition of the two linguistic planes: 1. The plane of language. 2. The plane of speech. Language planes are structured paradigmatically, speech ones - syntagmatically. It's generally known, that every linguistic unit ends in 2 types of systemic relations at a time. If certain units, equal in rank are correlated by means of an opposition (E.g.: long--longer--longest), we say they have paradigmatic relations, that are usually vertical & imply the choice when they're realized in actual speech (E.g.: I'm not going to stay here any longer.), the element that stands in paradigmatic relations. But they're substitutable. E.g.: 1). The way to the station is very long. 2). Which is the longest river in the world? Opposition relations are called associative. Associative groups exist in the vertical way. If linguistic elements appear in a contrast linear pattern, we say they have syntagmatic relations. They form a syntagneme, which may comprise: phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases, clauses. Syntagmatic relations can be observed not only at syntax level, they're not associative, but constructive, for they're based on the linear confrontation of the language units. Paradigmatic relations, which are typical of language, may be of different kinds: 1. They may be based on the similarity of the semantic features (synonymous & antonymous groups). E.g.: nice, pretty... 2. They may be based on the similarity of the formal characteristics of linguistic elements. Such relations exist between the members of a paradigm, which consists not of the units, but of those paradigmatic markers, which distinguish one form of the unit from its other forms. E.g.: go, goes, will go, has gone. 3. At the level major syntax we may also observe sentence paradigms, which are called transforms. They are united by a common meaning. E.g.: The work has been done, we went home. The work done, we went home. After the work was done, we went home. Syntagmatic relations exist between the elements linearly ordered. That is between phonemes, words etc. Linearity is the main factor for syntagmatic relations. Standing together in linear order, linguistic elements can make up a unity. But linearity is not the only ground, on which all syntagmatic relations are established. According to the logical approach, the differentiation is made between the 3 types of syntagmatic relations: 1. Independence. 2. Dependence. 3. Interdependence. There are: combinational syntagmatic relations, which reveal relatedness of elements & non-combinational ones. Combinational syntagmatic relations can be subdivided into: 1. Collocational (lexico-semantic). 2. Colligational (grammatical). Collocational relations are not of a grammatical character, they're of lexicosemantic character; the collocated elements are located together in the same linear arrangement (,,to speak fluently). Colligational relations are based on the morphological & syntactical peculiarities of the word (,,to tell him"; ,,to say nothing").Non-combinational relations are cohesive. They may be anaphoric & cataphoric. Non-combinational relations are typical of the syntax of the text, which mean that neither phrases, nor sentences can be formed on the basis of such relations. They're specifically textual & cohesive. They appear between sentences & supra phrasal unities. Linearity is not essential for such occasion. The cohesive relations appear between the elements which are usually in distant positions. The anaphoric relations show that an element refers to its antecedent in the left-hand side (retrospective relations). The cataphoric relations indicate that antecedent is located in the right text contest (prospective relations). E.g.: ,, He hated interference especially in his work & beyond everything he hated interfering women. The more he thought of it, the angrier he became."

Languages, especially standard languages or official languages used in courts of law, for administration of government, and for the promulgation of official works, tend to acquire norms and standards over time. Once English became the language of administration of law in England, a form of late Middle English called chancery English became such a standard. When William Caxton introduced printing with movable type into England, the norms of his grammar and spelling were taken largely from chancery English.

However, the "correction" of English grammar was not a large subject of formal study until the eighteenth century. Poet John Dryden remarked that the grammar in use in his day (second half of 1600s) was an improvement over the usage of William Shakespeare. Dryden was himself the first to promulgate the rule that a sentence must not end with a preposition. Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary contributed to the standardization of English spelling. More influentially, the first of a long line of prescriptionist usage commentators, Robert Lowth, published "A Short Introduction to English Grammar" in 1762. Lowth's grammar is the source of many of the prescriptive shibboleths that are studied in schools and was the first of a long line of usage commentators to judge the language in addition to describing it. For example, the following footnote from his grammar is, in turn, descriptive and prescriptive: "Whose" is by some authors made the Possessive Case of "which", and applied to things as well as persons; I think, improperly."

Lowth's method included criticising "false syntax"; his examples of false syntax were culled from Shakespeare, the King James Bible, John Donne, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and other famous writers. A number of his judgments were reinforced by analogies to Latin grammar, though it was his stated principle that such an analogy should not in itself be the basis for English prescriptions. Thus for example he criticises Addison's sentence "Who should I meet the other night, but my old friend?" on the grounds that the thing acted upon should be in the "Objective Case", corresponding, as he says earlier, to an accusative in Latin. (Descriptive critics, on the other hand, would take this example and others as evidence from noted writers that "who" can refer to direct objects in English.) Lowth's "ipse dixits" appealed to those who wished for certainty and authority in their language. Lowth's grammar was not written for children; nonetheless, within a decade of its appearance, versions of it were adapted for schools, and Lowth's stylistic opinions acquired the force of law in the classroom.

2. During the nineteenth century, with the rise of popular journalism, the common usage of a tightly-knit educated and governing class was extended to a more widely literate public than before or since, through the usage of editors of newspapers and magazines. There therefore began to be a broader market for usage guides. In general, these attempted to elucidate the distinctions between different words and constructions, promoting some and condemning others as unclear, declassй, or simply wrong. Perhaps the best-known and most historically important text of this sort was Henry Watson Fowler's idiosyncratic and much praised "Dictionary of Modern English Usage". Originally published in 1926, it was extensively revised for the 1996 third edition, and remains a primary reference for many educated speakers and editors. Besides Fowler, other writers in this tradition include the 19th-century poet and editor William Cullen Bryant, and, in the 20th-century, Theodore Bernstein and William Safire.

linguistics, scientific study of language, covering the structure (morphology and syntax; see grammar), sounds (phonology), and meaning (semantics), as well as the history of the relations of languages to each other and the cultural place of language in human behavior. Phonetics, the study of the sounds of speech, is generally considered a separate (but closely related to) field from linguistics.

Early Linguistics

Before the 19th cent., language was studied mainly as a field of philosophy. Among the philosophers interested in language was Wilhelm von Humboldt, who considered language an activity that arises spontaneously from the human spirit; thus, he felt, languages are different just as the characteristics of individuals are different. In 1786 the English scholar Sir William Jones suggested the possible affinity of Sanskrit and Persian with Greek and Latin, for the first time bringing to light genetic relations between languages. With Jones's revelation the school of comparative historical linguistics began. Through the comparison of language structures, such 19th-century European linguists as Jakob Grimm, Rasmus Rask, Karl Brugmann, and Antoine Meillet, as well as the American William Dwight Whitney, did much to establish the existence of the Indo-European family of languages.

Structural Linguistics

In the 20th cent. the structural or descriptive linguistics school emerged. It dealt with languages at particular points in time (synchronic) rather than throughout their historical development (diachronic). The father of modern structural linguistics was Ferdinand de Saussure, who believed in language as a systematic structure serving as a link between thought and sound; he thought of language sounds as a series of linguistic signs that are purely arbitrary, as can be seen in the linguistic signs or words for horse: German Pferd, Turkish at, French cheval, and Russian loshad'. In America, a structural approach was continued through the efforts of Franz Boas and Edward Sapir, who worked primarily with Native American languages, and Leonard Bloomfield, whose methodology required that nonlinguistic criteria must not enter a structural description. Rigorous procedures for determining language structure were developed by Kenneth Pike, Bernard Bloch, Charles Hockett, and others.

See also structuralism.

Transformational-Generative Grammar

In the 1950s the school of linguistic thought known as transformational-generative grammar received wide acclaim through the works of Noam Chomsky. Chomsky postulated a syntactic base of language (called deep structure), which consists of a series of phrase-structure rewrite rules, i.e., a series of (possibly universal) rules that generates the underlying phrase-structure of a sentence, and a series of rules (called transformations) that act upon the phrase-structure to form more complex sentences. The end result of a transformational-generative grammar is a surface structure that, after the addition of words and pronunciations, is identical to an actual sentence of a language. All languages have the same deep structure, but they differ from each other in surface structure because of the application of different rules for transformations, pronunciation, and word insertion. Another important distinction made in transformational-generative grammar is the difference between language competence (the subconscious control of a linguistic system) and language performance (the speaker's actual use of language). Although the first work done in transformational-generative grammar was syntactic, later studies have applied the theory to the phonological and semantic components of language.

Other Areas of Linguistic Study

In contrast to theoretical schools of linguistics, workers in applied linguistics in the latter part of the 20th cent. have produced much work in the areas of foreign-language teaching and of bilingual education in the public schools (in the United States this has primarily involved Spanish and, in the Southwest, some Native American languages in addition to English). In addition, such subfields as pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics have gained importance.

– What do all languages have in common?

• Semantic roles, grammatical relations, pragmatic relations, some constituent structure; only subjects can be controllees in matrix coding as subject constructions; etc.

– What are the ways in which they can differ from each other?

• Relative prominence of grammatical or pragmatic relations: word order reflects grammatical relations in English and reflects focus (new information) in Hungarian; Topic takes precedence over subject in Chinese in determining antecedent of null pronouns; Subject is more prominent in English.

– Syntax is not about the form (phrase structure) of sentences.

– It is about how strings of words are associated with their semantic roles.

– Phrase structure is only part of the solution.

– Sam saw Sue

– Sam: perceiver

– Sue: perceived

– Syntax is also about how to tell that two sentences are thematic paraphrases of each other (same phrases filling the same semantic roles).

– It seems that Sam ate the sandwich.

– It seems that the sandwich was eaten by Sam.

– Sam seems to have eaten the sandwich.

– The sandwich seems to have been eaten by Sam

– Starting from a constituent structure tree:

– Grammatical encoding tells you how to find the subject.

– The bear is the subject.

– Lexical mapping tells you what semantic role the subject has.

– The subject is the agent.

– Therefore, the bear is the agent.

Passive mappings

• Starting from the constituent structure tree.

• The grammatical encoding tells you that the sandwich is the subject.

• The lexical mapping tells you that the subject is the patient.

– Therefore, the sandwich is the patient.

• The grammatical encoding tells you that the bear is oblique.

• The lexical mapping tells you that the oblique is the agent.

– Therefore, the bear is the agent.

Levels of Representation

Phonetic form by itself is not a linguistic form; it is a sequence of sounds. What makes it linguistically relevant is its relation to meaning (logical form, pred-arg structure, f-str. etc).

The lexicon is also indispensable in all these theories; it is the repository of learnable linguistic knowledge.

The main division of labor in linguistics is between the lexicon and the grammar (Lexicon:Grammar).

In some theories the lexical component is “?at”; in others it is quite structured.

They also differ in levels of representation in the grammar. GB: There is an underlying d-structure, which gets mapped onto s-structure by movement rules (e.g., wh-phrases, relative clauses).

D-structure appeals to the universal principles of syntactic structure (expressed in tree-theoretic terms).

MP: S-structure is a derivative concept. Only interface levels with GCS has representational status.

In 1968 a generative grammar had three separate components: semantics, syntax, and phonology (Chomsky 1965). Phonetics was not considered part of transformational generative grammar (henceforth TGG) because language production below the level of phonology was not thought to be about cognitive processing (or, as was said at the time, mental processing).

For the generative grammarian, phonetics was an autonomous subject describing the facts of speech. Phonetic models derived from acoustics, aerodynamics, mechanics, etc. For the TGG phonologist, phonetics provided a set of facts that could be used in phonological descriptions (Chomsky and Halle 1968). These descriptions had two functions:

1. to provide raw data about the sounds or articulations used phonologically in a particular language;

2. to provide a link to the external world by modelling how the output of phonology was realized as a speech waveform.