Chapter 12
Theories and Schools of
Modern Linguistics
Introduction
• Modern linguistics began from the Swiss linguist
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Ferdinand de Saussure, who is often described
as the “father of modern linguistics”.
During the years between 1907 to 1911,
Saussure lectured on general linguistics in the
University of Geneva. After he died in 1913, two
of his students collected lecture notes from
students and put them together to produce the
great work, Course in General Linguistics, in
1916. This book became the most important
source of Saussure’s ideas and of his influence
upon succeeding generations of linguists. His
• The concept of arbitrariness
• The complexities of language: Human
language is an extremely complex and
heterogeneous phenomenon.
• Language---- a system of signs, the union
of a form and an idea, the signifier and
the signified, the relational nature of
linguistic units
• The distinction of LANGUE and PAROLE
• The distinction of SYNCHRONIC and
DIACHRONIC linguistics
能指/所指（signifier/ signified）
• 索绪尔认为每一个语言符号包括了由能指
与所指两个部分。能指是符号的物质形式，
由声音-形象两部分构成。这样的声音-形象
在社会的约定俗成中被分配与某种概念发
生关系，在使用者之间能够引发某种概念
的联想。这种概念就是所指。能指与所指
之间的关系是自由选择的，对于使用它的
语言社会来说，又是强制的。
1.
The
Prague
School
• 1. Introduction
• 1) The first meeting under the leadership of V.
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Mathesius in 1926
Practised a special style of synchronic linguistics
It sees language in terms of function.
2) Three points:
A. The synchronic study of language is fully
justified.
B. There was an emphasis on the systemic
character of language.
C. Language was looked on as functional in
another sense, as a tool performing a number of
essential functions or tasks for the community
• 2. Phonology and phonological oppositions
• 1) The Prague School is best known and
remembered for its contribution to
phonology and the distinction between
phonetics and phonology.
• Trubetzkoy: Principles of Phonology 1939
• Phonetics ---parole Phonology---langue
• The concept of phoneme: an abstract unit
of the sound system as distinct from the
sounds actually produced / the sum of the
differential functions, to distinguish
meaning
• Distinctive features, three criteria: (1)
their relation to the whole contrastive
system; (2) relations between the
• 2) Trubetzkoy’s contributions to phonological
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theory:
A. He showed distinctive functions of speech
sounds and gave an accurate definition for the
phoneme.
B. By making distinctions between phonetics and
phonology, he defined the sphere of
phonological studies.
C. By studying the syntagmatic and paradigmatic
relations between phonemes, he revealed the
interdependent relations between phonemes.
D. He put forward a set of methodologies for
phonological studies.
• 3. Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP)
• 1) It is a theory of linguistic analysis which refers to an
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analysis of utterances in terms of the information they
contain.
2) A sentence contains a point of departure and a goal of
discourse. The point of departure is called the THEME.
The goal of discourse is called RHEME. The movement
from the initial notion (theme) to the goal of discourse
(rheme) reveals the movement of the mind itself.
3) Functional sentence perspective
A. describe how information is distributed in sentences/
the effect of the distribution of known (given)
information and new information in discourse.
The known information refers to information that is not
new to the reader or hearer. The new information is what
is to be transmitted to the reader or hearer.
Usually the subject is the theme and the predicate is
the rheme. Sally stands on the table.
But it is not always the case. On the table stands Sally.
• 4) A sentence can be analyzed at three
levels: the grammatical sentence pattern
(GSP), the semantic sentence pattern
(SSP), the communicative sentence
pattern (CSP)
• John has written a poem.
• Agent-Action-Goal SSP
• The Subject-Verb-Object GSP
• Theme-Transition-Rheme CSP
• A distinction between sentence and
utterance
• 5) The relation between structure and function:
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J. Firbas developed the notion of
COMMUNICATIVE DYNAMISM (CD)
Linguistic communication is not a static
phenomenon, but a dynamic one.
CD is meant to measure the amount of
information an element carries in a sentence.
The degree of CD is the effect contributed by a
linguistic element, for it “ pushes the
communication forward”.
The distribution of various degrees of CD: the
initial elements of a sequence carry the lowest
degree of CD, and with each step forward, the
degree of CD becomes incremental till the
element that carries the highest.
2. The London School
• 1. Introduction
• 1) The London School generally refers to the
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kind of linguistic scholarship in England. J. R.
Firth (1890-1960), B. Malinowski (1884-1942), M.
A. K. Halliday
2) Stressed the importance of context of
situation and the system aspect of language.
3) Also known as systemic-functional linguistics.
2. Malinowski’s theories:
1) Professor of anthropology at the London
School of Economics from 1927 onwards.
The most important aspect of his theories
concerned the functioning of language.
Language is regarded to be a mode of action.
• The meaning of an utterance does not come
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from the ideas of the words comprising it but
from its relation to the situational context in
which the utterance occurs.
2) Based on two kinds of observations:
First, in primitive communities there is no writing,
and language has only one type of use.
Second, in all societies, children learn their
languages in this way.
3) Utterances and situation are bound up with
each other and the context of situation is
indispensable for the understanding of the
words.
4) Three types of context of situation:
A. situations in which speech interrelates with
bodily activity
B. narrative situations
• C. situations in which speech is used to fulfill a speech
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vacuum--- phatic communion
The meaning of a word is not given by the physical
properties of its referent, but by its function.
5) Coral Gardens and Their magic 1935
His theories on meaning and put forward two points:
A. prescribed the data for linguistic studies
data: the complete utterances in actual uses of
language
B. When a certain sound is used in two different
situations, it cannot be called one word, but two words
having the same sound, or homonyms. Meaning is not
something that exist in sounds, but something that
exists in the relations of sounds and their environment.
• Concepts of “linguistic environment” and “meaning as
functions in the CONTEXT OF SITUATION”
Phatic communion
• In linguistics, a phatic expression is one whose
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only function is to perform a social task, as
opposed to conveying information. The term
was coined by anthropologist \Malinowski in the
early 1900s.
For example, "you're welcome" is not intended
to convey the message that the hearer is
welcome; it is a phatic response to being
thanked, which in turn is a phatic whose
function is to be polite in response to a gift.
• 3. Firth’s theories
• 1) Firth regarded language as a social process, as a
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means of social life.
Learning language is a means of participation in social
activities.
Language is a means of doing things and making others
do things. It is a means of acting and living.
2) Firth did not see language as something wholly inborn
or utterly acquired. Riding-on-the-wall attitude
3) The object of linguistic study is language in actual
use.
The goal of linguistic inquiry is to analyze meaningful
elements of language in order to establish corresponding
relations between linguistic and non-linguistic elements.
The method of linguistic study is to decide on the
composite elements of language, explain their relations
on various levels, and ultimately explicate the internal
relations between these elements and human activities
in the environment of language use.
4) Firth attempted to integrate linguistic studies with
• 5) Firth held that meaning is use, thus defining meaning
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as the relationship between an element at any level and
its context on that level.
The meaning of any sentence consists of the following
five parts:
A. the relationship of each phoneme to its phonetic
context;
B. the relationship of each lexical item to the others in
the sentence;
C. the morphological relations of each word;
D. the sentence type of which the given sentence is an
example;
E. the relationship of the sentence to its context of
situation.
6) Firth defined the context of situation as including the
entire cultural setting of speech and the personal history
of the participants.
He used the notion of “typical context of situation”.
In analyzing typical context of situation, one has to carry
out the analysis on the following four levels:
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A. The internal relations of the text;
a) syntagmatic b) paradigmatic
B. The internal relations of the context of situation
a) relation between text and non-linguistic elements b)
the analytical relations between “bits” and “pieces” of the
text and the special elements within the situation
7) Firth took a sociological approach and discussed
meaning at various levels. On the phonological level, the
syntactic level, the lexical level, the situational level
8) Papers in Linguistics 1957
a model that covers both the situational context and the
linguistic context of a text:
1) the relevant features of the participants: persons,
personalities
2) the relevant topics, including objects, events, and
non-linguistic, non-human events
3) the effects of the verbal action.
• 9) Firth’s second important contribution to
linguistics is his method of PROSODIC
ANALYSIS, called prosodic phonology.
Prosody---Any human utterance is a
continuous speech flow made up of at
least one syllable, it cannot be cut into
independent units.
• In actual speech, it is not phonemes that
make up the paradigmatic relations, but
PHONEMATIC UNITS.
• Prosodic units---stress, length, nasalisation,
palatalisation, and aspiration.
• 弗斯对语言学的第二个大的贡献就是他提
出来的韵律分析法，也称韵律音位学。
• 弗斯的韵律学分析有自己的特点，它不
仅研究音调、重音、连音等现象，而且研
究诸如颚化、鼻化和圆唇化等现象，并试
图把语音学和语法学联系起来。
• 4. Halliday and Systemic-Functional Grammar
• 1) Halliday has developed the ideas stemming from
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Firth’s theories in the London School.
Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar is a sociologically
oriented functional linguistic approach and one of the
most influential linguistic theories in the twentieth
century.
2) Halliday’s educational background and experience:
Got his BA in Chinese language and literature at London
University in 1947.
From 1947 to 1949. studied under the supervision of Luo
Changpei at Peking University.
From 1949 to 1950, studied at Lingnan University, South
China, tutored by Wang Li.
Then worked for his Ph. D. degree under the supervision
of Firth. In 1955, he finished his doctoral dissertation
“The Language of the Chinese Secret History of Mongols”.
• From 1955 onwards, he taught linguistics at a
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number of universities in Britain and America.
In 1975, he moved to Australia and founded the
Department of Linguistics at the University of
Sydney.
3) Systemic-Functional Grammar
two components: Systemic Grammar and
Functional Grammar
Systemic grammar aims to explain the internal
relations in language as a system network, or
meaning potential.
Functional grammar aims to reveal that
language is a means of social interaction.
• Systemic-Functional grammar is based on
two facts:
• (1) language users are actually making choices
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in a system of systems and trying to realise
different semantic functions in social interaction;
(2) language is inseparable from social activities
of man
• A. Systemic Grammar
• Concerned with the nature and import of the various
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choices which one makes in deciding to utter one
particular sentence
Central component: a chart of the full set of choices
available in constructing a sentence
Different from other linguistic theories;
Firstly, it attaches great importance to the sociological
aspects of language
Secondly, it views language as a form of doing rather
than a form of knowing
Thirdly, it gives a high priority to description of the
characteristics of particular languages and particular
varieties of language
Fourthly, it explains a number of aspects of language in
terms of clines
Fifthly, it seeks verification of its hypotheses by means of
observation from texts and by means of statistical
techniques.
• Systemic Grammar is concerned with
establishing a network of systems of
relationships.
• The chain system and the choice system
• The axis of chain: the syntagmatic
relations
• The axis of choice: the paradigmatic
relations
• A system is a list of things between which
• We make choices between different types of process,
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participants, and circumstances.
The transitivity choices:
The material process (物质过程): John kicked the ball.
The behavioural process （行为过程）: John laughed.
The mental process(心理过程）: John likes Mary.
The verbal process（言语过程）: John said it is cold in
the room.
• The relational process （关系过程）: John is on the sofa.
• The existential process（存在过程）: There is a cat on
the sofa.
• B. Functional Grammar
• The Ideational Function概念功能： to convey
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new information, to communicate a content that
is unknown to the hearer
It mainly consists of “transitivity”（及物性）and
“voice”（语态）
John built a new house.
Actor: John
Process: Material: built
Goal: a new house
It reflects our understanding of phenomena that
come with our experience. This function of
language is that encoding our experience in the
form of an ideational content.
• Traditional grammar makes a binary
distinction between transitive verbs
such as throw, injure, kiss that take a
direct object, versus intransitive verbs
such as fall or sit that cannot take a direct
object
valency
• In linguistics, transitivity is a property of
verbs that relates to whether a verb can
take direct objects. It is closely related to
valency.
transitivity
• In functional grammar, transitivity is
considered to be a continuum rather than
a binary category. The "continuum" view
takes a more semantic approach, e.g. by
taking into account the degree to which
an action affects its object (so that the
verb see is described as having "lower
transitivity" than the verb kill).
• The concept of transitivity in Halliday’s
grammatical system is a powerful tool in the
analysis of the meanings expressed in clauses.
The term transitivity has a broader and narrower
meaning. The narrower meaning (found in
traditional grammatical description and the one
with which most readers are probably familiar)
involves the verb’s relationship to dependent
elements of structure. Transitive verbs take a
direct object and intransitive verbs do not.
• In the broader meaning (as proposed by
Halliday and assumed in the OpenText.org
annotation), the system of transitivity
consists of the various types of processes
together with the structures that realize
these processes.
• There are three basic elements to all process
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structures—the process itself, the participants in
the process, and the circumstances associated
with the process. Halliday distinguishes six
process types. The three main process types are:
material (i.e., what is going on outside oneself)
mental (i.e, inner experience—awareness of our
own states of being and reaction to our outer
experience)
relational (i.e., classifying and identifying one
experience with other experiences).
及物性系统
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韩礼德把纯理功能分为三种, 即概念功能、人际功能
和语篇功能。经验功能的意义在于解释经验模式, 其
中小句的相关地位为表述功能。“我们使用语言谈论
关于世界的经验( 包括我们内心世界的经验) , 描述
所包含的事件、状态和实体。”( Thompson, 1996:28)
语言能使人类建构关于现实世界的心理图景, 并理
解周围环境和内心世界所发生的一切。语言能使我
们的经验模式化, 以切分的方式将现实世界体现为
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一个接一个的模式化的“过程”( Process) ,并在此过
程中通过出现率很高的各种逻辑关系( 逻辑—语义
关系) , 将这些模块化的经验切分体连接成一个有机
的整体, 从而形成“作为作品的语篇”的整个经验结
构体。在语篇的基本切分体即小句层面, 经验模式表
现为“ 正在进行” 的语义特征, 诸如发生
( happening) 、做( doing) 、感知( sensing) 、意味着
(meaning) 、存在( existing) 及变成( becoming) 。所有
这些“正在进行”的过程都在小句中得以体现, 使无
终止的变化和事件流程有序化和程式化。这在韩氏
的功能语法中就是小句的及物性( Transitivity) 。
及物性
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及物性是以动词为中心的语法手段, 将体现及物过程的
小句成分分为“ 参加者”(Participant)、“ 过程”
( Process) 和“环境”(Circumstance) 三个部分, 再按过
程的不同特征细分为三个大类、三个小类和一个特
殊的气象类(Meteorological Process) 。根据韩礼德的
理论, 英语中及物性系统共有六种不同的过程: 物质
过程(Material)、心理过程(Mental)、关系过程
(Relational)、言语过程(Verbal)、行为过程(Behavioral)
和存在过程(Existential)。
• Transitivity consists of six different processes: Material
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process, behavioural process, mental process, verbal
process, relational process, existential process
Material process: those in which something is done
expressed by an action verb (beat, break, kick), and an
actor (logical subject) and the goal of the action (logical
direct subject) John kicked the boy.
Mental process: express such mental phenomena as
“perception” (see, look), “reaction” (like, please) and
“cognition” (know, believe, convince) involves two
participants: senser and phenomenon
John liked Mary.
Relational process: two types: attributive and identifying
Attributive expresses what attributes a certain object has,
or what type it belongs to. Sara is wise.
Identifying expresses the identical properties of two
entities. Tom is the leader; the leader is Tom.
• Verbal process: those of exchanging information
commonly used verbs: say, tell, talk, praise,
boast, describe the main participants are sayer,
receiver, and verbiage He told me a pack of lies.
She asked me a lot of questions.
• Behavioural process: physiological and
psychological behaviour such as breathing,
coughing, smiling, laughing, crying, staring, and
dreaming etc. Only one participant She
laughed heartily.
• Existential process: represent that something
There is
a pen on the desk. Does life exist on Mars?
exists or happens there is an existent
• The Interpersonal Function 人际功能
• It embodies all uses of language to express
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social and personal relations.
It includes the various ways the speaker enters
a speech situation and performs a speech act.
It is realized by MOOD 语气and MODALITY情态.
Mood shows what role the speaker selects in the
speech situation and what role he assigns to the
addressee. The imperative mood
Modality specifies if the speaker is expressing his
judgement or making prediction. Possibly,
certainly, perhaps, it is possible
• The Textual Function 语篇功能
• It refers to the fact that language has
mechanisms to make any stretch of
spoken or written discourse into a
coherent and unified text and make a
living passage different from a random list
of sentences.
• It fulfils the requirement that language
should be operationally relevant, having
texture in a real context of situation.
3. American Structuralism
• 1. Introduction
• It is a branch of synchronic linguistics that
emerged independently in the United
States at the beginning of the twentieth
century.
• It was under the leadership of the
anthropologist F. Boas, whose tradition
has actually influenced the whole of the
20th century American linguistics.
• 2. Early period: Boas and Sapir
• Handbook of American Indian Languages
(1911)
• Boas held that there was no ideal type or
form of languages, for human languages
were endlessly diverse.
• Sapir: Language: An Introduction to the
Study of Speech (1921)
• Without language, there is no culture.
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3. Bloomfield’s theory
The Bloomfieldian Era 1933-1950
Language (1933)
Behaviourism 行为主义
It is a principle of scientific method, based on
the belief that human beings cannot know
anything they have not experienced.
Children learn language through a chain of
“stimulus-response reinforcement” and the
adult’s use of language is also a process of
stimulus-response.
• 4. Post-Bloomfieldian linguistics
• Z. Harris
• C. Hockett
• G. Trager
• H. L. Smith
• A. Hill
• R. Hall
4. Transformational-Generative
Grammar
• A. N. Chomsky
• Syntactic Structures (1957): the beginning of the
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Chomskyan Revolution
Five stages of development:
The Classical Theory
The Standard Theory
The Extended Standard Theory
The Revised Extended Standard Theory
The Minimalist Program
• The innateness hypothesis
• LANGUAGE ACQUISITION DEVICE 语言习
得机制
• Like the ability to walk, the ability to speak
and understand spoken language seems
to be a natural human activity.
• Main features of TG grammar:
• Rationalism
• Innateness
• Deductive methodology
• Formalization
• Emphasis on linguistic competence
• Strong generative powers
• Emphasis on linguistic universals
Study Questions
• 1.Why is Saussure hailed as the father of
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modern linguistics?
2. What are the three important points of the
Prague School?
3. What is the Prague School best known for?
4. What is the essence of Functional Sentence
Perspective (FSP)?
5. What is the tradition of the London School?
6. What is the difference between Malinowski
and Firth on context of situation?
7. What is important about Firth’s prosodic
analysis?
• 8. What is the relation between Systemic
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Grammar and Functional Grammar?
9. What is special about Systemic-Functional
linguistics?
10. Analyze the following sentences by
identifying the Subject and Predicate on the first
level and Theme and Rheme on the second level.
(1) Mary gave her daughter a birth day present.
(2) A birthday gift was given to Jenny.
(3) The play was written by William Shakespeare.
(4) Do have another drink.
• 11. What are the special features of American
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structuralism?
12. How is behaviourist psychology related to
linguistics?
13. What is Harris’s most important contribution
to linguistics?
14. What is the theoretical importance of
Tagmemics?
15. What are the main features of Stratificational
Grammar?
16. How many stages of development has
Chomsky’s TG Grammar undergone?
17. What does Chomsky mean by Language
Acquisition Device?
• 18. Draw a tree diagram for each of the
following sentences.
• (1) The police attacked the suspect.
• (2) These children cannot understand her
painting.
• 19. What is special about TG Grammar?
• 20. What is Case Grammar?
• 21. What is Generative Semantics?