Linguistic Schools
年 代
语言理论
所受主要学科影响
主要特征
教学法
1
-4 -- 19c
传统语法
传统哲学观、文化观
静止规定型
2
19c
比较语言学
达尔文进化论
发展比较型
语法翻译法
3
20c 初 —
60s
结构语言学 /美国
结构句型法
结构主义语言学
分析哲学，行为主义， 严谨描写型
物理、化学方法
4
50s
功能语言学
受社会学影响
交际功能型
情景/功能教学
法
5
57--
TG语言学
混合哲学、心智主义
智慧演绎型
6
80s
认知语言学
体验哲学 / 认知科学
互动归纳型
认知教学法
(1) 布拉格学派
a.理解音位学和音位对立
b.理解句子功能前景
(2) 伦敦学派
a.了解马林诺夫斯基的理论
b.理解弗斯的理论
c.理解韩礼德与系统功能语法
(3) 美国结构主义
a.了解早期：博厄斯和萨丕尔
b.理解布龙菲尔德的理论
c.了解后布龙菲尔德时期语言学
(4) 转换生成语法
a.理解天赋假设
b.理解生成语法
c.了解古典理论
d.了解标准理论
e.了解扩展的标准理论
f.了解后期理论
g.理解转换生成语法的主要特征
(5) 修正还是反叛？
a.了解格语法
b.了解生成语义学
Brief Introduction
Saussure---- modern linguistics (Structuralism)
 The Prague School
 The London School
 American Structuralism
 Transformational-Generative Grammar
 Cognitive Linguistics

1. Saussure

Ferdinard de Saussure (1857-1913):
--- “He is the father of modern linguistics”
--- “a master of a discipline which he made
modern." (Jonathan Culler)
Structural theory--Sign
1.) language is a system of signs, each of
which consists of two parts: SIGNFIED
(concept） and SIGNIFIER (sound image).
He showed that the principles of langue must be
described as a system of elements composed of
lexical，grammatical, and phonological
components. The terminology of linguistics was to
be considered relative to each other, and
linguistics was really the study of signs and their
relationships. The linguistic sign is constituted by
the structural relationship between the concept
(signified) and the sound of the word (signifier).
2.) language is a SYSTEM or SIGNS.
To communicate ideas, we must be part of
system of conventions, part of system of
signs. The sign, for him, is the basic unit of
communication, the central of language.
Therefore, we must start from the nature of
the sign itself.
3.) The sequence which a sign forms with those it is
in a syntagmatic relation is sometimes called a
STRUCTURE. Any structure is formed by two
principal types of relations which Saussure
identified are SYNTAGMATIC and PARDIGMATIC
relations. The former is a relation between one
item and other in a sequence, or between
elements which are all present.
Syntagmatic relationships of a word are those
relationships that can obtain with neighboring in a
sentence. Associative structural relations pertain
to the ways in which words can replace one
another, and the ways in which they do not. These
relationships are about how words and sounds are
associated with each other and form part of the
synchronic relationship within the language
structure.
4.) meaning was to be found within the
structure of a whole language rather than in
the analysis of individual words.
Synchronic & Diachronic
Saussure was determined to delimit and
define the boundaries of language study. To
this end he began by distinguishing between
historical linguistics and descriptive
linguistics, or diachronic and synchronic
analyses respectively.
Linguistic was a pervasive interest of the Darwinist in
19th century. Diachronic linguistics deals with the
evolution of a language through time, as a
continually changing medium without end. They
study the change from Old English to Middle
English, then to modern English; or from “A
Grammar of Modern Greek” to “The Structure of
Shakespeare's English”.
A language has an existence separate from its
history. Language system is complete and
operates as a logical system or any point in
time regardless of influence from the past. In
other words, there is no relation between
Diachronic analyses and language system.
“Synchrony is a fiction, for language changes
as the minutes pass and grammar-writing is
a lengthy enterprise. How ever, the fiction of
synchronic description is essential of
linguistics” (Fowler).
If the signs of language had no changes, the
distinction between Synchronic analyses and
Diachronic analyses is meaningless. But a
language is evolving continually, the distinction is
significant because synchronic analyses were
either ignored or overlooked in the past, and most
importantly, the distinction drew attention to the
current structural properties of language as well as
historical dimensions.
Langue & parole
Language is such a complex and varied
phenomenon that it would be impossible to
study it without assuming some basic
operating principles. Saussure distinguished
the linguistic competence of the speaker
and the actual phenomena or data of
linguistics as LANGUE and PAROLE.
Langue is an abstract system that all of us has in
common and enables us to speak. When a man
learns a language, he should assimilate the data
of the langue and to some extent, obey the
linguistic rules, including the lexicon, grammar,
and phonology. “It is the social product whose
existence permits the individual to exercise his
linguistic faculty.”, “For language (langue) is not
complete in any speaker; it exists perfectly only
within a collectivity.
On the other hand, PAROLE is the “executive
side of language." Parole, is the
actualization of langue. It is a personal,
dynamic and social activity, which exists at a
particular time and place and in a particular
situation, as opposed to LANGUE, which is
a corporate, social phenomenon, existing
apart from any particular speeches.
The distinction between Langue and parole is
very important. In distinguishing them, “we
are separating what is social from what is
individual, and what is essential from what is
accessory and more or less accidental”.
The distinction between langue and parole
also has important implications for other
disciplines as well. It is essential for any field
of research to distinguish what belongs to
the underlying system which makes possible
various types of behavior and what belongs
to actual instances of such behavior.
The Prague School
1. The History of the Prague School
Phonology
Forerunner
The forerunner of the Prague School was the Moscow
Linguistic Circle founded in 1915. It is a circle consisted of
a group of young scholars such as Trubetzkoy (25yr) and
Jakobson (20yr), who is the president from 1915-1920. The
issues that this circle concerns are of both language and
linguistics including problems of poetics, literature analysis,
and general artistic structure under the influence of Slavic
and historical linguistics. The sources of their study are
based on Saussure and Baudouin’s works. When the
Revolution broke out on October 1917 the members of this
circle fled and this circle nearly dismissed.
Foundation
By the 1920s, the terms ‘phoneme’ and ‘phonology’ were well
known to European linguistics. More importantly, de
Saussure had left a legacy of modern structuralism which
greatly influenced linguistics in general. Working within this
structuralist tradition were, among others, a group of
scholars known from 1926 as the Linguistic Circle of
Prague. In phonology, two members of the Circle stand out:
Roman Jakobson (1896-1982), who began his career in
Moscow but moved to Czechoslovakia and worked there in
the 1930s before fleeing via Scandinavia to the USA; and
Nikolai S. Trubetzkoy (1890-1938), also of Russian origin,
who was a professor in Vienna from 1923 until his death
Chronicle of the Prague School
Phonology
a. 1915. The foundation of the Moscow Linguistic circle,
Jakobson’s being the president
b. 1917 Members fleeing Moscow due to October
Revolution
c. 1926 The foundation of the Prague School Linguistic
Circle, Jagobson’s being the vice president
d. 1928 Presenting the Prague Circle manifesto( drafted by
Jakobson and cosigned by Trubetzky and Karcevskij) at
the first International Congress of Linguistic at Hague.
e. 1938 Trubetzkoy died.
f.
1982 Jakobson died in Massachusetts
The Representative Characters
Roman Jakobson (1896-1982)
Jakobson’s contribution to linguistics can be represented as the concept
such as feature, binary opposition, markedness, redundancy, and
universals. He also focuses the importance of linguistics on language
acquisition, aphasia, act of communication, meaning in grammar,
poetry, and the systematicity of language change. Jakobson’s greatest
insight, distinctive feature, (after the phoneme) belongs to the
(Functional) Structuralist Phonology. So, for more information, you may
consult functional phonology. Jakobson’s contribution in the Prague
school phonology can be represented as the Prague Circle manifesto,
which changes the direction of the development of the European
phonology.
Trubetzkoy, Nikolai Sergeyevič (1890-1938)
Trubetzkoy’s chief contribution in phonology was taken in the sense of
functional phonology. (So, for more information, see the functional
(structuralist) phonology. Trubetzkiy’s notable contributions made to
phonological theory are as follows:
a.
Clarifying the distinction between phonetics and phonology by the
criterion of function
b.
Investigating insistently on phonic substance in terms of its various
functions in individual languages
c.
Emphasizing on the concept of phonological opposition (primary)
over phoneme (secondary)
d.
Classifying phonological oppositions typologically instead of
binaristic
Main Theories
Following de Saussure’s emphasis on the differential function of linguistic
elements, both Jakobson and Trubetzkoy attached great importance to
the oppositions among phonemes rather than to the phonemes
themselves. Thus to say that English has phonemes /s/ and /z/ is a
statement about a distinction which English speakers make and
recognize rather than a claim about phonemes as mental images or
phonetic entities. This was a significant insight, which seemed to
accord with linguistic experience. By the very nature of spoken
language, a speaker is aware of differences and reacts to
mispronunciation or interference with the system of oppositions. But
the isolation of individual phonemes from their spoken context is
neither a typical nor an easy task. Most speakers seem incapable of
doing it in any systematic way, and, in literate societies, usually resort
to naming letters and spelling out a word rather than attempting to
articulate separate phonemes.
Jacobson (and others of the Prague School) published actively during the
1920s and 1930s, but it was Trubetzkoy who provided the School’s
most comprehensive and widely consulted work on phonology,
GrundzÜge der phonologie (Principles of Phonology), which first
appeared in 1939, the year after his death. Besides discussing the
nature of distinctive oppositions in theoretical terms, Trubetzkoy also
surveys analytical procedures and gives extensive examples of the
different oppositions of various languages. He follows through the
implications of the structural approach in a number of ways, particularly
in the classification of oppositions. He is also responsible for the
concepts neutralization and archiphoneme which are consistent with a
functional view of the phoneme.
Jacobson and Trubetzkoy also initiated modern
distinctive feature theory. The notion of component
features is already implicit in the idea of opposition.
The notion was made explicit by Jakobson’s and
Trubetzkoy’s recognition of such features as
‘differential qualities’ or ‘relevant properties’. This
further strengthened their point that phonemes
represented points in a system rather than
physical or mental entities.
Distinctive Features

Jakobson (1939, 1949) drawing on earlier phonological
concepts of de Saussure and Hjelmslev, pointed to the
limited number of “differential qualities” or “distinctive
features” that appeared to be available to languages.
Jakobson’s interest was in showing hoe oppositions – as
the constitutive features of relations among phonemes –
reflected a hearer’s response to an acoustic signal. Just as
this signal contains a limited number of variables, so
perceptual response to it operates with a limited number of
categories.
The most famous elaboration of this approach is clarified in
works by Jakobson, Fant and Hlle (1952) and Jakobson
and Halle (1956). This scheme uses perceptual terms
which reflect acoustic cues rather than articulatory
mechanics. In 1939, Jakobson took Grammont’s terms
“acute” and “grave” representing opposite ends of a scale
that measures the predominance of upper or lower
components of the acoustic spectrum. The “acute-grave”
feature distinguishes both high front vowels (i, y) from back
vowels (u, o, a…) and palatal consonants from velar
consonants.
Jakobson and Halle employed only 12 features, which were
listed with articulatory correlates as well as acoustic cues.
All of the features are polar oppositions, allowing relative
values. So the acute vowels of one language need not to
be identical in nature with the acute vowels of another,
provided that they are more acute than the grave vowels to
which they are opposed. Moreover, the same acoustic
effect can be achieved by different articulatory means. Lip
rounding, pharyngealization and retroflexion, for instance,
may all be covered by the one distinctive feature of
“flatness”. Each feature is binary, with only two opposed
values along a single dimension.
Neutralization

For any particular system, biuniqueness is a
requirement that phonemes and allophones can
be unambiguously assigned to each other. A
problem in this connection is that contrastive
systems are often unequally exploited. This means,
for example, that two phonemes may be
distinguished in some structures but not in others.
Following Trubetzkoy (1939) we may say that
some phonemic oppositions are suspended or
neutralized under certain conditions. Trubetzkoy
distinguishes three kinds of neutralization.

Firstly, a language has a contrast but only one of
the relevant phonemes occurs under neutralization.
Suppose a language has a contrast of voiced and
voiceless plosives in word-initial and word-final
positions, nut only voiceless plosives occur wordfinally. Since the word-final plosives are not in
contrast with voiced plosives, the contrast of
voicing is inoperative or neutralized word-finally.

Secondly, neutralization may be represented by
some kind of variation or alternation among the
otherwise contrasting phonemes. For example, in
Indonesian, there are four nasal consonant
phonemes (bilabial, alveolar, palatal and velar).
But sequences of nasal plus other consonants are
homorganic, that is the nasal and following
consonants are at the same point of articulation.
So, we can find clusters such as /mb/ and /nd/, but
not /md/ and /nb/.
Thirdly, neutralization may be represented by
a sound which is distinct from both of the
otherwise contrasting phonemes. One of the
most common instances of this kind of
neutralization is where vowel contrasts are
reduced under certain conditions.
Historical Status
a. Prague school linguistics’ success essentially
changed the character of European linguistics.
b. Trubetzkoy’s contributions were inherited and
further elaborated by Martinet and his associates
who found the Functionalist School, i.e., Prague
School is the cradle of Structuralism.
Influence
The concept of neutralization and the theory
of markedness is expanded in generative
grammar as well as nowadays.
The London School
American Structuralism
It became popular and influential in the 1930s
and 40s through the world.
Two forerunners:
Franz Boas & Edward Sapir
The father:
Leonard Bloomfield
Franz Boas: the traditional grammatical model
could not be used to analyze the structures
of those languages.
Edward Sapir: Although Indian’s languages
had no written forms, they were very
communities.
Leonard Bloomfield:
Accepted the theories and principles of behaviorism;
Characterized language and language acquisition in terms of
behaviorist terminology. Language was a habit of verbal
behavior which consisted of a series of stimuli and
response.
Argued that to acquire a language was to form a habit of
verbal behavior and learning a L2 was learning a new habit.
Thought speech was primary and writing was secondary.
Transformational-Generative
Grammar
Put forward by Norm Chomsky in 1957.
Wrote a book Syntactic Structures to spread
his theory.
Main points:
1) Children are born with a LAD. This is made
up of general principles called UG. Once the
child is born, the particular environment will
trigger the LAD. The child will use and text
the principles again and again until his
hypotheses agree with the actual grammar
of the language.
2) Made the distinction between linguistic
competence and linguistic performance. He
believes that linguistics should study the linguistic
competence, not the performance, of the native
speaker so as to set up a system of rules that will
generate an infinite number of grammatical
sentences. To gain the goal, he argues we should
use a deductive, hypothesis-testing approach.
Cognitive Linguistics