Ibn Tofail University

Faculty of Languages, letters, & Arts

Academic Year :2023/2024
Department of English Studies

School of Linguistics Course

Semester 5

Prof EL GHOUATI Aziz

Academic Year 2023/2024

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 Module Objectives

This course aims at enabling the student to:

1- gain a good understanding of the different contributors into the making of

modern western language study;

2- learn how the grammatical concepts we seem to be so familiar with came

about;

3- have an idea about the developments in the field of linguistic study

throughout history and to a certain extent how this affected literature;

4- be familiar with major schools in linguistics in history

5- be able to read fairly sophisticated books and articles in the field;

6- discuss their readings with a fairly critical mind, and bring in their own

contribution.

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 Module Work Methods
1. Home reading, work in class

2. Presentations

2. Assignments

3. Discussions

Module Evaluation
The module evaluation involves the writing of an essay (final and catch-up exams).

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 Course Contents

The course provides an introduction to the major western trends in language study

from both a diachronic and a synchronic point of view. Therefore, it will shed light

on the major Schools of Linguistics focusing on the central questions, goals and

methods of analysis of each. Specifically, the course content includes the

following:

1. Introduction to the course

2. Linguistics as a Scientific Study of language

3. Babilyion and Hindu Traditions to the Study of Language

4. Non-Greek Perspective to the Study of language

5. The Contribution of the Greeks: The Sophists, Plato, and Aristotle

6. The Contribution of the Romans Priscian's Grammar

7. Historical Linguistics: An Overview;

8. Traditional Grammar

9. 19th Century Language study

10. De Saussure's Structuralism

11. Functionalism: The Prague School

12. Generativism: Chomsky

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Linguistics as a Scientific Study of Language

1- It may not be very difficult to define what linguistics exactly means, but definitely, the task of
specifying/ identifying what it is briefly is not an easy task. Actually, we run into the same problem
whenever we are in a situation of defining some science or even a course of action, such as to kill''.
The same problem is encountered in all scientific fields.

2- Linguists have agreed that language assumes three basic functions. A cognitive function in
communicating ideas, an affective one in conveying emotions, and an appellative one in
making requests or giving commands

4- The basic units of grammatical study are those sounds or sound sequences that are
meaningful in the language.

Some characteristics of the linguistic study of language

Ever since the advent of structuralism with De Saussure, linguistic study of language has been
characterized by two properties.
a- Linguistics is a scientific study

This stands for the most bold and important claim made by linguists. Linguists claim that they are
using means and methods that qualify their study of language to being referred to as scientific. They
see their approach as being empirical, methodical, exact and, consequently, objective. These
characteristics are what distinguishes scientific study of language from unscientific and / or
nonscientific ones.
An unscientific study would be defined as the one which not using a method in a consistent way.
This inconsistency makes of its results / findings unpredictable and as such not verifiable by others
working in the same field. The nonscientific study would be one that is a method but where empirical
evidence is not required. In addition, its findings may be verified by others since it would be using a
method.

b- Linguistics is descriptive
Modern study of language (read post-Saussurian study) qualifies as being different from the
traditional ways of studying language in that it, as a scientific study, primarily a descriptivist analysis
of language. Traditional studies have been in their large part prescriptivist. Prescriptivist studies
focus on differentiating correct usage from the incorrect one. Descriptivist studies, on the opposite
focus on reporting what native speakers of language say, just as:
To my knowledge, and by way of illustrating, there is no agreement among semanticists as to how to
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derive the meaning to kill. Some have suggested that it is to be derived from “CAUSE TO DIE”.
they hear it. The scientific study of language claims that there is nothing in the sounds that would
qualify them as right or wrong.

Characteristics of Language
To be able to carry out an accurate description of language, linguists have found it
useful to delimit a set of basic characteristics that distinguish language. In what follows, we
introduce ten of these characteristics that have gathered the consent of many linguists.

Language is sound: speech has primacy over writing which tries to represent speech. Taking
language to be primarily speech, the linguist makes room for taking advantage of the fact that
all human beings produce speech sounds with essentially the same equipment if we can say so.
Once this is accepted, then an accurate description of the speech sounds produced by humans
is made possible through accounting for the movement of the articulatory organs that produce
them.

Language is linear: It is a linear succession of sounds which are produced through successive
movements of the speech organs. Our representation of these sounds should, through the use of
appropriate symbols, be linear to parallel the order in which those sounds are produced.

Language is systematic: In part, language is systematic because it is possible to describe it using

a finite number of symbols that can combine only in a limited number of ways. The possible
combinations of linearity and systematic restrictions of combinations provides us with a
convenient tool to describe and compare languages be it at the sound system level or the syntactic
system level.

Language is a system of systems: languages have different systems (phonological, syntactic,

semantic, morphological) which are independent of each other but which have this ability of
operating simultaneously. Each of these systems has its own units and combinatory rules and
restrictions.

Language is meaningful: the fact that sounds are connected with daily human life interaction
and communication is the reason what gives rise to the interest of its study by linguists or
anyone else.

Language is arbitrary: only one language would exit if there is to be a direct relation between
the nature of the thing being referred to and the linguistic unit used to express it. Arbitrariness

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is the cause for the existence of more than one language. Onomatopoeic words are not to be
considered as counterexamples of the above claim.
Language is conventional: people use language according to fixed analogical rules. One
consequence of this characteristic is that linguists are confident that description of one
representative speaker is applicable to the speech habits of others in the same speech community.

Language is a system of contrasts: Linguists find it interesting to subject language to study

for the variety of differences that this system offers at the various levels of linguistic analysis.
Just how these differences are made is not considered of importance by the linguist.

Language is creative: Speakers of a language are credited with the ability to produce novel
sentences and to understand sentences they are hearing for the first time ever. The creativity of
language can also be seen in the imaginative manipulations of the various linguistic systems by
poets and creative writers and how these extend our awareness about the relations holding
among things.

Language is unique: Any two languages may differ in a lot of things, the possible
combinations of sounds that they accept in different positions, the number of parts of speech
that they have, etc. And this what makes languages unique and our having new things to learn
whenever we embark on learning a foreign language.

Languages are similar: Even though, learning a foreign language could be acknowledged as a
difficult task, it is made easier by those similarities that languages are claimed to have.
Similarity is also apparent when we talk about language families: the Romance group, the
Germanic group, the Semitic group, etc.

Some Characteristics of Linguistic analysis

1. A basic characteristic of language study / analysis is that all the units of language are
stated in terms of sounds or sound differences. Since all languages are meaningful, all the
units are established according to the meanings or meaning differences that they point to/
express. Another property is that given the arbitrary nature of language, the relation holding
between sound and meaning will be indirect.
2. Language study focuses on the study of the patterns of sounds and the sequences of
sounds in any given language. Such a focus makes of this study a formal one. It is also a
study that is referred to as a structural study. This is so because it makes of the contrasts
among units and patterns of units another of its primary focuses. Things being what they

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 are, each linguistic unit is definable in terms of three characteristics: composition,
distribution, and function.
3. The composition of linguistic units. This would help us define the unit through listing
its component parts in such a way that we can distinguish it from others that may have fewer
or more components than it does. Hence, sounds are defined in terms of the place and manner
of articulation features. Bigger units would be described in terms of the words making them
up, etc.
4. The distribution of linguistic units: This way linguistic units are defined in terms of
their distribution in relation to each other (what occurs with what when and how). Under this
heading, we talk about the linguistic environment a linguistic unit in a given shape occurs
in.
5. The function of linguistic units: Here reference is to the use made of them. That is what
they do. Every linguistic unit will have in the least a differential function. It will provide us
with a clue to differentiate one message from another: e.g., the sound /p/ in /pit/ as opposed
to the sound /b/ in /bit/
In addition to this differential function, linguistic units will have a referential function. By
this is meant that there will be among users of the language an agreement over a
conventional connection between the units and some aspect of the non-linguistic
environment. e.g., naming.

6. Linguists studying language, given the above, study both the sounds and the sound
sequences that make up language and also the messages about the non-linguistic
environment being conveyed by these sounds. Any linguist focusing on the formal
properties cannot ignore the content side of language.

Babilyion & Hindu Traditions to Language Study

a-Babilyion Traditions
Babylonian linguistics refers to the study of the Babylonian language, also known as
Akkadian, which was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The study of Babylonian linguistics has
a long and rich history that dates back to the earliest known writings in the Akkadian language.

The earliest known examples of written Akkadian date back to the 3rd millennium BCE,
when the language was used to write administrative and legal documents. Over the centuries, the
language evolved and developed, and many important works on grammar and linguistics were
produced.

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 One of the most important works on Babylonian linguistics is the Akkadian grammar,
which was produced by the Babylonian scholar Sibawaihi in the 8th century CE. This work
provided a comprehensive description of the Akkadian language, including its phonology,
morphology, and syntax.

In the centuries that followed, many other works on Babylonian linguistics were
produced, including dictionaries, lexicons, and commentaries on important texts. These works
were produced by scholars from a variety of backgrounds, including Babylonian scribes, Muslim
scholars, and European travelers and explorers.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, the study of Babylonian linguistics was greatly
influenced by the development of comparative linguistics and the decipherment of other ancient
writing systems, such as Egyptian hieroglyphs and Sumerian cuneiform. Scholars such as
Friedrich Delitzsch, Julius Oppert, and George Smith made significant contributions to the study
of Babylonian linguistics during this time.

Today, Babylonian linguistics continues to be an important field of research, with

scholars exploring the structure and history of the Akkadian language, as well as its relationship
to other ancient languages and cultures. The study of Babylonian linguistics has also had an
important impact on the development of linguistic theory and methodology more broadly.

b-Hindu Traditions

The Indians differed from the Greek by their attempt to describe their language while the
Greek are notoriously known for their speculations about language. It remains to be true that
their earliest literature is religious in theme written in Vedic Sanskrit and consisting mainly of
ritualistic hymns. The Hindu priests held the view that the efficiency of religious ceremonies
depended on both the religious text and on an accurate oral rendition thereof. Thus, the Hindu
priest developed an educational practice to hand down and to preserve a detailed corpus of
grammatical and phonetic information. This knowledge would most certainly have been lost had
it not been written down.

The most famous of Indian Grammarians, Panini (4th / 5th/ 6th century B.C.),
accomplished this task. He wrote the most succinct grammar of Sanskrit. This grammar is
described as “not [being] a grammar in the conventional sense of the term, but rather an algebra-
like condensation of the structure of language.” Panini’s grammar consists of some 400 Sutras
(strings). With respect to his grammar, Indian linguistics amounts to little more than one grand
effort to clarify his grammar; a commentary on this grammar.
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 As has been said above, Indian grammar is totally analytic and descriptive, its aim being
the establishment of the phonology and morphology of an archaic and obsolete language. Their
approach to language study was objective which contributed a lot in their succeeding to achieve
their goal. It is also worthwhile pointing out that the structure of the language being studied
helped a lot in achieving this endeavour. Roughly put, Sanskrit consist of a root to which
grammatical elements are affixed and simple words are joined together to form compounds.
Once the phonetic “merging’s” that have occurred between roots and larger phrases have been
learnt, the student of this language would discover that written Sanskrit is roughly a phonetic
transcription.

It is a grammar that reflects quite accurately the desired pronunciation, and that bequeaths
upon the reader the task of collapsing the phonetic combinations into discrete lexical units. It is
as if we were writing something like: „aiskreeim‟ and leaving it up to the reader to turn this into
either „Ice cream” or „I scream‟ depending on the context. Another such example would be:
“yeetawredi?” and expecting the reader to convert it to “Did you eat already?”

Hence, we could say that once the external and internal phonetic combinations (called
sandhi) have been accounted for, the neat structure of the language becomes apparent. The
student of Sanskrit is asked to work his way back from some large grammatical unit to a root,
listing and identifying each element that has been affixed in some manner to a root. This is as if
we are taking the English word “periphrastically” and breaking it down into peri-phrase-tic-al-
ly, accompanying each step in the analysis with a statement as to the function and meaning of
the unit under discussion. Incidentally, a dictionary of Sanskrit consists principally of roots, not
„words‟ as we would normally use the term. The Indian grammarians scarcely mention what
modern linguistics refer to as “syntax”- The grammar of sentence formation. Moreover, the
Indians accomplished little in the area of etymological studies.

Western grammar would definitely have looked different today had it derived from the
carefully descriptive studies of the Indians rather than from the speculative Greek philosophy.
Be that as it may, it was the Greeks, in grammar as in so many other things, who gave the western
world an approach to the analysis of language that endured almost unchanged unto the present
day.

The Non-Greek Perspective

This section deals with two perspectives from which language has been studied by what
is arbitrarily referred to as the Non-Greek‟. It has been labelled in this way due to its having no
direct link with the tradition that developed from the works of Plato and Aristotle in language
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study. The two perspectives are: The religious point of view and the methodical point of view
A- The Religious Point of View

Throughout human history, religion has always shown interest in language for various
reasons. In what follows, we will expose two such reasons: The original language question and
the religious use of language.
i. The original language

Questions about language have always been at the centre of human interests. Indeed,
humans have always wondered about the whereabouts of this language and about its form and
use.

The very first approaches to the study of language were religious in essence and had for
objective to argue for a God-given original language. Both the Coran and the Bible refer to this
Godly nature of language. The heavenly religions differ about what stands for the “Language of
God”. The Hebrew and Christian tradition claims Hebrew to be the original language. For Islam
it seems to be the case that Arabic is the language of Heaven.

Actually, the two traditions (Islamic vs Hebraic & Christian) seem to approach the issue
from two different perspectives. The Hebraic & Christian maintain that Hebrew is the original
language and that the Babel Tower is a signal of the dispersion of speech through heavenly
intervention. The Islamic tradition makes no reference to Arabic as being the original language
from which all the other languages originated or to any heavenly intervention to have people
speak different tongues.
B- The Methodical Point of View

Besides being the focus of religiously oriented approaches to language, the question of
the original language has also been the subject of observation and experiment.
i- The Non-Scientific perspective

There are records of the ancients trying to establish the through the most ancient of
these is reported by the Greek historian Herodotos (5th Century B.C.). It is the experiment carried
out by an Egyptian king called Psammetichos who isolated two newborns until the time they
began to speak. The assumption being that they would employ the most primitive of natural
languages since they would not have any language system to imitate. The experiment established
that the original language is Phrygian (spoken in Asia Minor) because the first word the infants
uttered was “bekos” a word which is phonetically similar to the word for “bread” in Phrygian.

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There is also record of the experiment carried out under the orders of James IV of Scotland
(1488-1513). The experiment consisted in the internment of two children and it is reported to
have determined that mankind’s first language is Hebrew.
ii- The Scientific Perspective

Skeletal findings have shown that at least two species of humans have colonized the
earth: the Neanderthal man and the Homo Sapiens. The Neanderthal man, so named after the
name of the German valley in which it was found, presents skeletal characteristics that are
interesting from a linguistic perspective. First, it has a larynx which narrower than that of the
Homo Sapien. Second this larynx is situated higher up the throat than is the case for the Homo
Sapien.

The dating technology have shown that The Neanderthal man lived on earth some 25
000 years ago. This species might have been exterminated by the Homo Sapien which is a later
species. What this means for language study is that these two species may not have been using
the same phones (speech sounds) by way of language. Their body structure (= larynx) would
not allow that. What this means is that man may not have spoken one and only one original
language from which all other languages have evolved / developed.

The Greek
From its beginnings Greek linguistics was closely aligned with philosophy. The notions
of language origins held by both Plato and Aristotle were predicated upon philosophical
doctrines concerning the nature of reality and knowledge, and in no important sense were they
derived from an analysis of linguistic data; although, Aristotle could be credited, besides
philosophical speculating, with having made some empirically-based observations about the
Greek language. True to its origins, the study of language among the Greeks remained the
special endeavour of the philosophers, and all the important “schools” contributed something.
In what follows, we are going to look at some of the “landmarks” of language study in the Greek
tradition starting with the Sophists, then moving chronologically to present Plato's, Aristotle's,
the Stoics‟, and the Alexandrians‟ contribution.
A- The Sophists
The Sophists exhibited a strong empirical tendency in language study. They tried to
subject everything to measurement. In their teaching of rhetoric, they advocated the use of what
has come to be known as “rounded sentences”, in which phrases and clauses of successive
sentences would be of equal length, right down to the last syllable. Their methods were satirized
by Aristophanes in The Frogs.

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 They were the ones who laid the groundwork for the technical vocabulary of rhetoric,
much of which, in translation, is still being used today. Their empirical approach counted a lot
for their success. They did not limit themselves to theorizing about what makes a successful
rhetorical composition but carried out observation of the masters of the art in action. They
analysed the speeches of the masters in terms of a certain number of units and had their students
make up speeches using similar units in similar arrangements.
One of the leading Sophists, Protagoras (481-420 B.C.), is credited for having been the
first to distinguish sentence types. Sentences for him, according to one account, are in the order
of four types: prayer, question, statement, and command. Others reported that he differentiated
seven types: narration, question, answer, command, report, prayer, and invitation. Aristotle said
of him that he was the first to draw the attention to the distinction between gender and tense.
Gorgias (483-376 B.C.), a contemporary of Socrates is credited for naming and
recommending the use of a variety of figures of speech, still currently in use in rhetoric such as
“antithesis,” “assonance,” “analogy,” “apostrophe,” “allegory,” “hypallage,” “similar endings,”
“repetition,” “metaphor, “puns,” and “rounded sentences.” Prodicus’s (465-398 B.C.) main
contribution consisted in drawing a distinction between words that were thought to be synonyms
from true synonyms. Hippias is acknowledged for having made a more detailed study of sounds
than did his predecessors.
Although the sophists explicitly discussed the syllable, they did not discuss individual
phonemes. Moreover, they never provided us with a clear definition of a syllable, but they all
seem to agree on how many syllables there were in rounded sentences. They have also
distinguished sentences as units of rhetoric. It remains to be said that they implicitly recognized
the difference between the phonological (through their discussion of the syllables and sounds)
and the grammatical or syntactic (in their gender and tense distinctions), the lexical (in
distinguishing synonyms), and the stylistic levels (through their distinctions of various rhetorical
devices)
We should always bear in mind that the sophists’ sole purpose behind language study is
to better equip their students to win arguments and not to discuss grammar. It is for this reason,
being concerned with a single use of language and not with the fundamentals of language that
are presupposed by any use of it, that we can say that their work is not linguistically useful for
us / our purposes. Indeed, they gave no formal criteria for distinguishing the various units they
discussed.

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The Greek Contiribution (Plato, Socrates, the Sophists, etc.)

A. Plato
Having dealt with the pre-Platonic interests in language, we now move on to look at how
Plato’s views about and interests in language were different from those of his fellow citizens,
the Sophists. First, we are going to handle the opposition in the understanding of the issue of
language meaning and how it comes about in the views of Plato and the Sophists. Then, we will
deal with Plato‟s other views about language, more specifically his views on the relation of
thought, language and the things talked about.
iii-The Physis - Nomos Controversy
The early Greek language analysts were interested in the fundamental question of how
words / language acquire meaning. At the time of Plato, two views were held as far this issue is
concerned. There was the view held by the Sophists and which amounts to saying that there is
some natural connection between language and the things this language is used to refer to talk
about. The other view which is basically the one defended by Plato and which claims that
language has meaning arbitrarily and through convention. These two views are discussed in
Plato’s Cratylus.
In Cratylus, Socrates is asked to act as a judge in the dispute that Cratylus and
Hemogenes have about the nature of the name of a thing. Cratylus holds the view that the name
of a thing is a direct reflection of the nature of the thing named. It is in this sense that Cratylus
is claiming that language acquires naturally (Physei). According to this view, the phonetic make
up of a name is a direct mirror of the composition of the thing being named. According to this
view, there should be only one name for anything that is to be named. This name is common to
all languages.
Hermogenes rejects this assumption and claims that things acquire their names through
convention. Speakers of any given language seem to agree on what name to give to a thing on
the basis of convention (nomō). In other words, he maintains that there is nothing inherent in the
thing-to-be-named that calls for the use of a certain combination of sounds. It is worth noting at
this point that this view accounts for the fact that any name is liable to change and any word is
likely to be adopted as long as there is agreement about its reference.
In his analysis, Socrates points out to his interlocutors that onoma (“name”, “noun”, or
“subject”) is a very important means for distinguishing things. He stressed that this role is
traceable to the fact that onoma is the smallest part in a logos (“phrase”, “clause”, or “sentence”
or “argument”). He also points out that those names are under the condition of being able to
satisfy their purpose. Moreover, Socrates claims that the craft of naming is not available to all
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people. Some people are more skillful in this respect than others. And the best we can hope for
is that those people who first coined a word have a clear idea about the nature of the thing being
named. Two kinds of names are distinguished by Socrates: Names that are complex or
compound and those that are simple.
Socrates discussion of complex words does not really sound serious. He claims that the
word for the name of the god of the sea “Poseidon” is made up of two constituents: posi the
dative “for the foot” of the word pous “foot” and desmos “a fetter, a movement restrainer”. Thus,
Socrates assumes that the very first person to have coined the name might have thought the fact
of walking through the waters might be very difficult even for Poseidon. He further notes that
the name is not to be considered as a mere combination for the two constituents. Rather, one
will have to assume that some phonetic operations have taken place to make the word sound
more agreeable to the ear. (euphony). Through this example, we can see that Socrates is arguing
that there is some quite direct link between the name and the nature of thing being named.
Socrates claims that in the case of simple names we shall have to proceed in a way
different from the one followed in the case of compounds. He suggests that one has to probe
into what the single letters making a word suggest/ imitate. This leads him to talk about the
classification of letters into vowels, consonants (occlusives and mutes), and semivowels
(hēmiphōna a consonant that is neither occlusive nor mute). He points out that one should
analyze the qualities of these sounds and see if there is some relation between the meaning they
convey and what their phonetics suggest. Reacting to the examples listed by Socrates, Cratylus
stresses the fact that the meaning associated with the individual sounds is a matter of custom.
Socrates makes the assumption that letters may refer to things which are similar or different, and
that this reference is indeed a matter of custom which is no more no less but he prefers to call
convention or agreement. Hence, he claims that “we must admit that both convention and usage
contribute to the manifestation of what we have in mind when we speak.”
iv- Thought, language, and the things talked about
Plato’s other views about language are exposed in Theatetus and the Sophists. In these
writings, he is more interested in the relation holding between what is referred to, language and
thought than into the probing of the etymology of words. In this work he observed that there is
some kind of correlation that holds between certain words which is similar to the correlation
that holds between certain things. He traces this correlation to the kinds of limitation we seem
to agree on as far as language use is concerned. In other words, he sees the reason for this
correlation to be lying in the way we think about the things and in the nature of the things
themselves. Thus, he undertook the task of establishing a way for the description of the correct

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associations that would lead to true statements. The attempt to institute a branch of knowledge
that deals with these correlation rules stands for the very first attempt to found formal logic, that
is a system that would enable us to convey whether certain combinations are correct or not
through checking the rapport between the terms used. In so doing, Plato devised a technique that
is behind the development of syllogistic rules.
We can exemplify this technique through having a look at an extract from The Sophists in
which a definition of the term “angling” is sought.

Stranger: Then now you and I have come to an understanding

not only about the name of the angler's art, but about the
definition of the thing itself. One half of all art was acquisitive
half of all the art acquisitive art was conquest or taking by force,
half of this was hunting, and half of hunting was hunting
animals, half of this was hunting water animals-of this again, the
under half was fishing, half of fishing was striking; a part of
striking was fishing with a barb, and one half of this again, being
the kind which strikes with a hook and draws the fish from below
upwards, is the art which we have been seeking, and which from
the nature of the operation is denoted angling or drawing up
(aspalienutike, anaspasthai). by which His work started with
The Sophists, By Plato (www.mitclassics.edu)
The method is called the division and as the extract above shows it is as follows: if we
want to define some species x, we start by a more inclusive and familiar class, a, (in the example
above art), of which we know x is a member. then class a is divided into two mutually exclusive
subclasses, b and c, making sure that only one of these subclasses contains the property X which
belongs to the class x we seek to define. We keep dividing the subclasses until we reach a
satisfactory definition of the class x through the use of all the subdivision that we have made.
Aristotle was dissatisfied with this technique. For him, this technique does not provide
us with any rules that we could use to define the fundamental notion of a set and also to select
the proper subdivision in each case. Moreover, this technique would work only in those cases
which are necessarily related but it does not account for that which is both accidentally and
necessarily related. Such observations led Aristotle to invent deductive syllogism.
In Theatetus, Plato uses the notions onomata and rhēmata to refer to this definition of
language. For him these two notions are a mirror or a reflection of one’s ideas as expressed by
the stream of air that gets out of the mouth. The expressions onomata and rhēmata are,
respectively, the plural of onoma and rhēma, correspond to many expressions we use. In

16
ordinary language, onoma means “name”, in the jargon of grammar, it means “noun”,
“nominal”, or “subject”, and in logic it means “logical subject”. Rhēma’s meaning in ordinary
language is “phrase” or “saying”, in grammar, it means “verb” or “verbal” or “predicate”, and
in logic it is “logical predicate”. In Plato’s use, the two notions are the basic members of logos
“sentence”. It should be pointed out that in Plato’s time no distinction was made between the
diction of ordinary language, grammar, or logic which led many scholars to call for a cautious
use of the above translations. However, Plato later defined two of the above terms in The
Sophists. There rhēma is defined as “the name of an action” and onoma as “the name of the one
who performs the action”. These definitions come closer to our definition of verb and noun in
grammar. Unlike his predecessor, Plato showed in his work that he was aware of many language
units that his predecessors could not be said to have explicitly discussed. Thus, he distinguished
the following: different dialects of Greek; a sound sequence as a word or as a sentence on the
basis of accent; native Greek words from borrowed ones; letters from their names; Greek
vowels, consonants, mutes, and semivowels.
By way of evaluating Plato’s contribution to language study, we can say that he has been
the first one to distinguish of sentences rhēma and onoma and this represents a clear advance
over the work of the Sophists who limited themselves to the phonological and lexical
constituents of sentences. His distinction of these two notions was purely semantic and did not
involve any reference to formal characteristics even though he was able to observe these.
Moreover, he did not make any distinction between the phonetic and phonological levels. He
seemed to assume that there is a one-to-one correspondence between sound and letter. As far as
his work on correlation is concerned, we could say that he did not attempt to trace the restrictions
holding of these correlations to their syntactic, stylistic, or lexical sources. Most importantly,
Plato did not make any distinction between grammar and logic. All of this could be traced back
to the why of his language study. Plato studied words / language with the intention of learning
something about the things being referred to. Plato never subjected the arbitrary, conventional
system of language to investigation. Finally, his definition of onoma, rhēma and logos is not
formal and our applying of these notions to any part of expressions would necessarily require of
us a knowledge of both the definitions and the meanings of the expressions.
B. Aristotle

No single scholar of Greek philosophy would disagree with the claim that had it not
been for Plato’s ideas, Aristotle would not have developed his major theses about reality, logic,
and language. Actually, everyone agrees that Aristotle had developed the majority of Plato’s
ideas by providing them with further insights of his own. In what follows, we will have a look

17
at his general theory about what there is to know, the manner in which men came to know about
it, and the way that people expressed this knowledge in language. Aristotle distinguished in
language several levels on which language can be studied. Moreover, he distinguished the forms
of both words and sentences. The meaning of words in isolation and in constructions also
received his attention. Finally, it can be said that he made a distinction between the written and
the spoken styles of language.

Priscian’s Grammar

The most authoritative description of Latin that has come down to us from the antiquity
is that of Priscian. He lived in the 6th century A.D. He is reported to have taught Latin to Greeks
in Constantinople. In writing his grammar, Priscian explicitly acknowledges that he is basing it
on the work of Appolonius Dyscolus for Greek. It is for this reason that this grammar is claimed
to be the Roman adaptation of Greek grammar.

The grammar that Priscian built has gained much importance mainly for two reasons:
i) It is the most complete description of Latin by a native speaker of this language;
ii) His theory of grammar is one of the pillars on which the traditional way of
discussing language was built.
ii) It is mainly for these reasons that he was the authority for Latin and for the
discusson of language in the medieval period.
Priscian’s grammar is divided into 18 books. The last two books deal with syntax and
were referred to by the scholars of the Middle Ages as the Priscianus Minor. The other 16 were
called Priscianus Major. He claimed that the for discussing language only semantic criteria
should be taken into consideration. Despite this, he made frequent use of formal criteria in his
grammar. He did not put any restrictions as to the ordering of these two kinds of criteria. In
what follows we are going to look to what he considered as the elements of language.
Elements of Language
He claimed that language is made of the following elements. First a language is sounds.
These sounds are of four kinds not all of which are useful for the description of language:
i- Vox articulata (an articulated vocal sound): this stands for a sound that is associated
with a meaning by a speaker.
ii- Vox inarticulata: it is a sound that is not uttered in order to express a meaning.
iii- Vox literata it is a sound that can be written, whether it is of the type articulate
or in articulate
iv- Vox illiterata: it is a sound that cannot be written.
18
 Second, he says that in any language we have letters. A letter stands for the minimal
part of a sound that can be written. Third, he distinguished the syllable. A syllable is a sound
that can be written and uttered in one breath with a single accent.
It may have a few as one and no more than six letters.
A word dictio is the minimum part of a compound expression. It is understood to be a
part of in terms of the meaning of its whole. The word was so defined by Priscian so as to
avoid the interpretation of a word like „vires’ (= plural of ‘vis’ , ‘viris’ “force”) as being
analyzable into meaningful parts like ‘vi’ and ‘res’ or ‘vir’ and ‘es’.
An oratio is an acceptable arrangement of words that signifies a complete thought. For
Priscian, there are many types of oratio. In his conception a single word uttered by way of
answer to a question can be considered as a perfect oratio.
Parts of speech
In his grammar, Priscian defined eight parts of speech (Partes orationis) as
follows:
a- The noun is the part of speech that assigns to each of its bodies, or things a common or proper
quality. In so doing, Priscian is following the Aristotelian tradition of giving the noun priority
over all other parts of speech. He also gave the nominative form (=subjective form) more
importance than the other nominal inflection (just as Aristotle did with his ptosis).
b- The verb It is a part of speech with tenses and moods but without case (ptosis). It signifies
acting or being acted upon. Priscian distinguished four types of constructions into which a verb
occurs:
1- Intransitive: it is the case where the action of a person is not involving
another person;
2- Transitive: It is the case where a person acts on another.
3- Reciprocal: it is the instance where a person acts upon himself. Iv
4- Reintranstive: It is the instance where a person acts upon another person
and this action rebounds upon the actor.
c- The participles: They are not explicitly defined. However, it is stated that they should
come in third place rightfully since they share case with the noun and voice with the verb.
d- The pronoun: it is a part of speech that can substitute for the proper noun of anyone and
that indicates a definite person.
e- A preposition: an indeclinable part of speech that is put before others, either next to them or
forming a composite with them. We can note that by adopting this definition, Priscian is not
distinguishing prepositions from ‘prefixes’.
f- The adverb is an indeclinable part of speech whose meaning is added to the verb.
19
g- The interjection is not explicitly defined but I distinguished from the adverb with which the
Greeks identified it. Priscian based this distinction on the basis of its syntactic independence
and its emotive meaning.
h- The conjunction is an indeclinable part of speech that links other parts of speech in company
with which it has significance by clarifying their meaning or relation.

To conclude, we should note that Priscian stated that in building his grammar he relied
on what he heard from Latin native speakers as well as on what he read in works by reputable
scholars.

TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR
Traditional grammar has a mixed background. It derives its vocabulary from describing
the formal aspects of language from older work. In addition to that, it derives its semantics
from that of the ancients (Greeks and Romans) and the medievals.

The Medievals developed a more sophisticated semantics than that of the Greeks and
Romans. It was based in an implicit way on the recognition of syntactic relations in language.
However, we have to acknowledge that the work of the Medievals on language did not
develop in a well-structured analysis of the formal aspects of language. We had to wait until
the 19th century to see students of Western languages produce a more confident morphological
analysis of their and classical languages.

Besides owing its development to the scholars of the Greek and the Roman languages
and the elaboration or refinement of their ideas during the medieval period, traditional
grammar benefited from two other sources: the first dictionaries and the first grammars of 18th
century England. Dictionaries arose to dissipate the confusion arising from the variety of
vocabulary and usage in the different parts of a country. Most of the first dictionaries were
addressing (among others) ladies who seemed to need such a help.

Dictionaries were written mainly for two reasons:

i) to establish the meaning of borrowed words in the source language and in the English
language;
ii) to establish spelling, pronunciation, and etymology of English words.
This trend did not limit itself to England. Throughout Europe grew the need for
correctness to the point that The English envied the success of the Italian Academia della
Crusca (which was established in 1582) and the Académie Française (set up by Cardinal
20
Richelieu in 1635). Both bodies published authoritative works on what was acceptable and
what was not in vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammatical constructions.
No such attempt seemed to succeed in the English-speaking world even though many
were aware of its necessity. As far as the question of correctness was concerned, England
divided into two groups: The conservatives and the liberals. The conservatives were typically
concerned with resisting linguistic change. They were keen on restoring past glories to the
tongue. This way they would be in more secure and familiar surroundings. The liberals were
able to admit the presence of innovations. They were willing to let such novelties stand their
own test of popularity and time.
The publishing of Johnson’s Dictionary (1755) and Bishop Lowth’s A Short
Introduction to English Grammar (1762) signaled the end of a debate for an English
equivalent to the French and Italian ‘Académies’. The works set the road for an English
prescriptive grammar. Both of the two authors saw that language is what custom has made it.
They further believe that no individual can legislate linguistic reality out of existence. Yet,
both of them felt justified in prescribing some expressions and proscribing others.
To conclude, below some of the characteristics of Traditional Grammar are listed:
1- Traditional Grammar is widespread;
2- Traditional Grammar gives a fairly thorough discussion of the declarative sentence;
3- Traditional Grammar is the vehicle by means of which many students and scholars
have learnt other languages;
4- Many grammars of many languages are available;
5- Traditional Grammar is normative. It mostly bases its rules on illogical grounds;
6- Traditional Grammar is based on European languages. This consequently means
that it may be inadequate for non-European languages;
7- Traditional Grammar does not distinguish between:
a- lexical, morphological, and syntactic meaning;
b- the difference between the grammatically minimal and stylistically
permissible constructions;
c- the particular and universal features of language.

The term traditional grammar also refers to the collection of prescriptive rules and concepts
about the structure of language that is commonly taught in schools. Traditional
English grammar, also referred to as school grammar, is largely based on the principles of Latin
grammar, not on modern linguistic research in English.

21
 Traditional grammar defines what is and is not correct in the English language, not
accounting for culture or modernizing in favor of maintaining tradition. Because it is fairly rigid
and rooted in the ways of the past, traditional grammar is often considered outdated and regularly
criticized by experts. Even so, many children learn this proper, historical form of grammar today.

A Prescriptive Approach

Prescriptive forms of grammar like traditional grammar are governed by strict rules. In
the case of traditional grammar, most of these were determined a long time ago. While some
professionals uphold prescriptivism and the goals of traditional grammar, others deride them.

Author of The Teacher's Grammar Book James D. Williams summarizes the creeds of
traditional grammar: "We say that traditional grammar is prescriptive because it focuses on the
distinction between what some people do with language and what they ought to do with it,
according to a pre-established standard. ... The chief goal of traditional grammar, therefore, is
perpetuating a historical model of what supposedly constitutes proper language," (Williams
2005).

Others, like David Crystal, are passionately opposed to school grammar and find it too
restrictive. "[G]rammarians of the 2000s are the inheritors of the distortions and limitations
imposed on English by two centuries of a Latinate perspective,"(Crystal 2003).

From Traditional Grammar to Sentence Grammar

David Crystal wasn't the first person to call attention to the age of traditional grammar
foundations, using this fact to argue against its implementation. Linguist John Algeo coined the
second major development in grammar teaching, brought on by growing opposition to traditional
grammar, sentence grammar. "The first English grammars were translations of Latin grammars
that had been translations of Greek grammars in a tradition that was already some two-thousand
years old.

Furthermore, from the seventeenth century through the first half of the nineteenth
century, there were no substantial changes made in the form of English grammar books or in the
way English grammar was taught. When people talk about 'traditional' grammar,' this is the
tradition they mean, or ought to mean. ... Traditional grammar began to be challenged around
the middle of the [nineteenth] century, when the second major development in grammar teaching
appeared.
22
 There is no very good name for this second development but we might call it 'sentence
grammar.' Whereas traditional grammar focused primarily on the word (hence its preoccupation
with parts of speech), the 'new' grammar of the 1850s focused on the sentence. ... It began to
emphasize the grammatical importance of word order and function words ... in addition to the
few inflexional endings in English," (Algeo 1969)

Richard Nordquist www.thoughco.com

Updated on January 09, 2020
The New-Grammarians
Neogrammarian, German Junggrammatiker, any of a group of German scholars
that arose around 1875; their chief tenet concerning language change was that sound laws
have no exceptions. This principle was very controversial because there seemed to be several
irregularities in language change not accounted for by the sound laws, such as Grimm’s
law (q.v.), that had been discovered by that time. In 1875, however, the Danish linguist
Karl Verner explained the apparent exceptions to Grimm’s law; his formulation of the
principle governing those exceptions is known as Verner’s law (q.v.). Subsequently, many
other important sound laws were discovered and formulated to account for other apparent
exceptions, and, by the end of the 19th century, the hypothesis of the regularity of sound
change had been generally accepted.
Synchronic linguistics, the study of a language at a given point in time. The time
studied may be either the present or a particular point in the past; synchronic analyses can
also be made of dead languages, such as Latin. Synchronic linguistics is contrasted with
diachronic linguistics (or historical linguistics), the study of a language over a period of
time. In the 20th century, synchronic description has come to be regarded as prior to
diachronic description; the latter presupposes that synchronic descriptions at various stages
of the development of a language have already been carried out. Previously, linguists had
placed emphasis on diachronic linguistics. The terminological distinction between
synchronic and diachronic linguistics was first made by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de
Saussure (1857–1913).
Paul Kretschmer, in full Paul Wilhelm Kretschmer, (born May 2, 1866, Berlin—
died March 9, 1956, Vienna), linguist who studied the earliest history and interrelations of
the Indo-European languages and showed how they were influenced by non-Indo-European
languages, such as Etruscan. A work on Greek vase inscriptions (1894) revealed how
nonlinguistic materials could be exploited for their linguistic worth.
Kretschmer’s epochal study of pre-Greek elements in ancient Greek was
his Einleitung in die Geschichte der griechischen Sprache (1896; “Introduction to the
23
History of the Greek Language”). Comparing Greek place-names with their foreign
counterparts in ancient Anatolia, he concluded that a non-Greek, Mediterranean culture had
preceded the Greeks there, leaving extensive linguistic traces. The discoveries of the
archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos, Crete, around 1900 tended to confirm
Kretschmer’s views.

STRUCTURALISM

It is a fact that language study has mirrored the predominant interest of the time. It is in this
sense that we can say that at one time or another, rhetoric, physics, literature, logic, psychology
have stood as models for this study. In more than one instance, the ways of doing it of some
disciplines have been adapted to linguistic research / study.
During his study of language, Ferdinand de Saussure seemed to have grown dissatisfied with
the claim that the only scientific way to study language is from a historical point of view.
However, he did not seem to be sure about the way to make more accurate a study that does not
make of the historical development of language a topic. Once he became familiar with the work
of Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), such an enterprise started being obvious to him. This is why,
before introducing the work of De Saussure, we are going to have first a look at some of
Durkheim‟s ideas and see how they can be put to use to make of the study of language a
“science‟ without having to refer to history.
A. DURKHEIM‟S “RULES OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL METHOD”: In the field of
sociology, Durkheim’s booklet “Rules of the Sociological method” is viewed as a classic though
all of its findings have been challenged today. The work acquired its importance from the fact
that it was the very first to claim that sociology could be made into a science independent from
anthropology and psychology. To make such an endeavour possible, Durkheim had to define
social facts as “things‟ very similar to the “things” studied by the physical sciences. This
proposal got De Saussure’s interest and led him to think about a new way for studying language
without being obliged to have recourse to history. On top of all, this new way of studying
language could claim to be scientific.
A social fact‟ is defined by Durkheim in the following terms:

Any kind of action, whether of a set nature or not, capable of exercising

external constraints over the individual … [Its chief property was that of] being
general through the extent of a given society.
Following this definition, social facts are radically different from individual
24
psychological acts. This follows from the fact that they are defined as being of a general nature
and as exerting a constraint on the individual. Having made this point, it was easier and
consequential for Durkheim to postulate the existence of a collective consciousness as distinct
from an individual consciousness. His warranty for talking about a collective consciousness
was based on an analogy with life. Life, according to him, could not be thought of as he addition
of all the factors that make up an organism.
Durkheim was criticized for having made “things” out of social facts. He related this
criticism to the lack of understanding- on the part of these critiques of what a thing is. For him,
a thing is different from an idea. It is something that includes all the objects of knowledge that
cannot be conceived without data from experience, observation, and experiment; it is not the
result of a purely internal mental activity.
Durkheim claims that social phenomena cannot be conceived of as personal constructs. If
this were the case- so he claims- the only things we could do them are: i) examine what we
attribute to them; and ii) see how they cohere logically. This position is untenable for Durkheim
because:

The greater parts of our social institutions were bequeathed to us by former

generations. We ourselves took no part in their formation. Even when we have
collaborated in their genesis, we can only with difficulty obtain even a
confused and inexact insight into the true nature of our action and the causes
which determined it… the important thing to know is not the way in which a
certain thinker individually conceives a certain institution, but the group’s
conception of it; this conception alone is socially

significant.

As for the meaning of the “an external constraint” that these social facts exert, Durkheim
maintains that usually we are not aware / conscious of these constraints which are definitely a
test for true social fact. This constraint would be felt only in those cases when there is resistance
on the part of the individual or the group to some social pattern. Once, I conform and assent to
the social fact, the constraint is unnecessary and hence not felt. For him, all cases of education
are a continuous effort to impose on the child ways of seeing, feeling and acting which he could
not arrive at spontaneously.
These applications of ideas to language study are obvious. In this respect language is a
“thing‟ separate from our use of it as individuals. This is so because we inherit it from other
speakers who have “taught‟ to us. It is not our product. In this view, language is a social fact.

25
It is general throughout the community and it exerts a constraint on the speakers. This constraint
is very peculiar:
i- In case we want to use for communicating, we have no other alternative;
ii- it is imposed on us by education. However, once we master it, we are aware of no
constraint. As individuals, we are under no obligation to say what kind of a “thing” language
is. Linguists / Linguistic books give a definition of language because they want to know
what it is and because the definition is presumably useful in relating language to other
things.
As a social fact, language is also independent of historical development. A group which
succeeds to another is NOT simply a prolongation of the latter, ”it is qualitatively different from
it, having gained some properties and lost others. It consists of a new individuality.” The
peculiarity of a social constraint is that it is traceable to the prestige that we endow certain
representations with. Under this view, language, on a part with social facts, will be best studied
when a minimum of attention is paid to the individual speaker’s performance.
Finally, when we are looking at the structural approach developed by De Saussure, we can
appreciate how much the ideas of Durkheim influenced such an endeavour. However, it is must
be pointed out here that De Saussure should not be thought of as having simply translated
Durkheim’s sociological ideas into linguistic ideas. The work of Durkheim should be seen a
something which has provided De Saussure with a model and a stimulus in his work on
language.

B. FERDINAD DE SAUSSURE

Today, De Saussure is famous for his work on synchronic linguistics. However, it should be
noted that De Saussure was already an authority in the field of linguistics when he started
developing his own view on how language study should be carried out. At that time, he was an
authority among the celebrities of historical linguistics. Already at the age of 22 he has published
a memorable work under the title Mémoire sur le système primitive des voyeles dans les langue
Indo-Europèens.
He was born on November 17th, 1857 in Geneva, where he did both his elementary and
secondary schooling. Leipzig was where he did his university studies. At the age of 24 (1881),
he joined Paris University where he lectured on Comparative Linguistics and general Linguistics
until 1889. After 1891, he lectured at the University of Geneva. When he died in 1913, his
famous book Cours de linguistique générale was not yet published. It was only done after his
death that the class notes of some of his students were put together along with some of his course
26
outlines to give us that book in 1921.
It is in his Cours that de Saussure crystallized his ideas against restricting / limiting scientific
investigation / study of language to its historical aspects. In fact, he established that the scientific
study of language is of an entirely different kind. He set for himself three goals:
i- to make the synchronic study of language a scientific study;
ii- to show that linguistic facts exist; and
iii- to establish the methods for identifying and dealing with linguistic facts. In what follows,
We are going to look at the following which are considered to make the most important of
his contributions to language study:
the distinction langue, parole, and langage

La langue, la parole, le langage

As far English is concerned, there are at least five sets / types of data that the term language
can be applied to:
i- linguistic forms;
ii- relations among linguistic forms;
iii- meanings of linguistic forms;
iv- relations among meanings;
v- relations between linguistic forms and meanings.

In French, De Saussure used three expressions to refer different aspects of language that
he considered worthy of attention. Since De Saussure wanted to study language scientifically,
this would necessitate of him to define language in such a way that it could be considered a
thing, an object that could be studied without any reference whatsoever to its historical aspect /
development. Thus, he followed Durkheim who held the view that we have social facts that can
be studied scientifically when we “consider them from an aspect that is independent of their
individual manifestation.” The term that is used by De Saussure to refer to the individual
manifestation of language is la parole, “speaking”. Thus, for him speaking involves the
following properties:
It is the sum of what people say, including individual constructions that are
the consequence of a speaker’s choice, acts of articulation that are equally
matters of free choice, required to produce these constructions.

Defined this way, “speaking” is not a social fact. This is so because it a product which
is both a conscious and fully individual product. Recall that a social fact should be general
throughout a community, and exerting constraint rather than allowing / permitting free choice.
27
The addition of all the acts of speaking in a community would result in us having both many acts
of speaking and the realization of the grammatical constraints of a language under the
assumption that all the speakers use language grammatically. The sum of la parole and the rules
of language, De Saussure calls la parole + rules of the language = le langage

While le langage has both the generality and the requirement of constraint, as found in
grammatical rules, it is not a social fact since it includes the individual factor attributable to the
individual speakers. For De Saussure, there will always be in le langage an element of the
voluntary and hence the unpredictable side. Simply because it involves individual speakers and
their performances. From this perspective, Le langage is viewed as not having a principle of
unity that enables us to study it scientifically.
For De Saussure, the unpredictable could be eliminated only through the subtracting of the
individual from le langage. In so doing, we would have a definition of language that fits the
notion of social fact as defined by Durkheim. One definition suggested by De Saussure of La
langue is that it is “le langage minus la parole”. La Langue is the set of passively acquired habits
we have been taught by our speech community. It is in term of this langue that we understand
other speakers and produce combinations other speakers from our community understand.
When we hear someone from another speech community speak, all we get are noises but not
the social facts of language. We are not able to connect the sounds so produced with the social
facts that this other speech community associates the sounds with. The claim is that within our
community there is a set of rules according to which we perceive the sounds as associated with
social facts. These rules, which can be called the convention, or grammar, of the language are
habits that education as imposed on us. They have the property of being general throughout the
community (that is why all the speakers can understand each other) and they exercise constraint
on the individual speakers (we are not given alternative ways of linking sounds and social factors
for successful communication). Adult speakers are not aware of any constraints as opposed to
children who are most often puzzled as to why they should use linguistics form instead of
another.
At this point in defining la langue, De Saussure studied “language” independent of individual
manifestations. La parole cannot be a social fact because it is individual, active and voluntary.
Le langage is not a pure social fact since it involves both social and individual aspects. La
Langue is the social fact since it is general throughout the community and it exerts constraint
over the individual speakers. Just as is the case for Durkheim’s collective consciousness, la
langue is not found complete and perfect in any individual.
La parole comprises anything that a speaker might say. Le langage involves anything that a
28
speaker might say as well as the constraints that stop him from saying anything ungrammatical.
La langue embodies the negative limits on a speaker must say if he is to speak a particular
language grammatically. It has to do more with a manner of speaking than with the matter spoken
about.
Viewed in this way, la langue is an abstraction, which is not found an inconvenience for the
scientific study of language in view of the following. First, De Saussure held the view that “the
point of view creates the object” we study. Second, he firmly believed that no science can study
entities in their concrete reality, since such a study would involve an infinite number of
individual properties. According to him, in order to make any study scientific, we need “a
conventional simplification of the data” to be examined. This means that the researcher is called
upon to abstract from some of the concrete properties of the things a science studies in order to
have a precisely definable object.
As a synchronic study, language is studied as though it is a stable system or state, with
neither a past nor a future. La parole cannot be studied since it is not homogenous. La langue
can be studied and actually has been studied. From this, we can deduce that language can be
studied only if we do away with speech. Thus, De Saussure saw as the sole object of linguistic
science that aspect of language which corresponds to a social fact.
La Langue is a social fact which can be studied when we consider the pattern behind
individual utterances. It is the pattern which is stable both through time and in the consciousness
of the speakers. This is not to deny this pattern the fact that it may undergo change. The pattern
changes but so slowly that we can afford to abstract from the reality of the change.
In linguistics, the terms ‘synchrony’ and ‘diachrony’ refer to two different approaches in
linguistic research, with respect to the periods of time considered in the research in question.
The synchronic approach means studying any aspect of language solely in one particular
period of time (typically the present), without taking into account other periods of time in that
language’s history. For example, studying the usage patterns of double negatives in English (e.g.,
I ain’t got no money) in the early 21st century, without looking into the usage patterns of double
negatives in English prior to the 21st century. Most fields in linguistics typically employ
synchronic approaches as to not lose focus in their research.
The diachronic approach means studying any aspect of language by comparing it between
two (or more) periods of time, effectively focusing on the change and evolution of whatever it
is you’re looking at. As an example, studying the usage patterns of double negatives in English
in the 18th century and comparing it to the patterns in the 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries to
see how double negatives in English may or may not have changed. By definition, historical

29
linguistics typically employs diachronic approaches.

Saussure on Signs
The Swiss linguist and founder of structuralism, Ferdinand de Saussure, describes the sign
and its arbitrary relation to reality.

LINGUISTIC SIGN.
A term in especially early 20 c LINGUISTICS. Such a SIGN has two parts: a signifier
(French signifiant), the form; something signified (signifié), what is referred to, the meaning.
According to Ferdinand de Saussure, language was a system of signs, in which each formed part
of an interdependent whole où tout se tient (where everything holds together). He stressed the
arbitrary nature of the sign, evidently covering two notions of arbitrariness:
(1) That there is mostly no connection between the two parts of the sign: there is no
intrinsic link between the sound sequence cow and the animal it refers to. Apparent exceptions,
as with onomatopoeic words (bang, coo, quack) are relatively few and vary from language to
language.
(2) That each language cuts up the world in different, arbitrary ways. This viewpoint is
controversial, as linguists are divided as to whether there is an underlying reality which is
managed differently by various languages, or whether the cutting up is as arbitrary as Saussure
suggested.

30
 Figure 1: Linguistic Sign
The link between signal and signification is arbitrary. Since we are treating a sign
as the combination in which a signal is associated with a signification, we can express this
more simply as: the linguistic sign is arbitrary.

American Structuralism
American and European structuralism shared a number of features. In insisting upon the
necessity of treating each language as a more or less coherent and integrated system, both
European and American linguists of this period tended to emphasize, if not to exaggerate, the
structural uniqueness of individual languages. There was especially good reason to take this point
of view given the conditions in which American linguistics developed from the end of the 19th
century. There were hundreds of indigenous American Indian languages that had never been
previously described. Many of these were spoken by only a handful of speakers and, if they were
not recorded before they became extinct, would be permanently inaccessible. Under these
circumstances, such linguists as Franz Boas (died 1942) were less concerned with the
construction of a general theory of the structure of human language than they were with
prescribing sound methodological principles for the analysis of unfamiliar languages. They were
also fearful that the description of these languages would be distorted by analyzing them in terms
of categories derived from the analysis of the more familiar Indo-European languages.
After Boas, the two most influential American linguists were Edward Sapir (died 1939)
and Leonard Bloomfield (died 1949). Like his teacher Boas, Sapir was equally at home in
anthropology and linguistics, the alliance of which disciplines has endured to the present day in
many American universities. Boas and Sapir were both attracted by the Humboldtian view of the
relationship between language and thought, but it was left to one of Sapir's pupils, Benjamin Lee
Whorf, to present it in a sufficiently challenging form to attract widespread scholarly attention.
Since the republication of Whorf's more important papers in 1956, the thesis that language
determines perception and thought has come to be known as the Whorfian hypothesis.
Sapir's work has always held an attraction for the more anthropologically inclined
American linguists. But it was Bloomfield who prepared the way for the later phase of what is
now thought of as the most distinctive manifestation of American "structuralism." When he
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published his first book in 1914, Bloomfield was strongly influenced by Wundt's psychology of
language. In 1933, however, he published a drastically revised and expanded version with the
new title Language; this book dominated the field for the next 30 years. In the book, Bloomfield
explicitly adopted a behaviouristic approach to the study of language, eschewing in the name of
scientific objectivity all reference to mental or conceptual categories. Of particular consequence
was his adoption of the behaviourism
American structuralism is a label attached to a heterogeneous but distinctive style of
language scholarship practiced in the United States, the heyday of which extended from around
1920 until the late 1950s. There is certainly diversity in the interests and intellectual stances of
American structuralists. Nevertheless, some minimum common denominators stand out.
American structuralists valued synchronic linguistic analysis, independent of—but not to the
exclusion of—study of a language’s development over time; they looked for, and tried to
articulate, systematic patterns in language data, attending in particular to the sound properties of
language and to morphophonology; they identified their work as part of a science of language,
rather than as philology or as a facet of literary studies, anthropology, or the study of particular
languages. Some American structuralists tried to establish the identity or difference of linguistic
units by studying their distribution with respect to other units, rather than by relying on identity
or difference of meaning. Some (but not all) American structuralists avoided cross-linguistic
generalizations, perceiving them as a threat to the hard-won notion of the integrity of individual
languages; some (but not all) avoided attributing patterns they discovered in particular languages
to cultural or psychological proclivities of speakers. A considerable amount of American
structuralist research focused on indigenous languages of the Americas. One outstanding shared
achievement of the group was the institutionalization of linguistics as an autonomous discipline
in the United States, materialized by the founding of the Linguistic Society of America in 1924.
This composite picture of American structuralists needs to be balanced by recognition
of their diversity. One important distinction is between the goals and orientations of foundational
figures: Franz Boas (1858–1942), Edward Sapir (1884–1939), and Leonard Bloomfield (1887–
1949). The influence of Boas, Sapir, and Bloomfield was strongly felt by the next generation of
language scholars, who went on to appropriate, expand, modify, or otherwise retouch their ideas
to produce what is called post-Bloomfieldian linguistics. Post-Bloomfieldian linguistics displays
its own internal diversity, but still has enough coherence to put into relief the work of other
language scholars who were close contemporaries to the post-Bloomfieldians, but who in various
ways and for various reasons departed from them. American structuralism has at least this much
heterogeneity.

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 structuralism, in linguistics, any one of several schools of 20th-
century linguistics committed to the structuralist principle that a language is a self-contained
relational structure, the elements of which derive their existence and their value from their
distribution and oppositions in texts or discourse. This principle was first stated clearly, for
linguistics, by the Swiss scholar Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913). Saussurean structuralism
was further developed in somewhat different directions by the Prague school, glossematics, and
other European movements.
In the United States the term structuralism, or structural linguistics, has had much the
same sense as it has had in European relation to the work of Franz Boas (1858–1942)
and Edward Sapir (1884–1939) and their followers. Nowadays, however, it is commonly used,
in a narrower sense, to refer to the so-called post-Bloomfieldian school of language analysis that
follows the methods of Leonard Bloomfield, developed after 1930. Phonology (the study of
sound systems) and morphology (the study of word structure) are their primary fields of interest.
Little work on semantics has been done by structural linguists because of their belief that the
field is too difficult or elusive to describe.

Functionalism: The Prague School

Prague school, school of linguistic thought and analysis established in Prague in the
1920s by Vilém Mathesius. It included among its most prominent members the Russian linguist
Nikolay Trubetskoy and the Russian-born American linguist Roman Jakobson; the school was
most active during the 1920s and ’30s. Linguists of the Prague school stress the function of
elements within language, the contrast of language elements to one another, and the total pattern
or system formed by these contrasts, and they have distinguished themselves in the study of
sound systems. They developed distinctive-feature analysis of sounds; by this analysis, each
distinctive sound in a language is seen as composed of a number of contrasting articulatory and
acoustic features, and any two sounds of a language that are perceived as being distinct will have
at least one feature contrast in their compositions. The concept of distinctive-feature analysis in
studying the sound systems of languages has been incorporated within the standard
model of transformational grammar.

The Prague school is also renowned for its interest in the application of functionalism—
the study of how elements of a language accomplish cognition, expression, and conation—
to syntax and the structure of literary texts.

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 As early as 1911 in Czechoslovakia, and independently of Saussure and Jakobson,
Vilém Mathesius (1882-1945) founded a non-historical approach to linguistics. The Prague
School looked at the structural components as they contributed to the entire language. There was
a need for a standard language once Czechoslovakia had acquired independence, and Czech had
the curiosity of being very different in its colloquial and literary forms. Prince Nikolai
Trubetzkoy (1890-1938) investigated paradigmatic relations between phonemes and classified
functions on the purposes they served - keeping words apart, signaling stress, etc.

Like the Russian Formalists, members of the Prague School were keenly concerned
with literature, but they were not hermetic in their approach - i.e., did not see literature as a self-
enclosed, stand- alone entity, but something reflecting social and cultural usage. That was also a
view developed by the American anthropologist William Labov in investigating the colloquial
language of New York. He found that listeners to tape recordings could very accurately place
speakers by geography and social stratum. As both reflected social movement in the recent past
- i.e., history: this was one rare exception to Saussure's assertion that language speakers do not
take past usage into consideration.

Generativism

Three fundamental properties have always characterized the generative approach to

language throughout its history, irrespective of the so many changes in outlook it underwent.
First, generativists have always been claiming that every sentence is characterized by the fact
that it can be represented by a derivation, even before the Syntactic Structures of 1957. The
second property has to do with the claim that the hierarchical structure in each derivation relates
to its predecessor through some kind of mapping that meets the requirements of some conditions.
These conditions can be structure- or language-specific or universal depending on the kind of
structure and on the point in the theory’s history that are referred to. The final and third of these
properties is that these conditions and their ordering of application are determined by intrinsic
properties of the human language capacity; a capacity that humans are claimed to be biologically
endowed with.

Of late, the generative grammarians have been claiming that the basic questions that a
linguistic inquiry should seek to answer are in the number of at least two. The first one which
stems from the assumption that language is a cognitive system and as such there is a need to
know whether what has come to be known as “principles of language” is unique to this system

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or is it the case that it shares it with other cognitive systems. The second questions “…an even
more basic question from the biological point of view is [about] how much of language can be
given a principled explanation” (Chomsky, 2005:2). The attempts to focus these questions and
to make of language an area of research around these two questions has come to be known as
“the Minimalist program”. By way of replying to contenders of both this program and the
generative enterprise in general, Chomsky (2004:2) stresses the fact that the Minimalist program
is not a hypothesis about language nor is it a new approach to language.

Language is taken to be that set of the mind / brain “… capacities that enter into the use
and understanding of language” (Chomsky (1995: 167)). This set occupies an important position
in the acquisition and use of language and is referred to as the faculty of language (FL), a species-
specific organ or language acquisition device (LAD) (Chomsky (2001: 1). A language is defined
as a state of FL (Chomsky, 1998b:115). In addition to FL, language is also handled by the
performance systems (Chomsky (1995: 168)). These are defined as “…fall[ing] into two general
types: articulatory-perceptual and conceptual-intentional.”( Ibid)
Universal grammar, theory proposing that humans possess innate faculties related to
the acquisition of language. The definition of universal grammar has evolved considerably since
first it was postulated and, moreover, since the 1940s, when it became a specific object of modern
linguistic research. It is associated with work in generative grammar, and it is based on the idea
that certain aspects of syntactic structure are universal. Universal grammar consists of a set of
atomic grammatical categories and relations that are the building blocks of the particular
grammars of all human languages, over which syntactic structures and constraints on those
structures are defined. A universal grammar would suggest that all languages possess the same
set of categories and relations and that in order to communicate through language, speakers
make infinite use of finite means, an idea that Wilhelm von Humboldt suggested in the 1830s.
From this perspective, a grammar must contain a finite system of rules that generates infinitely
many deep and surface structures, appropriately related. It must also contain rules that relate
these abstract structures to certain representations of sound and meaning—representations that,
presumably, are constituted of elements that belong to universal phonetics and
universal semantics, respectively.
These systems are acknowledged (Chomsky (1995: 168), (1998b: 116) to be dedicated
to language in that they “… enable its expressions to be used for articulating, interpreting,
referring, inquiring, reflecting, and other actions.”(Chomsky (1995:168)). The performance
systems are designated as the systems that embed FL (Ibid), an embedding to be understood in
the sense of the quote above. Hence, FL is said (Ibid) to be made up of only 2
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components/systems: a lexicon and a computational system. These are the ones that determine
the linguistic expressions (read, instructions) to be fed into the Linguistic levels of interface
with the performance systems. In what follows, we will look into the most important (at this
stage) details of this conception of language.
Chomsky's Syntactic Structures (1957) has proved to be a turning point in the twentieth
century's linguistics. He proposes his linguistic theory of generative grammar, which departed
radically from the structuralism and behaviourism of the previous decades. Earlier analyses of
sentences have been shown to be inadequate in more than one respect because they failed to take
into account the differences between “surface” and “deep‟ levels of grammatical structure.
A major aim of generative grammar was to provide a means of analysing sentences that
take account of this underlying level of structure. To achieve this aim, Chomsky drew a
fundamental distinction (similar to Saussure's langue and parole) between a person's knowledge
of the rules of a language and the actual use of that language in real situations. The first he
referred to as competence; the second as performance. Linguistics, he argued, should be
concerned with the study of competence, and not restrict itself to performance.

COMPETENCE & PERFORMANCE

Since the publication of Noam Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax in 1965, most
linguists have made a distinction between linguistic competence, a speaker's tacit knowledge of
the structure of a language, and linguistic performance, which is what a speaker actually does
with this knowledge.

a-Competence

Linguistic competence is the system of linguistic knowledge possessed by native

speakers of a language. It is distinguished from linguistic performance, which is the way a
language system is used in communication. Noam Chomsky introduced this concept in his
elaboration of generative grammar, where it has been widely adopted and competence is the only
level of language that is studied. According to Chomsky, competence is the ideal language
system that enables speakers to produce and understand an infinite number of sentences in their
language, and to distinguish grammatical sentences from ungrammatical sentences. This is
unaffected by "grammatically irrelevant conditions" such as speech errors. In Chomsky's view,
competence can be studied independently of language use, which falls under "performance", for
example through introspection and grammaticality judgments by native speakers.

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b-Performance

The term linguistic performance was used by Noam Chomsky in 1960 to describe “the
actual use of language in concrete situations”. It is used to describe both
the production, sometimes called parole, as well as the comprehension of
language. Performance is defined in opposition to “competence”; the latter describes the mental
knowledge that a speaker or listener has of language. It is the ability to produce and comprehend
sentences in a language. Since the publication of Noam Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of
Syntax in 1965, most linguists have made a distinction between linguistic competence, a
speaker's tacit knowledge of the structure of a language, and linguistic performance, which is
what a speaker actually does with this knowledge.

Avram Noam Chomsky (1928-) and his followers have transformed linguistics. Indeed,
despite many difficulties and large claims later retracted, the school of deep or generative
grammar still holds center stage. Chomsky came to prominence in a 1972 criticism of the
behaviorist’s B.F. Skinner's book Verbal Behavior. Linguistic output was not simply related to
input. Far from it, and a science which ignored what the brain did to create its novel outputs was
no science at all. Chomsky was concerned to explain two striking features of language: The
speed with which children acquire a language and its astonishing fecundity, and our ability to
create an endless supply of grammatically correct sentences without apparently knowing the
rules. How was that possible? Only by having
a) an underlying syntax and
b) rules to convert syntax to what we speak.
The syntax was universal and simple. A great diversity of sentences can be constructed
with six symbols. Take a cat sits on the mat. Older readers will remember their parsing exercises
at school: indefinite article, noun, verb, preposition, definite article, noun. Chomsky uses a
similar approach but his "parsing" applies to all languages. But how we convert to the mat was
sat on by a cat? The answer, argued Chomsky, were innate transformation rules by which a
fundamental deep structure is converted to the surface sentence. Matters are not usually so
straightforward, of course, and the rules can be very complex indeed, but Chomsky and his
coworkers have now provided them.
:
If many languages are now classified along Chomsky lines, why hasn't the approach
entirely swept the board, bringing all linguists into the fold of orthodoxy? First there are
procedural problems. The American behaviourists, and more so the London school, had a very
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thorough training in gathering field evidence. Speech was what native speakers actually spoke,
not what the anthropologist thought they might accept as correct usage. The Chomskians use
introspection (i.e., the linguists themselves decide whether a sentence is good grammar), an
approach which can allow "facts" to be fitted to theory and which has somewhat restricted
application to the European languages that Chomskians regard themselves as familiar with. Then
there is the matter of laboratory testing. Surface sentences that are generated by the more
convoluted transformation rules should take speakers longer to produce. The evidence is
somewhat contradictory. But more important than these are the theoretical issues. What are these
deep structures and transformation rules i.e., are they something "hardwired" into the brain or
simply a propensity to perform in ways we can view along Chomskian lines? Chomsky is
undecided. And, if the structures are real, is this the philosopher's goal: we can base semantics on
deep grammar? Some have done so, though Chomsky himself has now abandoned these hopes.
Chomsky is not a Structuralist, and there is more to understanding than the ability to recast
sentences an appreciation of the world outside, for example, which we perceive and judge on past
experience.

References
1) Jowett, B. (1892). The Dialogues of Plato Translated into English, with Analyses and
Introductions. Five volumes. New York: Oxford University Press.

2) Prof Afkinich, S5 School of Linguistics Course 2019, Faculty of Humanities, Ibn Tofail
University of Kenitra

3) Robins, R. H. (1967). A Short History of Linguistics. London: Longman.

4) Sampson, G. (1980). Schools of Linguistics: Competition and Evolution. London:

Hutchinson.

5) www.britannica.com/science/synchronic-linguistics

6)http://changingminds.org/explanations/critical_theory/concepts/synchrony_diachrony.htm

7) https://www.quora.com/What-are-synchrony-and-diachrony-in-terms-of-linguistics

8) http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/saussure.html

9) https://www.thoughtco.com/synchronic-linguistics-1692015

10) https://neoenglish.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/write-a-note-on-linguistic-synchrony-and-
diachrony/

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