Лекция: Лингвистические теории зарубежных стран.

Министерство Высшего и Среднего
специального образования республики Узбекистан
Каракалпакский Государственный
университет им.Бердаха
Кафедра английской филологии
Филологического факультета
Лекция: Лингвистические теории зарубежных
стран.
Для магистрантов
Доцент Юлдашев Н.
Нукус
2007г
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Lecture 1
The origin of Language.
Problems and questions for discussion.
1.Ploto’s Cratylus.
2.Gesture language and other means of communication.
3.The philosophical point of view of explaining the origin of language.
4.The development of language is a historical process with its own objective laws.
The origin of language
The origin of language is hidden in the depths of antiquity. But the ancient civilized peoples tried
to answer the question: how did language originate? Man’s search for the origin of language is
deeply rooted. As we have pointed out, the first impulse in Ancient Greece to understand the
origin of language was based not on scientific research but on general pgilosophical premises.
The ancient greeks made bold and persistent speculations on the origin, history and structure of
language, and there were many legends among them on which language was the first to be
spoken on the globe.
The greek historian Herodotus (5th century B.C.) tells us that King Psammetichus of Egypt
isolated two newborn infants to find out by their language which was the oldest nation on earth;
when they began to speak they uttered the word “bekos” which turned out to be phrygian for
“bread”.
This was the first naive attempt to determine which was the earliest language.
In his dialogue Cratylus Plato (427-347 B.C.) discusses the origin of words, and particularly the
question of whether relationship between things and the words which name them is natural and
nacessary, or merely the result of human convention.
Nevertheless, many profound thinkers have preposed solution of their own to this problem. All
linguists are agreed that the problem of the origin of human speech is still unsolved.
There is no people on earth that even primarily letalone exclusively uses gesture language as a
means of communication. It is true that gesture language seems to be widespread form of speech
among primitive although only a few of them really deserve the name gesture language.
From the point of view of practical life that the unscientific theory of the priority of gesture
language is really absurd, because this would have allowed communication only with people in
the immediate neighbourhood, necessarilly excluding conversation with people at a distance or
in the dark.
When prehistoric man became aware that pointing gestures were no longer adequate for
intercourse with others of his kind he began to search for more appropriate means of
communication. This means at his disposalwere sound and gesture. So it is thought that he had to
adopt these means of expression for his purposes. Sound and gesture came to be used
simultaneously in the very earliest stage of speech.
Ancient Greeks tried to explain the origin of language from the philosophical point of view. To
be more exact,they did not deal with the problem of the origin of language but with the
destignation of the things which surrounded them. The ancient philosophers thought that a word
must have a meaning either by nature or by convention. Either there was something in the nature
of the thing described that made particular word the right one for it, or there was no natural
connection between the word and its meaning, and the thing was described by such-and-such a
word only because a number of people had agreed on this meaning. These two different
philosophical points of view may be called the natural school and the conventional school.
A correct understanding of the essence of language depends upon one’s approach to the great
fundamental questioning of philosophy as a whole. The basis of all schools of philosophy is
connected with the relation between thought and existence,spirit and nature.
Now the question arises why language is the most important means of human communication.
The answer will become clear if we analyse non-linguistic means of communication.
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Some non-linguistic forms of communication came close to spoken language. The whistling
language used by the natives Gomera, in the Canary Islands, who communicate in it over very
long distances(about six miles).
Other kinds of non-linguistic forms of communication came close to written language and are
supposed by some to have been its embryonic form. The “quipu” or “knots” used by Peruvian
Incas, for instance, had red ropes to symbolize soldiers, yellow ropes for gold, white ropes for
silver, with a single knot signifying 10, two knots 20 and so on.
A third important field of non-linguistic communication is gestures which have no connection
with either spoken or written language. Gestures accompany all our speech. American Indian
plain tribes, for instance, accompany language with gestures, strange to us, but quite intelligible
to them: the hand, palm in, thumb up: two fingers initate a man wolking, and four fingers mean
the running of a horse.
Gesticulation as an aid to spoken language is universally used by all human communities on
Earth. To the Uzbek or Karakalpak, for instance a downward nod of the head means “yes”, and a
shaking of the head from side to side means “no” by a downward jerk of the head.
1.language is total means of expressing ideas and feelings and comminicating messages from
one individual to others, used by all people in all their spheres of activity.
2.language conveys not only the essence of the facts, but the speaker’s attitude towards them, his
estimation of reality and his will. Language is connected not only with logical thinking, but with
psychology of people too.
3.All sign- system apart from language are artificial and they are created and changed by
convention. They are made not by the people as whole, but by a relatively small group of
representives of the given speciality. The development of language does not depend upon the
will of the members of society. Each generation adopts the language it is given historically, and
the development of language may be characterized as a historical process with its own objective
laws.
Recommended literature
1.В.А.Звечинцев.История языкознания XIX и XX веков в очерках и извлечениях. Часть I,
М.,1960
2.В.И.Кодухов. Общее языкознание. М.,1974
3.Ю.С.Степанов. основы общего языкознания. М., 1975
4.Общее языкознание. Внутренняя структура языка. М.,1972
5.О.Азизов.Тилшуносликка кириш. Ташкент,1996
6.Н.А.Контрашов. Общее языкознание (курс лекций) часть II. М., 1972
7.Античные теории языка и стиля. Под.редак. О.М.Фрайденберг, М-Л 1936
8.А.Мойе. Введение в сравнительное изучение индоевропейских языков. М-Л., 1938
9.А.С.Чикобава. Проблема языка как предмета языкознания. М., 1959
10.F.M.Berezin. Lecture on Linguistics. M.,1969.
LECTURE № 2-3
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Theme: Linguistics before the 19th century
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Problems for discussion:
The Central philosophical problem of language in Ancient Greece.
The relation between logical and grammatical categories in Aristotle’s system.
The most famous grammarians of the Alexandrian period.
The weakest points of language study in Ancient Greece
The most prominent Roman grammarians.
The universal language of Catholic Church and the scholastic mediaeval science
The achievement of the study of language from the epoch of the Renaissance up to the 18th century.
The grammar of Port Royal.
In European tradition, the beginning of linguistics as a purposeful and systematic study of language
is ascribed to Ancient Greece. Though the primary linguistic teaching in Ancient Greece was in many
respects naïve and speculative, and the native from of speech was the only from studied, already in those
times, from the 5th century B.C., fundamental problems were put forward that ran through ages of analytical
linguistic effort up to our days.
In their study of language, the Ancient Greeks considered the four main ranges of questions: 1.The
most general, philosophical questions of language, such as the origin of human speech. 2. Questions
concerning structural categories in language, including phonetics 3.Questions concerning usage, i.e.
selection of words and constructions from the point of view of their correctness. 4. Linguistic questions
connected with the study of literary forms and rhetoric1.
The central philosophical problem of language in Ancient Greece was the problem of the relation
between the words and the things they signify. This discussion of this problem took the form of the
controversy about the origin of names. In connection with the controversy philosophers expressed their
views about the nature and origin of human speech.
The two philosophers are commonly named as the main figures at the outset of the dispute:
Heraclitus (ab. 544-ab.483 B.C.) and Democritus (ab.460-370B.C).
According to Heraclitus and his followers, there is a natural connection between words and the
things they signify: the nature of things predetermines the form of their names. Hence, language is inherent
in nature, and is given to people by nature. This conception of language was called “fusei” – “by nature”. It
was idealistic. According to the geeat materialst philosopher Democritus and his followers, the connection
between words and the things they signify is the result of human convention. Hence, language was created
by the people themselves. This conception of language was called <<thesei>> - <<by convention>>, <<by
law>>.
Abroad picture of the philosophical linguistic views prevalent in his time was shown by Plato (427347 B.C.) in his famous dialogue Cratylus, or about the Correctness of Names. There are three personages
in the dialogue: Cratylus, Hermogenes, and Socrates. Their historical prototypes are prominent
philosophers. Cratylus defends the doctrine <<by nature>> (fusei) in an argument with Hermogenes, an
adherent of the doctrine “by law” (thesei). The argues ask Socrates to settle their dispute. Socrates exposes
the schematism in the two opposite views, at the same time finding grains of truth in both of them. But he
points out the third, and the final, factor among those determining the meaning of the words, namely – usage
in people’s community.
The idea of usage as a factor determining the meaning of the word was one of the most profound
linguistic conceptions formulated in Ancient Greese. It was further developed both by philosophers and
grammarians.
The criticism of the one-sided approach to the connection between the <<linguistic sign>> and the
thing is revived in our time by some representatives of modern linguistics2.
In another dialogue, The Sophist, Plato analyses the nature of the sentence (or speech) as different
from separate words. Here we may see the rudimentary conception of the vocabulary as a set of naming
elements and the sentence as the result of connecting words in the process of speaking: the sentence is
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unttered for the sake of expressing the relation of things to actual life. The minimum sentence, according to
Plato, consists of a name plus a verb.
The first explicit grammatical teaching was propounded by Plato’s disciple, the great Greek
philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.).Aristotle developed the theory of the sentence and the theory of word
classes as notional and functional parts of speech. But, being the founder of logic, Aristotle identified the
relation of ideas in human thought with the relation of words in speech, and stated grammatical categories in
terms of logic. He introduced in grammar the logical notions of subject and predicate. His criterion for
discriminatig between part of speech was the ability of words to express the parts of the logical proposition,
i.e. the subject, the predicate, and the copula. Accordingly, he (Aristorle) established three parts of speech:
the “name” and the “verb” (forms expressing both the subject and the predicate), and the “conjunction”
(forms expressing copulas). Thus, by “names” he understood, in modern terminology, the nominative case
of nouns, adjectives, participles; by “verbs” he understood the infinitive of verbs; by “conjunctions”he
understood different functional words and forms.
Proceeding from this fundamental thesis Aristotle formulated the concept of grammatical
“falls”(cases) as deviations from “names” or “verbs” due to the logically dependent position in the sentence,
incapable of expressing either the subject or the predicate. In the later grammatical tradition the doctrine of
“names” and their “falls” (cases) was developed into the teaching of “direct” grammatical forms and
“oblique” grammatical forms.
Aristotle was the initiator of grammatical theory. But he lived a long time before the final formation
of grammar as a special discipline in Ancient Greece. His original teaching was perfected and reformed by
the later scholars. Still, the confusion of categories of grammar with categories of logic3 remained one of the
main faults of the Greek grammarians.
The grammatical teaching of Ancient Greece was completed in Alexandria, between the 2nd century
B.C. and the 2nd century A.D. The development of grammar in Alexandria was stimulated by the
interpretations of Homer’s poems that were extremely popular, but the language of which had become
antiquated. Gradually grammar became a self dependent discipline taught and studied not by philosophers,
but by grammarians.
The best- known scholars of that period were Aristarchus (ab.217 – 145 B.C.), DionysiusThrux
(ab.170-90 B.C.), and Appollonius Dyscolus (the 2nd century A.D.).
In the works of the Alexandrian scholars many features of grammar were shaped into the form that
the linguists of the 19 century called “traditional” grammar. Aristotle’s doctrine of “names” and their
“cases” was reformed. The words of the language were grouped into eight parts of speech: inflected (name,
verb, participle, article, pronoun) and uninflected (preposition, adverb, conjunction). The chief grammatical
categories (“accidents”) of the inflected parts of speech were described, such as gender, numbers, cases (the
categories of the nominal parts of speech);numbers, persons, tenses, moods, voices(the categories of the
verbs). The sentence and the word were considered the elements (chief elements) of the connected speech.
The sentence was defined as a “a combination of words expressing a complete thought” (Dionysius Thrux).
The word was defined as “an articulate sound with a certain meaning out of which the sentence is
composed, and into which it is decomposed” (Diomedes, the Roman grammarian of the 4 th century A.D., a
follower of the Alexandrian school).
Some progress was made in studying the phonetical structure of speech. Speech sounds
(“letters”) were classified in vowels, semi – vowels and non – vowels, the main principle of the
classification being the syllable – forming function of the sounds. The Alexandrian scholar described
the word accents, some phonetical changes in the process of speaking, the difference between long and
short vowels, observations of the phonetical phenomena were made chiefly in connection with the study
of metrics and prosody
As for general considerations of language, the argument about analogy and anomaly took place
among the Alexandrian scholars, that continued during many centuries and was inherited by Rome. The
“anomalists” taught that language does not correspond to our concepts of things, and therefore it is
illogicaland irregular. This doctrine was first propounded by the stoics(3rd-2nd centuries B.C.). The
“analogists” argued that language does correspond to our ideas of things, and it is quite logical and
regular.
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It is easy to see in this discussion traces of the philosophical dispute about the correctness of
names. But the Alexandrian scholars, in particular Aristech’s, who argued with the animalists and began
the discussion in Alexandria soon turned it to more concrete, grammatical lines. The argument served as
incentive to closer study of language.
The weakest point of language study in those times, both with the Greek and the Roman scholars,
was the problem of etymology. The etymologies given were absolutely fantastic. The division of words
into meaningful component parts was quite arbitrary. Likewise the morphological composition of the
word remained alien both to the Greek and to the Roman grammarians.
The Romans who were successors to the culture of Ancient Greece, succeeded also to the Greek
linguistic theories and grammatical teaching. Moreover, our knowledge of many linguistic achievements
of the Greeks is derived only from roman sources.
In particular it refers to the argument about analogy and anomaly, which is known mainly from the
treatise of Varro (116-27 B.C.), one of the greatest Roman grammarians. Varro contributed many
considerations to the argument, coming to the conclusion that in the sphere of Latin inflected forms
analogy prevailed, while word – building was more subject to anomaly.
On the whole, the Romans did not care as much as the Greeks about general linguistic problems.
They constructed their grammar on the Greek model, with some modifications. Due to the fact it had
been preceded by the Greek grammatical teaching, their grammar seems to be more systematicand
completed from the outset. Much attention was paid in Rome to the problems of style and rhetoric, in
particular to the problem of stylistic types of speech. The most prominent figure in this field was M.T.
Cicero (106-43 B.C. ), the great Roman orator.
The highest authority among the Roman grammarians belongs to Donatus (4th century A.D.) and
Priscian (6th century A.D.). The two scholars generalized the grammatical observations of Latin made by
their predecessors during several centuries. In their comprehensive works the grammatical teaching of
Antiquity found its most complete expression.
In the Middle Ages Latin became the universal language of Catholic Church, and also of
scholastic science. The grammars of Donatus and Prisian and adaptations of them remained in use
throughout centuries up to the epoch of the Renaissance.
As regards science, the Middle Ages are characterized as a time of stagnation, due to the
domination of church. Linguistic theory was confined to biblical dogmas. The origin of language was
ascribed to divine creation Even at that time scholars made some important observations about Latin
grammar. They defined nouns and adjectives as different parts of speech within the class of names, and
also discovered syntactical categories of concord, government and apposition.
But the scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages saw in the structure of Latin the only natural
and logically perfect form of speech in general. They proceeded from the assumption that all the
languages had essentially the same basic structure as Latin, and presupposed the same “logical normal”
grammatical categories in all the languages of “lesser importance” than Latin, i.e. the European
language of their time.
The first and most famous linguistic work inspired by this theory was written by Lancelot and
Aron at the convent of Port Royal in the year 1660. It was entitled “Grammaire Generale et Raisonnee”
– General and Rational Grammar. It was demonstrated the would – be identity of grammatical
categories in all the language on the example of French, Latin and Greek. Many other grammars
appeared in different European countries taking the grammar of Port Royal as a model.
The theory of logical grammar was subjected to severe criticism by representatives of modern
linguistics. It has been stressed that scientific linguistics must form the system of general linguistic
categories as a generalization of the study of various languages and not as pre- conceived formulas.
Still, other scientists, especially the propounders of transformationl grammar undertake to revise this
criticism. They point out that, though the theory of rational grammar was limited by the conditions and
views of its time, its basic principles were fruitful and sound; above all, its trend was not only to
describe linguistic facts, but to explain them along ”generative” lines, showing how more complex
structures of speech are created out of elementary structures.
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But the epoch of the Renaissance brought to the field of linguistics not only the idea of general
rational grammar. The horizon of linguistics widened. New European languages came to be described in
grammar books. The study ofAncient Greek was resumed in Europe, and some scholars began to study
Hebrew and Arabic. As a result of geographical discoveries, Europe scholars got acquainted with the
languages of “exotic” countries. In the 16-17th centuries many grammars and dictionaries were compiled
of languages that had been unknown before.
This work was crowned towards the end the 18th century by compiling polyglot glossaries that
contained parallel lists of words translated into as many languages as editors could gain information of.
The summarizing work in this field was published in Russia by the Acadmy of Sciences under the
editorship of P.S.Pallas, in the years 1786- 1787. It was entitled <<сравнительные словари всеx
языков и наручий>> and included 286 words given in more than 200 languages in Germany, in the
years 1806-1817. I.C. Adelung and I.S. vater published a huge treatise containing translations of the
Lord’s Prayr into 500 languages with glossaries and Commentary. The treatise was entitled Mithridates,
or General Linguistics.
Alongside of this work, from the epoch of the Renaissance philologists began to collect and
publish historical monuments of languages other than Latin or Greek. In this way materials for the
future scientific history of languages were prepared.
The scope of all this language study was tremendous. But the scientific foundation of the was
inadequate. That with might be considered as achievements of linguistics in the ancient world, cannot be
considered as such for the period in question. Scholars continued to state many linguistic categories in
terms of logic, taking no notice of the structural difference between languages.
They forced the description of different languages into the traditional scheme of Latin grammar . The
had no proper understanding of the difference between sounds and letters. They did not understand the
nature of local dialects, considering them to be the “corruption” of the correct form of language, i.e. of
the written language of books or the speech forms used in “refined” society. They had no idea of
historical language development. Unscientific views were expressed about the origin of language.
In spite of these drawbacks, the linguistic work done from the time of the Renaissance was of
great importance. It demonstrated the actual diversity and multitude of languages on the earth. It
disclosed the fact that all the living languages were equally effective as means of social intercourse. Due
to the study of different languages materials were gradually collected that were necessary for the
creation of modern, scientific linguistics.
LITERATURE
1. Античные теории языка и стиля М – Л., 1936.
2. L. Bloomfield. Language Ld. 1955, Introduction.
3. N.F. Intenyeva, O.M. Barsova, M.Y.Blokh, A.P. Shapkin. A Theoretical English Grammar
(syntax). M., 1969.
4. B.a. Ilyish. The Structure of Modren English. L., 1971.
5. M.Y. Blokh. A course in Theoretical English Grammar. M., 1983.
6. Ch.C. Fries.The structure of English. N.Y., 1952.
7. В.Н. Ярцева. Историческая морфология английского языка. М -Л., 1960.
8. В.Н.Ярцува. Исторический синтаксис английского языка. М.-Л., 1961
9. В.Н.
Жигадло,
И.П.
Иванова,
Л.Л.
Иофик.
Современный
английский
язык .М.,
10. О.Есперсен. Философия грамматики. М., 1958.
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Lecture 4
Theme: The Hindu Grammar of Sanskrit and its Influence on European Linguistics
Probems for discussion:
1. Grammatical teaching in Ancient India
2. The famous Hindu scolar Panini
3. The main acievements of the old Hindu grammatical theory
4. The Hindu grammar of Panini and the European scolars
5. The comparative study of Sanskrit and European languages
Outside the tradition of European linguistics, considerable progress
in the study of language was made in Ancient India. The Ancient Hindu scolars are not so highly
distinguised for raising general linguistic problems as the scholars in Ancient Greece. But the
grammar that they (Hindu scolars) created is in many respects a higher achievement than the
grammar of the Ancient Greeks. It gives a much more rigorous and objective description of the
structural elements of language.
The factors that gave rise to grammatical teaching in Ancient India were connected in a
pecular way with the interpretations of the old religious texts-the vedas, large collections of
hymns songs, ritual formulas, and incantations ( the Old Hindu “ Veda” means “knowledge”).
The oldest of the Vedas, the Rig-Veda (the knowledge of himns) dates from the third- second
millenium before our era. Many centures before they had been committed to writing, the
Vedictexts were handed down from generation to generation by an oral tradition. The oral
teaching of them was extremely exact, because they were to be preserved unchanged from
religious motives. Meanwhile, the living language developed and became more and more
different from the old Vedic language. Commentaties appeared interpreting the Vedic passages
the meaning of which had been lost or obscured. New works wrer also added to the texts, the
language of the whole Vedic literature becoming more and more heterogeneous as the time went
by.
Somewhere about the 6 th century B.C. scolars began to normalise the language of the
various late additions to the original texts, taking as their model the form of speech used by the
Brahmins, scolars, court poets. In this way Sanskrit appeared – the “perfected”, “learned”
language of the upper caste.
The common language of the people, as opposed to Sanskrit, was termed “Prakrit” by later
scolars (“practa” in Old Hindu means “plain”, “popular”). The work of describing and
normalising Sanskrit was completed in the 4 th century B.C. by the famous Hindu scolar Panini,
who gave a detailed description of Sanskrit, and partly of the Vedic language. In the 2nd century
B.C. Panini’s grammar was supplemented with an important commentary by another prominent
grammarian, Pantanjali. The grammar of Panini an Patanjali’s commentary are the oldest and the
best systematic grammatical works of the Ancient Indians that have come down to us.
Panini canonised the forms of Sanskrit as the “sacred” language, the language of
religious worship. But later the use of Sanskrit went beyond the limits, and great secular
literature was created in it. The language of this period is called “Classical Sanskrit”, to
distinguish it from the Vedic language, or the “ Vedic Sanskrit” as it was called by the European
linguistics. Classical Sanskrit was used in India througout the Middle Ages, similar to Latin in
Europe.
Panini’s grammar is the result of colossal linguistic effort that could not have been
achieved by one man. Panini himself refers to a number of his predecessors, thoug their works
have not been preserved.
The treatise is entitled “ Astadhyayi” – Eight Readings; it consists of eight books, or
chapters, containing about 4000 very short grammatical rules- “sutras”, given in verses. The
“sutra” from of the text is connected with the fact that it was meant for learning by heart, and
chiefly from hearing. Symbolic notation is used in the work, to make the memorising easier. For
example, special letters are used to signal the positions of the stress in the words, etc.
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Sanskrit was a language with strongly pronounced synthetic features. It was
exceptionally in inflections, widely used vowel interchange as grammatical means, and had an
extremaly developed system of word- building. Panini’s description adequately answered these
features.
One of the main acievements of the Old Hindu grammatical theory was that it discovered
the morphological structure of the word: the root, the stem, the suffix. It gave a detailed
description of the phonetical form of the root, discovering the different grades of vowel
interchange. The words of the languge were classified according to formative characteristics, the
primary verb roots being considered as the basic source for all the Vocabulary. All the tyres of
declination and conjugation were investigated. Syntactical study was also well advanced, being
partly combined with the study of word composition, which was due to the important role of
compound words in the Sanskrit sentence.
The phonetical description given in the Old Hindu grammatical means, and had an
especially accurate; it is connected with the purpose of the work: to show how to pronounce the
sacred texts without any distortions. The organs of speech were studied carefully; the sounds
were described in accord with their articulation, much attention being active organs of speech:
the lips, the three parts of tongue( front, middle, and back), the larynx. Phonetical changes on the
borders of words and affixes were also analysed with precision.
Alongside of Sanskrit forms, Panini’s grammar described certain forms of the Vedic
language, there by containing elements of comparative language study.
Some knowledge of Sanskrit and of Panini’s grammar reached Europe in the 16th and
17th centuries. Towards the end of the 18th century it was studied diligently by scolarsorientalists. At the beginning of the 19th century Panini’s grammatical treatise Eight Readings
was published in Europe.
The Hindu grammar of Panini presented to the European scholars an accurate description
of a language based not upon careful and exact observations. The Hindu grammar helped to
formulate one of the most important principles of scientific linguistics: to study consequence of
tne knowledge of Panini’s grammar was effected in full later on, at the end 20th century, when
some languages of the dying out American Indian tribes came to be studied, wothout any
previous knowledge of them. It was not accidental that Leonardo Bloomfield, the father of
American Descriptive Linguistics, called Panini’s grammar “one of the greatest monuments of
human intelligence”.1
Apart from this, however, the knowledge of Sanskrit and the Hindu grammar led to a
discovery of tremendous significance. The european scholars saw that Sanskrit had a structure
very similiar to the structure of Latin, Greek, and some other European language, both old and
new. The first reaction to this fact was the idea that Sanskrit was the Source from which all the
European languages had sprung. But this view was later rejected, it was understood that Sanskrit,
being related to latin and Greek, together with them formed part of a great family of kindred
languages.
This discovery, made at the end of the 18th century, had a revolutionising effect on
linguistics, making the turning point in its development. The comparative study of Sanskrit and
European languages gave rise to the historical comparative linguistics, and led to the completion
of linguistics as a science in the full sense of the word.
Check yourself!!
1.how did grammatical teaching appear in Ancient India? a)
what old texts needed
interpretation in Ancient India? b) what is Sanskrit? c) whogave the oldest grammatical
description of Sanskrit?
1
.L.Bloomfield. Language.Ld. 1955. p.11
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2. What are the main characteristic features of Panini’s grammar? a) what important
grammatical observations did Panini make in his grammar? b) how was the phonetical structure
of Sanskrit as the highest linguistic achievement of ancient times?
3. How did the knowledge of Sanskrit and its grammar influence European linguistics? b)
what discovery was made due to the comparison of Sanskrit with some European languages? c)
what was the consequence of this discovery?
Recommended Literature:
1. L.Bloomfield.Language. L.d.1955
2. O.Jespersen. The philosophy of grammar.L.d.1935
3. B.A.Ilyish. The structure of Modern English.Leningrad, 1975.
4. А.И.Смирницкий. Морфология английского языка.М.,1959
5. N.F.Irtenieva, O.M.Barsova, M.Y.Blokh, A.P.Shapkin.
A theoretical English Grammar(syntax) M., 1969
6. F.M.Berezin. Lectures on Linguistics. M.,1969
7. Античные теории языка и стиля. М-Л., 1936
Lecture 5-6
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Theme: The Structural Linguistics
Problems for discussion:
1. The most prominent American scholar- Leonardo Bloomfield.
2. Bloonfield’s classification of phrases.
3. Harold Whitehall’s types of headed groups and non-headed groups.
4. P.Roberts’ noun, verb clusters and P-groups, S-groups.
5. Archibald A.Hill and his analysis of language material and of Controversial matters.
6. A.Willem de Groot’s classification of word-groups.
7. Noam Chomsky’s notions of “deep structure” and “surface structure”.
It is well known that structural linguistics had developed more
precise and rigorous methods of analysis which help to make the study of language material an
objective operation.
In 1933 Leonardo Bloomfield, Americas most prominent scholar who played an
important role in the development of descriptive linguistics, published his remarkable book “
Language”.2
It was he who laid the foundation for the theory of phrase in Western European and
American linguistics. Undoubtedly he based his study of phrase structure on the results already
obtained by his predecessors, yet he was the first scholar to formulate a theory of phrase which
was later developed in the works of American structuralists.
As Bloomfield rightly points out, only within the last century or so “language has been
studied in a scientific way, by careful and comprehensive observation”.
Bloomfield defined a phrase as “a free form which cinsists of two or more lesser free
forms, as, for instance, poor John or John ran away or Yes, sir”. It follows from this definition
that Bloomfield makes no distinction between predicative combinations and any other
combinationsof words. Yet he does make a distinction between a free syntactic combination of
words and a compound form which is to be recognized as a single word. He states that although
a form like blackbird closely resembles of a two-word phrase (black-bird) “three is a clear-cut
difference, since in blackbird the second word (bird) has a weaker stress, ... and this formal
difference correlates with the semantic difference between blackbird and black bird 3.
Bloomfield also stresses the fact that the two forms differ in meaning since “compounded words
are more specialized”. Thus blackbird denotes “a bird of a particular species” and the free
syntactic combination black bird may denote “any bird of this colour”.
It is interesting and appeares to have remained unnoticed, that Bloomfield’s classification
of phrases is based on substitution since he classifies phrases in accordance with their
functioning at a higher level in larger structures. Nevertheless when discussing kinds of phrases
Bloomfield him never speaks of substitution as a techinique applied in his analysis. He states
that there are two kinds of phrases: endocentric and exocentric. In endocentric phrases the phrase
belongs to the same form class as one or more of its constituents while in exocentric
constructions the phrase does not share the form- class of any of its constituents. Thus at first
glance it may seem that the classification of phrases is based on an analysis of the inernal
2
3
L.Bloomfield. Language. New York, 1933
L.Bloomfield.Language. 1933. New York, page 180.
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structure of the group. But a closer examination shows that identity of form-classes of one
constituent and the the whole phrase can be revealed only at a higher level of analysis.
Bloomfield discusses in great detail another set of problems which traditionally the focus
of attention in the grammatical studies of his predecessors- agrremant, government and word
order. The terms which he uses are different and he starts his analysis by defining two new
notions- “taxeme” and “ tagmeme”. In the other words, taxeme is the smallest unit of form in
grammar. Tagmeme is defined as the smallest meaningfull unit of grammatical form and it
cannot be analysed into smaller meaningful features. There are taxemes of selection, selecting
the bound form –ess to follow actor, in forming the feminine; there are taxemes of order the fact
that act- preceder –ess; there are taxemes of madulation – the occurrence of one main stress on
the first syllable of actress. Both taxeme and tagmeme, defined as minimal units, appear at times
to be composite; ... different layers of analysis ... are not presented with sufficient clarity.
Bloomfield mentions that descriptive adjectives are divided into several types by features
of order. For instance, we say big black sheep and never black big sheep; kind old man and never
old kind man and so on. He closes his analysis by stating that he is not going to “ stop to
examine these subtypes”. Yet it is hard to discover the principle of arrangement of descriptive
adjectives forming an attribute group.
Bloomfield has devoted a good deal of effort to the interpretation of phrase structure and
in consequence has advanced an interesting and original theory of phrase. He summarized the
main results of linguistic research, advanced and developed linguistics and pointed the direction
that it was to take in the future. He is regarded as a scholar without whose work all of American
linguistics would be impossible, but this is a problem beyond the scope of this survey.
Bloomfield prepared the ground for further discussion and indicated some ways to the
exploration of the phrase.
A number of scholars have already recognized the key place which are of primary
importance for phrase study: “Structural Essentials of English” by Harold Whitehall4 and “
Understanding English” by Paul Roberts5.
In these books the discussion of Word Combinations promises to further our
understanding of phrase structure. It should be noted that the two books may be looked upon as
supplementing each other.
Harold Whitehall classifies phrases (“ Word-groups” in his terminology) according to
their function and their structure. He distionguishes two main types of word-groups: headed
(endocentric) and non-headed (exocentric). Thus his classification of phrases follows
L.Bloomfield’s, H.Whitehall clearly indicates that he uses substitution technique to classify
phrases and distinguish the two groups. He states that “it is possible to substitute the head for the
groups or the group for the head within the same grammatical frame”. For example, in fresh fruit
is good and I like fresh fruit it is possible to substitute the head expression fruit for fresh fruit in
either case without disturbing the grammatical frame.
Non-headed groups have grammatical functions quite distinct from those of any its
contituents. For instance, I saw a book of poems. In this construction “ neither I nor saw is
substitutable for I saw, and neither of nor poems can replace of poems”. Thus so far Whitehall
4
5
. Harold Whitehall. Structural Essential of English. N.Y., 1956.
Paul Roberts. Understanding English.N.Y., 1958
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has not produced anything original but merely paraphrases Bloomfield’s ideas. Nevertheless,
later on he introduces his own classification. He examines “ the four word-groups that are... most
frequent in occurrence”.
According to Whitehall in the first and the second group the head expression is the end of
the group, and Whitehall calls such Word Combinations “ tail-head constructions”.
In the third and the fourth group the head expression is at the front and these are called : “headtail constructions”.
The tail- head consructions fall into two subtypes: 1) those with a noun head preceded by
one, two or several modifiers; 2) those with a verb head preceded by one or more specialized
modifiers (verbal auxiliaries) with or without any inserted adverbs.
The examples to illustrate the noun head word-groups are: fresh fruit, nice fruit, the nice
fresh fruit, the fruit, my fruit.
The verb-head word-group is illustrated by the examples: trees can yield good fruit, trees
yield good fruit, trees may have been yielding good fruit.
Whitehall points out that the form of the head expression may be changed “either by
adding an ending ( yield-ed, yield-ing) or by replacing the vowel ( sing-sung, feed- fed) or by
both processes (feel-felt).
To sump up: Whitehall recognizes four principal types of headed groups; noun-groups,
verb-groups, modifier-groups and verbal-groups; and two principal types of non-headed groups;
prepositional-groups and subject-predicate-groups.
In Paul Roberts book Understanding English there is no systemic classification of
English phrases, as his chieh concern is the sentence. The basis of his analysis seems to be IC
technique. He points out that an English sentence is not simply a liner sequence of words. It is
composed of groups of words which are arranged “ in a series of levels, each word-group being
made up of subgroups, until we get down to a single word”. This statement seems to be a most
pithy and precise definition of IC analysis.
Roberts introduces the term “cluster” to designate groups of words which are
traditionally called “phrases” (especially in normative grammars).
He focuses his attention on noun clusters and verb clusters.
When examining noun clusters he describes the types of modifiers and states that the
most common noun-modifier is the article or, setting forth in his terminology, “ a determiner”,
for instance, the ghost. He states that nouns can also be modified by adjectives or other nounsyellow flowers or trapeze artist.
Roberts pays special attention to the problem of stress pattern and emphasizes the
difference in stress in N-N clusters and adj-N clusters. Thus, trapeze artist “would have the
primary stress on the second syllable of trapeze; handsome artist would have it on the first
syllable of artist”. This seems to be one of the first attempts at examining the stress pattern of
noun-phrases with different attributive groups.
Roberts starts his analysis of verb clusters by stating that they can be modified in a
variety of ways. According to him the auxiliary signals that a verb is coming in the same way as
the determiner indicates the coming of noun. Roberts thinks that the form of the verb depends
on the particular auxiliary used: may go, was going, had gone.
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Roberts states that the role of noun modifiers can be performed by prepositional groups
as the boy with dog (P-groups), or by clauses as the people who left early (S-groups)
Summing up, Roberts states that in English there are just a few constructions
endinglessly repeated. The four that predominate are noun clusters(yellow flowers), verb clusters
(may go, was going), P-groups (the boy with dog), and S-groups (the people who left early).
In 1958 Archibald A.Hill published his most stimulating book “Introduction to Linguistic
Structures”6. he applies newer techniques for the analysis of language material and discusses
controversial matters special attention is paid to the description of phrases.
He distinguishe two types of phrases: free phrases and fixed phrases. Free phrases consist
of words in normal sequence and can easily be constructed on the model of the given sequences
“ almost without limit, whether the speaker has ever heard the sequence before or not. Thus a
very old is a free phrase. On the model of this other free phrases can be constructed: a very
young man, a very old woman and even, as Hill puts it, a very superstitious button. Each group
of free phrases has stress-morpheme constructions which identify it.
Fixed phrases are relatively fixed entities and function as units. Their most important
characteristic is that their stress constructions
Free phrases are described by Hill in detail. He distinguishes three types of free phrases:
1) noun-phrases with the head-word expressed by a noun; 2) verb-phrases which into several
subgroups; 3) modifying phrases which are defined as phrases in which the end position is
occupied by a modifier and the phrase as a whole functions in accord with the characteristics of
the end word.
Summing up Hill’s classification and discussion of phrases it is possible to state that his
most important contribution is the description of the order of succession of preadjuncts in nounphrases. The problem has been raised by Bloomfield and only thirty years ( now fifty years) later
an attempt has been made to find out what governs the order of arrangement of the elements in
prominal groups.
In structural Linguistics the term “constitute” is used to designate “a composite form, but
only when being discussed as the product of IC as joined by a specific construction”.
A.Willem de Groot in his paper on word-groups questions the correctness of
Bloomfield’s principles of classification on the one hand and the terms introduced by him on the
other hand.
De groot thinks it far more logical to distinguish between “ the distribution of the group”
and “the distinguish of its members”. In his opinion, Bloomfield ignores a distinction between
different distribution of the groups themselves and different distribution of their members. As a
result of his procedure Bloomfield’s category of “ exotrentic constructions is a catch-all” as it
comprises both predicative groups (John ran) and connective groups ( with John). In de Groot’s
opinion the predicative should receive “its unique position” as a special type, for it is a
“favourite sentence-form”.
In English de Groot distinguishes 14 main types, which, according to him “ fall into a
considerable number of clearly distinguishable subtypes”.7
6
Archibald A.Hill. Introduction to Linguistic Structures.N.Y., 1958
depart from those characteristic of the corresponding free phrases. For instance, the green house is a free phrase, green has a
secondary stress and house has a primary stress, but greenhouse* is fixed phrase with the stress on the first syllable.
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15
Summing up the discussion of phrases in structuralistic grammatical studies, we can state
that they have provided the first valid classification of phrases based on strictly formulated
principles.Strictly speaking, the analysis of internal structure of phrases is based on immediate
constituents analysis and that is why it seems necessary to touch upon this question as well.
Noam Chomsky deals with the notions of “deep structure” and “surface structure”8 and
says that he uses the terms roughly in the same way as Charles F.Hockett.
Chomsky points out that “ the deep structure of a sentence” is “that aspect of the
syntactic description (SD) that determines its semantic interpretation” and the “ surface structure
of sentence” is “ that aspect of the SD that determines it phonetic form”. He states that the
surface structure of the sentence is shown by IC s analysis. The deep structure differs much from
the surface structure. Chomsky fails to indicate clearly the main characteristics of the deep
structure and this is to be regretted since it might prove useful to obtain a clearer notion ot it.
Chomsky limits himself to pointing out that it is clear that the two structures are different, the
surface structure cannot “ express the grammatical relations that are ... crucial for semantic
interpretation. The fact that hte surface structure cannot “indicate semantically significant
grammatical relations” is so fundamentally important that it “ motivated the development of
transformational generative grammar.
For Chomsky, surface sructure is “ a label bracketing ( i.e. IC s analysis) and “deep
structures must be distinct from surface structures”. According to Chomsky the second
assumption about the deep structures being distinct from surface structures “is surely much too
obvious to require elaborate defence”. He also thinks that the rules “ relating abstract underlying
structures to surface forms, in syntax and phonology, are ordered either linearly or cyclically in
many or perhaps all parts of the grammar. It is evident that Chomsky’s ideas, interesting as they
are, require further discussion.
To sum up: Chomsky emphasizes the necessety for a full generative grammar to consists
of the three components- syntactic, semantic, phoniligical. He says that the syntactic component
should generate “ SD s each of which contains a deep structure and a surface structure”. The role
of the semantic component is to assign a semantic interpretation to the deep structure. As to the
phonological component, it should assign a phonetic interpretation to the surface structure.
In conclusion it should be noted that IC s analysis seems to extend and deepen our
understanding of phrase structure although it only shows how to break up construction and fails
to show an adequate means of building them up.
In 1956 Noam Chomsky tried to formalize immediate constituents description and for
this purpose he examined the descriptive adequacy of this theory. He found that phrase structural
grammars based on IC s analysis were inadequate in a number of ways.
*greenhouse-n. Building with sides and roof of glass, used for growing plants that need
protection from the weather.
A.S.Hornby. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. London, 1974, p.384.
7
8
A.W. de Groot. Classification of Word-Groups. “ lingua”, Vol.6, Amsterdam, 2 January,1957.
Noam Chomsky. Topics in the theory of Genetative Grammar. In: “Current Trends in Linguistics”, Vol.3, 1966.
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RECOMMENDED LITERATURE
1.L.Bloomfield. Language. London,1955
2.O.Jespersen. The Philosophy of Grammar. L.d.1935
3. M.Y.Blokh. A Course in Theoretical English Grammar. Moscow,1983.
4.H.Whitehall. Structural Essentials of English. New York,1956.
5.P.Roberts. Understanding English. N.Y., 1958.
6.A.A.Hill. Introduction to Linguistic Structures. New York, 1958.
7.Ch.F.Hockett. A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York,1959.
8.A.W.de Groot. Classification of Word-Groups. “Lingua”. Vol.6, Amsterdam,
2January,1957.
9.N.Chomsky. Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar. In: “ Current Trends in
Linguistics”. Vol.3., 1966.
10.V.Burlakova. Contribution of English and American Linguistics to the Theory of Phrase.
Moscow,1971.
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17
Lecture 7-8
Some concepts of phonetics and phonology.
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)
Problems and questions for discussion:
The biological aspect of speech-sounds.
The acoustic study of speech-sounds.
The meaning of speech-sounds.
The classification of sounds: vowels, consonants.
The accentuation- the stress.
The ablaut (gradation).
Baudouin de Courtenay’s theory of phonological distribution of phonemes.
English phonetician D.Jone’s theory of phoneme.
The definition of the phoneme given by L.Sherba, N.Trubetskoy,R.Jakobson.
Phonetics comes from the Greek wordphone “sound”. Phonetics is a science dealingwith the
analysis and classification of speech-sounds.
Speech-sounds may be examined from different points of view: 1) the biological aspect
presupposes the study of the organs of speech which help to produce the sounds;
2) the acoustic study deals with such phenomena as the pitch of the sounds, which depends
directly on the frequency of vibrations in a given period of time, the timbre of the sounds, that
differentiates two sounds of the same pitch, the tone and the noise of the sounds which are the
results of the vibrations that produce them; if vibrations are regular we have a tone; if the
vibrations are irregular the result is a noise; 3) sounds of speech may be studied from the point of
view of their meaning, the semiologcal or specifically linguistic aspect of speech.
The process of the formation of speech.
The sounds that constitute speech are produced by a series of rhythmical pressures of air on the
ear-drum of the listener. Air is of an elastic nature and these pressures- or rather variations of
pressure are caused by a rhythmical disturbance of air at the point at which the sounds originates.
Sound is caused by a stream of air passing from the speaker’s lungs, upwards along the trachea
(or windpipe). On its way through the trachea the air passed through the larynx which contains
the vocal cords, along the chamber known as the pharynx; and from there out over the tongue
and through the mouth, or behind the veil of the soft palate and through the nose. In the process
of the formation of the voice, the role of the lungs is merely to serve a source of air, which is
emitted at a controlled rate and pressure.
The stream of air, pressed from the lungs, passed along the trachea to the larynx, where the sides
of the trachea are narrowed until they meet. Within the larynx there are two mobile membranes
running horizontally. These are the vocal cords. The sound waves resulting from the vibration of
the vocal cords are called the voice. A sound accompanied by voice(like the English b,d,r,z,) is
called a voiced sound, a sound not accompanied by voice (like English p,t,f,s,) is called voiceless
sound.
The primary grouping of sounds divides them into the production of which the air is allowed
to flow through freely, with no, or hardly any friction or contact of the tongue or lips.vowels are
classed according to the position of the tongue when they are pronounced.
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According to the particular section of the mouth towards which the articulating tongue is raised,
we distinguish the following vowels:1) front vowels, 2)back vowels, 3) central vowels.
According to the degree of mouth opening, the vowels sounds are classified into:
1) high or open vowels
2) middle vowels
3) low or closed vowels
A simple diagram may represent the classification of English vowels in the following manner.
Open
close
Front
central
back
Unrounded unrounded
rounded
High vowels- [ i ]
[u]
Middle vowels- [ e ]
[ ]
Low vowels
[ ]
A consonants is a sound produced by friction, or stop-page of the breath in some part of the
vocal passage. Consonants are classified according to three major criteria: 1) the point at which
the friction is made (place of articulation); 2) the way in which it is made (manner of
articulation); 3) the presence or absence of vibration in the larynx (voicing).
Consonants can be voiced or unvoiced, i.e. they can be made with or without the
vibration of the cartilages ; [ p,t,k, ] are unvoiced. When we pronounce them and place the finger
lightly upon the Adam’s apple (larynx- гортань), we feel no vibrations; [h,d,g,] are voiced
consonants when we pronounce them we feel a vibration.
Sounds as [p,t,k,b,d,g,] are known as explosives, because they are accompanied by
explosions.
Consonants are classified according to the organs which take part in the production of
their sounds. Consonants are made by the teeth, the gums, the hard, the soft palate, the uvula and
the lips.
A consonants made by both lips closing is called bi-labial (bi is “two” and labium is “lip”
in Latin). These are the English [w,p,b,m,] the Russian- [p,b,m,].
A consonant made by the lower lip articulating against the teeth, is called labio-dental.
(the Latin for :tooth is dens “dentis”) the English [f,v] the Russian [f,v].
A consonant made by the blade of the tongue which touches the upper teeth is called
dental English [ ], Russian [t,z,d,n].
A consonant is called palatal when it is made by the front tongue against the hard palate
(Latin palatum “roof of the mouth”), such as the English [
].
The glotal spirant [h] is produced by a narrowing or closure of the vocal cords. Sounds
[m,n] are nasals, in which both the mouth and nose allow the air to escape freely while the
buccal passage is temporarily blocked.
“Accentuation” a term which in most modern languages is synonymous with stress. In the
germanic languages the stress is usually on the first syllable of a word stem, consisting of two or
more syyables. French has the stress on the last syllable of the word. Crech has an initial stress,
for example: pryskat- to stray. In Russian the place of the stress is irregular, secondary stresses
common in English, French and German. The stress in Russian is enough to distinguish different
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words the phonetic forms of which are in other respects indentical:мука- flour, мука- torment;
zila-the lived, zila – vein. Some analogies can be found in English, in which in some cases the
stress serves to distinguish the verb from the noun or adjective, as in present- present, increase increase.
Some languages have musical pitch, with the accented syllable pronounced on a higher note than
the surrounding syllables. The musical pitch is discernible in such languages as Swedish and
Serbo- Croatian. In the Chinese language the voice pitch is used to convey semantic distinctions:
ma-pronounced in one tone means “mother”, in another tone means “flax”- лён,and in a third
tone means “horse”.
There are also phonetic changes which do not take p;ace while speak, but which
happened long before which are known as historical phonetic changes. In German there is
vocalic phenomenon known as Umlaut. Umlaut ( the word was invented by the german linguist
Jacob Grimm from two german words: Laut- “sound”, um- “about” refers to the influence upon a
preceding vowel of a later one. The german for “man” is Mann;for “men” is Manner,
pronounced (menner). The “a” of Mann under the influence of an old “ir” in the plural ending,
becomes “e”. If today we say “men” as the plural of “man”, and “feet” as “goose”, it is because,
before these words came into modern English, they were affected by umlaut- by the influence of
a final (vowel that has since disappeared.
Ablaut. German “ab” means “off”. Ablaut is known in English as “ vowel
gradation”.ablaut refers to the regular gradation of vowels in the root in different forms of the
same word. For example, sing, sang, sung; drive, drove, driven. These verbs are called strong in
German.in old English this verbal irregularity was a more vital factors than it is to-day.
The phenomenon itself goes back to the era before the Indo-European parent language
split up into independent languages; it is probably due to differences in accent.
Many phonetic changes are so striking, so uniform in their workings, that they have been
grouped into phonetic “laws”, of which the famous German philosopher and linguist Wolhelm
von Humboldt spoke as early as in 1826 as general tenencies and patterns in linguistic events.
The reasons for these phonetic changes are still obscure. Some linguists were inclined to
explain these changes by the environmental factor, for instance, by climatic conditions.
Naturally, it is unliked that a change in the climate could have any influence on language.
Nor is there good evidence for the theory that phonetic change is due to modifications in the
speech organs. These theories are groundless, because the reasons of these changes must be
sought in language itself, not in these external factors.
A new linguistic science which came into being in Russia at the end of the 19th century
and was developed by Russian and later by foreign investigators helps us to understand the
essence of these changes and the essence of sound itself. The name of this sciences is phonology,
which is the theory of sound change in general and deals with the study of phonemes.
If in the 19th century linguists spoke of the sounds of language, now they prefer to speak
of phonemes. The distinction between phonetics and phonology is now generally accepted.
It was observed long ago that not all the sounds in any language have the same value. Two
people speaking the same language and pronouncing individual sounds exactly alike could
hardly be found. But this diversity should not be noticeable by an average observer.
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Sometimes sounds differ slightly in pronounciation but this difference is quite irrelevant.
In English the [t] in the word “time” is distinctly different from the [t] in the word “sting” , but
the difference is not important. In such words as “back” and “bag”, the meaning is different.
What makes it different? Probably the two ending sounds.
All these considerations lead us to the concusion that in language not all sounds have
equal values. Sounds must be classified according to the function they perform in the language
and from this point of view speech sounds and phonemes ought to be distinguished.
The first linguist to point out the distinction between the “phoneme”(speech sounds),
Russian “zvuk”, and the “phoneme”(Russian “fonema”) was Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (18451929), the famous Russian philologist of Polish origin, who established himself in Russia, first
as a privat-docent at St. Petersburg then as Professor for eight years (1875-1883) at Kazan,
where he created his famous school of linguistics. Later he held professorships at Harpat (18831893), Cracow (1893-1900), and eventually St.Petersburg (1901-1918) where he continued to
develop his teaching. He spent his last years of his life in Poland.
Baudouin de Courtenay stated that the word “phoneme” was invented by his student
Krusjewsky. Baudouin de Courteney published his work “Proba Teorij Alternacyj
Fonetycznych”. A german translation of this book “Versuch einer Theorie phonetischer
Alternationen” was published in strassburg in 1895.
In his theory Baudouin de Courtenay subordinated the phonetic side of speech to the social
function of language as a means of communication. He stated not only the mutual relationship of
phonemes, but also the ways in which they are formed historically.
The one radical fault of his theory was the psychological concept of the phoneme. In one of his
works (some branches of the comparative grammar of the slavonic languages,1881) he showed
the possibility of working out theory of phonemes and phonetic alterations without recourse to
any subjective idealistic premises.
The well-known English phonetician D.Jones points out in his book “The phoneme: Its nature,
Development and origin” that the term phoneme as used by Baudouin de Courtenay was a
phonetic one. This phonetic concept can be viewed in two ways in his works“Psychologically”,a phoneme is a speech-sound pictured in one’s mind and aimed at in the
process of talking. Baudouin de courtenay recognized two kinds of phonetics: one was called
“psychophonetics” and related to the pictured sounds; the other was called “physiophonetics”
and related to concrete sounds actually uttered.
Viewed from the “physical” point of view, a phoneme is a set of sounds uttered in a
particular language which count for practical purposes as if they were one and the same.
Baudouin de Courtenay’s theory of the phonological distribution of phonemes is very important,
especially in its relationship to the construction of phonetic transcriptions, the devising of
alphabets for languges hitherto unwritten and in general to the practical teaching of spoken
foreign languges.
Badouin de Courtenay’s idea was developed his immediate follower L.Scerba in 1912, in
his book “Russian vowels in their Qualitative and Quantitative Aspects”. The definition of the
phoneme given by Scerba, as the smallest general phonetic representation of the given language
which is able to associate with the meaning representation and to defferentiate words was a
semantic character.
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The group of Eastern European scholars who on the intiative of the Czech linguist
V.Mathesins formed themselves in 1926 into the Circle “Linguistique de Prague”. Among them
there were Russian scientists N.Trubetzkoy (1890-1938), R.Jakobson and S.Karcewsky. They
were not pupils of B.de Courtenay, but they were familiar with his work and influenced by it.
The phoneme is the smallest unit of language because it cannot be divided any
smaller;but it is a couple phenomenon.
The presence in English of such a binary opposition as [n- ] isproved by the use of such pairs of
words as kin-king; sun-sung. Clearly [n] and [ ] are two phonemes in English, because one can
be substituted for the other to form a different word.
The phonology of any language is not a chaotic enumeration of speech-sounds and sound
combinations but a system embracing the quantity and pattern of phonemes, different kinds of
distinctive features and their distribution.
Recommended literature
1.В.А.Звечинцев. История языкознания XIX и XX веков в очерках и известиях, часть 1 М.,
1960
2.В.А.Звечинцев. Теоретическая и прикладная лингвистика. М., 1967
3.В.И.Кодуховю Общее языкознание. М., 1974
4.О.Азизов. Тилшуносликка кириш. Тошкент, 1996
5.Н.А.Контрашов. Общее языкознание (курс лекций), часть I
6.F.M.Berezin. Lectures on Linguistics.M., 1969
7.В.Томсек. История языковедения до конца XIX века.М.,1938
8.Я.В.Лоя. История лингвистических учений. М., 1968
9.А.Нуршанов. Узбек тилшунослиги тарихи. Тошкент,2002
10.В.В.Виногрдов. История русских лингвистических учений. М.,1978.
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22
Lecture № 9
Main grammatical concepts and categories .
Problems and questions for discussion;
1. The structure of words
2. The word order
3. The process of composition
4. The relational words ; a) prepositions
b) conjunctions
c) articles
d) auxiliary verbs
e) some form-words
5. The features of
grammatical categories
6. The morphological and syntactical
categories
Grammar is a branch of linguistics which deals with the structure of words and their
forms. Grammar is divided into morphology ( from the Greek “morpha”-form and “logos”
knowledge”) which is the science of forms, and syntax ( from the Greek “syn”-with and
“tassein”-to put in order) which deals the arrangements of those structures and forms. The
grammar of any language has a system of forms and syntactical combinations whose structure
allows us to express our thoughts and our attitude to reality.
For a long time grammar was considered an annex (
- дополнение,
приложение) to logic. Formerly, when men tried to settles all problems by thinking about them
abstractly, it was thought that there was such a thing as universal grammar which was patterned
after the classical models. Our modern languages are still sometimes taught in the same terms as
Latin grammar was in the Middle Ages.
All the attempts made to write out a logical grammar based on Latin, into which the
forms of every language could be fitted ( fit – соответствовать, приспосабливать(ся));
годиться), have been quite unscientific, because languages differ in their structure and posses
their own peculiarities in their expressions of different grammatical functions.
The word, as the fundamental unit of language, is not perceived as an indivisible whole.
The word consists of morphemes, i.e., separate parts with grammatical significance.
The primary element of a word is a generally called the root. The root is the main
unchangeable part of the word conveying the fundamental lexical meaning of the word. Words
contain affixes expressing lexico-grammatical meaning and serving not only to make new words
but to show the relations between words. We may call affixes “semantically” weakened
morphemes.
Affixes coming before the root are called prefixes (from Latin “praefixum” fastened
before), those coming after the root called suffixes (from Latin “suffixes” fastened after). ( fa:snприкреплять, привязывать, застегиваться, ухватиться за, сосредоточиться мысли, взгляд).
Prefixes modify the meaning of words, while the addition of a suffix not only modifies
the meaning, but changes the word itself from one part of speech into another.
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23
The stem is the part of a word got by adding an affix to the root. In the word mod-i-fy,
the root is mod, the stem is modi, and the affix is fy.
Closely related to affixes are grammatical endings (inflections from Latin “flecto” – to
bend) which express the different grammatical meanings implied in words.
There are languages which do not use prefixes (Finno-Ugric, Turkish) and grammatical
relations in these languages are expressed by suffixes. Take the Kirghiz word “kol-dor-um-go
with my hands” where the root is kol – hand, -dor the plural suffix, -um the possessive “my”,
and –go expresses the instrumental case, other languages use prefixation.
The idea expressed in English by the sentence “I came to give it to her” is rendered in
Chinook (an Indian language of Columbia river) by i-n-i-a-l-li-ol-am. This word consists of the
root –ol- “to give” six functionally distinct prefixes and a suffix. The prefixes, i- indicates
recently past time, -n- pronominal subject “I”, -i- pronominal object “it”, -a- the second
pronominal object “her”, -l- is a prepositional element indicating that the pronominal prefix is be
understood as an indirect (-her-to-, i.e. “to her”) and –u- an element that indicates movement
away from the speaker, the suffix –am modifies the verbal content in a local sense. It is obvious
that in this language the greater part grammatical relations is expressed by prefixes rather than
suffixes.
Some languages like Latin, express practically all grammatical relations by means of
modifications within the body itself. If we say in Latin “ Pater amat filium – The father loves this
son” or “ Amat pater” makes little or no difference. In other languages word order will be
different. In English word order may make little grammatical difference if we say “Yesterday the
man saw the dog” or “man saw the dog” or “the man saw the dog yesterday”. If we say
“Yesterday the man saw the dog” or “Yesterday the dog saw the man” it is not the matter of
difference. In this sentence the all important indication of the subject depends entirely on the
positions of certain words in the sentence. In this case the word order in English is as important a
means of grammatical expression as is the use of case endings in Latin.
In some languages word order distinguishes the attribute from the word attributed. In
English “the round home” and “the home round” express quite different notions.
A common device for word-making is the process of composition, which consists of
uniting into a single word two or more words to form a new entity.
The process of composition duffer’s from the mere juctaposition (
-сопоставление) of words in a sentence in that the compounded elements are felt to constitute
parts of a single word. The essence of a compound word is that expresses a single idea. But there
are different degrees of closeness in the merging
(
- поглощать, соединять(ся)) of the separate elements of a compound. It is
therefore practically impossible of draw a rigid demarcation
(
- разграничение) line between compounds and free syntactical groups. In the
commonest compounds, the last element expresses a general meaning, whereas the prefixed
element makes it less general: motor ship is a ship, but a particular kind of ship; water lily is a
lily, but a particular kind of lily (
- водяная лилия).
The process of composition , the prominent Russian linguist A.A. Reformatsky, may
have two tendencies – agglutinative and fusional (
23
24
- склеивающий, агглютинативный,
- плавка, сплав). The first gives us the
new word which is equivalent to the sum of meanings of two compounded words: German
Kopfschmerzen “headache” (Kopf - head and schmerzen – ache): Russian stengazeta “wall
newspaper”. Under the second heading a new word appears the meaning of which is more than
the sum of meanings of compounded elements.
The English words “typewriter” and “killjoy” are not merely the sum of combined
meanings of “type” and “writer” or “kill” and “joy”. In English the unity of the word
“typewriter” is further safe guarded by a predominant accent on the first syllable and by the
possibility of adding such suffixes as the plural –s to the whole word. The English word “killjoy”
(
- скучный человек, брюзга) is also an illustration of a compound word, but this
resulting word has a nominal, not a verbal function. We cannot say: he killjoys.
Literature:
1. Irteneva N.F., Barsova O.M., Blokh M.Y., Shaphin A.P.
“ A theoretical English grammar” M, 1969
2. Blokh M.Y., “ A course in theoretical English grammar” M, 1983
3. Смирницкий А.И. “Морфология английского языка” M, 1959
4. Смирницкий А.И. “Синтаксис английского языка” M, 1957
5. Бархударов Л.С., “Очерки по морфологии английского языка” M, 1975
6. История лингвистических учений . Средневековый Восток. M, 1981
7. Расулов Р. “Умумий тилшунослик” Ташкент 2005
8. Виноградов В. “История русских лингвистических учений” M, 1975
9. Berezin F.M. “Lectures on Linguistics” M, 1969
10. Ilyich B.A. “The Structure of Modern English” Leningrad, 1975
24
25
Lecture № 10
The Morphological classification of languages.
Problems and questions for discussion:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
The classification of languages by their structure
The isolating languages
The agglutinative group of languages
The flexional languages – synthetic and analytic
The polysynthetic languages (incorporating languages)
Linguistics classified different types of languages (A.Schlegel, W. Humboldt, O. Jespersen,
E. Sapir, F. F. Fortunatov)
From the grammatical point of view, the most familiar is the morphological classification
based on the structure of a word. Comparing the conjugation –
(
- спряжение, спрягать) of the Russian word “stol” – table (nom-stol, genstola, dat-stolu, acc-stol, inatr-stolom, prep-stole) with that of the French word “La table”, there
no corresponding forms in French. The relations between words in French are expressed by
means of prepositions: gen – de la table (of the table), dat-acc- a la table (to on the table) and so
on. This is the situation in English, too.
So languages like Russian, in which the relations between words in a sentence are
expressed by flexions are called flexional or synthetic. The French and English languages are
analytic.
But this does not mean that one group of languages is purely flexional languages we
sometimes observe analytic tendencies. In no single language do we either synthetic or analytic
tendencies manifested purely and consistently. Russian is synthetic in comparison with English,
but if we examine it, we can certainly find many analytical features: the Future tense of the verb
“chitat – to read” in its imperfective aspect is expressed analytically – ya budu chitat – I shall
read – by means of auxiliary verb.
In spite of these complications, the most familiar classification of languages by their
structure, all the languages of the world, contains four groups:
a) isolating ( e.g. Chinese);
b) flexional (Latin, Russian, to some extent English);
c) agglutinative (e.g. Turkish, Karakalpak, Uzbek);
d) incorporating (e.g. like some American Indian languages, in which the distinction
between word and sentence is partly effaced (
- стирать, вычеркивать). Of
course, strictly speaking it is impossible to set up a definite number of standard types that
would do justice to the peculiarities (особенности) of the thousands of languages and
dialects in the world. A flexional may still be analytic, synthetic or polysynthetic.
Nevertheless, this classification is quite reasonable, because it considers the grammatical
forms of languages.
The isolating languages sometimes called amorphous. ( from Greek “a” – not, “morphe”
– form) or formless and grammatical relations are expressed in these languages by word-order.
25
26
The words in these languages do not depend upon one another, because they are invailable in
themselves and, so to speak, “isolated” in the sentence. Chinese “leng tiangi – cold weather,
tiangi leng – the weather is cold”. Chinese is a tonal language and the meaning of the word of the
same structure are distinguished by tones which indicate the part of speech to be understood. A
Chinese root like
“da” can be used as a noun to mean “greatness”.
“da” –“- -“- an adjective –“- “great”.
“da” –“- -“- a verb
–“- “to great”.
“da” –“- -“- an adverb –“- “greatly”.
The exact meaning is made clear by where it stands in the sentence.
Another group of languages like Turkish and Finnish is called the agglutinative group. A
characteristic features of these languages is the large number of so – called “stickers”
(приклеивать) – suffixes which are added to the unchangeable root of the word. These suffixes
are very important, because they express the relations within the sentence.
Turkish – soguk mu dur – is it cold?
Bu sut mu dur – is this milk?
De yor – means – he is saying;
suffix – “yor” expresses the aspect (время). In de – yor – lar – they are saying, the suffix – “lar”
signifies plurality.
In agglutinative languages each of the suffixes has its definite, strictly limited meaning
i.e. each one must express one grammatical meaning, and each grammatical meaning is
expressed by the same affix in whatever word it is required. Karakalpak – окыу-шы-лар-ы-мызга.
The Turkish verb “de” which means “say”. “De yor” means “he is saying” the suffix –yor
expresses the aspect. In “de-yor-lar they are saying”, the suffix –lar signifies plurality.
The agglutinative9 languages are peculiar in the degree of coalescence between the
morphemes; that allows a different line to be drawn between the root and the suffix, root and the
prefix and so on.
The essential characteristic of flexional languages is the inner flexion which has a
grammatical meaning in many flexional; e.g. foot-feet: the German “kommen” to come, kam
“came”.
The flexional languages are divided into synthetic from the Greek “synthesis” –
combination and analytic from the Greek “analysis” – separation.
In the synthetic languages the grammatical relations between words themselves. In
analytic languages the sentence is of prime importance and grammatical meanings are expressed
by the words arranged in a fixed order. But, as we have pointed out we never find pure synthesis
analysis in any. Latin is notably synthetic, but on the other hand, its modern descendants Italian
and French are analytic
A polysynthetic language, as its name suggests, is more than ordinarily synthetic.
Sometimes this, for example, some North American Indian languages and Eskimo, are called
incorporating. Because the incorporation of affixes expressing different grammatical meanings
into the verb is carried to such an extend that the whole expression forms one unseparable unity
26
27
which can hardly be called either a word or a sentence, into which several elements inter in
hardly recognizable shape. E. Sapir, a great specialist in polysynthetic s gives are following
example. The idea expressed in English by the sentence: “I came to give it to her” is rendered in
Chinook – an Indian language of the Columbia river by i-n-i-l-u-ol-am. This word consists of the
root –ol “to give”, i- indicates recently past time, -n- the pronominal subject “I”, the other –i- the
pronominal object “it’, -a- the second pronominal object “her”, -l- is a prepositional element
indicating that the preceding pronominal prefix is to be understood as an indirect object (her to,
i.e. to her) and –u- indicates movement away from the speaker. The suffix –am modifies the
verbal content in a local sense10.
We see from this example that the distinction between word and sentence in these
languages is partly obliterated (
- вычеркивать, стирать) and an entire series of
concepts is contained within a single “word sentence”.
Wilhelm von Humboldt (1765-1835) a prominent German linguist and philosopher with a
considerable knowledge of languages tried to discover the general law of linguistic development.
In the introduction to this book “On the Kawz language on Java island” he followed the
classification put forward by A.Schlegel, making it more exact. W. Humboldt was a follower of
the German philosopher Hegel and as a Hegelian he wanted to keep the three-fold classification.
W. Humboldt’s scheme of classification, as interpreted by O.Jespersen, runs as follows:
Class I – isolating or root languages:
a) R ( = root ) - Chinese
b) R + r ( = root + auxiliary word ) – Burmese
Class II – agglutinative languages:
Synthetic type
a) Rs ( = root + suffix ) – Turkish and Finnish
b) R/x ( = root + suffix )
c) pR( = prefix + root ) – the Bantek languages
Analytic type
d) Rs ( or pR ) + r – Tibetan ( Tibet - Тибет)
Class III –flexional languages:
Synthetic type
a) Rx ( pure inner flexion) – Semitic languages
b) pRx ( Rx s inner and outer flexion ) – Indo-European languages
Analytic type
c) pRx ( Rx s ) + r – Romance languages, English
Literature:
1.
2.
3.
4.
9
Blokh M.Y. A course in Theoretical English grammar, M., 1983
Whitehall H. Structural Essentials of English, New York, 1957
Hockett Ch. A Course of Modern Linguistics, New York, 1959
Berezin F.M. “Lectures on Linguistics” M, 1969
From the Latin verb “agglutinare – to stick” this term was introduced by Franz Bopp, a German philologist.
E.Sapir. Language. New York, p.73
10
27
28
5. Расулов Р. “Умумий тилшунослик” Ташкент 2005
6. Лоя А.В. История лингвистических учений. М., 1968
7. История лингвистических учений . Средневековый Восток. M, 1981
8. Нурманов А. Узбек тилшунослиги тарихи. Ташкент 2002
9. Виноградов В. “История русских лингвистических учений” M, 1975
10. Блумфильд Л. Язык, М., 1968
11. Смирницкий А.И. “Морфология английского языка” M, 1959
12. Смирницкий А.И. “Синтаксис английского языка” M, 1957
28
29
Lecture 11
The main schools of Modern Linguistics
Problems and questions for discussion;
1. The scientific study of languages
2. De-Saussure’s theory of paradigmatic series of the system of language
3. The linguistic schools: a) The Prague school – Functional linguistics
b) oppositional analysis in Morphology
c) oppositional analysis in Syntax
4. The Copenhagen school – Glossmatics
5. The American school – Descriptive linguistics
The main method of the 19-th century and the beginning of the 20-th century was the
historical comparative method. The H.C.M. no exact definition of the object of
Linguistics as an independent science. Logical, psychological [
]
психологический-рухий and sociological considerations were involved [
] вовлекать,
затрагивать, включать в себя – in linguistic studies to an extend [iks’tend] – распространять,
увеличивать, расширять – as to obscure [
] мрачный, непонятный – linguistics
proper. As Louis Hjelmslev pointed out, “The Linguistics of the past – even of the recent past –
has concerned itself with the physical and physiological, physiological and logical, sociological
and historical presipitations [
] – стремительный – of languages, not of the
11
language itself”
The study of numerous languages of the word was neglected [
] –
принебригать, запускать- the research being limited to the group of the Indo-European
languages.
The 1st linguists to speak of language as a system or a structure of smaller systems were
Beaudouin de Courtenay (1845-1929) and Acad. F.F. Fortunatov (1848-1914) of Russia and
Swisslinguist Ferdinand (1857-1913).
The work that came to be most widely known is de – Saussure’s “Course in General
Linguistics”. (cours de linguistique generale).
De – Saussure’s main ideas are follows:
1. Language is understood as a system of signals, interconnected and i. It is this network
of interdependent elements that form the object of linguistics as an independent
science.
2. Language as a system of signals may be compared to other systems of signals, such as
writing, alphabets for the deaf – and – dumb, military signals, etc.
3. Language has two aspects: the system of language and the manifestation of this
system in social intercourse- speech.
The system of language is a body of linguistic units – sounds, affixes, words, grammar
rulse and rules of lexical series. total of our utterances and texts. Speech is the line as
(syntagmatic) aspect of languages, the system of language is its paradicmatic aspect.
11
L. Hjelmslev. Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. Baltimor. 1952, p.2
29
30
De – Saussure gave the following diagram to illustrate his theory of the paradigmatic
series of the system of language: educate
Education; instruct; relate; debate;
Educates; teach; locate; prelate
Enlighten; translate;
4. The linguistic sign is belateral, i.e. it has both form and meaning.
5. Language is to be situated as a system in the synchronic plane, i.e. a given moment of
its existence.
6. The system of language is to be situated on the basis of the oppositions of its
concrete units.
There were three main linguistic schools that developed these notions concerning
language and linguistics as the science that studies it:
1. The Prague school [
] that created Functional linguistics
2. The Copenhagen school – [
] which created Glossematics (from Gr. Glossa
– language)
3. The American school that created Descriptive linguistics. The Immediate constituents
grammar was a further development of Descriptive linguistics; The Transformational grammar
was the latest development as a new method.
1) The Prague school – Functional linguistics.
The Prague school was founded in 1929 uniting Czech and Russian linguistics: Mathesius,
Trinka, Nicolay Trubetskoy, Roman Jakobson and others.
The basic [ beisik ] – основной – method of this school is the use of oppositions of speechsounds that change the meaning of the words in which they occur. The basic definitions are
given by Trubetskoy as follows12: Rule I: If in a language two sounds occur in the same position
and can be substituted for each other without changing the meaning of the word, such sound are
optional [
] - необязательный, факультативный- variants of one and the same
phoneme.
Oppositional analysis in Morphology
The principle of binary [
] – двойной, сдвоенный- oppositions is especially
suitable for describing morphological categories.
The principle of privative oppositions has been used by Roman Jakobson for describing
morphological categories of the Russian languages. R. Jakobson described the Russian case
system: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Instrumental, Prepositional cases.
Prof. B.Ilyish used the opposition within the category of voice, between active and
passive: invites – is invited
Is inviting – is being invited
Invited – was invited
Has invited – Has been invited
Should invite - Should be invited
Prof. B.Ilyish remarks: “… the passive voice is the marked member of the opposition: its
characteristic is the pattern “be + second participle”. The active voice is unmarked member of
the opposition: its characteristic of that pattern.
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31
Oppositional analysis in Syntax
The principle of privative oppositions has been used to present the traditional sentenceparts of the basic two-members sentence type13. The syntactic relations of the sentence parts are
characterized by three distinctive features: A- Subordination. B- predicativeness. Cobjectiveness.
The oppositional method has also been extended to describe different types of simple
sentences in Modern English:
a) two-member sentences as against one-member sebtences: “John worked” as against
“John!” or “Work!”
b) sentences differing in the arrangement of the main constituents in basic sentences:
“We saw a river there”.
2) The Copenhagen school
The Copenhagen school was founded in 1933 by Louis Hjelmslev (1899-1959) and Viggo
Brondal (1887-1942). In 1939 the Prague and the Copenhagen schools founded the magazine
“Acta linguistica” that had been for years the international magazine of structural linguistics. In
1943 Hjelmslev published his main work “Principles of Linguistics” which was translated into
Russian. A Russian translation was published in 1980 in the first volume of “Новое в
лингвистике”.
Glassematics sought [
] от гл. seek [
]– искать, разыскивать- to give
more exact definition of the object of linguistics. The two sides of linguistic sign recognized by
de – Saussure are considered by Hjelmslev. To have both form and substance. This leads to the
recognition of a bilateral character of the two planes – “the plane of content” and “the plane of
expression”, namely:
Substance – human thoughts
Plane of content
Language
form meanings, lexical and grammatical
Form- linguistic forms
Plane of expression
Substance- sounds, letters etc.
The object of the linguistic science is limited to the two inner layers – [
] –
внутренний – [
] – слой – the form in the plane of content and the form in the plane of
expression.
3) Descriptive linguistics in the USA.
Descriptive linguistics from the necessity of studying half-known and unknown
languages of the Indian tribes [ traib] -
12
13
H.C. Трубецкой. Основы фонологи. М. 1960 стр. 53, 55, 56
О.М. Барсова. Основные проблемы трансформационного синтаксиса. ВЯ 1965 № 4
31
32
At the beginning of the 20th century these languages were rapidly dying out under the
conditions of what is known as “American culture”, or “American way of life”, which had
brought the Indian peoples poverty, diseases and degradation. The study of these languages was
undertaken from purely scientific interests.
The Indian languages had no writing and, therefore, had no history. The C.H. method
was of little use here.
Furthermore [
] – сравн. Ст. от far – дальше, затем, кроме того- the American
languages belong to a type that has little in common with the Indo-European languages.
The American-Indian languages belong to a type that has little in common with the IndoEuropean languages.
A recent development of Descriptive linguistics gave rise to a new method – the
Transformational Grammar.
The TG was first suggested by Z.Harrisas a method of analyzing the “raw material” and
was later elaborated by Noam Chomsky.
Literature:
13. Blokh M.Y. A course in Theoretical English grammar, M., 1983
14. Ilyich B.A. “The Structure of Modern English” Leningrad, 1975
15. Смирницкий А.И. “Морфология английского языка” M, 1959
16. Смирницкий А.И. “Синтаксис английского языка” M, 1957
17. Расулов Р. “Умумий тилшунослик” Ташкент 2005
18. Нурманов А. Узбек тилшунослиги тарихи. Ташкент 2002
19. История лингвистических учений . Средневековый Восток. M, 1981
20. Виноградов В. “История русских лингвистических учений” M, 1975
21. Berezin F.M. “Lectures on Linguistics” M, 1969
22. Бархударов Л.С., “Очерки по морфологии английского языка” M, 1975
32
33
Lecture 12-13
Theme: 1. The origin of descriptive linguistics in the USA.
The development of descriptive linguistics in the USA.
Problems for discussion:
1) The necessity of studying the Indian languages.
2) The development of the concept of “phoneme”.
3) The predecessor of American descriptive linguistics.
4) Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield – prominent scientists.
5) Developing a complete methodology of language study by Z.S.Harris and Ch.C. Fries.
6) The theory of the Immediate Constituents (IC) and Panini’s grammar.
Descriptive Linguistics developed from the necessity of studying half-known and
unknown language of the Indian tribes.
At the beginning of the 20th century these languages were rapidly dying out under the
conditions of what is known as “American culture” or “American way of life” which had
brought the Indian peoples poverty, diseases and degradation. The study of these languages was
undertaken from purely scientific interests.
The Indian languages had no writings and, therefore, had no history. The comparative
historical method was of little use here, and the first step of work was to be keen observation and
rigid registration of linguistic forms.
Furthermore, the American languages belong to a type that has little in common with the
Indo-European languages; they are “agglomerating” languages, languages devoid of morphological forms of separate words and of corresponding grammatical meanings. Descriptive
linguistics had, therefore, to give up analyzing sentences in terms of traditional parts of speech; it
was by far more convenient to describe linguistic forms according to their position and their
cooccurence in sentences.
The description of a language became more refined at the beginning of the 20th century
due to the development of the concept of “phoneme”. The concept of ”phoneme” was worked
out by the Russian linguists Bedouin of Courtney and his student Kruszewski, and developed by
the linguists of the Prague School ( Roman Jacobson, 1928; Trubetzkoy, 1934).
Franz Boas, linguist and anthropologist, (1858-1942) is usually mentioned as the
predecessor of American descriptive linguistics. His basic ideas were later developed by Edward
Sapir (1884-1939) and Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949). Bloomfield’s main work “Language”
was published in 1933. All linguists of the USA at one time felt the influence of this book.
The American linguists began criticizing the Praguian oppositional method and claiming
a more objective-distributional approach to phonemes. But it soon became clear that the facts
established were the same and only the approach was different.
The American Descriptive School began with the works of Edward Sapir and Leonard
Bloomfield. American linguists developed under the influence of these two prominent scientists.
Sapir studied a great variety if languages (Indian and Malago-Polynesian), he had many
students who now teach in many universities in the USA and continue his work. His most known
work is “Language”, an introductory to the study of speech (1921).
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Leonard Bloomfield is considered to be more rigid theorist. His book of the same title as
Sapir’s is more systematic and the treatment of the linguistic problems is more modern. It’s a
complete methodology of language study, approaching the language as if it were unknown to the
linguist. Z.S.Harris, Ch.C.Fries and other contemporary linguistic students later developed the
ideas laid down in this book.
To have a deeper understanding of modern grammar we must get acquainted with the
main concepts of Bloomfield’s book.
1. Bloomfield understood language as a workable system of signals, that is linguistic forms
by means of which people communicate: “… every language consists of a number of signals,
linguistic forms” (Language, London, 1955, p.158).
2. Bloomfield’s understanding of “meaning” seemed to be very unusual at that time. Later
Charles Fries developed his concept of “meaning” but even now “meaning” is one of the
problems linguistics search to solve. He writes: “… by uttering a linguistic form a speaker
prompts his hearers to respond to a situation; these situations and responses to it are the
linguistic meanings of the form. We assume that each linguistic form has a constant and a
definite meaning, different from the meaning of any other linguistic form in the same
language” (p.158). According to Bloomfield, “The meaning of speech-forms could be
scientifically defined only if all branches of science, including, especially, psychology and
physiology were close to perfection. Until that time, phonology with it all the semantic
phase of language study, rests upon an assumption of the linguistics; we must assume that
in every speech community some utterances are like in form and meaning”(p.78). “… every
utterance contains some significant features that are not accounted for by the lexicon”
(p.162). “… No matter how simple a form, we utter it, … the utterance conveys a
grammatical meaning in addition to the lexical content” (p.168).
The quotations clarify two things: 1) the meaning of an utterance can be found through
the response of the hearers; 2) a sentence has a grammatical meaning which doesn’t depend on
the choice or the items if the lexicon.
This can be illustrated by the following:
1) The selection of “none” instead of “someone” changes the meaning of an affirmative
statement into negative: Someone has come – None has come.
The selection of an animate noun instead of the inanimate is possible only with a changed
meaning of the verb: The wind blew the leaves away – The man blew his nose.
Bloomfield’s idea that the meaning of a sentence is a part of the morpheme arrangement
and doesn’t depend on the words used in the sentence has later been developed by Ch. Fries and
N. Chomsky, who showed that sentences with non-sensual selection of words still have a definite
meaning because of the arrangement of linguistic forms.
2) Bloomfield understood grammar as meaningful arrangement of linguistic forms from
morphemes to sentences. He wrote that the meaningful arrangement of forms in a language
constitutes its grammar and these seemed to be four ways of arranging linguistic forms: 1) order;
2) modulation: John! (call), John? (question), John.(statement); 3) pho-netic modification (do –
don’t); 4) selection of forms which contributes the factor of meaning.
3)Bloomfield produced the definition of the sentence that is now accepted by modern American
linguistics. The definition is given in Fries’s book “The structure of English” as the
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best among other two hundred definitions, and it reads as follows: “… Each sen-tence is an
independent linguistic form, not included by virtue of any grammatical construction into
any other linguistic form”.
This definition is essentially like that of another great linguist of that period Otto
Jespersen, the great Dane, as he is sometimes referred to.
Bloomfield also said that a sentence is marked off by a certain “modulation” or
intonation.
He stated that in English the most favorite type of sentences is the “actor-action”
construction having two positions. These positions are not interchangeable. All the forms that
can fill in the given position thereby constitute of form class. In this manner the two main form
classes are detected: 1) the class of nominal expressions; 2) the class of finite verb expressions.
4)Thus Bloomfield has shown a new approach to the breaking up of the word-stock into
classes of word, the syntactical or the positional approach. He writes: “The syntactic
construction of a language mark off large classes of free forms, such as, in English the
nominative expression or the finite verb expression…”. We shall see that the great form
classes of a language are most _______________.
1. O.Jespersen. The Philosophy of Grammar Ld-N.Y. 1935, p.307.
A sentence is a (relatively) complete and independent human utterance – the
completeness and independence being shown by standing alone or its capability of standing
alone, i.e. of being uttered by itself.
2. L. Bloomfield. Language, Ld, 1955, p.190. easily described in terms of word-classes
(such as the traditional parts of speech), because one or more of the words usually determines the
form class of a phrase, which appear in it.
These long form classes are subdivided into smaller ones.
In modern linguistic works the nominal phrase of a sentence is marked as the symbol NP
and the finite verb phrase as VP. The symbol N and V stand for the traditional parts of speech,
nouns and verbs, although the NP may include not only noun but their equivalents and the noun
determiners (e.g. the man, my hand, this house, I, they, something, some, other, etc.). The VP
with a transitive verb may have a NP unit (took a book, sent a letter, etc.). The long form class of
N is now subdivided into: animate and inanimate, material and abstract, class nouns and proper
nouns. The long form class of V is subdivided into intransitive verbs (VI) and transitive verbs
(TV), and the latter are again divided into the V of the “take type”, the “give type”, the “put
type” and the “hare type”, etc.
The selection of the subclasses of N and V leads to a different sentence – structures.
The division of the word-stock into form classes is developed in Fries’s book “The
structure of English” and is dealt with a most known article by Zellig. S.Harris “Cooccurrence and Transformation in Linguistic Structure”.
5) Perhaps Bloomfield was one of the first to speak about “utterance” as a linguistic
unit. Meanwhile the concept of utterance is of importance for the study of unknown languages
and this concept also elucidates many syntactic problems in the familiar languages. The linguists
of different schools now accept the concept of utterance.
6) The first mentioning of the Immediate Constituents (IC) can also be found in
Bloomfield’s book. The theory of IC which in the middle of the 20th century fascinated the
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minds if the linguists, and has only been obscured by the Transformational grammar, was first
propounded by Bloomfield. We may suppose that the idea of the IC arose under the influence of
Panini’s grammar because in the first chapter of the book Bloomfield says that Panini’s
grammar taught the Europeans to study the IC of their languages.
These are the main ideas of Bloomfield’s “Language” which make the book a
predecessor of American Descriptive linguistics.
Questions:
1. What gave rise to the advent of Descriptive linguistics?
2. What type do American Indian Languages belong to?
3. Who worked out the concept of phoneme?
4. Whom do we usually mention as the predecessor of Descriptive linguistics?
5. What was the role played by E. Sapir in Descriptive linguistics?
6. How did Bloomfield understand language?
7. What is the grammatical meaning of an utterance?
8. How are the main form classes defined?
9. How are the long-form classes further subdivided?
10.How do you understand the symbols NP and VP?
11.What is the theory of the IC?
12.Who can you suppose can hare influenced the idea of the IC?
Recommended literature:
1. L.Bloomfield. Language. Ld., 1955.
2. O.Jispersen. The philosophy of grammar. Ld., 1935.
3. О.С.Ахманова и Г.Б. Микаелян. Современные синтаксические теории. М., 1963.
4. В.Н.Ярцева. Проблемы формы и содержания синтаксических единиц. В книге:
“Вопросы теории языка в современной зарубежной лингвистике”, М., 1961.
5. B. A. Ilyish. The structure of modern English. Ld., 1965.
6. Z.S.Harris Method in structural linguistics. Chicago., 1960.
7. О.С.Ахманова. Фонология, морфонология, морфология., М. 1966.
8. Н.Ф.Иртеньева, О.М.Барсова, М.Я. Блох, А.П. Шапкин. Теоретическая
грамматика английского языка. Синтаксис (на англ.яз.) М., 1969.
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Lecture 14-15
Theme: Contemporary Description Linguistics
Problems for disscussion:
1. The main consepts of descriptive linguistics:
a. Utterance
b. Sentance
c. Structural meaning
d. Environment or position
e. Destribution
f. Morpheme and allomorpheme
g.Linguistic levels
2. the ic model of ch. C.Fries
a. sentences and their classification.
b. classical parts of the sentence and the parts of the speech.
c. the function words.
d. the grammatical meaning of a sentence.
e. the theory of the ic(the prase grammar).
f. english prases.
g. the analytical ic model of the sentence.
The main contribution of the American Descriptive school to modern linguistics is the
elaboration of the techniques of linguistic analyses. The main methods are the Distri-butional
method and the methods of Immediate Contituents.
The scientists belonging to this branch of linguistics understand language as one of the
semiotic systems, that is a system of signals by which people comminucate.
There other semiotic systems besides the natural languages: gesture language, morse
consisting dots and dashes, traffic lights and others.
Animals are supposed to have semiotic systems of their own. This problem is now under
investigation.(научное исследование).The vocal or natural language is the most important of
all semiotic systems used by people. A natural language is a system of vocal signals. Tese
signals are arbitrary in the sense that they are not inherant or connected with the nature of things
they refer to. Every human being learns the system of the language of his community and by he
begins to speak himself.The task of a scientist is to observe and to describe how people actually
say things,but he shouldn’t prescribe how things should be said.
The research is carried out in the synchronic plane.Languages are studied as spoken
languages only,the point of view of their historical development is utterly neglected for the time
being.
No comporative studies are carried out ,only one language ,the given language is being
studied (this is called “the monolingual approach”). This principle has been the main (basic)
progressive feature of Descriptive Linguistics.It enabled the Descriptive Ling-uistics todo away
with the traditional approach that made the scholars understand any language through the norms
of latin grammar, thus distorting the peculiar structure of the language studied.
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The most important part of the is ”field-work” that comprises three parts: 1. the work with
the native iformants(people who speak the language studied by the linguists as their mothertongue; 2. the fillin the results . 3. systematisation.
The study of a language must be objective, that is it must be based on formal criteria-the
distribution of linguistic units and their structural characteristics, not on the meaning of linguistic
forms.Descriptive theory recognises the following fundamental concepts for analysing linguistic
material:
Utterance: “an utterance is any stretch of talk, by one person before and after
which there is silence on the part of the person”14.
Sentance: the definition given by Bleom field is accepted. This is following: Bleom
field pruduced the definition of the sentence that is now accepted by odern American
linguistics.This definition is given in ch.fries’s book the structure of english as the best among
other two hundred definition and it reads as follows: “...Each sentence is an independent
linguistic form ,not included by virtue of any grammatical construction into any larger
linguistic form “. This deffinition is essentually like that of another great linguist of that period,
that is otto jespersen, the great Dane, as he is sometimes refered to: “A sentence is a (relatively)
complete and independent human utterance –the completness and independence being
shown by standing alone or or it’s capability of standing alone,i.e. of being uttered by
itself”15.
Bloomfield also said that a sentence is marked off by a certain “modulation” or intonation.
Bloomfield stated that in english the most favourite type of sentence in the “actor-action”
construction having two positions. These positions aren’t interchangable. All the forms that can
fill in a given position thereby constitute a form-class.
In this manner the two main form-classes are detached: class of norminal expressions and
the class of finate verb expressions
Structural meanings: the structural meaning of a sentence signalled by the parts of the
sentence or (or form-classes) irrespective of their lexical meanings.
The ideas of structural meaning of a sentence-structure was intruduced not only by
l.Bloomfield but also Acad. L.V.Shcherba who gave his famous example of the structural
meaning in the non-senaical sentence. Глокая куздра штеко будланула бокра и куздрячий
бокренка (щерба придумал эти слова и дал студентам анализировать Эти слова
отсутствуют и никаких значений не имеют).
Environment or position: of an element is understood as a set of the neighbouring
elements.
Distribution: the distribution of an element is the total of all environments in which it
occurs. There is a second definition used by Descriptive linguistics. Namely: Distribu-tion is the
class of elements that occur (in the same environment) .
14
15
Z.S Harris. Method in structural linguistics. Chicago,1960.p.14
O. Jespersen. The philosophy of grammar. LD- N.Y.,1935, p 307
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Contrastive distribution: is understood as a difference of two linguistic units occuring
in the same environment and changing one linguistic form into another linguistic form ,e.g the
zero suffix as against the –s Suffix: pen-pens, book-books etc.
Non- contrastive distribution: is understood as a difference of two linguistic units
occurring in the same environment without changing one linguistic form log hoofs-hooves
wharfs-wharves.
Complementary distribution: two units are said to be in complementary distribution if
only one of them normally occurs in certain environments and only the other normally occurs in
other surrounding e.g –[e]s [z][s] [iz] in rooms ,books, bodes.
Morpheme: The morpheme is “А linguistic form which bears no partical phoneticsemantic resemblance to any other form”1.
Allomorpheme: An allomorpheme is a variant of a morpheme which occurs in certain
environments.Thus a morpheme is a group of one or more allomorphemes (or morpheme).
The allomorphemes of one and the same morpheme.
1. Must be in complementary distribution.
2. The sums of their environments must be equal to the sums of environments of some
single morpheme in the language e.g the allomorphemes [z], [s], [iz] together have the same set
of environments as the single zero suffix; room-rooms,box-boxes.
3. They must be similar in meaning.
Prof, A.Smirnitsky2 who recognised the above mentioned criteria, pointed out that the
basic phonetic variants of the three allomorphemes [z],[s],[iz] and [d], [t],[id] are respectively
[z] and [d], as they are produced by native speakers in condition where any variant could appearafter vowels:
The voiceless variants [s],[z] are the result of assimilation to the preceeding voiceless
consonants and [iz], [id] represent the historically earlier forms with an [i] preserved between
two phonemes of a similar character.
We may note that the differance s in the environments are the same for such series of
pairs as:
boy-boys
pay-paid
book-books
talk-talked
man-men
take-took
sheep-sheep
cut-cut
Form-classes or positional classes: In structural linguistics this classification is set up
on the basis of a particular choice of diagnostic co-occurents: ”cloth” and “paper” both occur
say.: the___is “where” diminish does not appear: we call this class n.and “diminish” and
“grow” both occur say, in “it will___” where “paper” and “cloth” do not;
WE call this class v. the diagnostic environments are chosen in such a way that the
resulting classes permit compact statements about co-occurence. e.g, “cloth”, “paper”,
“diminish”, “grow” all show some differences in their environments. so that a simple summary
1
J.Blomfield. Language. J.D. 1955. p. 161.
А.И,Смирницкий. Морфология английского языка. М., 1959, ст.23-42. Also. О.С.Ахманова. Филология,
морфонология, морфология. М., 1966. с. 52-62.
2
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can be made. In terms of classes N and V we can say that every N occurs before some V in the
environment “the__v” and every V occurs in the environment “the N___” for some N.
Construction: A construction is any significant group of words or morphemes.
Constituent: A constituent is a linguistic form that enters into some larger construction, e.g.
the constituents “the old man” and “has gone to his son’s house” c constitute a sentence.
Immediate constituent: An immediate constituent is one of two constituents of which
the given linguistic form is directly built up, e.g
The old man | went to his son’s house.
The || old man | went || to his son’s house.
The || old ||| man |went || to ||| his son’s house.
The || old ||| man | went || to ||| his son’ | s |||| house
The || old ||| man| went || to ||| his son’ |||| s ||||| house.
Linguistic levels: The main units ( elements) of language are usually recognised by
discriptive linguistics: the phoneme and morpheme. A third level is often recognised, the level
of constructions or the syntactic level.
Any utterance can be presented on the phonemic level ( as a sequence of phonemes) and
on the morphemical level (as a sequence of morphemes).
The nation of levels is closely connected with that of isomorphism1. Isomorphesim means
similarity (or parallelism) of relations between the units concerned.
The structure of a language is understood as consisting of different levels connected with each
other by the relation of hierarchy2.
The IC Model of Ch.C. Fries
Charles Carpenter Fries’s book “The structure of English” must attract our attention
because it served as theoritical basis for the compiling of several Fries’s series that is the textbooks for foreign students.
Sentences and their classification.
Fries adopts the definition of the sentence given by bloomfield and the definition of the
utterance by Harris. He develops Blomfield’s idea of the meaning of the linguistic form as the
response to it.Instead of classifying sentences in accord “The purpose of communi-cation” (the
traditional classification intostatements, questions, requests), Fries classifies them in accord with
the responses elicit .The utterances that begin conversation and elicit responses are called
“situation utterance units”. The responses and the sentences that follow the situation sentences
in the same utterance are called “sequence sentences”.
They are also called non-situation sentences. The situation utterances or (sentences) are
furter classed into 3 major groups in accord with the responses they elicit,namely:
1. Utterances that are immediately and regularly followed by oral responses only:
1
uso- гр.isos равный.одинаковый.подобный.
Подобие или парелленизм. отдельных званьев структура языка. отдельных микро-или микроструктур.ее
составляющих. получила название изоморизм.
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a) greetings, b) calls, c)questions;
2. Utterances regularly eliciting conversational signals of attention to continious
discourse statements.
3. Utterances regularly eliciting action-responses:request or commands.
This utterance-response theory is a basis for training exercises aiming at the development
of correct or natural responses of students of foreign languages.
The classical parts of the sentence and the parts of speech.
In fries’s book we can find a critical revision of the classical analyses of the parts of the
sentence. Fries writes that this kind of analyses is no value for an effective practical command
of english(or any other language).
This classical analyses consists in describing technical terms “subject”, ”predicate”, “indirect
object”, “direct object” to certain parts of the sentence. “Knowing grammar” thi means only
the ability to apply technical terminology. Fries discards this kind of “grammatical analyses”
as belonging to a presientific erd.3
The grouping of morphemes into posiional classes with the help of “environment”
suggested by Harris led to therecognition of a few “diagnostic frames” in Ch.Fries work . He
choose 3 patterns of english sentences as “frames” to fill the positions with the words under the
test.
If a word could fit into a positions without coursing a change of the structural meaning
of the sentence. Thewas considered to belong to a certain form-class:
Frame A.
1
2
3
4
The concern
was
good
(always)
Frame B.
1
2
3
4
The clerk
remembered
the tax
(suddenly)
Frame C.
1
2
3
4
The team
went
—
there
The words were divided into 4 form-classes. Fries gives no names to these four classes
of words. exept the numbers; Class 1, class 2, class 3, class 4.
The function Words.
Besides the4 classes Fries also distinguishes function words.This words don’t fill in the
fo5rms (or positions)of the sentence frames.They are grammatical signals of the structural
meaning of the sentence. e.g.(there was a man in the room),(please dance).They(function
words)are signals of the grammatical meaning of the words in the sentence. e.g give me a sheet
of paper-give me the(that)sheet of paper.
Fries estimates the number of the function words as154.
Here belong;
1) “determines” as occur in the same position as “the” that is the class 1 words.
2) “Modal and auxilary verbs” as occur with class 2 words
2
Иерархия-гр. hierarchia (cвящений +власить)-рассположение элементов целого порядке от вышего к
низшему. ( словарь иностраных слов М. 1982 с. 184)
3
О.С Ахминова. Г.Б Михаэлян. фонология. морфонология Морфология м.1966 с 24-29
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3) Words of the “very” type as occur with class3 words. (very good. extremly bad.)
4) Conjuctions.
5) Prepositions
6) Introducers (‘intr1’ dju: s - вводить, знакомить, и внесение, представление) there,
it.
7) Interrogative words ( when, where, who, what, how,)
8)Interjections,
9) The words “yes” and “no”.
10) Attention getting signals (look, say, listen).
11) The polite formula “please”.
12) “lets” as a device which includes the speaker into a request and some other smaller
divisions of the 3 group.
The Grammatical meaning of a Sentence.
The Ch.Fries develops the idea of the grammatical meaning of the sentence suggested by
L.Bloomfield. Ch.Fries says that it is the classes of the words used in the sentence, their formal
devices (morphemes), and their positions that signal the structural meaning of a sentence and its
parts, not the concreate lexical meaning of the words.
To elucidate this Ch.Fries presents a set of sentences with non- sensical words, whose
grammatical meaning is quite clear . E.G
1
2
1
woggles
ugged
diggles
uggs
woggled
diggs
woggs
diggled
uggs
The structural signals of this sentence make us understand that “woggles”, “uggs”, and
“woggs” are the words of the first class, that is “third words” of some kind: That in each case
there are more than one of these “things” and that they, at sometime in the past, performed
certain “actions” (denoted by he class2 words); and that these actions were directed towards
other “things”; that denoted as “diggles”. “diggs”, and “woggles”.
These are grammatical English sentences, and a speaker of English should not hesitate to
make new utterances using the”thing words” in the singular e.g.
A woggle ugged a diggle;
A speaker may change the time of the event e.g
a woggle uggs a diggle ;
A speaker asks a question about the event , e,g
Did woggles ugg diggles?
All we know about the meaning of the sentences is expressed by the position (forms) of
the words, by the morphemes: [-s],[-d] or the zero morpheme and by the function words: a,the.
did.
The theory of the IC ( the prase grammar)
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To arrive at the complete structural meaning of a sentence to know how the sentence is
built(constructed) we must determine how the separate units of the sentences, its constituents,are
groupped.
Ch.Fries introduces in the analyses of the sentence the idea of phrases consisting of the
immediate constituents.
The English Phrases.
Each language has its own system of structural groupping and signals of the groups (or
phrases). In english there are generally two IC in a phrase. English has dictomous phrase
structure, whichmeans that the phrase in english can always be divided into two elements
(constituents). One of the signals of the group boundaries is the function word-preposition.
In spoken language (in oral speech) the structural grouppings(phrases) are shown by
intonation and pauses.
This suggested teaching the phrase grammar together with the rythmical division of the
Chuncs of speech.The practical value of the IC theory is great. Because it gives correct division
of speech into phrases that signals the meaning of the syntactic construction and gives the speech
its natural rythm.
The analytical IC of the sentence.
Ch.Fries has suggested the following diagramme for the analyses of the sentence which
also brings forth the mechanism of generating sentences.
The largest IC of a simple sentence are the NP and the VP. The boundary between them
goes between the word of a class 1 and the word of class 2. The NP in english has two IC- the
determiner and class 1 word (N).
The analyses is begun with largest IC and comes down to the smallest phrases. If the
sentence is complex the largest IC are the sentences included into the complex construc-tion.
The diagramme may be drawn somewhat differently without changing is principle of
analyses. The new diagramme is called a “candelabra” diagramme:
The
man
hit
the
ball
S
If we turn the analytical (candelabra) diagramme upside down, we get a new diagramme
which is called a “derivation tree”, because it’s fit not to analyse sentences, but shows how a
sentence is derived (or built,or generated ) from IC.
The Derivation Tree Diagramme.
The derivation Tree is drawn as two branches forking out from the sign s(sentence).
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44
Each branch has nodes (joints or knots)in it from which smaller branches fork out .Each node
corresponds to a phrase, the two forking branches correspond to the IC of the phrase. The
diagramme below is a derrivation tree for generating simple sentences with a transitive verb.
S
np
T
The
The
vp
N
man
boy
V
np
T
n
hit the
took a
ball
pen
To generate a sentence we must know that it consists firstly of an NP and a VP.A NP
consists of a determiner and a N. A VP with a transitive V consists of a V and an NP, that the
NP again has a determiner and an N.
All this is shown by the diagramme called the “derrivation tree”.
Summary.
The IC theory (or grammar) or the phrase theory (grammar) was the first modern
grammar fit for generating sentences.
Questions.
1. What semiotic systems do you know?
2. What language material is Fries book based on?
3. What is a morpheme?
4. What are form-class of words and how many are they?
5. What is the technique by which the form-classes of words have been distinguished?
6. What is the principal of the classification of sentences in Fries’s book ”The structure
of English?
7. How did Ch.Fries criticise the traditional analyses of the sentence into it’s parts?
Exercise 16.
Draw the tree diagramme for the following examples and analyse in terms of function.
1. Sally has finished this book.
2. George has been in the garden.
3. The guests had gone by midnight.
4. The dog had eaten the bone.
5. That letter might arrive in the morning.
6. The phone rings continually.
7. Jack sat in the corner.
8. Ken can cook the dinner.
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Linda Thomas. Beginning Syntax.
Oxford UK and Cambridge USA.1993.
Recommended Literature.
1. Z.S.Harris.Method in structural Linguistics.Chicago.1960
2. O.Jesperson. The philosophy of grammar London-New-york,1935
3. L.Bloomfield. Language. London,1955
4. А.И. Смирнийкий. Морфология английского языка . М. 1959
5. О.С. Ахманова. Фонология. Морфология. Морфонология. М 1966
6. Ch.C.Fries. The structure of English.LD.1957
7. H. Rodney. English grammar. Cambridge 1988.
8. N.F.Irtenyera, O.M.Barsova, M.Y. Blockh, A.P Shapkin. A theoritical nglish Grammar
(syntax). M, 1969
9. L.Thomas . Beginning Syntax.Oxford UK and Cambridge USA, 1993
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