Otvety Na Voprosy-1604

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QUESTIONS FOR THE EXAM IN "HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS" (4 YEAR MPGU)

1. Language science and its history. The substantive and methodological approaches to the history of

linguistics.

Linguistics1) is the study of language as a system of communication.

Although linguistics has a very long history. The studies of language phenomenon have been carried out for

centuries. It is fairly recently that linguistics has been accepted as an independent discipline.

Linguistics2)the term linguistic appears from the Latin word lingua and this is the study of human

natural languages. It studies all languages existing now. Those languages which existed in the past and may be

disappeared; and those that may appear in the future. It studies languages in general.

The concept of linguistics is becoming the most essential term in the course of the history of this study.

There are 2 different conceptions how to study the history of linguistics:1

stconception describes all the traditions that are scientifically related to one or more aspects of that which

can be called language or linguistic communication. This point of view is usually known as a substantive

understanding () of the history of linguistics. In this case we are to talk about

heterogeneous (different) things.

Ex.: different mythological traditions relating to the origin of the language, popular believes, about differentand similar things.

Speaking about this substantive approach we are to include the prehistory of linguistics, some naive

opinions, some ideas of plain people and individuals who didnt have a scientific interest in language, in

modern sense. In this case we are to mention those ideas which were introduced in philosophy in ancient

Greece, Rome, India, China; theories that appeared in the middle ages, in the epoch of Renaissance &

Enlightenment.

2-nd approachmethodologicalalternative approach. The concept of linguistics reconstructs step by step

the model of the respective linguistic theoretical approach. But inside this one there may be also different

theories describing how to deal with the history of science.

2. An episteme and paradigm and their correspondence to the philosophy of linguistics. Periods in the

history of linguistics (prof. Amirova's classification).

The term episteme was introduced by Michael Foucault. Episteme the foundations on which the

intellectual building of a particular collection of way of thinking are built.

He thought that science in general may have different epistemes. Some of them are more important for the

science than the others. Afterwards old epistemes may disappear & new ones may be created.

Thomas Kuhn has expressed the same idea but with the help of different term. Paradigm. He thought that

scientists is a group of people who want to discuss the same problem. Thats why their theory is based on a set

of basic assumptions. The existence of a paradigm is period of Norman science. But some time later scientists

can solve the problems. Thats why new questions are usually asked. Trying to answer them scientists usuallycome to a completely new paradigm.

Between the 2 paradigms:

- a period of different anomalies (crises)- a set of questions- fact

From anomalies they came to a new paradigm. In this case they have to create a new theory, new concepts

& notions & the metalanguage of a new science.

The period from the previous paradigm to the new one called a paradigmatic shift. It may be of 2 kinds:

- a revolution- an evolution

4 paradigm of linguistic knowledge:- the historical comparative paradigm

- the structural paradigm

- the generative transformational paradigm


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- cognitive communicative paradigm

Periods in the history of linguistics:

1. the theory of naming (). Appeared centuries ago in ancient philosophy. Theworks were the 1

stattempt to systemize everything in the language & the surrounding reality.

2. the grammatical traditions of the philosophy which are represented by different theories in antiquity &in the middle age in the west & east grammars.

3. Universal grammar which tried to show the common source in the system of languages. It was ratherprescriptive than descriptive.

4. Historical comparative linguistics discussed aspects concerning the source of the Indo-Europeanlanguages & the relationships between different languages & words.

5. the systematic linguistics formed the philosophy of language, discussed general proprieties of humancommunication & examined conceptions in the psycholinguistics & sociolinguistics.

6. structural linguistics displays the main language units & the relationships between them on differentlevels of language; shows how phonetics, morphology, lexicology & syntax work.

3. Linguistic ideas of Antiquity. The theory of naming in Greece: "phusei" and "thesei" theories,

Plato's Cratylos, Aristotle's categories.

The science of language began approximately when the minds of men first turned to problems like this:

1) How is it that people do not speak one and the same language?2) How were words first created?3) What is the relation between a thing and the name it stands for?4) Why is such and such a thing (person) called this but not in the other way?

The answers to these questions will be largely theological. It must be connected with religion. Nowadays we

get to know that all theories of antiquity thought that there must be only one God, who gave the language to

people. That may happen in a different ways when the God could give his language to the 1st

man and his

name was Adam. The God brought all the animals to Adam and he gave the names and Adam afterwards gave

these names to people. This very story is written in the Old Testament.

One more story about Babylon. People tried to reach the God. The God ruined the tower. In the punishmentfor mens crimes and presumption () but these were only legends. Nowadays we tried to

base linguistics on some particular facts. These facts and theories appeared in Hellenic linguistics

( = ). The linguistic analysis of Greek writers can be classified according to 3

main epochs.

1st

epoch

It is usually concerned with pre-Socratic philosophers with such names as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. This

period is characterized by its relating of grammatical categories and structures to entities. These philosophers

mostly dealt with the problems of existence. That is why they spoke about truth value. This particular epoch is

usually called the early philosophic period. The main interest of all the philosophy of antiquity was devoted

to etymology. They tried to speak about similarities in different sounds of words. They showed rather fanciful

connections in different words. They tried to explain the same meanings in words by similar sounds andpronunciations. One of the philosophers of antiquity compared different words in Greek and showed the

common sounds which are met in things and names. Ex.: the word mel which means honey is also

pronounced like smth sweet, the same with the word lana which means wool and if we take such words as

sharp, knife they are both rude in pronunciation and in the meaning. We can find similarities between the

meaning and sound of a word. The speculative minds of Greek thinkers proved the problem to be the most

attractive and this problem was rather abstract and general. The problem is rather complicated from the

position of todays linguistics because these linguists compared to sides ofthe sign:

1) form (sound)2) meaning of the word

A bit later Socrates described the similarities between the form and the meaning in Greek words. He pointed

out that the Greek words must be short. They must contain sweet sounds [l, r, n, m]nasal sounds. Themeaning of the word must correspond to nice things surrounded the person. Endless discussions were

discussed in works of Plato. Plato wrote dialogs in which different philosophers are becoming main

characters. Socrates was his teacher. That is why we find this particular hero in almost all dialogs. In one of


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his famous dialogs Cratolos Plato describes the connection between the form of the word and the meaning

of this unit. Plato wrote that objects are imperfect copies of peoples ideas. That is why peoples

thoughts represent not only the surrounding world but also human understanding of different objects. This

dialog Kratylos shows the difference between 2 main theories which existed in Greek philosophy.

The 1st

theory is known to be Phusei theory. It explains the word according to its nature. Ex.: mel, lana,

sharp.

The 2nd

theory was Thesei theory (). It is translated by convention. For centuries before Plato these

2 theories divided philosophers and grammarians into 2 camps. Plato in his dialog thinks that there is no

connection between a word and a thing and the main hero Socrates speaks about some words which representsrather ideally sounds in nature. Ex.: koo-koo, bow-wou, honk-honk horses, buzz-buzz.

But some of the words in the language dont follow there ideas because they are becoming rather

abstract:

Ex: table, chair, floor

In this case we are to know the history of these words or models according to which they are created.

Now Aristotlea pupil of Plato.

Many of Aristotles works are dealing with different sciences such as logics, metaphysics, rhetoric, literary

studies.

Aristotle maintained that human sensual experience is our only source of knowledge. Through our

senses we can discover main properties of things and through the senses we distinguish qualities of objects.Aristotle is writing that the simplest ability of a person is his perception and reasoning. But at the same

moment he thinks that everything is made by the God. The God is the course of any changes in the world and

a human being is created by the God. This idea is one of the supreme ideas in his writings. But for the history

of linguistics we are to know that thanks to Aristotle we are to distinguish between two main categories. By

the word category he meant the division of words into parts of speech. He thinks that a natural language can

be analyzed according to the system of logics.

By the word sentence he means two notions connected with each other. His term is translated as

. Any sentence must consist of a subject and a predicate. These are two main parts of speech.

Sometimes he thought that one more part of speech can bethe conjunctionmay appear in the middle or in

the end of a sentence.

After that he came to the conclusion that the main parts of the speech are a noun and a verb.It is interesting to know that Aristotle introduced the notion of case. He distinguished between the

following phrases: the table, on the table, under the table, going to the table.

4. Linguistic ideas of Antiquity. Stoic and Alexandrian Grammar, the Roman "Ars

grammaticae".

The successor of the pre-Socratic period is the period of the stoics. They were a group of philosophers who

mostly spoke about the same things concerning the investigation and differences in sentences. They showed

the difference between simple and complex sentences. They discussed the case of a proposition. They showed

differences in conjunctions. They describe and and but and they thought that not everything in thelanguage can be explained with the help of logics.

This second period influenced greatly those Greek philosophers who settled near the Alexandrian

library. These were mostly Greek philosopher and grammarians who continued to discuss the subdivision of

words into parts of speech. It is interesting to know that one of the philosophersDionisy introduced his own

classification of parts of speech. We distinguish 8 parts: a noun, a verb, a participle, an adverb, a numeral, a

pronoun, an adjective and integration. This Greek grammar was a brilliant one at that period. It described

everything at the Greek language. This kind of grammar was brought to Rome in 396. This grammar was

brought by the main Greek grammarianCrater. He not only brought it, heread lectures ondifferent classes

of words in the language. Afterwards the Latin writers translated this grammar into Latin. It is interesting to

know that the Latin grammar has very curious mistakes:

- Greek word: genikithe case of kind. It was rendered as the genitive case (genetivus). And it istranslated as the case of origin.

- A most bad mistakethe Akk case doesnt mean to accuse but it means the case of the object.


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The philological school of Alexandrian grammar is very important to us because philosophers and

grammarians tried to interpret texts of old poets. They spoke about the peculiarities in the language. They

showed cases of regularity and irregularity and thats right to understand better the language of their own

times.The most fam and influential grammarian of the centurv ISAclius Donatus, for both hisArs major

andArs minorare classics. The organization of the former represents an ideal culmination to the process wehave seen develop from Aristotle through Quintilian. First comes phonology, then the parts of speech, andfinally stylistics, which is treated primarily in terms of errors. The Ars minor is a series of questions and

answers which concentrate exclusively on thepartes orationis and which therefore testify to the central roleof morphology in Latin grammar.

5. Sanscrit grammars of ancient India (Panini, linguistic concepts of phoneme and morpheme, kinds

of compound words).

The Indian tradition presupposes careful observations and systematic classifications. Indian linguists

tried to observe scientific facts that is why we can call the Indian tradition the linguistic tradition or the Indian

Grammar.

The Indian grammarians tried to investigate very old secret texts, which were written on the Sanskrit

language. The Sanskrit language is one of the oldest of the Indo-European family. It is characterized by a very

important feature: it may be called the source language of the whole Indo-European family. Some of thelinguists of the 19

thcentury admitted the idea that Sanskrit was the stimulus to the investigations in historical

linguistics. It is essential that sacred texts which are written in Sanskrit had become obsolete even many

centuries ago but nobody could change any line from these texts. The main purpose of linguists was to

observe the facts, to describe them without any change. This was a scrupulous oral tradition everybody had to

remember all these texts by heart that is why these Vidic Sanskrit sense needed to be kept unchanged from

generation to generation. The main purpose of a linguist was to present the exact analysis of speech sounds

to point out every detail of articulation and to describe main grammatical forms presented in old texts.

Everything in the grammatical works may be called a system rather small but in some cases with a bit

artificial terminology.

So we are to understand that the treatment of grammar and phonological problems in Sanskrit was

entirely different from those ideas which we find in Greek and Roman traditions. The most famous Indiangrammarian is Panini. He lived approximately in the 4

thcentury B. C. he provided a complete and theoretical

analysis of all the principles according to which phonetics and morphology of Vidic Sanskrit texts is

organized. His main book consists of 8 parts, which described the synchronic layer of the language. He

presented 3959 rules according to which the language was. He described all the elements of Sanskrit:

phonology. But what is important in his work that his analysis is a particularly detailed description of Sanskrit

morphology. It is on a high level of the linguistic inside (). He introduces such

terms as phoneme and morpheme and explained different kinds of roots which may appear in a word. His

system of description is a complete integrated grammar of Sanskrit. His system is based on a number of rules,

transformations to describe all linguistic phenomena.

It is very interesting that every rule was described with the help of one sentence and people had to

memorize them by heart. Indian grammars existed not in the written form, they had to be studied and

memorized everything about 10 years. Panini formulated the morphological structure of Indian words. Some

of the tribes of Indian words have become international and they are even used in the modern linguistic.

They are:

Dvandva - is used to correspond to a compound word which consists of two substantives(nouns). The parts of the word may be :

- identical- partially identical- different

But the elements of these words are coordinated.

Ex.: nick-nock (), topsy-turvy ()

Bahuvrihicompound word, which means much rice but it is difficultto understand the directmeaning of the word while looking at its elements. It imitates the form of the object.


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Ex.: block-head (a person, whose head doesnt think), eye-lid ()

Tatpurushaa compound word, which explicates the second component of the word.Ex.: a dog-house.

In Paninis work we can find more terminology to explain the peculiarities of morphological and

syntactical structure of words and sentences. When his book appeared in Europe in the 19th

century linguists

were greatly admired by the systematic organization of all linguistic phenomena.

6. Linguistics in the Middle Ages. The inventory of printing and its influence on the stud) Greek,

Latin and other languages.

The chief thing in the middle ages were learning Latin language. The Latin language was the language

of Church and of general civilization. Latin wasnt studied in the scientific spirit but at that time it was a

language with the help of which people communicated. People tried to use it as a means of oral

communication. It was used as a language for documents, laws, court and besides that Latin was the language

of literature. The Renaissance brought about a change in this position. One more language became the

universal means of communicationGreek and grammarians during the period of Renaissance tried to

compare these 2 classical languages. Both languages were taught at schools, colleges. Everybody wanted to

write as the greatest Cicero and to speak as Aristotle. But at the following centuries we witnessed theconstantly developing interest in living languages, which can be used in oral communication. Among them

we name: Italian, French, German, Spanish, English, Celtic languages and many others. These languages

were different from Latin or Greek. One more very important factor happened in Eastern countries and in

Europe that was an invention of printing. Printing helped to study national languages. It accelerated

grammatical studies and studies of spelling. There was one more very important language whose influence is

very great and is concerned with theological (religious) interest. This language is Hebrew (). This

language is the original of the Old Testament ().

The acquaintance with this language was different because it belonged not to the Indo-European

family but to the Semitic languages. It was spoken by a great number of people in Europe, Asia and north

part of Africa. The importance of this language stimulated interest in linguistic studies of Hebrew. During the

period of Renaissance it was thought that many European languages descended (came from) Hebrew. But thislanguage was also different from Latin and Greek. It is connected with an investigation of old Germanic texts.

In the German language there was a Gothic language, which was not spoken even in Renaissance

period but the European grammarians managed to find out Wulfillars Gothic translation of the Bible. This

text was compared with the text in old English, German and Icelandic and linguists proved that the Gothic

language belonged to the Germanic brunch of languages but to the eastern part of this brunch old German

and Icelandic are his relatives. They are cognate languages (related) especially those which were spoken

during the period of Renaissance. The interest in linguistic studies from the historical perspective was rather

small but linguistic thinkers thought that it was an urgent problem to show treasures of different languages,

especially those which were spoken.

Besides during the period of Renaissance there appeared different philosophers, mathematicians,

logicians who began to talk about the universal character existing in any language. They tried to describe theproperties of the language irrespective on the spoken form. Among these philosophers we are to name 2

persons: Bekard and Leibniz who presented their own ideas on the peculiarity of the ideal means of

communication. They thought that Latin can be such a language or it can be look like a Latin. They wrote in

Latin and Latin was the 1st

language whose grammar was described rather properly.

Scholars of Europe thought that Latin grammar and grammar of any language were synonyms. Besides

that, Latin was a language rather rich in grammatical forms. All categories observed in Latin grammar

corresponded to other living languages. In the English we have 2 cases: Nominative and Possessive. Then it

contained 5 cases, because they were in Latin (Nominative, Possessive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative). Latin

was taught as a written language. Sometimes when different scholars from different countries began speaking

Latin they didnt understand each other, because they didnt study phonetics. The real life on the language

comes through the mouth and the ear but not through the pen and eye.

Latin at that period was a main means of communication between educated people. That is why works

written by Descrates and Leibniz are written with the help of the Latin language. It is very important to know

that Leibniz preserved his 1st

classification of European languages. In his classification we can find:


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- flexional languages- root languages- languages with agglutination

But Leibniz didnt described polisyntactical languagesbecause he didnt know about them.

, , .

, , ,, .

7. The origin of language in philosophers' works of the 17-18 centuries (Rousseau. Descartes Leibniz).

This problem is the most controversial problem in linguistics; the idea of this problem began to exist

many centuries ago, when two main theories appeared: the theory of Phusei and the theory of Theseithese

theories originated to philosophical theories of antiquity.

A bit later during the period of the Renaissance and the period of Enlightment (17th

18th

centuries)

were mostly connected with 2 main ideas:

1) a language appeared as the result of imitation of different sounds in the natural environment

2) a language could appear as a result of agreement between different people.

The theory of imitation

The theory of imitation was concerned with different names, among them we usually name Lord

Monboddo (lived in the 18th

century). He solved the problem by resort to the principle of imitation.

He supposed that people required their speech imitating the sounds of animals, plant, birds and other

phenomena. This was the case of the onomatopoeia.

The problem was mostly connected with the articulation of sounds but this scholar thought that we are

to describe how a monkey can imitate different sounds. He tried to describe the situation when a monkey

could use his fingers for taking different thingsthese natural movements led the animal to delicate

operations and afterwards to the development of the monkeys brain. He thought that the process was very

slow, but this particular ape could change into a human being, who used different sounds to name the

surrounding world.He thought that individuals were in constant intercourse and afterwards could recognize the meaning

of different words. The opposite idea was introduced by 2 French philosophers: Rousseau and Condillac.

Rousseau thought that the nature origin of the language could be framed by an agreement or social

content between different people. It is obvious in this case that some primitive men agreed to name certain

things with the help of particular words, but in this case they are to use some speech, words; they are to feel

the want of the language and in this case the problem arises: which particular words people used to name

some other words

Condillac expressed his thoughts in a bit different way. He thought that people started their

communication with instinctive cries, violent gestures and notions. And afterwards they repeated these

movements and notions many times, so their children could acquire some languages from his / her parents.

People simply enriched and developed their real language generation after generation.Condillac wrote: People uttered certain sounds in circumstances where everybody would be led to

refer them to the sameperceptions. They fixed the meanings more precisely according to the circumstances,

being repeated, accustomed the mind more and more to attach the same ideas to the same signs.

The idea of Condillac differs greatly from the Rousseaus understanding of the origin of the language.

At the end of the 18th

century the European philosophers tried to introduce some other understandings

of the same problem. They thought that a language could be developed as a conventional language for private

use; in this case the private language must consist of a number of conventional signs, rather convenient and

concise. Opposite to this idea was the idea to create some artificial language for communication.

Descrates saw clearly that thinking of a person involved not only words and their meanings but also

ideas in a human mind. He thought that it was necessary to describe the real nature of the thinking process.

That is why he formulated the rules of his own philosophical language. This language had to be characterizedby a concise structure and must look like the mathematical formula. He described this language in detail using

methods of manipulating the symbols of algebra and arithmetic. He spoke about the possibility of creating

such a language for purposes of communication.


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In the 17th

century there were about 50 attempts to create an artificial language based on the Descrates

principles.

Some scholars tried to use the mathematical formulas, some others used analytical geometry and

physical laws.

Leibniz tried to catalog the universe. He also used some mathematical formulas, a system of symbols;

he invented a guasimathematical languagea mixture of logics, maths and linguistics.

Nowadays computational linguistics regards this language to be the most systematic description of the

surrounding world. Only in the 20th

century on the basis of this Leibnizs language two other artificial

languages were created: the basic and the passal. But mathematical symbols, logical symbols cant represent

a natural language.

In the course of time, especially in the 17th

and 18th

centuries scholars from different countries came to

the other idea how to describe different languages.

8. Conditions influencing the appearance of historical and comparative ideas (San: sound

correspondences, Pierre Coerdoux, William Jones). The historical-comparative linguistics (R. Rask, F.

Bopp, J. Grimm, A. Vostokov) and their inventions.

The historical-comparative linguistics

The 19th

century witnessed an enormous growth and development of the language science. The

language science presented the features which were unknown before to the previous generations of scholars.

These were the conditions which influenced the development of historical linguistics.

1) the linguistic horizon was widen. Many new languages were described. Firstly we are tomention Old Hebrew, which didnt look like other languages. This language belonged to the

Semitic linguistic family. Besides that Arabic, Syrian became known to scholars of Europe.

They were also different from other European languages.

2) Many new languages became the topic of deeper investigations; among these languageslinguists tried to point out the features of living languages, but not the dead ones. Linguists

described languages of America, Africa and Asia. They represented catalogues of these

languages, especially the grammatical and lexical layer.3) At the beginning of the 19th century more comprehensive classifications of languages were

obtained. These classifications presented new linguistic forms and showed the connection

between language and literature.

4) Linguistics is becoming not a descriptive science, but an explanatory study. It tried toexplain the development of languages from the historical point of view.

Different scholars introduced into linguistics terms from the biological science. They began to speak

about the birth of the language, its growth and even its death.

Scholars introduced 2 main principles according to which any language should be described:

1. the notion of history2. the principle of comparisonAccording to the 1st principle language science as well as any language is usually changing. The

language is a natural organism.

According to the 2nd

principle languages can be compared with the living and the dead languages. The

European languages were compared with the Sanskrit language and this comparison gave a mighty influence

to linguistic studies.

The main idea was that linguists tried to look at different languages from the position of comparison.

They looked at following languages: Sanscrit compared with examples from Greek, Latin, Gothic, German

and English.

Sanscritpitar [pita:r]; bhratar

Greekpatir [pater]; phrater

Latin[pa:t]; fraterGothicfadar; brothar

GermanVater; Bruder

Englishfather; Brother


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1) These are historically related words2) There are some connections between p, p, p; bh, ph, f,

f, v, f; b, b, b

3) They tried to describe these incidences. The first scholars who began to speak about it was the French

monck who in 1767 showed the connections between Latin and Sanacrit. His name was Pierre Couerdoux. He

added the material from French. He was simply amazed with these connections. He wrote a special letter to

the French academy of science about the similarities between these 3 languages. But they didnt pay attenti on

to this letter.

4) A bit later in 1796 William Jones read a report in India, Calcutta and he pronounced memorable words

which are usually included into books in linguistics.

The Sanscrit language is of a wonderful structure more perfect than the Greekmore copious that Latin and

more exquisitely refined than either, that couldnt happen by exident. They may have appeared from one

common source and this language may be called one of the Indo-European languages because it belongs to the

same linguistic family.

5) Linguists were not satisfied with general and universal theories of the past (Dekat, Leibniz). These theories

didnt reflect the real world of the language.

6) The philological science tried to find some new ideas which can represent not only language in particularbut also thinking and cultural of different people. Mother linguists who paid attention to all these features

were 4 linguists:

- Rasmus Rask

- Franc Bopp

- Jacob Grimm

- A. Ch. Vostokov

Rasmus Rask in 1814 wrote the following words: A language is our principal means of finding anything

about the history of nations. Sometimes its very difficultits earlier forms because there are no written

documents. The linguists must proceed methodically to examine the whole structure of the language. These

words explain his aim of search. He tried to compare old Islandic with a great number of languages such as

Celtic, the Greenlandic language, Slavik languages, Greek, Latin, Gothic and Lethuanian. He showed quiteclearly that some of the languages are not connected with each other because they are far from each other.

OI------------Slno connection

Then he compared Celtic, Greek, Latin and Lethuanian: theres some connection between them and

Greenlandic and Old Islandic are closely connected.

But he wrote his book in Dutch. Thats why his ideas were unknown to the linguists of Europe.

His book was translated into German only 4 years later.

Franc Bopp wrote his famous book about inflections in Germanic language in 1816. It was a careful

description in which he came to the conclusion that all Germanic languages had common grammatical forms

both in inflections and in the verbal roots.He wrote that languages may be considered as natural organic bodies, which are formed according to fixed

laws. These languages are developed on the base of inner principles thats why languages are always

changing.

Two years later (1818 - 1820) Grimm compiled his german grammar. He was a very clever linguist who

collected the data about the development of languages. In it he carefully described each instance (example) of

words from Patronemic languages. They belonged only to some particular classes of words. They denoted

plants and animals, kinship (brother, sister), colour terms, numerals from 1100, verbs denoting main actions

and states. He came to the conclusion that all the germanic sounds came from Indo-European source.

He thought that the correspondences between the germanic languages and Indo-European languages in

general may be characterized by certain linguistic laws. This law became very famous because it described the

consonant shift between voiced and voiceless sounds.IE p, t, k, - b, d, g - p, t, k

b, d, g - bh, d

h, g

h

p - f


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pitar, pater, pater, father

A. Ch. Vostokov in 1822 gave a talk to the Russian academy of science. He spoke about the same

coincidences which happen between the IE languages and the Slavik languages. He compared Russian, old

Slavik, the Ukranian language, the Polish and the Check language.

He came to the conclusion that the Slavik languages appeared from some source which is quite close to the

Sanscrit language.

The ideas expressed by this scholar determined the development of the language science in the 19-th centiry.

These scientists gave a new way of looking at different IE languages as they tried to trace the origin of these

languages.

Their investigations made possible to declare linguistics and independent study different from philosophy and

natural sciences.

Besides that these people introduced a comparative in linguistics. This method helps to find correspondences

between two or more languages especially in the consonant and vowel system.

These scholars came to the conclusion that only the relationship between similar languages could demonstrate

the phonetic, morphological and sometimes the syntactic development of languages belonging to one and the

same IE linguistic family.

Approximately at the beginning of 70-th on the 19-th century a lot of data showed that the IE linguistic family

is characterized by a common source many brunches and subbranches. Among them e usually name germanic,

italic, romanic, slavik, botic, albanian and other languages. Each of these brunches may include livinglanguage and dead ones.

|9. The linguistic laws of the 19th

century (Grimm's law, Verner's consonant alternations and other

laws). August Schleiher's notions of reconstruction, protolanguage and genealogic classification.

Development of the comparative method

It is generally agreed that the most outstanding achievement of linguistic scholarship in the 19th century was

the development of the comparative method, which comprised a set of principles whereby languages could be

systematically compared with respect to their sound systems, grammatical structure, and vocabulary and

shown to be genealogically related. As French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, and the otherRomance languages had evolved from Latin, so Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit as well as the Celtic, Germanic,

and Slavic languages and many other languages of Europe and Asia had evolved from some earlier language,

to which the name Indo-European or Proto-Indo-European is now customarily applied. That all the Romance

languages were descended from Latin and thus constituted one family had been known for centuries; but the

existence of the Indo-European family of languages and the nature of their genealogical relationship was first

demonstrated by the 19th-century comparative philologists. (The term philology in this context is not

restricted to the study of literary languages.)

The main impetus for the development of comparative philology came toward the end of the 18th century,

when it was discovered that Sanskrit bore a number of striking resemblances to Greek and Latin. An English

orientalist, Sir William Jones, though he was not the first to observe these resemblances, is generally given thecredit for bringing them to the attention of the scholarly world and putting forward the hypothesis, in 1786,

that all three languages must have sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer exists. By

this time, a number of texts and glossaries of the older Germanic languages (Gothic, Old High German, and

Old Norse) had been published, and Jones realized that Germanic as well as Old Persian and perhaps Celtic

had evolved from the same common source. The next important step came in 1822, when the German

scholar Jacob Grimm, following the Danish linguist Rasmus Rask (whose work, being written in Danish, was

less accessible to most European scholars), pointed out in the second edition of his comparative grammar of

Germanic that there were a number of systematic correspondences between the sounds of Germanic and the

sounds of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit in related words. Grimm noted, for example, that where Gothic (the

oldest surviving Germanic language) had an f, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit frequently had a p (e.g., Gothic

fotus, Latin pedis, Greek pods, Sanskrit pads, all meaning foot); when Gothic had a p, the non-Germaniclanguages had a b; when Gothic had a b, the non-Germanic languages had what Grimm called an aspirate

(Latin f, Greek ph, Sanskrit bh). In order to account for these correspondences he postulated a cyclical

soundshift (Lautverschiebung) in the prehistory of Germanic, in which the original aspirates became


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voiced unaspirated stops (bh became b, etc.), the original voiced unaspirated stops became voiceless (b

became p, etc.), and the original voiceless (unaspirated) stops became aspirates (p became f). Grimm's term,

aspirate, it will be noted, covered such phonetically distinct categories as aspirated stops (bh, ph), produced

with an accompanying audible puff of breath, and fricatives (f ), produced with audible friction as a result of

incomplete closure in the vocal tract.

In the work of the next 50 years the idea of sound change was made more precise, and, in the 1870s, a group

of scholars known collectively as the Junggrammatiker (young grammarians, orNeogrammarians) put

forward the thesis that all changes in the sound system of a language as it developed through time were

subject to the operation of regular sound laws. Though the thesis that sound laws were absolutely regular in

their operation (unless they were inhibited in particular instances by the influence of analogy) was at first

regarded as most controversial, by the end of the 19th century it was quite generally accepted and had become

the cornerstone of the comparative method. Using the principle of regular sound change, scholars were able to

reconstruct ancestral common forms from which the later forms found in particular languages could be

derived. By convention, such reconstructed forms are marked in the literature with an asterisk. Thus, from the

reconstructed Proto-Indo-European word for ten, *dekm, it was possible to derive Sanskrit dasa, Greek

dka, Latin decem, and Gothic taihun by postulating a number of different sound laws that operated

independently in the different branches of the Indo-European family. The question of sound change is dealt

with in greater detail in the section entitled Historical (diachronic) linguistics.

The role of analogy

Analogy has been mentioned in connection with its inhibition of the regular operation of sound laws in

particular word forms. This was how the Neogrammarians thought of it. In the course of the 20th century,

however, it has come to be recognized that analogy, taken in its most general sense, plays a far more

important role in the development of languages than simply that of sporadically preventing what would

otherwise be a completely regular transformation of the sound system of a language. When a child learns to

speak he tends to regularize the anomalous, or irregular, forms by analogy with the more regular and

productive patterns of formation in the language; e.g., he will tend to say comed rather than came,

dived rather than dove, and so on, just as he will say talked, loved, and so forth. The fact that the

child does this is evidence that he has learned or is learning the regularities or rules of his language. He willgo on to unlearn some of the analogical forms and substitute for them the anomalous forms current in the

speech of the previous generation. But in some cases, he will keep a new analogical form (e.g., dived

rather than dove), and this may then become the recognized and accepted form.

Inner and outer form

One of the most original, if not one of the most immediately influential, linguists of the 19th century was the

learned Prussian statesman, Wilhelm von Humboldt (died 1835). His interests, unlike those of most of his

contemporaries, were not exclusively historical. Following the German philosopher Johann Gottfried von

Herder (17441803), he stressed the connection between national languages and national character: this was

but a commonplace of romanticism. More original was Humboldt's theory of inner and outer form in

language. The outer form of language was the raw material (the sounds) from which different languages werefashioned; the inner form was the pattern, or structure, of grammar and meaning that was imposed upon this

raw material and differentiated one language from another. This structural conception of language was to

become dominant, for a time at least, in many of the major centers of linguistics by the middle of the 20th

century. Another of Humboldt's ideas was that language was something dynamic, rather than static, and was

an activity itself rather than the product of activity. A language was not a set of actual utterances produced by

speakers but the underlying principles or rules that made it possible for speakers to produce such utterances

and, moreover, an unlimited number of them. This idea was taken up by a German philologist, Heymann

Steinthal, and, what is more important, by the physiologist and psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, and thus

influenced late 19th- and early 20th-century theories of the psychology of language. Its influence, like that of

the distinction of inner and outer form, can also be seen in the thought of Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss

linguist. But its full implications were probably not perceived and made precise until the middle of the 20thcentury, when the U.S. linguist Noam Chomsky re-emphasized it and made it one of the basic notions of

generative grammar (see below Transformational-generative grammar).


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Phonetics and dialectology

Many other interesting and important developments occurred in 19th-century linguistic research, among them

work in the areas of phonetics and dialectology. Research in both these fields was promoted by the

Neogrammarians' concern with sound change and by their insistence that prehistoric developments in

languages were of the same kind as developments taking place in the languages and dialects currently spoken.

The development of phonetics in the West was also strongly influenced at this period, as were many of the

details of the more philological analysis of the Indo-European languages, by the discovery of the works of the

Indian grammarians who, from the time of the Sanskrit grammarian Panini (5th or 6th century BC), if not

before, had arrived at a much more comprehensive and scientific theory of phonetics, phonology, and

morphology than anything achieved in the West until the modern period.

10. The development of historical-comparative ideas at the end of the 19 century.

11. Main periods and paradigms in linguistic knowledge of the 19th

century.

Our Russian ling-t Professor Georgiev a specialist in historic.-comp. ling., introduced his classif. of hist.-

comp. ling-cs. He said there are 3 periods, that characterize the development of h.-c. ling.

The first period(1814-1870)

The period of collecting the data & systematization of facts, because during this period the 1st ling. laws

appeared:

a)consonant set shift(by Grimm)

b)the idea of Protolang-ge(from it all I.-E. lang-s appeared& developed).This idea was expressed by August

Schleicher in 1862,1870

c)I.-E. ling. family. The description of all language belonging to it. August Schleicher made possible to

introduce his own ideas, concerning correspondences in grammar ,phon-cs,vocab-ry & syntax. He influenced

the development of ling-cs in the 19-20th centuries, because he made clear the conception that phonolog.

changes govern gr.& vocabulary of the Lang. He made possible to describe that sounds is a most stable

system in any lang-ge over cent-s than meanings of the word are. A ling-t who wants to describe a lang-gemust pay attention to the history of l-ge.

d)He introduced the method of reconstruction of Protolang-ge phenomenon.

These 4 results made possible to explicate the development of dif. lang-ges.

The second period (1870 - 1916)

During this period many new linguistic laws were formulated because at this period in Germany a new

linguistic school appeared. This school is known as Young Grammarian School. The school is represented

by the scholars: Karl Blugman, German Ostgoff, Henry and others. These scholars studied different

languages and came to the conclusion that a language is not a natural organism.

These scientists tried to describe language phenomenon according to 2 different principles:1) according to the linguistic analogy2) according to the inner reconstructionThe numbers of these schools tried to pay attention to the pronunciation of words in which we can find

out physiological and acoustic properties.

The 2nd

trend of school was the attention to psychologic processed of a communicative situation. The

scholars representing both trends in linguistics tried to investigate related and non-related languages

irrespective of the stage of their development. They didnt speak about the language age such as Sunscrit,

Greek, Latin, Gothic and German. These languages were studied as if they belonged to one and the same age

but now we know that some of languages are older, some of them are rather new languages.

The main representative of this school was Hanry Paul. His main book appeared in 1880. It was

called The principles of the history of language. In this work he spoke about necessity to pay attention tothe associations in the language. The associations in the language may appear dew to semantic changes in

words, that is why cases of metaphor and metonymy, examples of hyperbola and litotes () must be

examined on the base of associations. These associations may show how a person thinks when he is using


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stylistic devises. Some other semantic changes for example: the widening and narrowing of the meaning may

be described on the basis of the logical principle. In general Young Grammarian School tried not only to

uncover linguistic laws but to study also fairy-tales, proverbs and other examples of folk texts.

In 1877 Karl Verner formulated an additional law which can explain some cases of correspondences

which were not described by the Grimms law. K. V. found out that there can be changes in consonants in old

Germanic languages which depended upon the stress of the word. This law is concerned with the shift of

stress which happened 3d century BC. In Sanskrit the stress like in Greek is on the 2nd

syllable, Germanic

languages1st

syllable is stressed.

Ex.: Sanskritpitr Gothic - fdor

Greekpatr GermanVter Englishfder

He thought that the shift of the stress corresponds to German languages in which the absent change

changed from the musical stress to the dynamic stress. That is why the Grimms law couldnt describe

peculiarities of pronunciation in unstressed position.

Ex.: Gothicfdor Englishfder

This was a very serious addition to the 1

st

consonant shift. There was one more very important eventthat happened in 1889. This event is associated with the name ofFerdinand De Saussure. He predicted in his

work the existence of some laryngeal sounds which were observed in the Indo-European language. He stated

that there must be a language where these particular sounds are met, but this descriptions of these 3 sounds

were not observed in any living languages. He tried to use the method of internal reconstruction

() to describe the peculiarities of these elements. Only after his death these sounds were found in

some unknown texts in Turkey. When these texts were read by linguists they were simple amazed for De

Saussures discovery. We are to state that many other linguistic laws appeared during the 2nd

period of the

Historical Comparative Linguistics.

The third period (1916 - 1950)

According to professor Georgievs classification we are to speak about the 3d period. There were

very interesting discoveries in Comparative Linguistics which were made by Boris Grosny (Bulgarian

scientist), Egi Kurilovich (Czech), Gankrilidze and Ivanov.

B. G. discovered that particular language in Turkey where Ferdinand de Saussure described the

language sounds.

E. K. described the peculiarities of some dead Greek languages. During this very period new non-

comparative theories were proclaimed. One of these theories is called the Nostratic theory

(). According to it languages form different linguistic families, which are included into one

bigger family.

The other theory that appeared described the placewith the old Indo-European lived. This theory

was introduced by Gankrilidze and Ivanov.

Professor Amirovas Classification

She thinks that main conceptions and theories in Historical Comparative Linguistics should be

subdivided into 3 main trends:

1) Historical Comparative LinguisticsThis trend was associated with the birth of historical comparative ideas. Linguists like Bopp, Rask, Grimm

and Vostokov and afterwards Schlachter, Brygmann, Ostgoff, Paul studied genetic peculiarities of languages

in connection with social communities, speaking these languages.

2)

Comparative Typological theories, which studied the types of language structures irrespective ofhistorical and cultural correspondences of Indo-European languages. To this particular belong the Young

Grammarian School and some mentioned scholars: Egi Kurilovich, Boris Grosny.


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3) It is associated with theoretical linguistics which forms the philosophy of language and describesgeneral properties of languages in descriptive and comparative linguistics. These general properties of varies

languages were formulated by. He thought that languages have to be described as

cases of general linguistics. That is why it is very important to study human speech and communication and

even to spek about the ability of human being to construct phrases and sentences.

thought that human language activity is associated with his nature and ability to interact.

The last trend in linguistics influenced greately the scholars of the end of the 19th

and the

beginning of the 20th century. One of the most beneficial changes of the end of the 19th century was a new

attitude to the study of living human speech. The greatest stress way laid on phonetics and on the psychology

of the language.

At the end of the 19th

century we observe the rise of the Descriptive Linguistics. This kind of

linguistics were opposed to Comparative studies, Descriptive Linguistics became the source of some major

developments in contemporary linguistics. Besides that, descriptive analysis of the language made possible

the appearance of some synchronic studies.

The work of the Young Grammarian school led directly to some main theories in language

studies, that appeared in the 20th

century. Among the pioneers of the Descriptive Linguistics we are to

mention the British scientists Henry Sweet. He laid the foundations of all general theories which could

describe phonetics on one hand and the history of the language. He was the first grammarian who introducedthe grammar of the English language based on the descriptive analysis. According to him the principles of

Descriptive Linguistics differed greatly from the principles of the historical comparative studies. He

introduced and applied the spelling reform at the description of the language. He introduced the system of

transcriptions applicable to any phonetic system of the language. That system we are using now in phonetics

and phonology was described by him. He spoke about the case of the phoneme, phonological environment of

the investigated sounds, he also made possible to describe all linguistic phenomena in the English grammar.

12. W. von Humboldt's ideas on language, human activity and comparative linguistics.

13. Ideas of A. Boudouin de Courtenay on structural notions in linguistics. F. de Saussures Course onGeneral Linguistics

The explicit terminological distinction between a sound and a phoneme was given in works of a

Russian scholar Baudouin de Courtenay.Firstly, he introduced the term in general linguistics to

speak about the peculiarities of an abstract sound system. This happened in 1894. His theory of the phoneme

was a great progress in linguistics. This language unit was defined as a psychological unit of all sound

changes. He and his pupil Krushevskiy tried to distinguish a psychological aspect, which is connected with a

speaker and the morphological description of the sound change which is associated with the functional aspect

of pronunciation. Afterwards this term phoneme gained wide currency and became a linguistic universal.

This theory of a phoneme closed the studies of the 19th

century associated with the historical comparative

linguistics.

1) Firstly, he formulized and made explicit to main dimensions in the language study. They are as

follows: synchrony and diachrony.

Synchrony is related as a self-contained system of communication of any particular time. He

described synchrony as one of the axes. The other ax is represented in diachrony. It shows those changes

which may appear when we can compare 2 different levels of the language.

Time

A 21 century B

18 century


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In this case all notions in the language are treated diachronically. These 2 dimensions of the language

may possible to speak about synchronic and diachronic linguistics.

2) He distinguished between two main notions of a speaker langue and parole those actual

phenomena which are connected with utterances and speech. Langue and parole have become international

terms in structural linguistics. They categorized language activity of a human being. He thought that language

is connected with the society and speech is associated with a particular individual. A linguist has to

investigate what can happen in the language and in this case he is to study the lexicon, grammar, phonetics.

Each of these language levels represents their own peculiarities, each of them can be regarded as a separate

system and a language is a very complicated system which may include everything. Main units of each levels

(phonemes, morphemes, lexemes) and the relations between them.

3) He examined the interrelations between 2 main structures of the language. They are called

synthegmatic relations and paradigmatic relations.S. relations are observed in a sentence when all the

words are put in line. Ex.: I read a book. (pronoun + verb + noun) We may add smth else. P. relations

describes system of contrasted elements in different categories. We can change the example as we like:

instead of I we can put he, she, they; instead of read we can put run, write and so on. Here we

are putting word according to our communicative aims and associations which may appear in our mind. This

statement on the structural approach to language underlies principles of modern linguistics. This idea justifies

his idea that linguistics is an independent science and subject of study. Linguistics should be discussed as a

discipline which must represent inner peculiarities of a language characterized by phonetical, morphologicaland lexemic levels. in his course of general linguistics spoke also about signs and

their peculiarities. He thought that it is necessary to investigate the form of the word, the concept of the word

and to show how they are connected with things in reality. This very idea was based on achievements of the

German philosopher and mathematician Gotlap Frege.

thing

form concept

Nowadays all these connections are known as a semantic triangle which can describe 2 different sides of aword. The form of a word is associated with the way we pronounce the word, with the way we spell the word.

The conceptof a word introduces our thoughts about a particular object in the surrounded reality. Ex.: cat is a

domestic animal, 4 legs, one head and so on, we get to know some particular features that helps to distinguish

it from a dog or other animals. The semantic triangle allowed to show properties of any sign beside that a

language is a semiotic system. Besides the language there are many semiotic systems, surrounding a human

being. in his course spoke about a separate study of semiological systems. He called

the studysemiology.

14. Main antinomies of the "Course on General Linguistics" by F. de Saussure.

Fdss book A course on General Linguistics appeared in 1916. He read lectures, which impressed hisstudents so greatly, that they decided to reconstruct all lectures. His notes & notes of his students are used.

All FdSs ideas may be put under 3 main heads:

1. He formalized & made explicit 2 main dimensions in the language studies: Synchrony (s) andDiachrony(d). S is treated as a self-contained system of communication at any particular time. He

described S as one of the axes. The other axe is represented in D. it shows those changes which can

appear when we compare 2 different levels of the language (16th

century & 20th

century. In this case

all notions in the language are treated diachronically). These 2 dimensions of language made possible

to speak about Synchronic & Diachronic Linguistics.

2. FdS distinguished between 2 main notions:- langue (L) (language competence of a speaker)- parole (P) (phenomena which are connected with utterances & speech)

L &P have become international terms in structural linguistics. They categorize language activity of a

human being.


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FdS thought that language is connected with the society & speech is associated with a particular individual.

A linguist has to investigate what can happen in the language (lexicon, grammar, phonetics). Each of the

language units represented their own peculiarities each of them can be regarded a separate system & a

language is a very complicated system which may include everything: main units of each level (phonemes,

morphemes, lexemes) & the relations between them.

3. FdS examined the interrelations between 2 main structures of the language:- syntagmatic relations- paradigmatic relations

The syntagmatic relations are observed in a sentence when all the words are put in line

I read a book . (pronoun + verb + noun)We may add smth else.

P. relations describes system of contrasted elements in different categories. We can change the example as

we like: instead of I we can put he, she, they; instead of read we can put run, write and so on.

Here we are putting word according to our communicative aims and associations which may appear in our

mind. This statement on the structural approach to language underlies principles of modern linguistics. This

idea justifies his idea that linguistics is an independent science and subject of study. Linguistics should be

discussed as a discipline which must represent inner peculiarities of a language characterized by phonetical,

morphological and lexemic levels.

15. The development of the semantic triangle (by G. Frege, F. de Saussure. C.K. Ogden and LA.

Richards). F. de Saussure's understanding of the linguistic sign. Referential approach.

. in his course of general linguistics spoke also about signs and their peculiarities. He

thought that it is necessary to investigate the form of the word, the concept of the word and to show how they

are connected with things in reality. This very idea was based on achievements of the German philosopher

and mathematician Gotlap Frege.

thing

form concept

Nowadays all these connections are known as a semantic triangle which can describe 2 different sides of a

word. The form of a word is associated with the way we pronounce the word, with the way we spell the word.

The conceptof a word introduces our thoughts about a particular object in the surrounded reality. Ex.: cat is a

domestic animal, 4 legs, one head and so on, we get to know some particular features that helps to distinguish

it from a dog or other animals. The semantic triangle allowed to show properties of any sign beside that a

language is a semiotic system.

FdS spoke about the connection between 3 different sides of a linguistic sign. According to him 1 of the

sides which is connected with phonological form was called a sign. The other side of the triangle was called a

signifier ( or a concept which exists in the speakers or listeners mind). The relationship between aphonological form & a concept is showed by dotted line & it usually concerns linguistics. But now the sign is

not the unity of the phonological form & a grammar form. Its a unity between the outer side of a unit & inner

side of it, represented by the phonological & grammar forms related to a concept.

The 3d side of the triangle is a referent. Originally this triangle scheme was suggested by Gotlib Frege. Then

the American linguists Ogden & Richards adopted the 3-conner schemer with modification. According to it

the sign is a 2-faced unit, which is characterized by the phonological & graphical form, is known to be a

symbol & the referent is usually named by a linguistic unit. Now this schemer is known as the semantic

triangle, but instead of the concept linguists speak about the meaning. In general this approach is called the

referential approach because the referent is reflected in a name.

16. Structural schools of linguistics (Copenhagen, Prague). American school of descriptivism &

structuralism.


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It was developed by a number of linguists in different countries. Each Structural school of linguistics tried to

observe different notions. They elaborated different theories and methods but the main aim of various

linguistic tendencies is concerned with the form of a language existing against substance. This was the main

emphasis in his studies. There are several Structural schools of linguistics:

1) Copenhagen linguistic school2) The Prague linguistic school3) American school of linguistics.

Copenhagen linguistic school appeared in Denmark, the main representative is Luis Hjelmsliv. (L.H) He

introduced a term glossemantics. The word is taken from Greek gloss a language. Glossematics studied

a language & paid attention to the form, which was important for the understanding of notions, which are

represented in linguistics. L.H. used the semantic triangle, described by FdS, but he didnt use FdSs terms (a

sign, signifier, a referent). He introduced new terms: sign = expression plane; signifier=content plane. Plane

a case of studies in phonology. Content planestudies in semantics & grammar. Nowadays notions

expression plane & the content plane have become international term & are used not only in the structural

linguistics. A form is described as main units & relations between them on the levels of phonology, grammar

& semantics. His analysis is called the Content Analysis. This kind of analysis is independent of

extralinguistic notions & criteria. L.H. thought that linguistic is an independent science & every level in the

language can be analyzable & dependent on the ultimate constituency(UC). On the level of phonology this

UC are separate phonemes (ex: [dog] represented by 3 phonemes, the spell of the same word is characterizedby 3 graphemes, on the level of grammar this word is characterized by a number of categories:

1. a noun2. number3. gender4. case5. article

Level of semantics:

1. animal2. domestic animal3. dog family4. barking)Each level exists independently of each other. Many scholars spoke about equivalent of such analysis which

is built of logics & formality. Each level is a strictly limited field of units& relationships between them. But

the semantic level shows the limitless boundaries in the content plane, which may depend upon a particular

discourse meaning.

The Prague Linguistic School (PLS)

Represented by Czech & Russian scholars (, ,).

was a professor in Vienna & published works in different spheres of linguistics but his main book

Foundations of Phonology(1938) described the principles of the phonological analysis elaborated in PLS.

& PLS applied theory of FdS to the elaboration of the phoneme concept. He paid attention to

main notions introduced by FdSlangue & parole. He thinks that to the level of the language a phoneme may

belong that is why he tried to study languages as systems of interrelated elements & he treated a phoneme as aseparate class of sounds & as a complex phonological unit, this unit is realized in the sounds of speech. The

relations between units of the phonological level have become fundamental to the PL theory. Each phoneme

was regarded as a linguistic entity, which may be shown as consisting of common (universal) features &

distinctive properties or markers.

(Ex: [p]/[b]

- consonants- bilabial- not palatalized- voiced/ voiceless)

Phonetical systems of different languages represent 3070 phonemes, which characterized phonetical

system of each language (Russian3940 phonemes; English44; German38; Armenian62). thought that the main notion for the description of phonemes is opposition (p vs b). the 2

ndterm

is useful for description of opposition both in Eng & in Ru

(is neutral & only one plosive can occur) marked opposition.


17/31

introduced the term archiphoneme to speak about some universal features on the level of

phonology. The term phoneme was carefully investigated by a PLS & afterwards the phonological analysis

was applied to features connected with syllables. This analysis is rather fruitful for the prosodic description of

the language. Its possible to characterize the stress, the length, the pitch +intonation & other phenomena on

the level of speech. This kind of analysis also helped to describe the syntagmatic study & functions of certain

sound units in communication.

The American Linguistic SchoolIts represented by Leonard Bloomfield & his book Language (1933). His approach was scientific,

mechanistic & formal interpretation of language. He paid more attention to the phonological level & the

morphemic level. He introduced his own theory for the description of morphemes & phonemes. His analysis

is now known as the Immediate Constituance Theory.

Poor John / ran away

May be analyzed by the binary principe

a) 1. Poor John2. ran away immediate Constituance

b) Poor John ran away

ran away(uc)

Poor John

Ultimate Constituance(uc)(cant be divided further)

c) away

a (uc) way (uc)The basic units in the language study:

- sentence- phrase (construction) main levels in American Linguistics- morpheme- phoneme

17. American linguistics of the beginning of the 20lh

century. Behaviorism in linguistics. Leonard

Bloomfield "Language".

18. Anthropological linguistics in America. Franz Boas and Edward Sapir. Linguistic relativity,

American linguistics.

It is represented by 3 outstanding figures:

1) Franz Boas2) Edward Sapir3) Leonard BloomfieldF.B. taught several generations of American linguists and anthropologists The anthropological interest of

FB was reflected in close collaboration (; ) of anthropology and linguistics. These 2science were studied in American universities at the beginning of the 20

thcentury. Anthropologists tried to

describe the American-Indian population who spoke different languages. This population was illiterate and

they lived in very small communities over 30 much of the US and Canada. Since colonial days different


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people tried to put down words and phrases from American-Indian languages and thus the 1st

dictionaries and

grammars of native languages of the American continent appeared. Among these authors there were many

missioners, traders but there were no linguists among them. FB became the 1st

professional linguist who was

really interested in descriptive linguistics and human resources. At the beginning of the 20th

century there

were no special research procedure for the description of unknown languages. That is why this scholar tried to

adopt not only discovery procedures but he tried to analyze various language phenomena on the basis of a

framework of the analytical statements.

He paid great attention to description of the phonological, grammatical and lexical peculiarities of Indian

languages.

Each of his successors of his works were outstanding American linguists and they developed their own

point of view for the language study.

LB paid much attention to behaviorism (trend in psychology) associated with the description of language

events from the position of inductive generalizations. On the one hand LB paid much attention to the

linguistic form. He defined the meaning of a linguistic formas the situation in which the speaker utters

some sentence and the response it calls forth in the hearer. According to this definition the meaning is the

whole situation.

LB illustrated this situation with the help of 2 men: Jack and Jill. They are going along the road. Jill is

hungry and she sees an apple on the tree and with the help of the language gets Jack to get that very apple.

When she sees the apple it is a stimulus after that it is followed by reaction(SR). Jack can understand thewhole situation. His stimulus is different (linguistic reaction) to the whole situation. After linguistic reaction

he tries to fetch that apple (it is the other stimulus).when he gets it he returns to her and gives it (stimulus)

then she eats this apple. T.E.: Jill - SRJack Linguistic ReactionS (

) S R (Jill ).

Meaning according to LB is the realization btw speech and the practical events that follow this linguistic

situation afterwards. A very important point of his Theory is as follows: LB tries to describe all kinds of

stimulus and reactions as physical events.

LB tries to describe the language on the basis of the mechanism theory according to this idea a human being

behaves like an animal which doesnt have any feelings and emotions. For LB it is important to describe some

thought s concepts and images, which are connected with human behavior but he denied that possibility of

description. Human communication based on thoughts, movements and human experience. His description ofthe language is rather analytical. That is why his analysis of immediate constituence is usually regarded to be

a formal kind of language description.

ES introduced his own theory which was based on the description of American-Indian languages. He

described the languages of the Canadian tribes, he paid attention to the grammatical structure of these

languages and he introduced his own idea for the descriptive linguistics. His idea is usually known as

linguistic relativity (). He paid attention to the difficulty in relating language to the outer

world. He stated that we see the world as if we depend on the language we use. Language shapes our

perceptions. Cultural behavior is closely connected with the language spoken by the peoples. According to

this ideas people categorized the objects of the surrounding reality according to their experience and the

understanding of the world. He stresses the situation in which language influences our experience and our

perceptions are determined by our language. This idea was rather new in the 20th century because scholarsthought that the influence usually goes from the surrounding world to human understanding of it expressed in

the language. ES suggested that a person in his mind may built up his own picture of the world. This picture

may be different from other peoples models

He introduced the idea of linguistic relativity associated with the well-known hypothesizes expressed

by him and his pupil Benjamin Whorf. According to this hypothesis people dont know the background of

the language. A language doesnt describe ideas but it can shape the ideas. People usually cut down their own

experiences into certain pieces.

The principle of relativity corresponds to the idea that the same physical evidence may be expressed

with the help of different units. ES & BW tried to describe European languages and American-Indian

languages corresponding to nouns and verbs. According to this description American-Indian languages show

all the events with the help of verbs. They dont use nouns. Besides there is no distinctions btw nouns andverbs at all (lightning, waves, storm, flame). In Hopi there is only one word for insect, plane and pilot.

When ES was tried to describe a number of words they came across: in Arabic there are 300 words

denoting sand, 30 words for camel, 55 words describing a yellow colour; in American-Indian there are many


19/31

words that describe snow, white, gray, blue and no colours as black and yellow. BW showed that Hopi and

American-Indian languages have no words that can describe time.

The only distinction they make is btw what is subjective and what is objective. The subjective

phenomena include the future and everything that is mental and the other phenomena are objective. They have

no distance in time and place. Only present tense. They think that the word is determined by the language and

we see here and experience what we do because the language habits of our culture presupposes certain choices

of interpretation.

19.Descriptive linguistics on form and meaning in Britain (Firth and his ideas).

The development that had taken place after the main structural schools: the Prague linguistic Circle,

The Copenhagen ling. sch. And Bloomfields and Sapirs theories in American linguistics were connected

with differences of each particular theory of language and equal concern for all levels of the language.

Scholars of different schools mostly paid attention to the development of phonology but in the 50s of the 20th

century

1) phonology is no longer determines the course of linguistic theory and linguistic methods.

2) the grammatic studies of the 1st

part of the 20th

century were mostly concerned with the3 description

of morphology and morphemes and only in some cases scholars devoted their works to the description of

sentences.3) the 3d trend in linguistics is mostly associated with the description of lexicon but the semantic study

due to the influence of Bloomfield was neglected in American linguistics because it was thought that it cant

be the competence of linguistic science. This very moment in the 50s of the 20th

century one of the famous

British linguist John Firth introduced his own theory of the language. His understanding of the language

structure was associated with 2 main conceptions:

- The 1st

assumption represented in his works was that: it is important to investigate not only a

linguistic science but also the context of situation which is the means of making statements using the means of

the word.

As the previous generation of linguists JF paid much attention to the linguistic form but not to the

substance represented in the language. The whole theory of the language described the phonetics

independently from linguistics. ()Nowadays this view point is of great importance because of the usage in descriptive linguistics such

terms as context, situation, extra-linguistic features. The part of phonology was described paying attention to

prosodic elements. He spoke about the stress of the word, the division of word into syllables, the pitch of the

voice and the length of a word or phrase.

His pupils involved 4 fundamental categories in the language theories:

1) unit

2) structure

3) class

4) system

Each of these categories is influenced by rank and other features. Unitssentences have structures in which

units lower in rank are grouped into classes by reference to their function in structures. The members ofclasses are grouped into systems.

4 main levels of the language: RankGrammar

1) unit-sentence-word

2) structureclauses (phrases)syllable group

3)classseparate wordssyllables

4) system- morphemesegments

All the categories in the language are organized according to their actual data observed by linguists. For JF

the category of unit is the most important one. There are other criteria according to which the same categories

are described in detail. His pupils paid attention to either to phonological level of the grammatical level. The

semantic of a word was not observed by the British linguistic school. One of his pupils Halliday devoted all

his works to the description of grammatical categories paying no attention to the phonological level of thelanguage.


20/31

20. Transformational-generative phase of linguistics. N. Chomsky's "Syntactic structures": the object

of research, methods and assumptions.

1

A linguistic theory developed by Noam Chomsky, first put forth in his book Syntactic Structures

(1957), that provides a methodology for describing the relationships between sentences expressing similar

concepts to underlying "deep structures" by means of various transformational rules. A central premise of

Chomsky's work is that humans are innately predisposed to language abilities, and that such transformational

processes are linguistic universals.

2

These introduce yet another innovation. Rules that transform phrase structures into alternative forms.

Transformations provide especially economical explanations for the formation of questions, and passive

voice, but also in accounting for deletions ('John and Mary like Jill' instead of 'John likes Jill and Mary Likes

Jill') that we may be using to help memory chunking that helps overcome the 7 plus or minus 2 constraint on

short term memory.

The transformational grammar was a theory of how grammatical knowledge is represented and

processed in the brain. Developed by Noam Chomsky in the1960's, the transformational grammar consisted

of:

1) Two levels of representation of the structure of sentences: an underlying, more abstract form,termed 'deep structure', and the actual form of the sentence produced, called 'surface structure'. Deep structure

is represented in the form of a heirarchical tree diagram, or "phrase structure tree," depicting the abstract

grammatical relationships between the words and phrases within a sentence.

2) A system of formal rules specifiying how deep structures are to be transformed into surface

structures.

Consider the two sentences "Steven wrote a book on language" and "A book on language was written

by Steven." Chomsky held that there is a deeper grammatical structure from which both these sentences are

derived. The transformational grammar provides an characterization of this common form and how it is

manipulated to produce actual sentences.

Or take the sentence "Who will John see." This corresponds to its surface structure. According to the

transformational grammar, we form this sentence by unconsciously applying transformation rules to theunderlying deep structure given in the phrase structure tree of the form "John will see who." In this particular

case, the transformation rule applied is termed "Wh-movement."

The transformational grammar formed the basis for many subsequent theories of human grammatical

knowledge. Since Chomsky's original presentation, many different theories have emerged. Although current

theories differ significantly from the original, the notion of a transformation remains a central element in most

models.

Consider the following sentence pairs:

"The cat chased the mouse."

"The mouse was chased by the cat."

"Where did John drive?""John drove (where)."

According to the transformational grammar, there is an abstract level of representation that underlies

the syntactical structures of each pair member. For instance, the forms first and second sentences correspond

to "surface structures." The linguist Noam Chomsky proposed that these surface structures are derived from a

common underlying grammatical representation, called their "deep structure." Within the theory, their deep

structure is represented in the form of a heirarchical tree depicting the grammatical relationships between the

various constituents that make up the sentence, such as the noun phrases* "the cat" and "the mouse," and the

verb phrases "chased" and "was chased ." The application of certain transformation rules to this tree produces

the surface structures seen above.

Phrase Structure TreeA phrase structure tree is a form of representation of sentences in which nodes or elements are labelled

by syntactic category (noun phrase (NP), verb phrase (VP), prepositional phrase (PP), etc.)


21/31

The man hit the ball ()

(definite component)

Phrase Structure Rules

Phrase structure rules govern the structure of sentences in a language. One example is the rule that

English sentences must consist of a noun phrase (NP) and a verb phrase (VP)).

Noun Phrase

A word or sequence of words consisting of a noun or a noun plus one or more modifiers. For example, 'cat',

'the cat', 'the black cat' are all noun phrases. In the sentence, 'The black cat is happy,' 'the black cat' is the noun

phrase; 'the black cat is' is not a noun phrase. Noun phrases can be constructed recursively. That is, a noun

phrase can contain another phrase within it (such as a verb phrase or another noun phrase), that containswithin it another phrase, and so on. The noun phrase is one type of phrase among others in contemporary

theories of grammar.

Verb Phrase

A word or sequence of words consisting of a verb (refers to an action, existence or occurence) or a verb plus

an object (e.g. 'write', 'write a letter').

It the 50s of the 20th

century on the American continent the other outstanding scholar Zellig Harris

developed the notions of IC (immediate ) and distribution. began his investigations in phoneme

sequences and morpheme sequences. He described the preceding the following phonemes cases of context

btw phonemes and morphemes and afterwards came to the conclusion that there are 3 models of distribution

both on phonological and morphological levels of the language. These procedures helped to distinguish btw

syntax and morphology and afterwards showed that it is possible to describe the distribution on any formal

level except the lexemic level. In the 50s he extended the descriptive analysis of texts beyond and across

sentence boundaries. On the 1st

hand he tried to relate distribution with transformation btw 2 more actual

sentences. So

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