Structural linguistics


Structural linguistics is an approach to linguistics originating from the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and is part of the overall approach of structuralism. Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, published posthumously in 1916, stressed examining language as a dynamic system of interconnected units. Saussure is also known for introducing several basic dimensions of semiotic analysis that are still important today. Two of these are his key methods of syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis, which define units syntactically and lexically, respectively, according to their contrast with the other units in the system.
Structuralism as a term is derived from Sociologist Émile Durkheim's anti-Darwinian modification of Herbert Spencer's organic analogy which draws a parallel between social structures and the organs of an organism which have different functions or purposes. Although Saussure also made use of this analogy, structural linguistics is mainly associated with his notion of language as a dual interactive system of signs and concepts. The terms structure and structuralism were adopted to linguistics by the Prague school linguists Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy; while the term structural linguistics was coined by Louis Hjelmslev.

History

Structural linguistics begins with the posthumous publication of Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics in 1916, which his students compiled from his lectures. The book proved to be highly influential, providing the foundation for both modern linguistics and semiotics. Structuralist linguistics is often thought of as giving rise to independent European and American traditions due to ambiguity in the term. It is most commonly thought that structural linguistics stems from Saussure's writings; but these were rejected by an American school of linguistics based on Wilhelm Wundt's structural psychology.

European structuralism

In Europe, Saussure influenced: the Geneva School of Albert Sechehaye and Charles Bally, the Prague linguistic circle, the Copenhagen School of Louis Hjelmslev, and the Paris School of André Martinet and Algirdas Julien Greimas. Structural linguistics also had an influence on other disciplines of humanities bringing about the movement known as structuralism.

'American structuralism'

Some confusion is caused by the fact that an American school of linguistics of 1910s through 1950s, which was based on structural psychology, ; and later on behavioural psychology, was nicknamed 'American structuralism'. This framework was not structuralist in the Saussurean sense that it did not consider language as arising from the interaction of meaning and expression. Instead, it is thought that the civilised human mind is organised into binary branching structures, and advocates of this type of linguistics are identified from their convention of placing the Object into the Verb phrase; so structure is disconnected from meaning, in contrast to Saussurean structuralism. The American school is alternatively called 'Bloomfieldian' – or 'post-Bloomfieldian', following the death of its leader Leonard Bloomfield in 1949. However, such ideas had already been imported from Germany to American humanities by Franz Boas before him.
There were nonetheless some confluences in the European and the American approach. Saussure borrowed his three-fold definition of language as langage, langue and parole from his teacher at the University of Berlin, Heymann Steinthal, who was an advocate of Völkerpsychologie. To reciprocate, the American linguist Charles Hockett applied André Martinet's structural explanation to the emergence of grammatical complexity.
Other than that, there were unsolvable incompatibilities between the psychological and positivistic orientation of the Bloomfieldian school, and the semiotic orientation of the structuralists proper. In the generative or Chomskyan concept, a purported rejection of 'structuralism' usually refers to Noam Chomsky's opposition to the behaviourism of Bloomfield's 1933 textbook Language; though, coincidentally, he is also opposed to structuralism proper.

Basic theories and methods

The foundation of structural linguistics is a sign, which in turn has two components: a "signified" is an idea or concept, while the "signifier" is a means of expressing the signified. The "sign", e.g. a word, is thus the combined association of signifier and signified. Signs can be defined only by being placed in contrast with other signs. This forms the basis of what later became the paradigmatic dimension of semiotic organization. This is contrasted drastically with the idea that linguistic structures can be examined in isolation from meaning, or that the organisation of the conceptual system can exist without a corresponding organisation of the signifying system.
Paradigmatic relations hold among sets of units, such as the set distinguished phonologically by variation in their initial sound cat, bat, hat, mat, fat, or the morphologically distinguished set ran, run, running. The units of a set must have something in common with one another, but they must contrast too, otherwise they could not be distinguished from each other and would collapse into a single unit, which could not constitute a set on its own, since a set always consists of more than one unit. Syntagmatic relations, in contrast, are concerned with how units, once selected from their paradigmatic sets of oppositions, are 'chained' together into structural wholes.
Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations provide the structural linguist with a tool for categorization for phonology, morphology and syntax. Take morphology, for example. The signs cat and cats are associated in the mind, producing an abstract paradigm of the word forms of cat. Comparing this with other paradigms of word forms, we can note that, in English, the plural often consists of little more than adding an -s to the end of the word. Likewise, through paradigmatic and syntagmatic analysis, we can discover the syntax of sentences. For instance, contrasting the syntagma je dois and dois je? allows us to realize that in French we only have to invert the units to turn a statement into a question. We thus take syntagmatic evidence as indicators of paradigmatic relations.
The most detailed account of the relationship between a paradigmatic organisation of language as a motivator and classifier for syntagmatic configurations was provided by Louis Hjelmslev in his Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, giving rise to formal linguistics. Hjelmslev's model was subsequently incorporated into systemic functional grammar, functional discourse grammar, and Danish functional grammar.

Structural explanation

Structural explanation is derived from sociologist Émile Durkheim's humanistic modification of Herbert Spencer's organic analogy. Durkheim compared society to an organism which has structures that carry out different functions. In his structural explanation, growth of complexity necessitates systemic diversification.
Although Saussure likewise made use of the organic analogy, it was diminished in later structural linguistics. A more Saussurean approach to structural explanation in linguistics, similarly to social science, relates verbal actions to a system of norms: the rules of a language which are collectively represented in the speech community. These norms are internalised by the individual in the process of socialisation and become part of his or her unconscious knowledge.

Compositional and combinatorial language

According to André Martinet's concept of double articulation, language is a double-levelled or doubly articulated system. In this context, 'articulation' means 'joining'. The first level of articulation involves minimally meaningful units, while the second level consists of minimally distinct non-signifying units. Because of double articulation, it is possible to make all necessary words of a language with a couple dozen phonic units. Meaning emerges from combinations of the non-meaningful units. The organisation of language into hierarchical inventories makes highly complex and therefore highly useful language possible:
Louis Hjelmslev's conception includes even more levels: phoneme, morpheme, lexeme, phrase, sentence and discourse. Building on the smallest meaningful and non-meaningful elements, glossemes, it is possible to generate an infinite number of productions:
These notions are a continuation in a humanistic tradition which considers language as a human invention. A similar idea is found in Port-Royal Grammar:

Interaction of meaning and form

Another way to approach structural explanation is from Saussure's concept of semiology. Language is considered as arising from the interaction of form and meaning. Saussure's concept of the bilateral sign entails that the conceptual system is distinct from physical reality. For example, the spoken sign 'cat' is an association between the combination of the sounds , and and the concept of a cat, rather than with its referent. Language is thus considered a fully abstract system where each item in the conceptual inventory is associated with an expression; and these two levels define, organise and restrict each other.
Key concepts of the organisation of the phonemic versus the semantic system are those of opposition and distinctiveness. Each phoneme is distinct from other phonemes of the phonological system of a given language. The concepts of distinctiveness and markedness were successfully used by the Prague Linguistic Circle to explain the phonemic organisation of languages, laying a ground for modern phonology as the study of the sound systems of languages.
Likewise, each concept is distinct from all others in the conceptual system, and is defined in opposition with other concepts. Louis Hjelmslev laid the foundation of structural semantics with his idea that the content-level of language has a structure analogous to the level of expression. Structural explanation in the sense of how language shapes our understanding of the world has been widely used by the post-structuralists.
Structural linguist Lucien Tesnière, who invented dependency grammar, considered the relationship between meaning and form as conflicting due to a mathematical difference in how syntactic and semantic structure is organised. He used his concept of antinomy between syntax and semantics to elucidate the concept of a language as a solution to the communication problem. From his perspective, the two-dimensional semantic dependency structure is necessarily forced into one-dimensional form. This causes the meaningful semantic arrangement to break into a largely arbitrary word ordering.

Recent perceptions of structuralism

Those working in the generativist tradition often regard structuralist approaches as outdated and superseded. For example, Mitchell Marcus writes that structural linguistics was "fundamentally inadequate to process the full range of natural language". Holland writes that Chomsky had "decisively refuted Saussure". Similar views have been expressed by Jan Koster, Mark Turner, and other advocates of sociobiology.
Others however stress the continuing importance of Saussure's thought and structuralist approaches. Gilbert Lazard has dismissed the Chomskyan approach as passé while applauding a return to Saussurean structuralism as the only course by which linguistics can become more scientific. Matthews notes the existence of many "linguists who are structuralists by many of the definitions that have been proposed, but who would themselves vigorously deny that they are anything of the kind", suggesting a persistence of the structuralist paradigm.

Effect of structuralist linguistics upon other disciplines

In the 1950s Saussure's ideas were appropriated by several prominent figures in Continental philosophy, anthropology, and from there were borrowed in literary theory, where they are used to interpret novels and other texts. However, several critics have charged that Saussure's ideas have been misunderstood or deliberately distorted by continental philosophers and literary theorists and are certainly not directly applicable to the textual level, which Saussure himself would have firmly placed within parole and so not amenable to his theoretical constructs.

Modern guidebooks of structural (formal and functional) analysis