LAILA MEIKA RACHMAWATI

STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS
(16202241015/PBI-A)

Structural Linguistics
Structural linguistics is an approach to language and language study based
on a concept of language as a system of signs that has such clearly defined
structural elements as linguistic units and their classes. Structural linguistics
seeks to describe language with a precision approaching that of the exact
sciences.
Structural linguistics is defined as a study of language based on the theory
that language is a structured system of formal units such as sentences and
syntax.

Structural Linguistics Theory and Methodology

1. European
Ferdinand De Saussures starting point is a structural description (the
abstract and necessary rules) of the learned (conventional) abstract
codes that link speech sounds (phonology) and linguistic meaning; that is,
how acoustic stimuli (sounds, signifiers) get mapped onto meanings
(signified "content") in any language. For de Saussure, a linguistic (or any
cultural meaning-unit) is a "sign," specifically defined as the arbitrary--but
internally necessary--coupling of a sensory vehicle (speech sounds,
printed words) and a mental concept. This model of abstract and
necessary learned, conventional conditions for expression and meaning
influenced linguistics, semiology (models for a grammar of meaning
applicable to all cultural forms like writing, images, and music), and
anthropology.
Saussures groundbreaking methodology distinguishes a coherent object
for linguistics on the principle of relevance. His distinction between
parole, which is the French word for speech, and Langue, which is the
French word for language, accomplishes this. Langue denotes the set of
interpersonal rules and normsthe institution of languagelanguage as a
system. And parole denotes any actual manifestation of the system in
speech or writing, in short, any actual utterance. You couldnt have an
LAILA MEIKA RACHMAWATI
STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS
(16202241015/PBI-A)

utterance (which was coherent and meaningful) without the institution of

norms that Saussure called langue. So it is this that forms the object of
study for modern linguistics. Now it should be clear that such an object
could not ever be made visible (as a stretch of text can) but you can
establish the rules and conditions that make it possible to speak and write
in meaningful ways. The fundamental distinction between langue and
parole has been influential for a range of disciplines in the social sciences,
allowing us to distinguish institution from event and to analyze institutions
quite generally.
2. US
a. Here, the name of Leonard Bloomfield must be mentioned although it is
commonly held that American structuralism is more post-Bloomfieldian than
Bloomfield per-se. The post Bloomfieldians (cf. Bloch, Harris, Hockett, and
others) developed a system of mechanical procedures for the analysis of
linguistic structures, and methodological statements (frameworks) with
distribution as the criterion of relevance: that was an attempt to get away
from analytical operations that would have to refer to meaning as was the
case for Bloomfield, for whom the study of speech-sounds without regard to
meaning is an abstraction, and whose trouble was that the statement of
meaning is the weak point in language study, and will remain so until human
knowledge advances very far beyond its present state.
Bloomfield used two fundamental units of linguistic description with which
American structuralism became particularly associated: 1) the phoneme, a
minimum same of vocal feature or distinctive sound, as a unit of phonology,
and 2) the morpheme, a recurrent (meaningful) form which cannot in turn be
analyzed into smaller recurrent (meaningful) forms, as the unit of
grammatical structure.
Post-Bloomfieldians concentrated on both concepts and found fault with
Bloomfields morpheme when applied to languages other than agglutinative
languages like Japanese and Turkish. In fact, the latter are not complicated by
much morphophonemic change at the easily established boundaries between
bases and endings, which is neither the case for the highly inflectional
(synthetic) languages like Latin nor for the uninflected (analytic) languages
LAILA MEIKA RACHMAWATI
STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS
(16202241015/PBI-A)

like Chinese. Equally, Bloomfields view of the phoneme as a feature present

in the sounds or sound-waves has been shown to be untenable and is no
longer widely accepted among descriptive Linguists.
b. Naom Chomsky, beginning in the 1950s-60s, takes the abstract system of
both phonology and grammar as necessary as Saussure do, but starts with
the problem of syntax, language acquisition, and language productivity. His
model of syntax as the internalized rules for generating expressions solves
the empirical problem of "the poverty of stimulus" when seeking to explain
the rapid acquisition of grammar from few experiences; that is, trying to
explain how humans learn language by induction from experienced examples
(i.e., how any child in any language community from around age 3-4 is
capable of generating an infinite set of new grammatically formed sentences
which the child has never experienced). For Chomsky, humans have an
innate capacity for language and the ability to internalize a grammar from a
very small set of examples, and are soon able to generate an infinite number
of new expressions in their native language. From this observation, he was
able to map out a rigorous set of syntactic phrase structures capable of many
transformations.
Where de Saussure distinguishes between langue and parole, Chomsky
distinguishes between "deep structures" & "surface structures" and
"competence" & "performance."
c. In 1954, Hockett, in his Two Models of Grammatical Description,
distinguishes two frame(s) of reference within which an analyst approaches
the grammatical phase of a language and states the results of his
investigation :
1) Item and Arrangement (IA) whereby the inventory of morphemes is
specified before the sequences and the clusterings they form. Thus, the
structure of the utterance is specified by stating the morphemes and the
arrangement. This frame of reference is seen to be inadequate for
fusional languages, thus not satisfying the criterion that a model must be
general: it must be applicable to any language, not just to languages of
certain types.
2) Item and Process (IP) gives priority to one form or item and derives
others from it by means of a process represented by a marker which
LAILA MEIKA RACHMAWATI
STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS
(16202241015/PBI-A)

consists of the differences between the phonemic shape of a derived form

and the phonemic shape(s) of the underlying form or forms. One criticism
leveled against IP comes precisely from this: How are we to tell under
what conditions to interpret a derived form as involving two or more
underlying forms and a binary or higher-order process, and under what
conditions to interpret it as involving a single underlying form and a
singular process. We may say that this criticism could also be leveled
against transformational-generative grammar with its IP approach, and
this despite the strange claim made by Postal that IA and IP are
equivalent; differing only terminologically with the term process
replacing the term construction, and despite his rejection of both IA and
IP as Phrase-Structure Grammar (PSG) systems.
3) One important development in morphological studies was the revival of
interest in Word and Paradigm (WP) a third model mentioned but not
explored by Hockett -, and its formalization later by Robins (1959). In WP,
the word is central unit, and the grammatical words are the minimal
elements in the study of syntax. At the same time, the intersecting
categories form a framework or matrix within which the paradigm of a
lexeme may be set out. The word then is taken and analysed as a whole,
and its features and properties are neither morphemes in arrangement
nor requiring a process, but properties of the word as a whole.
d. Later, new directions in structural linguistics led in the area of phonology to
the development of phonemic distinctiveness. This was a fundamental
concept significantly elaborated by Trubetzkoy in his theory of the
phoneme. In this respect, his Rules for the Determination of Phonemes
(1969, Part I) are important, and the whole work points to the idea of system.
Systems are viwed as psychological realities and analysed independently. In a
single system, one looks for phonological symmetry, seen as a patterned
exploitation of distinctive or pertinent features. Trubetzkoy asserts that the
phonemic inventory of a language is actually only a corollary of the system of
distinctive oppositions. In phonology the major role is played, not by the
phonemes, but by the distinctive oppositions. Each phoneme has a definable
 LAILA MEIKA RACHMAWATI
STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS
(16202241015/PBI-A)

phonemic content only because the system of distinctive oppositions shows a

definite order or structure.
The phoneme thus became a theoretically fundamental element in linguistic
description and analysis.

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(https://www.scribd.com/document /241177917)
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(http://www.yourdictionary.com/structural-linguistics)
(http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/nguella/Documents/STRUCTURALISM%20IN
%20LINGUISTICS.pdf)
(http://yildizliarif.blogspot.co.id/2014/04/structuralism-in-europe-and-
america.html)
https://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elljwp/saussurecommentary.htm