Licenciatura en Lengua Inglesa

Lingüística y Sintaxis
Módulo 2

Ciclo 2024
Contents

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………..…3

Linguistics in early times……………………………………………………………………..……4

Exploring Linguistic Perspectives ………………………………………………………………..6

Formalist and functionalist approaches …………………………………………………………7

Structural linguistics ………………………………………………………………………………12

The North American Descriptivists …………………………………………………………….. 20

The Chomskyan Revolution …………………………………………………………………. …23

 Introduction
In Module 1, we embarked on the captivating journey of Helen Keller's discovery of language,
a narrative that mirrors the evolution of linguistic description. Helen Keller's story, which uses
language, is evidence of the unyielding human spirit. Despite her deaf and blind condition,
Helen's breakthrough came when her teacher, Anne Sullivan, bridged the gap between the
water she was touching and the word 'water' spelt into her hand. This pivotal moment
illuminates the transformative power of language, a power that surpasses mere words and
connects us to the world, ideas, and to each other, sparking a sense of inspiration and
intrigue. Let me remind you that you were invited to be curious, open-minded, and
enthusiastic, especially to develop a critical thinking view to navigate the history of linguistics
from its beginnings to the present day. Get ready for an exciting linguistic journey!
Our next step is to delve into the evolution of linguistics, a topic that is as fascinating as
it is important. We will be focusing on the comparative method, a cornerstone of the field's
development. In the 19th century, linguists were deeply engrossed in the quest to uncover
the origins of language and reconstruct ancestral languages like Proto-Indo-European (PIE).
They aimed to map language families and comprehend how languages changed over time
by comparing languages and identifying consistent sound correspondences and cognates.
This journey promises to be a thrilling one, filled with discoveries and insights.
The historical focus on the relationships between languages, primarily through the
comparative method, laid the foundation for modern linguistics. Today, linguistics is a vast
field encompassing numerous branches, each with a unique focus and contribution. These
branches include syntax, phonology, semantics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics,
among others. While the comparative method remains a vital component of historical
linguistics, modern linguistics has broadened its scope to examine language from multiple
angles. This includes its use in social contexts, its processing in the brain, and its evolution
in contemporary settings.
This evolution reflects the richness and complexity of human language, allowing us to
gain a deeper understanding of one of our species' most defining characteristics.

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 1. Linguistics in early times.

The comparative method of linguistic study can be traced back to the early 19th century.
This was when scholars began systematically comparing languages to identify relationships
and reconstruct ancestral languages. However, the roots of comparative linguistics extend
back earlier, with some key historical developments:
• 16th Century:
The intellectual curiosity of Renaissance scholars, a driving force behind the first systematic
study and documentation of languages from around the world, sparked an interest in
comparing languages. Their early grammar and dictionaries of European and other
languages laid the groundwork for later comparative studies, inspiring future generations of
linguists.
• Late 18th Century:
Sir William Jones's 1786 lecture was groundbreaking in comparative linguistics history. His
astute observations of similarities between Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and other languages,
suggesting a common origin (later known as the Indo-European language family), marked a
significant leap forward in our understanding of language evolution. The systematic study
of language comparison truly began in the 19th century.

Figure 1. The object of comparison of the Comparative Method

The historical method of studying languages by comparing them to find common roots and relationships is a
key aspect of historical linguistics. Here are some examples of how this method is applied:

1. Cognate Words: Linguists compare words from different languages with similar meanings and
sound patterns to identify cognates—words with a common origin. For example:
• English: "mother"
• German: "Mutter"
• Latin: "mater"
• Sanskrit: "mātṛ"
These words share similar roots and sound patterns, indicating a common ancestor language.

2. Regular Sound Correspondences: By examining regular patterns of sound changes across languages,
linguists can identify relationships. For example:
• Grimm's Law: Describes regular sound changes from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic
languages, such as:
• Latin: "pater" and English: "father"
• Latin: "pedis" and English: "foot"
• These sound correspondences show a systematic relationship between languages.

3. Reconstruction of Proto-Languages:
• Linguists use regular sound changes and cognate sets to reconstruct earlier ancestral languages
(proto-languages). For example:
• Linguists have reconstructed Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the ancestral language of many modern
languages, including English, Spanish, Hindi, and Russian, by comparing languages in the Indo-European
family.
• This reconstruction involves hypothesizing about the proto-language's vocabulary, grammar, and
phonetics.
Linguists started using the comparative method of studying languages by comparing their
features to identify cognates, regular sound correspondences, and grammatical
similarities across languages. Franz Bopp and August Schleicher were among the early
pioneers in this field. Their work on comparing the grammatical structures of Indo-European
languages and developing methods for historical linguistic analysis significantly advanced the
field. Jakob Grimm also contributed with his work on sound laws, such as Grimm's Law, which
described systematic phonetic changes in Germanic languages.
• Mid to Late 19th Century:
During this period, the comparative method gained more traction, leading to the
reconstruction of proto-languages such as Proto-Indo-European and the establishment of
language families. Thus, while the formal comparative method of linguistic study was
established in the 19th century, comparing languages and seeking common roots has deeper
historical origins.

The transition from the comparative method to the organisation of traditional

linguistics represents a shift from focusing on historical relationships and language
origins - also known as philology- to a more structured and systematic study of
languages. This approach revealed patterns of sound change and grammatical similarities,
helping to classify languages into families and establish their evolutionary paths. In the 19th
century, the comparative method was central to linguistics and paved the way for the
development of the study of linguistics as we know it nowadays.

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 2. Exploring Linguistic Perspectives: Formalism, Functionalism, and
Structuralism

In the vast field of linguistics, three major approaches, formalism, functionalism and
structuralism, stand out for their unique perspectives on the functioning and structure of
language. These theoretical frameworks, each with its distinct focus, offer invaluable
insights into the complexity and nature of language, making them crucial for any
comprehensive study of linguistics.
• Formalism is a linguistic approach that prioritises language's formal structure and
properties over its communicative function. Formalists are interested in the abstract
rules and principles that govern language, aiming to identify and describe universal
structures that underlie linguistic phenomena. The Chomskyan tradition, particularly
in generative grammar, is a prominent example of formalism, focusing on the innate
aspects of language and its formal grammar.
• Functionalism places language's communicative purpose and usage at the forefront
in stark contrast to formalism. Functionalists view language as a tool for human
interaction, studying how linguistic forms serve various functions and purposes in
communication. This approach, closely tied to pragmatics, discourse analysis, and
sociolinguistics examines how language is used in real-life contexts and how it
adapts to the needs of speakers, providing a practical understanding of language's
role in society.
• Structuralism's roots are in Ferdinand de Saussure's work, which proposed that
language is a system of signs consisting of signifiers (forms) and signifieds
(meanings). Structuralism focuses on the relationships and rules that govern
language structure, considering it a system composed of interconnected elements.
This approach emphasizes the synchronic analysis of language, studying it at a
specific point in time rather than its historical development.

Despite their differences, these approaches, formalism, functionalism, and

structuralism, harmoniously complement each other in many ways. Formalism's focus on
the abstract rules of language provides a foundation for understanding the structural
components of language systems. Functionalism's emphasis on the practical uses of
language offers insights into how those structures are employed in everyday
communication. Meanwhile, structuralism provides a framework for analysing the
relationships and interactions between language elements, thereby creating a unified
understanding of language.
By understanding and integrating these perspectives, we can gain a comprehensive
and profound view of how language operates as a formal system and a communication tool.
Each approach, formalism, functionalism, and structuralism, enriches our understanding of
language's multifaceted nature, contributing to a more nuanced and holistic appreciation of
the linguistic phenomena that shape human interaction and thought.

2.1 FORMALIST AND FUNCTIONALIST APPROACHES

At this point, it is clear that each linguistic description is based on different assumptions about the
general nature of language and the goals of linguistics. Broadly speaking, twentieth-century
movements in linguistics can be grouped into two paradigms, often labelled formalism (or
structuralism) and functionalism. The two approaches make different background assumptions
about the goals of a linguistic theory, the methods for studying language, and the nature of the
empirical evidence (Schiffrin, 1994, as cited in Barrone, 2008).

Figure 2.
The contrast between formalist and functional approaches, according to Hymes (1975) & Leech (1985)
FORMALIST APPROACH FUNCTIONALIST APPROACH
Focus on the language system, the structure of Focus on the functions the language system
language (code)as grammar. performs in society.
Analysis of code prior to analysis of use. Analysis of code and use in integral (dialectical)
relation.
Referential function. Gamut (whole) of stylistic or social functions.
Language as an autonomous system. Language in relation to its social functions.
Functional equivalence of languages; all Functional differentiation of languages,
languages potentially equal. varieties, styles, being not necessarily
equivalent.
Single homogeneous code and community. Speech community as a matrix of code-

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 repertoires or speech styles.
Tendency to explain linguistic universals as Tendency to explain universals as deriving from
deriving from a genetic, linguistic inheritance of the universality of the uses to which language is
the human species. put in human society.
Barrone, J. (2008)
2.1.1. Formalist and Functional Linguistics: A Dynamic Dialogue
As said, while formalism and functionalism are both pivotal approaches in the study of linguistics,
they differ significantly in their focus and objectives. This difference has led to a dynamic and often
productive dialogue within the field. On the one hand, formalism concentrates on language's
abstract, rule-based structures, aiming to describe universal grammatical principles that apply
across all languages. This approach views language as an innate system, emphasising the formal
aspects of language acquisition and use. On the other hand, functionalism prioritises language's
communicative functions and usage. Functionalists view language primarily as a tool for human
interaction, studying how linguistic forms serve different purposes in real-world communication
contexts.
The rivalry between these two approaches arises from their distinct priorities. Formalists seek
to uncover the inherent structures of language and often view communicative use as secondary.
Functionalists, in contrast, emphasize language's adaptive and flexible nature, arguing that its
primary purpose is communication. This ongoing debate has driven advancements in linguistics,
challenging scholars to consider multiple perspectives when studying language. The dynamic
interplay between formalism and functionalism enriches our understanding of linguistic phenomena.
It encourages a comprehensive approach that accounts for the formal rules governing language
and its pragmatic uses in society.
Until recently, there was an intense conflict between the two linguistics approaches. Formalists
viewed functionalism as a misguided rejection of their core beliefs, while functionalists believed
formalists were essentially misinformed. Language departments, particularly those in the United
States, tended to favour one orientation over the other towards the end of the 20th century. It is
noteworthy, therefore, that Newmeyer (1998, as cited in Mackenzie, 2016), a work that compares
and contrasts the two approaches primarily from a formalist perspective, opens with a dialogue that
is described as "not totally imaginary", which pits a formalist interviewee against a functionalist.
However, in recent years, it has been considerably less common to characterise functional
linguistics negatively, that is, only as a rejection of formalist viewpoints. As more and more
publications have acknowledged functional linguistics as a legitimate field with a rich history, the
previous hostility has given way to a more amicable coexistence. This is the stance that needs to
be adopted in this section.
Although functional linguistics has several streams, all functionalists adhere to a single set of
presumptions that justify the term "functional": Languages' ability to facilitate sophisticated
ideas and emotion exchange among individuals is a fundamental function of languages in human
beings. This function reflects how languages have evolved historically and are used today.
Because of this, a great deal of linguistic phenomena—many of which are related to morphosyntax
in particular—are thought to be justified or explainable. Functionalism looks for explanations mostly
outside of language (Newmeyer 1998, as cited by Mackenzie, 2018:470). Examples of these
domains include cognitive and social domains like gender, esteem, and politeness, as well as the
spatiotemporal and sociocultural contexts in which speakers use language daily.
Needless to say, this, in principle, creates a sharp distinction between functionalists and
formalists, who tend to abstract away from language's uses, seeing grammar as autonomous and
sui generis and allowing only explanations from within the language system.
Although functionalists have reached a considerable consensus about the assumptions that
fundamentally orient their work, there are significant differences among the various functional
linguists today. These reflect a variety of standpoints on such matters as the exact object of inquiry
(discourse, texts, grammatical structures), the type of data admissible (corpus data, experimental
data, intuitive judgements, examples from grammars), the degree to which language is seen as a
system, and the amount of overlap and/or cooperation envisaged with other subdisciplines of
linguistics (notably Cognitive Linguistics, Construction Grammar and Language Typology) or with
such other disciplines as sociology, psychology, anthropology, and pedagogy.
The following subsections will try to develop a rounded picture of functional linguistics as currently
practised, emphasizing both its unity and diversity.

• Origins
Although it is notoriously difficult to determine a starting point for any intellectual tradition, there is
some acceptance that the 1929 appearance of the Theses of the Prague School (Theses 1983)

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and specifically of various writings by the Czech scholar Vilém Mathesius around the same time
that marks the beginning of what is currently understood to be functional linguistics.
On the very first page, the Theses proclaims something today’s functionalists will generally still
assent to:

Wether [sic] one analyses language as expression or communication, it is the intention

of the speaker which can explain it in a most evident and a most natural manner. For
this reason, linguistic analysis should respect the functionalist standpoint. Seen from the
functionalist viewpoint, language is a system of purposeful means of expression. No
fact of language can be understood without regard to the system to which it pertains.
(Theses 1983: 77, emphasis in original)

The founders of the Prague School focused on the clause and specifically on how it functioned
for the speaker of that clause. What they attempted to elucidate was how the speaker dynamically
constructs the clause in an attempt to achieve his/her communicative goals. The clause was seen
as commencing with a starting point (or ‘theme’) and climaxing in a communicative highpoint, in
later Prague School writings to be called the ‘rheme’. A fundamental point, one that has had
important repercussions for some branches of functional linguistics, is that the theme may or may
not, correspond with the subject; and similarly for the rheme and the predicate. These slippages are
currently understood as involving ‘competing motivations’ (see §30.3). In later years, a related
but non-dichotomous approach arose in Czech linguistics under the heading of ‘communicative
dynamism’, with the clause being seen as gradually growing more and more ‘dynamic’ as it
advances step by step from starting point to conclusion. While the Prague School took a dynamic
view of clause construction, the forms resulting from the use of language were regarded as
constituting a system (cf. the quotation from the Theses above), one that has arisen through the
myriad applications of the principles of dynamic construction. The founders of linguistic
functionalism were thus in no way opposed to the study of the language system as
a structure, but this should always go hand in hand with an examination of the functions that
its elements served.
Here was born one of the fundamental tenets of many functionalists: the belief that linguistic
work aims to forge a link between structure and function. Butler (2003), in a monumental
examination of this area of linguistics, accordingly identifies the three approaches he compares to
‘structural-functional theories’. Structure is identified with the lexico-grammatical organization as an
entrenched cognitive capacity that permits us to formulate and encode our communicative
intentions. Givón (2009, as cited in Mackenzie,2018) points to the functional advantages of having
such a grammatical system, drawing a sharp contrast between pidgin communication, where
interlocutors do not share a system, and grammatical communication, where they do, showing that
the two types of communication differ radically concerning both structure and function. In a pidgin
situation, as for example, during encounters between foreign tourists and monolingual inhabitants
of the country being visited, morphology will be heavily reduced, constructions simple and word
order directly dictated by communicative needs; processing will be slow, laborious and conscious,
with high context-dependence. In grammatical communication, by contrast, morphology is rich,
constructions are varied and hierarchical, and word order is often dependent on syntactic relations
(such as subject and object), while processing is quick, effortless, unconscious and much less
context-dependent.
It should be noted, however, that other functionalists have questioned or even denied the
Praguean conclusion that the result of language use is a structure. Skepticism about ‘structure’ is
also apparent in Givón (2013), who does not mention the Prague School but rather emphasizes the
opposition that he sees between functionalism and structuralism. In general, it can be said that
American functionalism is much less beholden to Prague than its European counterpart(s), seeking
its roots in the US anthropological heritage and, more recently, in various movements that grew up
in opposition to Chomskyan formalism.
• Commitments
As the Prague School developed, its practitioners placed an ever-greater emphasis on
formalization in representing hypotheses and findings in a formal, mathematical language. There is
a group of American and American-trained linguists who have not just been influenced by the
School but have interacted with its more recent members. This group have been referred to by the
apparent oxymoron ‘formal functionalists’ since they generally accept the formalist premises of
generative grammar and concentrate on providing formalized and theoretically compatible accounts
of aspects of language structure that fall outside the view of generative grammar, which tends to
privilege certain ‘core’ phenomena. These linguists’ theoretical commitments qualify them as

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‘formalists’, although the matters they deal with and their interpretation of data align them more with
functionalism. The advantage of formalisation, as they see it, is that it becomes possible to derive
explicit, functionally informed hypotheses about language structure.
A key commitment of functional linguistics is understanding how language serves
different communicative purposes and fulfills various functions in everyday life. This
approach values empirical data from natural language use, examining language
patterns and variations across different speakers and contexts.

2.2 STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS

If the nineteenth century was an era of comparative and historical philology, the twentieth century
saw a decisive shift favouring descriptive or synchronic linguistics. Where German scholars
had led the way in the previous century, the emergent twentieth-century academic
discipline was to be dominated by Americans. But the man often seen as the father of what
became known as structural linguistics, our focus in this section, was a Swiss. The work of
Ferdinand de Saussure, whose thinking underpins most work undertaken in this century and the
last, merits consideration in some detail, as many of the dichotomies with which he is associated
– langue/ parole; syntagmatic/paradigmatic; signifiant/signifié – have become part of the
conceptual toolkit not just of linguistics but also of structuralist approaches to literature and social
sciences.
In the Course in General Linguistics with which Saussure is associated, the concepts it
introduced and their relevance to contemporary linguistic thought. We then consider the legacy of
Saussure’s thinking in the work of the North American Descriptivists, who established linguistics
as a respectable academic discipline partly by breaking away from universal models based on
Classical European languages and treating each language as a system in its own right. From this
relativist position emerged what became known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis—the suggestion
that languages significantly mould the worldview of their speakers.
Saussure was born in Geneva in 1857 and entered the University of Geneva in 1875 as a
student of physics and chemistry before switching his attention to Classical languages. Later,
moving to study Indo- European at Leipzig, where, aged just 21, he published his dissertation
‘Memoir on the Primitive System of Vowels in Indo-European Languages’, to considerable
acclaim. Thereafter, he enjoyed further success in Paris, where he stayed until 1891, when he
returned to Geneva to take up a Chair.
However, the work for which Saussure is best known was not published in his lifetime nor
written by Saussure himself. The Course in General Linguistics (henceforth Course), which has
been likened to a Copernican revolution in the discipline, opens with a brief summary of the
history of linguistics, in which Saussure identifies three stages:

• The first, beginning with the Greeks, he defines as the ‘grammar’ stage, which he sees as
essentially prescriptive and unscientific.
• The second, ‘philological’ stage, he dates from the work of Friedrich Wolf in 1777 and is
again seen as not purely linguistic in intention, focused as it was on elucidating texts written
in different periods.
• The third, and for Saussure, the most interesting stage (the first two are dismissed in little
more than a page), is that of comparative philology, which he dates from the work of Franz
Bopp in 1816. Saussure’s critique of the comparative school, as he calls it, echoes the
concerns raised in his letter to Meillet (see Case study on next page): it had failed to define
the nature of its study and in its endeavour to establish relations between languages had
paid scant attention to the nature of words as representative signs.

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 Case study: Genesis of the Course

Despite his success as a philologist, Saussure shows signs of dissatisfaction with contemporary
methods and even linguistics terminology from an early stage. In the frustration he expresses in a
letter to the eminent French linguist Antoine Meillet in 1894, we see the germ of the work that
would make him famous :
‘but I am fed up with all that and with the general difficulty of
writing even ten lines of good sense on linguistic matters. For
a long time, I have been, above all, preoccupied with the logical
classification of linguistic facts and with the classification of the
points of view from which we treat them, and I am more and more
aware of the immense amount of work that would be required to
show the linguist what he is doing...¨

‘The utter inadequacy of current terminology, the need to reform it and, to do that, to demonstrate
what sort of object language is, continually spoils my pleasure in philology, though I have no
dearer wish than not to be made to think about the nature of language., in general. This will lead,
against my will, to a book in which I shall explain, without enthusiasm or passion, why there is not
a single term used in linguistics that has any meaning for me. Only after this, I confess, will I be
able to take up my work at the point I left off.’

The book Saussure refers to was eventually published, but only after his death. Compiled
posthumously by Saussure’s students from his Geneva lecture notes from three courses taught
between 1906 and 1911, and edited by two of Saussure’s colleagues, Charles Bally and Albert
Sechehaye, in collaboration with Albert Riedlinger, the Course in General Linguistics (Cours de
Linguistique Générale) was published in 1916, three years after his death, and has had far-
reaching repercussions for linguistic study ever since.
 2.2.1 The nature of the linguistic sign
Saussure defines language as a system of signs. The sign for Saussure consists of two elements: a
signifier (signifiant) and a signified (signifié), both of which are arbitrary. The arbitrariness of the signifier is
not a difficult concept to grasp. Why does a native English speaker, when she/he sees an animal barking,
call it a dog? Still, there is no reason why it should be called a dog: if there were, all languages would have
discovered this and given this animal the same name rather than selecting such different terms as ci
(Welsh), perro (Spanish), Hund (German) or mbwa (Swahili).

Figure 3. The linguistic sign (Course, p. 66)

The absence of any link between the word and its referent in the real world is almost universal. One exception
is onomatopoeic words, where a word echoes a sound associated with the referent in question, as in cuckoo.
Even for onomatopoeic words, however, there is a large measure of arbitrariness: cuckoos are called
‘cuckoos’ only in English, and to return to our canine example above, there is a remarkable divergence cross-
linguistically, even in the way barking is represented in print: English dogs go woof! woof! while French ones
go ouah! ouah! and Russian ones gav! gav! although there are no linguistic differences (to the best of our
knowledge) between dogs of different nationalities.
(This observation has spawned several websites and even a Wikipedia page, which you may like to check
out.).
Key idea: The signifier and the signified.
The linguistic sign unites an arbitrary signifier (signifiant) with an arbitrary signified (signifié).

However, the arbitrariness of the signifier is only part of the story: Saussure stresses that the signified,
too, is arbitrary, as each language divides up the world in its own way. A consequence of the conceptual
arbitrariness of the signified is that precise translation between languages often proves impossible. For
example, Swedish has no word for grandmother, distinguishing between

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mormor (‘mother mother’) and farmor (‘father mother’), which English does not. Some concepts seem to elude
translation altogether (see Case study below), and even concepts as familiar as colour terms are highly
language-specific. A second consequence of arbitrariness is that both signifier and signified are subject to
change: the silent letters of know or though in English attest to a time when the pronunciation of both words
was different; Old English þing once meant ‘discussion’ but came to mean thing, while the word man originally
meant ‘person’ but acquired the meaning ‘male person’, an etymology which leads some people to object to
terms such as chairman as gender exclusive.

Key idea: Synchronic v diachronic

Saussure insisted on the separation of synchronic facts (describing the language at a particular
point in time) from diachronic ones (relating to changes which have taken place in the language)
because a native speaker does not need to know the history of his/her language to speak and
understand it.

While the study of language change, a major preoccupation of the nineteenth-century comparative
philologists, is of interest and value in itself, Saussure warned against confusing synchronic approaches
(studying the language as a system at a single point in time) and diachronic ones (focusing on changes in the
language system). Saussure prioritised the former, using a chess analogy to distinguish the two perspectives.

Case study:
Gezelligheid and the arbitrariness of the signified.

The Dutch term gezellig is frequently cited as an example of a concept which cannot
be translated. The website DutchAmsterdam.com attempts thus to convey its meaning to
anglophone visitors:
Locals and foreigners alike will tell you that the word cannot be translated. Its meaning includes
everything from cozy to friendly, comfortable to relaxing, enjoyable to gregarious. According to
Wikipedia, ‘A perfect example of untranslatability is seen in Dutch through the word gezellig,
which does not have an English equivalent. Literally, it means cozy, quaint, or nice, but it can also
connote time spent with loved ones, seeing a friend after a long absence, or general
togetherness.’ However, to the Dutch, it goes way beyond being ‘cozy’. You’ll hear the word a lot
when you visit Amsterdam, so here are some tips on how to understand and use it:
Gezellig vs. not gezellig
 10

A brown café is gezellig. A dentist’s waiting room is not – though it can be gezellig if your friends
accompany you, particularly if they are gezellig. An evening in the town with friends is gezellig,
especially if you have dinner at a gezellig restaurant, see a good movie, and finish with a drink at
a gezellige pub. Trying to entertain the in-laws from hell is definitely not gezellig.

For Saussure, Grimm had failed to distinguish between diachronic changes and the
functions given to new elements in the resulting language system. Thus, the vowel
alternations foot: feet, goose: geese, tooth: teeth emerged as the result of a purely
phonetic change, which was used by the system to designate singular and plural: it did not
happen to represent the plural, as if ‘plural’ were a slot to be filled and the language
developed a new form to fill it. Sound changes are ‘blind’ but have consequences for the
system as a whole: for example, the change in British English, which saw the wh- sound [ʍ]
pronounced like [w] had the consequence that such word pairs such as which/witch,
whales/Wales and while/wile are no longer distinguished by most British English speakers.

• Spotlight on Saussure: The chess analogy

Ferdinand de Saussure employs a vivid analogy between language and a game of chess in
his seminal work, "Course in General Linguistics," to illustrate key concepts about the
nature of language, including the distinction between synchrony and diachrony. By
comparing language to a chess game, Saussure conveys that understanding the
historical sequence of moves in a game offers no real advantage to a player who joins the
game in progress. Similarly, a fluent speaker of a language does not need knowledge of
past linguistic states to communicate effectively.

However, Saussure acknowledges the limits of the analogy by pointing out a fundamental
difference. While a chess player's moves are deliberate attempts to secure a win, language
change lacks a specific goal or intended outcome. In his words, "Language premeditates
nothing."

Saussure further extends the chess analogy by emphasising that the specific form of chess
pieces is less important than their distinctiveness from one another. What matters most is
the ability to differentiate each piece in the game; thus, the precise shapes of the rooks or

17
bishops can vary as long as their functions remain clear and distinct. Through these
comparisons, Saussure provides a compelling framework for understanding language as a
structured system, where the relationships between its elements are more significant than
the elements themselves.

Saussure also famously stated that ‘language is form, not substance’ and that language is a
system of relations with no positive terms, only differences. To understand Saussure’s
insights here, it is worth dwelling on these claims, both of which stem from our earlier
principle of the arbitrariness of the sign:

it is understood that the concepts are purely differential and defined not by their
positive content but negatively by their relations with the other terms of the system.
Their most precise characteristic is in being what the others are not.
Course, p. 117 (as cited in Horsnby, 2014)

Everything that has been said up to this point boils down to this:
in language, there are only differences. Even more important, a difference generally
implies positive terms between which the difference is set up, but in language, there
are only differences without positive terms.
Course p. 120 (as cited in Horsnby, 2014)

To illuminate the notion of linguistic entities without an essence of their own, Saussure
asks us to consider a railway timetable. We are prepared to accept, he says, that the 8.25
Geneva to Paris express, which leaves each day, is ‘the same train’ in spite of the fact that
its coaches, driver and locomotive are probably not the same each day: we would continue
to call it the ‘8.25 Geneva to Paris train, even if it left a few minutes late now and again. We
do so because the inherent qualities of the train itself do not matter; what matters is that this
train is not the 10.25 to Paris or the 8.25 to Bern.
Saussure’s concept of linguistic values is based on differences: if we wish to learn the
meaning of the word blue, we need to know how it differs from red, green, yellow, etc.:
there is no inherent concept of ‘blueness’, which will leap out at us and enable us to
understand the concept. Similarly, we can only understand dog by virtue of its contrast with
cat, horse, elephant, etc., without which dog would mean little more than animal. The
importance of difference is even clearer in the case of speech sounds. There will almost
certainly be slight differences each time we produce a b sound in a word like bit, and
differences again between our own pronunciation and that of others. Yet all these different
realizations will be recognized by English speakers as ‘the same’, in the same way, that a
teacher will recognize the many different handwritten b’s he/she might see in 30 Year 6
homework assignments as ‘the same letter’. It matters not if a Year 6 child occasionally
puts a smiley in the round part of the ‘b’, gives it a moustache or draws sunglasses on the
stalk: it will remain recognizably b unless and until it ceases to be distinct from other letters
and starts to be confused with, say, d, with the result that the pairs bid/did, bad/dad, big/dig
and so on are no longer distinguishable.

Key idea: The structuralist perspective

From a structuralist perspective, language has no positive terms. It depends on
meaningful contrasts or oppositions at every level.

If, in language, ‘there are only differences’, then it is the relations between elements in the
system, rather than the elements themselves, that are meaningful, and Saussure suggests
that these relations are of two kinds. The first, syntagmatic relations, represent the
combinatorial possibilities a language permits: adjectives may qualify nouns in English, for
example (a green coat) but not verbs (*to green try); adverbs may qualify verbs (go
boldly/boldly go) but not nouns (*boldly tree/*tree boldly). Paradigmatic relations, by
contrast, concern the range of elements that can be substituted in the same environment.
For example, in the sentence, John built a house we could replace John with another proper
noun, such as Peter or Mary, with a noun phrase, such as the little old man or (in a fictional
parallel universe) the giant slug in evening dress. Similarly, we could replace built with build,
constructed, destroys, is destroying, admires and so on. At the phonological level, the first
sound /p/ of pit stands in opposition to all the other sounds, which could replace it to produce
other words, e.g. kit, sit, mitt, fit, lit, nit.

19
 A final important dichotomy for Saussure was that of langue and parole, meaning
respectively the abstract language system and the concrete instantiation of that
system in speech. For Saussure, the real object of study for the linguist was langue, but
our only access to it is via parole, with all its hesitations, slips of the tongue, false starts and
so on. He saw the difference between the two exemplified in the contrast between
phonetics, the study and description of speech sounds, and phonology, the study of sound
systems in language. Strongly influenced by the sociologist Emile Durkheim, Saussure saw
langue as a social phenomenon, implanted in the individual, who may through his/her own
parole initiate or adopt change in langue.

Key idea: The language system

Langue (the language system) is based on relations of two kinds:
• syntagmatic, or combinatorial relations between elements
• paradigmatic relations, involving items of the same category which can be
substituted for each other in a given environment.

3. The North American Descriptivists

The North American Descriptivists played a significant role in shaping the
development of linguistics as a distinct academic discipline in the United States
from the 1920s to the 1950s. American Descriptivists adopted a scientific
approach to the study of language. Their focus on methodology, precise
description, and data-driven analysis brought respectability and rigour to linguistics
as a science. Key figures in this movement, such as Leonard Bloomfield, Martin
Joos, Henry Gleason, Charles Hockett, and Zellig Harris, advanced the study of
phonology and morphology through rule-based descriptions. Bloomfield's seminal
work Language (1933) remains a foundational and accessible introduction to the
subject, setting the stage for methodological approaches in the field. The
Descriptivists prioritized aspects of language that could be described and
explained using formal rules, particularly in phonology and morphology.
Saussure’s emphasis on language as a structure, rather than on its individual
elements, led to the adoption of the term structuralism, the importance of which in
modern linguistic thinking is difficult to overemphasize. Robins (1997, as cited in
Hornsby, 2014) has gone so far as to say that ‘the structural approach to language
underlies virtually the whole of modern linguistics. His concept of distinctive
oppositions, and notably that of the phoneme as a distinctive speech unit, was later
developed and refined in the 1920s and 1930s by the Prague School Linguists,
including Nikolai Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson. They also explored the causes of
sound change, on which the Neogrammarians had been largely silent, from a
structural point of view: phonemic mergers might, for example, be seen to decrease
complexity within the system and thereby reduce effort from the speaker’s point of
view. ((though the question of why a change happens at a particular time would not
be addressed until the advent of variationist sociolinguistics).
However, in the United States, between the 1920s and 1950s, linguistics became
established as an autonomous academic discipline. The direction for the subject was
set by a group which came to be known as the North American Descriptivists, whose
major figures include Leonard Bloomfield, Martin Joos, Henry Gleason, Charles
Hockett and Zellig Harris; two important contemporaries, Edward Sapir and Franz
Boas, came to linguistics from an anthropological background. Bloomfield, above all,
is credited with achieving respectability for linguistics as a science, which is a central
Descriptivist concern. His seminal 1933 work Language, which remains a highly
readable introduction to the subject even today, attempts to bring the scientific rigour
of the natural sciences to linguistics through a detailed description of methodology
and discovery procedures and reflections on corpora and sample sizes.
The need to justify linguistics as a science resulted in an emphasis on those
aspects of language which could readily be described and presented in terms of rules
(notably at the phonological and morphological levels, and a consequent downgrading
of those which could not, notably semantics, in which Bloomfield saw no imminent
prospect of scientific progress:

The study of language can be conducted without special assumptions as long as we do not
pay attention to the meaning of what is spoken.
Bloomfield (1933), as cited by Hornsby (2014).

21
 Where nineteenth-century linguists had taken their inspiration from advances in natural
history, the Descriptivists looked to the logical rigour of mathematics in the description of rule-
governed linguistic behaviour:

But of all the sciences and near-sciences that deal with human behaviour, linguistics is
the only one which is in a fair way to becoming completely mathematical, and the other
social scientists are already beginning to imitate the strict methods of the linguists.
(Joos 1957: 350)

Mathematics is a good place to turn for analogs of structures...

A good many mathematical systems are characterisable wholly or partly as consisting of
elements for which certain relations are defined.
(Hockett 1957: 394)

For the Descriptivists, a scientific approach demanded reliance on publicly observable

linguistic data, the goal at this stage being to describe rather than to explain.

We do not answer ‘why’ questions about the design of a language... we try to describe
precisely; we do not try to explain.
Anything in our description that sounds like an explanation is simply loose talk... and is
not part of current linguistic theory.
(Joos 1957: 349)

The emphasis on description reflected a desire to shed some decidedly unscientific

prejudices from the past, notably the assumption that all languages were essentially
structured along similar lines to the Classical languages (or, worse, that they ought to be).
Such beliefs were flatly contradicted by the material with which the Descriptivists generally
worked: an aspiring doctoral student in the interwar years would typically be required to
provide a description of the grammar and phonology of an (often obsolescent) native
American language, for which a Classical or European language model was of little help.
The Descriptivists’ approach, which stems directly from Saussure’s conception of language
as a system of relations, was to establish observable regularities of form within their data
sets or corpora (singular: corpus) and describe the distribution of each element:
 ...the total of all environments in which it occurs, i.e. the sum of all the (different) positions
or occurrences of an element relative to the occurrence of other elements.
(Harris 1951: 15–16)

4. THE CHOMSKYAN REVOLUTIONS

Introduction. Unraveling Myths about Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky is a prominent figure in modern linguistics, renowned for his

influential theories and extensive contributions to the field. However, Chomsky's
work is often surrounded by misconceptions and myths that can obscure the core
questions he addresses and the true impact of his research. In this section, we aim
to dispel some of these myths and clarify Chomsky's work in linguistics and its
relationship—or lack thereof—with his political activism. By understanding the
realities of Chomsky's contributions and separating fact from fiction, we can gain a
more accurate and nuanced view of his role in the study of language. The following
text is part of Salkie’s chapter (2005) on Myths about Chomsky.

23
25
languages were developed. This was a vast and complex intellectual achievement,
one that is sometimes unjustifiably belittled in histories of linguistics.
Chomsky was convinced, however, that biology was the wrong model for linguistics.
He thought that physics was the science that had achieved the best results, and he
resolved to try the methods of physics, rather than biology, in studying language.
What Chomsky admires about physics is its breadth and depth.
The theories of Galileo and Newton, for instance, are so broad that they apply to
tiny objects, planets, and stars. The depth of their theories comes from a particular
kind of abstract reasoning. Objects on the earth move in almost straight lines, while
planetary motion is almost circular. Building on Galileo’s work, Newton proposed a
mysterious force called gravity which operates in perfectly straight lines – unlike
anything we see in nature. He showed that certain mathematical assumptions about
gravity could explain the motion that we actually witness around us. The explanation
required a complex framework of assumptions and reasoning, and there were things
that it failed to explain, but within this framework it succeeding in explaining many
things.
Here is how Chomsky describes the methods used in physics:

The ‘Galilean style’ in physics is ‘making abstract mathematical models of the universe
to which at least the physicists give a higher degree of reality than they accord the
ordinary world of sensation’ . . . We have no present alternative to pursuing the ‘Galilean
style’ in the natural sciences at least.
Some might argue . . . that we can do still better in the ‘human sciences’ by pursuing a
different path. I do not mean to disparage such possibilities. It is not unlikely, for
example, that literature will forever give far deeper insight into what is sometimes called
‘the full human person’ than any mode of scientific inquiry can hope to do. But I am
interested here in a different question: to what extent and in what ways can inquiry in
something like the ‘Galilean style’ yield insight and understanding of the roots of human
nature in the cognitive domain? Can we hope to move beyond superficiality by a
readiness to undertake perhaps far-reaching idealisation and to construct abstract
models that are accorded more significance than the ordinary world of sensation, and
correspondingly, by readiness to tolerate unexplained phenomena or even as yet
unexplained counterevidence to theoretical constructions that have achieved a certain
degree of explanatory adequacy in some limited domain, much as Galileo did not
abandon his enterprise because he was unable to give a coherent explanation for the
fact that objects do not fly off the earth’s surface.

(Chomsky 1980, pp. 8–10)

Chomsky thus proposed to use the methods of physics rather than biology in his
approach to language: he aimed to build abstract theories which might only explain
part of the data rather than attempting to classify observable phenomena
exhaustively. But so far we have only seen how his methods were inspired by
physics. What about his questions about language: where did they come from?

27
Chomsky refers to the shift in thinking about language in the 1950s – for which he
was largely responsible – as ‘the cognitive revolution’. Instead of taking a language
as a collection of sounds and marks on paper made by a geographically defined
group of people, he argued that a language is a system of knowledge in the mind of
– at the limit – a single speaker. The system of knowledge cannot be directly

29
observed, but in that respect it is like the inside of the sun, which is also inaccessible
for practical reasons. Astronomers nonetheless propose theories about the inside of
the sun based on observations about the behaviour of the sun; linguistics can do the
same about the inside of our heads. Presumably, knowledge of language has a
physical correlate: it must be stored in our brain in some concrete form, just like any
knowledge. Brain scientists may one day be able to identify the physical correlates
of linguistic knowledge: in the meantime, linguists can propose theories about the
structure of this knowledge, and brain scientists can further investigate these
theories.

The answer to the second question comes in several parts. If a person has some
knowledge in their head, then logically, that knowledge may have one of three
sources:
1 It may be in the brain at birth – in other words, it may be transmitted via our
genes.
2 It may develop in the brain as the person grows, analogous to the growth of
teeth. We are not born with teeth, but pathological cases apart; our genes
determine that we will develop a first incomplete set and a second complete set of
teeth by certain ages. In the same way, we may not have linguistic knowledge in our
mind at birth, but our genes may cause the development of this knowledge by a
certain age, independent of any experience that we may have.
3 The knowledge may be learned from experience.
Clearly, the words of a particular language are learned from experience: no one has
ever claimed that the vocabulary of English or any other language is programmed
into our genes at birth. It may be, however, that parts of the structure of languages
are genetically transmitted. Whether that is the case or not is a matter for empirical
investigation.
If parts of our linguistic knowledge are genetic, then these parts must be
universal: they must apply to all human languages. This follows from the fact that we
do not seem to be genetically predisposed to learn any particular human language:
the same infant will acquire English if surrounded by English input, or any other
language if the relevant input is available. Chomsky therefore refers to these parts of
our linguistic knowledge – assuming they exist – as Universal Grammar (UG).
Are there any reasons to think that, in fact rather than as a matter of logic, parts
of our linguistic knowledge are genetic? Chomsky argues that there are several.
First, the acquisition of language by young people takes place within certain ages,
and follows regular sequences. Particular sentences and rules are normally learned
before others, with variation only to a limited extent between individuals. In this
respect, acquiring a language is like learning to walk. Apart from people with mental
or physical disabilities, all young people learn to walk by a certain age and in a
certain sequence, with only minor variation. We commonly presume that learning to
walk is genetically determined, and it is sensible to conclude that the development of
language is too.
The second argument is that all languages have features in common. To take

31
a simple example, all languages seem to distinguish vowel and consonant sounds,
and for every language investigated so far, it is possible to distinguish grammatically
between nouns and verbs. There are languages which are ‘atypical’ in various
respects: for instance, English has an unusually large inventory of vowel sounds
(nearly twenty) compared with most languages. But there are no known languages
which are wildly different from all the others: all the English vowel sounds also occur
in many other languages, and in other respects, there are no ‘unique’ languages.
Claims to the contrary do not stand up to investigation. For instance, the commonly
held belief that the Basque language is different in its grammar from every other
language in the world is untrue. Languages do differ, of course, but not in unlimited
ways. When we learn a new language, we are immediately struck by the obvious
differences, but from a detached scientific viewpoint, it is possible to argue that the
similarities between languages are more significant.
The third argument is based on work in generative grammar. Research has,
Chomsky claims that rules and principles in particular languages go far beyond the
evidence available to young people acquiring a language.
It is not simply that young people generalise beyond the evidence, for instance, in
putting plural endings on nouns that they have only heard in the singular.
Chomsky’s point is that different people regularly acquire the same rules and
principles despite cases where the evidence for them is unavailable.
It is difficult to illustrate this point without being technical, but a simple example might
clarify it. Suppose a young person hears this sentence:
33
Chomsky argues that the leap is a legitimate one: for him, this is what makes
linguistics interesting and important.
BACK TO PHILOSOPHY
Chomsky’s use of terms like ‘human nature ’ is anathema to some philosophers,
particularly those who believe strongly that the human mind is a blank sheet at birth
and that knowledge cannot be transmitted through our genes. This point of view
is called empiricism, and it is associated in particular with philosophers such as
Hume and Locke. Empiricists deny that there is such a thing as ‘human nature’,
claiming that all our knowledge and our personality are derived from experience.
Their arguments are opposed by other philosophers like Descartes and Leibniz

who maintained that we are born with innate knowledge, a position called ratio-
nalism (see Cottingham 1988; Woolhouse 1988). Until quite recently, rationalism
had something of a bad press: it was associated with mystical concepts such as
‘the eternal realm of ideas ’ in Plato’s writings. Before the development of modern
genetics, it was difficult for rationalists to explain exactly how knowledge could be
passed on to new humans before any experience of the world.
Chomsky has no patience with empiricism. He argues not just that empiricism is
wrong, but that it amounts to an obstinate refusal to face reality, and is thus more
akin to a mental aberration than a coherent intellectual stance. Whether a piece
of knowledge is innate or learned through experience is a factual question: it is a
question that can be investigated by observation and analysis, rather than by ruling
out one of the answers in advance of investigation, which is what empiricists do.
In the case of language there are good reasons for supposing that there is innate
knowledge, as we have seen, along with knowledge that is learned from experience.
In other words, Chomsky gives factual, evidence-based arguments that empiricism
is wrong, and has developed a scientific research programme based on rationalist
principles. As we noted above, he sees philosophy and science as part of the same
enterprise of understanding the world and our place in it. The study of language
is one area where scientific progress has direct implications for philosophy, to the
benefit of both.
Where does this leave us on the question of certain knowledge? Chomsky’s
reasoning leaves us with an apparent paradox, though it is one that all scientists
face. Scientific knowledge, based on careful observation of the facts, the selection
of certain facts as susceptible to analysis, and the formulation of abstract theories
to explain only these facts, seems to be the most secure knowledge that we can
arrive at. Such knowledge is limited and partial; furthermore, it is almost sure to
be wrong, in the sense that new scientific research will probably come up with
different theories which may have significant implications for philosophy, forcing
us to question some of the beliefs that we currently hold. Scientific knowledge is
thus the most certain, but at the same time, fundamentally unstable and uncertain.
This, in Chomsky’s opinion, is simply the way the world is: instead of making us
uncomfortable it should make us excited because there is so much still to learn.

35
References

Berrone, M. L. (2008). A student's linguistics workbook Comunicarte.

Hornsby, D. (2014). Linguistics: A complete introduction. Teach Yourself.

Mackenzie, J.L. (2016). Functional linguistics. In K. Allan (Ed.), The Routledge handbook
of linguistics (pp. 470-475). Routledge.

Salkiem R. (2005). The Chomskyan revolutions. In P. Cobley (ED.). The Routledge

companion to semiotics and linguistics (pp. 105-114). Routledge.