Introduction to Linguistics - Professor Abderrahim El Karta

Linguistics: Definition and Scope

1. What Is Linguistics?
Linguistics is defined in general dictionaries as the science of language' or 'the scientific study of language'. It is
the branch of knowledge that deals with language'. But although it is the only academic discipline that deals with
language alone, and there are aspects of language that it alone is concerned with, its practitioners cannot claim a
monopoly of the whole of their subject matter. A range of other disciplines, from the study of literature to
computer science, deal with language in one way or another, and the boundaries between them and linguistics
are not fixed. A typical dictionary definition of linguistics is something like "linguistics is the study of language as
a system of human communication. Although studies of language phenomena have been carried out for
centuries, it is only fairly recently that linguistics has been accepted as an independent discipline. Linguistics now
covers a wide field with different approaches and different branches and areas of investigation, namely the
study of sound systems (phonetics and phonology), word and sentence structure (morphology and syntax), and
meaning (semantics). It also covers a number of linguistics subfields that have been advanced and have gained
importance; for example, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, applied linguistics,
etc.

2. What does linguistics cover?

One obvious way of studying language is to consider what its elements are, how they are combined to make
larger bits, and how these bits help us to convey messages. The first part of this, discovering what the elements
are, is sometimes rather dismissively termed taxonomic or classificatory linguistics. But given how much
argument there is about what the categories involved in linguistic description are, this is clearly an important
part of linguistics, and is certainly a prerequisite for any deeper study of language. The study of the elements of
language and their function is usually split up into a number of different branches and subfields.

2.1. Branches of Linguistics

1. Phonetics deals with the sounds of spoken language: how they are made, how they are classified, how they
are combined with each other and how they interact with each other when they are combined, how they
are perceived. It is sometimes suggested that phonetics is not really a part of linguistics proper, but a sub-
part of physics, physiology, psychology, or engineering. Accordingly, the label linguistic phonetics is
sometimes used to specify that part of phonetics which is directly relevant to the study of human language.

2. Phonology also deals with speech sounds but at a rather more abstract level. While phonetics deals with
individual speech sounds, phonology deals with the systems which incorporate the sounds. It also considers
the structures the sounds can enter into (for example, syllables and intonational phrases), and the
generalizations that can be made about sound structures in individual languages or across languages.

3. Morphology deals with the internal structure of words - not with their structure in terms of the sounds that
make them up, but their structure where form and meaning seem inextricably entwined. So the word cover
is morphologically simple, and its only structure is phonological, while “lover” contains the smaller element
“love” and some extra meaning which is related to the final in the spelling. Another way of talking about this
is to say that morphology deals with words and their meaningful parts.

4. Syntax is currently often seen as the core of any language, although such a prioritizing of syntax is relatively
new. Syntax is concerned with the ways in which words can be organized into sentences and the ways in
which sentences are understood.

5. Semantics deals with the meaning of language. This is divided into two parts, lexical semantics, which is
concerned with the relationships between words and sentence semantics, which is concerned with the way
in which the meanings of sentences can be built up from the meanings of their constituent words. Sentence
semantics often makes use of the tools and notions developed by philosophers; for example, logical
notation and notions of implication and denotation.
 2.2. Major Subfields of Linguistics

In addition to theoretical schools of modern linguistics (structuralism, mentalism, and functionalism) and the
core branches of linguistics (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics), a number of linguistics
subfields have been advanced and have gained importance, the most relevant to this course are
psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, applied linguistics.

1. Psycholinguistics is the study of (a) the mental processes that a person uses in producing and understanding
language, and (b) how humans learn language.

2. Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to social factors, that is, social class, educational level and
type of education, age, sex, ethnic origin, etc.

3. Pragmatics is the study of the use of language in communication, particularly the relationship of sentences
and the contexts and situations in which they are used.

4. Discourse analysis is the study of how sentences in spoken and written language form larger meaningful
units such as paragraphs, conversations, interviews, etc.

5. Applied linguistics is the study of second and foreign language learning and teaching and the study of
language and linguistics in relation to practical problems, such as lexicography, translation, speech
pathology, etc.

The remaining parts of this course will focus on defining and explaining three major schools of modern linguistics
(the structuralist school, the mentalistic school, and the functionalist school), the five major branches of
Linguistics (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics), and five major subfields of modern
linguistics (psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, and applied linguistics). However,
for a better understanding of this scope of modern linguistics, we will begin with the pre-linguistics traditional
schools of language study and historical Linguistics.
 Historical Linguistics
Introduction
Before the foundation of modern linguistics as a scientific academic discipline by the end of the second
decade of the twenty-first century with clear subject matter and scope, there had been significant traditions of
language study in ancient India, in ancient China, in ancient Greece and Rome, among the medieval Arabs, and
elsewhere. By the seventeenth century, a few European scholars and philosophers were beginning to interest
themselves in general questions about the nature of language, and between the seventeenth and nineteenth
century, scholars like Descartes, Locke and Humboldt made a number of significant contributions in this respect.
By the end of the eighteenth century, historical linguistics had begun to be firmly established, and throughout
the nineteenth century, the historical study of language was for many people synonymous with the scientific
study of language.

I. HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
1. What is historical linguistics?
Historical linguistics is generally defined as the study of language change: how and why language change
occur. If you were to ask practicing historical linguists why they study change in language, they would give you
lots of different reasons, but certainly included in their answers would be that it is fun, exciting and intellectually
engaging, that it involves some of the hottest topics in linguistics, and that it has important contributions to
make to linguistic theory and to the understanding of human nature.

There are many reasons why historical linguists feel this way about their field. For one, a grasp of the ways in
which languages can change provides the student with a much better understanding of language in general, of
how languages work, how their pieces fit together. For another, historical linguistic methods have been looked
to for models of rigour and excellence in other fields. Historical linguistic findings have been utilized to solve
historical problems of concern to society which extend far beyond linguistics.

Those dedicated to the humanistic study of individual languages would find their fields much Impoverished
without the richness provided by historical insights into the development of these languages-just imagine the
study of any area of non-modern literature in French, German, Italian, Spanish or other languages without
insights into how these languages have changed. A very important reason why historical linguists study language
change and are excited about their field is that historical linguistics contributes significantly to other sub-areas of
linguistics and to linguistic theory.

More linguists list historical linguistics as one of their areas of specialization than any other subfield of
linguistics. That is, it is clear that there are many practicing historical linguists, though this may seem to be in
contrast to the perception one might get from a look at the lists of required courses in linguistics programmes,
from the titles of papers at many professional linguistic conferences, and from the tables of contents of most
linguistics journals; nevertheless, historical linguistics is a major, thriving area of linguistics, as well it should be,
given the role it has played and continues to play in contributing towards the primary goals of linguistics in
general.

2. What is Historical Linguistics About?

Historical linguistics deals with language change. Historical linguistics is sometimes called diachronic linguistics,
since historical linguists are concerned with change in language or languages over time.

This is contrasted with synchronic linguistics, which deals with a language at a single point in time.

For example,

• Linguists may attempt to write a grammar of present-day English as spoken in some particular speech
community, and that would be a synchronic grammar.

• Similarly, a grammar written of Old English intended to represent a single point in time would also be a
synchronic grammar.
There are various ways to study language diachronically. For example,

• Historical linguists may study changes in the history of a single language, for instance the changes from
Old English to Modern English, or between Old French and Modern French, to mention just two
examples. The historical linguist may also study changes revealed in the comparison of related
languages, often called comparative linguistics. We say that languages are related to one another when
they descend from (are derived from) a single original language, a common ancestor: for example, the
modern Romance languages (which include Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and others) descend
from earlier Latin.

• In the past, many had thought that the principal domain of historical linguistics was the study of how'
languages change, believing that answers to the question of 'why they change were too inaccessible.
However, since the 1960s or so, great strides have been achieved also in understanding 'why' languages
change. Today, we can say that historical linguistics is dedicated to the study of 'how' and 'why'
languages change, both to the methods of investigating linguistic change and to the theories designed to
explain these changes.

• Some people imagine that historical linguists mostly just study the history of individual words - and many
people are fascinated by word histories, as shown by the number of popular books, newspaper columns
and radio broadcasts dedicated to the topic, more properly called etymology (derived from Greek
etumon 'true' (neuter form], that is, 'true or original meaning of a word').

• The primary goal of historical linguistics is not etymologies, but accurate etymology is an important
product of historical linguistic work.

• What is of greater concern to historical linguists is not the etymology of words per se, but the kinds of
changes they have undergone and the techniques or methods we have at our disposal to recover this
history. Thus, in the history of words, we notice various kinds of change: borrowing from Greek to Latin
and ultimately, from French (a descendant of Latin) to English, shifts in meaning, and the sporadic
change in sound. Changes of this sort are what historical linguistics is about, not just the individual word
histories. These kinds of changes that languages can and do undergo and the techniques that have been
developed in historical linguistics is concerned with.

• In large part, then, a word's etymology is the history of the linguistic changes it has undergone.
Therefore, when we understand the various kinds of linguistic change, the stuff that etymologies are
made of and based on becomes clear.

Historical linguists are concerned with all these things broadly and not merely with the history behind
individual words. For that reason, etymology is not the primary purpose of historical linguistics, but rather the
goal is to understand language change in general; and when we understand this, then etymology, one area of
historical linguistics, is a by-product of that understanding.
 Schools of Modern Linguistics: Structuralism
1. Introduction: Emergence of Structuralism
The idea of structuralism is attributed to the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), who is the
founding father of modern linguistics and the founder of structuralism and the structuralist school of modern
linguistics. Saussure's most influential work is the Course in General Linguistics that was published in 1916, three
years after his death in 1913.

The Cours de Linguistique Générale (Saussure, 1916), in which he established the structural study of language,
became one of the key texts and classic books in Linguistics, and marked the beginning of the era of structuralism as
the founding school of modern linguistics.

In this book, Saussure put forward a very different view of language and other sign-systems, a view which has
ever since dominated structural thinking in linguistics and many other academic fields such as literature and literary
criticism in addition to its popularity in semiotics.

Saussure's influential thought about language helped to make structuralism the dominant approach in
linguistics and the influence his structuralist school of modern linguistics reached its peak between 1930 and 1960
and continues today.

2. What Is Linguistic Structuralism/ Structuralist Linguistics

Structuralism in linguistics (also referred to as structural / structuralist linguistics) is generally defined as:

• An approach to linguistics which Stresses the importance of language as a system and which investigates
the place that linguistic units such as sounds, words, sentences have within this system.

• A school or theory in which language is conceived as a self-regulating system, whose elements are
defined by their relationship to other elements.

• An academic discipline and field of study in which the study of a 'language system was abstracted from
the spoken and written use of languages and from their history.

• The descriptive linguistics school which views Language as a highly structured system in which each
element is largely defined by the way it is related to other elements and deals with languages at
particular points in time (synchronic) rather than throughout their historical development (diachronic).

• "A school in modern linguistics which views language as a structured system, with each element in it
defined chiefly by how it is related to other elements. In this view, it is the system which is the primary
object of study, and not the individual elements present in that system. It is "an approach to the study of
language which sees a language as a structured system.

• The structural study of language, emphasizing the arbitrary relationship of the linguistic sign to that
which it signifies, the primacy of synchronic linguistics (studying language at a given moment) over
diachronic linguistics (studying the changing state of a language over time), and langue (the state of a
language at a certain time) as the subject matter of linguistics rather than parole (the speech of an
individual).

Langue as a System, Structure, or structural system: A particular pattern that is available in a language for
constructing a linguistic unit, or an instance of this. Structures can be recognized in languages at every level of
analysis: phonemes combine to build morphemes, morphemes combine to build words, words combine to build
phrases, phrases combine to build clauses and sentences, sentences combine to build texts, and so on. At every
one of these levels, the smaller unit must be combined into larger ones in particular orderly ways determined by
the rules of the language, and we, therefore, say in each case that we are looking at an instance of a particular
structure.

For a better understanding of Linguistic structuralism, let us consider the conceptual framework that is
attributed to Saussure.
3. The Saussurean dichotomies
In “The Cours de Linguistique Générale”, Saussure made a number of fundamental distinctions which are still
basic to linguistic thinking. These are outlined below.

3.1. Langue Versus Parole

The distinction between langue and parole forms an important part of the theoretical basis of structuralism.
Saussure argues that there are two sides to language: langue and parole.

LANGUE is defined as:

• "that part of language which is not complete in any individual, but exists only in the collectivity
(1916:30).

• a system of internalized, shared rules governing a national language's vocabulary, grammar, and sound
system;

• a system of rules, usages, meanings and structures that are products of the human ability to create
language and are shared by members of a specific speech community.

PAROLE, on the other hand,

• is observable in the behaviour of the individual;

• designates actual oral and written communication by a member or members of a particular speech
community;

• is often equated with speech. It is the concrete realisation of a collectively-internalised system and also
reflects the personality, creativity and physiological capabilities of an individual speaker.

Linguistics: Saussure believes that linguistics is fundamentally the study of langue. He believed that
linguistics should study langue in order to gain a picture of the comprehensive, complex, ordered assemblage of
sounds, words and syntactical units. Saussure's views concerning langue and parole, as well as his understanding
of the purpose and goals of linguistics, have exerted immense influence on linguists in Europe and North
America.

3.2. Prescriptivism Versus descriptivism

Prescriptivism refers to a linguistic school of thought in which individuals seek to promote one particular
variety of a language, formulate its rules, and enforce adherence to those rules.

Descriptive linguists strive to present a picture of language as complete as possible as it actually exists at a
specific point in time and place; they first describe observable facts about a particular spoken and written
language and note generalizations about that information. They then draw conclusions about that language and
tie their conclusions to an analysis of human language in general.

3.3. Synchrony Versus diachrony

It was the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, in the early twentieth century, who first introduced and
emphasized the fundamental and celebrated distinction and the difference between synchrony and diachrony in
the study of language.

SYNCHRONY: In a synchronic approach to describing a language, we focus on that language at one moment
in time and describe it as we find it at that moment. The Synchronic study of language is the study of language as
it is (or was) at any particular point in time. Thus, we might study the syntax of American English in the early
twenty-first century or the phonology of seventeenth-century French, or the patterns of compounding in
Classical Chinese.
 DIACHRONY: diachronic approach, we look at how a language has changed over some period of time. Most
work in historical linguistics is diachronic in nature. The Diachronic study of language is to look at the way in
which a language develops or changes over time. In this way, we might consider the development of the English
verb system or changes in Arabic phonology from the classical period until today.

The synchronic study of language is a key defining element of structuralism one of the fundamental concepts
of the structuralist school of modern linguistics which is accordingly synchronic in essence. The distinction
between synchronic and diachronic studies is generally maintained today.

3.4. Paradigmatic Versus Syntagmatic

For Saussure, langue is not a happenstantial collection of isolated signs but is instead a system of signs.
Because it is a system, changes in one area have ramifications throughout the rest of langue. Signs relate to each
other in two general kinds of ways: syntagmatically and paradigmatically.

Syntagmatic relations are ones of co-occurrence - of what goes with what, and how. Rules of syntax provide
one example of a kind of Syntagmatic relationship. Since spoken language and its written representation) is
linear, Syntagmatic relationships in language tend to be sequential.

Paradigmatic relations are relations which obtain among alternative possible fillers of some position in a
Syntagmatic chain and among the alternative forms that some particular filler might take in an alternative
position. Such relations in language can be phonological (spot vs. spit), morphological (run vs. ran), syntactic
(brought vs. had brought), or semantic (hit the ball vs. catch the ball), it is through this aspect of the
systematicity of language that a change in one place affects the whole system of a language.

3.5. Signifier (signifiant) and signified (signifié) and Arbitrariness mode

Saussure insisted that the linguistic sign has two aspects to it: a sound side and a meaning side. The two are
tightly linked within a speech community and can be seen as being the two sides of the same playing card, but
we must nevertheless keep these two aspects of the sign separate from each other in our technical
understanding of the way in which language functions.

The concept of a pig may be carried by the sounds /pɪɡ/, but that concept is not to be equated with that
series of sounds. The sign unites the physical set of sounds (the signifier, or signifiant) with a particular mental
image (the signified or signifié). Note that real-world pigs do not feature here. The sign links our mental image of
a pig with a particular set of sounds, not a real pig. The real pig has a very indirect relationship with the sound
sequence /pɪɡ/.

Saussure makes a number of other points about linguistic signs which have become accepted, although they
had not always been seen as obvious prior to Saussure. Perhaps the most important of these is the fact that the
linguistic sign is arbitrary. There is no natural link between the sound sequence /pɪɡ/and particular animals. If
there were, how could the same or very similar animals be easily associated with the word pig in English, cochon
in French, gris in Danish, Schwein in German, and so on? Even onomatopoeic signs are to a large extent
conventional. We only have to think about the words we use to represent animal noises in a number of
languages to see that. Without knowing, it is hard to guess what animal says gav-gav in Russian, or what animal
says chuchu in Japanese. While the signs of sign languages are often said to be iconic and resemble some feature
of what is denoted, it can be difficult there to guess what a particular sign means if it has not been explained.
 Modern Schools of Linguistics: The Mentalist School
1. Introduction: definition and emergence of Chomskyan linguistic mentalism school
The mentalist school was founded by Noam Chomsky, who postulates that language reveals that there is a good
reason to believe in the existence of mind. In linguistics, the influence of this school of thought is most marked in the
work of Noam Chomsky, especially in his notions of competence and innateness, and in his general views of the
relationship between language and mind (a 'theory of mind').

In this respect, mentalistic linguistics is opposed to the behaviourism of earlier psychological work on language.
Chomsky is very well known for his anti-behaviourist tendency; he does not agree that language is part of human
behaviour, but that language is "a mirror of the mind" (1972). He argues that by understanding language structure
and language acquisition, we may eventually be able to explain how the mind operates, e.g., by studying language in
detail, one may better understand how the language faculty of the human mind operates: "the study of language will
bring to light inherent properties of the human mind (1972:103).

Chomsky is deeply inspired by the rationalist view of language represented by Descartes (1596-1650). particularly
Descartes' "Cogito", "I think, therefore I am" (Descartes, 1637 in Discourse on Method). Chomsky is also inspired by
the Port Royal Grammarians who, following the ideas of Descartes, stress the role of reason in the discussion of
topics like the philosophy of mind and language acquisition.

The ideas of this school of thought became widely known in the 1960s when Noam Chomsky drew certain
parallels between them and his own conception of the relationship between language and mind.

2. Chomskyan Mentalism: assumptions and principles

Following the line of thought of Descartes and the Port Royal, Chomsky developed his mentalist theory of language.
This school of linguistics holds that:

 reasoning, not experience, is crucial since knowledge comes from the mind, not from the activity or
events that affect one in some way. In other words,

 language is based on a reasoned structure common to all humankind. Thus, grammars must try to find
out the general principles of organization of language which reflect the properties of the human mind.

 linguistics should reach two main goals: a) a theory of language and b) a theory of language acquisition.

 A theory of language will aim to characterize what language is, its essential properties that distinguish it
from other means of communication, and the similarities and differences between all the languages of
the world.

 A theory of language acquisition will seek to discover the way children acquire their native language.

 The linguist must start by describing particular languages in detail, that is, by giving detailed grammars of
individual languages. This is called "particular grammar". The next stage is to formulate the general (or
universal features shared by all languages. This is called "universal grammar".

3. Chomskyan Competence/Performance and De Saussurean Langue/Parole

A grammar, in Chomsky's view, is a systematic description of the competence of the native speaker of a language
which enables him to produce, understand, and pronounce all the possible sentences of his language. Competence,
which is our unconscious knowledge of language, is contrasted by Chomsky with performance, which is the actual
use of language or the realization in different situations of the linguistic rules we have acquired unconsciously as
children. Recall that Chomsky's distinction between competence and performance is analogous to de Saussure's
division 'langue' vs. 'parole', which reveals that Chomsky was influenced by de Saussure's ideas and methodology in
linguistics. However, De Saussure's langue/parole dichotomy has a sociological orientation since for him 'langue' is
the collective sum of rules used by all the members of a speech-community in society, and this knowledge is passed
on from one generation to another, and parole means individual speech in society, that is, anything that a native
speaker might produce or understand.
 But Chomsky's distinction between competence and performance has a psychological orientation in the sense
that competence refers to the unconscious knowledge of the language that native speakers store in their brain
during early childhood, in addition to the fact that the distinction draws on the assumption that language reflects the
activity of the mind. Chomsky regards linguistics as part of cognitive psychology and thinks that the description and
explanation of the brain (mental ability) is one of the most essential goals of linguistics.

Chomsky states that there are two types of competence: "pragmatic competence" which is the ability to use the
native language appropriately (in the right context) to satisfy certain needs, and "grammatical competence" which
includes our syntactic, semantic, and phonological abilities. Syntactic abilities include the ability to combine words
into grammatical sentences, and the ability to distinguish grammatical sentences from ungrammatical ones.
Semantic abilities include the ability to notice ambiguity in sentences. Semantic abilities also include the ability to
distinguish between semantically well-formed (acceptable) and semantically ill-formed (unacceptable) sentences,
Phonological abilities involve, among many other things, the ability to know whether a sentence is stressed
according to native speakers' intuitions or not.

4. The aims of the mentalistic linguist and linguistics

Mentalism holds that a theory of language should describe the native speakers' competence. It holds that:

 The rules formulated by the linguist should characterize the sentences of the language under study in

accordance with the native speakers' intuitions (or competence)

 The job of the linguist, then, is not only to describe an unlimited number of sentences but also to put
forward a limited number of rules which characterize the regularities in the language in such a way that they
correspond to the native speakers' knowledge of their language.

 The linguist's task is to

1) Postulate a finite theory of an infinite number of sentences

2) Build up a theory of what the native speaker knows about his language.

5. Creativity of Language
The principles listed above are relevant to what Chomsky calls the "creativity of language", which refers to the
native speaker's ability to produce and understand an infinite number of novel but well-formed sentences.

This creativity of language shows, according to Chomsky, that language is acquired by internalizing
(unconsciously) the rules of how to construct, interpret and pronounce sentences. This constitutes empirical
evidence that language is rule-governed.

To explain this creativity of language, the linguist must formulate sentence-formation rules, sentence-
interpretation rules, and sentence-pronunciation rules. Thus, the set of possible well-formed sentences in a
language is infinite, whereas the set of rules which generate them is finite.

A language, then, can be represented by means of a limited number of rules which determine the relationship
between strings of words in a language. The linguist must devise a theory including a finite set of rules which will
account for the well-formedness of sentences in a language.

If the linguist is a native speaker of the language he is studying, he can rely on his intuitions to distinguish well-
formed utterances from ill-formed ones.

6. Shortcomings and Criticisms of Chomsky's Mentalistic

Theory Many Sociolinguists, philosophers, and psychologists have expressed their objections to mentalist linguistics.

The importance given by the mentalist school to native speakers' intuitions and their use has been regarded as a
shortcoming of Chomsky's theory since they seemingly weaken its scientific character. In other words, it seems that
Chomsky's linguistics is moving away from the scientific method which is based on observation, objectivity, and
empirical analysis. However, it would be interesting to see whether linguistics could make significant progress if a
non-cognitive approach were adopted.

Opponents of the mentalistic theory have particularly attacked the competence-performance distinction. For
instance, the American sociolinguist William Labov claims that the study of an idealized speaker-hearer's language
appears to be valid and useful for understanding language rather than one's individual speech.

Dell Hymes, another American sociolinguist, argues that the linguistic competence-performance dichotomy
neglects the importance of communication. He, accordingly, devises "communicative competence", which means,
briefly, the ability to use language appropriately in appropriate contexts to convey a certain message under
particular circumstances. A native speaker's knowledge also comprises his ability to use language appropriately as
well as his syntactic, semantic, and phonological abilities.

The “tacit knowledge” of native speakers in the competence-performance division has been criticized too. The
claim is that this linguistic knowledge cannot include pragmatic elements such as knowing that the weather is cold
in Siberia.

For structuralists, language acquisition includes regularities concerning the distribution of linguistic elements.
This distribution is due to acquired linguistic behaviour. For example, an English child learns to place his adjectives
before nouns, given his exposure to data as a native language learner. Thus, members of a given speech-community
will shape a child language according to the principles of reinforcement, discrimination, and generalization. This
theory was put forward by B.F. Skinner in an attempt to account for language acquisition, using the principles of
reinforcement of responses. Chomsky managed to discredit Skinner's book “verbal behaviour” (1957) by criticizing
the behaviourist theory which is neither convincing nor objective.

7. Concluding remarks
For a better understanding, we must distinguish between empiricism and rationalism, which are two
philosophical trends dealing with the acquisition of knowledge in the broad sense. The role of the mind is more
central for rationalism than for empiricism where passive data and patterns are crucial. The empiricist view thus
does not value the role of innateness. The latter consists of the innate capacity with which individuals are endowed
at birth. The rationalist position is based on the notion of innateness which it attempts to maximise. For the
empiricists (or structuralists) the child is only equipped with a minimal set of learning principles, while for the
rationalist (or mentalists) the child acquires a complex finite number of rules which determines his linguistic
competence in a relatively short period of time because he possesses an innate capacity, or "Language Acquisition
Device" as Chomsky calls it, which facilitates language acquisition. A child cannot acquire his native language with
such great speed and in such a way if he is endowed only with the empiricist learning procedures.

That human language is acquired rapidly despite its complexity is an argument for the idea that children are
endowed with an innate language faculty which makes language acquisition possible in such a short lapse of time. A
child normally starts acquiring his language from birth and develops a complete knowledge and competence in it at
about four or five years of age. Some people say that it takes longer, but it depends here on the definition you give
to language. Another argument is that native language is acquired with hardly any endeavour and with no formal
education in comparison with second or foreign language learning.

Furthermore, the child is exposed to a deficient corpus of data including slips of the tongue, false starts, etc. This
claim, however, is debatable since a recent research on 'motherese' (the language that the mother talks to her
infant) shows that the data to which a child is exposed are not that generated since the speech directed at the child
is selected: it includes grammatical and meaningful sentences relevant to the immediate environment of the child.
 Modern Schools of Linguistics: The Functionalist School
1. Introduction: The Definition and Emergence of Functionalism
Functionalism is a school and theory of modern which emphasizes the functions of language in general, or the
functions of those specific features in particular textual or other contexts. It is an approach to the description of
language structure which attaches importance to the purposes to which language is put.

The structuralists’ view of language focuses entirely on the purely structural characteristics of languages, ignoring
the possible functions of language. In this view, the system of a language is explicitly studied in abstraction from its
functions.

Functionalist approaches often work with ‘patterns', 'preferences', 'tendencies', and 'choices', in place of the
explicit rules preferred by non-functionalist linguists, particularly the structuralist linguists. In reaction to
structuralism, a large number of linguists have advanced the functionalist approach, which accounts for the
functional aspect of language and combines the investigation of structure with the investigation of function

2. Functionalism: Major approaches and pioneering scholars

In the history of functionalism, many functionalist perspectives on language study have been put forward, the most
prominent ones are the Prague school of functionalist linguistics, the Role-and-Reference Grammar (RRG) approach,
and the Systemic Linguistics (SL) theory.

2.1. The Prague school functionalist linguistics

The Prague School refers to the views and methods of the Linguistic Circle of Prague and the scholars it influenced.
The circle was founded in 1926 by Vilém Mathesius (1882-1946), a professor of English at Caroline University, and
included such linguists as Roman Jakobson (see Jakobsonian) and Nikolai Trubetskoy (1890-1938). The Prague
School functionalist Linguistics dealt with language in terms of function. Its main emphasis lay on the analysis of
language as a system of functionally related units. These thoughts and analyses of language influenced and
contributed to the development of modern linguistics.

In particular, it led to the distinction between the phonetic and the phonological analysis of sounds, the analysis of
the phoneme into distinctive features, and such associated notions as binarity, marking, and morphophonemics.
Since the 1950s, Prague School ideas have been received and developed, particularly with reference to the syntax,
semantics, and stylistics of English and Slavonic languages. Of particular note here is the formulation of a theory of
functional sentence perspective, wherein sentence analysis is seen as a complex of functionally contrastive
constituents.

Representative seminal works are J. Vachek (ed.), A Prague School Reader in Linguistics (1964), the early book by
Trubetskoy, Grundzüge der Phonologie (1939), translated in 1969 as Principles of Phonology, Jakobson and Halle
(1956), Fundamentals of Language, Jacobson article (1964), "Efforts towards a means-ends model of language in
interwar Continental linguistics", and the French linguist André Martinet (1962), A Functional View of language.

The Prague School functionalist linguists studied language patterns in so far as these had functions to fulfill. In this
respect, Sampson (1980: 104) states: "Prague linguists looked at languages as one might look at a motor, seeking to
understand what jobs the various components were doing and how the nature of one component determined the
nature of others".

2.2. The Role-and-Reference Grammar (RRG) approach

The Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), developed by William Foley and Robert Van Valin, approaches linguistic
description by asking what communicative purposes need to be served and what grammatical devices are available
to serve them.

The role and reference grammar (RRG) is a functionally orientated framework for grammatical description, in which
the choice of a grammatical structure is determined by an interaction of semantic (i.e. role) factors and pragmatic or
contextual (i.e. reference) factors.
The focus is on the structure of the clause, analysed into a 'core' layer (a 'nuclear’ verb and its associated arguments)
and a 'periphery' (e.g. adjuncts), and supplemented by a theory of juncture (how sub-clausal units combine) and a
theory of nexus (the types of syntactic relationship between the units in the juncture)

These elemental units are used in an “interclausal grammar” to analyse the variety of clausal, sentential, and larger
constructions found in languages. The approach is lexically based and makes no use of derivations. It functions by
establishing the contextual conditions which govern the pairing of meaning representations to structural
realizations.

2.3. The Systemic Linguistics (SL) theory / The Systemic-Functional Grammar (SFG)
2.3.1. The Systemic Linguistics (SL) theory: Assumptions, Principles, and Aims

The Systemic Linguistics (SL) theory is chiefly interested in examining the structure of a large linguistic unit -a text or
a discourse- and it attempts to integrate a great deal of structural information with other information (social
information, for example) in the hope of constructing a coherent account of what speakers are doing.

The Systemic Linguistics (SL) theory (also referred to as the Systemic-Functional Grammar (SFG), developed by the
British linguist M.A.K Halliday (1973) and the American philosopher, John Searle (1971), holds that language must
be studied as a means of communication, not just structure. It highlights that both structure and function must be
taken into account in order to understand the nature of language. It stresses that the study of language must look at
its internal organization with regard to the function it serves in society.

The Systemic-Functional Grammar is a functionalist approach to the linguistic description which:

holds that language is best understood as communication,

views language as a resource that is fundamentally shaped by the uses that people make of it,

aims to provide a comprehensive account of how language is used in context for communication,

aims to explain the forms of language in terms of the meanings that they express, and to develop a grammar which
is designed to “make it possible to say sensible and useful things about any text, spoken or written” (Halliday 1994).

2.3.2. The Systemic-Functional Grammar (SFG): Key concepts

From early in its development, The Systemic-Functional Grammar (SFG) has had two main distinguishing features,
which are reflected in the name.

 Systemic Grammar

Whereas many approaches focus on the syntagmatic, “horizontal” dimension of how constituents may be combined
with other constituents in a well-formed structure, SFG prioritises the choices that are open to the speaker at any
particular point in an utterance - the paradigmatic, “vertical” dimension.

The grammatical structures are then seen as the outcome of choices from those available. Sets of choices between
options can most economically be shown in the form of systems. Systems embody the Saussurean concept of valeur:
a linguistic form has meaning by virtue of the other possible forms that could have been chosen instead. Hence, this
is a “systemic” grammar.

 Functional Grammar

The model, Functional Grammar, is oriented primarily toward meaning rather than form: that is, its aim is to
describe how wordings are used in expressing meanings. It means that what a linguistic form consists of is seen as
less important than the function that it performs in the clause: hence, this is a 'functional grammar. The following
paragraphs expand on these distinguishing features in turn.
 2.3.3.The Systemic-Functional Grammar (SFG): Functions of language

SFG holds that language is a resource for social communication and can only be properly understood if that whole
picture is taken into account at all stages of the investigation. Its orientation to language in use means that it has
been widely adopted in discourse analysis and corpus linguistics and in a range of other areas most notably
education, natural language generation, and language acquisition studies.

According to Halliday, communication basically consists of the encoding of meaning, therefore, language is based on
meaning. He says that a child acquires his native language for communicative reasons, all of linked to everyday social
links. For instance, a child uses language for the following purposes:

1) to meet his material needs,

2) to control or influence others' behaviour,

3) to express himself

4) to discover the external world, and

5) To acquire some knowledge of the world.

Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar prioritizes the various purposes to which language may be put. This is based
on the assumption that the function of language is communication and that language serves a number of diverse
functions. Here are some of the functions of language which we can distinguish:

1) We pass on factual information to other people.

2) We try to persuade other people to do something.

3) We entertain ourselves or other people.

4) We express our membership in a particular group.

5) We express our individuality.

6) We express our moods and emotions.

7) We maintain good (or bad) relations with other people.

8) We construct mental representations of the world.

All of these functions are important, and it is difficult to argue that some of them are more important, or more
primary, than others, and proponents of functionalism are often interested in providing classifications of the
functions of languages or texts.