HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS

STRUCTURALISM

The 20th century establishes what is known as modern linguistics, whose recognized founder is undoubtedly
doubts the Swiss linguist, born in Geneva, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913). Although they can
Recognizing lines of continuity with the linguistics of the 19th century, linguistics of the 20th century is characterized
as 'modern' due to some prominent convictions that distinguish it from that of the previous century and that
we owe it to the work of F. de Saussure.

Those convictions are:

the descriptive (not prescriptive) orientation of linguistics;

2. the priority of spoken language over written language;
3. the assumption of the importance of all languages, regardless of the degree of
development or power of its speaking communities;
4. the priority given to synchronic description over diachronic studies.

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)

Ferdinand de Saussure, considered the "father" of linguistics, has influenced later generations.
in a decisive manner; that influence was exerted based on a compilation of her lectures,
reconstructed from the notebooks of his disciples, which was published for the first time in 1916.
The Course in General Linguistics, prepared by two of his disciples (Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye),
it therefore presents characteristics that make it difficult to determine the degree of accuracy and fidelity with
the ideas of the linguist, as well as some fragments in which the argument loses intensity or reveals
certain inconsistencies with other statements from the course1.

It is interesting to note that the first translation of the Course in General Linguistics into Spanish was made
by Amado Alonso in 1945, during his exile in Buenos Aires (Ed. Losada). The prologue of
Amado Alonso is a enlightening reference for the reading of the Course, which he qualifies as "the best
organized body of linguistic doctrines that positivism has produced." Indeed, Saussure has
as a higher aim of its reflections to confer a dimension of 'science' to linguistics; for this,
It is necessary to come across a homogeneous study object, not complex, susceptible to being analyzed through
rigorous methods.

For Saussure, the field of linguistics is composed of all manifestations of human language.
all expressive forms, without discriminating between 'good' and 'bad uses' and without considering the degree of
the civilization of its speakers. The task of linguistics is therefore to carry out the description and history of all
the languages, to find the general principles of their workings and, fundamentally, to distinguish themselves and
define herself.

Delimit and define the object of linguistics: language and speech.

Saussure distinguishes primarily a general linguistic faculty, which is given to us by nature as a species and
that allows us "the exercise of language." But what is the object of linguistics? Language is
"multiform and heterogeneous", susceptible to being analyzed from very different perspectives (physical, physiological,
psychic, individual, social), it has a static yet dynamic character, current and simultaneously past. For
to build an object of study that gives linguistics the character of science, Saussure coins the
dichotomy language and speech. Language and speech are two aspects—essentially distinct—of language.
Strongly influenced by the thought of the sociologist and anthropologist E. Durkheim (1858-1917), it defines the
language as a "social fact", a social product of the faculty of language and a set of
conventions, adopted by the community, to allow the exercise of linguistic ability among the
individuals.
To advance in delimitation, Saussure starts from a basic scheme of the individual act of
communication: the starting point is the speaker's brain, where the encounter takes place between the
concept (concepts are defined as acts of consciousness) and the acoustic image (the
representations of the linguistic signs that serve for their expression). Saussure delimits in the act of
communication the physical aspects (sound waves), the physiological (phonation and hearing) and the psychological (the
union of concepts and verbal images). Add to the phases of the communicative circuit a 'faculty of
"association and coordination" that plays the main role in organizing language as a system
and what is at stake whenever it is not about isolated signs.

The place of the tongue is located in the brains of speakers, in the sum of verbal images and their
corresponding concepts stored in all individuals. Language is a treasure deposited by the
speech practice among all subjects belonging to the same community; it is a system
virtually existing in the set of individuals. In effect, language is essentially social, never
it is complete in the individual brain and is 'external' to the individual. On the other hand, it is a product that is
It is registered passively; the individual cannot create or modify it by themselves: it is comparable to a
type of contract established in the community and, to understand its operation, it is necessary to carry out a
learning task. It is, therefore, a historical fact. On the contrary, speech has a character
essentially individual: it is an act of will and intelligence of the speakers; it has a character
«more or less accidental», includes physical and physiological aspects, and contrary to language it is something
"accessory" (an individual deprived of speech due to a certain pathology may still possess their language).
Language, while being a psychic object, has a concrete nature, since the signs have a real place.
in the brain and can be represented through conventional images. A dictionary and a grammar
they can be a faithful representation of a language. Language, Saussure argues, is form and not substance, it is
the ground of the joints between the plane of concepts and that of phonetic substance.

In this way, Saussure manages to construct a homogeneous object of study, distinct from speech, that can
to study separately: a system of signs in which the union of meaning and image is essential
acoustics. It can thus be concluded that Saussurean theory assigns to the lexicon (as a set of signs)
an essential character in the language system.

Saussure considers that linguistics is a part of semiology, "the science that studies the life of the
"signs in the breast of social life," and defines as the task of the linguist to determine why language is a
special system of signs within the set of semiological facts. In this way, linguistics is a
subdiscipline within social psychology and, ultimately, psychology.

The linguistic sign

The linguistic sign consists of an association between the concept and the acoustic image, it is about a
conventional delimitation in an amorphous mass of content ('a nebula') of certain significance,
through a linguistic form: concepts can only be distinguished by virtue of being linked to a
particular significance. The language thus serves as an intermediary between thought and sound. The sign
Linguistic is a psychological entity with two aspects, which Saussure calls signified and signifier.
the concept and the acoustic image, respectively, in order to convey the indissoluble unity that
the sign conforms as a totality.

Meaning and signifier are in a relationship of interdependence; the link between them is arbitrary, it is
to say, unmotivated: there is no reason for a specific meaning to correspond to a specific signifier
and vice versa, a fact that proves the very existence of different natural languages (for the same
significado, en español: mesa de luz; francés:nuittable; inglés: nighttable; alemán: Nachttisch;nótese
Moreover, Spanish conceptualizes that meaning differently from other languages.
part, the linguistic sign is linear due to the auditory nature of the signifier: it necessarily takes place in
the time dimension and assumes its characteristics (represents a measurable extension).

The elements of the signifier are arranged sequentially and form a chain, which is evident in the
writing. The linguistic sign is immutable in relation to the individual and the speaking mass that employs it: the
language is always an inheritance from a previous era, it is 'the forced letter' and, therefore, it cannot be changed
by free will. However, in relation to the dimension of time, the linguistic sign is mutable,
since it is susceptible to alteration both in the plane of the signifier and the signified (cf. Latin)
necare, 'to kill'; Spanish: anegar; French: noyer, 'to drown'.

System and value

Language is a system of pure values, which are established by the social fact: the values of signs.
Linguistic elements are based on the use and consensus of the community. An element of the system has no value unless
in its relationship with the entirety of the system; language is a system in which all its elements are
solidarity and in which the value of each one results from the simultaneous presence of the others. The notion of value
It is verified both in the plane of meaning and in the plane of the signifier.

Within the same language, words with a common general meaning delimit each other reciprocally.
(brave, bold, reckless); the words of different languages do not always have a one-to-one correspondence.
one (English uses fish indistinctly for fish and fish, which in Spanish are opposed by the feature /-
living; their respective values emanate from the differences that constitute the total system of English and the
respectively). Regarding the plane of the signifier, it is only the opposing differences that
they configure the values of the elements: there is some margin of flexibility for the realization of
certain phonemes (in Argentina we find different pronunciations according to the variants
regional and sociolectal variations for the word rain ([lubja]; [šubja], [žubja], which carry the same value)
distinction; however, such flexibility could not be transferred to the phonological system of French). Saussure
concludes that in language there are only conceptual and phonetic differences resulting from the system and that
They relate all their elements in terms of value.

Syntagmatic and associative relationships

The relationships between the elements of the system occur in two different orders that correspond to the
two forms of our mental activity: the syntagmatic order and the associative or paradigmatic order. The
paradigmatic relationships reflect the linearity of the linguistic sign, which conditions the sequentiality of
all expressions: the elements align one behind the other in the speech chain (phones, words,
Sentences); the resulting total is called a syntagma and is composed of two or more consecutive units.
(for example, to place before, For good reason, Even if it rains, I will go out). It is about 'in presence' relationships (since
that two or more elements are equally present in the series), ordered and that have a character
finished. Paradigmatic relationships occur in the speaker's brain (they are relationships 'in absence'), which
associate elements of the system that have something in common (for example, height/freshness/heat;
affection/love;forgiveness/calefón/attention), that is, the association may be based on the presence of
common elements—a suffix—, in the analogy of meanings or in the simple phonetic similarity. The
evoked elements form an associative family that has no given order nor, generally, a number
defined.

Synchrony and diachrony

Based on the dimension of time, Saussure emphasizes the need to distinguish the perspective.
synchronic and diachronic perspective in linguistic study, a common necessity for all sciences that
they operate with values. Thus, it proposes, first of all, a synchronic linguistics that deals with the static aspect
of the language ("the axis of simultaneities"), which is defined as a system of pure values outside of any
historical consideration and, secondly, a diachronic linguistic ('the axis of successions'), which
studies the evolution of a language. For Saussure, the opposition between both points of view is absolute: the
language is compared in this sense to a game of chess: the respective value of the pieces depends on their
position on the board, therefore, the system is always somewhat temporary, varying from position to position
(= the system in equilibrium). Evolutionary changes (= alterations of the system) affect nothing more than
isolated elements—like the movement of a piece—; those changes can have high repercussions or
zero in the total system. Both perspectives are equally legitimate and necessary; however, consider
that linguistics has devoted excessive attention to diachrony and must turn to the study of the
synchrony, regarded as a description of language states. In fact, all studies labeled as
"Descriptivism" that occupied the first half of the 20th century comes more or less directly from
Saussure.

AMERICAN STRUCTURALISM

Linguistic relativism

The school of linguistic relativism represented by Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, and Benjamin Whorf
has stood out for fieldwork as it inaugurates the systematic collection of direct language data
"exotic", minority, non-Indo-European and unwritten. In addition to using that methodology, those authors
they have claimed an identical scientific value for all languages, contrary to certain deviations from
European comparatism of the 19th century.

Franz Boas (1858-1942) was born in Minden (Germany); he studied mathematics, physics, and geography in the
universities of Heidelberg, Bonn, Kiel, and Berlin, before moving to the U.S. and dedicating themselves to anthropology
and the study of various aboriginal cultures. Boas's work, in which the mentality of is highlighted
hombre primitivo [The Mind of Primitive Man] (1911) y Raza, lengua y cultura [Race, Language, and
Culture] (1940) integrates the study of language with that of culture, including religion, art, and history.

In contrast to those 19th-century linguists who relied on Darwin's ideas to justify the
supremacy of certain peoples and languages in a "parallel evolution" to natural selection (cf., for
example, Schleicher in "Comparatism," within The Linguistics of the 19th Century, Boas emphasizes the value
identical for each type of language, regardless of the race and cultural level of the associated people.
It also argues that there are no true "pure races" and that no race is innately superior.
to another. From a linguistic point of view, and under the influence of the great German linguists of the century
XIX, like Herder or Humboldt, Boas argues that each language represents an implicit classification of the
experience and that these classifications are different according to the languages, but that this does not have
no effect on the 'level' of thought or culture.

Born in Germany into a Jewish family, just like his teacher Boas, Edward Sapir (1884–1939)
he was educated at Columbia University in the U.S. Although he is often considered one of the fathers of
Anthropology, she was a linguist by training. She worked at various universities in the U.S. and Canada.
(Alberta, Chicago, Yale, Ottawa, California, Pennsylvania) and dedicated himself to studying an enormous number of
endangered languages, corresponding to the various linguistic families originating from the current territory of
USA and Canada: Eskimo-Aleut (Eskimo), Wakashan (Nootka), Siouan (Catawba), Hokan (Hopi)
yana), penutia (wasco-wishram, chinook), uto-azteca (southern paiute, ute) and atabascana (sarcee, kato, navajo,
Hupa, Kutchin, Ingalik, Takelma, Chasta Costa). He produced numerous grammars and dictionaries of those languages,
together with ethnological observations about the peoples who spoke them. Parallel to his studies
ethnological and linguistic, wrote poetry and literary criticism and composed music.

In 1921 appeared The Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech

Speech, the only book that Sapir published during his lifetime (most of his work was edited after his death).
It addresses topics such as linguistic universals, linguistic typology, and linguistic change.
what will later be the source of a series of typological works such as Linguistic Universals
Language by Joseph Greenberg (1963) or, more recently, Language Universals and Typology
linguistics [Language Universals and Linguistic Typology], by Bernard Comrie (1981).

Sapir's central interest in language... is not focused on the linguistic form itself (for example, if a
language uses or does not use inflection), nor in the linguistic meaning as such (for example, if a language can express
or not true regarding), but rather in the formal organization of meaning that is specific to a language
particular, that is, the way in which meanings are systematized or grammaticalized (for example, in
the grammatical categories or in the composition patterns).
Sapir's research on the role of meaning in grammatical form and the importance of this in
the use of language and in the formulation and transmission of ideas contributed to what is known as
the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (or the hypothesis of linguistic relativity).

In fact, the hypothesis was developed after Sapir's death by his disciple Benjamin Lee.
Whorf (1897-1941), a linguist without systematic academic training. Whorf claimed that each language
It allowed the processing of an infinite variety of experiences through a finite set of categories.
formal (lexical and grammatical) and that the experiences were classified through a procedure of
analogy. Languages vary considerably not only in the basic distinctions they recognize, but
also in the way they group them into a coherent system.

This suggests that the system of categories that each language presents to its speakers is not universal, but rather
particular. A central point of the hypothesis stated by Whorf is that linguistic categories are
used as guides in habitual thinking. In this way, if speakers manage to interpret a
experience in terms of a particular category available in their language, will automatically group by
analogy other meanings in that category. These categories, in turn, are 'naturalized': speakers
they tend to conceive experiences in an intrinsic relationship with the categories they use, even when these
they are the result of a linguistic analogy process.

Descriptivism

Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949) was a colleague of Sapir at Yale University, after having worked in
Ohio and Chicago; both were located in theoretical opposite positions, since Bloomfield, as we will see,
rejected the possibility of linguistics analyzing meaning, while for Sapir semantics
was an essential part of the studies on language and tongues.

Bloomfield's main work is certainly Language (1933), in which he presents his

version of structuralist linguistics. Bloomfield states that his work is nourished by the three traditions
main approaches in the study of language: the historical-comparative, the philosophical-descriptive, and the empirical-
descriptive. Despite that triple tradition, Bloomfield primarily promoted descriptive field studies.
That descriptivism has its limits in the fact that, as he himself admitted, the speech communities
they are often not homogeneous, an observation that has positioned it as a required precedent for all
socio-linguistic and ethnolinguistic studies of the present (see the section "Sociolinguistics" below).

One of Bloomfield's biggest concerns is to grant linguistics a character analogous to that of the
natural sciences, which he explicitly considers an epistemological model. For this, Bloomfield
proposes to eliminate all 'mentalist' or 'psychological' study of language (thus refuting a good part of the
Saussurean conception of the sign, focusing on its material and mechanical aspects; that is, language.
It is conceived by Bloomfield as one of the visible human behaviors. The behaviors are described in
terms of stimulus and reaction pairs in typical situations and that is why Bloomfield is considered
a representative of behaviorism, which has had expressions in various social and human sciences.

Behaviorism forces Bloomfield to reframe the place of semantics within linguistics.

since in that conception of language there would be no place for any type of concept or mental image
(referring to Saussure's definition of meaning): the only thing that can be verified is a set of stimuli and
reactions that occur in certain situations. Bloomfield accepts the Saussurean premise that
studying language involves studying the correlation between sounds and meanings; however, technically,
the meaning is too difficult to 'observe', so it should be left out of the scope of the
linguistics. For Bloomfield, then, linguistics "begins" with phonetics and phonology.

Bloomfield postulates that there are two components on which the study of the correlation should focus
sounds and meanings: the lexicon and grammar. While the lexicon is the total inventory of morphemes
In a language, grammar is the combination of morphemes within any 'complex form'. This
Yes, the meaning of a statement is derived from the sum of the meaning of the lexical items plus 'other
"thing," which is the meaning provided by grammar. Grammar includes both syntax (i.e., the
sentence construction) such as morphology (i.e., word formation). Each individual morpheme of
a language constitutes an 'irregularity', insofar as it implies an arbitrary relationship between a form
and a meaning that must be memorized. In this way, the lexicon is defined as 'a list of
basic irregularities”, a notion that has been reclaimed in various linguistic theories.

The general scheme regarding language proposed by Bloomfield has been revisited with minor changes.
by two other relevant authors within American structuralism: Charles Hockett (cf. Course of
modern linguistics [Course in modern linguistics], from 1958) and Zellig Harris (cf. Methods in linguistics
Methods in Structural Linguistics, 1951.

EUROPEAN STRUCTURALISM

The school of glossematics: Louis Hjelmslev

The theory developed by the Danish linguist Louis is known as glossematics.

Hjelmslev (1899-1965) - with the collaboration of Hans J. Uldall - within the framework of the Linguistic Circle of
Copenhagen, a research forum inspired by the Prague Linguistic Circle. This linguistic school is
explicitly recognizes as indebted to Saussure's contributions and, especially, to the idea that the
Language is a system of values, understood as opposing, relative, and negative entities.

Of the various definitions of language provided in the Course of General Linguistics, the following is particularly interesting.
Hjelmslev holds that language is form and not substance. Glossematics bases its theory on the
deepening this idea: language is an autonomous entity of internal dependencies, that is, within it
only the formal relationships between the elements of the different linguistic levels are important, understood
as constants (the form).

Thus, for example, the phoneme /d/ is defined within the phonological system of Spanish as a consonant.
(in opposition to the vowels), which can take the initial or final position of a syllable, due to its ability to be
followed by another consonant forming a group (dragon) and by entering into commutation with certain
elements that fall within that category (key). These definitions are sufficient to capture the role
essential of Spanish in the internal mechanism of the language, that is, within the language considered
how to scheme (the domain of pure forms).

On the other hand, language as a given social realization, but regardless of its manifestation,
The norm constitutes the material form.

Thus, the /d/ is defined from this perspective as a voiced dental-alveolar (as opposed to, for example, the /t/.
dentoalveolar deafness): what distinguishes it is a positive property, the minimal differences that grant it
positive qualities compared to the other elements of the system.

From the perspective of language considered as usage (a set of habits), the /d/ is defined as
dentoalveolar, voiced, occlusive or dentoalveolar, voiced, fricative: this definition encompasses all the qualities
registered in the usual pronunciation of the Spanish /d/. Hjelmslev concludes that of the three meanings of
the mentioned language is the one that conceives of language as a scheme closest to the meaning assigned
to this word: this way everything material is avoided and what is truly essential is separated from what is accessory.
Finally, the Saussurean speech act is referred to as an act and is nothing more than a temporary and accidental document.

In a very succinct manner, it can be said that glossematics considers language to be a semiotics.
composed of two planes: expression and content (which correspond to the planes of the Saussurean sign:
significant and meaning). The sign, from an internal point of view, is actually a function, an entity
generated by the connection between two functions: an expression and its content or a content and its expression.
There is no sign function without both expression and content being present simultaneously: therefore, the
The sign function is itself a solidarity entity. In each of the planes of the sign, it is necessary to distinguish.
between form and substance. If expressions in different languages are compared, like 'I don't know' / 'Idonot'
know (English) / I do not know (German) / I do not know them (French), we found a common factor - the
Calling the matter, the content—which when considered this way is not analyzable, is an amorphous mass. That matter is
ordered, formed in each language in a different way (to visualize this aspect we have underlined in the
examples of the elements that perform negation in different languages, see also the order of the
words and the position of the verbs that are in bold). That is to say, that each language places its own
Limits in the amorphous mass of thought, distribute the elements differently and with different emphasis.
Continuing with Hjelmslev's metaphor: it is like a single and the same handful of sand that can be put in
different molds, these molds are the shapes that are unique to each language, the material remains as
substance formed for one linguistic form and another. Each plane of the sign, content and expression, is
composed of a form and a substance, that is, by pure formal properties and by substance
formed.

An example at the level of morphology: the area of number (matter) is organized differently in the
different languages. In Spanish, the number is ordered (formed) into two categories: singular and plural; the plural
it is carried out through the morphemes –(e)s and Ø (house/houses; paper/papers; (the) Tuesday/ Tuesdays); on the other hand,
Some languages like Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, and Lithuanian distinguish singular, plural, and dual. This
the distinction is also verified in the plane of expression: matter consists of the totality of sounds
pronounceable, for example, the vowel continuum constitutes a phonetic zone of matter, which is formed from
different ways in different languages, depending on the specific functions of each one: thus
while the vowel system of Spanish consists of five vowels, German has eight.

The internal analysis of the plans of the linguistic sign leads to the recognition of smaller elements in each
one of them: thus, a word like irremediable can be divided into different smaller carrying elements
of meaning (i-remedi-(a)ble), which are used in other signs (irreducible) and, in turn, can
to distinguish oneself among other elements, without meaning—the phonemes—that serve to construct others
formants. In each plane of the sign, non-signs can be identified, referred to in the theory as figures of the
content and expression, whose number is limited and that serve to construct new signs. The
languages, by their purpose, are first and primarily systems of signs, but by their internal structure are
something different: they are systems of figures that can be used to build signs.

Hjelmslev's proposal reveals the strong influence of the logicians from the Vienna Circle, who applied the
methods and the symbolism of mathematics to studies on language. Linguistic theory must
to account for the system of all languages: it is a formal system of premises that seeks
discover and formalize the structure of a language, irrespective of any extralinguistic reality
and of all its possible manifestations. The theory requires compliance with a methodological principle that
is called 'empirical' and maintains that the description must meet the conditions of being
self-consistent (non-contradictory), exhaustive, and as simple as possible. In accordance with this principle,
the theory preferably chooses the deductive procedure, which starts from the classes to reach the
components, but it allows for the possibility of also including the inductive method.

French-speaking structuralism

French structural linguistics has given rise to what is called (in terms of Charles
Bally) general theory of enunciation. Bally (1865–1947) was part of the Geneva school that was inaugurated
by Saussure and was, in fact, one of the editors of the Course, along with Alfred Sechehaye.

If we start from the opposition between language and speech outlined by Saussure, the idea of enunciation is an attempt
to outline a linguistics of speech: it is about seeing how subjects use (in terms of Émile
Benveniste approaches the potential system of language to give rise to real expressions. From this
thus, the grammatical concept of sentence (which is an abstract unit) is replaced by statement,
that includes the situation in which the issuance takes place.

In that context, Bally resumes the opposition between entremodus/dictum, which can be traced back to the Greek Stoics.
Thus, in the statement Probably Juan is tired, the predication (the dictum) relates Juan and
tired (through the intermediate copulative verb to be) and the modality (the modus) probably affects that
preaching by highlighting the intervention of the speaker's subjectivity.

From a grammatical point of view, the mood can be expressed in very different ways.
linguistic and non-linguistic. Among the linguistic resources are the adverbs in -ly, the mood, the
time, the aspect, the person, and the distribution of information in the statement, including notions
as theme/topical (or theme/purpose, in Bally's terms), the focus and the topic, etc.
non-linguistic resources, the modality can be expressed through intonation, interjections, or the
gesturality (which are intermediate resources between language and action, insofar as they also in them
the arbitrary intervenes.

Who would further develop Bally's ideas was Émile Benveniste (1902-1976), a professor at the prestigious
Collège de France. The notion of denunciation appears repeatedly in the conferences, classes, and articles.
by Benveniste produced between 1950 and 1974 and gathered in two collections, published under the title
General Linguistics Problems [Problèmes de linguistique générale] II. In particular, in "The
the formal apparatus of enunciation," Benveniste proposes a systematization of the formal resources by
through which the appropriation of the potential system of the language by a subject is expressed
individual in order to give rise to a discourse instance. In that sense, the paraphrases of language in
The use of language, as employed by Benveniste, accounts for the fact that enunciation is basically conceived.
as an act, not as a linguistic object equivalent to a sentence, a text, etc. In this way, the
enunciation assumes a locutory also a addressee (or alocutary, in the original terminology), since
any speech involves someone addressing another person. Furthermore, enunciation also requires
a reference, that is, the expression of a certain relationship between discourse and the world.

Proof of these generalizations is the deictic systems, which (Benveniste highlights) exist in all the
languages that refer to it, here and now, the basic parameters of the enunciative situation.

To express the relationship between the participants in communication, languages use various resources: the
pronoun system (the first and second person, which indicate the participants in the act)
Declarative: you and you, versus the 'non-person': he) and the verbal morphemes of person and number
(especially relevant in the case of languages with implicit subject, such as Spanish). The spatial situation
The act of enunciation is expressed through demonstrative pronouns, adjectives, or adverbs (this, that,
here, etc.), which indicate greater or lesser spatial proximity to the speaker.

Finally, the relationship with the particular moment of enunciation is expressed through
various adverbs or equivalent nominal constructions (now, before, tomorrow, this week) and by the
verbal morphemes of tense and aspect, opposing the indicative present to the rest of the options
temporaries. From this last opposition, Benveniste constructs the dichotomy interdiscourse (where the
facts are shown intimately linked to the speaker, as they present themselves in a present coinciding with the act of
enunciation) history (where the events are presented as if they were external to the moment of enunciation,
with the predominant use of past tenses.

Structuralism in England: John Rupert Firth and Michael Halliday

Structuralism had a strong imprint in England through the work of John R. Firth (1890-1960) and
after his disciple Michael Halliday (born in 1925), who is the father of one of the functionalist theories
most influential contemporaries (the so-called Systemic functional linguistics). Firth was a scholar of
exotic languages of the East, just as M. Halliday was, before being a linguist, a specialist in language and literature
China.

J. R. Firth, while starting from some Saussurean postulates, departs from many of them and adopts a
singular attitude towards other structuralist schools: it particularly confronts with the
American structuralism, the dominant approach in the English language during its formative period. The
The Prague School also strongly influenced his ideas and those of his disciples and followers.
For Firth, linguistics must study meaning in language, understanding meaning as a
complex of contextual relationships; phonetics, grammar, lexicography, and semantics each deal with
its own components of the complex in their appropriate context. The meaning pertains, therefore, to all the
linguistic levels since the speaker makes choices among the possibilities offered by each level
attending to the context. The meaning, then, is inextricably linked to use.

Firth was a disciple of the anthropologist B. Malinowski, from whom he received a strong influence, especially in
what refers to the relevance of context in every communicative and linguistic event (hence it is usually
identify with this line as part of British contextualism). For Firth, language is a totality; the
The division of language into phonetics, grammar, lexicon, etc. is nothing more than a methodological necessity: for
Describing and explaining any element or aspect of a given level is essential to take into account all.
the other levels. On the other hand, it should never be overlooked that language always has a function
social in the context of a given culture. Languages can only be studied from specific texts,
samples of what is called restricted languages, that is, the language of science, politics, commerce,
etcetera.

With this idea, he gave importance to the study of languages for specific purposes, which today has a
dynamic development. The theory assigns a central role to the notion of system (hence the name theory will derive from it.
systemic) and also to that of structure, which defines in relation to syntagmatic relationships and
paradigmatic of Saussure: every analysis must distinguish between structure as a syntagmatic entity and
system, paradigmatic entity, and any linguistic analysis must be conducted by analyzing both the
syntagmatic relationships like the paradigmatic ones.

The study of language must appeal to the distinction of levels of analysis, but conceiving them in a way
flexible: Firth recognizes the basic levels of language as the phonetic, lexical, grammatical, and
situational (context of situation); however, it admits that the graphematic level (the study could be proposed
structural level of the orthographic system) or the stylistic level (the level responsible for explaining those traits
specific that are significant for the functional delimitation of a language style.

His disciple Michael Halliday led the so-called neofirthian school and developed it from the decade
from the sixties of the twentieth century, systemic theory. In various works from that period, it was considered that language
it was organized sound: phonetics studies sounds, and linguistics studies their organization. The description of
a language must consider the different levels of structuring; they are situation, form, and substance, and
are related to each other through context and phonology. Only the form is strictly linguistic; the
The situation consists of the real social circumstance in which the language functions and the substance is its material, whether
phonic or graphic. The description must show the relationship between the linguistic form—the organization
significant of the substance—and the situation, as well as between linguistic form and substance; for this reason postulates
the two interlevels that perform those functions (contextual and phonological). The study of form includes the
lexicon and grammar.

One of the most studied aspects of the system by M. Halliday in the sixties and seventies is the
transitivity, which consists of a network of systems that originate in the main clause (the sentence that
it contains preaching). The systems of transitivity are related to:

the types of processes used in the clause;

2. with the participants, and with attributes and circumstances of the processes and the participants.

The types of processes can be extensive or intensive, depending on whether they are action or perception processes.
(Elena compró la casa;Las gaviotas volaron) o de descripción o identificación (Las fiestas navideñas
exhausting; The president is Rodríguez Zapatero). Within the extensive processes, the following are distinguished:
effective system (aimed at an end/object, as in Elena bought the house) of the descriptive system (non-action)
Directed, the seagulls flew). In turn, the effective trait can manifest the subject as an actor (operational)
or as an object (receptive). A more refined description of the extensive clause distinguishes the
initiator of the action and other possibilities of relationship between the participants (Juan broke the)
window/The window was broken).
By the mid-seventies, his works began to show a growing trend towards
transcending the boundaries of the sentence in grammatical analysis, as eloquently demonstrated by his
Cohesion in English (1976), created in collaboration with Ruqaiya Hasan, and in
the one who develops the different cohesive procedures that make it possible to turn the text into an object with
meaning. Its functional grammar published in 1985 exhibits the consolidation of its grammatical model.
see State of the art

The Prague Linguistic School

The Prague Linguistic Circle was founded by Czech and Russian linguists (Bohuslav Havránek, Vilém
Mathesius, Joseph Vachek, Bohumil Trnka, Roman Jakobson, Nicolai Troubetzkoy and Serge
Karcevskij) in 1926, largely as a reaction against the neogrammarians' tendency to isolate the
linguistic phenomena and to study them partially. Two periods are recognized in the work of the
Prague linguists: a classic period, prior to the Second World War, and a second period, which
It begins once the war is over. The Prague linguists can be characterized as structuralists.
functionalists: they start from the internal relationship between meaning and signifier but consider the relationships of
the language with extralinguistic reality. Its contributions have been substantial on all levels of language.

In the classical period, research in the area of phonetics and phonology stands out, undertaken
especially by R. Jakobson, S. Karcevsky, and N. Troubetzkoy; the latter author is responsible for the
principles and reflections that became known as the "Prague Phonology". In his work, he develops the
notions of phoneme and allophone, that is, the distinction between 'distinctive types' and concrete realizations of
sounds, which explains that speakers pronounce and perceive the differences in the pronunciation of 'lasen'
the words asphalt, house and sewer at the same time identify those variants as realizations of the
type (phoneme) s, which allows contrasting meanings (casavs.cara). We owe to Troubetzkoy the understanding
and the systematization of the phonological systems of different languages based on distinctive features
relevant to the phonemes and the classification of phonological oppositions. Naturally, their
The work is largely based on the work of predecessors such as Baudin de Courtenay, Ferdinand.
Saussure, Otto Jespersen, etc.

On the other hand, the Prague linguists innovate by incorporating the functionalist perspective in the definition of the
language: for them, language is a system of means of expression appropriate for an end. Furthermore, language
it is a functional system in itself: the phonetic, grammatical, and lexical structures depend on the functions
linguistic and their modes of realization.

In the postwar period of the Prague School, there is a notable greater concentration on studies.
grammatical and the attention given to the higher levels of organization of grammar.

YaMathesius had conceived language as a system of correlated levels: phonological,

morphological and syntactic and suprasyntactic or stylistic. The higher levels impose their organization
categorical to the lower ones, but always the last selects the means of realization. Each level is a
subsystem, with its own units. Structural analysis must encompass the paradigmatic aspect and
syntagmatic. The contributions of B. Trnka to the field of morphology and of Frantisek are relevant.
You provide syntax. This last author reworks and theoretically completes previous contributions on the
higher levels; thus, it proposes to distinguish the syntactic levels of:

the grammatical structure of the sentence;

2. the semantic structure of the sentence and
3. the organization of the broadcast.

Especially original is the proposal for the suprasyntactic level, initially developed
by Mathesius. At this level, the unit is the emission or the 'functional perspective of the sentence', which implies
the contextualization of language in a specific situation, with a speaker and a listener, in which
The primary linguistic function is the representative or informative one. Emission is a dynamic process of
communication, in which its elements are hierarchized according to the degree of information they carry
(= communicative dynamism); those elements are theme (= known information) and rheme (= information
new).

The emission is mainly produced through non-grammatical resources although some are reflected at the level
grammatical (the contrastive or emphatic accent, intonation, word order, etc.). Studies on
the functional perspective of the sentence from the Prague linguists is a central antecedent for the
birth of Text Linguistics. In this sense, they are also an important precedent.
developments in functional stylistics: they conceived the functional stratification of the language based on pairs of
traits language partner intellectual vs. emotional, orality vs. writing, speech
dialogic vs. monologic, informative language and poetic language, the first divided into practical language and
theoretical, and above all a dichotomy that underlies in part the transversal classification: language
popular vs. literary language. Havránek distinguishes in the field of non-artistic communication the language
everyday language, the referential language and the scientific language; and later it also refers to the journalistic language.

In this context, it is necessary to mention Roman Jakobson (1896-1982), linguist, phonologist, and theoretical of the
Russian literature, who due to political persecution, like his friend and colleague Troubetzkoy, had to
to emigrate first to Prague, later to Denmark and Norway, and from there, due to the threat of the Nazi invasion, to
the United States. His work is vast and covers the fields of phonology, aphasia, general linguistics,
stylistics and poetics. Jakobson's contribution that has been most widely disseminated in linguistics and
especially in its teaching is linked to the functions of language.

That work was presented at a conference titled "Linguistics and Poetics," which was intended for
critically discuss the traditional conception that considers those fields as opposites and only
tangentially related. Jakobson argues that all verbal conduct—not just poetic—is
intentional and aimed at an end: language must be approached and studied in all its variety
functions. Based on the information theory formulated in 1948, which is articulated around the factors
that constitute communication (sender, receiver, reference, channel, message, and code), deduced the existence
of six linguistic functions: the expressive, the conative, the referential, the phatic, the poetic and
Linguistic metalanguage. In this way, he completed the model of classical linguistic functions, presented
by Karl Bühler in his book, Theory of Language (1930).

GENERATIVE GRAMMAR (CHOMSKY)

Syntactic structures

One of the most famous, innovative, and influential linguists of the 20th century is, undoubtedly, Noam.
Chomsky (born in 1928), also known for his writings on politics, history, and economics. Student
brilliant at the University of Pennsylvania, he received his doctorate in 1955 (the same year he joined
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT), under the direction of the structural linguist Zellig Harris. His
doctoral thesis (The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory) no
it was published until the seventies, but, two years later, it published an excerpt that literally revolutionized the
Linguistic theory: Syntactic Structures (1957).

Among the most influential ideas of syntactic structures, it is worth mentioning what was later called the problem.
logic of language acquisition or Plato's problem. The proposal is that there is a knowledge
specific about the own language, which is not managed by a 'general intelligence' and which does not '
learn" in the sense that the production and interpretation of sentences require a number of operations
complex formal structures that it is implausible that children acquire through "explicit instruction" from their
older.

No one teaches a child how to move the verb to the correct position in the case of a question, he argues.
Chomsky: thus, the question 'Where is Juan?' seems to derive from the affirmative sentence 'Juan is in'.
Replacing the circumstantial with an interrogative pronoun and moving the verb to the second.
position. The ungrammatical sentences *Where Juan is? or *Where is Juan at home? suggest that a
a year and a half old child (who can already ask questions) must have an intuitive understanding of
notions such as circumstantial verb, on which, evidently, no one has instructed him.
Crucially, cases with complex subjects or verbs indicate that, in addition, it has to handle the notions
dissyntagma, disubordination and periphrasis to produce questions without errors such as Where is the
chico?, ¿Dónde está el chico que invitaste ayer?, ¿Dónde ha ido Juan?

From examples like these, Chomsky infers that there must be a formal knowledge, prior to the
experience, that allows the child to handle all those notions with great speed and without instruction
explicit. In this way, it opposes the views of the mind as a tabula rasa, which are typical of the
behaviorist views of language (see Bloomfield, for example) and the extreme views that the
language determines thought, which would not previously have any category (see Whorf, for
example).

Another property of language that Chomsky points out is expressed in the so-called problem of Descartes, which
it highlights the fact that, from a finite set of units and rules, a speaker can generate
infinite grammatical sentences and, therefore, interpretable for listeners (regardless of whether
whether they have heard it before or not). From this idea derives one of the usual names of perspective
theory developed by Chomsky, generative grammar or generativism.

Regarding the model itself, Chomsky proposes that there are transformations, that is, operations of
movement, deletion, addition, or permutation of material that allow capturing the connections between
related sentences (like the one we mentioned earlier for a question and its corresponding
assertive sentence). From this notion of transforming one structure into another, another one of the names derives.
which has received the theoretical current led by Chomsky (transformational linguistics).

Other pairs of related sentences that, according to Chomsky, can be explained through
transformations are the sentences marked by affirmative/negative polarity (for example, the series Juan
he went to the movies / Juan did not go to the movies / Juan did go to the movies) or the contrast between the active and passive voice (Juan
he destroyed the dikes / The dikes were destroyed by Juan). For its part, also the verbal morphology (by
example, the agreement between verb and subject) is introduced through transformations. Note that,
while some transformations are mandatory (the agreement of verb and subject, for example), others
optional ones (the passive or the negation).

In syntactic structures, the transformations are rigidly ordered among themselves, in order to explain
certain empirical phenomena of English morphosyntax. For example from Spanish, the
Transformation of passive (rule number 12) should necessarily precede the addition of morphology.
that arises from the agreement of the verb with the subject (rule number 15), as can be observed in the pair of
preceding sentences (i.e., Juan destroyed the dams / The dams were destroyed by Juan).

Another term introduced in syntactic structures is grammaticality, which refers to intuitions.

of speakers in front of constructions of their mother tongue. Chomsky differentiates the problems of
grammaticality of the meaning problems that can arise from extragrammatical factors, which do not
they affect the structure (nor, therefore, the interpretability) of a sentence. For Chomsky, the notion
degrammatical is equivalent to 'significant' or 'meaningful': a sentence like The colorless green ideas
they sleep furiously, although various classes of
semantic incongruence, it is well-formed from a syntactical point of view and, therefore, can receive
some interpretation.

Aspects of the theory of syntax

Chomsky's second book, which revisits and refines Syntactic Structures, is Aspects of the Theory of ...
syntax[Aspects of the theory of syntax] (1965). Among the concepts developed there, several appear that
they are considered representative of the entire generative grammar.

This is how the dichotomy performance vs. competence happens, which for Chomsky
allows to distinguish the actual and observable linguistic behavior (performance) in contrast to the internal system of
knowledge that underlies it (competence). Chomsky explicitly assumes that competence is a
idealized faculty, resulting from the abstraction of the judgments of an ideal speaker/listener from a community
completely homogeneous linguistics, which is not affected by irrelevant conditions for grammar such as
memory limitations, distractions, errors, etc. (Chomsky, 1965, p. 3).

In that sense, Chomsky separates competence, which is an idealized capacity (mental or psychological), from
the real production of statements, which is the performance. The dichotomy recalls the distinction
between language and speech Saussure, as Chomsky himself notes (1965, p. 4). Both pairs of concepts
they intend to extract from the mass of facts of language a systematic entity that can serve as an object
of legitimate study of linguistics (language, for Saussure; competence for Chomsky), to which
they differentiate from other phenomena related to language that are heterogeneous and difficult to systematize (the
speech and acting, respectively). However, whereas for Chomsky competence is the
set of underlying rules to the infinite sentences of a language, for Saussure the language coincides
practically with the lexicon, as a 'systematic' inventory of items.

On the other hand, it should be remembered that Chomsky rejects the ideas that communication is an inherent function.
of language and that the language should be studied in the context of human interactions, two premises
assumed by structural linguistics.

Starting from the dichotomy competence/performance, Chomsky presents in Aspects... the opposition between
grammaticality and acceptability of sentences. While the grammaticality of a sentence is
refers to properties that pertain to competence, that is, whether the sentence is or is not formed according to the
rules that are part of the internalized knowledge of speakers, acceptability, on the other hand, has
what to see with factors related to performance, which include everything from semantic and pragmatic normality to
the complexity of the sentence.

Also based on the opposition between competence and performance, Chomsky raises in Aspects... the
difference between an explanatorily adequate grammar (which accounts for competence, that is, of
internal knowledge of the speaker about their language) as opposed to a descriptively-oriented grammar
adequate (which is limited to observing the facts or behavior without accounting for the underlying system of rules).

The other important modification that adds aspects of syntax theory to the structures model.
Syntactically, it is the role that the lexicon plays. In Aspects... the lexicon is clearly distinguished from
transformational component (something that did not happen in syntactic structures, which allowed for generation
undesirable of ungrammatical sentences.

Thus, the lexicon brings together all the idiosyncratic information (phonological, syntactic, and semantic) that speakers
they know about lexical items. Especially relevant is the incorporation of the notion of
subcategorization, which specifies what type of selection verbs have: for example, destroy is inserted in
a context [__ SN]; to believe, in [__O]. The existence of subcategorization in lexical entries explains the
Ungrammaticality of sentences like Juan laughs Maria, which syntactic structures allowed. From that
Chomsky's proposal began to be discussed in the mid-1960s regarding the nature of the
subcategorization, that is, whether it should be addressed in syntactic terms (like the previous ones, in which it was
they specify the syntactic characteristics of the complement) or in semantic terms (for example, by
through thematic roles: destroyselect an agent that carries out the action and a theme, which is the
entity passively involved) or if the selection is dual (syntactic and semantic).

With the determination of the place of the lexicon in the model, in Aspects... the opposition is finalized.
deep structure and surface structure of a sentence, which was already implicit in the notion of
transformation of syntactic structures. The deep structure is derived more or less directly from the
properties of lexical items, while the surface structure is created once the
syntactic operations corresponding to the transformational component.

Seventies
For generative grammar, the years that followed Aspects of the Theory of Syntax were
marked by the discussion about which sentences could be formally correlated with each other through
a transformation (i.e., which sentences can be derived from one another) and what phenomena should have been
considered independent from a syntactic point of view, although there was a sense of
semantic or formal kinship.

A fundamental text on that path is 'Remarks on Nominalization'

nominalization (1970), from which generative grammar resumed Bloomfield's opposition between the
morphology and syntax as different components of grammar that account for the formation of
different types of complex units. Chomsky distinguishes, within the various classes of words with
nominal category that appears linked to a verb (gerunds and 'true' nominalizations), those
relationships that are systematic, regular, and predictable (and must, therefore, be captured by transformations
syntactic) of those unpredictable relationships that must be expressed through lexical rules or
morphological. At the same time, 'Observations on Nominalization' can also be read as a long
argument against the authors enrolled in generative semantics (like George Lakoff, Paul
Postal, John Ross), which constituted the first offshoot of generative grammar in the last
years of the sixties and the early seventies. The generative semantics tried to explain why
through transformations certain semantic relationships that are not formally expressed in the
grammar (for example, those that link in Spanish the verbs to die and to kill - understood as 'to cause that
another dies'); on the contrary, Chomsky tried to demonstrate that these relationships cannot be the result of
syntactic operations, but must be expressed through rules of another nature (lexical or
semantics.

In summary, the central points of generative grammar already appear in Chomsky's early texts.
that remain today. Among them, it is worth mentioning the proposal of the existence of knowledge
innate / universal language, which has led to redesigning the theory of acquisition (and has influenced
directly in the enormous development of psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics in recent years); the
preeminence granted to the syntactic component as the locus of the universal properties of language; the
interest in the creative or generative aspect of human language, associated with recursiveness as
fundamental property, and, finally, the assumptions that there are intermediate units between words and
the sentences (phrases or syntagmas) and that the phonological structure of a sentence does not coincide
necessarily with its semantic structure (i.e., there are displacement and ellipsis operations that lead to
a lack of correspondence between sound and meaning). As an epistemological premise, Chomsky has
raised the idea that linguistics should not be a science that is simply classificatory or descriptive, but
explanatory and, therefore, it must look for the laws or rules that underlie linguistic behavior.

Syntactic structures and aspects..., which gave rise to the so-called extended standard theory that
developed throughout the seventies, intended to serve as a first step in the explanation of the
human capacity for language; however, the proposed syntactic model lacked universality. Thus,
for example, certain transformations, such as the insertion rule of the auxiliary verb do, made
reference to particular phenomena of English, without any universal scope. Only in the eighties, with the
the theory of principles and parameters, later reformulated as the minimalist program, will propose a model
able to reflect in an appropriate and systematic way not only the universal characteristics of language, but
also the particular properties of languages.

Source:
Par@Educar–Contributions for teaching at the secondary level
Available in:http://www.aportes.educ.ar/sitios/aportes/nucleo/index?nucleo=language_nucleus_path