Weakness of Structural linguistics Functionalism

1. Weakness of Structural linguistics Functionalism Lecture # 18

2. Review of lecture 17 • Structuralism - new movement – reaction against the traditional and universal grammar. It studies a language employing certain procedures which linguists have formulated, tested, and improved.

3. Review of lecture 17 • A structuralist treats grammar as a devise by which words are combined into larger units of discourse. Basic assumptions -Priority of the spoken language, Objective treatment of all languages, Importance of synchronic description, Linguistics – descriptive, not prescriptive science, System structure, Language & Utterance

4. Review of lecture 17 Strengths • Chomsky says, “ The major contributions of structural linguistics is methodological rather than substative. • It made study of language scientific, precise, verifiable and objective

5. Review of lecture 17 • It examines all languages in terms of their phonological and grammatical systems. • It recognizes uniqueness of each language

6. Weakness of structural grammar • Chomsky criticized – corpus bound, neglect of meaning • Structurism ignores explanatory adequacy, meaning, linguistic universals, native speaker’s intuition and his competence of generating infinite number of sentences from a finite set of items

7. Weakness of structural grammar • Structuralism analysis the date of a given corpus by means of inductive methods, and formulates a grammar based on discovery procedures of data. • To structuralists, grammar is a catalogue of elements classified of with restrictions enumerated, and relations made physically manifested.

8. Weakness of structural grammar • Total corpus cannot be captured or verified. • Language is not merely an inventory, or catalogue of items, as structuralists imagined. • Structuralists failed to capture all ambiguities and relations. • It does not include the idea of creativity

9. Weakness of structural grammar • It does not account for the degree of grammaticality and acceptability, nor does it stop the generation of ungrammatical sentences. • Grammar is not predictive and explicit; it does not explain inter-relatedness of sentences. • Grammar should not merely be a record of data

10. Weakness of structural grammar • It should establish the general and innate properties of the language based on intrinsic properties of human mind. • Linguistics is a sub-class of cognitive psychology. • Language is both nature and nurture. • Grammar should also specify, what to say; when and why

11. Weakness of structural grammar • Structural grammar does not fulfill all these goals. It is not a whole but a part of the whole – an inventory of units such as phonemes, morphemes, words , lexical categories, phrases. • Descriptive grammar is just one aspect of generative grammar.

12. Weakness of structural grammar • Structuralism fails to speak anything about nature of language and fails to establish a relationship between sound and meaning. • A grammar should also account for deep structures. • It should give a factually accurate formulation of rules.

13. Weakness of structural grammar • It should give such rules that generate deep and surface structures. • It should give such rules that discover the iner-relatedness of sentences. • It should give such rules that give phonetic transcriptions of surface rules and semantic interpretation of deep structures.

14. Weakness of structural grammar • The units logically prior to the grammar; the grammar is logically prior to the units. • It concentrates on structuralism and ignores the native speaker’s competence. • It also ignores the psychological and sociological side of language.

15. Weakness of structural grammar • It is interested in data more for the sake of data than in capturing the creative power that generates an infinite set of sentences. • It does not speak of the internalization – the emergence of Transformational Generative Grammar

16. Functionalism • A particular movement within Structuralism • Phonological, grammatical and semantic structure of languages determined by the functions they have to perform in societies in which they operate • The representatives of functionalism are the members of Prague school

17. Functionalism • It had its origin in the Prague linguistic circle founded in 1926. • It was particularly influential in the European linguistics in the period preceding the Second World War. • The Prague school rejected Saussurean distinction of synchronic and diachronic linguistics & homogeneity of language system

18. Functionalism • The Prague school first made its impact in phonology. • One of the members – Trubetzkoy • He drew a line between phonetics and phonology. • The distinctive function of the phonetic features is only one kind of linguistically relevant function

19. Functionalism • Others are demarcative functions and expressive functions. • Most of the supra-segmental features are stress, tone, length, etc. • They have a demarcative rather than a distinctive function in particular language function

20. Functionalism • They are called boundary signals. • They do not serve to distinguish one form from another on the substitutional (paradigmatic) dimensions of contrast; they reinforce the phonological cohesion of forms. • They help to identify them syntagmatically as units by marking the boundary between one form and another in the chain of speech

21. Functionalism • In English there no more than one primary stress associated with each word form. • The position of primary stress on English word –forms is partly predictable and does not identify boundary as it does in languages with fixed stress like Polish, Czech or Finnish. • Word stress does have an important demarcative function in English

22. Functionalism • The expressive function of the phonological feature is meant by its indication of the speaker’s feelings or attitude. • For example, word stress is not distinctive in French; and it does not play a demarcative role – the way it plays in many languages • An emphatic pronunciation of the beginning of the word shows expressive function

23. Functionalism • Every language puts a rich set of phonological resources at the disposal of its users for the expression of feelings. • Functionalists emphasize on the multi-functionality of language and the importance of its expressive and social functions along with its descriptive function

24. Functionalism • An important contribution of Prague school is functional sentence perspective e.g. FSP Example: 1. This morning he got up late. 2. He got up late this morning. 1and 2 are conditionally equivalent and same meaning. The context of 1 & 2 differ systematically

25. Functionalism • In some languages, the syntactic structures of utterances or of sentences is determined by the communicative setting of the utterance. • This is called functional sentence perspective by Prague school linguistics. • Functionalism in linguistics emphasizes the instrumental character of language.

26. Functionalism • Functionalists maintain that the structure of natural languages is determined by the several independent semiotic functions – expressive, descriptive and social. • Furthermore, it says that the structure of language systems is partly though not wholly, determined by functions.

27. Summary • The Prague school rejected Saussurean distinction of synchronic and diachronic linguistics & homogeneity of language system

28. Summary • Functionalists emphasize on the multi-functionality of language and the importance of its expressive, social, and cognitive functions along with its descriptive function • Functionalism in linguistics emphasize the instrumental character of language

29. Summary • Functionalism in linguistics emphasizes the instrumental character of languageFunctionalists maintain that the structure of natural languages is determined by the several independent semiotic functions – expressive, descriptive and social. • Furthermore, it says that the structure of language systems is partly though not wholly, determined by functions.