Modern Schools of Linguistic Thought: A Crash Course

132 Pages·2020·2.617 MB·English

by  Zeki Hamawand

Zeki Hamawand
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Modern Schools of Linguistic Thought
Zeki Hamawand
Modern Schools of
Linguistic Thought
A Crash Course
Zeki Hamawand
University of Kirkuk
Kirkuk, Iraq
ISBN 978-3-030-42576-0 ISBN 978-3-030-42577-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42577-7
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020
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Preface
This textbook gives a brief account of the linguistic battles between schools of lin-
guistic thought, competing with each other. Namely, it surveys the dominant schools
of linguistics from the eighteenth century and onwards, devised by different think-
ers responding differently to linguistic issues. It discusses issues related to linguis-
tics such as theoretical paradigms, grammatical models, interdisciplinary fields,
practical applications, and technical methods. It presents the rival schools that grew
up around their founders who responded differently in relation to linguistic topics,
with each school having its merits and demerits. It lays the emphasis on the most
notable contributions, important discoveries, and actual findings of each school. It
addresses the assumptions proposed by outstanding scholars in the field, which have
a profound effect on the analysis of language. It is my hope that this account will
fulfill the needs of readers in the field by deepening their appreciation of what has
been done in the study of language and by expanding their interest in the history of
linguistics as an important branch of general linguistics.
The book is based on the assumption that the philosophy of a science is informed
by its history, and that the development of a science is understood as an intellectual
process. In the light of this assumption, it explores the formation and development
of the various schools of linguistic thought. To that end, it links theory with practice
in the survey. It has, therefore, two aims. The theoretical aim is to acquaint students
with the theories of linguistics, concentrating on the set of principles that they pro-
pose to provide valid analyses of language structure. The practical aim is to famil-
iarize students with the mechanisms used in analyzing language structures, and to
inform them of the techniques employed to account for their interpretation. The
ultimate aim is to demonstrate that the methods used by previous generations are of
great interest to, and the concepts they proposed are of paramount importance for,
current researchers.
To achieve its mission, the textbook uses an approachable style and condenses the
information into points. The linguistic schools are arranged in chronological order,
one following another in time. As a textbook, it targets two classes of audience.
Primarily, it targets students in linguistics departments. It provides them with sketches
of schools of linguistic thought and informs them more fully about their assump-
tions, objectives, and methods. Secondarily, it targets students at English depart-
ments. It helps to deepen their understanding of the role of linguistics in studying
human language. As a guidebook, it targets two classes of audience. First, it targets
v
vi Preface
linguists. The aim is to acquaint them with the different tools employed by each lin-
guistic school to account for language structure. Second, it targets scholars from
neighboring disciplines. The aim is to heighten their awareness of the important role
of linguistics and its interaction with other disciplines to solve language problems.
The textbook is meant to help students gain insight into the science of linguistics
and trace its historical development. It broadens their understanding of the impor-
tance of linguistics as a branch of science. It does not necessarily suppose any fore-
knowledge of the topic. The definitions that it presents and the explanations that it
gives should not be taken as hard-and-fast criteria, but rather as rules of thumb. To
get a grasp of any section or subsection, the students are advised to study its content
carefully, make a brief summary of it, and then tackle the study questions at the end.
The purpose of this is twofold. First, it attracts attention to the core of the section.
Second, it tests comprehension of the material presented. Finally, further reading is
included at the end of the textbook. The purpose of this is twofold. First, it acknowl-
edges works that contributed in one way or another to the present discussion.
Second, it provides additional sources on the topics covered in the analysis.
To make maximum use of the textbook and achieve the aims of the course on the
history of linguistic thought, teachers should bear in mind some points. First, the
textbook is organized in such a way that it allows teachers flexibility in designing a
course to meet teaching requirements. Teachers are free to use the textbook in a way
that suits the level of the course they teach and/or the time available. Basically, the
textbook is ideal for a one-semester course of ten teaching weeks. In this case,
teachers are recommended to cover one chapter per week. Second, each chapter
begins with an overview, where the subject matter, the objectives and the procedures
are stated. The overview aims to help the student understand the content of the chap-
ter before delving into the details. Each chapter is divided into sections. Each chap-
ter closes with study questions. These are meant to reinforce the material presented
or encourage students to check their own understandings. Third, when a concept is
first introduced, it is rendered in boldface to highlight its significance.
This textbook offers a concise outline of the history of modern linguistic theory
in Europe and America. In the course of preparing it, a number of people have con-
tributed directly or indirectly to its evolution. A very special nod of appreciation
goes to the following linguists for checking parts of the text or providing relevant
material: Lachlan Mackenzie, Elizabeth Winkler, Brian Joseph, Alison Wray,
Frederick Newmeyer, Janet Holmes, William Foley, James Gee, Jonathan Culpeper,
Susan Curtiss, Patience Epps, Louise Cummings, Susan Hunston, Charles Meyer,
John Hewson, Alistair Knott, Marcel Danesi, Lesley Jeffries, Anders Holmberg,
Malcolm Coulthard, Richard Hudson, Nancy H. Hornberger, Nigel Fabb, Wayne
Finke, Anthony Woodbury, Howard Jackson, Nick Thieberger, and Dorin Uritescu.
In spite of their help, I take full responsibility for any errors. A special word of
thanks goes to Cathy Scott, Commissioning Editor at Palgrave Macmillan, for her
intelligent editorial supervision. Finally, thanks are due to my wife for her kindness,
generosity and patience.
Kirkuk, Iraq Zeki Hamawand
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2.1 What Is Language? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2.2 Why Study Language? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2.3 Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2.4 Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3.1 What Is Linguistics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3.2 Why Study Linguistics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3.3 Axes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3.4 Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2 Theoretical Paradigms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2 Origin-Centered Paradigms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2.1 Comparative Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2.2 Historical Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.2.3 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.3 Form-Centered Paradigms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.3.1 Structural Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.3.2 Generative Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.3.3 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.4 Meaning-Centered Paradigms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.4.1 Functional Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.4.2 Cognitive Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.4.3 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3 G rammatical Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.1.1 What Is Grammar? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.1.2 Why Study Grammar? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
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3.2 Rule-Concerned Grammars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.2.1 Prescriptive Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.2.2 Descriptive Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.2.3 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.3 F orm-Concerned Grammars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.3.1 Structural Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.3.2 Generative Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3.3 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.4 Meaning-Concerned Grammars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.4.1 Functional Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.4.2 Cognitive Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.4.3 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4 Interdisciplinary Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.1.1 What is an Interdisciplinary Field? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.1.2 Why Study an Interdisciplinary Field? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.2 H ead-Focused Interdisciplinaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.2.1 Psycholinguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.2.2 Neurolinguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.2.3 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4.3 Society-focused Interdisciplinaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4.3.1 Sociolinguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4.3.2 Anthropolinguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.3.3 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.4 S tyle-Focused Interdisciplinaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
4.4.1 Literary Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
4.4.2 Forensic Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.4.3 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.5 Environment-Focused Interdisciplinaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.5.1 Geolinguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.5.2 Ecolinguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.5.3 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.6 S ummary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5 P ractical Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
5.1 I ntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
5.1.1 What Is a Practical Application? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.1.2 Why Study a Practical Application? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.2 Teaching-related Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.2.1 Applied Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
5.2.2 Contrastive Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
5.2.3 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.3 Text-related Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.3.1 Discourse Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Contents ix
5.3.2 Text Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
5.3.3 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.4 Speech-related Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.4.1 Developmental Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
5.4.2 Clinical Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
5.4.3 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
5.5 Language-related Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.5.1 Field Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.5.2 Documentary Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
5.5.3 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
5.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
6 Technical Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.1.1 What Is a Technical Method?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
6.1.2 Why Study a Technical Method? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
6.2 Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
6.2.1 Intuition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
6.2.2 Elicitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
6.2.3 Observation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
6.2.4 Experimentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
6.3 Corpus Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
6.3.1 Quantitative Corpus Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
6.3.2 Qualitative Corpus Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
6.3.3 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
6.4 Computational Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
6.4.1 Speech Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
6.4.2 Text Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
6.5 Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
6.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
7.1 Theoretical Axis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
7.1.1 Disciplinary Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
7.1.2 Interdisciplinary Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
7.2 Practical Axis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
7.2.1 Practical Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
7.2.2 Technical Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
List of Tables
Table 2.1 Theoretical paradigms of linguistics 33
Table 3.1 Grammatical models of linguistics 53
Table 4.1 Interdisciplinary fields of linguistics 74
Table 5.1 Practical applications of linguistics 89
Table 6.1 Technical methods of linguistics 105
xi