Structuralism (de Saussure)

Structuralism is a term we use to refer to a theoretical approach to linguistics which studies

languages as a structured system, a system of oppositions, where each element of the system
is not explored and characterized in isolation, but rather in relation to other elements of the
system.
The view of the language was put forward at the beginning of the 20 th century by the Swiss
linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure's approach to the study of language revolutionized
the discipline of linguistics to such an extent that he is frequently called the father of modern
linguistics.
He was the first who turned (European) linguistics away from its exclusive occupation with
historical explanations of linguistic phenomena (or historicism), pointing it towards
descriptions of the structure of language i.e. of the linguistic system at a given point in time.
He did not held the view that the historic description of linguistic phenomena is not important
(diachronic perspective), but simply maintained that the study of evolution of language should
be kept apart and should not preclude the analysis of a linguistic system as a whole at a
particular point in time (synchronic perspective).
There are four main Saussurean dichotomies.
a) Synchronic vs. diachronic
b) Language vs. parole (intended as the system that enables people to produce and
understand utterances vs. the actual utterances that speakers produce.)
c) The signified vs. the signifier (i.e. the concept vs. what stands for the concept, with
the linguistic sign representing the relationship between the two.)
d) The syntagmatic vs. the paradigmatic relations in language. (The syntagmatic
dimension of language represents all the relations between linguistic elements which
are simultaneously present in a structure (from the phonological to the syntactic level) ,
whereas in the paradigmatic dimension we have set of elements that an enter into the
structure. For an example, we may wish to equate the syntagmatic dimension of
language with the syntactic plane, and the paradigmatic with the lexical plane of
language. The syntagmatic vs. paradigmatic dichotomy can then be seen as the feature
of the linguistic system which sees 0n the one hand (the syntagmatic) all the word
combined in terms of grammatical rules (e.g. She will dance, and on the other (the
paradigmatic) the choice of all words can be put into a linguistic structure(e.g. he or
Anna instead of she, shall or should instead of will and e.g. go, speak, write
instead of dance) .These two dimensions of language help us to more clearly see the
different interrelations in the resulting linguistic system.
A language vs. the human language faculty (Chomsky)
In order to understand linguistics, we ought to differentiate between:
a) A natural language i.e. an individual language (e.g. English, Croatian, Italian)
b) All the properties shared by all the natural languages of the world i.e. what all the
natural languages have in common
This latter approach represents the general context in which the study of language universals
(both semantic and grammatical) is grounded. The study of universal principles an
influential direction of linguistic research yielded a new view of language, which sees it as
the (innate) knowledge of all the structural components. The innate part of the definition
pertains to the hypothesis that children are born with a predisposition for language, already
knowing what human languages are and pre-wired for their acquisition. This view, first

proposed in 1957 by the famous American linguist Noam Chomsky, is among other
arguments, based on the observation that we (come to) know the structural elements and the
compositional rules i.e. the functional properties of the incredibly complex system of our
native language within any explicit instruction, within a relatively short time. Many linguists
agree that it is indeed this incredible ability that represents what in linguistic jargon is called
the human language faculty.
Chomsky deeply impacted the field by turning linguistic explorations from the predominantly
social toward the mental i.e. cognitive thus internalizing linguistics.
The aim of his work is to give an overview of each of the structural segments of language,
trying to constantly keep in mind that we are talking about connected units that cannot be
fully understood if studied in isolation (as has frequently been done in the past). They all
make or rather they all are language. A complex , powerful miracle which makes us ,
humans, unique in nature.
Many linguists maintain that the ultimate claim of linguistics is not simply to understand the
structure and functions of language in itself, but rather to understand language as a reflection
of human thought. This also implies that the study of language is ultimately the study of
human mind.
*Chomsky : One reason for studying language and for me personally the most compelling
reason is that it is tempting to regard language, in the traditional phrase , as a mirror of
mind. More intriguing, to me least, is the possibility that by studying language we may
discover abstract principles that govern its structure and use, principles that are universal by
biological necessity and not mere historical accident, that derive from mental characteristics
of the species. A human language is a system of remarkable complexity.
Competence vs. performance
The knowledge of language consists of:
a) the knowledge of the sound system (knowing what sounds or rather phonemes exist
in a given language, and which do not (e.g. Croatian non native speakers of English
have problems pronouncing words like thought because the phoneme /O/ is not part
of the knowledge of the sound system of Croatian). It also means intuitively knowing
things relative to distribution of sounds in the given language(i.e. although the sound
combination or cluster nk exists in English (think, sink ) having knowledge of the
English sound system means knowing that there can be no English word beginning with
nk.
b) knowledge of words ( knowing that certain sound sequences signify certain concepts
or meanings( i.e. doakan means nothing to most of us, but it means living creature in
a Native American language Papogo)
c) creativity ( means having that particular knowledge of language which enables us to
combine sounds into morphemes, morphemes into words, words into sentences,
sentences into texts, and most interestingly come up with sentences/ texts never
spoken before, as well as to understand sentences/texts never heard before.
d) knowledge of grammar i.e. knowledge of sentences vs. non-sentences ( knowing
what is grammatically well formed vs. an ill formed sentence in a given language. E.g.
What he did was play a song is a well formed English sentence, and What he thought
was want a piece of cake is not, and knowing English, means also not having doubts
relative to the grammatical judgments of these two sentences.

All of the above is part of what linguists call linguistic competence. Competence as
proposed by Noam Chomsky (1965), is defined as a human ability to produce language i.e.
the knowledge that makes linguistic behavior possible (quite abstract). We see that
competence closely parallels Saussurean langue (the system underlying language
production and understanding). Linguistic competence i.e. the knowledge described above
should be distinct from the actual act of using i.e. producing language, which was named by
Chomsky linguistic performance. Linguistic performance pertains to real utterances produced
i.e. the linguistic behavior of real people ( performance parallels Saussurean parole). In simple
terms, we can say that performance pertains to the act of using words.

The origin of language

The origin of language in our species has been a topic of much speculation throughout our
history, but it is not very likely that we shall ever discover the facts surrounding the
appearance of language. It is generally believed that language became physiologically
possible only after the larynx evolved to the structure found in the homo sapiens.
All the various speculations regarding what determined the emergence of language were
collected by Danish linguist Otto Jesperson, who subsequently grouped them into four
categories. To these four categories, Jesperson himself added a fifth. This takes us to the five
possible (general) views of language emergence proposed by Otto Jesperson. They are:
1. The surrounding sound source:
The view sees the emergence of language as a response to sounds people were (habitually)
hearing in nature, i.e. in their surroundings. In other words, the main idea is that speech arose
through people imitating natural sounds from the environment. This is primarily true for
sounds of animals. E.g. a bird could have been called PAW-PAW and a dog WOOF-WOOF. Other
sounds could have been used to indicate natural phenomena such as e.g. thunder etc. If you
think of this, it makes sense that the first words were used to indicate animals (food for
people) and natural phenomena (e.g. thunder, rain). In objection to this view, however, we
ought to note that too little in todays natural languages is onomatopoeic.
Jesperson nicknamed this theory the bow-wow theory.
2. The oral gesture source of language:
This theory suggests that there was originally a strong link between physical gesture and
orally produced sounds. Gestures would have, under this view, preceded sounds as a means
of communication. It is proposed that gestural language became, at some point, accompanied
(and them possibly later replaced) by sounds, There are two good lines of argument in
support of this view. The first one sees the limitations of gesture in terms of vision: a person
standing far away, or trying to gesture to us at night, or while we are not facing him/her,
would have big problems communicating. In order to understand gestures we have to have
the person using them in sight, and vocal communication does not have this limitation, On the
other hand, while it might be simple to gesture goodbye (a gesture approximating the
waving of the hand) , try gesturing (miming) the meaning My moms uncles twins which is
practically impossible.
Jesperson tagged the oral gesture source theory the ding-dong theory.
3. The instinctive sound source:

This theory sees language originating from sounds produce by people in instinctive reaction to
fear, pain, anger, surprise and other emotions. In modern language we do have such sounds.
They are termed interjections (e.g. OUCH for pain or AH for sighing) but they are few and do
not bear enough relation to the sounds found in phonology to be viewed as the source from
which language originated.
Jesperson named this theory the pooh-pooh theory.
4. The coordinating sound source:
Under this view, speech arose when people tried to coordinate physical efforts. Groups of
people working together, or one among them had to produce a sound coordinating physical
movement (OOO-ISSSSAAA, for pulling) or else the work in the group would not be efficient.
Jesperson calls this theory the yo-he-ho (or yo-heave-ho) theory.
5. The romantic source theory:
This theory has been added by Jesperson himself. His own view is that the initial stimulus
behind the appearance of human language was the romantic side of life (love, play, poetic
feeling, and singing)
Jesperson calls his own theory the la-la theory.
The development of communicative systems in various species:
Contemporary biologists and linguists believe that the issue of development of language
cannot be studied separately from the issue of development of the (human) species. A key
issue in the context of language development is that of the (role played by the) vocal tract
and the ear, as well as that of the brain.
Scientists do not entirely agree on the dynamism of the evolution of language. Some see it as
a long process that possibly covers a very long period of time, whereby language gradually
evolved from some sort of gestural communication. This position is known as the continuity
view of language evolution. On the opposite side are all those who claim discontinuity i.e. who
believe that the human language faculty has little or nothing to do with the gestures or calls
of our hominid ancestors. The scientists advocating the discontinuity view do not advocate
he view that language just appeared out of the blue, in one giant leap, but propose that
human language is qualitatively different from all other forms of communication, either living
or extinct, since it is grounded in important changes in our thinking abilities, i.e. in the
evolution of the brain. The properties of this latter view believe that language development
went through a number of stages, before it actually resulted in language as we know it today.
Comparing human and animal talk: The universal characteristics of language:
American linguist Charles Hockett in his famous study of animal vs. human communication
proposed several universal characteristics shared between language and other modes of
communication. Although the number of universals varied from seven to sixteen in the
different presentations of his views, we shall mention just the six universal features of
communication that received the most attention:
1. Semanticity:
Language signals are symbols that convey meaning, In linguistic terms, language symbols are
associated with something (from objects to abstract notions to intentions) in the world.
Meaning drives, motivates language.

2. Arbitrariness:
Language signals are arbitrary in that there is no resemblance between the signal and
whatever the signal represents. In other words, linguistic signs are in a arbitrary relation to
what they are used to indicate. Dog, cane, or pas have been more or less arbitrarily
chosen to denote the furry four-legged barking creature, but none of these words resemble
the creature in any way. In contrast to these we have non-arbitrary signs, i.e. signs the
meaning of which can be inferred from their form ( =) for smile)
3. Discreteness:
Language signals are discrete. This means that they are clearly distinct, and clearly contrast
with each other, rather than varying continuously. Language sounds are a good example of
discrete elements ( p vs. b in English, Italian) The tone of voice and many gestures are not
discrete. They vary along continuous parameters, which have no clear boundary between one
and the other.
4. Duality of patterning:
Sometimes referred to as double articulation. Duality refers to the property of linguistic
structure to combine a number of smaller, meaningless units into large number of meaningful
units. No linguistic system is of the type one sound one meaning, but thanks to duality a
limited number of sounds allows creation of a very large number elements that convey
meaning. Duality solves the problem of the limited possibilities of the vocal tract, which can
produce at the most around 100 distinguishable speech sounds.
5. Productivity:
Known also as creativity, productivity refers to the fact that the potential number of
utterances in human language is infinite, which also implies that the human capacity to
produce and understand (new) meanings is infinite.
6. Displacement:
This feature allows users of language to refer to things and events that are physically and
temporarily displaced (non here and non now thought and talk), and even about things that
do not exist.
Out of the six universals, the first four deal with the nature of the elements that make up a
language, and the fifth and sixth are features of language use. Although some of them are
found in some forms of animal communication, only human language exhibits all of these
characteristics.