The Prague School

The main focus of Prague School approach is on the role of functions in the act of
communication ,and the role of L in society . its major activities was concerned
with the study of the functional significance of the sound pattern within the over-
all system of language and to examine how they related.

One of the most prominent members of PS is Trubetzkoy whose teachings formed

a nucleus of the Prague School of structural linguistics.
Trubetzkoy main concept of the role of sound patterns in language is that they
serve to differentiate meaningful speech units from each other without necessarily
carrying a meaning themselves

The consideration of linguistic functions was also the focus of Roman Jakobson
who saw the importance of taking into account not only the functions of particular
elements in the working of language, but the functions of linguistic activity itself.
Jakobson has distinguished six points of view from which linguistic act can be
considered : in relation to the speaker, the listener, the context, the contact ,the
code and the message.
Another linguistic novelty of Jakobson was that he was first to state the
importance of diachronic phonology and the predilection for dichotomies for the
interpretation of linguistic facts in binary terms.

André Martinet was anoher important fegure of the PS who was interestsed in
different fields form descriptive phonology, diachronic phonology, syntax and
general linguistics
In one of his famous lecture Martinet stated that Phonology must concentrate on a
particular aspect of phonetic facts: i.e. the linguistic functions of sound differences;
the way in which they are used in the linguistic system.
Martinet also helped completing the functional view of language which had been
suggested by the School of Prague by applied his functional views to syntax. And
underlining that for syntax, function (as against form) is the central notion