美国结构主义语言学

1、American Structuralism美 国 结 构 主 义 语 言 学作 者 姓 名 刘培龙 专 业 英语 指导教师姓名 郑众 专业技术职务 副教授 ContentsAbstract1Abstract 2Introduction3Chapter 1 Background of the American Structuralism 4Chapter 2 The Development of American Structuralism 52.1 Boas-Sapir Period (1911-1932) 52.2 The Bloomfieldian Period (1933-1950)6

2、Chapter 3 Features of American Structuralism 73.1 Synchronic and Diachronic 73.2 Descriptive and Prescriptive8Chapter4 Advantages of American structuralism 9Conclusion 10Bibliography 11Acknowledgements12AbstractAmerican structuralism is an intellectual movement that developed in France in the 1950s

3、and 1960s, in which human culture is analyzed semantically. It was divided into three periods: Boas-Sapir period, the Bloomfieldian Period, the Post-Bloomfieldian Period. The American Structuralism does have its own features, which can be summed up as comparison of two pairs of concepts: “synchronic

4、 vs. Diachronic”, “Descriptive VS Prescriptive”. American Structuralism is a great landmark in the linguistics history, and comparing with its predecessor-the traditional grammar, it has many advantages.Key words: American Structuralism; semantically; periods; feature; advantages;摘 要美国结构主义语言学是一场于195

5、0年代和1960年代在法国兴起的运动,这项运动对人类文化进行了语义分析。它可以分为三个时期:Boas-Sapir期间,Bloomfieldian期间,Post-Bloomfieldian时期。美国结构主义有其自身的特点,这可归结为两对概念的比较:“共时和历时的”、“描述性与规定”。美国结构主义语言学开创了语言学中的里程碑，同时，与在它之前的传统语法相比，其自身也有着许多优势。关键词：美国结构主义语言学；语义分析；时期；特点；优势；IntroductionStructuralism is an intellectual movement that developed in France in t

6、he 1950s and 1960s, in which human culture is analyzed semantically.Structuralism originated in the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the Prague and Moscow schools. It appeared in academia in the second half of the 20th century and grew to become one of the most popular approaches in academic

7、 fields concerned with the analysis of language, culture, and society. As an intellectual movement, structuralism came to take existentialism's pedestal in 1960s France.Chapter 1 Background of American StructuralismAmerican Structuralism，which is also called American descriptive linguistic, is a

8、 branch of synchronic linguistics that emerged in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. And it was the American anthropologists, who found that “the indigenous languages of the American Indian were dying out rapidly and they felt the urgent need to record these languages” As t

9、he Native American Indian languages were of “vast diversity” and “there were no written records of these languages”, so the traditional grammar, which focuses on “prescribing the rules governed language” proved to be infeasible to deal with the Native American Indian languages. To “record and descri

10、be these exotic languages” without having any presuppositions about the nature of language in general seemed more suitable on “descriptive procedures” occurred.Chapter 2 The development of American Structuralism There are three major periods of American structuralism in history:2.1 Boas-Sapir Period

11、 (1911-1932)Boas (1858-1942), born in Germany, anthropologist, Pioneer of the American Structuralism Handbook of American Indian Languages in 1911“descriptive linguistics”: paved way for future American descriptive linguistics. In the preface of his book, he emphasized that during the process of des

12、cribing language, the linguists should try to “discover, for each language under study, its own particular grammatical structure” and “to develop descriptive categories appropriate to it” but not impose the rules of other languages or traditional grammar on it.Edward Sapir (1884-1939), as well as Bo

13、as, was an anthropological linguist and the precursor of this school. His main ideas were summed up in his famous work Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech and the Spare-Whorf Hypothesis which was developed by his student, B.L.Whorf (1897-1941). As an eminent anthropologist, Sapir paid m

14、ore attention on the relation between language and thought and culture as he said in the preface of the Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech:“This little book aims to give a certain perspective on the subject of language rather than to assemble facts about it. It has little to say of the

15、 ultimate psychological basis of speech and gives only enough of the actual descriptive or historical facts of particular languages to illustrate principles. Its main purpose is to show what I conceive language to be, what is its variability in place and time, and what are its relations to other fun

16、damental human intereststhe problem of thought, the nature of the historical process, race, culture, art”.Benjamin Lee Whorf （1897-1941 ）born in America ,Sapirs student, eminent anthropologist who developed Sapirs views as Sapir-Whorf hypothesis .Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis It consists of two parts” ling

17、uistic determinism and relativism”, states, “the way people view the world is determined wholly or partly by the structure of their native language”. Whorf, who succeeded Sapirs supposition, proposed that “all higher levels of thinking are dependent on language. Or put it more bluntly, language dete

18、rmines thought, i.e. the notion of linguistic determinism, because languages differ in many ways”. And he also believed that “speakers of different languages perceive and experience the world differently, i.e. relative to their linguistic background, hence the notion of linguistic relativism”2.2 The

19、 Bloomfieldian Period (1933-1950)Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949), an American philologist and linguist, is considered to be the Newton in American Linguistics as the American linguist Bloch once said that: “Its not too much to say that every significant refinement of analytic method produced has come

20、 as a direct result of the impetus given to linguistic research by Bloomfields book. If today our methods in descriptive analysis are in some ways better than his, if we see more clearly than he did himself certain aspects of the structure that he first revealed to us, it is because we stand upon hi

21、s shoulders”Bloomfield is such a great figure that the period between 1933 to1950 is called Bloomfieldian Era. And its said that its in 1933 when his language was published that the American Structuralism reached its prime development, forming its own theory and method of language study.For Bloomfie

22、ld, “linguistic is a branch of psychology, and specifically of the positivistic brand of psychology known as behaviorism.” Its from the point of “behaviorism” that he holds language is “a chain of stimulus-response” behavior and believes that the linguistic description should based on the observatio

23、n of language.Chapter 3 Features of American Structuralism The American Structuralism does have its own features, which can be summed up as comparison of three pairs of concepts: “synchronic vs. Diachronic”, “Descriptive VS Prescriptive” and “Structuralism VS Traditional Grammar”.3.1 Synchronic and

24、Diachronic”A diachronic approach is one that analyzes the evolution of something over time, allowing one to assess how that something changes throughout history. You would use this approach to analyze the effects of variable change on something, thus allowing you to postulate WHY a certain state was

25、 borne of a prior state or WHY a certain state progressed to some future state. An example: you could use a diachronic approach to determine why the USA government has come to develop a system of political parties despite the fact that the founders mistrusted political parties and did not create the

26、m. A synchronic approach analyzes a particular something at a given, fixed point in time. It does not attempt to make deductions about the progression of events that contributed to the current state, but only analyzes the structure of that state, as it is. Example: one might use a synchronic approac

27、h to describe the state of political parties in the USA at some specific time, analyzing their structure and functions only as they relate to the specific state that they were in at that time.3.2 Descriptive and PrescriptiveLinguistics takes a descriptive approach to language: it tries to explain th

28、ings as they actually are, not as we wish them to be. When we study language descriptively, we try to find the unconscious rules that people follow when they say things like sentence. The schoolbook approach to language is typically prescriptive. It tries to tell you how you speak and write.Notice t

29、hat there is a place for both description and prescription in language study. For example, when adults learn a foreign language, they typically want someone to tell them how to speak, in other words to prescribe a particular set of rules to follow, and expect a teacher or book to set forth those rul

30、es. But how do teachers know what rules to prescribe? At some point in time, someone had to describe the language and infer those rules. Prescription, in other words, can only occur after the language has been described, and good prescription depends on adequate description. We obviously don't w

31、ant to be teaching people the wrong things about language.Chapter 4 Structuralism and Traditional Grammar"Traditional Grammar" term is applied to summarize the range of methods found in the pre-linguistic era of grammatical study. The whole approach of this method emphasizes on correctness

32、, linguistic purism, literary excellence, the priority of the written mode of language and the use of Latin models.The very beginning of the twentieth century was typically marked by a new approach to grammar as suggested by linguists such as Ferdinand de Saussure and American linguist like Frantz B

33、oas, Bloomfield and Edward Sapir. Their approach is called structuralism whose aim was to arouse a reaction against the approach of the traditional grammarians.Traditional grammarians considered Latin as their model because English is a part of the Indo-European family of languages, and to which Lat

34、in and Greek also belong. It did have similar grammatical elements.Traditional grammar has some limitations as it occurs with some static verbs that do not occur in a progressive form, for instance "I know" or in the imperative mood like "Know!" Traditional grammar sometimes fail

35、s to account for certain things like ambiguous sentences just like "While thinking about the queen the Honda hit the fence"ConclusionAfter Chomskys Transformational-Generative Grammar theory rose in the late 1950s; the American Structuralism, which is famous for its focus on describing the language, gradually