Structural linguistics

A usually synchronic approach to language study in which a language is analyzed as an independent network of formal systems, each of which is composed of elements that are defined in terms of their contrasts with other elements in the system.

“Methodologically, it analyzes large-scale systems by examining the relations and functions of the smallest constituent elements of such systems, which range from human languages and cultural practices to folktales and literary texts”Structuralism is a theory of humankind in which all elements of human culture, including literature, are thought to be parts of a system of signs. Critic Robert Scholes has described structuralism as a reaction to "’modernist’ alienation and despair."

(pratt.edu/~arch543p/help/structuralism.html)

Structuralism was heavily influenced by linguistics, especially by the pioneering work of Ferdinand de Saussure. Particularly useful to structuralists was Saussure’s concept of the phoneme (the smallest basic speech sound or unit of pronunciation) and his idea that phonemes exist in two kinds of relationships: diachronic and synchronic. A phoneme has a diachronic, or "horizontal," relationship with those other phonemes that precede and follow it (as the words appear, left to right, on this page) in a particular usage, utterance, or narrative—what Saussure, a linguist, called parole (French for "word"). A phoneme has a synchronic, or "vertical," relationship with the entire system of language within which individual usages, utterances, or narratives have meaning—what Saussure called langue (French for "tongue," as in "native tongue," meaning language). An means what it means in English because those of us who speak the language are plugged into the same system (think of it as a computer network where different individuals can access the same information in the same way at a given time).Empirisism in american structuralism is An approach to acquiring knowledge that emphasizes repeatable observations through the  physical senses
Noam Chomsky, for instance, who powerfully influenced structuralism through works such as Reflections on Language (1975), identified and distinguished between "surface structures" and "deep structures" in language and linguistic literatures, including texts. Characterizations of American Structuralism: Corpus-based, Examples from observation, not from introspection, Taxonomic: no universals, Bottom-Up: phonetics, phonology, etc…, Each level is autonomous, Based on early 1900s ideas: behaviorism, tabula rasa, empiricism.

Structuralism in United States, can be defined positively. In the United  States itself a line of development can be traced that is not only geographical, but that has a certain social and intellectual unity.

Leonard Bloomfield

Leonard Bloomfield founded American structuralism, based on structural linguistics developed by Saussure. Bloomfield is known for applying the principles of behaviorist psychology to linguistics, defining "the meaning of a linguistic form as the situation in which the speaker utters it, and the response it calls forth in the hearer."

His 1933 book Language is the classical structuralist text, setting out Bloomfield's rigorously empiricist approach to language study.

In his 1942 guide for second language learners, he advocated a blank slate approach:

The sounds, constructions, and meanings of different languages are not the same: to get an easy command of a foreign language one must learn to ignore the features of any and all other languages, especially of one's own.

The unity of American Structuralism would be associated in the minds of most linguists today with the approach variously called “post-Bloomfieldian”, “neo-Bloomfieldian”, or simply “Bloomfieldian”.

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Glossary

Glossary

A priori: Expression often used to disparage other’s work and invite approbation of one´s own, usually dad.

A posteriori: Expression often used to disparage other’s work and invite approbation of one´s own, usually good. 

Basic and modified meaning: the meaning of a morpheme is a sememe, constnt, definite, discrete from all other sememes.

Behaviorism: assumed the fundamental identity of physically determined©- behavior with any other kind of nonlinguistic (a) behavior. But it was conceded that while all (a) behavior is the immediate, consequence of (a) factors, (c) behavior is mediate.

Binarism: a mode of thought predicated on stable oppositions (as good and evil or male and female) that is seen in post-structuralism analysis as an inadequate approach to areas of difference;  also   : a specific dichotomy subscribed to or reinforced in such thought.

Binarisim revisited: Ambiguous or inadequate elements in combination compound ambiguity or inadequacy.

Borrowing: to receive with the implied or expressed intention of returning the same or an equivalent.

Colloquial standard: it is observed in situations lacking formal behaviors among observably privileged classes within a larger speech community.

Connotation: it is a subjective or socialized relation of the referent for speaker to the other referents and properties.

Connotation: the suggesting of a meaning by a word apart from the thing it explicitly names or describes.

Constituency: a group or body that patronizes, supports, or offers representation  *creating grass-roots constituency for continuing the project — Fred Reed*  b : the people involved in or served by an organization (as a business or institution).

Correct: Truth is not popularly distinguished from validity, but validity can be viewed as subsuming true and correct. E.g. statements are true, calculations correct.

Denotation: it is reference and/or referent.

Dialect geography: the study of dialects with regard to their geographic distribution, as well as how their distribution may be affected by geography, e.g., the spread of a particular dialect being halted at a mountain range, forest belt, body of water, etc.

Duration: it is the relative length of time through which the vocal organs are kept in a position.

Empiricism: The posteriori or inductive approach is claimed to discover structure in data.

Endocentric: Is a grammatical construction that fulfills the same linguistic function as one of its parts, free forms combining produce a resultant phrase, of which the form-class of one member may by determinative of the phrase’s grammatical behavior.

Episemes: Are the meanings of the tagmemes.

Exocentric: Is when the phrase or construction does not follow the grammatical behavior of either constituent.  

Expression: If meaning is sense: it is a static relation, process, or action relating a speech and inside the speaker. If meaning is reference: it is a static relation, process, or action relating a speech and outside the speaker. If meaning is sense-and-reference: it is a static relation, process, or action linking an aspect of outside the speaker mediated by inside the speaker.

Form: it expresses its meaning.

Free forms: free forms combing can be said to produce a resultant phrase, of which the form-class of one member may be determinative of the phrase’s grammatical behavior.

Insight: the power or act of seeing into a situation.

Labialized: it is when the lips are rounded during the production of the consonant.

Labiovelatized: it is together with the former.

Language: we use language to study language. It is here that conflicting assumptions about what can be legitimate data, what is an appropriate method, what counts as evidence and what are feasible goals. Language can be seen as the totality of mutually effective substitute responses.

Lexicon: the vocabulary of a language, an individual speaker or group of speakers, or a subject.

Linguistics: is talk about language, the need to discuss these distinctions suggests that somehow, the (a) objective data can be connected with (b) how we think even if (c) our inherited language conventions are an unreliable witness of how it works.

Literary standard: it is accessible through general or personal educational effort, tracends geographic and social barriers, and is used on occasions described as formal.

Local dialect: it is that interacting groups with which others have so little contact those dialect speakers are incomprehensible without considerable attention.

Mentalism: is dualism, it recognizes two kinds (mental and material) of data, experience, perception, insight, causality, evidence, explanation, study goals and methods of study.

Mere: is a syncategorematic expression: it lacks both sense and reference; is not quantifiable, and does not function as subject or predicate in falsifiable assertions. Its use informs us about attitudes, not facts.

Modification: it presumes some standard from which a departure is made, and the criteria for establishing the base can vary, legitimately or inconsistently.

Notation: the act, process, method, or an instance of representing by a system or set of marks, signs, figures, or characters.

Order: Is the most important in languages, grammatically and /or stylistically. 

Palatalization: here, during the production of a consonant, the tongue and lips take up, as far as compatible with the main features of the phoneme, the position of a front vowel, etc.

Parts of speech: the verb, the noun, the pronoun, the adjective, the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction, and the interjection, and each of these explain how a word is used. 

Phoneme: it is the branch of science that deals with sound-production.

Phonetics: it provides an objective record of gross acoustic features, only part of which is distinctive for particular languages.

Phonology: or practical phonetics, determines which features are the distinctive ones.

Pitch: it is the frequency of vibration in the musical sound of the voice.  

Provincial standard: it is observed among those remote geographically from the formative environments of cultural centers.

Psychologists: talks about language. 

Rationalism: the a priori or deductive approach has been said to impose structure upon data.  

Reference: it is a static relation, dynamic process or action, whose terms are in inside the speaker and outside the speaker.

Referent: it is a bit of objective outside the speaker or subjective inside the speaker now regarded as part of outside the speaker.  

Situation: it includes every object and happening in there, hence an aspect of outside the speaker which speaker and hearer equally constitute, distinct only by their individual conditioning by the rest of outside the speaker in the past. 

Sense: it is a state, process, or action within an inside the speakers, by which a speech is related to an outside the speaker.

Sentence types: order can imply position, which can be functional; a form alone is in absolute position with another, in included position. Sentences related through order, position, and, within a sentence, are distinguished by modulation, paratactic arrangement, and features of selection.

Sub- standard speech behavior: it is found among those who must interact daily as peers with each other, but only occasionally, and as subordinates, to the privileged; their goals, satisfactions, reinforcement and opportunities differ markedly from those of standard speakers, although they may occupy identical territory. 

Syntax: Is "the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages.  

Tagmemes: is the smallest functional element in the grammatical structure of a language are meaningful units of grammatical form and can consist of several taxemes. 

Taxeme: any element of speech that may differentiate one utterance from another with a different meaning, such as the occurrence of a particular phoneme, the presence of a certain intonation, or a distinctive word order. 

Transition: it is the manner in which the vocal organs pass from inactivity to the formation of a phoneme, or from the formation of one phoneme to that of the next, or from the formation of a phoneme to inactivity. 

Valid: logically correct.

Velarization: here, in which the tongue is retracted as for a back vowel.   

Words: Are the smallest elements that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content. The word is a free form; freedom of occurrence largely determines our attitude towards parts of a language.

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Lingüística Antropológica

Lingüística Antropológica

Ethnography: is the scientific study of human social phenomena and communities, through means such as fieldwork. It is considered a branch of cultural anthropology, the branch of anthropology which focuses on the study of human societies. The field of ethnography is a very important part of cultural anthropology, since many anthropologists use other people's fieldwork in their research. It may also provide clues to trends in human society, and ethnographers can be found in some surprising places.
Linguistics Ethnography: It is a term that design a particular configuration of interests within the broader field of socio- and applied linguistics, ‘linguistic ethnography’ (LE) is a theoretical and methodological development orientating towards particular, established traditions but defining itself in the new intellectual climate of late modernity and post-structuralism. Linguistic ethnography is an orientation towards particular epistemological and methodological traditions in the study of social life.
Ethno linguistics: Is that part of anthropological linguistics concerned with the study of the interrelation between a language and the cultural behavior of those who speak it. Is a field of linguistics which studies the relationship between language and culture, and the way different ethnic groups perceive the world. It is the combination between ethnology and linguistics. The former refers to the way of life of an entire community, i.e., all the characteristics which distinguish one community from the other. Those characteristics make the cultural aspects of a community or a society. Ethnolinguists study the way perception and conceptualization influences language, and show how this is linked to different cultures and societies. An example is the way spatial orientation is expressed in various cultures. The most representative in ethnography linguistics studies were Edward Sapir, Franz Boas and Robert Lowie.

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