American structuralism and Bloomfield

Lecture 5

Structuralism

The term structuralism is used in many contexts in different disciplines in the 20th century. Structuralism proposes the idea that many phenomena do not occur in isolation, but instead occur in relation to each other, and that all related phenomena are part of a whole with a definite, but not necessarily defined, structure.

Structuralist

Structuralists, in any area of knowledge, attempt to perceive that structure and the changes that it may undergo with the goal of furthering the development of that system of phenomena or ideas.

In Linguistics

Collective term for a number of linguistic approaches in the first half of the twentieth century, all based on the work of F. de Saussure, but strongly divergent from one another.

While ‘structuralism’ in its narrower sense refers to de Saussure’s linguistic theories, in its broader sense it is an umbrella term for approaches in anthropology, ethnology, sociology, psychology, and literary criticism, which – in analogy to linguistic structuralism – concentrate on synchronic analysis rather than on genetic / historical preconditions, in order to expose the universal structures at work under the surface of social relations

American Structuralism

   The term Two general phases Bloomfield’s Language Distributionism Discovery procedures

General term for variously developed branches of structuralism pioneered above all by

E. Sapir (1884 - 1939)and

L. Bloomfield (1887 - 1949).

Two general phases

Although the various schools cannot be clearly distinguished from one another, a distinction is made between two general phases: the so-called ‘Bloomfield Era’, and distributionalism, with Z. Harris as chief representative.

Discovery Procedures

Two analytical steps Segmentation Classification

Boas

AnthropologistHandbook of American Indian

Languages, 1911

Sapir

Anthropological linguistLanguage: An Introduction to the

Study of Speech, 1921

Benjamin Lee Whorf

Whorfian hypothesis Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Bloomfield

Language, 1933BehaviourismEmpiricismAn approach to acquiring knowledge th

at emphasizes repeatable observations through the physical senses

Stimulus-response theory

Behaviorism

School of psychology which seeks to explain animal and human behavior entirely in terms of observable and measurable responses to environmental stimuli. Behaviorism was introduced (1913) by the American psychologist John B. Watson, who insisted that behavior is a physiological reaction to environmental stimuli.

Tabula Rasa The mind comes as a blank slate

The conditioned-reflex experiments of the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov and the American psychologist Edward Thorndike were central to the development of behaviorism. The American behaviorist B. F. Skinner contended that all but a few emotions were conditioned by habit.

John Watson (1878-1958)

John Broadus Watson founded the behaviorist movement in American psychology. His view that only observable events, and not mental states, are the substance of psychology provided the behavioristic flavor that still characterizes much of psychology today.

Pavlov (1849-1936)

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936), a Russian physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1904 for his work on the physiology of gastric secretion.

Famous for studies on reflexes and for laying the foundations of the field of behavioural psychology.

“conditioned reflex”

Skinner (1904–90)

American psychologist, leading exponent of the school of psychology known as behaviorism, which explains the behavior of humans and other animals in terms of the physiological responses of the organism to external stimuli.

Skinner maintained that learning occurred as a result of the organism responding to, or operating on, its environment.

operant conditioning( 操作性条件反射 ) Skinner box

S → r ……….. s → R

S: the girl feels hungry

r: the girl asks the boy to pick an apple

s: the boy hears the girl’s request

R: the boy picks an apple and gives it to the girl

…. sound waves

Post-Bloomfieldian linguistics

Z. Harris C. Hockett K. Pike

Characteristics of American structuralist

Almost complete negligence of semantics attempt to formulate a set of "discovery

procedures"

To sum up

Structuralism is based on the assumption that grammatical categories should be defined not in terms of meaning but in terms of distribution, and that the structure of each language should be described without reference to the alleged universality of such categories as tense, mood and parts of speech.

Firstly, structural grammar describes everything that is found in a language instead of laying down rules;

Secondly, structural grammar is empirical, aiming at objectivity in the sense that all definitions and statements should be verifiable or refutable.

Text-reading

2.1 The task of language study

“Scholarship has approached the study oflanguage without actually entering upon it. (36) ” Not writing; Not literature; Not ‘good’ speech“We can save ourselves this detour by turning at once tothe observation of normal speech. We begin byobserving an act of speech-utterance under verysimple circumstances (37-8) .”

Why not “writing”?

Writing comes later than spoken language.

Literacy was confined to a very few people.

Written form doesn’t affect spoken form.

Why not “literature”?

The limited concerns: certain persons; the content; the unusual features.

Philologist: cultural and background significance.

Linguist: the language of all persons alike.

Why not ‘good speech’?

“he observes all speech-forms alike.”

2.2 Example of his behavioral method

The story of Jill and Jack; Language enables one person to make a

reaction (R) when another person has the stimulus (S). (P.39)

The division of labor, and, with it, the whole working of human society, is due to language. (P. 39)

2.3 His Formula

S → r ……….. s → R The gap between the bodies of the speaker

and the hearer---the discontinuity of the two nervous systems---is bridged by the sound-waves (P. 41).

2.4 The difference between human voice and animal sounds

The physiological fact of voice: larynx and vocal chords;

Difference from animals’ great differentiation great precision Benefits of human language relaying communication; abstraction;

2.5 The speech community

Definition and the idea of language universality (see Sapir’s)

The process for learning language (1) an inherited trait (2) teaching and imitating (3) using words to offer stimulus (4) habit-forming (5) speech is perfected by its results

2.6 The mechanism which governs speech

The linguist deals only with the speech-signal (r…….s);

The complex and delicate mechanism which governs speech

The mentalistic theory

The materialistic theory

2.7 The experiment method

Aphasia:

Aphasia 1: mispronunciation or confusion

Aphasia 2: unconventional construction

Aphasia 3: naming things difficulty

Aphasia 4: incorrect response

The viewpoint of language from physiology

2.8 Another way of study human response—observation

Mass observation The study of conventional actions Language change: statistical observation

through a length of time

2.9 Other reactions resulted from stimulus

Gesture ---differs with individual speaker but governed by

social convention; ---symbolic ---gesture languages are based on the convention of

ordinary speech Marking and drawing The importance of writing The significance of other means of recording