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Linguistics

Notes Other ‘schools’ based on the linguistic circles of Copenhagen and Prague in particular went in
different directions, but owed much to Saussure’s original ideas. British linguistics was also
influenced by Saussurean notions, although less directly. And it is largely on account of Saussure
that the idea of structuralism achieved the status which was to make it the major linguistic theme
of the next thirty years. As mentioned by Waterman, “Saussure’s influence upon subsequent
linguistic theory has understandably been of major importance. Indeed, in the Western world at
any rate, all hues of structuralism have come under his influence.’
Saussure’s fountain principle is his notion of double entity. It is the core of his doctrines. It is from
this principal notion that all other notions and distinctions of the Course and other works of
linguistics emerge. Saussure succinctly considers human speech always in terms of double entity,
formed of two parts of which the one has no value without the other. Everything in the language
can be defined in double terms: bears the imprint and seal of an opposing duality:
— the articulatory and the acoustical duality;
— the duality of sound and sense;
— the duality of the individual and the society;
— the duality of langue and parole;
— the duality of the material and the immaterial;
— the duality of the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic;
— the duality of sameness and opposition;
— the duality of the synchronic and the diachronic, etc., etc.
Lastly the following two statements from Benvensite will reflect Saussure’s contribution:
A forerunner in doctrines which in the past fifty years have transformed the theory of language,
he has opened up unforgettable vistas on the highest and most mysterious faculty of man. At the
same time, in placing on the horizon of science and philosophy the notion or “sign” as a bilateral
unit, he has contributed to the advent of formal thought in the sciences of society and culture and
to the founding of a general semiology.
and again there is no linguist today who does not owe him something. There is not a single
general theory which does not mention his name.

3.3 The Copenhagen School

The greatest contribution of this school is GLOSSEMATICS, which is often described as the study
that is “de Saussure taken to his logical conclusions” since it takes seriously the dictum that
language is a form, not a substance. It is an approach to language developed by L. Hjelmslev (died
in 1965) and associates at the linguistic circle of Copenhagen in the mid thirties. The linguists of
this school wanted to develop a theory of language applicable to all languages.
Glossematics, which aims at making linguistic science fully independent of subjective appraisal,
seeks to establish a kind of algebra of language, i.e. a net work of definitions forming a system that
can serve as a model for the description of particular languages.
Sidney Lamb’s Stratificational grammar is written under the influence of glossematics. Chomsky
too seems to have been influenced by some of the theoretical assumptions of Hjelmslev.

3.4 The Prague School (Czechoslovakia)

The Prague School of linguistics is one of the major schools of structural linguistics. This was the
name given to group of scholars working in or around Prague in the late twenties and early
thirties. The Linguistics Circle of Prague was founded in 1926, and published an important journal
(Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague). Much of the inspiration for his work came from Saussure,
but two of its most important scholars, Roman Jakobson and Nikola Trubetzkoy, were Russians.

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