Page 40 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes (covering concepts such as ‘sentence’ and ‘clause’), structure (covering concepts such as ‘subject’
and ‘predicate’), and system (covering such concepts as the set of ‘personal pronouns’ or ‘tenses’).
Scales were the model constructs which related these categories, and the linguistic features
subsumed under them, to each other. For example, one scale was the means of relating the ‘units’.
The various units recognized (sentence, clause, group, word, and morpheme) were thought to be
arranged hiearchically on a rank scale, and each unit was conceived of as consisting of one or
more of the units below it—a sentence was considered as consisting of one or more clauses, a
clause as consisting of one or more groups, a group of one or more words, and a word as one or
more morphemes. Halliday latter modified this theory and his modified model of grammar is
known as systemic grammar.

3.6 The American School of Linguistics

3.6.1 William Dwight Whitney
The tradition of American linguistics may be said to have begun with William Dwight Whitney
(1827-1894) who was Professor of Sanskrit at Yale College. His principal works Language and the
Study of Language (1867) and The Life and Growth of Language (1874) have had wide influence both
in America and in Europe. His work belongs to the comparative method of linguistics.

3.6.2 Franz Boas
It remained for European-trained Franz Boas of Columbia University to set the stage for the
development of a modern linguistic science in America. His Handbook of American Indian Languages
(1911) contains a magnificent introduction which is still regarded as a remarkably acute discussion
of the problems of descriptive linguistics.
Boas was an anthropologist who had studied physical sciences and geography. He concluded that
culture must be studied in relation to language and literature. He worked out his own scheme for
the orderly description of languages. He called for three basic divisions in the description of
languages: (1) phonetics, (2) meaning, and (3) grammatical processes of communication and
modification by which these meanings must be expressed. He mentioned that “the natural unit of
expression is the sentence.” He defined ‘word’ as a “phonetic group, which, because of its
permanence of form, clearness and significance and phonetic independence, is readily separable
from the whole sentence.” The weakest part of his definition of ‘word’ was the ‘phonetic’. He
considered the study of the grammatical categories peculiar to each language.
It was Boas who emphasized the need for the linguist to ‘go into the field’, to get an accurate,
detailed description of the human behaviour involved.
3.6.3 Edward Sapir
In 1922 in the preface to Language Sapir made it clear that he intended to communicate some new
sights into the nature of language. He defined language as “a purely human and non-instinctive
method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced
symbols.” He thus opened the way to sound-meating relationship. Yet he maintained that language
is ‘primarily an auditory system of symbols,’ and that it is possible to discuss ‘thought without
language’. He set out to study the relations between language and culture. He regarded language
as a ‘prepared groove’ for our experiences and as a ‘garment wrapped about our thought’ when
we try to communicate our thoughts.

3.6.4 Leonard Bloomfield
It is Bloomfield who is rightly considered to be the father of modern American linguistics. What
Saussure did for Europe, Bloomfield did for America in a lesser degree. He should be credited for
making linguistics an autonomous and scientific discipline. He introduced a precise and restricted
‘technical vocabulary for linguistic description and initiated immediate constituent analysis.’ He
also provided techniques for the survey of a wide variety of linguistic problems, both synchronic
and diachronic. Whereas his predecessors in America had been social scientists, he was a true

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