美国结构主义 American Structuralism

1、American StructuralismContentsnThe background of the American Structuralism nThe three Periods American tructuralismnFeatures of American tructuralismnAdvantages of American tructuralismnProblems with American StructuralismnReferencesThe background of the American StructuralismnAmerican Structuralis

2、m，which is also called American descriptive linguistic, is a 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 a

3、nd they felt the urgent need to record these languages” (Hu Zhuanglin 2001:423). The background of the American StructuralismnAs the Native American Indian languages were of “vast diversity” and “there were no written records of these languages”, so the traditional grammar, which focuses on “prescri

4、bing the rules governed language ” proved to be infeasible to deal with the Native American Indian languages. nSo to “record and describe these exotic languages” without having any presuppositions about the nature of language in general seemed more suitable and much discussion on “descriptive proced

5、ures” occurred.The three Periods American StructuralismnBoas-Sapir Period (1911-1932)nFranz BoasnEdward SapirnThe Sapir-Whorf HypothesisnThe Bloomfieldian Period (1933-1950)nThe Bloomfield the mannBloomfield and BehaviourismnThe Post-Bloomfieldian Period (1952-1956)Boasn1858-1942, Born in GermanynAn

6、thropologist, Pioneer of the American StructuralismnHandbook of American Indian Languages in 1911n“descriptive linguistics”: paved way for future American descriptive linguistics. In the preface of his book , he emphasized that during the process of describing language, the linguists should try to “

7、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 (Hu Zhuanglin 2001:425).Edward Sapirn1884-1939nAnthropological linguist who was influ

8、enced by BoasnBook: Language: An Itroduction to the study of Speech( in 1921) In his book, he defined language as “a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system voluntarily produced symbols.” Sapirs basic views on relationship between lan

9、guage, race and culture are: race, language and culture are not evenly distributed; the history of language and culture can not be accounted for in terms of race. (Liu Runqing, Feng Zunxing 2004:147)Benjamin Lee Whorfn1897-1941nBorn AmericanSapirs student nEminent anthropologist nDeveloped Sapirs vi

10、ews as Sapir-Whorf hypothesisSapir-Whorf Hypothesis It consists of two parts-“linguistic 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

11、levels of thinking are dependent on language. Or put it more bluntly, language determines 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. relativ

12、e to their linguistic background, hence the notion of linguistic relativism” The Bloomfieldian PeriodBloomfieldn1887-1949nBorn in ChicagonBook: Language in 1933nPrinciple representative ofAmerican Structuralism nFounder of American Structuralism nFor Bloomfield, “linguistic is a branch of psychology

13、, 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” (Hu Zhuanglin 2001:427) behavior and believes that the linguistic description should based on the observation of language.S r

14、.s Rn“S” stands for practical stimulus, “r” stands for the substitute reaction of speech, “s” stands for the substitute stimulus, and “R” stands for external practical reaction.nThe first principle: When one individual is stimulated, his speech can make another individual react accordingly.nThe seco

15、nd principle: The division of labour and all human activities based on the division of labour are dependent on language. nThe third principle: The distance between the speaker and hearer, two separate nervous systems, is bridged up by sound waves.Bloomfield and His Book He distinguished five main ty

16、pes of speech: a, Literary standard b, colloquial standard c, provincial standard d, sub-standard e, local dialectStructuralism and Language TeachingnAudio-lingual Method in language teachingnInfluenced language teaching method:constant practice and repetition (drilling)The Post-Bloomfieldian Period

17、nAfter Bloomfield, American linguaists such as Z. Harres, C. Hockett, Pike futher developed American Structuralism and the most distinguished one is Zelling Harris (1900- ), who belonged to the Post-Bloomfieldian Linguistics. His Methods in structural linguistics published in 1951 marks “the maturit

18、y of American descriptive linguistics. ”The Post-Bloomfieldian PeriodnHarris formulated “a set of strict descriptive procedures which took the logic of distributional relations as the basic of structural analysis” (Hu Zhuanglin 2001:430), holding that the analysis of language should be done without

19、referring to the meaning. And he also gave the basic steps of the language analysis, which are “distribution and substitution” (Hu Zhuanglin 2001:433). Features of American tructuralismnthe American Structuralism does have its own features, which can be summed up as comparison of three pairs of conc

20、epts: “synchronic vs. Diachronic”, “Descriptive VS Prescriptive” and “Structuralism VS Traditional Grammar”.Synchronic vs. Diachronic nA Synchronic description means taking “a fixed instant (usually, but not necessarily, the present) as its point of observation”, while the Diachronic description mea

21、ns studying “a language through the course of its history” (Hu Zhuanglin 2001:24). Descriptive VS Prescriptive nThe distinction of these two is that describing shows “how things are” while the prescribing lays down “how things ought to be”. For instance, a descriptive one would say, “People do/dont

22、say X ”, while the latter one would present as “Do/Dont say X ”A Comparison between Traditional and Structural GrammernThe structural approach to analyze “how words form and how those words are used together to form larger structures” while the traditional grammar focuses mainly on “the meaning of t

23、he collection of words portrayed” (Romanine Suzanne 1994). IC analysis nthe Immediate constituent analysis, IC analysis for short. And IC analysis refers to:n“The analysis of a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents-word group (or phrases), which are in turn analyzed into the immediate cons

24、tituents of their own, and the process goes on until the ultimate constituents are reached” (Hu Zhuanglin 2001:123).Advantages of American tructuralismnAmerican Structuralism is a great landmark in the linguistics history, and comparing with its predecessor-the traditional grammar, it has many advan

25、tagesnThe linguistic description is “vividly important” in “documenting the diversity of human languages”, most of which are vanishing and offering the basic data of “developing serious explanatory theories of language” (Robert D. Valin JR, Randy J.Lapolla 2002:3). Advantages of American tructuralis

26、mnSo Its descriptive tradition is still worth learning and referring today for with its describing techniques, “languages we dont know or understand can be observed and described into terminology that we, as outsiders, can comprehend” (Romanine Suzanne 1994)nWe all say that today the global is becom

27、ing a village but actually, to achieve this aim, we still need to do more jobs as there are so many kinds of languages in the world, which are a great obstacle. Advantages of American tructuralismnAnd for “within language lies communication, and within communication lies understanding of the world and the people around us” (Romanine Suzanne 1994), we should still look back at the American Structuralisms classical theories and methods from now and then and make full use of it to get the basic data of varied languages to deve