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 Saussures 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
Bloomfields 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 socalled
Bloomfield
Era,
and
distributionalism, with Z. Harris as
chief representative.

Discovery Procedures

Two analytical steps

Segmentation

Classification

Boas
Anthropologist
Handbook

of American Indian
Languages, 1911

Sapir
Anthropological

linguist
Language: An Introduction to the
Study of Speech, 1921

Benjamin Lee Whorf

Whorfian

hypothesis
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Bloomfield
Language,

1933
Behaviourism
Empiricism
An approach to acquiring knowledge
that 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 (190490)
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( )
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 girls 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 of
language without actually entering upon it. (36)
Not writing;
Not literature;
Not good speech
We can save ourselves this detour by turning at once to
the observation of normal speech. We begin by
observing an act of speech-utterance under very
simple circumstances (37-8) .

Why not writing?

Writing

comes later than spoken language.

Literacy
Written

was confined to a very few people.

form doesnt 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 soundwaves (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 Sapirs)
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

responseobservation
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