Historical overview

Historical overview

• Descriptive linguistics - EUROPE

• Am. Indian Ls – no historical records – interest in synchronic description – arrived at the same as Saussure (for a different reason)

• Describe different levels of a specific L systematically (each L separately – later criticised by Chomsky)

• Contrasted with prescription

• Functional linguistics – USA

• Interest in the function of different features of language ‘what it does’

• Contrasted with formal linguistics ‘how it works’

Prague school of linguistics

• ‘Prague linguistic circle’

• Vilém Mathesius (cz), Nikolai S. Trubetzkoy (ru), Roman Jakobson (ru), and many others

• What originated here

• Phonology (Trubetzkoy)

• Phoneme, minimal pair, feature, opposition

• binarism, markedness (Jakobson)

• Morphological typology (Vladimír Skalička)

• Functional sentence perspective (Mathesius)

• Boom in phonetics

• Ispired by Saussure: sounds as a systém (a phoneme is a phoneme because it contrasts with others phonemes in the language)

• But phoneme is not a single piece, i tis a structure of simultaneous properties („features“)

• The term „oppositions“ was used to distinguish oppositions that are recognized in a language

• /b/ : /p/ - voiced/non-voiced opposition

• /m/ : /b/ - nasal/non-nasal opposition

• Features: place, voicing, nasalized

Jakobson’s ‘distinctive’ features

• Those that allow oppositions (contrast meaning)

• The same for all languages (universal)

• not articulatory but auditory

• Modeling the listener

• Non-distinctive phonetic detail is filtered out (En: send [sɛ̃nd])

• Binary features [+/–] – Occam’s Razor – he wanted to keep it simple so he was interested mainly in Binary features, because we are aware just by these simple „changes“

• suggests symmetry (V [+front] / V [-front])

• but it’s not always so

Markedness

• /m/ : /b/ - [nasal] [non-nasal] opposition

• [non-nasal] – absence of ‘nasal’ „unmarked“

• the basic, default value

• [nasal] – presence of ‘nasal’ „marked“

• Something extra, some ‘added value’

• Morphology: derivation, inflection

• happy (unmarked) – unhappy (marked)

• boy – boys (single is not seen, so plural is marked)

• Kupující je povinen… – masculine is unmarked

Language universals

1. A marked property is less frequent among the worlds languages

• E.g. phoneme inventory

• A consonant – involves a constriction in the vocal tract which interferes with airflow; Voicing – requires airflow

• French, Polish, … nasalized Vs as phonemes (nasal – an ‘extra’, marked feature) – always fewer nasal Vs in a L than non-nasal

• Or: syllable structure

• CV: law /lɔ/, no /nəʊ/ – basic, unmarked – most frequent (in En, Cz and cross-L)

• VC: all /ɔl/, own /əʊn/ – more marked

• VCC: owned /əʊnd/ – even more marked

1. Marked implies unmarked, not the other way round

• There are many Ls with just voiceless stop and fricative phonemes (Chinese, Korean, Finnish, Icelandic, Australian Ls…), Ls that have voiced also have voiceless

• There are Ls with just non-nasal V phonemes (Cz, En) but not vice versa

• There are Ls with just (C)V syllables (Hawaiian, Fijian), no Ls with just V(C)