Tar!K______ 1
American Structuralism
1. Features of American Structuralism
Introduction
It is agreed upon that the American linguistic studies emerged
from the institutes of anthropology rather than from the institutes
of languages. The American scholars were anthropologists who
developed structural ideas far away from European work. They
worked on existing languages, the Amerindian languages. Field
work techniques of anthropologists characterized their approach.
These languages did not have written records or previous
descriptions as opposed to the European languages. Therefore,
their historical aspects were discarded. The Amerindian
languages were very different from the European ones.
Thus, American structuralists, avoiding the prescriptive attitude,
were in need to develop fresh descriptive frameworks fitting these
languages’ actual features. American work emphasised
the uniqueness of each language’s structure, similar to the
European tradition. The leading figures of the American
structural studies were Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, and Leonard
Bloomfield.
Features of American Structuralism
In order to avoid the dangers implicit in traditional grammar,
American linguists had the following aims:
• To describe current spoken language, not dead languages.
, Tar!K______ 2
• To focus on language form as a sole objective, thus
neglecting meaning to a subordinate place.
• To perform thedescription of language using an organized,
unprejudiced and meticulous method which allows the
analyst to extract the grammar of a language from a corpus
of recorded data in a quasi- mechanical way following four
steps:
a) Field recordings of a corpus of data;
b) Segmentation of the utterances of the corpus at different levels:
phoneme, morpheme, word, group, clause and sentence;
c) Listing an inventory of forms thus obtained from each level and
stating the distribution (possible environment) of the forms;
d) Classifying the forms (by giving them names) and utterances
of the language being studied.
Only such an essentially classificatory method could enable them,
it was thought, to concentrate systematically without any
predetermined framework, on the unique structure of the
language under examination.
American Structuralism
1. Features of American Structuralism
Introduction
It is agreed upon that the American linguistic studies emerged
from the institutes of anthropology rather than from the institutes
of languages. The American scholars were anthropologists who
developed structural ideas far away from European work. They
worked on existing languages, the Amerindian languages. Field
work techniques of anthropologists characterized their approach.
These languages did not have written records or previous
descriptions as opposed to the European languages. Therefore,
their historical aspects were discarded. The Amerindian
languages were very different from the European ones.
Thus, American structuralists, avoiding the prescriptive attitude,
were in need to develop fresh descriptive frameworks fitting these
languages’ actual features. American work emphasised
the uniqueness of each language’s structure, similar to the
European tradition. The leading figures of the American
structural studies were Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, and Leonard
Bloomfield.
Features of American Structuralism
In order to avoid the dangers implicit in traditional grammar,
American linguists had the following aims:
• To describe current spoken language, not dead languages.
, Tar!K______ 2
• To focus on language form as a sole objective, thus
neglecting meaning to a subordinate place.
• To perform thedescription of language using an organized,
unprejudiced and meticulous method which allows the
analyst to extract the grammar of a language from a corpus
of recorded data in a quasi- mechanical way following four
steps:
a) Field recordings of a corpus of data;
b) Segmentation of the utterances of the corpus at different levels:
phoneme, morpheme, word, group, clause and sentence;
c) Listing an inventory of forms thus obtained from each level and
stating the distribution (possible environment) of the forms;
d) Classifying the forms (by giving them names) and utterances
of the language being studied.
Only such an essentially classificatory method could enable them,
it was thought, to concentrate systematically without any
predetermined framework, on the unique structure of the
language under examination.
