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- Herausgeber: Books on Demand
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
THIS BOOK is an overview of American linguistics ever since its earliest beginnings, with its different trends: ANTHROPOLOGY (Franz Boas), ETHNOLOGISTS (Edward Sapir), BEHAVIORISM (Leonard Bloomfield), GENERATIVISM (Noam Chomsky), COGNITIVISM (Ronald Langacker), SOCIOLINGUISTICS (William Labov), BIBLE TRANSLATORS (Kenneth Pike), and LANGUAGE UNIVERSALS (Joseph Harold Greenberg).
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AMERICAN LINGUISTICS
Pages de titrePrefaceLanguage & LinguisticsWhitneyBoasSapirWhorfBloomfieldJakobsonHockett HarrisChomskyLangackerGreenberg MontagueLabovPikeGricePierce Conclusion Appendices GlossaryBibliographyTo Noam Avram ChomskyPrefaceLANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICSWHITNEYBOASSAPIRWHORFBLOOMFIELDJAKOBSONHOCKETTHARRISCHOMSKYLangackerGREENBERGMONTAGUELABOVPIKEGRIPIERCECONCLUSIONAPPENDICESGLOSSARYBIBLIOGRAPHYCopyrightEl Mouatamid Ben Rochd
American Linguistics
From Whiney to Greenberg
To Noam Avram Chomsky
PrefaceLanguage & LinguisticsWhitneyBoasSapirWhorfBloomfieldJakobsonHockett HarrisChomskyLangackerGreenberg MontagueLabovPikeGricePierce Conclusion Appendices GlossaryBibliography
To Noam Avram Chomsky
Preface
Some like to equate American linguistics with Noam Chomsky (see Newmeyer). This is as if you equated America with the Statue of Liberty. If fact America is much more than that, it is King Elvis Presley, Westside Story, Harlem Globe trotters, big universities and New York’s statue of liberty,…and many other fascinating facets to make it the “dream land” for many.
At the purely intellectual level, or let’s say linguistic level, again stands Noam Chomsky the linguist, to the extent (see the linguistic wars), that some have borrowed “B.C.” to mean linguistics “before Chomsky” (and Linguistics after Chomsky?)
Not to exaggerate the matter, other imminent linguists came before Chomsky, and most probably paved the way for him, to mention but his teacher Zellig Harris (Methods in Structural Linguistics) and many brilliant linguists came after him, working with him, or in different directions, sometimes opposed to him.
Those who preceded him were the American Structuralists (alternatively called Distributionlists, Descriptivists, or even Bloomfieldians; any difference?) Whatever name or difference you may give them, they are the ones who made up the fame and name of American linguistics, the most famous of which were anthropologist FranzBoas, ethnologists EdwardSapir,behaviourist LeonardBloomfield, fireman and linguist Benjamin LeeWhorf, and structuralist ZelligHarrisetc. and later on generativist semanticist, GeorgeLakoff, cognitivist RonaldLangacker,and universalistGreenberg…(see, Ben Rochd, 2021c), to mention but a few.
Of course the list could be much longer with more recent geniuses of linguistics, who were born in America or migrated to it, such as RichardKayne(the City University of NY), William Labov(New York City University), FrizzNewmeyer(University of Washington), KenHale(MIT), JoanBresnan(MIT), JoanMaling(MIT), not to forget the ancients such as RomanJakobsonand MorrisHalle(MIT) and missionary KennethPike. You could also include philosophers of language such asPierce, Grice,andSearl. The list is almost endless as America has over the years, attracted the most brilliant scholars from all over the world: Japanese, Chinese, Italians, Syrians (Mazin Al-Waer), etc.
Now, the motives behind such huge time and energy consuming endeavor, is sometimes rendered to the feeling of guilt of the white man towards the Indian genocide (Drimmer). This may have been one of the motives that pushed some American scholars to study and record the Indian languages before their extinction (with their speakers).
It is believed that the Indians were swept away by 90 °/°, to the extent that in the 60s,AIM(American Indian Movement) once stated that the Indians were more numerous than when ChristopherColumbusdiscovered America. Still, they are (now ?) shown as a mere tourist attraction. They are kept secluded in reservations; nothing but modern slavery!
Another motivation of American linguistic research may have been the rising of fierce nationalisms in Europe of the 30s i.e. such as GermanNazism, as many imminent American linguists were from Jewish origin: Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, and Avram Chomsky.
Finally, American researches and rich linguistic scholarship may have been simply motivated by ‘knowledge for knowledge sake,’(epistemology) and LOVE OF LANGUAGE.
Whatever the ideological and political motives behind these huge language studies… the outcome is tremendous and far-reaching.
This book aims at giving the students of linguistics a first, quick and handy introduction to the evolution of American linguistics, starting from the early 19thcentury anthropologists such as Franz Boas (Handbook of American Indian Languages) to modern cognitivists such as Langacker (Cognitive Grammar), by passing Chomsky’s Transformational-Generative enterprise.
When we observe the movement of the planets by night, we are amazed by their grandeur and exactitude. (see “Einstein’s miracle!”). By opposition, we are able to use our feet to walk, our hand to wave and our tongue to talk. No big deal. Language is simple and natural. Unlike the ecstasy we feel when, we see the amazing motion of the planets and galaxies.
According to psychologist Wolfgang Kohler, “it is necessary for you, to develop a kind of “psychic distance” from the acts that you perform naturally. You have to be able to look at them as it were from the outside, to recognize how amazing they are, before you can begin to try to find out what are the capacities on which these acts are based. It is not a problem when you study, say, physics because, since we are studying something that is external to us, we already have psychic distance. We do not move the planets so therefore the fact that the planets move already seems remarkable. But since we are the ones who are doing the speaking, what we are doing sometimes does not seem remarkable, but rather somewhat obvious. However, it is really much more remarkable than the fact that the planets are moving the way they are.”
(Mazen Al-Waer, ‘An Interview with American Linguist Noam Chomsky’, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy. MIT. 1980).
As a matter of fact language, is an incredible maze of intricate relationships between sounds, images patterns, neurological and social relationships. To the extent that despite all researches done in the four corners of the world about LANGUAGE, J.C. Marshal states: “advances in knowledge have only shown even wider areas of ignorance (Marshall 1970, page 241)
The Linguists define their domain as the science of language (read languages in the generic sense). Science or knowledge can be either deductive or inductive. In the deductive tradition of science four necessary stages are recognized by all researchers, before reaching any theory about a natural phenomenon (see Dr. Takaki). Those are:
-observation
-hypothesis
-experiment
-theory
TANGIERS
To try and make things clearer, let me tell you a story. I once met a student of history at York railway station. He told me about his sister who had gone sightseeing to “Tangiers in Tunisia”. I said: “you’re welcome to my home in Tokyo”! We both laughed. At first you may think that this student is an idiot. In fact his knowledge of geography is an acceptable approximation. All scientific (inductive) researchers are “stupid” like him. They work by approximations.
Take for instance the case of Japanese doctor TAKAKI. Not knowing the causes of a sickness that struck the Japanese mariners, he also worked by hypotheses (approximations) concerning the causes and the cures: was it the cold? a virus? homesickness?, etc., until he found out that it was the “deficiency” in vitamins of the food they ate. It was the lack of thiamine.
Doctor Takaki had to formulate many hypotheses at first, until he came to the right conclusion “the lack of vitamin.”
QUESTION-TAG
Likewise descriptive linguists work by approximations. They start by observing i.e. hearing an English native speaker’s question tag for instance and formulate their hypotheses:
The weather is nice, isn’t it?
The first approximation would say:
-Locate the verb and copy it to the right of the sentence. If the original verb is affirmative, make the copy negative, and vice versa. ()
-Locate the subject of the sentence and copy it to the right of the verb.
Result: * the bad boys are in town, aren’t the boys?
Second approximation:
-Locate the verb and copy it to the right of the sentence.
-If the original verb is positive, make it negative and vice versa.
-Inset to the right of the verb the pronoun agreeing with the subject in person, number and gender.
Result: *Mary could have arrived, arrivedn’t she?
Third approximation:
-copy the first verb to the right of the sentence, making the copy negative if the original verb is positive and vice versa
-Insert to the right of the copied verb the pronoun that corresponds to the subject in person, number and gender. (Akmajian & Heny 1975)
Result: Mary could have arrived, couldn’t she?
Likewise in semantics, the same scenario applied s (the binding of reflexives):[John saw John/*Mary never talks about themselves].
In scientific research, there are of course debates even conflicts between at least three approaches which are: Deductive, inductive and ecclesiastic. (see Linguistic Wars, Newmeyer 1980)
To try and help themselves in this big enterprise, the linguists have come to divide it into a few sections/perspectives: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics to mention but the most important.
Phonetics
Phonetics is the study of the speech sounds. It deals with the speech organs, articulators, and air chambers. And divides the speech sounds into Vowels and consonants, with open vocal tract and relatively closed vocal tract respectively.
The consonants are seen through three perspectives: place of articulation, manner of articulation and voice. Whereas, the vowels are more tricky to describe. They are all voiced, their place of articulation is palatal. They are described in terms of high-low, front-back dichotomies and rounding of the lips.
The Phoneme
The notion “Phoneme” is essential for the descriptive linguist as a startingpoint.The technical term ‘phoneme’ is used to indicate the smallest sound feature which is common to all the speakers of a given speech community. These phonemes ( chart) are analogous to the chemistry chart: the 90 elements (atoms) out of which all substances are made.
So the “phoneme’ is can be seen as the minimum “brick in the wall’ of language. It plays the distinctive role of demarcation between different words of a language (O’Connor) e.g. pit, pet, pat, pot, put etc. “the phoneme is one of those basic concepts, such as may be found in all sciences, which defy exact [axiomatic] definition.” (ibid)
The phonemes of different languages may differ, or resemble each other. English has 47 vowels and consonants. Arabic has 28 consonants plus 3 vowels (Sibawaihi). The phonemes are incommensurable, i.e. a foreign ear hears only a jumble which he may try to repeat. The written system tries to unify the pronunciation of each phoneme in the (English) language as if it were uniform among the speakers of American English for say (Labov). The unified (written phonemes) overlooks the differences between speakers known as dialects (let alone idiolects). In fact, linguistic descriptions oscillate between ‘logic’, ‘metaphysics’ or even ‘prejudice.’ (Gleason 1969)
“Secondary phonemes of pitch, for instance, mark the end of sentences, and distinguish three main sentence-types, e.g. John ran away, John ran away? Who ran away?” (Bloomfield 1933, page 170)
Syllable or Morpheme?
