PROGRAMA DE PS-GRADUAO EM LETRAS

EXAME DE SELEO PARA 1 SEMESTRE DE 2009 MESTRADO E DOUTORADO EM LINGSTICA E LINGUA PORTUGUESA

CANDIDATO (A): ____________________________________________ Data: 05/12/2008.

PROVA DE SUFICINCIA EM LINGUA INGLESA

LEIA O TEXTO ATENTAMENTE. ESCOLHA UMA DAS DUAS OPES:

A) RESPONDA, EM PORTUGUS AS QUESTES PROPOSTAS ABAIXO; OU B) FAA UMA TRADUO DO TEXTO. OBS.: APENAS UMA DAS DUAS OPES SER ACEITA.

The origins of structuralism go back to the linguistic turn brought about by the publication of a series of lectures on general linguistics that had been delivered at the University of Geneva by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure in three courses given between 1906 and 1911. The lectures were published after his death as Course in General Linguistics (1916). Saussures main aim was to give substance to what he called the new science of linguistics. His path-breaking proposal was to abandon the analytical perspectives belonging to other disciplines, such as psychology, anthropology, normative grammar, philology, etc., and use language as the norm of all other manifestations of speech. The centrality of language thus granted, Saussure then set about distinguishing language (langue) from human speech (langage) and speaking (parole). He defines speaking (or utterance) as a wilful and intellectual individual act. Speech is a natural phenomenon: human beings have the faculty to construct a

language, i.e. a system of distinct signs corresponding to distinct ideas. By contrast, language is both the social product of the faculty of speech and a collection of necessary conventions that have been adopted by a social body to permit individuals to exercise that faculty. That is, language is a particular sign system adopted by a given community for the purposes of oral communication, such as English or French. In summary, Saussure underlined the systematic nature of language, and insisted on the importance of carrying out a synchronic, as distinct from a diachronic, study of language. Rather than trying to establish the genesis, the earlier form, the sources, and the evolution of words, the linguist should focus primarily on the arrangement, the systematic organization of words in concrete speech actsthat is, on languages current structural properties. Philology had always worked with written texts, but Saussure explicitly rejected writing in favour of spoken language as the object of Iinguistics, observing that A similar mistake would be in thinking that more can be learned about someone by Iooking at his photograph than by viewing him directly. Consequently, in his approach to the analysis of the linguistic sign, phonologythat is, the study of the physiology of sounds as distinct from phonetics or the study of the evolution of soundsoccupies a central position. Referncia: WAUGH, Patrcia. Literary theory and criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

QUESTES: 1. What is the connection between structuralism and Saussure? 2. What was Saussures basic proposition? 3. What did this change of emphasis guarantee? 4. Which should the linguists main concern be? 5. What distinction can be made between phonology and phonetics?