ABANDO, JEAN AUBREY INTRODUCTION TO

LINGUISTICS

AGAPITO, JOSHUA
09/20/2019

THE STRUCTURALISTS

STRUCTURALISM

 A method of analyzing phenomena as an anthropology, linguistics,

psychology or literature, chiefly characterized by contrasting the
elemental components of the phenomena in a system of binary
opposition and examining how the elemental components are
combined to make larger units.
 An approach to linguistics that analyses and describes the structure
of language, as distinguished from its comparative and historical
aspects.

LINGUIST

 One who specializes linguistics is called a linguist, a linguist who

speaks and writes well in many languages is a polyglot.

FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE (NOVEMBER 1897-FEBRUARY 1913)

 Swiss linguist and semiotician, his ideas laid a foundation for many
significant developments in both linguistics and semiology in the
20th century.
 He is the father of structuralism. In 1916, his cours de linguistique
generale (course in general linguistics) was published, where the
main ideas of structuralism were formulated.
 He also formulated several principles of linguistic analysis which
have become the tenets of modern linguistics.

PRINCIPLES OF LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS

 Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive.

- Linguists describe the rules and facts of language exactly as they find
them without making judgments.
- Contrasts with the previous view of traditional grammar which was very
strongly prescriptive.
- A task of a linguist is to describe the way people speak and write not to
tell them how they ought to use language.

 Priority of the spoken language.

- Spoken language is more basic than written language.
- There are great variations both in grammar and vocabulary choices
which the written language does not reflect.

 Synchronic and diachronic description of language.

 a) Diachronic linguistics is the study of languages from the
viewpoint of their historical development.
b) Synchronic linguistics studies languages at a single point of
time.

 All languages are equal.

- For a linguist, all languages serve as the data for objective study.
- It was determined that every existing natural language is a highly
developed system and its structure does not directly correlate with the
stage of social development of that speech community.

 Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of linguistic units.

a) Syntagmatic relation between words is when the words either
spoken or written have different grammatical roles in the
sentence. It structures the words in the sequence to form a
meaningful whole.
b) Paradigmati relation between the words will be when these two
words can substitute each other in a sentence without affecting
the meaning of the sentence.

REFERENCES:

www.thefreedictionary.com

Bernardez E.R. & Ulalan R.T. , Introduction to Linguistics (2013)

en.m.wikipedia.org

https://www.omniglot.com/languages/articles/struucturallinguistics.htm