Teorii lingvistice Engleza II Nume: Dascaliuc Alina

1. Comment on the similarities/ differences of approach expressed in the two

fragments below :

A. Language cannot exist outside individuals, but inside each speaker. Individual
speech has general characteristics common to everybody, as well as individual
characteristics, depending on each speaker’s background, education and
occupation.
B. Language is an abstract system, while its use is seen as language in action. As a
social phenomenon, as an institution, language is materialised through its
individual usage.

It is well known that language exists wherever humans exist. A language means being
able to reproduce sounds that signify certain meanings and to understand or interpret
sounds produced by others. At the same time, it means having the ability to identify
sounds that belong and those that do not belong to the language that you speak.

The two paragraphs have both similarities and differences. Both of them focus on the
language and also both of them affirm that individual use, individual speech has general
social characteristics common to everybody. The first paragraph highlight the conditions
in which exists a language and emphasizes that not every individual has a language,but
every speaker does. The idea is that language represents a speaker and not an
individual, of course it represents the speaker according to his background, education
and profession. What represents the individual is his appearance and his behavior.

In the B fragment, the language is seen as an abstract system. It is indeed an abstract

system of word meanings and symbols for all aspects of culture. In addition to that, it
includes speech, written characters, numerals, symbols, nonverbal gestures and
expressions. Abstractness is commonly defined in opposition to concreteness. The
abstract words are defined as those that refer to meanings that cannot be experienced
directly, but which we know because the meanings can be defined by other words. An
abstract word refers to something that you cannot experience directly through your
senses or actions. Its meaning depends on language. This is why its easiest way to
explain it is by using other words. For example to explain the word “sweet” you could
have someone eat sugar; to explain the verb “jump” you could simply jump up and down
or show someone who is jumping up and down and so on. Thus, as a social
phenomenon, as an institution, language is materialised through its individual usage,
which are simply words.
 Any normal child from anywhere in the world, of any racial, geographical, social or
economic heritage, is capable of learning any language to which he or she is exposed.
That means that everyone is an individual and everyone can be a speaker of a certain
language, of an abstract system.

Finally, language is an abstract system , which materialises just expressing some

thoughts, ideas, feelings and its use is seen as a language in action.

2. Which of the two – diachronic or synchronic linguistics – better describes language

change? Explain your choice in one paragraph.

It is well known that language suffered multiple changes along the years and its
continuously changing is the most important characteristic. Knowing that the diachronic
linguistics studies the development of a language over time while the synchronic
linguistics is the study of a language at a particular time, it is more relevant to speak
about synchronic linguistics when describing the language change. The Swiss linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics (1916) emphasized the
priority of synchronic descriptions: the dominant trends in language description should
focus on states of language at given times, while historical (diachronic) linguistics was
seen to have a subsidiary role. In other words, the synchronic linguistics is a system in
which everything holds together in a coherent self-contained structure of interdependent
parts. Linguistic change is always in progress. Language change is the result of
speaker-activity in social context and there are two main principles that are to be
considered when analysing language change: language use cannot take place except in
social and situational contexts, and is always observed in these contexts and the
description of language change cannot be done without taking into account decisions of
a social kind. That is why the synchronic linguistics describes better the language
change.