Important distinctions in linguistics

1-Descriptive Vs Prescriptive : *descriptive :If a linguistic study describes and analyzes the lge people
actually use, *prescriptive: if it aims to lay down rules for “correct” behavior, i. e., to tell people what they
should say and what they should not say.

De Saussure Dichotomies

*-Dichotomies:

1/ Diachronic(historical ling): When we study lge historical developments through time , for example: the
changes which have taken place between Old and Modern English could be described in phonological,
grammatical and semantic terms.

2/Synchronic ling : When we study lge at one particular time /at some point of time in history, ,
disregarding whatever changes might be taking place.

3/ Langue (sign) : the lge system shared by a community of speakers (is the set of rules which lge users all
have to follow).

4/Parole (speech act): the concrete act of speaking in actual situations by an individual speaker (is the
concrete use of the application of this rules by individual).

5/ L Competence(lge form) : a person’s knowledge of his lge, the system of rules which he has mastered so
that he is able to produce and understand an indefinite number of sentences, and to recognize
grammatical mistakes and ambiguities.

6/ L Performance(lge function & use): the actual realization of lge knowledge, lge seen as a set of specific
utterances produced by lge speakers, as encountered in a corpus.

*Linguistics Competence : linguistic competence which tells you whether a sentence is grammatical or not,
*communicative competence: tells you whether an utterance is appropriate or not within a situation.

7/Paradigmatic: a paradigmatic relation if they can be substituted for each other (i.e., A & B are in the
same class) e.g. “cat” and “dog”.

8/ Syntagmatic: a syntagmatic relation if they can be combined with each other (i.e., A & B are related
semantically) e.g. “cat” and “scratch”.

*-The Nature of the Linguistic “Sign”: a sign is a unity of a signifier and a signified ,both the signifier and
signified are concepts and not things, The connection between the signifier and signified is arbitrary
(nonessential),The types of signified are not fixed or given. It has Three Levels: *Lexical Words and
Morphemes*Tactic/Syntax*Representational

1:signifier : sound-image-from/ 2:signified : meaning-acoustic-concept .

*The arbitrary relation : The relationship between signifier and signified is purely arbitrary, There is
nothing that logically links a particular sound image to a concept.
 Transformational Generative Grammar(TGG)

1/Transformational Grammar: (Put forward by Norm Chomsky in 1957, Wrote a book Syntactic Structures
to spread his theory.).Transformational is a method of stating how the structures of many lges can be
generated or explained as the result of specific transformations applied to certain basic structure.
*Transformations: I helped John. (Active)/John was helped by me. (Passive).

*Main points:- Made the distinction between ling competence and ling performance. He believes that ling
should study the ling competence, not the performance./ Children are born with a LAD(is a function of the
brain that is specifically for learning lge. It is an innate biological function of human beings just like learning to walk.).
This is made up of general principles called UG.

*Main characteristics : 1: productivity 2: structurally acceptable 3: it should contains ( phonological,

syntactic , semantic component ) 4: accepted and reject due to native speakers .

*Main Rules : 1/ Deletion: A+B+C become A+B. 2/Addition : A+B become A+B+C . 3/ Permutation :
A+B+C become A+C+B . 4/ Substitution : A+B+C become A+D+C .

2/Generative Grammar : is defined as one that is fully explicit. It is a finite set of rules that can be applied
to generate all those and only those sentences (often but not necessarily, infinite in number) that are
grammatical in a given lge.

*Properties of Generative Grammar: It includes whatever is in phrase structure grammar and

transformational grammar and further takes into account all possible syntactic structures.

3/ Universal Grammar : Human languages exhibit remarkable similarities or principles. These patterns are
called universals. UG is an attempt to integrate grammar, mind and language .* We can find these
similarities on many linguistic levels:

1/Phonological : Consonants, we can refer to every consonant by its location and manner of articulation.
2/Semantic: One semantic universal regards our notion of color.
3/Syntactic: most of existing languages have verbs, nouns, adjectives and pronouns. And it contains 5
surface S / deep S represented by tree diagram or phrase structure ).
 Linguistics Schools

1/ The Prague School : The Prague School can be traced back to its first meeting under the leadership of V.
Mathesius (1882–1946) in 1926. Its most important contribution to linguistics is that it sees language in terms of
function.

*Three important points concerning the ideas of the Prague School: 1/ First, it was stressed that the synchronic
study of language is fully justified ,but can’t be separated from diachronic studies. 2/Second, there was an emphasis
on the systemic character of language. Elements are held to be in functional contrast or opposition( written /
spoken). 3/Third, lge was looked on as functional in another sense, that is, as a tool performing a number of essential
functions or tasks for the community using it.

*Prague School Phonology: Phonetics belonged to parole whereas phonology belonged to langue. “Phoneme” is an
abstract unit of the sound system as distinct from the sounds actually produced. In classifying distinctive features,
Trubetzkoy proposed three criteria: (1) their relation to the whole contrastive system; (2) relations between the
opposing elements; and (3) their power of discrimination(judge).

2/ The London School : (B. Malinowski (1884-1942), professor of anthropology (1927). Language is to be regarded as
a mode of action, rather than as a counterpart of thought .The meaning of an utterance comes from its relation to
the situational context in which it occurs.

*Three types of situational context: 1/in which speech interrelates with bodily activity; 2/narrative situations;
3/situations in which speech is used to fill a speech vacuum(gap).

Discourse Analysis

1/ What is discourse Analysis ?: 1 :A particular unit of lge (above the sentence), or discourse in structure; A
particular focus on lge use, discourse as function. 2 :The study of well-established meanings or ideas around a topic
which shape how we can talk about it .e.g. ‘discourses of education’, ‘discourses of health and illness’. 3 :The study of
how meanings are established, used, challenged and changed (including in talk).

*Structural or textual definition of discourse: Discourse is a particular unit of language (above the
sentence).*Functional definition of discourse: Discourse is a particular focus of language use.

*Discourse’ refers to any utterance which is meaningful. These texts can be: written texts ,oral texts
(‘speech’/’talk’) , mixed written/oral texts (e.g. Internet chat) ,Discourse does not depend on the size of a text .

2/ Approaches to Discourse Analysis :

*Discourse analysis is the general term for a number of approaches and different school of thaughts to analyze
discourse. critical discourse analysis is a school of thought that tries to analyse discourse critically. While DA is a
general term, CDA is specific, to a method, vision, set of tools which allow to analyse discourse in a certain way .