Structural Linguistics

A schools of thought in second

language acquisition
DISCUSSANTS:
Angel Joy Devera & Rica Mae Del Valle
OBJECTIVES
At the end of this lesson, students will be able to:
1 Identify what is school of thought.
2 Identify what is first and second language.
3 Understand what is structural linguistics.
4 Find out the advocates of structural
linguistics.
• What is School of Thought?
A school of thought, or intellectual tradition, is
the perspective of a group of people who
share common characteristics of opinion or
outlook of a philosophy, discipline, belief, social
movement, economics, cultural movement, or
art movement.
• First Language

A person’s native language.

A language spoken in additional to one’s first

language.
• Second Language Acquisition

Second language acquisition, or sequential

language acquisition, is learning second
Language after a first language is already
established.
• What is Structural Linguistics?
• defined as a study of language based on the
theory that languages is a structured system of
format units such as grammar, sentences, and
syntax.
• an application of scientific observations of human
languages.
• What is Structural Linguistics?
• only “publicly observable responses” could be
subject to investigation.
• the linguist’s task was to describe human
languages and to identify the structural
characteristics of those languages.
• believes that languages can differ from each
other without limit, and that no preconceptions.
• What is Structural Linguistics?
Example:
“ She is singing”
In structural linguistics:
- “She” is analyzed as a pronoun.
- “is” is identified as the auxiliary verb.
- “singing” is recognized as the main verb in the
present continuous tense.
 ADVOCATES
1 Leonard Bloomfield

2 Edward Sapir

3 Charles Hockket

4 Charles Fries
 Leonard Bloomfield
• An American linguist. Physicalism, as
advocated by Bloomfield, emphasized the
study of language as a system of physical
sounds and their combinations.

• In English, the sounds /p/ and /b/ are

distinct phonemes because they can
change the meaning of words, as in "pat"
and "bat"
Leonard Bloomfield

• In English, the word

"unhappiness" consists
of 3 morphemes: "un-",
"happi", and "-ness"
 Edward Sapir
• A famous American linguistic who
conducted extensive fieldwork on
Indigenous languages and emphasized
the importance of studying languages in
their cultural and historical contexts.

• Sapir's work on linguistic relativity is

often exemplified by comparing different
languages' categorizations of color.
 Charles Hockett
• An American linguistic who developed a
set of principles and criteria for analyzing
and comparing languages, known as the
"design features" of language.

• In Hockett's design feature "arbitrariness"

refers to the absence of any natural or
necessary connection between a word's
meaning.
 Charles Fries

• An American linguistic who

emphasized the importance of
studying the structures and
patterns of language use in
order to understand and teach
languages effectively.
 Charles Fries
• For Example:
"I eat pizza for dinner"
"Pizza eat I for dinner"

In these two sentences, the

word order and grammatical
structure significantly impact
the conveyed meaning.
Thank You !!