Linguistics of the American School of Descriptive Linguistics

The American School of Descriptive Linguistics is also known as the American School of Descriptivists. In the 20s of the 20th century, American scholars gradually formed a school of linguistic stool on the basis of the investigation of the American Indian language. It is known for its emphasis on the depiction of the structure and form of language.

Both American structuralism and European structuralism emphasize the systematization of linguistic structures, but each has its own characteristics. The Prague School focused on the function of linguistic structure, the Copenhagen School focused on the relationship between structures, and American structuralism focused on the description of structural forms.

Focus on spoken language and synchronic depictions. Much of the Amerindian language has no written and historical material, which necessitates a synchronic formal analysis from the outset of the school. This approach is markedly different from that of European scholars, who focused on philology and diachronic studies, and historical and comparative linguistics, which focused on diachronic studies.

Focus on formal analysis and avoid the element of meaning. American structuralism focuses on verifiable linguistic forms in structural analysis, without considering psychological processes or social and historical factors. In terms of the relationship between form and meaning, they believe that the opposition of form can determine the difference in meaning.

In structural analysis, the main focus is on the study of distributions and the use of alternative methods. The task of structural analysis is to separate and classify individual units (e.g., phonemes, morphemes, etc.) from a pile of linguistic materials. In slicing, the main basis is distribution.

Distribution is the sum of the different positions in which a unit or feature appears in a discourse, that is, the sum of all the circumstances in which it appears. Substitution means that in the same environment, one unit can be replaced by another.

Direct component analysis was used. This school of thought focused on the hierarchy of structure, which led to the development of direct component analysis. The so-called direct component is to distinguish the components of a sentence according to the hierarchy.

For example, the English poor John ran away(Poor John runs away) first into the two direct components of Poor John and Ran Away, then Poor John into Poor and John, and Ran Away into Ran and Away. If it is not possible to cut it any further, the remaining ingredient is called the "final ingredient".

The final ingredients of the above example sentences are poor, john, ran, and away.

Establish "morpheme phonemes". This is a unit that combines grammar and phonetics, including several phonemes that appear in several morpheme variants. For example, the English knife nayf (knife, singular) and knives nayvz (knife, plural) contain two different variants of the same morpheme, one f and one v, which can be summed up by the morpheme f, saying that the phonetic form of this morpheme is nayf.

The morpheme phoneme helps to identify morphemes, and it plays the role of using a concept to control all changes.

Oppose spiritualism and advocate behaviorism.

He advocates the study of synchronic descriptive and analytical methods.

Focusing on formal analysis, using distribution and substitution methods, separating phonemes and morphemes from discourse and classifying them.

Pay attention to the study of spoken language.

They argue that the task of the linguist is to collect linguistic material and then describe, analyze, and summarize it. They attach great importance to spoken language and often go to the society to collect living spoken language materials. For example, in order to analyze and study the dying Amerindian languages, they went to the Indian settlements to do a lot of work to record linguistic materials.

Once the material has been collected, the next step is to analyze the material, and there are three steps to describe the language in this regard:

1. Divide the material into the smallest linguistic unit - morphemes. Then, the phonemes were determined by contrast, and then the phonemes were classified by substitution.

2. Establish morphemes by contrast, and then classify morphemes by substitution 3. Use substitution to divide word classes, and then establish the form of sentences.

These three steps are actually the three planes of study that describe linguistics: the phonological plane, the morphological plane, and the syntactic plane. They form the general framework for descriptive linguistics (illustrated and omitted).

Linguistic materials. Phonemic plane.

Morphological aspects. Syntactic plane.

The pioneer of this school of thought was FBoas and ESapir.

Boas was both an anthropologist and a linguist. The preface he wrote in the Handbook of American Indian Languages (1911) can be said to be the initial theoretical summary of the linguistic investigations and research undertaken by American anthropologists. Among them, it is emphasized:

Linguistic facts should be objectively described, and should not be framed by other languages or traditional grammar; In order to describe different structures of language, new concepts and methods should be created. Sapir was also an anthropologist and linguist, and his famous book Linguistics: An Introduction to the Study of Language (1921) linked the study of language to human psychology, society, and culture. They all emphasize respect for the language of the native peoples of the Americas, resulting in an objective synchronic and systematic depiction.

Later, American structuralists devoted themselves to the formal description of the structure of language, and their basic tenets and traditions came from these two men.

l.In addition to Harris and others, this school of thought also includes Pike, ENida, Frees, and others, each with their own characteristics.

Beginning in 1934, they held annual summer language workshops. They mainly inherited the doctrine of Sapir and devoted themselves to applying the methods of descriptive linguistics to the analysis of all human behavior. For example, in structural analysis, Parker distinguishes between "-emic" (the component of a language that has a commonality) and "element" ("etic" (that is, the component of a language that has a personality), and applies this distinction to the analysis of other human behaviors.

In the process of the development of American structuralism, the American Chinese Language Society, founded by Boas, Sapir, Bloomfield and others in 1924, played a certain role. Founded in 1925 as the mouthpiece of the American school of structuralism, the Society also holds annual summer workshops in linguistics to provide a venue for scholars' academic activities.

The American school of descriptive language is one of the structuralist schools of language. Not all American linguists belong to the American school of descriptive linguistics, but rather a group of linguists in the United States who hold the same views of this school of language, and there is no group or institution for them, and there is no special form of organization. The American descriptive linguistic school gradually formed in the 20s of the 20th century, and occupied a dominant position in American linguistic research from the 1930s to the 1950s.