Lingüística

TASK 2: THE NATURE OF
LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE
By JOYCE M. TORREGROZA
Introduction to Lingüistics
Group 51817_8
Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia ─ UNAD
Lic. en Lenguas Extranjeras Enf. Inglés
Bogota, October 2020

FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE
❖ Ferdinand de Saussure, (born Nov.
26, 1857, Geneva, Switz.—died Feb. 22,
1913, Vufflens-le-Château), Swiss
linguist whose ideas on structure in
language laid the foundation for much
of the approach to and progress of the
linguistic sciences in the 20th century.

FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE
❖ ‘If we could embrace the sum of word-images stored in the minds of all individuals, we
could identify the social bond that constitutes language. It is a storehouse filled by the
members of a given community through their active use of speaking, a grammatical system
that has a potential existence in each brain, or, specifically, in the brains of a group of
individuals. For language is not complete in any speaker; it exists perfectly only within a
collectivity.’
❖ Saussure named la langue to the “hoard deposited by the practice of speech in
speakers who belong to the same community, a grammatical system which, to all
intents and purposes, exists in the mind of each speaker”
❖ To Saussure, the language exists as a social collective which is essential to
communication. Also, he expressed that relationship between signified and
signifier is arbitrary, so it’s product of a collective and cultural imaginary which is
the reason because a cat is named cat, for example.

FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE
❖ ‘Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each
term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others … [for
example]. To determine what a five-franc piece is worth one most know: (1) that
it can be exchanged for a fixed quantity of a different thing, e.g. bread; and (2)
that it can be compared with a similar value of the same system, e.g. a one-franc
piece, or with coins of another system (a dollar, etc.). In the same way a word can
be exchanged for something dissimilar, an idea; besides, it can be compared with
something of the same nature, another word. Its value is therefore not fixed so
long as one simply states that it can be ‘exchanged’ for a given concept’.
❖ Saussure studied language as a whole, in which the meaning of each element
depended on the element or elements that accompanied it. Let us not forget that
Ferdinand de Saussure, in his study of linguistics, paid special attention to context.

NOAM CHUSKY
❖ Noam Chomsky (born December
7 th , 1928) is an eminent American
theoretical linguist, cognitive scientist
and philosopher, who radically changed
the arena of linguistics by assuming
language as a uniquely human,
biologically based cognitive capacity. He
suggested that innate traits in the
human brain give birth to both
language and grammar.

NOAM CHUMSKY
‘It seems clear that we must regard linguistic competence –
knowledge of a language – as an abstract system underlying
behavior, a system constituted by rules that interact to determine the
form and intrinsic meaning of a potentially infinite number of
sentences.’
❖ Chomsky was trained as structuralist, and it was a technique of the
structuralism to record actual speech to observe (among others) the language
behavior in some contexts. Also, Chomsky’s theory expressed that each one of
us had a finite number of rules in mind which strings together to set an infinite
number of sentences, even when we never heard them before.

NOAM CHUMSKY
‘Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-hearer, in
a completely homogeneous speech community, who knows its language
perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions
as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, errors
(random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in
actual performance.’
❖ Again, this quote points to Chomsky’s structuralist training. In its
view, linguistic theory studies language in an ideal setting where
everyone shares a language, and they know it perfectly; to Chomsky,
grammar varies from one speaker to another, even when there is a
correct and appropriate grammar for each existing language. It is the
use of this appropriate grammar that defines an ideal speaker.

MICHAEL HALLIDAY
❖ Michael Halliday, in full Michael
Alexander Kirkwood Halliday, also
called M.A.K. Halliday, (born April 13,
1925, Leeds, Yorkshire, England—died
April 15, 2018, Manly, New South
Wales, Australia), British linguist,
teacher, and proponent of neo-Firthian
theory who viewed language basically
as a social phenomenon.

MICHAEL HALLIDAY
‘Every text – that is, everything that is said or written – unfolds in
some context of use; furthermore, it is the uses of language that,
over tens of thousands of generations, have shaped the system.
Language has evolved to satisfy human needs; and the way it is
organized is functional with respect to these needs.’
❖
When Halliday made his language studies, he paid specially
attention to the context. According to his view, language exists to
satisfy human needs: so, it is the speakers who (according to their
linguistics choices) mark, for example, the mood in their speech.

MICHAEL HALLIDAY
‘Spoken and written language, then, tend to display different KINDS of
complexity; each of them is more complex in its own way. Written language
tends to be lexically dense but grammatically simple; spoken language tends
to be grammatically intricate but lexically sparse’ … ‘The value of having
some explicit knowledge of the grammar of written language is that you can
use this knowledge, not only to analyze the texts, but as a critical resource for
asking questions about them.’
❖ This quote represents what Halliday expressed about how our linguistics choices tends
to affect our speech; people make different choices when they are talking to a friend (in
a symmetric relationship) or with a teacher (in an asymmetric relationship). Same
happens when they are writing or speaking, people tends to watch carefully her choices
when they’re writing (specially, when is a formal text); generally, we take more care
about our linguistics choice when it comes to write a text than when it is a verbal
exchange.

W H Y I S L I N G U I S T I C S D E F I N I T E L Y
C O N S I D E R E D A S C I E N C E ?
❖ Since high school, we all know
the scientific method: observation,
hypothesis, experimentation and,
finally, the emergence of a theory.
This method has been used for
centuries to study different
phenomena of nature, physics, and
biology (among others) … and
also the language.

W H Y I S L I N G U I S T I C S D E F I N I T E LY
C O N S I D E R E D A S C I E N C E ?
❖ Linguistics is a science because it’s based on the observation of a phenomenon (language)
and tries to explain it: how it arises, why its structure, why grammar is so diverse from one
speaker to another, a dialect to another or one language to another ... Speech sounds, linguistic
behavior, linguistic decisions (not just the choice of words; let's think about the intonation, the
context, the intention behind those words that we pronounce) ... the linguists, fascinated by all
these questions, they tackle the study of language and communication just as Isaac Newton once
encompassed the study of gravity (and at that time, Newton's physics was not considered a
science): observing, collecting data, establishing hypothesis.
❖ In short, linguistics is a science because it brings us closer to understanding a phenomenon
that, without it, would have no explanation.

DOUBLE ARTICULATION
❖ According to André Martinet, language is doubly articulated: when speaking or listening, we
note certain linguistic units that have a meaning. These are the words or unit of the first joint.
❖
❖
Today is Thursday
❖
5 words.
❖ A word is a unit with meaning. And this units are conforming for smaller ones which has not
meaning: just sounds that are part of the phonological system of a language: those are the phonemes.
So, let’s see the word Thursday:
❖
T─H─U─R─S─D─A─Y
❖
8 phonemes.
❖
With the phonemes, we can form word and with words, we make sentences.

HUMAN LANGUAGE
❖ Animals can communicate with
each other, and the study of their
communication began around 1960.
However, speech is proper only in the
human communication, and here are
three properties which prove that
language is different from any type of
communication discovered until now.

HUMAN LANGUAGE
❖ Displacement: Humans can
speak about different times and
spaces. But the rest of the
creatures, can’t do the same.
Human language is the only
one that has tools that allow
referring to things and places
that the speaker does not know
or is not even sure that they
exist.

HUMAN LANGUAGE
❖ Arbitrariness: There is no
natural connection between a
word and its meaning. The
connection between what we see
written with letters and the image
that it evokes us is arbitrary; for
example: the word table; it is
composed of 5 phonemes that
form a word that by itself doesn’t
tell us anything. The important
thing is the interpretation that we
give to that word, the mental
image that it evokes us.

HUMAN LANGUAGE
❖ Creativity: Humans are the
only ones who can manipulate
their linguistic resources
depending on the needs,
because human language is
infinite.
❖ In contrast, non-human
communication is inflexible.

REFERENCES
❖ MCCABE, A. (2011). An Introduction to Linguistics and Language Studies (pp. 1-13). Equinox
Publishing Ltd. Recuperado de:
http://bibliotecavirtual.unad.edu.co/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&
AN=547849&lang=es&site=eds-live&scope=site
❖
❖ BAUER, L. (2007). The Linguistic Student’s Handbook (pp.11-18). Edinburgh University Press.
Recuperado de:
http://bibliotecavirtual.unad.edu.co/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&
AN=194155&lang=es&site=eds-live&scope=site
❖
❖ RIVERA, A. (2009). La enseñanza del idioma: un enfoque comunicativo integral en la formación
docente (pp.31-33), Coordinación Educativa y Cultural Centroamericana. Recuperado de:
https://ceccsica.info/sites/default/files/content/Volumen_26.pdf
❖
❖
YULE, G. (2004) Las Propiedades del lenguaje. El Lenguaje (pp.31 38). Madrid, España: Akal.