LANGUAGE SCIENCES FROM THE SUMERIANS TO THE COGNITIVISTS

                   CONCISE HISTORY
                             OF THE
            LANGUAGE SCIENCES
            FROM THE SUMERIANS TO                                    THE COGNITIVISTS

SECTION X

20th Century Linguistics

Trends in Twentieth-Century Linguistics: An Overview

1. ‘Progress’ and ‘Science’ in Linguistics

In order to evaluate and understand the twentieth

century with any sort of objectivity, we need to extend

our perspective backward in time. Historical continuities

with the nineteenth and earlier centuries give

a firmer grounding to judgments concerning the twentieth

century. For linguistics, such continuities are

manifest:

the founders of twentieth-century linguistic

theory, trained in that of the late nineteenth, rejected

few of its fundamental principles but sought instead

to extend their domain. Looking back over the whole

of the past 200 years, a still grander continuity

emerges, one that sweeps over and above the paradigmatic

and methodological breaks and splinters that

occupy our attention most of the time. It is the gradual

realignment of the study of language away from moral

science, philosophy, aesthetics, rhetoric, and philology,

and in the direction of the natural sciences-

first botany, biology, chemistry, and comparative

anatomy; then geology; and finally physics, by way of

mathematics. With this has come a steady elimination

of.human  will from the object of study, the necessary

condition for any ‘science’ in the modern sense. Over

these same two centuries science has become virtually

synonymous with academic prestige, as measured by

institutionalization (creation of departments and pos-

itions, launching of journals, organizing of conferences),

financial support from governmental and other

grant-giving

agencies, and public recognition. Not

surprisingly, then, for linguists progress came to be

equated with scientificization. ’

When in the first part of the twentieth century the

great achievements of the nineteenth-century fore-

bears were stated, it was in terms of the new methodological

rigor they introduced into the analysis of

language,

and of their success in abandoning formerly

connected fields, such as philology and mythologyrather

than, say, how many more languages and

linguistic phenomena were described and accounted

for than previously, or how far language teaching had

advanced. In other words, progress was defined as the

John E. Joseph

acquisition of autonomous status for linguistic science

(see Sect. 3.6). As for the mid-twentieth-century

rapprochement with mathematics and physics, it was

carried out in full consciousness and with overt

references; ‘mathematical linguistics* (now usually

called computational linguistics) would even emerge

as a significant subdiscipline.

2. Linguistic ‘Mainstreams’

These developments did not affect all work on language

equally. Rather, the ‘mainstream’ was pro-

gressively redefined in the direction of autonomous

inquiry. By mainstream is meant the group having

the greatest institutional power and prestige, with no

implication that other approaches were ‘backwater’

in any sense other than the hold they possessed on the

major journals, support agencies, academic departments,

and public attention. Areas the mainstream

deserted

continued to interest other linguists, some-

times even to inspire new disciplines like general semantics,

philosophy of language, and critical theory, to

name

just three. But in effect, ‘linguistics’ has come to

designate a more or’less  autonomous approach to

language,

and this brief overview will not depart

significantly from the traditional mainstream focus.

Defining linguistics was in fact the main goal of the

book generally credited with shaping the twentieth-

century linguistic agenda: the Cours  de linguistique

gPnPrafe  of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913). As

discussed in Sect. 4, Saussure established the framework

for the ‘synchronic’ (nonhistorical) study of the

language

system, or lungue,

 conceived as the socially-

shared system of signs deposited in the mind of each

speaker. Nevertheless, during at least the first third of

the twentieth century the study of language continued

to be dominated by the historical inquiry which had

earned such prestige in the nineteenth century. Only

gradually did synchronic linguistics gain practitioners

and institutional acceptance, until eventually his-

torical linguistics was itself partially marginalized and

fundamentally refashioned in the light of synchronic

findings.

221

20th Centurv Linguistics

From the 1930s through the 1950s the mainstream

of linguistics was defined by various American and

European ‘schools’ (understood as groups of linguists

sharing some basic common assumptions about prob-

lems and methodology, while often disagreeing on

particular matters) which are today grouped together

as ‘structuralist’ (see Sect. 5). All of them had some

greater or lesser intellectual debt to Saussure’s Cours

and to the groundwork laid by historical-comparative

study. From the 1960s to the present, the mainstream

has been defined by the ‘generativist’ approaches

which originated in the work of Noam Chomsky (b.

1928; see Sect. 8). But as the twentieth century comes

to a close, the synthesis of the last 30 years appears to

be dissolving. Linguistics has splintered into a panoply

of well-entrenched approaches that are roughly equal

in prestige, and the field as a whole is coming under the

shadow of emerging megadisciplines like cognitivism

and connectionism (see Sect. 12).

3. Language Theory before World War I

By 1900 the firm hold which historical grammar had

held upon mainstream status in linguistic science was

being challenged by several adjacent fields of study.

Even within the historical sphere linguists did not

agree which if any of the leads provided by various

versions of psychology should be followed. This sec-

tion surveys what part of the general linguistics territory

each field claimed as its own.

3.1 Historical Linguistics

By 1890 the mainstream of the field was definitively

occupied by the approach which had been established

around 1876 by the Junggrammatiker (Neogrammarians)

of the University of Leipzig, whose work

followed up on that of August Schleicher ( 1821-l 868).

It excluded virtually all manifestations of language

except historical phonology, morphology, and syntax

(in descending order of attention), and was primarily

concerned with the Indo-European family and par-

ticular subgroupings within it. Phonology and morphology

covered that part of language that could be

cataloged as positive facts; syntax, on the other hand,

had to be stated in relational terms, and for most

known languages it involved a considerable volitional

factor. Schleicher had excluded syntax from linguistic

‘science’ on the grounds that it was subject to free

will. Although syntax continued to be of marginal

importance relative to phonology, some important

work in this area was carried out, notably by Berthold

Delbruck  (1842-1922).

By focusing their inquiry in this way the neogram-

marians succeeded brilliantly in meeting the criteria

for progress of their time. It seemed to many that they

had done virtually all that it was possible for a true

science of language (defined according to the then

dominant ideology of positivism) to do. This is the

impression one takes away from the first major his-

222

toriographical study of linguistics in the modern

period, Holger Pedersen’s (1867-1953) Linguistic Sci-

ence  in the 19th Centuq*  (193 1). But this progress was

gained at the price of ignoring ‘general’ linguistic

theory and leaving most aspects of language to the

inquiry of adjacent fields. In particular, psychology

annexed most aspects of language production and

comprehension early on, a move hastened by the enor-

mous influence of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s (17671835)

posthumously published treatise on language

structure

and mental development (1836). Even at the

height of the neogrammarian ascendance, dissenting

voices could be heard within the historical domain-

most notably that of Hugo Schuchardt (1842-1927),

who launched a major attack against the Leipzig

mainstream in 1885.

3.2 Psycholog?

‘Classical’ psychology of the mid-nineteenth century

was the very antithesis of positivism, formulating the-

ories of mind and thought in a mode that we would

today classify as philosophical. Psychological linguists

in the Humboldtian tradition like Heymann  Steinthal

(1823-99) saw their investigations of language as a

means to the understanding of national culture and

thought. In particular, their work on the typology  of

languages continued to explore the parallels between

mental structures and morphosyntactic structures.

This mode did not disappear even when, a generation

later, ‘experimental’ psychologists incorporated enough

positivist methodology into their practice to

maintain its scientific status and prestige. One of the

most prominent figures of this period, Wilhelm Wundt

( 1832-1920),  developed a V&lkerpsychologie  (psychology

of nations) with a specifically linguistic component,

and it gained enormous prestige, informing

for example the first book by the great American

linguist Leonard Bloomfield (see Sect. 5.2). But other

linguists continued to object to the fact that the

psychological approach worked backward from

a priori notions about the nature and structure of the

mind to form theories of language that could never be

empirical or objective in anything but a superficial

sense.

3.3 Phonetics and Dialectology

Experimental phonetics, the detailed measurement of

speech sounds, offered the first truly positivistic

approach to language, and had steadily grown in prestige

through the influence of such individuals as Alex-

ander Melville Bell (1819-1905) and Henry Sweet

(1845-1912). Objective and quantitative as it was, no

one could dispute its claims to scientificness. But while

its descriptive power was unparalleled, and its peda-

gogical usefulness high, its explanatory power proved

disappointing, especially to those who believed pho-

netic principles would provide the explanations for

historical change. Phonetics could only deal with

individual speech acts, not the abstract linguistic systems

that underlay them, and its data tended to form

an end in themselves. Whereas ‘classical’ psychology

had suffered from being too cerebral and not empirical

enough, phonetics was so single-mindedly empirical

as to defy rational interpretation.

Still, in the age of positivism phonetics opened the

possibility of accumulating masses of previously

untapped data about living dialects. Detailed research

on German dialects by Georg Wenker (1852-l 9 11) in

the 1870s began a trend that would reach maturity

with the IO-volume linguistique  de la  France

(1902-10) by the Swiss linguist Jules Gillieron (1854

1926) and his assistant Edmond Edmont (1849-1926).

Led by Gillieron, the linguistic geographers developed

their own critique of neogrammarian theory: against

the dictum of absolute sound laws modulated only by

analogy, Gillieron stressed the impact of factors like

homophonic clashes and popular etymology. This led

to the resuscitation of a doctrine originally attributed

to Jacob Grimm (1785-l 863),  which became the rallying

cry of the anti-neogrammarian resistance: ‘every

word

has its own history.’

3.4 Anthropology

Late in the nineteenth century, as anthropology

moved from a physical toward a cultural orientation,

an impressive fieldwork methodology developed

based on positivistic principles. Since language was

taken to be an integral element of culture, and since

linguists were concerned mostly with tracing the history

of Indo-European tongues, anthropologists had

little choice but to undertake the description of

unknown languages on their own. Franz Boas (1859-

1942),  a German emigre to America, became the

organizational leader of anthropological linguistics

and began a tradition of ‘scientific’ description of living

languages within their own cultural framework,

free of preformed ideas, including those of the psychologists.

This is not to say that Boas ever rejected

. psychological concepts from anything but the collection

and analysis of language data; nor did he reject

the historical approach, since much of his activity

‘ was aimed at establishing the historical affiliations of

’ American Indian tribes through their linguistic

relations. Some have even seen a trace of Hum-

+ boldtian linguistic thinking in the emphasis Boas

I

’ placed on diversity over and above communality. In

any case, Boas’s school was probably the closest thing

! to  a meeting ground for the various approaches to

;’ language  at the start of the century, and as we shall see,

Y it would take a leading role in American structuralism

{: with  the work of Boas’s student and associate Edward

”  Sapir  (see Sect. 5.2).

z

I 4.:

f’  3.5 Sociology

F The young science of sociology also embodied the

spirit  of positivism, with which it shared the same rec-

;

‘,

c c

6

?

ik.

5.

4

:r

’ Trends in Twentieth-century Linguistics: An Overview

ognized founder, Auguste Comte (1798-l 857),  and as

the new century opened it had begun to seize a con-

siderable portion of the intellectual territory once

claimed by classical psychology, which by now ap-

peared hopelessly old-fashioned and metaphysical.

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), who had gone to

Germany for postgraduate study under Wundt but

found his approach less than satisfactory, assumed the

first chair in social science at Bordeaux in 1896 and

obtained a professorship in Paris in 1902. Also in 1896

he founded the periodical L ‘Annie  sociologique, whose

principal linguistic contributor would be Saussure’s

student and close associate Antoine Meillet (18661936).

However, until the

Cours,  anything like a sociological

formulation of linguistics would remain a

vague desideratum. Wundt’s national psychology still

claimed this aspect of language for its own.

3.4 To\i’ard  an Autonomous General Linguistics

The roughly coeval rise to prominence of Boas’s

anthropology in the United States, Gillieron’s  dialect

geography and Durkheim’s sociology in France,

Sweet’s articulatory  phonetics in the United King-

dom, and Wundt’s national psychology in Germany

conspired to give a new impetus to the study of living

languages that mainstream linguistics had long since

abandoned. Not that all historical linguists had ever

been content with the division of labor outlined above:

some thought that historical-comparative linguistics

alone could be scientific, others felt that other aspects

could be studied scientifically but that this should fall

to adjacent, disciplines, and still others thought that

historical-comparative linguistics should be expanded

to take the other areas under its wing.

The last group faced the double disadvantage of

having to emphasize the failures of nineteenth-century

linguistic science and of offering potential students

and the general public few clues as to how to reach

the goals they set for themselves. Linguists with a

basically historical orientation who published notable

books on general linguistics in the late nineteenth and

early twentieth century include William Dwight Whitney

(1827-94),

Michel  Brtal (1832-1915), Abel

Hovelacque ( 1843-96),  Archibald Henry Sayce  (18451933),

 Victor Henry (1850-1907), and Hanns Oertel

(1868-1952). The works of Georg von der Gabelentz

(1840-93) and especially Hermann  Paul (1846-192 1)

deserve particular mention because although cast in

the historical mold they anticipate the vision of the

linguistic system that would characterize the struc-

turalist period. But it was Whitney, first and foremost,

who showed the way toward a modern general lin-

guistics that would not be a smorgasbord where psychology,

phonetics, and other subspecialties were

served

in equal portions, but a comprehensive study

of language guided by historical principles and examining

language for its own sake-a truly ‘autonomous’

approach.

223

Century*  Linguistics

One  other prominent contributor to genera! linguistics

needs to be discussed here: Otto Jespersen (1860-

1943). Jespersen, who gained his early renown in phonetics

and the history of English, undertook in the

1920s an attempt to delineate the ‘logic’ of grammar

divorced from psychological underpinnings-work

that among other things anticipates future directions

in its attention to syntax and child language acquisition,

Yet Jespersen would expressly reject some of

the

key tenets of Saussure’s Co~lrs

and structuralism,

making him the last great general linguist in the prestructuralist

vein.

4. Saussure and the Cows

The decisive step in redirecting the linguistic mainstream

to the study of living languages was taken by

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) in three courses

on general linguistics he gave at the University of

Geneva between 1907 and 1911, a synthesis of which

was published posthumously as the Cows  de lin-

guistique  gknkrale  (Course in General Linguistics) in

19 16 (see the article on Saussurean Tradirion in

Linguistics). Inspired in part by Whitney’s views on

the special fitness of linguists to direct the study of

languages, living or dead, Saussure problematized

these issues in a clearer and more methodical fashion

than anyone before him. He maintained that language

as an abstract system (langue) was the proper object

of study of linguistics, and that ‘synchronic’ study of

language as a static system should be kept rigorously

distinct from ‘diachronic’ (i.e., historical, langue-

focused) study.

Saussure delineated for the first time a program that

would be neither historical nor ahistorical, neither

psychological nor apsychological; yet more systematic

than Whitneyan or Paulean general linguistics, so as to

compare favorably in intellectual and methodological

rigor with the rival approaches outlined in Sect. 3.

Saussure tended increasingly toward sociological

rather than psychological formulations of langue over

the years in which he lectured on general linguistics.

Again, this may be tied in part to the need to establish

synchronic linguistics independently of either the

dominant psychological establishment (Wundt) or the

neogrammarians, who had combined with the psychologists

to greater or lesser degrees. As suggested in

Sect. 3.5, the young science of sociology offered one

of the most progressive approaches to human phenomena,

and was not yet so well-instituted as to pose

any threat to the emergence of an autonomous general

linguistics.

But most importantly, Saussure’s program surpassed

all rival approaches in crucial aspects of scien-

tificization. The marginalization of actual speech

production (parole) provided a quantum leap toward

the elimination of volitional factors; the abstract lan-

guage system, langue,  is beyond the direct reach of the

individual will. Secondly, Saussure’s characterization

224

of langue as a system of ‘arbitrary* relations between

spoken ‘signifiers’  (i.e., sound patterns) and mental

‘signifieds’ (i.e., concepts)--relations that are of pure

form, where elements may in effect have any substance

so long as they differ from one another-moved

linguistics away from its nineteenth-century con-

nections with biology (a science largely pass4  in academic

glamour) and in the direction of mechanical

physics, the mathematically-directed study of the

physical universe, which was reascending to the forefront

of scientific prestige after years of relative neglect.

Like its predecessors, Saussure’s program brought

progress as much through what it excluded as what it

added. Although he spoke of a linguistics of parole

that would cover the phonetic side of language and

the products of individual will, he made it clear that

investigating larlgue  is the essential, real linguistics.

Similarly, his program for diachronic linguistics was

meant to reform, not marginalize, the historical study

of language, yet such was the impact of his synchronic

program that it dealt historical linguistics a blow from

which it has never fully recovered. In both instances

the Cows  became the touchstone for developments

that were probably inevitable, given the overall pres-

sures for the rise of an autonomous science of living

languages and the general evolution of academic pres-

tige toward mathematical and physical approaches.

5. The Emergence of Structuralist Schools

The end of World War I (1914-18) brought a widespread

sense of liberation from a century of German

linguistic dominance. Linguists outside Germany,

while still respectful of the neogrammarians’ methods,

now felt free to use, correct, or abandon them as they

saw fit. In the first decade of the twentieth century the

formulation of a national linguistics had meant the

application of neogrammarian techniques to the study

of German dialects, and even opposition views had to

be defined relative to the Leipzig mainstream. But

from the 1920s on a national linguistics came to mean

a more or less original theoretical position held by a

nation’s leading linguists. Clearly, the postwar gen-

eration was ready for change.

In any survey of early structuralism the Geneva

School deserves pride of place, for the role of Charles

Bally (1865-l 947) and Albert Sechehaye (1870-l 946)

in publishing the Cours  and of Serge Karcevskij (see

Sect. 5.3) in transmitting Saussure’s doctrines to Mos-

cow and Prague, as well as for the important original

work done by these and other members (see The

Geneva School of Linguistics after Saussure). Yet the

Geneva School would be largely overshadowed by

developments in other quarters, the most significant

of which are surveyed in Sects. 5.24.

5.1 Features of Structuraiism

The term ‘structuralism’ (which did not come into use

in linguistics until the late 1920s) indicates a number

of approaches to the study of language which arose

at this time, having in common the following features:

(a)

W

@>

(4

(d

As

The study of ‘systematic’ phenomena more or

less along the lines of Saussure’s charac-

terization of langue. (It has been noted that

even Bally, in attempting to realize a linguistics

of parole in his ‘stylistics,’  ended up by incorporating

stylistic phenomena into the sphere of

langue.)

In conjunction with (a), an implied belief that

‘abstract’ levels of analysis are more funda-

mental, more deep-seated-in a word, more

‘real’-than concrete ones.

A preference for ‘social’ abstractions over mental

ones, including an axiomatic faith in lan-

guage as a fundamentally social phenomenon

which nevertheless could best be studied

through the utterances of individual speakers.

In conjunction with (c), a general priority of

linguistic ‘form’ over meaning-though see

Sect. 5.4 on the ‘London School.’ (This is a

continuing heritage from the neogrammarians,

whose single-minded concentration on form

had inspired Brial to bring forth ‘semantics’ in

reaction.)

A deep distrust in written language, which is

usually characterized as not being language at

all but only a secondary representation-

though see Sect. 5.3 on the Prague School. This

feature seems however to be on a distinct level

from the other four: contingent rather than

necessary to the structuralist outlook, and cer-

tainly not restricted to it.

will be clear from the following survey, struc-

turalist linguistics arose across Europe and America

not in a unified fashion, but in the form of national

schools-not (contrary to a long-standing mythj

through lack of contact, but because of a desire for

.: intellectual independence (especially after the decades

? of German domination) and for theories that would

i: reflect the different linguistic interests and ideologies

:, of the various countries. Yet the postwar generation

*’  all sought approaches that appeared modern and

$ scientific, and they landed on largely the same things.

it”  The Cours  was a major influence on all the struc-

x,:, turalist schools, though by no means the only one; it

k: ,provided  a theoretical program but little in the way

k+  of actual work to be carried out. All in all, the struc!$.turalist

 period is surprising both in its unity and its

i, diversity.

+.

;*  6..

‘>-

.,$.2,  American Structuralism

,The  two most prominent American linguists of the

first  half of the twentieth century, Edward Sapir

‘(1884-1939)  and Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949) folIowed

 parallel and convergent career paths (see Amer-

 in Twentieth-century Linguistics: An Overview

ican  Srructuralism).  Both were active, together with

Boas and others, in the institutionalization of linguis-

tics in America and in developing and refining the

analytical method known as ‘distributional’ because

of its classification of elements according to the

environments in which they appear. Yet where Sapir’s

ideas are embedded in (though never subordinated to)

a broad cultural-anthropological perspective, Bloomfield

(formerly an adherent to Wundt’s Vdkerpsy-

chologie) had become a behaviorist, and treated

languages as systems of stimuli and responses. Meaning,

being unavoidably mentalistic, was suspect to

Bloomfield, unless it was determined objectively on

the basis of distribution. (Some of Bloomfield’s stu-

dents and followers would develop a still more radical

position, virtually exiling meaning from the purview

of linguistics altogether, though it is a mistake to

associate this position with Bloomfield himself.)

Despite their general convergence, then, Bloomfield’s

view was more narrowly linguistic than Sapir’s

and profited from its attachment to the empirical and

‘modern’ science of behaviorism. Such was the success

of Bloomfield’s 1933 book Language that it effectively

set the agenda of American linguistics for a generation

to come. Sapir and his students contributed at least

as much as Bloomfield and the (neo-)Bloomfieldians

to the refinement of the distributional method and

phonemic theory, but never forsook their broader

anthropological interests. Sapir’s student Benjamin

Lee Whorf (1897-194 1) pursued a line of inquiry into

the notion that the structure of thought might be

dependent upon the structure of the linguistic system.

This idea, later dubbed the ‘Sapir-Whorf hypothesis*,

has roots dating back at least as far as John Locke

(1632-1704). In a sense it is the ultimate expression of

faith in the power of the linguistic system; but in any

case it was anathema to the anti-mentalist Bloom-

fieldians, and even today it continues to arouse controversy.

5.3 The Prague School

Despite important contributions by its founder VilCm

Mathesius (1882-1945) and other Czech members,

the Prague Linguistic Circle (founded 1926) is best

remembered for the work of three prominent Russi-

ans, Roman Jakobson (18961982),  Serge Karcevskij

(1884-1955), and N. S. Trubetzkoy (1890-1938) (see

also Prague School Phonology). Jakobson had been a

prominent member of the Moscow Linguistic Circle,

a center of the Russian formalist movement, in which

certain of the features listed in Sect. 5. l-most notably

the priority of form over meaning-had arisen inde-

pendently from Saussure (an indication that they were

inherent in the Zeitgeist). Karcevskij had been at

Geneva from 1906 to 1917, years that span Saussure’s

courses in general linguistics, and when he returned

to Moscow after the October Revolution in 1917 he

225

20th Century Linguistics

brought  back a first-hand familiarity with Saussurean

thought. Jakobson and Trubetzkoy recognized the

points of convergence with formalism and earlier

work by Russian linguists, but also appreciated the

originality of Saussure‘s systematization.

The ‘Theses Presented to the First Congress of

Slavic Philologists in Prague, 1929’ already evince the

distinctive characteristics of Prague structuralism,

namely breadth-they include programs for the study

of poetic language and applications to language teach-

ing-and ‘functionalism.’ The document begins: ‘Language

like any other human activity is goal-oriented’

(Steiner

1982: 5). Besides any immediate material goal

to be accomplished, Prague inquiry assumed a constant,

implicit goal of maximally efficient communi-

cation, whether in the case of a casual utterance or

some manifestation of poeticity. The Prague School

also devoted considerable attention to analyzing the

special nature of’standard languages,’ a topic in which

they had a very practical interest given the need to

establish and maintain a national language acceptable

to both Czechs and Slovaks that had existed since the

creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918.

In the 1930s Jakobson and Trubetzkoy took structuralism

in the radically new direction of what is now

called ‘markedness’ theory, which holds that certain

elements in the linguistic system have an inter-

relationship that is neither arbitrary nor purely

formal, but defined by the fact that one element is

distinguished from the other through the addition of

an extra feature, a ‘mark.’ When the distinction is

neutralized it is always the simple, ‘unmarked’ member

of the opposition that appears. This concept,

which undoes the strict separation of substance and

form, first arose in Trubetzkoy’s phonology studies;

Jakobson then extended it to morphology and other

structural levels, ultimately developing it into a theory

of linguistic ‘naturalness’ in which unmarked elements

are predicted to be those which occur most widely

-across languages, are acquired first in childhood, and

are lost last in aphasia.

Following his emigration to America in 1942,

Jakobson exercised a fundamental impact on the

development of structuralism, both through his con-

ceptual innovations and his success in exporting his

brand of structuralism to (a) other human and natural

sciences, where it became the dominant paradigm in

the 1950s and 1960s  and (b) American linguistics,

through his influence (both direct and indirect) on

Chomsky (see Sect. 8). Besides America, much of the

later history of Prague structuralism was played out

in Paris, in the work of Andre Martinet (b.1908)

whose ‘Functional Linguistics’ continues to this day

to develop key aspects of the Prague program (see

 Grummur).  But it is particularly with Jakobson

and his followers, including Meillet’s student Emile

Benveniste (1902-76), that the structuralist concept of

the system is elaborated to near-metaphysical pro-

226

portions, while opening a vein of insights that linguists

of many schools continue to mine.

5.4 Olher Sfructuralist  Currents

Two other traditions have been particularly influential,

though neither so much as those of America or

Prague. The first is the ‘Copenhagen School’ headed

by Louis Hjelmslev (1899-1965), who went farther

than any of his contemporaries toward working out

the ‘relational’ nature of linguistic systems as implied

in Saussure’s Cows  (see The Glossematic School of

Linguisrics).  In principle the concern with form over

substance was a common structuralist heritage, but as

carried to its logical extreme by Hjelmslev it resulted

in a higher degree of abstraction than Prague functionalism

or American distributionalism could tolerate.

Hjelmslev anticipated the ‘algebraic’ quality of

post-World War II linguistics, and it is indeed in this

later period that his primary influence is felt (see Sect.

7).

The other important structuralist tradition, the

‘London School’ founded by John Rupert Firth

(1890-1960), deviates from the other schools in its

treatment of feature (d), the priority of form over

meaning, a fact which differentiates it most sharply

from the Bloomfieldians (see Firth and Ihe  London

School of Linguisrics).  In fact, Firth approached the

whole systematic nature of language in an unparalleled

way. Whereas other schools conceived of language

systems as consisting of a small set of largely

independent subsystems (phonology, morphology,

syntax, suprasegmentals), for Firth language was

‘polysystemic, ’ incorporating an infinite number of

interdependent micro-systems which overlap the tra-

ditional levels of analysis. The London School’s

refusal to separate phonology and suprasegmentals,

for example, made interaction with American structuralists

almost impossible-yet it anticipated work

in generative phonology by nearly half a century (see

Sect. 8). The ‘neo-Firthian’ systemic linguistics of M.

A. K. Halliday (b-1925; see Systemic Theory) and his

followers represents, together with tagmemics (Sect.

7; see also Tugmemics), one of the most robust ongoing

continuations of an essentially structuralist

.

Finally, special mention is due to Meillet’s protege

tradition.

Gustave Guillaume (I 883-1960), a relatively isolated

figure on the Parisian scene who cut his own structuralist

path distinct from the dominant Pragueanism

of Martinet and (in a different vein) Benveniste (see

Guilluumean  Linguistics). Like Hjelmslev, Guillaume

was largely concerned with elaborating the systematic

and abstract program of Saussure’s Cours,  but less

algebraically and with more concern for linguistic data

and psychological mechanisms. Guillaume’s work was

centered on French syntax, with a special predilection

for analysis of the definite and indefinite article, which

(in French at least) stands on the border between

,

svntax and semantics. Here he was clearly ahead of

$s time, and it may be no surprise that hehas  gained

his widest audience only during the 1970s and

1980s.

6, Developments in Historical Linguistics

Many linguists interpreted Saussure‘s arguments for

synchronic study as implying that it alone was true

linguistics-despite the fact that half of the Cours  is

devoted to diachronic matters. Jakobson took the lead

in insisting that each of the two approaches actually

implies the other. Certainly of the five features of

structuralism in Sect. 5.1, none is blocked a priori

from application to the diachronic dimension; and

none of those linguists at the forefront of structuralism

ever shied from tackling historical problems. Indeed,

Jerzy Kurylowicz’s (1895-1978) 1927 demonstration

that the distribution of the letter in the recently

identified and transcribed ancient language Hittite

corresponded precisely to that of the abstract and

hypothetical ‘sonant  coefficients’ posited for ProtoIndo-European

 by Saussure in 1878, did much to con-

vince historical linguists of the value of structural

inquiry, and helped remind structuralists of the valu-

able corroboration historical data could provide to

their theories.

Yet during the same period historical linguistics

became the locus of a reaction against not just struc-

turalism but the whole scientificization that had been

underway for over a century. The point of departure

for this reaction was Benedetto Croce’s (1866-1952)

call in 1900 for the return of language study to the

realm of moral science and the human will. In view of

the development of the field as outlined in Sect. 1, it

is not surprising either that most mainstream linguists

ignored Croce  or that certain individuals (particularly

in Italy) took up his call with great fervor. Karl

Vossler’s (1872-1949) attempt at a linguistic appli-,

cation of Croce’s theories attracted a wide following,

especially in German-speaking lands. The mainstream

linguist most deeply affected was Matte0  Bartoli

(1873-1946). the founder of ‘neolinguistics’ (later

: called ‘area1 linguistics’), an approach to historical

>:

study combining Crocean ideas with the findings of

id7 dialect geography to create a counterpoint to neo-

‘, grammarianism (see Neolinguisric  School in Italy).

i After the deaths of Bartoli and Vossler the movement

I’

3

faded out, though not before the tenets of area1

? linguistics became well established in the historical

$5 and geographical approaches.

?;

a

Another unique development arose in the former

i.. Soviet Union with the work of Nikolai Jakovlevich

c

p

Marr (1865-1934), who argued for the existence of a

@and  historical macro-family of languages he called

r;  ‘Noetic,‘ whose principal branches would be Semitic

k

::.

and ‘Japhetic.’ The latter family, another of his inventions,

 included originally his native Georgian and the

plausibly related Basque, but grew over the decades

Trends in Twentieth-century Linguistics: An Overview

to subsume many extinct languages of the Mediterranean

region (e.g., Iberian, Etruscan, Elamite)

and was ultimately extended far into Asia, Africa,

northern Europe (including eventually the Celtic and

Germanic languages), and even America. Marr

believed that this original Japhetic cultural unity-

classless, communistic, and not tied to race-fell victim

to ‘Aryan’ conquerors whose descendants would

spawn

European capitalism and imperialism. He

insisted

that suppressing this history was the goal of

‘bourgeois linguistics,’ i.e., the Western European historical-comparative

tradition.

Marr’s ‘New Theory of Language’ asserted that

language was a superstructural element in Marxist

terms (i.e., a direct consequence of the economic and

social system), and strongly contested the Western

European view of linguistic history as proceeding

from unity to diversity, arguing that because of continuous

language mixture we actually move in the

opposite

direction. Marr’s ‘paleontological analysis*

reduced all the words of all languages to four basic

elements-.&,  her,  van,  and rosh, occurring singly or

in combination-and analyzed their subsequent his-

tory according to his theory of ‘stadialism,‘ which

held that economic revolution must produce linguistic

evolution.

Outside the USSR, Marr’s theories were dismissed

as methodologically unsound and ideologically

driven; his fantastic etymologies and genealogies and

his claims to penetrate the thoughts and mental development

of prehistoric peoples were beyond the pale

of scholarly objectivity. The strongest repudiation of

his views came in 1950 when his own countrymen, led

by Stalin himself, denied that language was superstructural,

dismissed Japhetic theory and paleontological

analysis,

and embraced the historical-

comparative method as scientifically sound.

The 1980s saw a revival of interest in linguistic

‘mega-families’  like Nostratic (embracing at least

Indo-European,  Semitic, Georgian and Basque) and

the vast American Indian reconstructions of Joseph

Greenberg (see Sect. 10). These proposals, while at

first attracting enormous attention in the popular

press, were met with skepticism from the ranks of

historical linguists and have largely retreated into specialized

corners.

7. Post-World War II ‘Algebraic’ Structuralism

From about 1945 younger linguists showed an

increasing bent toward the algebraic and mathematical

aspects of structuralism, in the use of tables,

formulas, and other mathematical schemata, statistics,

calculations, and the generally rigorous working

out of the notions of system and systematicity. Such

a bent had already figured prominently in the work of

Hjelmslev and Guillaume (Sect. 5.4). In the early

1950s military and commercial interest in furthering

the wartime progress on computers and machine

227

b@

.

translation improved the fortunes of many linguists,

particularly in America, and gaye even more impetus

to the development of computationally-based models.

In America, the ‘neo-Bloomfieldians’ assumed the

mainstream mantle they had previously shared with

the disciples of Sapir (see American Structuralism),

and ‘anthropological linguistics’ retreated to the

status of a subdiscipline. Bloomfield’s mathematically

inclined heir apparent Charles F. Hackett  (b.1916)

rose to prominence, as did Zellig S. Harris (1909-92),

whose Methods of Structural Linguistics (completed

1947, published 1951) marked the high point in the

systematization of Bloomfieldian analysis. Harris,

Hackett,  and Jakobson also began extending their

inquiry to syntax, a largely neglected area (despite a

number of high-quality contributions over the years,

especially in the historical domain). Although syntactic

studies would not come fully into their own

until

the ascendence

 of Chomsky, who declared a

sharp break with the structuralist (especially the neoBloomfieldian)

tradition (Sect. 8),

 nevertheless in his

wake further structuralist accounts of syntax were put

forward, of which the most notable are the ‘stratificational

 grammar’ of Sydney M. Lamb (b. 1929),

which follows largely in the tradition of Hjelmslev (see

Stratifjcational  Grammar: The Giossematic  School of

Linguistics), and the ‘tagmemics’ of Kenneth L. Pike

(b.1912; see Tagmemics).

Pike, who had taken courses with Sapir and Bloomfield,

has had enormous influence not only for his

definitive

work on phonemic theory but also for his

decades-long

association with the Summer Institute

of Linguistics and the Wycliffe Bible Translators,

dedicated to translating the gospel into every one of

the world’s languages. Through their auspices hundreds

if not thousands of descriptive linguists have

been

trained in tagmemic analysis, and as a result, our

knowledge

of the structure of many languages exists

only

in this form. The religious side of Pike’s activity

has caused it to be neglected in accounts ‘of modern

linguistics, but it is largely the reason why the structuralist

tradition continues at present to have a significant

existence throughout the world.

In Europe too syntactic studies were underway, following

on the pioneering work of Lucien Tesniere

(1893-1954;

see Valency

 Grammar), but the focus of

structuralist investigation continued to be phonology,

and dialect geographic and historical linguistics con-

tinued to be more actively pursued than in the USA.

Meanwhile the younger generation of European

scholars looked increasingly to America for innovative

ideas and technological advances. Hence the

major development in structuralism during this period

was its exportation to other fields-until a revolt

against structuralism became part of the student upris-

ings of 1968. From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s

European linguistics turned increasingly toward

American generativism, while the other human sciences

played out a ‘poststructuralist’ phase.

228

8. Transformational-Generative Grammar, including

Generative Phonology

The mainstream of linguistics in the last four decades

of the twentieth century has been shaped by the work

of Avram Noam Chomsky (b. 1928) who had ties to

Bloomfield through his teacher Zellig Harris (see Sect.

7),  and to Jakobson through personal acquaintance

and through his close association with Jakobson’s

student Morris Halle  (b.1923). It is widely believed

that in its concern with ‘universal’ aspects of language

Chomsky’s program is a continuation of Jakobson’s;

in any case, it had no precedent in neo-Bloomfieldian

structuralism. Such was Chomsky’s success in over-

turning mainstream structuralist tenets that it is no

exaggeration to say he revolutionized the field-

though in broader perspective even this ‘revolution’

only helped advanced linguistics further along the

path it had been following for over 150 years. Chom-

sky’s avowed aim was to bring linguistics to the level

of rigor of physics, at once the most mathematical and

the most exact of the physical sciences. In his early

years he worked directly on mathematical models of

language, but finally abandoned this line of inquiry to

devote himself to his ‘context-free phrase structure’

models of syntax and, through the 196Os,  phonology

(see Erolu  tion of Transformational Grammar).

8. I Chomsky ‘s ‘Standard Theory ’ (I 955-65)

Much as the search for ‘science’ led nineteenth-century

linguists to eliminate living languages and struc-

turalists to eliminate parole from their sphere of

inquiry, Chomsky too eliminated from consideration

everything but the linguistic competence of an idealized

native speaker-hearer. He utterly rejected the

behaviorism that was part of Bloomfield’s legacy,

arguing that language is not a behavioral phenomenon

but a mental attribute (later he would refer to it

as

an ‘organ’) that is ‘universal’ and ‘innate.’ (Actu-

ally, the version of linguistic behaviorism Chomsky

most memorably attacked was not Bloomfield’s, but

that of B. F. Skinner (1904-90), a prominent Harvard

‘behavioral psychologist’ not directly affiliated with

any linguistic school or tradition.)

The claim of innateness not just of general language

faculties but of specific grammatical features is what

most abruptly severs Chomsky’s thought from its predecessors,

for in certain other ways it represents a

continuity and furthering of the structuralist approach.

In terms of the features of structuralism listed

in

Sect. 5.1, only (c), the preference for social abstractions

over mental ones (which implies behaviorism in

a greater or lesser degree), is clearly abandoned by

Chomsky. The other goals are maintained or inten-

sified. Regarding methodology, Chomsky rejected distributionalism

as naively empiricist, capable only of

revealing

the trivial phenomena of ‘surface’ structure

rather than the ‘deep’ structure which constitutes a

language’s innate, universal core. Data garnered

through introspection by the linguist-formerly suspect-were

deemed superior to those acquired ‘objec-

tively’ because of the new status granted to the mind.

And the ‘transformations* which lead from deep to

surface structure became a hallmark not only of

Chomsky’s linguistics but of later structuralist

thought generally.

Where his work was in conflict with the structuralist

mainstream Chomsky sought alignment with still ear-

lier traditions, in particular with Cartesian’ linguistics

which other historians of linguistics have not followed

him in recognizing. More subtly, his representation of

phrase structure as tree diagrams tied him to a didactic

tradition that embodied much of what the structuralist

enterprise had labored against. In the early 196Os,

when the race for American superiority in space

brought unprecedented funding especially to ‘scien-

tific’ enterprises, Chomsky attracted talented disciples

from various fields and was enormously successful in

getting both publicity and government funding.

Despite the reticence or outright refusal of most

senior structuralists to accept its leading ideas, transformational-generative

grammar became mainstream

linguistics in America around the mid-1960s and was

on its way to having this status worldwide, the first

unified paradigm since neogrammarianism to do so.

Extended Standard Theory (1966-78)

Within a short time, however, dissension erupted

within the generative ranks, led by some of Chomsky’s

most talented followers (see Generative Semantics).

The central issue was Chomsky’s insistence upon the

radical autonomy of syntax. In Chomsky’s view, syn-

tactic rules represent the initial stage of language gen.

eration; phonological and semantic rules are subsequent

and ‘interpretative.’ This radical version of

the structuralist priority of form over meaning conflicted

with the common intuition that meaning per-

haps need not, but can, determine syntax to a degree

sufficient to render the ‘autonomy’ of syntax virtually

nonexistent. The colleagues who broke with Chomsky

at this time did so in the name of ‘generative’ (as

opposed to interpretative) semantics, and though this

was no organized movement with a coherent research

framework, it has had a lasting impact on the field

(see R. A. Harris 1993). Besides reviving interest in

semantics as a major subdiscipline of linguistics

(whence it was all but banished during the neo-Bloomfieldian

 ascendancy), it gave rise to the thriving area

of discourse pragmatics  (see Sect. 11), which studies

how topic and focus phenomena determine word

order even in supposedly ‘syntactic’ languages, and to

George Lakoff’s (b.1941)  influential work on metaphor

in language and thought. Many of the leading

ideas of generative semantics were absorbed into later

breakaway generative paradigms, and soon thereafter

into Chomsky’s own program (examples include

predicate-raising, logical form, lexical decomposition,

globality; see further Sect. 8.3).

Chomsky’s response to this challenge included significant

revisions to the theory, although he continued

to

assert more strongly than ever the autonomy of

syntax and the interpretative nature of semantics. The

principal changes made in this period were a shift of

emphasis away from phrase structure rules and

toward word-specific features specified in the lexicon,

and severe restrictions placed on transformations,

which were no longer permitted to add or delete but

only to move elements already present in deep structure.

This led to a complexification of structural levels

and the introduction of ‘empty categories,’ ‘traces,’

and ‘filters* to do the work transformations formerly

did. Chomsky still insisted that grammatical roles like

subject and object must be derived from word order,

despite the success of Charles Fillmore’s (b. 1929) ‘case

grammar’ in explaining these phenomena without the

sometimes elaborate mechanisms to which Chomsky

had to resort (see Case Grammar). The result was that

by the mid-1970s the ‘extended standard theory’ had

reached a state of such complexity that its claims to

account for the speed and efficiency of child language

acquisition were growing ever poorer, and alternative

models were proliferating annually.

8.3 Government and Binding Theory: Alternative Generative

Theories

Saussurean and Jakobsonian structuralism continued

to be the dominant mode of linguistic analysis in Eur-

ope until the student revolts of 1968. Meanwhile,

scores of new universities and linguistics positions

were being created throughout Europe in the 1960s

and 1970s. The combined result was that a large post-

World War II generation of linguists starting their

careers found that the tradition in which they had

been trained was intellectually passe. Some turned to

the fashionable post-structuralist approaches sug-

gested by the work of Michel  Foucault (1926-84),

Jacques Derrida (b.l930), and others. But another

group of young European linguists became Chom-

sky’s new core constituency, and it was to them, in

Pisa in 1979, that he presented his new, pared-down,

‘neoclassical’ version of generative linguistics, called

*Principles and Parameters’ or government and binding

theory (GB), the objective of which is to formulate

the ‘parameters’ of ‘core’ universal grammar in the

most general possible way. Part of the new simplicity

was gained through finally admitting a system of

grammatical relations as primary (though without

acknowledging that this represented any sort of con-

cession to rival theories), and in the final abandonment

of phrase-structure rules, with ever greater

emphasis on lexical specification. But in general, GB

shifted the focus of linguistic inquiry away from

accounting for specific problems in specific languages,

and toward relating problems within and among lan-

229

Century-  Linguistics

guages.  By tracing not obviously related problems to

single  sources, it seemed for several years to point

toward a greater economy of explanation, and hence

toward real progress in the understanding of human

language structure.

By the late 198Os, however, new categories and prin-

ciples had begun to proliferate in the light of more

detailed data, and GB moved toward a strongly lexicalist

 mode! that rejects any notion of deep or (D-)

structure. Since 1991 Chomsky himself has turned his

attention away from the kinds of problems GB was

aimed at solving, and toward a ‘minimalist program’

devoted to the investigation of features shared by a!!

languages. At present no one approach can claim

mainstream status, though it is probably accurate to

say that this status is shared by the whole cluster of

generative theories, including minimalism, GB, lexical-functional

grammar, relational grammar, and

numerous

other approaches, including generalized

phrase structure grammar (GPSG) and head-driven

phrase structure grammar (HPSG), both of which

restore phrase structure rules to the prominence they

had in earlier transformational-generative grammar,

while eliminating the transformational component

completely. (For a fuller survey of these approaches,

see Droste & Joseph 1991; see also Applicational

Grammar; Case Grammar; Cognitive  Grammar.)

8.4 Generatire  Phonology

Generative phonology has developed in parallel with

(and sometimes in the shadow of) syntactic theory.

Chomsky & Halle’s  Sound Pattern of English (1968)

established the basis of a phonological theory that

would recapitulate the syntactic mode! in so far as

possible (an unacknowledged bond with London

School structuralism and Praguean  phonology).

Because phonology, unlike syntax, consists of a fixed

number of elements, a degree of systematic com-

pleteness was achieved that syntactic studies could

never match. Early generative phonology incorporated

Jakobson’s distinctive feature theory, as we!!

as an extremely formalized version of markedness theory

(which subsequently found a prominent place in

GB as well). A less formalized version of markedness

soon gave rise to various versions of ‘natural phonology’

in which phonetic complexity interfaces with

systemic considerations to determine marked and

unmarked structures.

However, from the mid-1970s on, the mainstream

of phonological work shifted to more forma! analytical

considerations, starting with the proper rep-

resentation of ‘suprasegmentals,’  most notably stress

and the tones of tone languages (another unac-

knowledged bond with the London School). John

Goldsmith’s (b.1951)  mode! of ‘autosegmental pho-

nology’ gave rise to numerous attempts at accounting

for phonology through the use of ‘tier’ and ‘template’

230

models, and of ‘underspecification’ of phonologica!

units as a way of accounting for the behavior of maxi-

mally unmarked elements.

Natural phonology led in due course to natural

morphology and syntax, which in turn gave impetus

to studies of ‘iconicity’ between sound and meaning

(another topic anticipated by Jakobson); and underspecification

theory has been extended to other levels

of linguistic structure. Even if phonology no longer

occupies the central position it did during the struc-

turalist  period, it continues to spawn much original

work that exports as many ideas as it imports to other

linguistic realms.

9. Sociolinguistics

We have seen that each movement toward greater

autonomy in linguistics brings an opposite (if unequal)

reaction toward re-placing language in a more broadly

human context. Thus Humboldtian psychologism

came on the heels of early historical-comparative

linguistics, Neogrammarianism coincided with the

academic institutionalization of modern literature

studies, and structuralism arose contemporaneously

with Crocean aestheticism. So too, generative sem-

antics may be seen as a corrective reaction against the

excesses of transformationalism,  as in fact may the

contemporary rise of a large number of alternative

approaches to language, three of which are surveyed

in the following sections. The most significant of these

is sociolinguistics.

The origins of linguistic geography were treated in

Sect. 3.3 above, which noted that its rise to prominence

in the early part of the twentieth century

created a momentum for synchronic linguistics.

Although the arrival of structuralism kept linguistic

geography from ever having mainstream status, it con-

tinued to be an active and vibrant research area in

Europe and, starting in the 193Os, in America, under

the leadership of Austrian-born Hans Kurath (!891-

1992). The shallower time depth of English in America

meant that geographic isog!osses were often less

clearly defined and more susceptible to socially-based

considerations. Raven McDavid  (191 l-84) took up

these social factors starting in the mid-!940s, around

the same time that a group of scholars centered at

Columbia University, led by Andre Martinet (b. 1908)

and his student Urie! Weinreich (1926-67), began to

emphasize the importance of class dialects. At least

one prominent sociologist, Paul Hanly  Furfey  (18961992),

was training students in linguistic research as

we!!, and by the early 1950s a number of individuals

were actively engaged in collecting language data

along social-class lines. The movement did not attract

wide attention however until the early 1960s and the

early studies of William Labov (b.!927), which coincided

with increased US government interest in

funding social research and the study of black  English

at the height of the civil rights movement.

Lab&s  studies established themselves at once at

the forefront of sociolinguistics, to the point that earl-

ier work was largely forgotten. The reasons are by

now familiar: increased ‘scientificness,’ in particular

mathematicality,  attained through a heavy reliance

on statistical information and calculation. The use of

‘variable rules’ effectively brought into the domain of

langue  much that otherwise would have been relegated

to  parole, providing a further systematization and

reclaiming of territory from voluntary language production.

Moreover, Labov’s demonstrations of how

social variation can be the synchronic reflex of diachronic

change has led to a significant merger between

sociolinguistics and historical linguistics in the United

States and the United Kingdom.

Sociolinguistics never achieved mainstream status

in the United States, and while very much alive there,

it has fared better still in the United Kingdom, a

country that is generally more class-conscious and has

a long tradition of dialect studies. The London School

and ‘systemic’ linguistics have always emphasized the

dual nature of language as social semiotic-and unlike

most other structural approaches, they have done

more than focus on one aspect while paying lip service

to the other.

10. Universal-Typological Linguistics

Beginning in the late 1950s  Joseph H. Greenberg

(b. 1915),  a linguist in the anthropological tradition,

began rethinking long-neglected questions of lan-

guage universals and typology, the latter in connection

with his important work on classifying African languages.

That his interest in universals arose sim-

ultaneously with Chomsky’s in universal grammar is,

despite their considerable differences, evidence of the

power of Jakobsonian structuralism on younger

American linguists of the period (Greenberg admits

this influence more readily than Chomsky does).

While Chomsky claimed that study of any one language

in its deep structure would by definition be a

study

of universals, Greenberg set about looking for

universals in an empirical way, by examining the

grammars of a sample of languages from numerous

language families. He found that while absolute universals,

such as having the vowel /a/, were trivial to

the deeper understanding and functioning of language

systems, a large number of ‘implicational’ universals

could be discerned that related the functioning of

seemingly disparate linguistic elements to one another

in previously unsuspected ways. For example, he

found that while languages are almost equally divided

between those which place objects before and after

verbs, and between those which place objects before

and after adpositions (a cover term for prepositions

and postpositions), the two features correlate such

.

Trends in Twentieth-century Linguistics: An Ocercie\r

that postpositional languages tend overwhelmingly to

have the order object-verb and prepositional lan-

guages to have verb-object. That is, objects tend to

come either before or after both verbs and adpositions

in a given language, suggesting that there exists a

unified process of government that supersedes that of

either of these categories.

Although Greenberg’s work was directly in line

with Chomsky’s both in the overall program of a

search for the universal and in the more specific result

of collapsing traditional distinctions into megacategories

like government, Chomsky and other gen-

erative linguists have from the beginning refused to

admit a meaningful connection between the two programs,

arguing that Greenberg dealt with mere surface

structure

phenomena and drew meaningless con-

clusions from statistical tendencies. For the neoBloomfieldians-whose

main concern had been to

avoid creating pseudo-universals by imposing the categories

and structures of their native language on the

very different languages they were investigating-and

for European structuralists generally, the empirical

nature of Greenberg’s work and that of others in the

same vein, including Bernard Comrie (b. 1947) and

John Hawkins (b. 1947),  made it much more palatable

than Chomsky’s, which appeared to admit of no disproof.

Significant strides toward reconciling the

Greenbergian and Chomskyan visions of language

universals have finally been made in the last 15  years.

11. Discourse Analysis

The final trend to be considered here is remarkable

for tying together several disparate traditions in the

goal of expanding language analysis beyond the level

of the individual utterance. Traditionally this was the

goal of rhetoric, and later of ‘stylistics’  as practiced

for example by Saussure‘s associate Charles Bally. For

linguistics proper, however, the amount of (seemingly

willful) variation possible beyond the level of the

clause seemed to establish this as a firm upper limit to

the extent of langue.

This may be why the impulse to go further came

from sociology, particularly from the ‘conversational

analysis’ initiated by Harvey Sacks (1935-75) in the

196Os, within the more general paradigm of ethnomethodology

founded by Harold Garfinkel

(b. 1929).

This

work did not find common ground with Labov-

ian  sociolinguistics, but did establish bonds with the

‘ethnology of speaking* approach founded by Dell H.

Hymes (b. 1927),  who had been trained in the anthropological

tradition. What is more, both con-

versational analysis and the ethnography of communication

found common ground with Halliday and

the London School, as well as with Prague School

analysis of sentence perspective (see also Prague

School Syntax and Semantics). John J. Gumperz

(b. 1922) is generally credited with having drawn these

231

2Ofh  Century Linguistics

various trends together in the later 1960s into the field

known as ‘discourse analysis’ (see Murray 1994).

Discourse analysis soon received valuable input

from an unlikely source: generative semantics. In mak-

ing their case against the hegemony of syntax the

generative semanticists gave particular attention to

‘pragmatics,’ the study of topic and focus phenomena

(a Praguean  heritage), and pragmatics was readily

incorporated into the more general scope of discourse

analysis, which henceforth could claim probably the

richest heritage (sociological-anthropological-Genevan/American/Praguean/London

- structuralist -

generativist) of any current trend (see also Generatice

Semantics). In the early 1990s Deborah Tannen’s

(b. 1945) analyses of men’s and women’s conversational

patterns achieved unprecedented popular success

in America-and perhaps not coincidentally,

discourse analysis appears to be emerging as a contender

for mainstream status. It is drawing increasing

interest

from ‘cognitive scientists’ (see Sect. 12) as well

as

from adjacent humanistic fields, including literary

criticism.

In this convergence of research traditions we have

in a sense the final culmination of the scientificization

of language study. Over the past 200 years the dividing

line between the systematic and the willful has shifted

progressively from phonology to morphology to part

of syntax to a!! of syntax and now finally to a!! of

discourse. The result of this seems to be, in other

words, that no aspect of language need be considered

unsystematic; no aspect cannot ultimately be

accounted for in a scientific, even algebraic way.

Through all the vagaries of neogrammarianism, struc-

turalism, and generativism, behaviorism and universalism,

rationalism and empiricism, this path of

development

has continued unbroken.

12. Conclusion

For language theory the twentieth century has been a

time of great intellectual ferment, only part of which

is reflected in a chronicle of mainstreams. Much of the

remaining story is told in other, nonhistorica! entries

in the 1994 Encyclopediu  of Language & Linguistics;

much more is not told, because it falls outside the

scope of linguistics as currently defined.

But the definition of the field is changing. ‘Semiotics’

has come into existence as the kind of general

science of signs envisioned by figures like Saussure

and Charles Sanders Peirce  (1839-1914). Closer to

the mainstream, the rise of ‘cognitive science’ as an

umbrella category dovering  linguistics as well as much

work in psychology, philosophy, computer science,

artificial intelligence, and consciousness studies, has

come about largely through the influence of Chomsky

and his school. Cognitive scientists see the auton-

omous structure of language as providing the key to

the structure of the mind; in general, they believe that

232

creating the most efficient mode! of artificial inte!ligence

 is the best possible way of discovering how the

mind operates. This notion has however come into

conflict with another view of the mind and its oper-

ation, called ‘connectionism,’ which is skeptical about

the claims of cognitive science and prefers to construct

explanations through a combination of evidence

acquired through direct study of neural networks and

processes of perception and mental organization as

well as of language structure. The challenge for

linguistics as the twentieth century ends is to reassert

the autonomous status of language and account for

its interaction with other, equally autonomous mental

faculties.

It has become a commonplace to associate the rise

of formalism and structuralism in late nineteenth- and

twentieth-century thought with the rise of Marxism in

both the intellectual and the political spheres. If the

connection is indeed real, then we should not be sur-

prised if the demise of Marxism portends radical

change in Western thought, including linguistics. We

should not even be surprised if the 200-year course

of scientificization described at the beginning of this

article were, finally, reversed. A revival of interest in

problematizing the ‘autonomy’ of linguistics, nascent

at the time of this writing, may prove to be the first

tentative step in this direction.

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