ACTIVITIES

Copenhagen School:
http://en.educaplay.com/en/learningresources/564621/copenhagen_school.htm


Leonard Bloomfield:
http://en.educaplay.com/en/learningresources/564639/leonard_bloomfield.htm


Formalism by Noma Chomsky:
http://en.educaplay.com/en/learningresources/564604/formalism_by_noam_chomsky.htm

Theories of Grammar:
http://en.educaplay.com/en/learningresources/564582/theories_of_grammar.htm



Transformational grammar:
http://en.educaplay.com/en/learningresources/564583/transformational_grammar.htm

Anthropological linguistics:
http://en.educaplay.com/en/learningresources/565061/anthropological_linguistics.htm

The Praga School:

-Check the questions and answer the Puzzlw.

http://en.educaplay.com/en/learningresources/565077/the_prague_school_.htm

The descriptivists

3 importants descriptivists are:

- Franz Boas

Franz Boas was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology" and "the Father of Modern Anthropology.

Although Boas published descriptive studies of Native American languages, and wrote on theoretical difficulties in classifying languages, he left it to colleagues and students such as Edward Sapir to research the relationship between culture and language.

He shifted attention to the perception of different sounds.

Although Boas was making a very specific contribution to the methods of descriptive linguistics, his ultimate point is far reaching: observer bias need not be personal, it can be cultural. In other words, the perceptual categories of Western researchers may systematically cause a Westerner to misperceive or to fail to perceive entirely a meaningful element in another culture. As in his critique of Otis Mason's museum displays, Boas demonstrated that what appeared to be evidence of cultural evolution was really the consequence of unscientific methods, and a reflection of Westerners' beliefs about their own cultural superiority. This point provides the methodological foundation for Boas's cultural relativism: elements of a culture are meaningful in that culture's terms, even if they may be meaningless (or take on a radically different meaning) in another culture.

M.A.K. Halliday “A rich and adaptable instrument” - Activity

activity7/m__a__k__halliday.htm

M.A.K. Halliday “A rich and adaptable instrument”

In an educational context the problem for linguistics is to elaborate some account of language that is relevant to the work of the English teacher.

It is not necessary, to sacrifice a generation of children, or event one class roomful, in order to demonstrate that particular preconceptions of language are inadequate or irrelevant. In place of a negative and somewhat hit and miss approach, a more fruitful procedure is to seek to establish certain general positive criteria of relevance. These will relate, ultimately, to the demand that we make of language in the course of our lives.

We tend to underestimate both the total extend and the functional diversity of the part played by language in the life of the child.

Perhaps the simplest of the child´s models of language, and one of the first to be evolved, is what we may call the instrumental model. The child becomes aware that language is used as a mean s of getting things done.

Language as an instrument of control has another side to it, since the child is well aware that language is also a means whereby others exercise control over him. Closely related to the instrumental model, therefore is the regulatory model of language. This refers to the use of language to regulatory behavior of others.

A single incident has little significance; but such general types or regulatory behavior; through repetition and reinforcement determine the child´s specific awareness of language as a means of behavioral control.

Closely related to the regulatory function of language it its function in social interaction , and the third of the models that we may postulate as forming part of the child´s image of language is the interactional model.

Language is used to define and consolidate the group , to include and to exclude, showing who is the one of us and who is nor, no impose status, and to contest status that is imposed and humor, ridicule, deception, persuasion, all the forensic and theatrical  arts of language are bought into play .

Imaginative models of language; and this provides some further elements of the metalanguage with words like story make up and pretend.

The London School - Activity

actividad6/the_london_school.htm

The London School

Complete descriptions of languages emerged from this school.

 Henry Sweet 

Phonetic study in the modern sesnse was pioneered by Henry Sweet in the 19th century.

He based his historical studies on a detailed understanding of the workings of the vocal organs. 

Daniel Jones

He continued.

He taught the phonetics of French in 1907.

He became in the first university department of phonetics in Britain.

J.R Firth

He taught courses on the sociology of language in 1930s.

The polysystemic principle.

Prosodic theory.

A phonology was a structure of systems of choices, and systems of meaning.

Syntactic analysis in the London School style is commonly called “systematic grammar”.

Bronislaw Malinoyski

He was the colleague’s Firth.

He was a professor of Anthropology at the London School.

“In its primitive uses, language functions as a link in concerned human activity...It is a mode of action and not an instrument of reflection”.

 The term phatic communion. Ex/ How do you do?...Nice day.

Halliday

He introduces into syntax the notions: rank and delicacy.

Rank: a scale of sizes of grammatical unit, roughly speaking.

Delicacy: a scale of relative preciseness of grammatical statements.

Functions of language - Activity

aactivity5/roman_jakobson.htm

Functions of language

Functional linguistics: The Prague School - Activity

activity4/prague_school.htm

Functional linguistics: The Prague School

Read about the following ideas:

- The Prague School practiced a special style of synchronic linguistics.

- The members of The Prague School thought of language as a whole as serving a purpose.

- Prague linguists, on the other hand, looked at languages as one might look at a motor, seeking to understand what jobs the various components were doing and how the nature of one component determined the nature of others.

 - They tried to go beyond description to explanations, saying not just what languages were like but why they were the way they were.

-  Mathesius: theme and rheme. 

- Trubetzkoy distinguished various functions that can be served by a phonological opposition: Distinctive function, delimitative function, culminative function.

- Karl distinguished another three functions: Representation function, expressivefunction and conative function.

-Saussure contrasted two kinds of linguistics:

*Synchroniclinguistics: The study of a system in which the various elements derive their values from their mutual relationship.

*Historicallinguistics: The description of a sequence of isolated, unsystematic events.

- The Prague School argues for system in diachrony and it claims that linguistics change is determined by synchronic état de langue.

- The Descriptivits´ approach to phonology might be described metaphorically as `democratic´.

- Descriptivists tended to be reluctant to admit that any sound which can be found in some language might nevertheless be regarded as a relatively `difficult´ sound in any absolute sense.

- One of the characteristic of the Prague approach to language was readiness to acknowledge that a given language might include a range of alternative “systems”, “registers”, or “styles”, where American Descriptivist tended to insist on treating a language as single unitary system.  

- And the Prague scholars were particularly interested in the way that a language provides a speaker with a range of speech-styles appropriate to different social settings.

  

Saussure: language as social fact - Activity

activity3/saussure.htm

Saussure: language as social fact

Now we are going to focus in one specific scholar, Ferdinand de Saussure: 

First who is he?

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics. He was born in Geneva.

Language as a social fact:

By the end of the 19th century, the equation of languages with biological species had largely been abandoned. This created a difficulty for the notion of linguistics as an academic discipline.

Although it was not typically felt to be problematic by linguists of the nineteenth century, the question: "How does it make sense to postulate entities called "language" or “dialects” underlying the tangible reality of particular utterances?" in fact remained open during that period.

The man who aswered this was Saussure and he was the scholar who defined the notion of "synchronic linguistics", the study of languages as systems existing at a given point in time, as opposed to the historical linguistics. 

And the in 1913 he died.

Two of his colleagues, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye decided to reconstruct lecture-notes that Saussure had left behind: the book they produced, the "Cours de linguistique générale". And in this document he is recognized as the father of twentieth-century. 

According to Saussure there is an essentially systematic character to the synchronic facts of a language which he claims to be lacking in diachrony.

 Saussure’s concept of an état de langue as a network of relationships in which the value of each element ultimately depends, directly or indirectly, on the value of every other.

A language comprises a set of "signs"each sign being the union of a significant with a signifié.

According to Saussure, the changes which actually occur in the history of a language are in no way dependent on the effect they will have on the system.

A language, according to Saussure, is an example of the kind of entity which certain sociologists call “social facts”.

In Saussure’s view of syntax he worried of two terms: parole (speaking) and langue (language). The parole produced by individual speakers meanwhile the langue is a collectivity.

Saussure argued that langue must be a social fact on the grounds that no individual knows his mother-tongue completely.

And we are concerned in language, so let continue exploring it. 

Applied Linguistics and Linguistics - Activity

activity2/applied_linguistics_and_ling_.htm

Applied Linguistics and Linguistics

The following mind maps are to know more about the scholar and their contribution in Linguistics:

Here we have some definitions related with the topic:

Study of language - Activity

Activity/study_of_language.htm

The study of languages

"Language is as a pathway that can take many different ways"

From the Real Academia Española's perspective, language is the way to express.
But with this blog you can notice that is more complex of that.

In the Image 1 I am express importants scholars:

Image 1

Welcome!

My blog is called Chomskiando due to Chomsky is the most influential linguistic of the 20 th century.  


So this video that I want to show you is about two scholars: Noam Chomsky and Ferdinand de Saussure.


It show us their lives and why they are importants.


Also in other text, I am going to focus more in them, in linguistic and in other scholars.

And also this is the link of the originally video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLmbMqi3yis