The Strengths of Structural Grammar
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The contribution of the 19th century towards the development of a scientific approach to language cannot be underestimated, even though the preoccupation throughout this period was almost totally historical. Earlier study of language history was haphazard and vague. There was little objective, systematic analysis of similarities and differences between language forms, or of the chronological changes in a language. If similarities were noted, it was often to dismiss them as coincidental; differences were dismissed as unimportant, or reinterpreted to suit the presuppositions of a particular original theory. If the changing nature of language was considered at all, it was part of a natural process of corruption, measured against the changeless status of Latin. The first to point out objectively the fact of a systematic language similarity was a French Jesuit missionary named Coeurdoux, who showed in 1767, with many examples, that Latin and Sanskrit had definite grammatical and lexical correspondences; but his suggestion was not published until later, and by that time, Sir William Jones had said the same thing more emphatically, and included Greek and Celtic in his observations. Most scholars agree that the scientific study of language originated from these observations.
Structural grammars made many contributions to our understanding and description of language, especially in dealing with morphology. Because of these contributions, and because many grammars and other handbooks apply their findings, the approach of structural grammars is not disregarded. The morphological classifications as well as the terminology of these grammars are used generally in linguistic study.
Structural grammars were especially successful in treating exotic languages at the phonological and morphological levels. In contrast with earlier grammars, exotic languages were not presented as languages similar in some respects to Latin and different in others. Instead, the elements were identified by their role in the various layers. Languages were described according to their characteristics, with regard for those of other languages.
The ‘phonemic principle’ is the most obvious and typical acquisition of structural linguistics. Not only has some of the earliest and most influential work in structural linguistics been devoted to phonemic analysis, but the methods of phonemic analysis have been transferred (not always for the better) to other areas of linguistics.
In spite of differences between traditional and structural grammars, they are alike in maintaining an analytic approach to language. Both approaches aim to determine the constituents of words and sentences, concentrating, as we have noted, on forms. Structural grammars also concentrate on analysis but give special attention to intonational patterns. Such presentations of syntax are in keeping with the theoretical bases of analytic grammars. They start with a selected corpus, identify the forms in the corpus, and describe how they are used. Syntax, in this way, is an extension of morphology.
Analytic grammars and dictionaries (based on the presentation of analytic grammars) are especially useful to native speakers. These have an intuitive understanding of their language. In using grammars, dictionaries, and other handbooks, they may simply be interested in verifying details. Non-native speakers may, however, find such works less helpful; for they must learn how to express themselves, for example, to master the possible ways of producing particular constructions. Non-native speakers find grammars treating these several ways under one heading more helpful than one that treats them separately under their morphological elements.
Between the years 1933 and 1957, structural grammar placed great emphasis on analyzing the sound systems of language. This emphasis developed primarily for three reasons: (i) interest in descriptive rather than historical studies, (ii) the accessibility of sounds and the availability of techniques for analyzing and describing them, and (iii) practical applications of linguistics.
In opposition to the totally historical view of language of the previous century, Saussure emphasized the importance of seeing language from two distinct and largely exclusive points of view, which he called synchronic and diachronic. The distinction was one that comparative philologists had often confused, but for Saussure – and subsequently for linguistics – it was essential. Synchronic linguistics sees language as a living whole, existing as a ‘state’ at a particular point in time. We can imagine this state as the accumulation of all the linguistic activities that a language community (or some section of it) engages in during a specific period, for example, the language of the present-day working class in Lagos. In order to study this, the linguist will collect samples within the stated period, describing them regardless of any historical considerations which might have influenced the state of the language up to that time. To consider historical materials is to enter the domain of diachronic linguistics. This deals with the evolution of a language through time, as a continually changing medium – a never-ending succession of language states. Thus, we may wish to study the clause from Old English to Middle English, or the way in which Shakespeare’s style changes from youth to maturity: both would be examples of diachronic study. These two points of view were often not clearly distinguished before Saussure; that they must be distinguished is denied by few linguists today. Giving due emphasis to the synchronic (which had been the neglected dimension before Saussure) helps to clarify the important point that a diachronic investigation always presupposes, to some extent, a synchronic study. It is impossible to consider the way a language has changed from one state to another without first knowing something about the two states to be compared. As a result, the living language received more attention than it ever had before, and speech, in particular, came into the ascendant.
The second Saussurean dichotomy which has endured till today, though with modifications, is that between langue and parole. The problem which Saussure was trying to solve arises out of the intolerable ambiguities which surround language. Saussure made a distinction among three main senses of language, and then concentrated on two of them. He envisaged langage (human speech as a whole) to be composed of two aspects, which he called langue (the language system) and parole (the act of speaking). Briefly, the division is as follows. Langage is that faculty of human speech present in all normal human beings due to heredity, but which requires the correct environmental stimuli for proper development. Langue was considered by Saussure to be the totality (the ‘collective fact’, as he put it) of a language, deducible from an examination of the memories of all the language users. It was therefore: ‘the sum of word-images stored in the minds of individuals’. The idea is very similar in principle to the notion of competence as later defined by Chomsky, though it differs in its cumulative nature. Langue has to be related to the actual usage of individuals. This leads to parole, the actual, concrete act of speaking on the part of an individual. It is a personal, dynamic, social activity, which exists at a particular time and place and in a particular situation – as opposed to langue, which exists apart from any particular manifestation in speech. Parole is, of course, the only object available for direct observation by the linguist. It is identical with the Chomskyan notion of performance.
Making a conceptual distinction of this kind is certainly an aid to clear thinking on the subject of language, and linguistics as a whole benefited. The two concepts have also been modified over the years, as different schools of thought have taken them up and built conceptual structures on their basis.
In summary, structural grammar is empirical; it makes exactness a methodological requirement and insists that all definitions be publicly verifiable or refutable. It examines all language in terms of phonological and grammatical systems, which can be determined by empirical methods. Because its description is structural, the uniqueness of each language is recognized and done justice; but it also facilitates comparison since the method also reveals what languages have in common. It describes the minimum required contrasts that underlie any construction or conceivable use of a language and not just observable in some particular use.
Weaknesses of Structural Grammar
While structural grammars were successful in their phonological and morphological analyses, they treated complex syntactic strings poorly. For example, relationships among sentences like 1(a) and 1(b) below were not well handled:
1. (a) A child won the prize (b) The prize was won by a child
Although 1(b) is a variant of 1(a), structural grammars would treat this variant as a different form. Capable treatment of such sentence variants was produced only by a further grammatical approach, the transformational – generative grammar.
In principle, the item-and-arrangement model of structural grammar can provide a comprehensive description of any language. Phones are classified into phonemes. These basic units are arranged to form words. Once words are described, it is a simple matter, in principle, to state the rules for arranging words to form sentences. This is the structuralist stand. But when you start to do the description, you will discover that it is no simple matter. In practice, the variety of sentence patterns occurring in any language has seemed to defy exhaustive description.
Recourse to introspection or to the notion of the mind (or intuition) was rejected by structuralists based on the notion of verifiability. To them, the sole proper object of study was thought to be a corpus of utterances; it was held that linguistics had the purpose of providing procedures for cutting up the utterances, and for grouping together the resulting segments. The classes and categories which were set up in the process of these operations were considered to be scientific constructs, conceptual fiction which were useful in the course of the description but did not correspond to any psychological reality. Thus, structural grammar prescinds from psychological factors that are important to all speakers.
One of the most obvious casualties in this approach was semantic study. Semantics was traditionally the section of linguistics in which the least degree of precision had been reached, and in which recourse to ‘mentalist’ notions appeared to be the least dispensable. Consequently, an attempt was made to achieve linguistic description without considering meaning. The attempt to eliminate meaning was made not only in the field of phonology and morphology but even in the field of semantics itself! In their situational description of meaning, the assumption that the ‘relevant’ linguistic facts can be correlated with the ‘relevant’ non-linguistic items in a completely objective manner has concealed many non-linguistic assumptions.
Some of the problems connected with the treatment of the morpheme depended on the way the notion of meaning was employed. The definition of the morpheme as a minimum meaningful unit was in many ways misleading. Besides, lacking a workable method to deal with meaning, a confusing use of terms like ‘zero’ elements and of ‘portmanteau’ morphs was introduced. In, for example, cats two morphemes were identified: cat, meaning ‘cat’, and –s, meaning ‘plural’. The way in which cat also meant ‘singular’ was not clearly explained, and the same analysis was imposed on languages for which it was intuitively less satisfactory. Artificial solutions were suggested for cases like foot, feet or sing, sang to make them match mechanically the cases cat, cats and love, loved. Structural grammar has not produced any complete grammars comparable to the exhaustive treatments by traditional methods, concentrating on critical studies of how grammars should be written, partial sketches of exotic languages, and partial structural analysis of familiar languages. Structural grammar devotes attention to surface structures and has no regard for deep structure. For many, structural grammar’s goal is the description of language, and not explanation. In attempts to comprehend language, structural grammar does not enjoy the attention of modern scholars, but anyone concerned with the facts of language finds it useful.
Conclusion
We have tried in this unit to point out some of the strengths and weaknesses of structural grammars. It must be mentioned that discussion of strengths and weaknesses by no means applies to the work of individual linguists, since they are stated in extreme fashion. Strengths are those claimed by structuralists, and the weaknesses are those pointed out by representatives of the opposing views.
Summary
You have learned in this unit:
• the strengths of structural grammar, and
• the weaknesses of structural grammar
Tutor-Marked Assignment
1. Mention and discuss three areas where structuralist principles and methods are still employed in the analysis of language.
2. Mention any two weaknesses of structural grammar and discuss their effects on linguistic analysis.
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