Theoretical Linguistics

De Saussure De Saussure draws a firm dichotomy between language and langue, speaking and parole; he considers speaking to be historically prior to language in its genesis. Speaking is necessary for the establishment of language. Saussure as an internalist is interested in the study of the linguistic system from the inside, how it functions, what are the rules and the laws that govern that system? Language possesses 4 properties: Passive, receptive, collective and homogeneous. Passive; language is deposited in the human brain, it is not used when the speaker is asleep for example, though, it remains intact Receptive; it interacts with other languages, borrows and receives from them. Collective; in order to be established, language should emerge in a communal context. The presence of a community is necessary for a lgge in order to be shared by its different members. Homogeneous; all the members of the community must stick and abide by the same rules and follow the same instructions. Nobody can introduce any change and impose it on the rest of the community because lgge is shared and used evenly. Unlike language, speaking has different characteristics. It’s active, executive, individual, and heterogeneous Language processing doesn’t mean only inquoting but also dequoting (speaking and comprehending) Prior knowledge is necessary to perform a speech (to speak) the same like a chess game where moves are necessary to play. Speaking is a reflection to the language but even without prior knowledge, people communicate and perform speaking because they tend not to restrict themselves to any abiding rules, they just speak which accounts for the deviation from rules people are usually trapped in as well as the ill constructed sentences and utterances they produce. Meanwhile, language passes through stages of fluctuations. At first a community performs speaking and examines in the meanwhile the set of features that

are probable to become gradually abiding and compulsive rules of lgge. The rules are shared unconsciously but conventionally. Is language as an abstraction, a spoken or a written form? De Saussure assumes that language is the speech. The notion of value is recurrent with De Saussure’s analysis; it is according to his approach the difference between two statics; like a particular phoneme gets its value and proper specificity outta the difference between the places and the manners of articulation. De Saussure excludes the diachronic approach based on time to be a standing factor in studying lgge. He adopts instead a synchronic approach that focuses on the lgge itself as it is spoken in a precise given period by a precise and given community. He reckons it to be contributing to the study of the systemacity of lgge. He distrusts the recourse to the diachronic approach as it unveils nothing but the stages of change undergone by a lgge throughout history. The first stage wherein a msg getsborn is the brain of the speaker. It takes at first an ideational aspect. As language’s ultimate aim is to facilitate and hold conversations between different speakers, the vague nature of the idea makes communication almost impossible. For that reason, msg should pass through a verbalization process. This latter requires an organizational pattern according to which the different terms get organized in a syntagmatic relationship following a linear strategy. The meaning of the msg doesn’t depend on the number of terms used in the sentence but rather on the way they are grouped and organized which implies and reveals the vital importance of the organizational pattern in a sentence. Besides, every term is conditioned by the one preceding it and conditions itself the term that comes next after it. Moreover, Every term in the sentence submits to a paradigmatic relationship that relates it to the set of terms that existed

already in the mind of the speaker before he opts for that very term. These terms are grouped in a constellation as a whole set wherein only one term the speaker is concerned with.

Edward Sapir The main focus in linguistics for De Saussure is the systemacity of Lgge Sapir envisages a different approach of linguistics as he defines as an objective behind studying it the existent relation btw the lgge itself and other human interests. Lgge for Sapir is closely connected to culture; the socially inherited assemblage of practices and beliefs that determine the texture of our lives. Sapir believes that if we eliminate society, the individual will never learn to talkthe importance of the social environment. On the other side, Chomsky minimizes the role of society asserting that the essentials of lgge are biologically determined and the environment serves to nothing but activating the genetic competence While De Saussure fixes his ultimate objective from studying linguistics to the observation of lgge functioning inside the linguistic system, Sapir restores back the importance of speaking claiming that lgge exists and sustains as long as it’s actually practiced ; spoken and heard, written and read. Competence which is the set of rules and knowledge deposited in the brain of the speaker constitutes the main focus and the most needed requirement according to De Saussure to establish a linguistic system. The environment, being one of the main components in the establishment of lgge according to Sapir, is diminished in terms of its importance bcz it doesn’t relate to the abstract and the systemacity of a lgge. Sapir assigns the study of lgge systemacity to the pedagogues whose main concern is to identify the right way how to speak and perform a lgge while prescribing the set of rules upon which the system stands and gets based. This approach is discredited by Sapir for it doesn’t invoke any of the

cultural specificities of the lgge environment within which it got born. Both descriptive and prescriptive approaches do not serve to identifying the cultural environment sapirs stresses. At the contrary, their at last output is some sets of rules governing the system with no reference to the speaking. Pavlov discovered 2 signaling systems in the brain of human beings: • The concrete entity that I can perceive using my senses • The concrete percept is converted into a concept The percept must be abstracted and conceptualized which is one of the properties of human language (displacement) The use of a linguistic medium serves to convert the percept into concept Animals can’t displace the percept into a concept because their brains cannot retain the percept and conceptualize it. The speaker inquotes his speech using a set of items and intending to communicate a certain meaning The msg (set of words) stimulates the listener’s brain, then, this latter selects the words he thinks they carry out the meaning and opts for a precise organizational pattern, thus making the msg understood. Inner speech= the formulation of the idea in the brain The outer speech= the uttering of the msg so that to communicate a meaning.