This text is a concise historical survey of structural linguistics, charting its development from the 1870s to the present day. It explains what structuralism was and why its ideas are still central today. For structuralists a language is a self-contained and tightly organised system whose history is of changes from one state of the system to another. This idea has its origin in the 19th century and was developed in the 20th by Saussure and his followers, including the school of Bloomfield in the United States. Through the work of Chomsky, especially, it is still very influential. P.H. Matthews examines the beginnings of structuralism and analyzes the vital role played in it by the study of sound systems and the problems of how systems change. He discusses theories of the overall structure of a language, the Chomskyan revolution in the 1950s, and the structuralist theories of meaning.
Description:
This text is a concise historical survey of structural linguistics, charting its development from the 1870s to the present day. It explains what structuralism was and why its ideas are still central today. For structuralists a language is a self-contained and tightly organised system whose history is of changes from one state of the system to another. This idea has its origin in the 19th century and was developed in the 20th by Saussure and his followers, including the school of Bloomfield in the United States. Through the work of Chomsky, especially, it is still very influential. P.H. Matthews examines the beginnings of structuralism and analyzes the vital role played in it by the study of sound systems and the problems of how systems change. He discusses theories of the overall structure of a language, the Chomskyan revolution in the 1950s, and the structuralist theories of meaning.