A Short History of Structural Linguistics
A Short History of Structural Linguistics
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This concise history of structural linguistics charts 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 nineteenth century and was developed in the twentieth 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. Matthews examines the beginnings of structuralism and analyses 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.
- A historical treatment, not just a survey
- Concerned with general ideas about language, not just technicalities
- Scope right up to the present day
Product details
July 2005Adobe eBook Reader
9780511035401
0 pages
0kg
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Languages
- 3. Sound systems
- 4. Diachrony
- 5. The architecture of a language system
- 6. Internalised language
- 7. Structural semantics
- 8. Structuralism in 2000.
