Lecture 6. Principles of Synchronic Description of Language

Lecture 6. Principles of Synchronic Description of Language

1. 
   Language in Synchrony
   
2. 
   The Sign in Ferdinand de Saussure’s Interpretation
   
3. 
   The Terms: "System" and "Structure"
   
4. 
   The Notions of "Layer" and "Level" in the Language
   

The choice of an approach to the study and scientific description of language necessitates certain philosophical and methodological assumptions about the nature and role of language as a phenomenon of reality, and about its place among ontologically given sets of phenomena. These assumptions determine both the "what" and the "how". But there is yet another very important, probably the most important aspect – "what for?". The question "What for" is a compass that can lead the scholar to the subject onto the path of theoretical analysis adequate to its ontology. Such a path, compared with mere empirical inventory of facts, leads to a higher stage of cognition both theoretically and practically.

If we accept that the language is "the most important means of human communication" needed by all members of a given collective these traits must be the first reading of the linguist’s compass. As we assume that language is not an ideology but an instrument – an instrument of a special type, one possessing a structural and systematic organization rather than a kind of construction that any material instrument (an ax, a plough, a combine harvester) has – the first task of all speakers is to master this instrument in its given state. Ferdinand de Saussure was therefore quite right in saying that "the synchronic aspect prevails over the other (the diachronic aspect) because, for the speaking mass, it is the true and the only reality.

The primary orientation of scientific consideration and description of language must be the synchronic orientation consonant with the synchronic interests of the "speaking mass" and permitting a theoretical substantiation of practical descriptions of language, such as school textbooks, dictionary entries, rules of pronunciation, etc. Only the language of each individual has real being.

The English language, the Italian language are abstractions. A historical language does not exist in reality. There exists in reality only individual linguistic acts, oral or graphic, from which we deduce the concept of Italian, or French, or Latin.

For this reason, the science of language (unlike the science of speech!) must first of all be able to stop the process of speech given in direct observation, to interpret the "immobilized" entity (speech) as system and structure (language), and define all the units of this structure in their identities, differences and interconnectedness. In view of all this, the these on the "language" of a single individual refer to facts that are given the first; but they are not the true object of the linguist. The facts of speech are something different outside the sphere of language.

Speech is the subject matter of psychology, physiology, logopedia, and neuropathology, and on the educational level, the special preserve of educationalists. Speech is a different subject matter. Observing speech as an immediate process, the linguist must therefore be able to stop it and arrive at language as a second-order reality, not observable directly. The status of language as an instrument objectively existing for the "speaking mass", that is what pure synchrony is. But the clearest formulation of the question of the evolutionary and descriptive aspects is contained in the Saussure’s remarkable Cours de linguistique générale. To continue de Saussure’s analysis to the point the following concepts will have to be elucidated: (a) sign; (b) structure; (c) system.
2. The Sign in Ferdinand de Saussure’s Interpretation

Let us begin with the concept of sign. The term "sign" was readily used by Filipp Fortunatov: "language is ... an aggregate of signs", he wrote, "mostly for thought and for expression of thought in speech; besides, language also has signs for expressing emotions". To these two purposes of language – expressing thoughts and emotions – the author adds the function of expressing relation. Language can never be identified with code. Saussure gave an erroneous application of the theory of signs to language. His definitions do not elucidate the nature of the linguistic sign.

Some interesting ideas on the nature of the linguistic sign were expressed by Alf Sommerfelt, Sergej Karcevskij. Emile Benveniste pointed out that the relation between the linguistic sign and the designated object is "arbitrary" but the relation between the signifier and the signified within the language is not arbitrary but "necessary", as this combination presents a close symbiosis in which the concept is the "soul", as it were, of the acoustic image. Saussure’s thesis concerning the arbitrariness of the sign was defended by Charles Bally, Pierre Naete, and especially by Niels Ege. The sign concept is necessary to understand language, in general, and in synchrony, in particular.
3. The Terms: "System" and "Structure"

To clarify the relationship between synchrony and diachrony, and to form a conception of synchrony itself, it is also necessary to specify the meaning of the terms "system" and "structure". These two terms are sometimes used as synonyms, and some linguists even suggest that one would suffice. "System" means connections and interconnections on the horizontal plane, and "structure", connections and interconnections on the vertical plane.

A system is a unity of homogeneous elements, a principle unifying the phonetic, morphological, lexical and syntactic systems within each layer of language structure. A structure is the vertical axis integrating various layers of the whole. Many "structuralists" and even "non-structuralists" use the term "structure" on the analogy of the natural sciences. The analogy comes from organic chemistry. In Arnold Cikobava’s (Introduction to Linguistics) we find precisely this kind of description of system as "mechanical ordering".

"The concept of external mechanical ordering must not by any means be substituted for that of system...; in the case of mechanical ordering, the quality of each is independent of the whole. The view of system in language among American scientists inclined to pragmatism and behaviorism and it is more complex. Let us consider Bloomfield’s definition of grammar as "meaningful arrangement of forms in language". Can the concept of system be replaced by the concept of "arrangement" which follows from Bloomfield’s behaviorist orientation? Can a "living" spectrogram or even oscillogram be viewed as a direct "linguistic characteristic"? Hardly.

Not only phonemes but also positions are correlated with differentiation of meaning, and that phonemes exist in language not only as elements of a series moving through time, as linear links, but also as localized components of morphemes, positions, and systems of phoneme variation in different positions, it is necessary to understand the given language rather than to rely on the statistical criterion of occurrence and distribution, with which certain American descriptive linguists appear to be content.

Structure and structuredness are a general property of language as a special phenomenon of reality which varies with concrete types of that structure (consider, e.g., German and Chinese, Arabic and the Turkic languages, etc.); but the system quality is specific not only for each group of related languages but also for each individual language taken separately (e.g., Bulgarian and Russian, English and German – each within the framework of closely related languages. It is not only the phonetic and grammatic systems of each language that are individual. The lexicons manifest similar proprieties. This is even true of the international vocabulary, owing to the fact that the lexicon does not exist by itself but in the structure of the language, it is subordinated to the phonetic and grammatical norms of a given synchrony regardless of its origin. The individuality of the lexical systems of different languages is also conditioned by different paths of development of figurative meaning in each given language. The system characteristic of words in terms of synonymy and homonymy and the distribution of the semantic load of words, as clearly shown by de Saussure (cf. the Russian baran "ram" – baranina "mutton" and French mouton), are all proofs of the fact that languages as structural aggregates of systems are both individual and idiomatic.

The structural interpretation of synchronic data specifies a language as a hierarchically structured whole, that is the most important element in the synchronic aspect itself.

• 
  in the construction of alphabets and the rationalization of orthography (based on phonetics and morphology);
  
• 
  for solving problems in practical transcription in cartography, practical translation, etc. (the basis here is lexicology and phonetics);
  
• 
  for preparing a language for work on machine translation – separately for the oral and written forms of translation (the basis of this work is always lexical, but only through grammar, with either morphology or syntax predominating, depending on language structure, and with emphasis either on the graphic presentation of the text or on the phonetic division of speech);
  
• 
  linguistic interpretation of artificial languages is not only theoretically linked with pure synchrony but cannot practically extend beyond the framework of synchrony, as these languages are devoid of natural development. They are norm languages; they can be enriched lexically, they may be regulated and reformed grammatically and phonetically, but they cannot develop.