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c 



  ? ?
 ?   ?
General term for variously developed branches of V  Vpioneered
above all by E.Sapir (1884±1939) and L.Bloomfield (1887±1949). Although the
various schools cannot be clearly distinguished from one another, a distinction
is made between two general phases: the so-called µBloomfield Era,¶
andV   
V with Z.Harris as chief representative. Common to all
branches are certain scientific prerequisites which decisively influenced the
specific methodological orientation of American structuralism. At first.
an interest in dying Native American languages brought about interdisciplinary
research in linguistics and anthropology. The occupation with culturally distant
and as yet completely unresearched languages, which existed only orally, was a
significant catalyst for the paroleoriented, purely descriptive methods of
American structuralism  V
. The works of E.Sapir and F.Boas
are significant ( u
). The theoretical and methodological format
came to be determined in large part by the principles of behaviorist
psychology 
V. Following the natural sciences, this direction of
research reduces the object of its investigation to sensorally perceptible data
and draws on observations made in animal experiments to explain human
behavior. This restriction to an exact analysis of objectively experienced data
meant that the problem of meaning was deemed an extralinguistic
phenomenon, whereas 


 and  were subject to a strictly
formal analysis, based on the V


V ofV  
and VVu 
. Methodologically, American
structuralism is characterized by empirical V and inductive
procedures, in which only the identification and arrangement of linguistic
elements are relevant for grammatical description.
(   V V  V V     
).

c  

  ?

 A distinctive version of V  V developed in the United States in


the 1940s and 1950s, strongly influenced by the work of Leonard Bloomfield,
though it is clear that Bloomfield would not have approved of some of its more
extreme characteristics. The American Structuralists (or µpostBloomfieldians¶)
were often fieldworkers struggling to describe and record the dying languages of
North America; they attached great importance to developing efficient and
reliable techniques for analysing, describing and transcribing unfamiliar
languages. Partly as a consequence, they were sometimes perceived by
European linguists as hostile to theory, while they themselves occasionally
sneered at the Europeans as µarmchair theorists¶.
The Americans championed the 


V
 as the fundamental
unit in phonology, and often preferred the term
V




 They eventually developed a view of phonology distinguished by a
remarkable battery of doctrines, including theV 

uV and the
conditions of   VV       

   Motivated by a particular view of what constituted a scientific
approach to language, these doctrines frequently compelled analyses which
were inelegant and counterintuitive; the introduction of   
V
 


Vprovided only partial relief. But perhaps the single
characteristic most objected to by a later generation of phonologists was the
structuralist emphasis upon V  
V at the expense
ofV (generalizations); beginning with Halle (1959), which presented the
celebrated V against structuralist doctrines, this priority was
reversed, and within a few years  


 had supplanted
American structuralist phonology as the mainstream in the United States. See
Anderson (1985: chs 10±11) or Fischer-Jørgensen (1975: ch. 6) for an account
of American Structuralist phonology, Makkai (1972) for a collection of classic
papers, Stark (1972) or Huddleston (1972) for a more general account of
American Structuralism, and Newmeyer (1986) for an account of the
confrontation between structuralism and generative linguistics. See
also  u



 VV
?

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