European structuralism: SAUSSURE a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. Saussure is widely considered to be one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics and of semiotics, and his ideas have had a monumental impact throughout the humanities and social sciences.
Language is a system of signs. He initiated what was later called structuralism. Language: langue: abstract system of rules which exists in our heads, parole: actual use of lg, act of communication. Synchronic study of lg: at one point of its history, Diachronic study: study of lg as it changes through time. syntagmatic analysis is analysis of syntax or surface structure (syntagmatic structure) as opposed to paradigms (paradigmatic analysis). Paradigmatic analysis is the analysis of paradigms embedded in the text rather than of the surface structure (syntax) of the text which is termed syntagmatic analysis.
TRUBETZKOY a Russian linguist and historian whose teachings formed a nucleus of the Prague School of structural linguistics. He is widely considered to be the founder of morphophonology. Defined the notion of phoneme. HJEMSLEV a Danish linguist whose ideas formed the basis of the Copenhagen School of linguistics, studied comparative linguistics,he developed a new theory on language, coining the word Glossematik (in English, glossematics. He worked on the Saussurian notion of sign. B. MALINOWSKI studied lgs of primitive ppl, emphasized the role of context, introduced the phatic function of lg. FIRTH an English linguist, studied the utterance- realisation of a given sentence, the meaning is the one that is used in a given situation. Transformational &generative grammar: CHOMSKY
an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, one of the fathers of modern linguistics. Developed his theory of generative grammar, which has undergone numerous revisions and has had a profound influence on linguistics. His approach to the study of language emphasizes "an innate set of linguistic principles shared by all humans" known as universal grammar. Lg is the mirror of the mind, it's an infinite set of sentences generated by a finite set of rules and words. Competence refers to a speaker's knowledge of his language as manifest in his ability to produce and to understand a theoretically infinite number of sentences most of which he may have never seen or heard before. Performance refers to the specific utterances, including grammatical mistakes and non-linguistic features like hesitations, accompanying the use of language. Emphasis on syntax as the main branch of linguistics. Grammar shows a competence of the idea of a speaker.Am. structuralism: Bloomfield-represents am structuralism, spoken lg is primary, envisaged language structure in a very limited way. In particular it was associated with the phoneme as the unit of phonology (sound system) and morpheme as the unit of grammar.According to these linguists, both `phoneme' and `morpheme' are units of form and not of meaning. Bloomfield holds behaviourictic point of view iaccording to which Meaning = situation; it is typical for sociological study, S (stimulus) → R (response) Meaning is reduced to the situation Z.Harris- He is the foremost representative of branch of structuralism- distributionalism