Linguistic Theory: junio 2012

lunes, 4 de junio de 2012

Discourse Analysis can be applied to any text, that is, to any problem or situation. Since Discourse Analysis is basically an interpretative and deconstructing reading, there are no specific guidelines to follow. One could, however, make use of the theories of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, or Fredric Jameson, as well as of other critical and postmodern thinkers.

*Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was the founder of “deconstruction,” a way of criticizing not only both literary and philosophical texts but also political institutions. Although Derrida at times expressed regret concerning the fate of the word “deconstruction,” its popularity indicates the wide-ranging influence of his thought, in philosophy, in literary criticism and theory, in art and, in particular, architectural theory, and in political theory.

*Foucault's concern is not to produce a general theory of discourse (whatever that might mean). His use of the term discourse may be taken to be tactical. It may be thought of as an attempt to avoid treating knowledge in terms of 'ideas'. The reason for avoiding the term 'ideas' is that it brings in its train a series of presuppositions which Foucault hopes to abandon. We will mention only three. The first is that an 'idea' is knowledge by virtue of being a proposition, a proposition being the logical form of an idea. Knowledge viewed in this logical sense may be thought of as a tissue of 'ideas'. Knowledge consists of ideas as they present themselves for validation. The second pre-supposition is that an idea' is a mental representation and is thus tied to the apparatus of production of thought by a human subject. Although these two presuppositions do not have to go together with any logical necessity, they frequently do so in historical investigations, especially in the sense of ideas being treated as propositions and at the same time having an 'author'. The third pre-supposition is that 'ideas' are expressed or have their existence in language. In this case the identity of an idea is its meaning and its basic units are sentences. As we shall see this trinity of proposition-subject-meaning which hovers over the idea is one from which Foucault tries to turn away in his analysis of knowledge.

*Fredric Jameson is generally considered to be one of the foremost contemporary English-language Marxist literary and cultural critics. Over the past three decades, he has published a wide range of works analyzing literary and cultural texts, while developing his own neo-Marxist theoretical perspectives. In addition, Jameson produced many important critiques of opposing theoretical schools and positions. A prolific writer, he has assimilated an astonishing number of theoretical discourses into his project, while intervening in many contemporary debates and analyzing a diversity of cultural texts, ranging from the novel to video, and from fairy tales to postmodernism.

MICHAEL HALLIDAY (game)

MICHAEL HALLIDAY jigsaw puzzle game » free online jigsaw puzzles

MICHAEL HALLIDAY

ü MÉTODO ETNOGRÁFICO: es lo que los etnógrafos hacen, cualquier tipo de descripción parcial o total de un grupo ethno (gente) y graphy (descripción): una descripción de la gente y de sus estilos de vida. La etnografía es un método de investigación social que trabaja con una amplia gama de fuentes de información.

MICHAEL HALLIDAY (conceptos)

ü PROPUESTA TEÓRICA: implicó el cuestionamiento de las propuestas de dos grandes lingüistas: Ferdinandde Saussure y William Lavob, puesto que ninguna de las dos permitía un estudio acabado del binarismo "lengua-habla" o era la opción sistémica (lengua) o la opción funcional (habla). Halliday plantea la discusión al respecto en el libro "el lenguaje como semiótica social" (1979), donde profundiza respecto a un nuevo modelo para el estudio del lenguaje integrando el componente sociocultural como clave en su comprensión.

ü SOCIOLINGUÍSTICA: es la disciplina que estudia los distintos aspectos de la sociedad que influyen en el uso de la lengua, como las normas culturales y el contexto en que se desenvuelven los hablantes; la sociolingüística se ocupa de la lengua como sistema de signos en un contexto social. Se distingue de la sociología del lenguaje en que esta examina el modo en que la lengua influye en la sociedad.

ü ESTILÍSTICA: es un campo de la lingüística que estudia el uso artístico o estético del lenguaje en las obras literarias y en la lengua común, en sus formas individuales y colectivas. Analiza todos los elementos de una obra o del lenguaje hablado, el efecto que el escritor o hablante desea comunicar al lector o receptor del discurso hablado y los términos, giros o estructuras complejas que hacen más o menos eficaces esos efectos.

ü PSICOLINGUÍSTICA: es una disciplina que trata de descubrir cómo se produce y se comprende el lenguaje por un lado y cómo se adquiere y se pierde el lenguaje por otro. Muestra, interés por los procesos implicados en el uso del lenguaje; es, además, una ciencia experimental que exige a que sus hipótesis y conclusiones sean contrastadas sistemáticamente con datos de la observación de la conducta real de los hablantes en situaciones diversas.

ü NEUROLINGUÍSTICA: estudia los mecanismos del cerebro humano que facilita el conocimiento y la comprensión del lenguaje, ya sea hablado, escrito o con signos establecidos a partir de su experiencia o de su propia programación. Busca integrar a la persona en un todo y permite influir en ella, de manera sutil, manteniendo la visión de donde se encuentra la negociación con el otro individuo y hacia donde se pretende llegar.

ü MODULARIDAD DEL PENSAMIENTO:
Alicia + compró + una casa + en el campo
MODALIDAD Sujeto + Verbo finito + Objeto directo + Complemento
circunstancial
de lugar

GRAMÁTICA DE LOS CASOS (game)

domingo, 3 de junio de 2012

GRAMÁTICA DE LOS CASOS DE CHARLES FILLMORE

La gramática de casos es el módulo gramatical que se encarga de estudiar la distribución y el movimiento de los sintagmas nominales. Como teoría de análisis gramatical fue desarrollada a partir 1968 por el lingüista americano Charles J. Fillmore en el contexto de la gramática transformacional. Según esta teoría, una predicación está constituida por un verbo que es combinado con uno o varios papeles temáticos, tales como el Agente, el Tema o el Instrumental. Estos papeles temáticos toman la forma de sintagmas nominales, y la distribución de estos viene dada por el caso gramatical, que es una propiedad asignada a los SN de manera obligatoria, pues en caso de carecer de ella, la frase resultante no sería gramatical. La labor del caso es pues, la de asignar una función gramatical específica a cada sintagma nominal.
Hay tres niveles de análisis:
- POSITIVO (de contenido): Parámetro de análisis: Palabra. Consiste en ver cuántas palabras dentro del corpus se repiten. Es un primer nivel de estadística textual como análisis de contenido. Es un análisis de relación y frecuencias de palabras. Por acumulación de palabras, aparece un determinado sentido. Le podemos ir dando un primer nivel cualitativo, por ejemplo, el diferencial semántico.
- ESTRUCTURAL: Parámetro de análisis: Texto, cualquier materialización de un discurso. La definición de texto de Umberto Eco es un conjunto estructurado de signos. Fuera de la lingüística hablada. Aquí aparece la estructura de la lengua no hablada. Un conjunto de imágenes puede ser un texto. Nuestra propia manera de vestir es un texto. Los textos suelen ser bastante coherentes.
- SOCIO-HERMENÉUTICO: Se trabaja con la idea de discursos sociales (parámetro de análisis). Es decir, con una cierta intención social de hacer algo. Estos discursos sociales son interpretación en contextos sociales. Por ejemplo, palabras como “tregua” que parecen neutras en estos días se llenan de discursos sociales. Todos los discursos sociales están hechos en referencia a otros discursos sociales.
Estos tres niveles son fundamentales, casi siempre hacemos todos estos tres niveles. Hay una cierta transversalidad en todo análisis del discurso. Es muy difícil situarse sólo en uno. Corpus, es una selección de materiales significativos.

Noam Chomsky (game)

Noam Chomsky hangman game » hangman games

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky

+ Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928, to Jewish parents in the affluent East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,

+ A graduate of Central High School of Philadelphia, Chomsky began studying philosophy and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1945, taking classes with philosophers such as C. West Churchman and Nelson Goodman and linguist Zellig Harris.

+ Chomsky is famous for investigating various kinds of formal languages and whether or not they might be capable of capturing key properties of human language.

Syntactic Structures

Syntactic Structures was Chomsky's first published book, a short monograph that distilled the concepts presented in LSLT. It was published by a Dutch publishing house, Mouton. In 1956, Chomsky showed an editor at Mouton his lecture notes for MIT undergraduates and a revised version of these notes were published as Syntactic Structures in the first week of February, 1957. Favorable reviews from fellow American linguists, e.g., Robert Lees, made Syntactic Structures visible on the linguistic research landscape, and shortly thereafter the book created a revolution in the discipline.

Generative gramar

The Chomskyan approach towards syntax, often termed generative grammar, studies grammar as a body of knowledge possessed by language users. Since the 1960s, Chomsky has maintained that much of this knowledge is innate, implying that children need only learn certain parochial features of their native languages. The innate body of linguistic knowledge is often termed universal grammar.

Today there are many different branches of generative grammar; one can view grammatical frameworks such as head-driven phrase structure grammar, lexical functional grammar, and combinatory categorial grammar as broadly Chomskyan and generative in orientation, but with significant differences in execution.

Leonard Bloomfield (game)

Leonard Bloomfield

Leonard Bloomfield

Mentalism and behaviorism.

The word “meaning” express complications at the moment of the study of a linguistic phenomenon, because imply 3 factors:

a) outsider speakers

c) speech

if we connect them differently we get different results. For example, if we connect them continuously (a, b, c) we obtain an ecological system. If none of the three factors is connected to each other, then said to lack of objectivity, and if we make connection between b and c, excluding a, we obtain what is known as subjectivity.

Linguistics is Talk about Language.

This scheme suggests that if (a) and (c) are equally, though differently, distinguishable from (b) as (outside), a method designed to study the outside can be different from another best adapted for studying the inside, perhaps a third is needed to study the triad simultaneously.

Old and new language about language.

Saussure, Boas, and Sapir has a mentalist tradition. That tradition was designed to test the consistent use or non-obvious implications of scientific concepts. But that concept of “science” itself was of an intellectual, logically deductive enterprise.

Saussure´s stress on negative, contrastive, function over positive phonetic or semantic composition changed that tradition´s perspective, not its basics. Boas´ demonstration of social determination antecedent to sensation, added a missing dimension; Sapir concluded that a minimum for human language is formation and expression of concrete and relational ideas.

Objective talk about Language.

For Behaviorists, (c)-behavior is labeled a substitute response to an immediate (a) stimulus; (c) is also a substitute stimulus for (a) responses otherwise occasioned by (a) stimuli. Speech is taken to be an objectively observable activity of an organism, a succession of substitute and responses.

Language as Response.

Mentalism is dualistic: It recognizes two kinds (mental and material) of data experience, perception, insight, causality, evidence, explanation, study goals and methods of study. Behaviorism, as a form of materialistic determinism, is monistic: It admits only a single kind (material) of data erroneously distinguished by mentalists into experience, insight, perception, causality, evidence, explanation, study goal and method of study.

Distinguish sense and reference.

Reference is a static relation, dynamic process or action linking speech to outside speakers, mediated by inside speakers, while sense, is a state or action within inside speakers, by speech is related to outside speakers.

Society constitutes the totality of senses and references between the speakers and the hearers.

Distinguish denotation and connotation.

Denotation is reference; connotations are socialized relations of the referent for speakers and their properties.

The fundamental assumption of linguistics.

to Bloomfield, the mentalist in practice defines meanings exactly as does the mechanist, in terms of actual situations.. and wherever this seems to add anything, of the hearer’s response. He says they have the same data.

Stable states.

Synchronic linguistic description proceeds on the counter-factual assumption of constant and stable forms with meanings, in an unchanging speech-community, through linguistics forms containing a discrete number of phonemic contrasts.

Basic and modified meaning.

The linguist can only analyze the signals , not the signaled., that’s why linguistics must start from the phonetics. The total stock of morphemes is a language’s lexicon.

Syntax.

The free forms of a language appear in larger free forms arranged by taxemes of modulation, phonetic, modification, selection and order. Any set of such taxemes is a syntactic construction.

Forms resultant from Free forms.

They can be said to produce a resultant phrase, of which the form-class may be determinative of the phrase’s grammatical behavior. ENDOCENTRIC.

EXOCENTRIC. Its when the phrase does not follow the grammatical behavior of either constituent.

A priori vs A posteriori.

We operate a priori, our procedure may be said to have resulted not from experience, but some vantage prior to or independent of. We could say we deduced some.

Our procedure is called a posteriori from a vantage posterior and not independent of experience. We induced the information contained in columns.

American Structuralism

The American structuralism has two ways of considering the concept of structure.

The first is that the researcher is requiring some kind of order and that order is the structure. The second is that the language already has a structure and the researcher discovers.

The American structuralism approach is the so-called descriptivism.

Point of view is the synchronous and the object of the grammar is the functions.
The steps for grammatical analysis are the following:

- Observation

- Operational scenarios.

- Calculation based on assumptions.

- Prediction.

- Verification of predictions

The study of meaning is excluded because aspects of the meaning depend on:

- Occurrences of linguistic forms,

- Textual combination and

- Of their interrelations in the structure of the language.

For example: the issue "Have cold" in the mouth of a beggar, it can mean "give me something to eat", and in the mouth of a chicha "embrace me".

Glosary (game)

Glosary hangman game » create hangman

Glosary*

Mere: Is a syncategorematic expression used to emphasize that something is not large or important. It informs us about attitudes, not facts.

Scientific: Is an expert who studies or works in one of the sciences. Relating to science, or using the organized methods of science. This condemns the confusion of technical jargon and empirical trappings either whatever 'real' science is.

Meaning: The meaning of something is what it expresses or represents. The word meaning locates a task without telling us how to go about its study.

Linguistics: It is the systematic study of the structure and development of language in general or of particular languages.

Legitimate data: Is the real information.

Method: A particular way of doing something.

Evidence: One or more reasons for believing that something is or is not true.

Mentalism: of or relating to any school of psychology or psychiatry that in contrast to behaviorism values subjective data in the study and explanation of behavior.

Fasible goals: An aim or desired result possible to do easily or conveniently.

Behaviorism: Is a theory of learning based upon the idea that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning. According to behaviorism, behavior can be studied in a systematic and observable manner with no consideration of internal mental states.

Monistic: Is a view that there is only one kind of ultimate substance.

Dualistic: Is a view of human beings as constituted of two irreducible elements (as matter and spirit).

Ethnography: The study and systematic recording of human cultures.

Anthropology: The study of the human race, its culture and society and its physical development.

Postulates: To suggest a theory, idea, etc. as a basic principle from which a further idea is formed or developed.

Postulation method: Is a method of clarifying and simplifying the whole process of argumentation.

Form: To make something begin to exist.

Morpheme: It is the smallest bit of language that has its own meaning, either a word or a part of a word, a single unit of language which has meaning and can be spoken or written.

Assumption: It is something that you accept as true without question or proof.

Phonemes: Any of the abstract units of the phonetic system of a language that correspond to a set of similar speech sounds which are perceived to be a single distinctive sound in the language.

Alternation: Usually a slight change, in the appearance, character or structure of something.

Historical linguistics: It is the branch of linguistics that focuses on the interconnections between different languages in the world and/or their historical development.

Literary standard: It is accessible through general or personal educational effort, transcends geographic and social barriers, and is used on occasions described as formal.

Provincial standard: It is observed among those remote geographically from the formative environments of cultural centers.

Colloquial standard: It is observed in situations lacking formal behaviors among observably privileged classes within a larger speech meaning.

Local dialect: Is that of an interacting group with which others have so little contact that dialect speakers are incomprehensible without considerable attention. The occasions od difference are time, plus geographic and/or educational isolation.

Palatalization: During the production of a consonant, the tongue and lips take up, as far as compatible with the main features of the phoneme.

Velarization: When the tongue is retracted as for a back vowel.

Contrasts: An obvious difference between two or more things.

Reference: It is something that refers as an allusion, as something that refers a reader or consulter to another source of information; as a consultation of sources of information.

Sense: A meaning conveyed or intended. Denotation: A direct specific meaning as distinct from an implied or associated idea.

Connotations: it is a feeling or idea that is suggested by a particular word although it need not be a part of the word's meaning, or something suggested by an object or situation.

Situation: The set of things that are happening and the conditions that exist at a particular time and place the economic/political situation.

Syntax: The grammatical arrangement of words in a sentence.

Ethnocentric: Believing that the people, customs and traditions of your own race or nationality are better than those of other races.

Exocentric: Two or more parts of a phrase that are different parts of speech and, when combined, form another part of speech which is different from all of the parts.

Structure: The aggregate of elements of an entity in their relationships to each other.

Pattern: An artistic, musical, literary, or mechanical design or form.

Design: It is an underlying scheme that governs functioning, developing, or unfolding.

A priori: Stipulating or proclaiming beforehand something, deduction.

A posteriori: Induction of certain information.

Structural description: Description based in the structure of something.

Form-classes: Group of words distinguished by common inflections, such as the weak verbs of English.

Lexicon: The vocabulary of a language, an individual speaker or group of speakers, or a subject.

Cultural borrowing: Is to take ideas, customs, and social behaviors from another culture or civilization.

Anthropological Linguistics (game)

Leonard Bloomfield main contributions to linguistics word search game » word search puzzle maker

ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS

LEONARD BLOOMFIELD AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS
Franz Boas was the first anthropological linguist to emphasize descriptive study of non-Indo-European languages as they exist today. Bloomfield, who acknowledged his debt to Boas, emphasized the value of synchronic descriptive linguistics, though he never deserted diachronic historical linguistics. Though trained in historical Indo-European, especially Germanic, philology, Bloomfield turned to a study of Tagalog, a Malayo-Polynesian language, during World War I. In 1917 he became interested in a more accessible language family, the Algonquian. His linguistic work with Indians of the Algonquian family in Wisconsin was not only descriptive; he also applied historical linguistic techniques to this language family. He showed that the neogrammarian methodology of assuming regularity in sound change was applicable beyond the Indo-European language family.

In 1921 Bloomfield became professor of German and linguistics at Ohio State University. There he met the behaviorist psychologist A. P. Weiss. Both men took a logical positivist approach to science; they agreed that a mechanistic rather than a mentalistic approach to human phenomena was necessary if the disciplines concerned with man were to be truly scientific.

Bloomfield was one of the founders of the Linguistic Society of America in 1924. He was professor of Germanic philology at the University of Chicago from 1927 to 1940, when he became professor of linguistics at Yale University. He died in New Haven, Conn., on April 18, 1949.

Influence of Language

In Language Bloomfield emphasized the need to be objective, to deal only with physically observable phenomena, and to develop a precise description and definition in order to make linguistics a true science. The period from the publication of Language in 1933 to the mid-1950s is commonly called the "Bloomfieldian era" of linguistics. Though Bloomfield's particular methodology of descriptive linguistics was not widely accepted, his mechanistic attitudes toward a precise science of linguistics, dealing only with observable phenomena, were most influential. His influence waned after the 1950s, when adherence to logical positivist doctrines lessened and there was a return to more mentalistic attitudes. Today linguists, especially the younger ones, are more concerned with the directly nonobservable mental processes by which human beings are uniquely capable of generating language.

Ethnography (game)

Ethnography crossword puzzle game » crossword maker

Linguistic Theory