Structural linguistics in the context of Aspects of the Theory of Syntax

Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of power. Although different post-structuralists present different critiques of structuralism, common themes include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of structuralism, as well as an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute its structures. Accordingly, post-structuralism discards the idea of interpreting media (or the world) within pre-established, socially constructed structures.

Structuralism proposes that human culture can be understood by means of a structure that is modeled on language. As a result, there is concrete reality on the one hand, abstract ideas about reality on the other hand, and a "third order" that mediates between the two.

In the study of language, description or descriptive linguistics is the work of objectively analyzing and describing how language is actually used (or how it was used in the past) by a speech community.

All academic research in linguistics is descriptive; like all other scientific disciplines, it aims to describe reality, without the bias of preconceived ideas about how it ought to be. Modern descriptive linguistics is based on a structural approach to language, as exemplified in the work of Leonard Bloomfield and others. This type of linguistics utilizes different methods in order to describe a language such as basic data collection, and different types of elicitation methods.

In functional-cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign (linguistic or otherwise) and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness (which is typically assumed in structuralist, formalist and generative approaches to linguistics). The principle of iconicity is also shared by the approach of linguistic typology.

Generative grammar is a research tradition in linguistics that aims to explain the cognitive basis of language by formulating and testing explicit models of humans' subconscious grammatical knowledge. Generative linguists tend to share certain working assumptions such as the competence–performance distinction and the notion that some domain-specific aspects of grammar are partly innate in humans. These assumptions are often rejected in non-generative approaches such as usage-based models of language. Generative linguistics includes work in core areas such as syntax, semantics, phonology, psycholinguistics, and language acquisition, with additional extensions to topics including biolinguistics and music cognition.

Generative grammar began in the late 1950s with the work of Noam Chomsky, having roots in earlier approaches such as structural linguistics. The earliest version of Chomsky's model was called Transformational grammar, with subsequent iterations known as Government and binding theory and the Minimalist program. Other present-day generative models include Optimality theory, Categorial grammar, and Tree-adjoining grammar.

Louis Trolle Hjelmslev (Danish: [ˈjelˀmsle̝w]; 3 October 1899 – 30 May 1965) was a Danish linguist whose ideas formed the basis of the Copenhagen School of linguistics. Born into an academic family (his father was the mathematician Johannes Hjelmslev), Hjelmslev studied comparative linguistics in Copenhagen, Prague and Paris (with Antoine Meillet and Joseph Vendryes, among others). In 1931, he founded the Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague. Together with Hans Jørgen Uldall he developed a structuralist theory of language which he called glossematics, which further developed the semiotic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure. Glossematics as a theory of language is characterized by a high degree of formalism. It is interested in describing the formal and semantic characteristics of language in separation from sociology, psychology or neurobiology, and has a high degree of logical rigour. Hjelmslev regarded linguistics – or glossematics – as a formal science. He was a pioneer of formal linguistics. Hjelmslev's theory became widely influential in structural and functional grammar, and in semiotics.

Evolutionary linguistics or Darwinian linguistics is a sociobiological approach to the study of language. Evolutionary linguists consider linguistics as a subfield of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. The approach is also closely linked with evolutionary anthropology, cognitive linguistics and biolinguistics. Studying languages as the products of nature, it is interested in the biological origin and development of language. Evolutionary linguistics is contrasted with humanistic approaches, especially structural linguistics.

A main challenge in this research is the lack of empirical data: there are no archaeological traces of early human language. Computational biological modelling and clinical research with artificial languages have been employed to fill in gaps of knowledge. Although biology is understood to shape the brain, which processes language, there is no clear link between biology and specific human language structures or linguistic universals.

Course in General Linguistics (French: Cours de linguistique générale) is a book compiled by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from notes on lectures given by historical-comparative linguist Ferdinand de Saussure at the University of Geneva between 1906 and 1911. It was published in 1916, after Saussure's death, and is generally regarded as the starting point of structural linguistics, an approach to linguistics that was established in the first half of the 20th century by the Prague linguistic circle. One of Saussure's translators, Roy Harris, summarized Saussure's contribution to linguistics and the study of language in the following way:

Although Saussure's perspective was in historical linguistics, the Course develops a theory of semiotics that is generally applicable. A manuscript containing Saussure's original notes was found in 1996, and later published as Writings in General Linguistics.

Roman Osipovich Jakobson (Russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н, IPA: [rɐˈman ˈosʲɪpəvʲɪt͡ɕ (j)ɪkɐpˈson]; 11 October [O.S. 29 September] 1896 – 18 July 1982) was a Russian linguist and literary theorist. A pioneer of structural linguistics, Jakobson was one of the most celebrated and influential linguists of the twentieth century. With Nikolai Trubetzkoy, he developed revolutionary new techniques for the analysis of linguistic sound systems, in effect founding the modern discipline of phonology. Jakobson went on to extend similar principles and techniques to the study of other aspects of language such as syntax, morphology and semantics. He made numerous contributions to Slavic linguistics, most notably two studies of Russian case and an analysis of the categories of the Russian verb. Drawing on insights from C. S. Peirce's semiotics, as well as from communication theory and cybernetics, he proposed methods for the investigation of poetry, music, and the visual arts including cinema.

Through his decisive influence on Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes, among others, Jakobson became a pivotal figure in the adaptation of structural analysis to disciplines beyond linguistics, including philosophy, anthropology and literary theory; his development of the approach pioneered by Ferdinand de Saussure, known as "structuralism", became a major post-war intellectual movement in Europe and the United States. Meanwhile, though the influence of structuralism declined during the 1970s, Jakobson's work has continued to receive attention in linguistic anthropology, especially through the ethnography of communication developed by Dell Hymes and the semiotics of culture developed by Jakobson's former student Michael Silverstein. Jakobson's concept of underlying linguistic universals, particularly his celebrated theory of distinctive features, decisively influenced the early thinking of Noam Chomsky, who became the dominant figure in theoretical linguistics during the second half of the twentieth century.

Leonard Bloomfield (April 1, 1887 – April 18, 1949) was an American linguist who led the development of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s. He is considered to be the father of American distributionalism. His influential textbook Language, published in 1933, presented a comprehensive description of American structural linguistics. He made significant contributions to Indo-European historical linguistics, the description of Austronesian languages, and description of languages of the Algonquian family.

Bloomfield's approach to linguistics was characterized by its emphasis on the scientific basis of linguistics and emphasis on formal procedures for the analysis of linguistic data. The influence of Bloomfieldian structural linguistics declined in the late 1950s and 1960s as the theory of generative grammar developed by Noam Chomsky came to predominate.

Zellig Sabbettai Harris (/ˈzɛlɪɡ/ ZELL-ihg; October 23, 1909 – May 22, 1992) was an American linguist, mathematical syntactician, and methodologist of science widely considered to have been influential in his fields. Originally a Semiticist, he is best known for his work in structural linguistics and discourse analysis and for the discovery of transformational structure in language. These developments from the first 10 years of his career were published within the first 25. His contributions in the subsequent 35 years of his career include transfer grammar, string analysis (adjunction grammar), elementary sentence-differences (and decomposition lattices), algebraic structures in language, operator grammar, sublanguage grammar, a theory of linguistic information, and a principled account of the nature and origin of language.

Functional linguistics is an approach to the study of language characterized by taking systematically into account the speaker's and the hearer's side, and the communicative needs of the speaker and of the given language community. Linguistic functionalism spawned in the 1920s to 1930s from Ferdinand de Saussure's systematic structuralist approach to language (1916).

Functionalism sees functionality of language and its elements to be the key to understanding linguistic processes and structures. Functional theories of language propose that since language is fundamentally a tool, it is reasonable to assume that its structures are best analyzed and understood with reference to the functions they carry out. These include the tasks of conveying meaning and contextual information.

The Copenhagen School is a group of scholars dedicated to the study of linguistics, centered around Louis Hjelmslev (1899–1965) and the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen (French: Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague, Danish: Lingvistkredsen), founded by him and Viggo Brøndal (1887–1942). In the mid-twentieth century, the Copenhagen school was one of the most important centres of linguistic structuralism, together with the Geneva School and the Prague School. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the Copenhagen school's approach to linguistics has evolved from purely structural to functionalist, culminating in Danish functional linguistics—which, despite the "functional" moniker, nonetheless incorporates many insights from the founders of the Linguistic Circle.

Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy (Russian: Николай Сергеевич Трубецкой [nʲɪkɐˈlaj sʲɪrˈɡʲe(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ trʊbʲɪtsˈkoj]; 16 April 1890 – 25 June 1938) was 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. He was also associated with the Russian Eurasianists.
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