文档介绍：Part Two
Chapter 12 Theories & schools of modern linguistics
4. American Structuralism
5. Transformational-Generative Grammar
6. Case Grammar and Generative Semantics
4. American Structuralism
Early period: Boas and Sapir
Bloomfield’s theory
Post-Bloomfieldian Linguistics
(omitted)
American Structuralism
American Structuralism is a branch of synchronic linguistics that emerged independently in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. It developed in a very different style, from that of Europe, under the leadership of the anthropologist F. Boas (1858 - 1942), whose tradition has actually influenced the whole of the 20th-century American linguistics.
American Structuralism
Specialized in the anthropology of North America, Boas worked anizer of a survey of the many indigenous(本土的) languages of America north of Mexico. The result of the survey was the book Handbook of American Indian Languages (1911). Boas trained the men who investigated other languages. For decades, all the great names of American linguists learned their subject from Boas at first or second hand.
Boas
1. Early period: Boas and Sapir
American Structuralism
Boas held that there was no ideal type or form of languages, for human languages were endlessly diverse. Boas was strongly opposed to the view that language is the soul of a race, and he proved that the structure and form of a language has nothing to do with the evolution of a race and the development of a culture. Thus, there were only differences in language structure, while there is no difference between languages in terms of being more or less reasonable or advanced.
Boas
Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech (1921)
An anthropological viewpoint
The nature of language and its development
Focus on typology
Elements of speech, the sounds of language, form in language, grammatical process, grammatical concepts, types of linguistic structure, and historical changes
Sapir
American Structural