English Grammar: The Basics by Michael McCarthy;

Author:Michael McCarthy; [Michael McCarthy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Unlimited)
Published: 2021-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 5.1 Grammar and the chess board.

Source: Image © M. J. McCarthy 2020.

For structuralists, working out how the parts of a language fit together, especially those of newly contacted societies or of languages not previously described, often demands field work, that is to say, embedding oneself in a society and listening, observing and drawing conclusions from all the observable evidence.

The American structural linguist Leonard Bloomfield (1887–1949) was greatly influential in his belief that a language could be studied applying purely empirical methods of observation. In 1933, Bloomfield published his most famous book, Language. In it, he says:

[S]peakers cooperate in a very refined way by means of language signals. In describing a language, we are concerned primarily with the working of this cooperation at any one time in any one community, and not with its occasional failure or with its changes in the course of history.

(Bloomfield 1933/1935: 158)

The linguist observes the forms of language and notices resemblances. We can go from one utterance to another and notice ‘partial resemblance’ (1933/1935: 159). In a variety of utterances, we can see similarities:

Mary ran

Bill ran

Mary fell poor Mary fell

Bill fell  poor Bill fell

Dan fell poor Dan fell

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