Well known linguists such as De Saussere, F. and Bloomfield, L. main representative theoretician of a school of language called Structuralism. De Saussere, F. belongs to the group of European linguistics who developed studies on the language field at the end of the 19th century and beginning of 20th century while Bloomfield, L. belongs to the group of the North American ones.

1. Structuralism ( De Saussure, F . / Bloomfield, L. et alii). UNIVERSIDAD PEDAGÓGICA EXPERIMENTAL LIBERTADOR INSTITUTO PEDAGÓGICO CARACAS VICERRECTORADO DE INVESTIGACIÓN Y POSTGRADO COORDINACIÓN NACIONAL DE POSTGRADO Maestría en Enseñanza del Inglés como Lengua Extranjera Prof. Héctor Escalona

2. Structuralism European 1920’s North American 1930’s – 1960’s

3. Dead languages Linguists tried to reconstruct dead languages on the basis of the similarities that were found to exist between languages thought to be related historically to those dead languages. In short, during the 19th century scholars in linguistics worked from a historical, diachronic, perspective.

4. European Structuralism Ferdinand de Saussure 1857 - 1913 De Saussure was not satisfied with the historical comparison of language. He stated that such comparison only answered where a language comes from, but not what language is.

7. European Structuralism 2) Language is a system of signs Noise is language only when it expresses or communicates ideas. Main tenets

8. European Structuralism Signified Signifier Physical dimension of language Sign Car /ka:r/

9. European Structuralism Langue The abstract system Parole Actual speech Main tenets

10. North American Structuralism Beginning: a group of anthropologists describing fast-disappearing American-Indian tribes. They found that there was no methodology for them to follow in order to describe these languages.

11. North American Structuralism A new step in the American Structuralism Leonard Bloomfield 1887-1949 NA Structuralism centers in what people actually say

13. North American Structuralism 1) Linguistics is a descriptive science. Describe what people say, not what people should say. Main tenets

15. North American Structuralism 3) Every language is a system on its own right. Language should not be described in terms of another language, but rather, it should be described on its own terms. Main tenets

16. North American Structuralism 4) Language is a system in which smaller units arrange systematically to form larger ones. These linguists proposed a procedure in which they began analyzing the smallest units and classifying them, and describing the patterns into which they combined to form larger units. /l/ [lang-gw I ʤ ] Language is a system Main tenets

17. North American Structuralism 5) Meaning should not be part of linguistic analysis. Bloomfield and many other structuralism followers consider meaning as abstract and unobservable, therefore, unscientific. Prato? Main tenets

18. North American Structuralism 6) The procedures to determine the units in language should be objective and rigorous. NA Structuralism rejected traditional definitions of, for example, a noun as “the word that refers to persons, animals or things” (definition based on meaning). Main tenets

19. North American Structuralism 6) The procedures to determine the units in language should be objective and rigorous. In this respect, they provide two observable criteria for defying the items of language: Form and Distribution. Main tenets

20. North American Structuralism 7) Language is observable speech, not knowledge. Langue and parole were rejected as unscientific abstractions. The main objective would be to make a taxonomy of language based on observable samples of speech (corpus/corpora) Phonemes-morphemes-sentences patterns. Main tenets

21. Thanks REPÚBLICA BOLIVARIANA DE VENEZUELA UNIVERSIDAD PEDAGÓGICA EXPERIMENTAL LIBERTADOR INSTITUTO PEDAGÓGICO CARACAS VICERRECTORADO DE INVESTIGACIÓN Y POSTGRADO COORDINACIÓN NACIONAL DE POSTGRADO Maestría en Enseñanza del Inglés como Lengua Extranjera Prof. Héctor Escalona