Prague school slides

the prague school of thought

1. The Prague school of thought By Noreen Zafar 9291

2. History of prague school Its an influential group of linguists , philosophers an d literary critics . Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis and the theory of standard language during the year 1928-1939. This circle included Roman Jakobson , Nikolie Trubetzkoy as the famous czech literary scholars and Vilem Methisus was the first president of this school until is death in 1945. The circle’s E nglish translations were published by czech linguist Joseph Vachek in several collections and also in 1929 the circle launched a journal which had the functional credo. The world war II brought an end to it.

3. Combination of structuralism and functionalism Every component of a language for example phoneme,morpheme,word and sentences, exist to fullfill a specefic function And in structuralism;The context ,not just the components is what is important. Karl Buhler presented three kinds of functions: 1:The cognitive function : refers to language employment for the transmission of factual information. 2:The expressive function : The indication of he mood or attitude of the speaker or writer. 3:The conative function : is used for influencing the person or for bringing about some practical effect. The functional distinction of the cogntive and the expressive aspects of language was applied by prague school lingists in their work on stylistics and literary criticism.

4. Functional Sentence Perspective ( FSP ) Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP) is a theory of linguistic analysis which refers to an analysis of utterances (or texts) in terms of the information they contain. The principle is that the role of each utterance part is evaluated for its semantic contribution to the whole.

5. Phonology and phonological oppositions Trubetzkoy , Russian linguist Principles of Phonology (1939) Phonetics belonged to parole whereas phonology belonged to langue . “ Phoneme ” is an abstract unit of the sound system as distinct from the sounds actually produced. In classifying distinctive features, Trubetzkoy proposed three criteria: (1) their relation to the whole contrastive system; (2) relations between the opposing elements; and (3) their power of discrimination.

6. Trubetzkoy ’ s contribution Trubetzkoy ’ s contributions to phonological theory concern four aspects. First, he showed distinctive functions of speech sounds and gave an accurate definition for the phoneme. Second, by making distinctions between phonetics and phonology , and between stylistic phonology and phonology, he defined the sphere of phonological studies. Third, by studying the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations between phonemes , he revealed the interdependent relations between phonemes. Finally, he put forward a set of methodologies for phonological studies, such as the method of extracting phonemes and the method of studying phonological combinations.

7. Major concepts Theme – the point of departure of a sentence, which is equally present to the speaker and hearer; Rheme -- the goal of discourse which presents the very information that is to be imparted to the hearer; Known/ given information -- information that is not new to the reader or hearer; New information -- what is to be transmitted to the reader or hearer.

8. Therefore the subject-predicate distinction is not always the same as theme- rheme distinction. Sally stands on the table . subject predicate theme rheme On the table stands Sally . predicate subject theme rheme

9. J akobson 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 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.

10. Jakobson extended the concept of grammatical meanings in which the marked elements announces the existence if some meaning. While the unmarked element does not announces the existence. Jakobson described language by saying that every single constiuent of a linguistic systems built on our opposition of two logical contradictories; markedness (the presence of an attribute)in contrary to its absence.( unmarkedness )

11. Markedness Markedness in phonology . /b/ (marked) /p/ (unmarked) Markedness in morphology. Jumped (marked) Jump (unmarked) Markedness vocabulary Lion (unmarked) Lioness (marked) Brotherhood (unmarked) Sisterhood (marked)

12. CONCLUSION The general approach in the study of language for the prague school can be described as the combination of structuralism and functionalism. In addition, synchronic and dychronic approaches are seen as interconnected and influencing each other. They regard language as a system of a subsystems , each of which has its own problems.but they are never isolated for they are the part of a larger whole. As such a language is never in state of equillibrium but rather has many deviations. These deviations allow the language to develop and function as a linguistic system.