Structural Linguistics - Basic Theories and Methods

Basic Theories and Methods

The foundation of structural linguistics is a "sign," which in turn has two components: a "signified" is an idea or concept, while the "signifier" is a means of expressing the signified. The "sign" is thus the combined association of signifier and signified. Signs can be defined only by being placed in contrast with other signs, which forms the basis of what later became the paradigmatic dimension of semiotic organization (i.e., collections of terms/entities that stand in opposition). This idea contrasted drastically with the idea that signs can be examined in isolation from a language and stressed Saussure's point that linguistics must treat language synchronically.

Paradigmatic relations hold among sets of units that (in the early Saussurian renditions) exist in the mind, such as the set distinguished phonologically by variation in their initial sound cat, bat, hat, mat, fat, or the morphologically distinguished set ran, run, running. The units of a set must have something in common with one another, but they must contrast too, otherwise they could not be distinguished from each other and would collapse into a single unit, which could not constitute a set on its own, since a set always consists of more than one unit. Syntagmatic relations, in contrast, are concerned with how units, once selected from their paradigmatic sets of oppositions, are 'chained' together into structural wholes. These dimensions, still fundamental to all linguistic and semiotic organisation, are often confused with other, related but quite distinct dimensions of organisation. Prominent examples of this are the confusion of paradigmatic with spatial relationships, and syntagmatic with temporal relations. For the latter, for example, the fact that in spoken language syntagmatic units come 'one after the other' is misread as a temporal relationship rather than the abstract structural relationship that it actually is. Thus, in written language, syntagmatic units are organised by spatial sequentiality and not by temporal sequentiality. These conflations can be quite pernicious and need to be watched for carefully when reading texts purporting to use Saussurean or semiotic methods.

One further common confusion here is that syntagmatic relations, assumed to occur in time, are anchored in speech and are considered either diachronic (confusing syntagmatic with historical) or are part of parole ("everyday speech": confusing syntagmatic with performance and behaviour and divorcing it from the linguistic system), or both. Both paradigmatic and syntagmatic organizations belong to the abstract system of language langue (French for "Language;" or an abstract, Platonic ideal). Different linguistic theories place different weight on the study of these dimensions: all structural and generative accounts, for example, pursue primarily characterisations of the syntagmatic dimension of the language system (syntax), while functional approaches, such as systemic linguistics focus on the paradigmatic. Both dimensions need to be appropriately included, however.

Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations provide the structural linguist with a tool for categorization for phonology, morphology and syntax. Take morphology, for example. The signs cat and cats are associated in the mind, producing an abstract paradigm of the word forms of cat. Comparing this with other paradigms of word forms, we can note that in the English language the plural often consists of little more than adding an S to the end of the word. Likewise, through paradigmatic and syntagmatic analysis, we can discover the syntax of sentences. For instance, contrasting the syntagma je dois ("I should") and dois je? ("Should I?") allows us to realize that in French we only have to invert the units to turn a sentence into a question. We thus take syntagmatic evidence (difference in structural configurations) as indicators of paradigmatic relations (e.g., in the present case: questions vs. assertions). The most detailed account of the relationship between a paradigmatic organisation of language as a motivator and classifier for syntagmatic configurations is that set out in the systemic-network organization of systemic functional grammar, where paradigmatic relations and syntagmatic configurations each have their own separate formalisation, related by realization constraints. Modern linguistic formalisms that work in terms of lattices of linguistic signs, such as Head-driven phrase structure grammar, similarly begin to separate out an explicit level of paradigmatic organization.

Saussure developed structural linguistics, with its idealized vision of language, partly because he was aware that it was impossible in his time to fully understand how the human brain and mind created and related to language:

Saussure set out to model language in purely linguistic terms, free of psychology, sociology, or anthropology. That is, Saussure was trying precisely not to say what goes on in your or my mind when we understand a word or make up a sentence. Saussure was trying to de-psychologize linguistics.