Sampson traces the development of some of the major
movements in American and European linguistics in the first half of the 20th
century up to about the mid-1970s. He begins with the 19th century
Romantic roots of philology and continues through the emergence of linguistics
as a legitimate, observable science, and its eventual abandonment of the
Darwinian paradigm. Sampson hopes for a return to biological study of
linguistics.
As linguistics tomes go, Sampson’s book is very
accessible even for the novice linguistic student. One can read selected
chapters or the entire book in sequence. I would recommend the latter since he
keeps returning to issues raised in previous chapters. For example, he refers
back to the strands of Romanticism, the shift to a science, and Saussure’s,
Chomsky’s, and the Descriptivists’ influences repeatedly. He does, however,
review the issues briefly in the concurrent chapter, which makes it easy to read
selectively. One should be familiar with the symbols of phonetic and phonemic
descriptions, as much of the early work in linguistics was observation of
pronunciation patterns. The Sampson slant I noted was that of his preferential
treatment of European linguistics and decidedly anti-Chomskyan.
Sampson does focus on the role of the scientific method
throughout the book. This a great book for preparing for comprehensive exams
because he outlines the basic philosophies and then surveys the opposing
ideologies.
Sampson concludes that this century of linguistic study
that was dominated to philology—the study dedicated to reconstruction of the
lost proto-language—eventually gave way to synchronic linguistics—the
analysis of languages as communicative systems as they exist. Language became a
describable entity. The Romantics thought of language as embodying the soul of a
race. Modern linguistics study has been linked to trends in scientific thought
since 1861, but gradually moved away from Darwin’s paradigm.
Key players in this era were Jacob Grimm (of Grimm’s Fairy Tales fame),
who stated Grimm’s Law of phonetic sound shifts.
Ferdinand de Saussure was credited with founding the notion
of the study of synchronic linguistics. His concept of langue (language)
vs. parole (speaking) was a dominating issue of the early 20th
century linguistic studies. His concept of language is a network of
relationships in which the value of each element ultimately depends on the value
of the other. For Saussure language comprises a set of signs: a
signifier—portion of speech sound; and signified—portion of meaning. His
statement that language is not complete in any speaker, it exists perfectly only
with a collectivity (society); he thought semantics should be regarded as a
social fact, not psychological. Sampson notes because of Saussure European
schools tended to ignore or de-emphasize not merely syntax but syntagmatic
relationships too.
Sampson uses this term to describe the school of
linguistics founded by Franz Boas. This movement set the tone for American
linguistics until Chomsky’s arrival. The description of an individual language
was an end in itself, and a necessary first step to understanding the wider
culture of the community. Sampson describes the movement as relativistic—no
ideal type of language. The next leader was Leonard Bloomfield who was the prime
mover behind the formation of the Linguistic Society of America. Bloomfield
emphasized the status of linguistics as a science. Logical positivism exerted a
strong influence on scientific field during this time. Bloomfield is credited
with moving linguistics into the field of psychology and behaviorism.
Bloomfield’s slogan: “Accept everything a native speaker says in his
language and nothing he says about it.” The resulting paradigm was measuring
language inputs and outputs. Other influences mentioned were Charles Hockett and
Kenneth Pike.
Sampson defines this as: man’s language could mould his
perception of reality or that the world a man inhabits is a linguistic construct
is credited to Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and his amateur protégé, Benjamin
Whorf (1897-1941). Sampson categorizes this as a special development of the
Descriptivist School. Sapir is also credited with his “linguistic drift”
theory: that over the long-term languages tend of modify itself in some
particular direction. The suggestion came close to saying that language had a
life of its own. Sampson conducts an in-depth analysis of the hypothesis and
focuses on Whorf’s work with the Hopi and his color theory. As he analyzes the
hypothesis, Sampson is both critical and complimentary. His conclusion leaves
much unanswered.
The Prague School saw language in terms of function,
particularly phonology. They argued for methodology and diachronics. The real
value in this chapter is the treatment of Roman Jakobson, who later influenced
many American linguists including Chomsky.
Sampson credits Chomsky with a “linguistic revolution.”
He points to Chomsky’s early influences of Zellig Harris and his collaboration
with Roman Jakobson. Accroding to Sampson, Chomsky began the concept of
syntactic universals. Sampson outlines Chomsky’s main theories of
transformational generative grammar. He also categorizes his linguistic world
into Chomskyans and anti-Chomskyans, and I believe comes down on the side of the
anti-Chomskyans. The value of this chapter is that Sampson does take a critical
look at Chomsky’s ideas, ends up accusing him of scientism, and criticizes his
work as establishing a dominant paradigm in linguistic studies which Sampson
thinks stifled the field for years. Sampson also discusses the role of Jakobson
and phonological universals.
Sampson prefers the grammatical models of Hjelmslev and Lamb to Chomsky’s because he claims they are more easily understood and not as complicated. The main concept in this chapter was that language manifests two distinctions: form vs. substance and content vs. expression. These distinctions intersect to create four strata: form/content, form/expression, substance/content, substance/expression. Hence language consists of external relationships between elements of different strata and internal relationships between elements in one strata.
Sampson sentences tells it all: “All this is highly
abstruse, not to say airy-fairy.” Quite.
This school is so names because of their association with
the generative syntactical school. Morris Halle, of MIT, in collaboration with
Jakobson were concerned with establishing the concept of phonological
universals. Their work led to much of the accepted work in the field of
describing phonological studies. Interesting quote: “The truth is, of course,
that scientists are fully as fallible and often irrational as other men
[sic].” A brief history of the use or lack of use of the IPA phonetic alphabet
is included in this chapter.
Sampson finally gets to his pet school that is “a pure
academic discipline of linguistics in Britain.” He pays homage to the work of
Henry Sweet whose phonetic research was, Sampson thought, far superior to that
of the Americans. He also surveys the continuation of Sweet’s work by David
Jones at UCL and then outlines Michael Halliday’s systemic theory. Sampson’s
slant is decidedly British. In fact in his conclusion he states: “semantics
cannot be scientific”; and that the Americans think all aspects of language
can be treated scientifically. He ends with a prediction that linguistics will
shift from psychological linguistics to biological linguistics.
Larry Czer
August 1, 2001