Modern linguistic theory is the fastest developing and most active in the history of linguistics in the 20th century.

After Saussure, a Swiss linguist, initiated the structuralist theory and made linguistics a science, modern linguistics developed rapidly and achieved remarkable results.

This paper expounds various schools of modern linguistics and their characteristics, representatives and important contributions from a diachronic perspective.

Keywords: the beginning of modern linguistics; Functionalist linguistics; Structuralist linguistics

More than two thousand years ago, different parts of the world began to study various languages, but these ancient studies have no scientific basis, so they failed to reveal the essence of languages.

It was not until the emergence of comparative linguistics in the19th century that language research began to explore the law of language development and turned language research into scientific research.

This paper expounds various schools, characteristics, representative figures and important contributions of modern linguistics from a diachronic perspective.

Summarized as follows:

First, the beginning of modern linguistics

Modern linguistics began with the Swiss linguist Ferdi Nan de Saussure (1857- 19 13).

He is usually described as? Father of modern linguistics? And then what? A master of modernizing the subject of language? Saussure's language theory is a Copernican revolution in the history of language.

This is of far-reaching significance to the development of modern linguistics.

Saussure's theory developed from linguistics, sociology and psychology.

Saussure was the first person to define language research as scientific research.

His theory directly draws our attention to the essence of language.

His theory can be summarized as follows:

1, the essence of language symbols Saussure believes that language symbols are composed of concepts and sound images, that is? What do you mean? And then what? Signifier? .

Associated with the arbitrariness of language symbols is the linear feature of signifier.

2. The nature of the relationship between linguistic units Because the relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary, there is no necessary attribute between a signifier and signified.

Refers to only one member in the system, which is defined by the relationship between other members in the same system.

3. The difference between language system and language phenomenon This is the difference between language system and language actual phenomenon.

In his view, linguists are thinking about studying the language system.

4. The difference between tense and diachronic linguistics is the difference between static linguistics and evolutionary linguistics.

Second, early functional linguistics and systemic functional linguistics

The influential schools of functional linguistics in the 20th century include Prague School, Copenhagen School and London School.

These schools inherited Saussure's tradition, and regarded languages as a whole structural system, believing that each language has its own internal structure, in which everything is interdependent.

In this system, the meaning of a language component is determined by its relationship with other language components.

Systemic Functional Linguistics was developed and founded by Halliday on the basis of London School Linguistics.

It is one of the most influential linguistic theories in the 20th century.

Systemic Functional Linguistics attaches importance to language function from the perspective of sociology, and its influence extends to all fields related to language.

Prague school

The Prague School was founded in 1926 10.6, and its main representatives are Matthews, Trubetskoi, Jacobson and brendel.

There are three main aspects in the early research of Prague School: 1. It makes a theoretical development for the research methods of linguistic facts. 2. It emphasizes the systematicness of language. 3. It emphasizes the role of language in the confidant language group.

After 1950s, the new generation of Prague school linguists continued the research of the older generation and developed new theories, including language evolution, language system, standard language, theme and rheme, language function and so on.

Copenhagen school

Copenhagen School is a small linguistic school.

The school was founded in 193 1, and its representatives are Urdal, Ye Er Mslev and Brandal.

The linguistic theory of Copenhagen School aims at solving two problems.

The first is the research object of linguistics, and the second is the accuracy of language research.

In the process of pursuing formalization, they closely combined linguistics with mathematical logic, and thought that linguistics would be objective and scientific only if it became a structuralist language category.

This thought has a great influence on linguists of different linguistic schools, including Harris, Chomsky and Halliday.

London school

The London School usually refers to the study of linguistics in Britain.

London school is actually Firth school.

Talking about the socialist contribution of the London School is actually talking about Firth's main contribution.

Because Firth is not only the founder of this school, but also the main source of its language theory.

Firth's contribution to linguistic theory is mainly manifested in the following aspects: First, what is language? Multiple systems? , not? Single system? ; Secondly, Firth believes that the primary task of linguistics is to study the generation of semantics, and language description is actually semantic description; Thirdly, prosodic linguistics is Firth's socialist interest.

People study the prosodic features of language from two aspects: aggregation and combination, and expand the scope of analysis from monosyllabic to phonological groups; Fourthly, Firth distinguishes the system and structure of speech.

He defined the language form with the aggregation relation or selection relation as the system, and defined the expression form with the combination relation or linear relation as the structure. Fifth, Firth absorbed a lot of nutrition from anthropology.

He pays special attention to the social attribute of language, and thinks that language is a way of life of human beings, not a set of mandatory symbols and signs.

Systemic functional linguistics

Systemic Functional Grammar includes two aspects: systemic grammar and Functional Grammar.

They are an inseparable and important part of Halliday's linguistic theoretical framework.

Systemic grammar refers to regard language as a system network composed of several subsystems, also known as meaning potential.

What systemic grammar wants to study is the composition of the language system and the relationship between its internal subsystems.

Functional grammar attempts to reveal that language is a means of human communication.

The core of systemic grammar is to construct a set of charts of effective sentence selection and explain the relationship between different choices in detail.

Halliday's systemic grammar is different from other linguists' theories in the following aspects: first, systemic grammar attaches great importance to the sociological characteristics of language; Second, what does systemic grammar think language is? Doing things? A means, no? Knowledge? Means.

Does it distinguish? Speech act potential? And then what? Actual language behavior? ; Third, systemic grammar pays more attention to the description of individual languages and individual variants; Fourth, does systemic grammar use it? Continuum? This concept is used to explain many linguistic facts; Fifth, systemic grammar relies on the observation and data of the text to verify his hypothesis; Sixth, systemic grammar wants? System? This is a basic category.

Third, American descriptive and structuralist linguistics.

American descriptive structuralism linguistics is a branch of modern linguistics, which was born independently in the United States in the 20th century. Under the leadership of anthropologist Boaz, it formed a completely different style from European tradition.

Early: boas and Sapir.

Boas noticed that every language has its own phonetic system and grammatical system.

For the language to be studied, the important task of linguists is to summarize the special grammatical structures of various languages and analyze the special grammatical categories of various languages.

Regarding the relationship between language and meaning, Sapir thinks that the combination of language and meaning is not inevitable, but possible.

Regarding the relationship between language and thinking, Sapir believes that although they are closely related, they are actually not the same.

Language is a tool and thinking is a product; Without language, thinking is impossible.

Wolff, a student of Sapir, later inherited Sapir's theory and thought and developed into a famous philosopher? Sapir-Wolf Hypothesis? .

(B) Bloomfield's theory

Bloomfield's main contribution is to make linguistics a science from the philosophical point of view.

His On Language is regarded by both sides of the Atlantic as a model of scientific methodology and the greatest linguistic work of the 20th century.

The first part of the book mainly discusses four contents: the language view of behaviorism; Problems in the speech community; Phonological features of typology; Grammatical unit.

The second part discusses some important issues of historical linguistics.

Although linguistics is a textbook, it has created a school of linguistics-American Structuralist Linguistics.

Throughout modern linguistics, we have seen many schools of linguistics, which shows that they are developing rapidly and schools are emerging one after another.

With the emergence of branch disciplines, the relationship between linguistics and other disciplines is getting closer and closer, and it has become an interdisciplinary subject.

Grasping the context of modern linguistic schools can learn from others' strengths, broaden our horizons and broaden our thinking.

This is of great benefit to the development of our Chinese.

China is rich in language resources and has excellent conditions for language research. By learning from the efforts of modern linguistic schools and China linguists, a linguistic school with China characteristics will be formed, which will contribute to social production and cultural construction in related fields.

References:

[1] Feng Zongxin. Introduction to schools of modern linguistics. Peking University Publishing House, 2006.

[2] Hu Zhuanglin. Linguistics course. Beijing, Peking University Publishing House, 2002.

[3] He Lifang. A brief introduction to western linguistic schools [J]. Journal of Hubei Radio and TV University, 2008. 1 1.

[4] Zhu Yongsheng et al. Introduction to Functional Linguistics. Shanghai, Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2004.

[5] Zhao Hui. An Overview of Western Linguistic Schools [J]. Journal of Inner Mongolia Radio and TV University, 2008.38+0.