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Grammar, meaning, and the study of language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

R. H. Robins
R. H. Robins*
Affiliation:
University of London
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Extract

General linguistics, like any other academic subject, is always moving. But in recent years there have been more signs of fundamental change than for some time before, at least as far as may be gathered from published literature, necessarily the main source of information on contemporary trends on the part of most of one’s colleagues the world over. The earlier undercurrents and movements in linguistic thinking and discussion can only be known by those in personal contact with their prime movers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , Spring 1964 , pp. 98 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1964

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References

1 This paper is the published version of two lectures read in the summer of 1963, under the same title, at the University of Washington, Seattle, and at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. In some respects the style and form appropriate to the spoken presentation have been retained in the printed form.

2 Hjelmslev, L., Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (translated by Whitfield, F. J.), supplement to IJAL 19, 1 (1953)Google Scholar.

3 See, for example, Togeby, K., “La structure immanente de la langue française,” TCLC 6, 1951 Google Scholar; Siertsema, B., A Study of Glossematics (The Hague, 1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Bloomfield, L., Language (London, 1934)Google ScholarPubMed.

5 Trubetzkoy, N. S., Grundzüge der Phonologie, TCLP 7, 1939 Google Scholar, also in French translation by Cantineau, C., Les principes de phonologie (Paris, 1949)Google Scholar.

6 Hockett, C. F., “A System of Descriptive Phonology,” Lang. 18 (1942), pp. 3–21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Trager, G. L. and Smith, H. L., An Outline of English Structure, Studies in Linguistics, Occasional Paper 3, 1951 Google Scholar.

7 Cambridge, 1950.

8 Pike, K. L., “Grammatical Prerequisites to Phonemic Analysis,” Word 3 (1947), pp. 155–72 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “More on Grammatical Prerequisites,” Word 8 (1952), pp. 106-21.

9 See his “Two Models of Grammatical Description,” Word 10 (1954), pp. 210-34.

10 On Firthian linguistic theory, the following may be consulted: Firth, J. R., Papers in Linguistics 1934-51 (London, 1957)Google Scholar; Robins, R. H., “John Rupert Firth,” Lang. 37 (1961), pp. 191–200 Google Scholar; Bursill-Hall, G. L., “Levels Analysis: J. R. Firth’s Theories of Linguistic Analysis,” JCLA 6 (1960-1), pp. 124–35 and 164–91 Google Scholar.

11 ’s-Gravenhage, 1957.

12 Cf. Longacre, R. E., “String Constituent Analysis,” Lang. 36 (1960), pp. 63–88 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harris, Z. S., String Analysis of Sentence Structure (The Hague, 1962)Google Scholar.

13 “The Logical Basis of Linguistic Theory,” Preprints of Papers for the Ninth International Congress of Linguists (1962), pp. 509-74 (To be published in the Proceedings of the Congress).

14 See Martinet, A., “La double articulation linguistique,” TCLC 5 (1949), pp. 30–37 Google Scholar, and more fully, A Functional View of Language (Oxford, 1961); but it must be noted that the relation between the grammatical component of language and its semantic analysis is not the same as that being set out in the present paper.

15 See Firth, J. R., “The Technique of Semantics,” TPS 1935, pp. 36–72 Google Scholar, also published in his Papers in Linguistics 1934-51.

16 As in Hockett, C. F., A Course in Modern Linguistics (New York, 1958), p. 126 Google Scholar.

17 The choice of this example from among the innumerable others available bears some relevance to the positions of the two universities where the lectures, on which this paper is based, were given. During the 1840’s the area now comprising the province of British Columbia and the states of Washington and Oregon was in dispute between the British and American governments, the British claiming all the territory north of latitude 42° and the Americans claiming everything south of 54.40°, whence the slogan of the supporters of the American claim. As is well known, the dispute was settled in 1846 by a compromise, extending the United States-Canadian frontier across the continent along the 49th parallel.

18 Syntactic Structures, chapter 9.

19 This analogy was suggested by Professor C. E. Bazell in the course of a departmental seminar in London. I would not, of course, wish to hold him responsible for the use I have thought fit to make of it in this paper.

20 Trends in European and American Linguistics 1930-1960 (Utrecht and Antwerp, 1961), p. 215.

21 Cf. Hockett, , “Linguistic Elements and Their Relations,” Lang. 37 (1961), p. 46 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 ’s-Gravenhage, 1963.

23 Chapter 3.

24 P. 44.

25 P. 76.

26 P. 55.

27 Pp. 65-67.

28 Lang. 37 (1961), p. 43.

29 Perhaps its apogee was marked by the publication of Harris’, Z. S. Methods in Structural Linguistics (Chicago, 1951)Google Scholar.