Prague school, school of linguistic thought and analysis established in Prague in the 1920s by Vilém Mathesius. It included among its most prominent members the Russian linguist Nikolay Trubetskoy and the Russian-born American linguist Roman Jakobson; the school was most active during the 1920s and ’30s. Linguists of the Prague school stress the function of elements within language, the contrast of language elements to one another, and the total pattern or system formed by these contrasts, and they have distinguished themselves in the study of sound systems. They developed distinctive-feature analysis of sounds.
Trubetzkoy distinguished various functions that can be served by a phonological opposition:
*Distinctive function: The obvious function that of keeping different words or longer sequences apart.
*Delimitative function: It helps the hearer locate word-boundaries in the speech signal.
*Negative delimitative function: When we hear that sound we know that there can’t be a morpheme boundary immediately before it.
*Culminative function: Perception of stress tells the hearer how, any words he must segment the signal into, although it does not tell him where to make the cuts.
Each of the three phonological functions has to do with enabling the hearer to work out what sequence of words has been uttered by the speaker.
Karl distinguished another three functions:
*Representation function: Starting facts.
*Expressive function: Expressing temporary or permanent characteristics of the speaker.
*Conative function: Influencing the hearer.
Saussure contrasted two kinds of linguistics:
*Synchronic linguistics: The study of a system in which the various elements derive their values from their mutual relationship.
*Historical linguistics: The description of a sequence of isolated, unsystematic events.
The Prague School argues for system in diachrony and it claims that linguistics change is determined by synchronic état de langue.
Wendy Saussure.
Trubetzkoy distinguished various functions that can be served by a phonological opposition:
*Distinctive function: The obvious function that of keeping different words or longer sequences apart.
*Delimitative function: It helps the hearer locate word-boundaries in the speech signal.
*Negative delimitative function: When we hear that sound we know that there can’t be a morpheme boundary immediately before it.
*Culminative function: Perception of stress tells the hearer how, any words he must segment the signal into, although it does not tell him where to make the cuts.
Each of the three phonological functions has to do with enabling the hearer to work out what sequence of words has been uttered by the speaker.
Karl distinguished another three functions:
*Representation function: Starting facts.
*Expressive function: Expressing temporary or permanent characteristics of the speaker.
*Conative function: Influencing the hearer.
Saussure contrasted two kinds of linguistics:
*Synchronic linguistics: The study of a system in which the various elements derive their values from their mutual relationship.
*Historical linguistics: The description of a sequence of isolated, unsystematic events.
The Prague School argues for system in diachrony and it claims that linguistics change is determined by synchronic état de langue.
Wendy Saussure.
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