Saussure

Have you ever listen about The father of twentieth century linguistics ?

Lets check these links about Ferdinan 'd Saussure …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLmbMqi3yis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7_KcBAvIAE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2cLwOqr28M&feature=related   

Early-to mid-20th century: descriptive linguistics.

In the 20th century, the emphasis shifted from language change to language description.
Structural Linguistics is sometimes misunderstood. It does not necessarily refer to a separate branch or school of linguistics. All linguistics since de Saussure is structural, as 'structutal' in this broad sense merely meansthe recognition that language is a paterned system composed of interdependent elements, rather than a collection of unconnected individual items.

Nineteenth century: historical linguistics

It is significant that the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle made major contributions to the study of language. Plato is said to have been the first person to distinguish between nouns and verbs.

1786 is the year which many people regard as the birthdate of linguistics. On the 27th of september, 1786, an Englishman, Sir William Jones, read a paper to the Royal Asiatic Society in Calcutta pointing out that Sanskrit (the old indian language), Greek, Latin,Celtic and Germanic all had striking structural similarities.

The Study of Language

What is a language, and how do languages come about?  One of the major problems posed

by language is its multi-level nature. Language can be analyzed in the form of individual

competence, in actual dialogue (or “discourse”) among groups of individuals, as a formal

system of signs, as a cultural system, and in numerous other ways. Which of these perspectives one takes depends on the kinds of questions one wants to ask, and also narrows

down the kinds of answers one is likely to get. General linguistics has tended to focus on

language as a formal system and, under the influence of Noam Chomsky, to interpret language in terms of a highly abstracted individual competence. Such an approach leads us to

see language as beginning in the individual, in the physical development of the brain and

in its ability to process language, which is in turn linked with neural systems that support

speech and hearing. These matters are the terrain of the psycholinguist, who is interested in

the relationship between psychology and language. But this approach is only one way of

addressing language – and the kinds of questions that interest social studies teachers are

not, by and large, questions that the formal approach is capable of addressing in a comprehensive way, nor do the internal workings of the human brain tell us what we need to

know about language in a broader social context