STRUCTURAL GRAMMAR

I. Structural grammar’s roots was pioneered by Bloomfield and was a reactions against
traditional grammar.
A. Structural grammar was pioneered by Leonard Bloomfield (1933)
1. According to Bloomfield (1933), syntax is “the study of free forms that are
composed entirely of free forms.”
B. Structural grammar is a reaction against traditional grammar.
1. It aims to make language scientific and autonomous.
2. It is based on observable data, such as current speech.

II. Bloomfield introduced concepts helpful in understanding sentence structures.

A. Linguistic forms are a fixed combination of signaling units
1. A free form is a linguistic form which can be spoken alone, while a bound
form is a linguistic form which is never spoken alone.
2. A complex form bears a partial phonetic-semantic resemblance to some
other linguistic form, while a simple form bears no partial phonetic-semantic
resemblance to any other form.
B. Constituents are components of a linguistic form.
1. An immediate constituent is the major division of a linguistic form
2. An ultimate constituent is a phonetically definable constituent.

C. Grammar is the meaningful arrangement of forms in a language.

1. Order is the succession on which the constituents of a linguistic form are
spoken.
2. Modulation is the use of secondary phonemes.
3. Phonetic modification is the change in the primary phonemes of a form.
4. Selection of forms is choosing a certain form to convey an intended
meaning.
D. Construction is the combination of forms.
1. A construction is a resulting form where two or more forms are spoken
together as constituents of a complex form.
2. A syntactic construction is a resulting form where none of the immediate
constituents is a bound form.

III. Bloomfield proposed the Immediate Constituent (IC) analysis.

A. IC analysis has two goals.
1. It seeks to determine the parts of an utterance and how they are put
together.
2. It aims to segment each utterance into ICs, thus revealing the hierarchical
structure of the utterance and eventually understanding its meaning.
 B. IC analysis offers steps to show the structure of an utterance.
1. Sentences are divided into immediate constituents (IC).
2. Each of these ICs are then divided and subdivided until the ultimate
constituents of the sentence are reached.
3. A binary division is applied and a tree diagram or bracketing is used
C. IC analysis has advantages.
1. It clearly demonstrates the internal structure of a sentence and hence
shows that sentences are not merely linear sequences of elements.
2. It helps to account for ambiguous constructions.
D. IC analysis has disadvantages.
1. Binary divisions are not always possible, as there will be a three-way
division.
2. Discontinuous constituents pose technical problems for tree diagrams.
3. It neglects the semantic completeness of idioms.

IV. Charles Fries concepts

A. Form classes
B. Linear Sentence Patterns

V. Charles Fries offered a procedure for the analysis of English sentences.

A. His procedure has 10 steps.
1. Identify parts of speech and function words.
2. Mark special ties that are signaled by a concordance of forms or by
particular intonation contrasts.
3. Identify particular arrangement of the Class 1 and Class 2 words that signal
the kind of sentence.
4. Identify particular arrangement of the Class 1 words before and after the
Class 2 words.
5. Cut off any sequence signals that stand either at the beginning or at the end
of the sentence.
6. Cut off an included sentence that stands at the beginning of the utterance in
which it is included.
7. Cut between the Class 1 words and the Class 2 words that form the basic
arrangement of the sentence.
8. Separate the various modifiers of the Class 1 word that is the “subject.”
9. Separate the various modifiers of the Class 2 words.
10. Cut within the word groups that have been treated as whole units on the
level above.
B. Limitations
1. There is a question of selecting the right frame to test substitutability.
 2. There is the problem of selecting the first 'noun' or 'class V word so that we
can say that the other 'nouns' can be substituted for it.
3. It is not possible to find items, which are substitutable for each other in all
the environments.
4. The substitutions have to be made by observing a constraint that has not
been made explicit.
5. When there are several different ways of making the cuts, there is no
special reason for preferring one to the other.
6. In cases of ambiguity the IC analysis does not illuminate the structure; on
the contrary, it obscures it
7. The formula tends to be at least as long as the sentence whose structure it
seeks to represent.
8. If there are infinitely many sentences in a language, there are infinitely
many formulae, creating problems of storage and learning in the brain.
9. If the function words determine whether a sentence is English or not, even
nonsense words inserted in a sentence can be considered authentic
English.
10. This mechanism is not adequate to describe patterns within patterns.

VI. Criticisms of Structural Grammar

A. Strengths
1. Chomsky says, “The major contribution of structural linguistics is
methodological rather than substantive.
2. It made study of language scientific, precise, verifiable and objective
3. It examines all languages in terms of their phonological and grammatical
systems.
4. It recognizes uniqueness of each language
B. Weaknesses
1. Chomsky criticized – corpus bound, neglect of meaning
2. Structuralism ignores explanatory adequacy, meaning, linguistic universals,
native speaker’s intuition and his competence of generating infinite number
of sentences from a finite set of items
3. It does not account for the degree of grammaticality and acceptability, nor
does it stop the generation of ungrammatical sentences.
4. Grammar is not predictive and explicit; it does not explain inter-relatedness
of sentences.
5. Grammar should not merely be a record of data
6. It should establish the general and innate properties of the language based
on intrinsic properties of human mind.
7. Linguistics is a sub-class of cognitive psychology.
 8. Language is both nature and nurture.
9. Grammar should also specify, what to say; when and why
10. Structural grammar does not fulfill all these goals. It is not a whole but a part
of the whole – an inventory of units such as phonemes, morphemes, words ,
lexical categories, phrases.
11. Descriptive grammar is just one aspect of generative grammar.

VIII. Application to Language Teaching

A. Bloomfield
B. Fries

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Bloomfield, Leonard. Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1933.
Fries, Charles. The Structure of English: An Introduction to the Construction of English
Sentences. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1940.
Matthews, Peter. A Short History of Structural Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University, 2001.
Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Ed. Charles Bally and Albert
Sechehayem. New York: Philosophical Library, 1939.