descriptive linguistics

n (Linguistics) (functioning as singular) the study of the description of the internal phonological, grammatical, and semantic structures of languages at given points in time without reference to their histories or to one another. Also called: synchronic linguistics Compare historical linguistics

descrip′tive linguis′tics

n. the study of the grammar, classification, and arrangement of the features of a language at a given time, without reference to its history or comparison to other languages. [1925–30]

descriptive linguistics

The study of a language at a particular stage in its development without relating it to other stages or other languages.

Thesaurus

Noun

descriptive linguistics - a description (at a given point in time) of a language with respect to its phonology and morphology and syntax and semantics without value judgmentslinguistics - the scientific study of languagegrammar - the branch of linguistics that deals with syntax and morphology (and sometimes also deals with semantics)phonemics, phonology - the study of the sound system of a given language and the analysis and classification of its phonemesmorphophonemics - the study of the phonological realization of the allomorphs of the morphemes of a languagederivation - (descriptive linguistics) the process whereby new words are formed from existing words or bases by affixation; "`singer' from `sing' or `undo' from `do' are examples of derivations"prescriptive linguistics - an account of how a language should be used instead of how it is actually used; a prescription for the `correct' phonology and morphology and syntax and semantics

Translations

Descriptive Linguistics

one of the schools of linguistic structuralism, which was dominant in American linguistics from the 1930’s to the 1950’s. The American linguists L. Bloomfield and E. Sapir, who reexamined the ideas of the neogrammarian doctrine, were the founders of descriptive linguistics. The trends in descriptive linguistics—one associated with Bloomfield (the works of G. Trager, B. Bloch, Z. Harris, C. Hockett, and H. L. Smith, Jr.) and the other with Sapir (the works of K. L. Pike, E. A. Nida, and C. Fries)—diverge in the nature of their research interests and in part in their theoretical aims but are similar in the area of methods of linguistic research.

The limitation to problems of synchronic linguistic re-search is caused by linguistic practice (the teaching of language) and the specifics of the material from North American Indian languages. Language appears to descriptivists as an aggregate of speech utterances, which were the main object of their research. At the center of their attention were the rules of the scientific description (hence the name) of texts: the study of the organization, the arrangement and classification of their elements. The formalization of analytical procedures in the area of phonology and morphology (the development of principles for studying language at different levels, of distributive analysis, and of the method of immediate constitutents) led to the posing of general questions on linguistic simulation. Lack of attention to the content plane of language, as well as to the paradigmatic aspect of language, did not permit descriptivists sufficiently fully and correctly to interpret language as a system. There was also no consistent philosophical basis. The overcoming of descriptivism is connected with sharp criticism of its methodological basis (in particular, its underestimation of the explanatory aspects of science) from the viewpoint of the theory of the generative grammar of language.

REFERENCES

Sapir, E. Iazyk: Vvedenie v izuchenie rechi. Moscow, 1934. (Translated from English.)
Gleason, H. Vvedenie v deskriptivnuiu lingvistiku. Moscow, 1959. (Translated from English.)
Bloomfield, L. lazyk. Moscow, 1968. (Translated from English.)
Arutiunova, N. D., G. A. Klimov, and E. S. Kubriakova. “Amerikanskii strukturalizm.” In Osnovnye napravleniia strukturalizma. Moscow, 1964.
Readings in Linguistics, 4th ed. Edited by M. Joos. London-Chicago, 1967.

G. A. KLIMOV

See Descriptive Linguistics

descriptive linguistics