Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

A structuralist method of linguistic analysis which excludes any non-observable evidence and, in order to determine the systematic relations and structural properties of language elements, relies on the formal description of their distribution alone. The identification and classification of elements is accomplished by formal discovery procedures of segmentation and substitution. This method was designed in the 1940s and early 1950s chiefly for recording and analysing languages unknown to the linguist. In theoretical linguistics it has been largely superseded by the paradigm of generative grammar which relies on introspection and sophisticated informants. But in one field where such are not available it still offers a fruitful avenue of approach: decipherment. It can help to determine the direction of script and to recognize and classify the signs. See also decipherment . Reading Harris 1954. ... log in or subscribe to read full text