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Priority of Synchronic Description over Diachronic Description



Synchronic and Diachronic Description
There are two different ways of investigating a language. We can investigate a language as it exists at a given point of time i.e. in the fifteenth century or in the nineteenth or 20th century and then describe it. This approach is called the synchronic approach.
The other approach consists in studying the state of the language at different periods of time and discover how it has evolved over time, what stages it has passed through and what changes have taken place in its pronunciation, lexicon, grammar and syntax with the passage of time. This approach is called the diachronic or historical approach.
Saussure is of the view that synchronic description of a language is more important than the diachronic description. To prove his point he compares language to a game of chess. He says that at a given point of time, we are concerned only with the position of the pieces at that time. It is not important to know how the pieces have reached there. Similarly, to use language for all practical purposes, what is important for us to know is the current state of the language. Its historical evolution is totally irrelevant.
The synchronic approach also helps us to avoid the etymological fallacy. It is sometimes assumed the meaning of the words is related to the original form from which they have been derived. But it is not true. Words as well as the forms derived from them often change their meaning as the language evolves. Consequently, a word may come to have a meaning which is not at all related to the root from which it has been derived. To be efficient users of the language, we need only to know the meaning of the word at the current time only. We have nothing to do with its history.
The game of chess has a beginning and an end. It also has a goal which gives us the direction in which the pieces have to move. But languages have no definite beginning or end. Nor is there any directionality in language. What we are concerned with is only the current state of a language to be able to use it efficiently.
Another argument I favour of the priority of synchronic description is that it is independent of diachronic description. To describe the state of a language at a given time, we do not need any knowledge of the stages through which it has passed before reaching the current state. On the other hand, a diachronic description requires a synchronic description of the language at several different points of time before the point of time in question. We cannot describe a language diachronically without reference to its earlier states.

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