Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Syntax - 3 Constituents, Phrasal (Syntactic) Categories and Phrase Structure (Syntactic) Rules

Syntax –  Constituents,  Categories  and Phrase Structure Rules A. Constituents Constituents are the units which may be words, phrases (groups of words not qualifying as sentences) or clauses (sentences embedded in lager sentences) that go into the making of a larger structure.   For example, the sentence – Boys are naughty – has three constituents all of which are words. In the sentence – The naughty boy broke the glass, - again, we have three constituents two of which are noun phrases and the third one is a verb. In the sentence – The boy who is naughty broke the glass – we have a clause (a sentence within a sentence)   - 'who is naughty' - as a constituent of a larger sentence. Traditional grammar operated with words as the constituents of sentences. The words were then classified into parts of speech such as nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs etc. But modern grammarians have rejected this classification because 1. Their defini...
Post a Comment
Read more

Varieties of English

Varieties of English When we name a language, we are referring not to the actual form the language which we hear or read. We are referring to the common core or the nucleus of the language which runs through all the varieties of that language, ‘a set of grammatical or other conventions which are common to all the varieties of that language that we come across. It is to this common core or nucleus of the English language that we are referring to when we say that someone speaks or writes English. The actual realisation of a language differs from region to region and from person to person. It also differs according to the subject matter, the medium being used, the attitude of the speaker and the mother tongue of the speaker. Every language is realised in a varieties of ways by its users. 1. Varieties according to region or area (Regional Variation):   Speakers of a language living in different regions use different varieties of the language. We used to say in India that l...
Post a Comment
Read more

Syntax as the Grammar of a Language

Syntax as the Grammar of a Language Some linguists have identified syntax with grammar. They are of the opinion that syntax and grammar are synonymous and the syntactical rules are nothing but the rules of the grammar of a language. However, it is not possible to agree with them. Of course, syntactical rules are reflected in the grammar of the concerned language. But grammar covers a much broader area than syntax. We may say that syntax is a part of grammar but just one part. There is an area in every language which is common to both. But at the same time, there is a part of grammar which is not covered by syntax. Also there are certain things which are exclusive to syntax and are not covered by grammar. Syntax is the branch of linguistics which deals with the linear ordering of elements (words, phrases and clauses) in the well-formed (acceptable) sentences of a language. In the case of most of the languages, the order moves from left to right but in some like Urdu, it mo...
Post a Comment
Read more