Updated August 07, Key Takeaways: Synchronistic Linguistics Synchronistic linguistics is the study of a language at a particular time. In contrast, diachronic linguistics studies the development of a language over time.
Synchronistic linguistics is often descriptive, analyzing how the parts of a language or grammar work together. Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Nordquist, Richard. Defining Synchronic Linguistics. Definition and Examples of Diachronic Linguistics.
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I Accept Show Purposes. Linguistics, in Saussure's time, approached the problem of the multiplicity of languages by trying to trace each of them back to a handful of common sources in much the same way as evolutionary biologists approach the problem of the multiplicity of species. This approach was deemed diachronic by Saussure because it looks for the production of difference across time.
But for Saussure this ignored the to him, more interesting and important problem of how to account for the existence and operation of language itself. To get a handle on this, he insisted that it was necessary to take a snapshot of language at a particular time and effectively produce a freeze-frame of it. This approach he referred to as synchronic. By freezing time, or better ignoring its effects, Saussure thought it would be easier to see that which was eternal and universal.
Sturrock Structuralism From: synchronic and diachronic in A Dictionary of Critical Theory ». Subjects: Linguistics. View all related items in Oxford Reference ». Search for: 'synchronic and diachronic' in Oxford Reference ». All Rights Reserved. Tracing the development of English from the Old English period to the twentieth century is a diachronic study.
A synchronic study of language is a comparison of languages or dialects —various spoken differences of the same language—used within some defined spatial region and during the same period of time. Determining the regions of the United States in which people currently say 'pop' rather than 'soda' and 'idea' rather than 'idear' are examples of the types of inquiries pertinent to a synchronic study. State University of New York Press, - "Most of Saussure's successors accepted the 'synchronic- diachronic ' distinction, which still survives robustly in twenty-first-century linguistics.
In practice, what this means is that it is accounted a violation of principle or linguistic method to include in the same synchronic analysis evidence related to diachronically different states. So, for example, citing Shakespearean forms would be regarded as inadmissible in support of, say, an analysis of the grammar of Dickens.
Saussure is particularly severe in his strictures upon linguists who conflate synchronic and diachronic facts. Routledge, Sometimes the term diachronic linguistics is used instead of historical linguistics, as a way of referring to the study of language or languages at various points in time and at various historical stages.
Demer, Ann K. Farmer, and Robert M. The MIT Press, This practice can be called not unrevealingly 'old-time synchrony,' and it has made its mark in the form of numerous studies providing synchronic analyses of particular syntactic constructions, word-formation processes, morpho phonological alternations, and the like for individual earlier pre-modern or at least early modern stages of languages.
Gaining as much synchronic information as possible about an earlier stage of a language must surely be viewed as a necessary prerequisite for doing serious work on the diachronic development of a language. Nonetheless, pursuing the synchrony of earlier language states solely for the sake of synchronic theory-building.. At least in a technical sense, then, diachronic linguistics and historical linguistics are not synonymous, because only the latter includes research on 'old-time synchrony' for its own sake, without any focus on language change.
Janda and Brian D. Joseph and R.
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