Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

460 Roman Jakobson
chrony but followed the old, atomizing, neogrammarian dogma in historical
linguistics. His fallacious identification of two oppositions - synchrony versus
diachrony, and statics versus dynamics - was refuted by post-Saussurian linguistics.
The start and &ish of any mutational process coexist in the synchrony
and belong to two different subcodes of one and the same language. Hence, no
changes can be understood or interpreted without reference to the system which
undergoes them and to their function within this system; and, vice versa, no
language can be fully and adequately described without an account of its
changes in progress. Saussure’s ‘absolute prohibition to study simultaneously
relations in time and relations within the system’ is losing its validity. Changes
appear to pertain to a dynamic synchrony.
The diachronic linguistics of today examines the succession of dynamic
synchronies, confronts them, and, in this way, delineates the evolution of a
language in a wider historical perspective, with due attention not only to the
mutability of the linguistic system but also to its immutable, static elements.
The concentration upon the system and the application to diachrony of the same
analytic principles as those employed in synchrony has enabled the diachronic
research of our time to achieve impressive results in the field of internal reconstruction;
and, on the other hand, when focusing upon the historical stratification
of linguistic systems, explorers observe new, significant affinities between
this stratification and the synchronic patterning of languages. Present-day
linguistics could hardly adhere to the reminder which was quite opportune half
a century ago, when it was necessary to emphasize and to set the tasks of
descriptive linguistics : ‘L‘opposition entre le diachronique et le synchronique
eclate sur tous les points.’
In Saussure’s opinion, as soon as we approach the question of spatial relations
of linguistic phenomena, we leave ‘internal’ and enter ‘external’ linguistics.
However, the entire development of linguistic geography, areal linguistics, and
study of affinities between adjacent languages: this all compels us to consider
the spatio-temporal pattern of verbal operations as the integral part of each
‘idiosynchronic’ system, corresponding to Saussure’s coinage. The assiduous
fieldwork of contemporary linguists has prompted the conclusion that the code
used by any representative of a given language or dialect is convertible: it involves
different subcodes compliant with the extant variations in the radius of
communication. It becomes ever clearer that the code as well as the circuit of
messages exhibits a perpetual interplay of conformism and nonconformism
(or, in Saussure’s terms, force unifiante and force particulariste) both in the
spatial and in the temporal aspects of language. The tendency of the Cours to
isolate each of these two aspects has been abandoned in the further development
of linguistics; thus, the alleged unlikeness between the sources (foyers)
of innovation and the areas of contagion and expansion proved to be deceptive,
since any innovation arises solely through a multiplication in time and space.
In comparative linguistics, the search for common patrimony became more
and more closely linked with the pressing questions of neighborhood affinities.
But now the leading role passes on to the typological comparison of languages
and to the quest for ordered laws which underlie this typology and govern all