现代语言学功能主义思想的产生及发展趋势

现代语言学产生于索绪尔的结构思想,在总体上呈现为结构主义特征。索绪尔的结构语言学严格区分语言与言语、内部与外部、共时与历时、静态与动态的二元对立关系,通过前后关系取舍方法而立论,但也割裂了语言结构与功能的内在统一性,远离了语言的具体完整性,因而包含着内在的矛盾性。现代语言学功能主义思想的孕育和发展是实现结构与功能统一,回归语言具体完整性的过程,这些发展逐渐融合为功能类型学主流。功能类型学代表的＂动态范式＂以演化生物学为基础,预示着语言学发展正走向新的综合。

Functionalism in Modern Linguistics:Background and Development

Modern linguistics began with Saussure’s structural thinking and is generally structuralistic in nature. Saussure makes strict dichotomy between langue and parole, internal and external, synchrony and diachrony, static and dynamic. He develops his structural approach to language by focusing on the former to the exclusion of the latter. This analytic method results in the separation of language structure from its function and consequently leads to the failure of linguistics to capture the concrete totality of language. Functionalism in modern linguistics arises in the various attempts of linguists to integrate structure with function so as to fully characterize the concrete totality of language. These attempts culminate in functional-typology, which represents the dynamic paradigm based on evolutionary biology and development of linguistics towards a new synthesis.