Synchrony anddiachrony are two complementary viewpoints inlinguistic analysis. Asynchronic approach – fromAncient Greek:συν- ("together") +χρόνος ("time") – considers a language at a moment in time without taking its history into account. In contrast, adiachronic – fromδια- ("through, across") +χρόνος ("time") – approach, as inhistorical linguistics, considers the development andevolution of a language through history.[1]
For example, a synchronic study ofMiddle English would focus on understanding how the language functioned at a given stage in its history. A diachronic approach, by contrast, studieslanguage change by comparing different stages at different historical periods. The termssynchrony anddiachrony are often associated with the historical linguistFerdinand de Saussure, who considered the synchronic perspective as systematic but argued that language change is too unpredictable to be considered a system.
The concepts were theorized by theSwiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, professor of general linguistics inGeneva from 1896 to 1911, and appeared in writing in his posthumousCourse in General Linguistics published in 1916.
Saussure's teachers inhistorical-comparative andreconstructive linguistics such asGeorg Curtius advocated theneo-grammarian manifesto according to which linguistic change is based on absolute laws. Thus, it was argued that ancient languages without surviving data could be reconstructed limitlessly after the discovery of such laws. In contradiction to his predecessors, Saussure demonstrated with multiple examples in hisCourse that such alleged laws are too unreliable to allow reconstructions far beyond the empirical data. Therefore, in Saussure's view, language change (diachrony) does not form a system. By contrast, each synchronic stage is held together by a systemic equilibrium based on the interconnectedness of meaning and form. To understand why a language has the forms it has at a given stage, both the diachronic and the synchronic dimension must be considered.
Saussure likewise rejected the idea of theDarwinian linguistsAugust Schleicher andMax Müller, who considered languages as living organisms arguing that linguistics belongs tolife sciences. Saussure illustrates the historical development of languages by way of his distinction between the synchronic and the diachronic perspective employing a metaphor ofmoving pictures. Even though objects on film appear to be moving, at a closer inspection, this turns out to be an illusion because each picture is static ('synchronic') and there is nothing between the pictures except a lifeless frame. In a similar manner, the "life" of language—simplylanguage change—consists of a series of static points, which are physically independent of the previous stage. In such a context, Saussure warns against the confusion of synchrony and diachrony expressing his concern that these could be not studied simultaneously.[2]
Following the posthumous publication of Saussure'sCourse, the separation of synchronic and diachronic linguistics became controversial and was rejected by structural linguists includingRoman Jakobson andAndré Martinet, but was well-received by thegenerative grammarians, who considered Saussure's statement as an overall rejection of the historical-comparative method.[3] In American linguistics, Saussure became regarded as an opponent of historical linguistics. In 1979,Joseph Greenberg stated
By contrast,Mark Aronoff argues that Saussure rooted linguistic theory in synchronic states rather than diachrony breaking a 19th-century tradition ofevolutionary explanation in linguistics.[5]
A dualistic opposition between synchrony and diachrony has been carried over intophilosophy andsociology, for instance byRoland Barthes andJean-Paul Sartre.Jacques Lacan also used it forpsychoanalysis.[6] Prior to de Saussure, many similar concepts were also developed independently by Polish linguistsJan Baudouin de Courtenay andMikołaj Kruszewski of theKazan School, who used the termsstatics anddynamics of language.[7]
In 1970Eugenio Coșeriu, revisitingDe Saussure's synchrony and diachrony distinction in the description of language, coined the termsdiatopic,diastratic anddiaphasic to describelinguistic variation.[8][9][10]
