Inlinguistics,glossematics is astructuralist theory proposed byLouis Hjelmslev andHans Jørgen Uldall. It defines theglosseme as the most basic unit of language.
Hjelmslev and Uldall eventually went separate ways with their respective approaches. Hjelmslev's theory, most notably, is an early mathematical methodology for the analysis of language which was subsequently incorporated into the analytical foundation of current models offunctional–structural grammar such asDanish Functional Grammar,Functional Discourse Grammar andSystemic Functional Linguistics.[1] Hjelmslev's theory likewise remains fundamental for modernsemiotics.[2]
Glossematics defines theglosseme as the smallest irreducible unit of boththe content and expression planes of language; in the expression plane, the glosseme is nearly identical to thephoneme. In the content plane, it is the smallest unit of meaning which underlies a concept. Aewe, for example, consists of the taxemessheep andfemale which may eventually be divided into even smaller units – glossemes – of meaning. The analysis is gradually expanded to the study offunctions, more commonly known as dependencies, between elements on the level ofdiscourse (which is calledprocess), and between meaning and form in the linguistic system.[3]
The termglosseme was coined by Louis Hjelmslev and Hans Jørgen Uldall in the 1930s.[4] It derives from theGreek wordglossa (meaning here 'language') and the-eme suffix. A similar idea was used byLeonard Bloomfield in describing his system of basic linguistic units,tagmemes, although glossematics is more far-reaching in each direction.
Glossematics is an expansion ofSaussure's concept of language as a dual system of meaning and form. This is in contrast to a contemporary American tendency of placing semantics outside the core of linguistics. Hjelmslev was also influenced by thePrague Linguistic Circle to the extent that he considered full texts as the material for analysis rather than ‘utterances' as was commonplace inAmerican structuralism. Diverging from both American and European linguists, though, Hjelmslev considered language not as asocial fact but as a computational system which underlies all sciences.[5]
The ultimate goal of the linguist is to gain a more perfect understanding of the whole through a thorough study of the structure of the constituent parts. To the greatest extent possible, glossematics seeks to construct a non-historical, non-sociological and non-psychological model based on language-specific principles and minimal reliance on factors external to the system. The linguist's task, analysing texts or corpora of different languages, aims to establish a universal model of the inner workings of language by comparing the underlying meta-structures of a given language to others. Rather than separate fields of study, Hjelmslev regarded phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicology and semantics as part of the same apparatus.
Linguistics must then see its main task in establishing a science of the expression and a science of the content on an internal and functional basis… [it must become a discipline] whose science of the expression is not phonetics and whose science of the content is not semantics. Such a science would be an algebra of language.
— Louis Hjelmslev[3]
By ‘phonetics' and ‘semantics' Hjelmslev means unorganised sound and meaning. Instead, a linguist must studyexpression and content, the systematised organisation of form and meaning of a given language which is to be deduced from the research material. As manifested by subsequent models ofstructural grammar, but also to an extent bygenerative grammar, units of a given level are collected into inventories (e.g. word classes, phrase types, etc.[6]). Glossematics is then meant to become a device which can correctly predict all grammatical sentences of any language."[3] Hjelmslev's idea later came to be associated withNoam Chomsky who used a modification of it made by his PhD supervisorZellig Harris.[7][8][4] Hjelmslev's influence extends to semiotics and to thesystemic andDanish grammatical models offunctional linguistics.[9]
Glossematics earned the nicknameformalism orformal linguistics after the publication of Hjelmslev'sProlegomena to a Theory of Language (Danish original published in 1943 with subsequent English and French translations). Some members of the Prague School disagreed with Hjelmslev's use of the wordfunction in his meaning 'dependency' or 'link' in a chain of dependencies which is distant from the Praguian concept of the functions of language.[10] Glossematics is a proper structuralist model in that it examines the interaction of the content level and the expression level. Nonetheless, the formalist epithet can be considered appropriate from different perspectives. For one, Hjelmslev considered linguistics as a formal science.[11] For another, his approach to phonology was based on criteria of distribution, alternatives and other structural features of the system in a rejection of psychological definitions of the phoneme and definitions based on phonetic substance.[12]: 171 He also believed that general linguistics should be the study of language as an autonomous system disregarding extralinguistic factors.[13]
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The dictionary definition ofglossematics at Wiktionary