El estudio del lenguaje como ciencia natural

Abstract

A single property of the linguistic sign (the arbitrary character of the union between its faces) has been raised as a general property of human language by structuralist linguists. This move has emptied structuralist research of any kind of natural content. In the first section of this article it is proposed what the author calls the ‘argument of the impossible languages’ with the aim of refuting the structuralist reasoning. This argument clearly shows that the range of particular languages is naturally limited, which justifies the emerging of a Natural Science referred to human language. The second part of the paper is devoted to certain features of modern natural sciences, whose manifestation and effects in the study of language are analyzed.