Editing Functional linguistics (section)

===1920s to 1970s: early developments===
The establishment of functional linguistics follows from a shift from structural to functional explanation in 1920s [[sociology]]. Prague, at the crossroads of western European [[structuralism]] and [[Russian formalism]], became an important centre for functional linguistics.<ref name="Daneš_1987">{{cite book |last=Daneš |first=František |editor-last=Dirven |editor-first=R. | editor-last2=Fried |editor-first2=V. | title=Functionalism in Linguistics |publisher=John Benjamins |date=1987 |pages=3–38 |chapter=On Prague school functionalism in linguistics |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dKpLAwob95wC |isbn= 9789027215246}}</ref>

The shift was related to the [[Organicism|organic analogy]] exploited by [[Émile Durkheim]]<ref name="Hejl 2013">{{cite book |last=Hejl |first=P. M. |editor-last=Maasen |editor-first=Sabine |editor2-last=Mendelsohn |editor2-first=E. |editor3-last=Weingart |editor3-first=P. | title=Biology as Society, Society as Biology: Metaphors |publisher=Springer |date=2013 |pages=155–191 |chapter=The importance of the concepts of "organism" and "evolution" in Emile Durkheim's division of social labor and the influence of Herbert Spencer |isbn=9789401106733}}</ref> and [[Ferdinand de Saussure]]. Saussure had argued in his ''Course in General Linguistics'' that the 'organism' of language should be studied anatomically, and not in respect with its environment, to avoid the false conclusions made by [[August Schleicher]] and other [[social Darwinism|social Darwinists]].<ref name="Saussure_1959">{{cite book |last=de Saussure |first=Ferdinand |title=Course in General Linguistics |place=New York |publisher=Philosophy Library |date=1959 |orig-year=First published 1916 |url=https://monoskop.org/images/0/0b/Saussure_Ferdinand_de_Course_in_General_Linguistics_1959.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190808231716/https://monoskop.org/images/0/0b/Saussure_Ferdinand_de_Course_in_General_Linguistics_1959.pdf |archive-date=2019-08-08 |url-status=dead |isbn=9780231157278 |author-link=Ferdinand de Saussure |accessdate=2020-07-07 }}</ref> The post-Saussurean [[Structural functionalism|functionalist]] movement sought ways to account for the 'adaptation' of language to its environment while still remaining strictly anti-Darwinian.<ref name="Sériot_1999">{{cite book |year=1999|author-last=Sériot | author-first=Patrick | editor-last1=Hajičová |editor-last2=Hoskovec| editor-last3=Leška | editor-last4=Sgall | editor-last5=Skoumalová| title=Prague Linguistic Circle Papers, Vol. 3| publisher=John Benjamins | chapter=The Impact of Czech and Russian Biology on the Linguistic Thought of the Prague Linguistic Circle|pages=15–24 |isbn=9789027275066 }}</ref>

Russian émigrés [[Roman Jakobson]] and [[Nikolai Trubetzkoy]] disseminated insights of Russian grammarians in Prague, but also the [[evolutionary theory]] of [[Lev Berg]], arguing for [[teleology]] of language change. As Berg's theory failed to gain popularity outside the [[Soviet Union]], the organic aspect of functionalism diminished, and Jakobson adopted a standard model of functional explanation from [[Ernst Nagel]]'s [[philosophy of science]]. It is, then, the same mode of explanation as in biology and social sciences;<ref name="Daneš_1987" /> but it became emphasised that the word 'adaptation' is not to be understood in linguistics in the same meaning as in biology.<ref name="Andersen_2006">{{cite book |last=Andersen |first=Henning|editor-last=Nedergaard |editor-first=Ole |title=Competing Models of Linguistic Change : Evolution and Beyond |publisher=John Benjamins |date=2006 |pages=59–90 |chapter=Synchrony, diachrony, and evolution |isbn= 9789027293190 }}</ref>

Work on functionalist linguistics by the Prague school resumed in the 1950s after a hiatus caused by World War II and Stalinism. In North America, [[Joseph Greenberg]] published his 1963 seminal paper on language universals that not only revived the field of [[linguistic typology]], but also the approach of  seeking functional explanations for typological patterns.<ref name="Newmeyer2001"/> Greenberg's approach has been highly influential for the movement of North American functionalism that formed from the early 1970s, which has since been characterized by a profound interest in typology.<ref name="Newmeyer2001"/> Greenberg's paper was influenced by the Prague School and in particular it was written in response to Jakobson's call for an 'implicational typology'.<ref name="Newmeyer2001">[[Frederick Newmeyer|Newmeyer]] (2001) ''[https://www.jstor.org/stable/4176644 The Prague School and North American Functionalist Approaches to Syntax]'', in Journal of Linguistics, Mar., 2001, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Mar., 2001), pp. 101–126</ref> While North American functionalism was initially influenced by the functionalism of the Prague school, such influence has been later discontinued.<ref name="Newmeyer2001"/>