A Brief History of Linguistics An Overview summary

A Brief History of Linguistics: An Overview1. IntroductionLinguistics in a broad sense boasts a history as long as the history of writing. Serious discussions of the origin of language in the ancient times have been recorded in both the West and East.Linguistics, like other science, builds on the past. A study of the history of linguistics acquaints us with not only the great advances made in the scientific investigation of language in the past decades, but also the continuity of linguistic theory from the earliest times to the present day.2. Linguistics in Ancient Times2.1 Indian LinguisticsIt is in the fourth century BC that the great Indian grammarian Panini produced his famous Sanskrit grammar, called Eight Books. Linguistics in India must have been seriously under way well before the middle of the first millennium BC.The Indian linguistic scholarship focused on three aspects: general linguistic theory and semantics, phonetics and phonology, and grammatical description. The main focus of Indian linguistics is not on theory but on observation, and the questions they raised are closely related to literary study and philosophy. The semantic relationship between a sentence and the words that make up the sentence was also under discussion.2.2 Chinese LinguisticsThe earliest writing system was witnessed in China in the 14th century BC, called Jiaguwen. There was no such ting as philology or grammar then, and the only practice was Xungu, critical interpretations of ancient texts. Interpretations of ancient texts inevitably involved issues concerning grammar. For its systematicity and clarity, Er Ya is considered as a very important pioneer work in Chines Xungu. Ancient China enjoys special fame in her theories on the origins of language.Dictionaries were produced in China from the second century AD onward. In the Qin and Han dynasties, studies of language focused on both compiling classical texts (philology) and interpreting the meaning of words (Xungu).2.3 Greek LinguisticsAncient Greece is considered as the cradle of Western civilization, and work on language started there in about the 5th century BC. Ancient Greek linguistics was philosophical, more interested in problems on the relationship between language and the natural world, language and human thought, language and logical form.There were several famous philosophers in ancient Greece. They were Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and later Stoic philosophers. The three aspects of linguistic study among early Greek scholars were etymology, phonetics and grammar. The ancient Greekshave done outstanding work in many fields, and their achievement in linguistics is one of many that are especially memorable in terms of grammatical theory and grammatical description.2.4 Roman LinguisticsThe Romans borrowed their writing system from the Greeks. And their writing was called Cynillic writing. In the west half of the empire, Latin became the language of administration, business, law, learning, and social achievement.Roman linguistics was largely the application of Greek thought, Greek controversies on language, and Greek categories to the Latin language. It is through theses Latin grammarians that the accepted grammatical description of the language was brought to completion and handed on to philosophy of language in the Middle Ages.3. Linguistics in the Middle AgesThe Middle Ages refers to the period of European history starting from the fall of the Roman Empire in the year 476 and the beginning of the Renaissance in the fifteenth century. Latin remained the language of learning. This ensured the language a high place, and linguistic studies in the early years of the Middle Ages were largely represented by students in Latin grammar.Around 1000, Aelfric wrote Latin Grammar and Colloquium. As his grammar was one of the known grammars especially directed at English-speaking learners, it was taken as setting the seal on several centuries of Latin-inspired English grammar.The second part of the Middle Ages was characterized by scholastic philosophy, in which linguistics had an important place and a considerable amount of linguistic work was carried on. Linguistics works had been almost wholly pedagogical. One such grammar is the Doctrinale of Alexander of Villedieu. One of the most striking examples of practical work in the second part was the First Grammatical Treaties. Scholasticism is the synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian revelation in European thought. It sought to resole the conflict of faith and reason and of nominalism and realism. Nominalism refers to the doctrine that are no universal essences in reality and that abstract concepts are mere names.In the Middle Ages, Latin remained the only really necessary scholar's language, despite the later increase in men's knowledge of Greek and some study of Arabic and Hebrew.In the early decades of the thirteenth century, Petrus Hispanus produced his Summulae Logicales, a summary of logic. The theoretical basis of his arguments is that sensation, memory, imagination, judgement and reasoning, etc. , are attributed to various faculties in human beings.4. Linguistics in the RenaissanceThe Renaissance is traditionally regarded as the birth of the modern wold and the beginning of modern history. The study of Greek and Latin grammars continued, and the further refinements and the developments that carried it from the Medieval Periodto modern teaching practice in the classical languages were a proper object of specialist study.4.1 Hebrew and ArabicIts biblical status gave Hebrew a place alongside Latin and Greek. A number of Hebrew grammars were written in Europe, in particular Reuchlin's On Fundamental Rules of Hebrew.Arabic linguistic studies were concerned with the Koran, the sacred book of Islam. The school of Basra laid stress on the strict regularity and the systemic nature of language. Arabic grammatical scholarship reached its culmination at the end of the eight century in the grammar of Sibawaih of Basra. The Arabic achievement in this branch of linguistics was far more successful in terms of descriptive accuracy than that of the Greeks and the Romans.4.2 European LanguagesThe Renaissance itself saw the publication of many of the first grammars of the European languages. These new grammars of modern languages paid great attention to the relations between spelling and pronunciation.Persian Ramus, a precursor of modern structuralism, stressed the need in the ancient languages to follow the observed usage of the classical authors, and in the modern languages the observed usage of native speakers. His grammatical descriptions and classifications relied on the relations between actual word forms.4.3 The Port-Royal GrammariansThe rationalist movement make itself feel in the production of philosophical grammars, especially associated with the French Port-Royal schools. Port-Royal scholars were the writers of the universal grammars. On the basis of this general grammar, Port-Royal scholars took the nine classical word classes, but re-divided them semantically. With the first six relating to the objects of our thought and the last three to the form or manner of our thought.In making a genuine attempt to write a general grammar, the Port-Royal grammarians drew examples from Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and other European languages, seeking to refer to alleged universal characteristics of language that underlie them all. In many ways their ideas are similar to Chomsky's modern theory.4.4 Empiricism and the Reworking of English GrammarsThe centerpiece of empiricism is the thesis that all human knowledge is derived externally from the sense in impressions and the operations of the mind upon them in abstraction and generalization.The most radical proposal of the age was the invention of a new language for the advancement for learning and commerce throughout the civilized world.One aspect of English empiricism in linguistic studies during these two centuries was the beginning of systematic phonetic description of the sounds of the English language, and of the formal analysis of English grammar. English grammars, in a sense, are the products of reworking by pioneers of the English language studies. Since then, grammars of English have continued to be written from this period up to the present day, gradually remodeling the Latin tradition in the interest of formal correspondence with the actual patterns and paradigms of English.5. Linguistics in the 18th Century5.1 The Discovery of SanskritIn this year, Sir William Jones established beyond doubt the historical kinship of Sanskrit with Latin, Greek and the Germanic languages. The discovery of Sanskrit by Western scholars was one of the principal factors in the development of comparative philology in the 19th century.5.2 Philosophy and Linguistic InquiriesIn the 18th century, speculation was turning towards historical questions, though in a rather general way. Attempts at seriously thought-out explanations of the origin and development of human language united philosophers of both the empiricist and the rationalist camps of the 18th century.Halfway through the century, Condillac and Rousseau discussed the origin and early development of human speech. Their conceptions of the genesis of language were very similar.Herder asserted that language and thought are inseparable, and that language is the tool, the content, and the form of human thinking. A prominent representative of the universal philosophical theory of grammar in English during 18th century was James Harris. He held that words are related to what they designate by convention and that language is "a system of articulate voices signified by compact". He saw the intricate connection between human society and human speech.In the 18th century, thinkers in different countries and with diverse backgrounds were drawn towards the study of the history of language. This happened on the eve of the 19th century when the history of language made unprecedented advances, which owed much to the work done in the 18th century.6. ConclusionFrom the earliest period in the human history to more recent times, language studies developed along a route characterized by incremental in depth. However, as language is such a complicated phenomenon and each inquiry has its limitations, we are still far from having exhausted all aspects of language. It is safe to say, though, that these inquiries have certainly paved the way for unprecedented linguistic developments in the time that followed.。