语言学流派

Summary of the Chapter two: A Brief History ofLinguisticsIn this unit, we know that from the earliest period in the human history to more recent times, language studies developed along a route characterised by incremental in depth. From tentative attempts to know about human language till more systematic these inquiries into languages; from the description of particular languages to the description of various languages as a whole; from studying human languages proper to dealing with the relationships between language and thought, Logic, society, and culture, most inquiries seem to have taken us closer to the truth. 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.1.1 The linguistics in the four ancient civilisationsKnowledge of linguistic involves its history. And the history of linguistics is related to the origin of human language.Linguistics in a broad sense boasts a history as long as the history of writing. In this unit, there are altogether four ancient countries which play the important roles in the period of linguistic development, such as ancient India, ancient ancient China, ancient Greece, and ancient Roman. In each country, there are some linguists or philosophers who contributed to language. In the West, many philosophers were interested in a number of disciplines, language being one of their topics of discussion. They debated on the origin of the language, and the relationship between words and meaning. Such debate went on and on between Naturalists and Conventionalists about two oppositions: anomaly vs. analogy, and irreularity vs. regularity. The conventionalists pointed out that words can be changed at will and that language is equally efficient once the language has been accepted. In the East, and ancient China is the representative and enjoys the fame in her theories on the origins of language. Xu Shen , a Chinese linguist in the Han Dynasty, thought that the earliest historical record on writing can be traced back to an ancient figure named Fuxi. And he mentioned that Cangjie created writing .Whatever stories may be and wherever the stories come from , they belong to myths. They only show how ancient people tried to get to know about language. Linguistics builds on the past. New developments do not only challenge and refute traditional doctrines, but also develop and reformulate them. In the next part , we will mainly explain linguistics in ancient times in the four ancient countries which were connected to the language.Indian linguistics is essential to the history of the language’s development. In India, Veda and Sutras can be regarded as the sources for the earliest grammar. These earliest forms of literature had been passed down by words of mouth until they were recorded in Sanskrit. It is in the fourth century BC that the great Indian grammarianPanini produced the famous Sanskrit grammar, called Eight Books. The Indian linguistics scholarship focused on three aspects: general linguistics theory and semantics, phonetics and phonology, and grammatical description. It is remarkable that Indian scholars of the time discussed the relation between the perceived utterances, spoken or written, of a language and language itself. The most remarkable achievements of Indian linguistics lay in phonetics and phonology. Indian phonetic work is much far advanced in both theory and practice as compared with anything else produced in the West . There are two aspects in which Indian linguistic work may be held to be superior to Western traditional grammar. Besides, Panini is the first scholar to notice allomorphs in language. He established abstract word forms for various parts of speech, and established rules of change for morphemes and phonemes.The second one is the Chinese linguistics. As one of the four ancient civilisations in the world, China has developed an indigeous tradition of linguistic studies. The earliest writing system was witnessed called Jiaguwen. The first work in interpreting characters in the Chinese history is Er Ya. Xu Shen wrote the first book on interpretation of Chinese characters, Shuo Wen Jie Zi. Yang Xiong produced a book which is now called Dialects, which is the first book in Chinese history specialists in dialects. Liu Xi wrote a similar work entitled Interpretation of Nouns, in which he classified characters of the same quality into the same category. From the end of 16th century the nature of the Chinese writing system was known in European and it played an important part in some directions of linguistic research.The third one is ancient Greece which is considered as the cradle of Western civilisation. Greek linguistics was philosophical, more interested in the problems on the relationship between language and the natural world, language and human thought , language form and logical form. There are several famous philosophers in ancient Greece. They were Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Stoic philosophers. Socrates left us no writing of his own and all his arguments and viewpoints are reported in some of the writings of Xenophon and in the Dialogues of Plato. Aristotle is a student of Plato,who was probably the most remarkable, most knowledgeable and the most versatile intellect in the ancient times. The ancient Greeks have done outstanding work in many fields including logic, ethics, politics, rhetoric, and mathematics, and their achievement in linguistics is one of many that are especially memorable in terms of grammatical theory and grammatical description.The fourth one is Roman, whose scholarship in linguistics gives us a quite different picture. The respective roles of Greece and Rome were not the same. Their roles were dissimilar and contemplementary. The Romans as well as the Slavs, borrowed their writing system from the Greeks. Roman linguistics was largely the application of Greek thought, Greek controversies on language, and Greek categories to the Latin language. Varro was the first serious Latin writer on linguistic issues and is regarded as the most important Roman grammarian, who is well- known for his 25-volume De linga Latin . After Varro, Priscian is the best known grammarian. His compilation of 18-volume Institutiones grammaticae, a representative of their work, is regarded as a classic work in grammatical studies throughout the Middle Ages. Inevaluating Priscian’s work as a whole, one notices that in the context in which he was writing and the form in which he cast his description of Latin. It is they who laid solid foundations for grammars and philosophy of language in the Middle Ages.1.2 linguistics in the Middle AgesDuring this time, a continuity of Greek thought and learning coexisted in the Eastern Empire with the official spread of Christianity.When Christianity spread to England in the sixth century, Bede and Aleuin wrote grammars of Latin in the seventh and eighth centuries. Aelfric wrote Latin Grammar and Colloquium. The second part of the Middle Ages was characterised by scholastic philosophy. The Doctrinale of Alexander of Villedieue is practical, and it remained a popular and prescribed textbook throughout the medieval period. One of the most striking examples of practical work in the second part of the Middle Ages was the First Grammatical Treatise,written by an unknown Icelandic scholar of the 12th century. Scholasticism is the synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian revelation in European thought. It sought to resolve the conflict of faith and reason and of nominalism and realism. Scholasticism tried to establish proof of the existence of God. The rise and growth of scholastic philosophy came about due to a number of historical factors. The most interesting and significant development in linguistics during this period is the output of “speculative grammar”or treatises Demodis significandi from the high period of scholastic philosophy.The role of the philosopher in grammar was considered a major one , and the theoretical basis of grammar was the philosopher’s province. In the early decades of the thirteen century, Petrus Hispanus produced his Summulae logicales , a summary of logic. For Hispanus, language is the communication of all the stages of knowledge. It was a common place of that period that the same linguistic items could express an insight into any of the levels.1.3 Linguistics in the RenaissanceHebrew, as the language of the Old Testament, became a proper and important language to study. Its biblical status gave Hebrew a place alongside Latin and Greek. Arabic grammatical scholarship reached its culmination at the end of the eighth century in the grammar of Sibawaih of Basra. Later Dante, the prophet of the later Renaissance ,did a lot to foster the study of the spoken Roman dialects as against written Latin. Among the Renaissance grammarians, Petrus Ramus, a French philosopher, is well known and has been hailed as a precursor of modern structuralism. At the same time, the Port-Royal grammar appeared . And it took the nine classical word classes. The Port-Royal Grammar also promoted the studies of French in the same way as classical languages were studied. The English grammarians started from an empiricist approach.Empiricism had arisen as part of the challenge to the accepted ideas of medieval scholasticism.1.4 Linguistics in the 18th CenturyThe year 1786 may be taken as the landmark of the start of the contemporary world of linguistic sciences. The discovery of by Western scholars was one of the principal factors in the development of comparative philology. The study of Sanskrit also gave strength to the assumption of the comparative method, that languages which are clearly related in their grammatical structure must be related genetically and not accidentally.A prominent representative of the universal philosophical theory of grammar in England during the 18th century was James Harris. While Harris occupied a position in the New World, Horne Tooke was a natural rebel. The 18th century linguistic scholarship is characterised with both merits and demerits. It is too easy to find fault with those attempts at the historical study of language.Summary of Unit 3: The 19th century Historical andComparative LinguisticsLinguistics studies in the 19th century served to bridge up the past with the coming 20th century. Such studies, especially those of Neogrammarians, summarisded the academic achievements of historical and comparative linguistics on the one hand, and heralded the advent of structuralist linguistics at the beginning of the 20th century on the other. Their statements on the objectivity and independence of language, their emphasis on linguistic data, and their methods of surveying contemporary languages and dialects are of great importance to modern linguistics in the 20th century.The 19th century saw not only great social changes but also rapid scientific and cultural developments. The foundation for historical linguistics in the West had been laid down by the ancient Greeks. Historical work on the languages before 1800 had not been systematic. After1800, there were remarkable changes , and scholars focused on a specialised theory and achievements.Though the 19th century witnessed the prime development of historical linguistics , work done before the century is very important. The famous Italian writer ,Dante was among the earliest to make comments on the relations of particular languages. His practice was very much like the later binary division. Scaliger, a knowledgeable French scholar,discarded two false assumptions: the supposed linear historical relation between Greek and Latin, and the alleged origin of all languages in Hebrew.Rask and Grimm are among the chief founders of the comparative and historical studies of the Indo-European family. Rask put forth the methods and principles by which languages were to be compared through comparison. Rask’s work wascontinued by the outstanding German scholar, Jacob Grimm. He published his German Grammar, which was hailed as the start of Germanic linguistics. What is important about Grimm is his observation that there are regularities in sound shift.Humboldt was one of the most profound thinkers on the general linguistic questions in the 19th century. He stressed the creative linguistic ability inherent in every speakers’ brain or mind . Language is to be identified with the living ability by which speakers produce and understand utterances, not with the observed products of the acts of speaking and writing. The most influential and most important linguist in the mid-19thcentury was another German scholar, August Schleicher. He wrote a number of works on historical linguistics and linguistic theory. His biological approach to language governed both hiss theory of the parent language and his treatment of linguistic typology.The major linguistic controversy in the last quarter of the century was concerned with what is now referred to as the Neogrammarian doctrine. The Neogrammarians wished to make historical linguistics an exact science with its methods in line with those natural sciences in the 19th century, notably geology. The meogrammarians declared that sound laws have no exceptions and were criticised and some of the criticisms, loaded with harsh words , were out of pure personal resentment rather than academic disagreement.In India, the linguistic study of Sanskrit had been continuously maintained. The simultaneous realisation of the historical connections of Sanskrit with the language of Europe came at a time when the Romantic movement and nationalists sentiments were at their height. The Indo-European family and concomitantly other similarly based genetic families were the progressive creation of the 19th century scholarship, mainly in the German universities .。