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| | Though the modern [[science]] of '''[[linguistics]]''' began only in the mid-twentieth century, the study of the origins and nature of [[language (general)|language]] have been an ongoing concern across the world's civilisations for millennia. From ancient times until the eighteenth century, insights into language mainly involved explaining the [[grammar]] of particular languages, such as [[Sanskrit language|Sanskrit]], or describing changes over time. Such work laid the foundations for an extension of linguistic inquiry into [[language universals]] - the features common to all languages, which presumably tell us something about the system that underlies them. Later still, twentieth-century scholars prioritised explanations and predictions the system of language itself, and modern linguistics was born. |
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| '''Linguistics''' as a study endeavors to describe and explain the human faculty of language and has been of scholarly interest throughout recorded history. Contemporary linguistics is the result of a continuous European intellectual tradition<ref>[[James Burnett, Lord Monboddo]], ''The Origin and Progress of Man and Language (6 volumes, 1773-1792)</ref> originating in [[ancient Greece]] that was later influenced by the ancient Indian tradition of linguistics due to the study of [[Sanskrit]] [[grammar]] by European linguists from the [[18th century]]. [[China]] has also independently produced native schools of linguistic thought. | |
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| At various stages in history, linguistics as a discipline has been in close contact with such disciplines as [[philosophy]], [[anthropology]] and [[philology]]. In some cultures linguistic analysis has been applied in the service of [[religion]], particularly for the determination of the religiously preferred spoken and written forms of sacred texts in [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]], [[Sanskrit]] and [[Arabic language|Arabic]]. Contemporary Western linguistics is close to philosophy and cognitive science.
| | ==Antiquity== |
| | The early Indian [[grammarian]] {{Unicode|[[Pāṇini]]}}'s (ca 520–460 BCE) examined [[Sanskrit language|Sanskrit]] and produced several insights into the nature of grammar, such as the [[morpheme]], which remain highly relevant in modern research and Plato in ''Cratylus'' wonders whether language has a ''natural'' or ''conventional'' origin. |
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| ==Linguistics in antiquity== | | ==Middle Ages== |
| ===India===
| | By [[mediaeval]] times, scholars in [[Europe]] were working on the assumption that certain languages were inherently more suited for certain usages or as tools of thought. However, [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]], in a significant reversal of the typical medieval prioritisation of [[Latin language|Latin]], regarded the vernacular as the "primary" speech as it was first learned. He famously declared that the vernacular with "without any rules" (''sine omnia regula''), by which of course he meant written, codified rules as taught in schools. Nevertheless, he was hampered, as were most medieval writers on the subject, by the limited ability to compare texts, and the lexical elements within them, over time. |
| Linguistics was pursued in [[Vedic civilization|ancient India]] for many centuries. The [[Sanskrit]] [[grammar]] of {{Unicode|[[Pāṇini]]}} (c. [[520 BC|520]]–[[460 BC]]), who is often considered the founder of linguistics, contains a particularly detailed description of Sanskrit [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]], [[phonology]] and [[Root (linguistics)|roots]], evincing a high level of linguistic insight and analysis. In particular, he is most famous for formulating the 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology in the text ''{{Unicode|[[Aṣṭādhyāyī]]}}''. His sophisticated grammar of Sanskrit continues to be in use to this day. The Indian grammatical tradition is believed to have been active for many centuries before {{Unicode|Pāṇini}}, and anticipates by millennia certain developments in the West, such as the phoneme and the generation of word forms by the successive application of morphological rules for example. (Outside of India, the phoneme seems to have been discovered and forgotten several times through history.)
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| The [[South India]]n linguist [[Tolkaappiyar|Tolkāppiyar]] (c. [[3rd century BC]]) wrote the ''[[Tolkāppiyam]]'', the grammar of [[Tamil language|Tamil]], which is also still in use today. [[Bhartrihari]] (c. [[450]]–[[510]]) was another important author on [[Indic]] linguistic theory. He theorized the act of speech as being made up of three stages: conceptualization by the speaker; performance of speaking; and comprehension by the interpreter. The work of {{Unicode|Pāṇini}}, and the later Indian linguist Bhartrihari, had a significant influence on many of the foundational ideas proposed by [[Ferdinand de Saussure]], professor of Sanskrit, who is widely considered the father of modern [[Structuralism|structural]] linguistics.
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| ===Greece===
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| While ancient Indian scholars pursued grammar, [[Ancient Greece|ancient Greek]] [[philosopher]]s were debating the nature and origins of language. A subject of concern was whether language was man-made or supernatural in origin. The possibilities that the meaning of language is agreed to by consensus versus having a predetermined fixed value was also considered. An example for the Greek debates about language is available in [[Plato]]'s ''[[Cratylus (dialogue)|Cratylus]]''. It was not until relatively late that the Greeks developed a set of grammatical rules for their language. It was upon this foundation that [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] philosophers built the grammar rules for [[Latin]].
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| == Medieval linguistics ==
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| [[Middle Ages|Medieval]] [[Europe]] accepted the Greek and Latin without change until the start of the [[Italian Renaissance]]. In ''[[De vulgari eloquentia]]'' ("On the Eloquence of Vernacular"), [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]] expanded the scope of linguistic enquiry from the traditional languages of antiquity to include the language of the day. From this base the grammars and vocabularies of the various languages of Europe were then explored.
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| ==Modern linguistics== | | ==Modern linguistics== |
| ===Historical linguistics=== | | ===Structuralism=== |
| | | {{main|Structuralism}} |
| In the eighteenth century [[James Burnett, Lord Monboddo]] analyzed numerous primitive languages and deduced logical elements of the evolution of human language. His thinking was interleaved with his precursive concepts of biological evolution. Some of his early concepts have been validated and are considered correct today. ''The Sanscrit Language'' ([[1786]]), [[William Jones (philologist)|Sir William Jones]] proposed that [[Sanskrit]] and [[Persian language|Persian]] had resemblances to classical [[Greek language|Greek]], [[Latin]], [[Gothic language|Gothic]], and [[Celtic languages|Celtic]] languages. From this idea sprung the field of [[comparative linguistics]] and [[historical linguistics]]. Through the [[19th century]], European [[linguistics]] centered on the comparative history of the [[Indo-European language]]s, with a concern for finding their common roots and tracing their development.
| | Some aspects of modern linguistics can be traced to the [[Swiss people|Swiss]] linguist [[Ferdinand de Saussure]]'s ''[[Course in General Linguistics]]''. He was the first to rigorously define ''language'' and therefore define what linguistics is. He also introduced the idea of language being a ''system'' or ''structure'', which heavily influenced the field during the following years. Saussure's work was an early example of how the primary purpose of linguistics became to explain how languages work at one given moment of time and establish how languages work through both [[empirical linguistics|empirical evidence]] and [[theory|theoretical]] reasoning. Elsewhere, a primary concern with describing and preserving the grammars of diverse languages continued well into the twentieth century. |
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| Working from a biblical perspective some scholars believed that all human languages were descended from the language of [[Adam and Eve]], a language called the [[Adamic language]]. Many of these scholars believed that the [[Hebrew language]] was, in fact, the same as the Adamic language.
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| In the [[1820s]], [[Wilhelm von Humboldt]] observed that human language was a rule-governed system, anticipating a theme that was to become central in the formal work on syntax and semantics of language in the [[20th century]], of this observation he said that it allowed language to make ''infinite use of finite means'' (''Über den Dualis'' 1827).
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| About [[1880s|1880]], scholars in the United States began to record the hundreds of native languages once found in North America. The concern with describing languages spread throughout the world, and thousands of languages around the world have now been analyzed to varying degrees. As this work was developing in the early twentieth century, mainly in America, linguists were confronted with languages whose structures differed greatly from those of known European languages.
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| Scholars decided they needed a theory of linguistic structure and methods of analysis.
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| From such concerns came the field of structural linguistics. Pioneers in it include the [[anthropology|anthropologist]]s [[Franz Boas]] and [[Edward Sapir]], and [[Leonard Bloomfield]].
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| When [[historical-comparative linguistics]] first met unfamiliar languages, the linguist's first job was to thoroughly describe the language.
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| ===Descriptive linguistics===
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| In Europe there was a parallel development of structural linguistics, influenced most strongly by [[Ferdinand de Saussure]], a Swiss student of Indo-European and general linguistics whose lectures on general linguistics, published posthumously by his students, set the direction of European linguistic analysis from the [[1920s]] on; his approach has been widely adopted in other fields under the broad term "[[Structuralism]]."
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| During the second World War, [[Leonard Bloomfield]] and several of his students and colleagues developed teaching materials for a variety of languages whose knowledge was needed for the war effort.
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| This work led to an increasing prominence of the field of linguistics, which became a recognized discipline in most American universities only after the war.
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| ===Generative linguistics===
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| ===Other specialties===
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| From roughly [[1980s|1980]] onwards, [[Pragmatics|pragmatic]], [[Systemic functional grammar|functional]], and [[Cognitive linguistics|cognitive]] approaches have steadily gained ground, both in the U.S. and in Europe.
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| ==See also==
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| *[[History of communication]]
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| ==References==
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| * {{cite book | author=[[Mario Pei]] | title=Invitation to Linguistics | publisher=Doubleday & Company | year=1965 |id=ISBN 0-385-06584-1}}
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| * {{cite book | author=[[W. P. Lehmann]], editor| title=A Reader in Nineteenth Century Historical Indo-European Linguistics| publisher=Indiana University Press| year=1967 | id=ISBN 0-253-34840-4 |url=http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/iedocctr/ie-docs/lehmann/reader/reader.html}}
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| * {{cite book| author=[[Frederick J. Newmeyer]]| title=The History of Linguistics| publisher=Linguistic Society of America| year=2005|id=|url=http://www.lsadc.org/fields/index.php?aaa=history_of_ling.htm}}
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| ==Line notes== | | ===Generative grammar=== |
| <div class="references-small">
| | {{main|generative grammar}} |
| <references /> | | From the 1950s, [[Noam Chomsky]] and his contemporaries initiated new methods in linguistics, producing [[explicit]] theories of grammar<ref>Chomsky (1957); [[The Sound Pattern of English|Chomsky and Halle]] (1968).</ref> - namely, systems that required no reference to other kinds of knowledge. Parallel to this 'Chomskyian' focus on the nature of the linguistic system, concerns about how language was used in [[society]] began to mature. In this way, from the 1960s [[William Labov]] was a pioneer in studies of [[sociolinguistics]], a field which attempts to describe the relationship between language and society. |
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| [[Category:Linguistics]]
| | ==Footnotes== |
| [[Category:History of social sciences|Linguistics]]
| | {{reflist|2}}[[Category:Suggestion Bot Tag]] |
| [[Category:Linguistics Workgroup (Top)]] | |
| [[fr:Histoire des sciences du langage]]
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Though the modern science of linguistics began only in the mid-twentieth century, the study of the origins and nature of language have been an ongoing concern across the world's civilisations for millennia. From ancient times until the eighteenth century, insights into language mainly involved explaining the grammar of particular languages, such as Sanskrit, or describing changes over time. Such work laid the foundations for an extension of linguistic inquiry into language universals - the features common to all languages, which presumably tell us something about the system that underlies them. Later still, twentieth-century scholars prioritised explanations and predictions the system of language itself, and modern linguistics was born.
Antiquity
The early Indian grammarian Pāṇini's (ca 520–460 BCE) examined Sanskrit and produced several insights into the nature of grammar, such as the morpheme, which remain highly relevant in modern research and Plato in Cratylus wonders whether language has a natural or conventional origin.
Middle Ages
By mediaeval times, scholars in Europe were working on the assumption that certain languages were inherently more suited for certain usages or as tools of thought. However, Dante, in a significant reversal of the typical medieval prioritisation of Latin, regarded the vernacular as the "primary" speech as it was first learned. He famously declared that the vernacular with "without any rules" (sine omnia regula), by which of course he meant written, codified rules as taught in schools. Nevertheless, he was hampered, as were most medieval writers on the subject, by the limited ability to compare texts, and the lexical elements within them, over time.
Modern linguistics
Structuralism
- For more information, see: Structuralism.
Some aspects of modern linguistics can be traced to the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics. He was the first to rigorously define language and therefore define what linguistics is. He also introduced the idea of language being a system or structure, which heavily influenced the field during the following years. Saussure's work was an early example of how the primary purpose of linguistics became to explain how languages work at one given moment of time and establish how languages work through both empirical evidence and theoretical reasoning. Elsewhere, a primary concern with describing and preserving the grammars of diverse languages continued well into the twentieth century.
Generative grammar
- For more information, see: generative grammar.
From the 1950s, Noam Chomsky and his contemporaries initiated new methods in linguistics, producing explicit theories of grammar[1] - namely, systems that required no reference to other kinds of knowledge. Parallel to this 'Chomskyian' focus on the nature of the linguistic system, concerns about how language was used in society began to mature. In this way, from the 1960s William Labov was a pioneer in studies of sociolinguistics, a field which attempts to describe the relationship between language and society.
