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Comparative linguistics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (February 2008)
Linguistics
Theoretical linguistics
Generative linguistics
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Lexis
Semantics
Lexical semantics
Statistical semantics
Structural semantics
Prototype semantics
Pragmatics
Systemic functional linguistics
Descriptive linguistics
Phonetics
Historical linguistics
Comparative linguistics
Etymology
Sociolinguistics
Corpus linguistics
Applied linguistics
Language acquisition
Language assessment
Language development
Language education
Psycholinguistics
Neurolinguistics
Linguistic anthropology
Cognitive linguistics
Computational linguistics
Stylistics
Prescription
History of linguistics
List of linguists
Unsolved problems
This box: view • talk • edit
Comparative linguistics (originally comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages in order to establish their historical relatedness. Languages may be related by convergence through borrowing or by genetic descent.
Genetic relatedness implies a common origin or proto-language, and comparative linguistics aims to construct language families, to reconstruct proto-languages and specify the changes that have resulted in the documented languages. In order to maintain a clear distinction between attested and reconstructed forms, comparative linguists prefix an asterisk to any form that is not found in surviving texts. A number of methods for carrying out language classification have been developed, ranging from simple inspection to computerised hypothesis testing. Such methods have gone through a long process of development.
Contents[hide]
1 Methods
2 History
3 Other related fields
4 See also
5 References
6 Bibliography
//
[edit] Methods
The fundamental technique of comparative linguistics is to compare phonological systems, morphological systems, syntax and the lexicon of two or more languages using techniques such as the comparative method. In principle, every difference between two related languages should be explicable to a high degree of plausibility, and systematic changes, for example in phonological or morphological systems, are expected to be highly regular (ie consistent). In practise, the comparison may be more restricted, eg just to the lexicon. In some methods it may be possible to reconstruct an earlier proto-language. Although the proto-languages reconstructed by the comparative method are hypothetical, a reconstruction may have predictive power. The most notable example of this is Saussure's proposal that the Indo-European consonant system contained laryngeals, a type of consonant attested in no Indo-European language known at the time. The hypothesis was vindicated with the discovery of Hittite, which proved to have exactly the consonants Saussure had hypothesized in the environments he had predicted.
Where languages are derived from a very distant ancestor, and are thus more distantly related, the comparative method becomes impracticable. In particular, attempting to relate two reconstructed proto-languages by the comparative method has not generally produced results that have met with wide acceptance. The method has also not been very good at unambiguously identifying sub-families and different scholars have produced conflicting results, for example in Indo-European. A number of methods based on statistical analysis of vocabulary have been developed to try and overcome this limitation, such as lexicostatistics and mass comparison. The former uses lexical cognates like the comparative method but the latter uses only lexical similarity. The theoretical basis of such methods is that vocabulary items can be matched without a detailed language reconstruction and that comparing enough vocabulary items will negate individual inaccuracies. Thus they can be used to determine relatedness but not to determine the proto-language.
[edit] History
The earliest method of this type was the comparative method, which was developed over many years, culminating in the nineteenth century. This uses a long word list and detailed study. However, it has been criticized for example as being subjective, being informal and lacking testability. [1] The comparative method uses information from two or more languages and allows reconstruction of the ancestral language. The method of Internal reconstruction uses only a single language, with comparison of word variants, to perform the same function. Internal reconstruction is more resistant to interference but usually has a limited available base of utilizable words and is able to reconstruct only certain changes (those that have left traces as morfophonological variations).
In the twentieth century an alternative method, lexicostatistics, was developed, which is mainly associated with Morris Swadesh but is based on earlier work. This uses a short word list of basic vocabulary in the various languages for comparisons. Swadesh used 100 (earlier 200) items that are assumed to be cognate (on the basis of phonetic similarity) in the languages being compared, though other lists have also been used. Distance measures are derived by examination of language pairs but such methods reduce the information. An outgrowth of lexicostatistics is glottochronology, initially developed in the 1950s, which proposed a mathematical formula for establishing the date when two languages separated, based on percentage of a core vocabulary of culturally independent words. In its simplest form a constant rate of change is assumed, though later versions allow variance but still fail to achieve reliability. Glottochronology has met with mounting scepticism, and is seldom applied today. Dating estimates can now be generated by computerised methods that have less restrictions, calculating rates from the data. However, no mathematical means of producing proto-language split-times on the basis of lexical retention has been proven reliable.
Another controversial method, developed by Joseph Greenberg, is mass lexical comparison.[2] The method, which disavows any ability to date developments, aims simply to show which languages are more and less close to each other, in a method similar to those used in cladistics in evolutionary biology. On the one hand, since mass comparison eschews the use of reconstruction and other traditional tools, it is flatly rejected by the majority of historical linguists. On the other, the method has been shown to be useful in preliminary grouping of languages known to be related, when such findings are backed up by in-depth comparative analysis.
Recently, computerised statistical hypothesis testing methods have been developed which are related to both the comparative method and lexicostatistics. Character based methods are similar to the former and distanced based methods are similar to the latter (see Quantitative comparative linguistics). The characters used can be morphological or grammatical as well as lexical. Since the mid-1990s these more sophisticated tree- and network-based cladistic methods have been used to investigate the relationships between languages and to determine approximate dates for proto-languages. These are considered by many to show promise but are not wholly accepted by traditionalists. [3] However, they are not intended to replace older methods but to supplement them. Such statistical methods cannot be used to derive the features of a proto-language, apart from the fact of the existance of shared items of the compared vocabulary. These approaches have been challenged for their methodological problems, since without a reconstruction or at least a detailed list of phonological correspondences there can be no demonstration that two words in different languages are cognate.[citation needed]
[edit] Other related fields
There are other branches of linguistics that involve comparing languages, which are not, however, part of comparative linguistics:
Linguistic typology compares languages in order to classify them by their features. Its ultimate aim is to understand the universals that govern language, and the range of types found in the world's language is respect of any particular feature (word order or vowel system, for example). Typological similarity does not imply a historical relationship. However, typological arguments can be used in comparative linguistics: one reconstruction may be preferred to another as typologically more plausible.
Contact linguistics examines the linguistic results of contact between the speakers of different languages, particular as evidenced in loan words. Any empirical study of loans is by definition historical in focus and therefore forms part of the subject matter of historical linguistics. One of the goals of etymology is to establish which items in a language's vocabulary result from linguistic contact. This is also an important issue both for the comparative method and for the lexical comparison methods, since failure to recognize a loan may distort the findings.
Contrastive linguistics compares languages usually with the aim of assisting language learning by identifying important differences between the learner's native and target languages. Contrastive linguistics deals solely with present-day languages.
There is also a wide body of publications containing language comparisons that are considered pseudoscientific by linguists; see pseudoscientific language comparison.
[edit] See also
Contrastive analysis
Historical linguistics
Comparative method
Lexicostatistics
Glottochronology
Mass lexical comparison
Sound law
[edit] References
^ See for example "Language Classification by Numbers" by April McMahon and Robert McMahon
^ Campbell, Lyle (2004). Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Cambridge: The MIT Press
^ See for example the criticisms of Gray and Atkinson's work in Language Log, 10 December 2003
[edit] Bibliography
August Schleicher: Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. (Kurzer Abriss der indogermanischen Ursprache, des Altindischen, Altiranischen, Altgriechischen, Altitalischen, Altkeltischen, Altslawischen, Litauischen und Altdeutschen.) (2 vols.) Weimar, H. Boehlau (1861/62); reprinted by Minerva GmbH, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, ISBN 3-8102-1071-4
Karl Brugmann, Berthold Delbrück, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (1886-1916).
Raimo Anttila, Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Benjamins, 1989) ISBN 90-272-3557-0
TheoComparative linguistics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (February 2008)
Linguistics
Theoretical linguistics
Generative linguistics
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Lexis
Semantics
Lexical semantics
Statistical semantics
Structural semantics
Prototype semantics
Pragmatics
Systemic functional linguistics
Descriptive linguistics
Phonetics
Historical linguistics
Comparative linguistics
Etymology
Sociolinguistics
Corpus linguistics
Applied linguistics
Language acquisition
Language assessment
Language development
Language education
Psycholinguistics
Neurolinguistics
Linguistic anthropology
Cognitive linguistics
Computational linguistics
Stylistics
Prescription
History of linguistics
List of linguists
Unsolved problems
This box: view • talk • edit
Comparative linguistics (originally comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages in order to establish their historical relatedness. Languages may be related by convergence through borrowing or by genetic descent.
Genetic relatedness implies a common origin or proto-language, and comparative linguistics aims to construct language families, to reconstruct proto-languages and specify the changes that have resulted in the documented languages. In order to maintain a clear distinction between attested and reconstructed forms, comparative linguists prefix an asterisk to any form that is not found in surviving texts. A number of methods for carrying out language classification have been developed, ranging from simple inspection to computerised hypothesis testing. Such methods have gone through a long process of development.
Contents[hide]
1 Methods
2 History
3 Other related fields
4 See also
5 References
6 Bibliography
//
[edit] Methods
The fundamental technique of comparative linguistics is to compare phonological systems, morphological systems, syntax and the lexicon of two or more languages using techniques such as the comparative method. In principle, every difference between two related languages should be explicable to a high degree of plausibility, and systematic changes, for example in phonological or morphological systems, are expected to be highly regular (ie consistent). In practise, the comparison may be more restricted, eg just to the lexicon. In some methods it may be possible to reconstruct an earlier proto-language. Although the proto-languages reconstructed by the comparative method are hypothetical, a reconstruction may have predictive power. The most notable example of this is Saussure's proposal that the Indo-European consonant system contained laryngeals, a type of consonant attested in no Indo-European language known at the time. The hypothesis was vindicated with the discovery of Hittite, which proved to have exactly the consonants Saussure had hypothesized in the environments he had predicted.
Where languages are derived from a very distant ancestor, and are thus more distantly related, the comparative method becomes impracticable. In particular, attempting to relate two reconstructed proto-languages by the comparative method has not generally produced results that have met with wide acceptance. The method has also not been very good at unambiguously identifying sub-families and different scholars have produced conflicting results, for example in Indo-European. A number of methods based on statistical analysis of vocabulary have been developed to try and overcome this limitation, such as lexicostatistics and mass comparison. The former uses lexical cognates like the comparative method but the latter uses only lexical similarity. The theoretical basis of such methods is that vocabulary items can be matched without a detailed language reconstruction and that comparing enough vocabulary items will negate individual inaccuracies. Thus they can be used to determine relatedness but not to determine the proto-language.
[edit] History
The earliest method of this type was the comparative method, which was developed over many years, culminating in the nineteenth century. This uses a long word list and detailed study. However, it has been criticized for example as being subjective, being informal and lacking testability. [1] The comparative method uses information from two or more languages and allows reconstruction of the ancestral language. The method of Internal reconstruction uses only a single language, with comparison of word variants, to perform the same function. Internal reconstruction is more resistant to interference but usually has a limited available base of utilizable words and is able to reconstruct only certain changes (those that have left traces as morfophonological variations).
In the twentieth century an alternative method, lexicostatistics, was developed, which is mainly associated with Morris Swadesh but is based on earlier work. This uses a short word list of basic vocabulary in the various languages for comparisons. Swadesh used 100 (earlier 200) items that are assumed to be cognate (on the basis of phonetic similarity) in the languages being compared, though other lists have also been used. Distance measures are derived by examination of language pairs but such methods reduce the information. An outgrowth of lexicostatistics is glottochronology, initially developed in the 1950s, which proposed a mathematical formula for establishing the date when two languages separated, based on percentage of a core vocabulary of culturally independent words. In its simplest form a constant rate of change is assumed, though later versions allow variance but still fail to achieve reliability. Glottochronology has met with mounting scepticism, and is seldom applied today. Dating estimates can now be generated by computerised methods that have less restrictions, calculating rates from the data. However, no mathematical means of producing proto-language split-times on the basis of lexical retention has been proven reliable.
Another controversial method, developed by Joseph Greenberg, is mass lexical comparison.[2] The method, which disavows any ability to date developments, aims simply to show which languages are more and less close to each other, in a method similar to those used in cladistics in evolutionary biology. On the one hand, since mass comparison eschews the use of reconstruction and other traditional tools, it is flatly rejected by the majority of historical linguists. On the other, the method has been shown to be useful in preliminary grouping of languages known to be related, when such findings are backed up by in-depth comparative analysis.
Recently, computerised statistical hypothesis testing methods have been developed which are related to both the comparative method and lexicostatistics. Character based methods are similar to the former and distanced based methods are similar to the latter (see Quantitative comparative linguistics). The characters used can be morphological or grammatical as well as lexical. Since the mid-1990s these more sophisticated tree- and network-based cladistic methods have been used to investigate the relationships between languages and to determine approximate dates for proto-languages. These are considered by many to show promise but are not wholly accepted by traditionalists. [3] However, they are not intended to replace older methods but to supplement them. Such statistical methods cannot be used to derive the features of a proto-language, apart from the fact of the existance of shared items of the compared vocabulary. These approaches have been challenged for their methodological problems, since without a reconstruction or at least a detailed list of phonological correspondences there can be no demonstration that two words in different languages are cognate.[citation needed]
[edit] Other related fields
There are other branches of linguistics that involve comparing languages, which are not, however, part of comparative linguistics:
Linguistic typology compares languages in order to classify them by their features. Its ultimate aim is to understand the universals that govern language, and the range of types found in the world's language is respect of any particular feature (word order or vowel system, for example). Typological similarity does not imply a historical relationship. However, typological arguments can be used in comparative linguistics: one reconstruction may be preferred to another as typologically more plausible.
Contact linguistics examines the linguistic results of contact between the speakers of different languages, particular as evidenced in loan words. Any empirical study of loans is by definition historical in focus and therefore forms part of the subject matter of historical linguistics. One of the goals of etymology is to establish which items in a language's vocabulary result from linguistic contact. This is also an important issue both for the comparative method and for the lexical comparison methods, since failure to recognize a loan may distort the findings.
Contrastive linguistics compares languages usually with the aim of assisting language learning by identifying important differences between the learner's native and target languages. Contrastive linguistics deals solely with present-day languages.
There is also a wide body of publications containing language comparisons that are considered pseudoscientific by linguists; see pseudoscientific language comparison.
[edit] See also
Contrastive analysis
Historical linguistics
Comparative method
Lexicostatistics
Glottochronology
Mass lexical comparison
Sound law
[edit] References
^ See for example "Language Classification by Numbers" by April McMahon and Robert McMahon
^ Campbell, Lyle (2004). Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Cambridge: The MIT Press
^ See for example the criticisms of Gray and Atkinson's work in Language Log, 10 December 2003
[edit] Bibliography
August Schleicher: Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. (Kurzer Abriss der indogermanischen Ursprache, des Altindischen, Altiranischen, Altgriechischen, Altitalischen, Altkeltischen, Altslawischen, Litauischen und Altdeutschen.) (2 vols.) Weimar, H. Boehlau (1861/62); reprinted by Minerva GmbH, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, ISBN 3-8102-1071-4
Karl Brugmann, Berthold Delbrück, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (1886-1916).
Raimo Anttila, Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Benjamins, 1989) ISBN 90-272-3557-0
Theodora Bynon, Historical Linguistics (Cambridge University Press, 1977) ISBN 0-521-29188-7
Richard D. Janda and Brian D. Joseph (Eds), The Handbook of Historical Linguistics (Blackwell, 2004) ISBN 1-4051-2747-3
Roger Lass, Historical linguistics and language change. (Cambridge University Press, 1997) ISBN 0-521-45924-9
Winfred P. Lehmann, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (Holt, 1962) ISBN 0-03-011430-6
R.L. Trask (ed.), Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001) ISBN 1-57958-218-4
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_linguistics"
Categories: Historical linguistics Language comparison
Hidden categories: Articles lacking in-text citations All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements since August 2007dora Bynon, Historical Linguistics (Cambridge University Press, 1977) ISBN 0-521-29188-7
Richard D. Janda and Brian D. Joseph (Eds), The Handbook of Historical Linguistics (Blackwell, 2004) ISBN 1-4051-2747-3
Roger Lass, Historical linguistics and language change. (Cambridge University Press, 1997) ISBN 0-521-45924-9
Winfred P. Lehmann, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (Holt, 1962) ISBN 0-03-011430-6
R.L. Trask (ed.), Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001) ISBN 1-57958-218-4
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_linguistics"
Categories: Historical linguistics Language comparison
Hidden categories: Articles lacking in-text citations All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements since August 2007
Source : en.wikipedia.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_linguistics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (February 2008)
Linguistics
Theoretical linguistics
Generative linguistics
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Lexis
Semantics
Lexical semantics
Statistical semantics
Structural semantics
Prototype semantics
Pragmatics
Systemic functional linguistics
Descriptive linguistics
Phonetics
Historical linguistics
Comparative linguistics
Etymology
Sociolinguistics
Corpus linguistics
Applied linguistics
Language acquisition
Language assessment
Language development
Language education
Psycholinguistics
Neurolinguistics
Linguistic anthropology
Cognitive linguistics
Computational linguistics
Stylistics
Prescription
History of linguistics
List of linguists
Unsolved problems
This box: view • talk • edit
Comparative linguistics (originally comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages in order to establish their historical relatedness. Languages may be related by convergence through borrowing or by genetic descent.
Genetic relatedness implies a common origin or proto-language, and comparative linguistics aims to construct language families, to reconstruct proto-languages and specify the changes that have resulted in the documented languages. In order to maintain a clear distinction between attested and reconstructed forms, comparative linguists prefix an asterisk to any form that is not found in surviving texts. A number of methods for carrying out language classification have been developed, ranging from simple inspection to computerised hypothesis testing. Such methods have gone through a long process of development.
Contents[hide]
1 Methods
2 History
3 Other related fields
4 See also
5 References
6 Bibliography
//
[edit] Methods
The fundamental technique of comparative linguistics is to compare phonological systems, morphological systems, syntax and the lexicon of two or more languages using techniques such as the comparative method. In principle, every difference between two related languages should be explicable to a high degree of plausibility, and systematic changes, for example in phonological or morphological systems, are expected to be highly regular (ie consistent). In practise, the comparison may be more restricted, eg just to the lexicon. In some methods it may be possible to reconstruct an earlier proto-language. Although the proto-languages reconstructed by the comparative method are hypothetical, a reconstruction may have predictive power. The most notable example of this is Saussure's proposal that the Indo-European consonant system contained laryngeals, a type of consonant attested in no Indo-European language known at the time. The hypothesis was vindicated with the discovery of Hittite, which proved to have exactly the consonants Saussure had hypothesized in the environments he had predicted.
Where languages are derived from a very distant ancestor, and are thus more distantly related, the comparative method becomes impracticable. In particular, attempting to relate two reconstructed proto-languages by the comparative method has not generally produced results that have met with wide acceptance. The method has also not been very good at unambiguously identifying sub-families and different scholars have produced conflicting results, for example in Indo-European. A number of methods based on statistical analysis of vocabulary have been developed to try and overcome this limitation, such as lexicostatistics and mass comparison. The former uses lexical cognates like the comparative method but the latter uses only lexical similarity. The theoretical basis of such methods is that vocabulary items can be matched without a detailed language reconstruction and that comparing enough vocabulary items will negate individual inaccuracies. Thus they can be used to determine relatedness but not to determine the proto-language.
[edit] History
The earliest method of this type was the comparative method, which was developed over many years, culminating in the nineteenth century. This uses a long word list and detailed study. However, it has been criticized for example as being subjective, being informal and lacking testability. [1] The comparative method uses information from two or more languages and allows reconstruction of the ancestral language. The method of Internal reconstruction uses only a single language, with comparison of word variants, to perform the same function. Internal reconstruction is more resistant to interference but usually has a limited available base of utilizable words and is able to reconstruct only certain changes (those that have left traces as morfophonological variations).
In the twentieth century an alternative method, lexicostatistics, was developed, which is mainly associated with Morris Swadesh but is based on earlier work. This uses a short word list of basic vocabulary in the various languages for comparisons. Swadesh used 100 (earlier 200) items that are assumed to be cognate (on the basis of phonetic similarity) in the languages being compared, though other lists have also been used. Distance measures are derived by examination of language pairs but such methods reduce the information. An outgrowth of lexicostatistics is glottochronology, initially developed in the 1950s, which proposed a mathematical formula for establishing the date when two languages separated, based on percentage of a core vocabulary of culturally independent words. In its simplest form a constant rate of change is assumed, though later versions allow variance but still fail to achieve reliability. Glottochronology has met with mounting scepticism, and is seldom applied today. Dating estimates can now be generated by computerised methods that have less restrictions, calculating rates from the data. However, no mathematical means of producing proto-language split-times on the basis of lexical retention has been proven reliable.
Another controversial method, developed by Joseph Greenberg, is mass lexical comparison.[2] The method, which disavows any ability to date developments, aims simply to show which languages are more and less close to each other, in a method similar to those used in cladistics in evolutionary biology. On the one hand, since mass comparison eschews the use of reconstruction and other traditional tools, it is flatly rejected by the majority of historical linguists. On the other, the method has been shown to be useful in preliminary grouping of languages known to be related, when such findings are backed up by in-depth comparative analysis.
Recently, computerised statistical hypothesis testing methods have been developed which are related to both the comparative method and lexicostatistics. Character based methods are similar to the former and distanced based methods are similar to the latter (see Quantitative comparative linguistics). The characters used can be morphological or grammatical as well as lexical. Since the mid-1990s these more sophisticated tree- and network-based cladistic methods have been used to investigate the relationships between languages and to determine approximate dates for proto-languages. These are considered by many to show promise but are not wholly accepted by traditionalists. [3] However, they are not intended to replace older methods but to supplement them. Such statistical methods cannot be used to derive the features of a proto-language, apart from the fact of the existance of shared items of the compared vocabulary. These approaches have been challenged for their methodological problems, since without a reconstruction or at least a detailed list of phonological correspondences there can be no demonstration that two words in different languages are cognate.[citation needed]
[edit] Other related fields
There are other branches of linguistics that involve comparing languages, which are not, however, part of comparative linguistics:
Linguistic typology compares languages in order to classify them by their features. Its ultimate aim is to understand the universals that govern language, and the range of types found in the world's language is respect of any particular feature (word order or vowel system, for example). Typological similarity does not imply a historical relationship. However, typological arguments can be used in comparative linguistics: one reconstruction may be preferred to another as typologically more plausible.
Contact linguistics examines the linguistic results of contact between the speakers of different languages, particular as evidenced in loan words. Any empirical study of loans is by definition historical in focus and therefore forms part of the subject matter of historical linguistics. One of the goals of etymology is to establish which items in a language's vocabulary result from linguistic contact. This is also an important issue both for the comparative method and for the lexical comparison methods, since failure to recognize a loan may distort the findings.
Contrastive linguistics compares languages usually with the aim of assisting language learning by identifying important differences between the learner's native and target languages. Contrastive linguistics deals solely with present-day languages.
There is also a wide body of publications containing language comparisons that are considered pseudoscientific by linguists; see pseudoscientific language comparison.
[edit] See also
Contrastive analysis
Historical linguistics
Comparative method
Lexicostatistics
Glottochronology
Mass lexical comparison
Sound law
[edit] References
^ See for example "Language Classification by Numbers" by April McMahon and Robert McMahon
^ Campbell, Lyle (2004). Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Cambridge: The MIT Press
^ See for example the criticisms of Gray and Atkinson's work in Language Log, 10 December 2003
[edit] Bibliography
August Schleicher: Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. (Kurzer Abriss der indogermanischen Ursprache, des Altindischen, Altiranischen, Altgriechischen, Altitalischen, Altkeltischen, Altslawischen, Litauischen und Altdeutschen.) (2 vols.) Weimar, H. Boehlau (1861/62); reprinted by Minerva GmbH, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, ISBN 3-8102-1071-4
Karl Brugmann, Berthold Delbrück, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (1886-1916).
Raimo Anttila, Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Benjamins, 1989) ISBN 90-272-3557-0
TheoComparative linguistics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (February 2008)
Linguistics
Theoretical linguistics
Generative linguistics
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Lexis
Semantics
Lexical semantics
Statistical semantics
Structural semantics
Prototype semantics
Pragmatics
Systemic functional linguistics
Descriptive linguistics
Phonetics
Historical linguistics
Comparative linguistics
Etymology
Sociolinguistics
Corpus linguistics
Applied linguistics
Language acquisition
Language assessment
Language development
Language education
Psycholinguistics
Neurolinguistics
Linguistic anthropology
Cognitive linguistics
Computational linguistics
Stylistics
Prescription
History of linguistics
List of linguists
Unsolved problems
This box: view • talk • edit
Comparative linguistics (originally comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages in order to establish their historical relatedness. Languages may be related by convergence through borrowing or by genetic descent.
Genetic relatedness implies a common origin or proto-language, and comparative linguistics aims to construct language families, to reconstruct proto-languages and specify the changes that have resulted in the documented languages. In order to maintain a clear distinction between attested and reconstructed forms, comparative linguists prefix an asterisk to any form that is not found in surviving texts. A number of methods for carrying out language classification have been developed, ranging from simple inspection to computerised hypothesis testing. Such methods have gone through a long process of development.
Contents[hide]
1 Methods
2 History
3 Other related fields
4 See also
5 References
6 Bibliography
//
[edit] Methods
The fundamental technique of comparative linguistics is to compare phonological systems, morphological systems, syntax and the lexicon of two or more languages using techniques such as the comparative method. In principle, every difference between two related languages should be explicable to a high degree of plausibility, and systematic changes, for example in phonological or morphological systems, are expected to be highly regular (ie consistent). In practise, the comparison may be more restricted, eg just to the lexicon. In some methods it may be possible to reconstruct an earlier proto-language. Although the proto-languages reconstructed by the comparative method are hypothetical, a reconstruction may have predictive power. The most notable example of this is Saussure's proposal that the Indo-European consonant system contained laryngeals, a type of consonant attested in no Indo-European language known at the time. The hypothesis was vindicated with the discovery of Hittite, which proved to have exactly the consonants Saussure had hypothesized in the environments he had predicted.
Where languages are derived from a very distant ancestor, and are thus more distantly related, the comparative method becomes impracticable. In particular, attempting to relate two reconstructed proto-languages by the comparative method has not generally produced results that have met with wide acceptance. The method has also not been very good at unambiguously identifying sub-families and different scholars have produced conflicting results, for example in Indo-European. A number of methods based on statistical analysis of vocabulary have been developed to try and overcome this limitation, such as lexicostatistics and mass comparison. The former uses lexical cognates like the comparative method but the latter uses only lexical similarity. The theoretical basis of such methods is that vocabulary items can be matched without a detailed language reconstruction and that comparing enough vocabulary items will negate individual inaccuracies. Thus they can be used to determine relatedness but not to determine the proto-language.
[edit] History
The earliest method of this type was the comparative method, which was developed over many years, culminating in the nineteenth century. This uses a long word list and detailed study. However, it has been criticized for example as being subjective, being informal and lacking testability. [1] The comparative method uses information from two or more languages and allows reconstruction of the ancestral language. The method of Internal reconstruction uses only a single language, with comparison of word variants, to perform the same function. Internal reconstruction is more resistant to interference but usually has a limited available base of utilizable words and is able to reconstruct only certain changes (those that have left traces as morfophonological variations).
In the twentieth century an alternative method, lexicostatistics, was developed, which is mainly associated with Morris Swadesh but is based on earlier work. This uses a short word list of basic vocabulary in the various languages for comparisons. Swadesh used 100 (earlier 200) items that are assumed to be cognate (on the basis of phonetic similarity) in the languages being compared, though other lists have also been used. Distance measures are derived by examination of language pairs but such methods reduce the information. An outgrowth of lexicostatistics is glottochronology, initially developed in the 1950s, which proposed a mathematical formula for establishing the date when two languages separated, based on percentage of a core vocabulary of culturally independent words. In its simplest form a constant rate of change is assumed, though later versions allow variance but still fail to achieve reliability. Glottochronology has met with mounting scepticism, and is seldom applied today. Dating estimates can now be generated by computerised methods that have less restrictions, calculating rates from the data. However, no mathematical means of producing proto-language split-times on the basis of lexical retention has been proven reliable.
Another controversial method, developed by Joseph Greenberg, is mass lexical comparison.[2] The method, which disavows any ability to date developments, aims simply to show which languages are more and less close to each other, in a method similar to those used in cladistics in evolutionary biology. On the one hand, since mass comparison eschews the use of reconstruction and other traditional tools, it is flatly rejected by the majority of historical linguists. On the other, the method has been shown to be useful in preliminary grouping of languages known to be related, when such findings are backed up by in-depth comparative analysis.
Recently, computerised statistical hypothesis testing methods have been developed which are related to both the comparative method and lexicostatistics. Character based methods are similar to the former and distanced based methods are similar to the latter (see Quantitative comparative linguistics). The characters used can be morphological or grammatical as well as lexical. Since the mid-1990s these more sophisticated tree- and network-based cladistic methods have been used to investigate the relationships between languages and to determine approximate dates for proto-languages. These are considered by many to show promise but are not wholly accepted by traditionalists. [3] However, they are not intended to replace older methods but to supplement them. Such statistical methods cannot be used to derive the features of a proto-language, apart from the fact of the existance of shared items of the compared vocabulary. These approaches have been challenged for their methodological problems, since without a reconstruction or at least a detailed list of phonological correspondences there can be no demonstration that two words in different languages are cognate.[citation needed]
[edit] Other related fields
There are other branches of linguistics that involve comparing languages, which are not, however, part of comparative linguistics:
Linguistic typology compares languages in order to classify them by their features. Its ultimate aim is to understand the universals that govern language, and the range of types found in the world's language is respect of any particular feature (word order or vowel system, for example). Typological similarity does not imply a historical relationship. However, typological arguments can be used in comparative linguistics: one reconstruction may be preferred to another as typologically more plausible.
Contact linguistics examines the linguistic results of contact between the speakers of different languages, particular as evidenced in loan words. Any empirical study of loans is by definition historical in focus and therefore forms part of the subject matter of historical linguistics. One of the goals of etymology is to establish which items in a language's vocabulary result from linguistic contact. This is also an important issue both for the comparative method and for the lexical comparison methods, since failure to recognize a loan may distort the findings.
Contrastive linguistics compares languages usually with the aim of assisting language learning by identifying important differences between the learner's native and target languages. Contrastive linguistics deals solely with present-day languages.
There is also a wide body of publications containing language comparisons that are considered pseudoscientific by linguists; see pseudoscientific language comparison.
[edit] See also
Contrastive analysis
Historical linguistics
Comparative method
Lexicostatistics
Glottochronology
Mass lexical comparison
Sound law
[edit] References
^ See for example "Language Classification by Numbers" by April McMahon and Robert McMahon
^ Campbell, Lyle (2004). Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Cambridge: The MIT Press
^ See for example the criticisms of Gray and Atkinson's work in Language Log, 10 December 2003
[edit] Bibliography
August Schleicher: Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. (Kurzer Abriss der indogermanischen Ursprache, des Altindischen, Altiranischen, Altgriechischen, Altitalischen, Altkeltischen, Altslawischen, Litauischen und Altdeutschen.) (2 vols.) Weimar, H. Boehlau (1861/62); reprinted by Minerva GmbH, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, ISBN 3-8102-1071-4
Karl Brugmann, Berthold Delbrück, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (1886-1916).
Raimo Anttila, Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Benjamins, 1989) ISBN 90-272-3557-0
Theodora Bynon, Historical Linguistics (Cambridge University Press, 1977) ISBN 0-521-29188-7
Richard D. Janda and Brian D. Joseph (Eds), The Handbook of Historical Linguistics (Blackwell, 2004) ISBN 1-4051-2747-3
Roger Lass, Historical linguistics and language change. (Cambridge University Press, 1997) ISBN 0-521-45924-9
Winfred P. Lehmann, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (Holt, 1962) ISBN 0-03-011430-6
R.L. Trask (ed.), Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001) ISBN 1-57958-218-4
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_linguistics"
Categories: Historical linguistics Language comparison
Hidden categories: Articles lacking in-text citations All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements since August 2007dora Bynon, Historical Linguistics (Cambridge University Press, 1977) ISBN 0-521-29188-7
Richard D. Janda and Brian D. Joseph (Eds), The Handbook of Historical Linguistics (Blackwell, 2004) ISBN 1-4051-2747-3
Roger Lass, Historical linguistics and language change. (Cambridge University Press, 1997) ISBN 0-521-45924-9
Winfred P. Lehmann, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (Holt, 1962) ISBN 0-03-011430-6
R.L. Trask (ed.), Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001) ISBN 1-57958-218-4
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_linguistics"
Categories: Historical linguistics Language comparison
Hidden categories: Articles lacking in-text citations All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements since August 2007
Source : en.wikipedia.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_linguistics
Minggu, 15 Februari 2009
Schools of Linguistics
Sampson, Geoffrey. (1980). Schools of Linguistics. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP.
Brief Overview and Review
Sampson traces the development of some of the major movements in American and European linguistics in the first half of the 20th century up to about the mid-1970s. He begins with the 19th century Romantic roots of philology and continues through the emergence of linguistics as a legitimate, observable science, and its eventual abandonment of the Darwinian paradigm. Sampson hopes for a return to biological study of linguistics.
As linguistics tomes go, Sampson’s book is very accessible even for the novice linguistic student. One can read selected chapters or the entire book in sequence. I would recommend the latter since he keeps returning to issues raised in previous chapters. For example, he refers back to the strands of Romanticism, the shift to a science, and Saussure’s, Chomsky’s, and the Descriptivists’ influences repeatedly. He does, however, review the issues briefly in the concurrent chapter, which makes it easy to read selectively. One should be familiar with the symbols of phonetic and phonemic descriptions, as much of the early work in linguistics was observation of pronunciation patterns. The Sampson slant I noted was that of his preferential treatment of European linguistics and decidedly anti-Chomskyan.
Sampson does focus on the role of the scientific method throughout the book. This a great book for preparing for comprehensive exams because he outlines the basic philosophies and then surveys the opposing ideologies.
A Chapter-by-Chapter Recap of Significant Issues
Prelude: The nineteenth century
Sampson concludes that this century of linguistic study that was dominated to philology—the study dedicated to reconstruction of the lost proto-language—eventually gave way to synchronic linguistics—the analysis of languages as communicative systems as they exist. Language became a describable entity. The Romantics thought of language as embodying the soul of a race. Modern linguistics study has been linked to trends in scientific thought since 1861, but gradually moved away from Darwin’s paradigm. Key players in this era were Jacob Grimm (of Grimm’s Fairy Tales fame), who stated Grimm’s Law of phonetic sound shifts.
Saussure: language as social fact
Ferdinand de Saussure was credited with founding the notion of the study of synchronic linguistics. His concept of langue (language) vs. parole (speaking) was a dominating issue of the early 20th century linguistic studies. His concept of language is a network of relationships in which the value of each element ultimately depends on the value of the other. For Saussure language comprises a set of signs: a signifier—portion of speech sound; and signified—portion of meaning. His statement that language is not complete in any speaker, it exists perfectly only with a collectivity (society); he thought semantics should be regarded as a social fact, not psychological. Sampson notes because of Saussure European schools tended to ignore or de-emphasize not merely syntax but syntagmatic relationships too.
The Descriptivists
Sampson uses this term to describe the school of linguistics founded by Franz Boas. This movement set the tone for American linguistics until Chomsky’s arrival. The description of an individual language was an end in itself, and a necessary first step to understanding the wider culture of the community. Sampson describes the movement as relativistic—no ideal type of language. The next leader was Leonard Bloomfield who was the prime mover behind the formation of the Linguistic Society of America. Bloomfield emphasized the status of linguistics as a science. Logical positivism exerted a strong influence on scientific field during this time. Bloomfield is credited with moving linguistics into the field of psychology and behaviorism. Bloomfield’s slogan: “Accept everything a native speaker says in his language and nothing he says about it.” The resulting paradigm was measuring language inputs and outputs. Other influences mentioned were Charles Hockett and Kenneth Pike.
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Sampson defines this as: man’s language could mould his perception of reality or that the world a man inhabits is a linguistic construct is credited to Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and his amateur protégé, Benjamin Whorf (1897-1941). Sampson categorizes this as a special development of the Descriptivist School. Sapir is also credited with his “linguistic drift” theory: that over the long-term languages tend of modify itself in some particular direction. The suggestion came close to saying that language had a life of its own. Sampson conducts an in-depth analysis of the hypothesis and focuses on Whorf’s work with the Hopi and his color theory. As he analyzes the hypothesis, Sampson is both critical and complimentary. His conclusion leaves much unanswered.
Functional linguistics: the Prague School
The Prague School saw language in terms of function, particularly phonology. They argued for methodology and diachronics. The real value in this chapter is the treatment of Roman Jakobson, who later influenced many American linguists including Chomsky. Functional Link: http://www.heartfield.demon.co.uk/structure.htm
Noam Chomsky and generative grammar
Sampson credits Chomsky with a “linguistic revolution.” He points to Chomsky’s early influences of Zellig Harris and his collaboration with Roman Jakobson. Accroding to Sampson, Chomsky began the concept of syntactic universals. Sampson outlines Chomsky’s main theories of transformational generative grammar. He also categorizes his linguistic world into Chomskyans and anti-Chomskyans, and I believe comes down on the side of the anti-Chomskyans. The value of this chapter is that Sampson does take a critical look at Chomsky’s ideas, ends up accusing him of scientism, and criticizes his work as establishing a dominant paradigm in linguistic studies which Sampson thinks stifled the field for years. Sampson also discusses the role of Jakobson and phonological universals.
Relational grammar: Hjelmslev, Lamb, Reich
Sampson prefers the grammatical models of Hjelmslev and Lamb to Chomsky’s because he claims they are more easily understood and not as complicated. The main concept in this chapter was that language manifests two distinctions: form vs. substance and content vs. expression. These distinctions intersect to create four strata: form/content, form/expression, substance/content, substance/expression. Hence language consists of external relationships between elements of different strata and internal relationships between elements in one strata.
Sampson sentences tells it all: “All this is highly abstruse, not to say airy-fairy.” Quite.
Generative phonology
This school is so names because of their association with the generative syntactical school. Morris Halle, of MIT, in collaboration with Jakobson were concerned with establishing the concept of phonological universals. Their work led to much of the accepted work in the field of describing phonological studies. Interesting quote: “The truth is, of course, that scientists are fully as fallible and often irrational as other men [sic].” A brief history of the use or lack of use of the IPA phonetic alphabet is included in this chapter.
The London School
Sampson finally gets to his pet school that is “a pure academic discipline of linguistics in Britain.” He pays homage to the work of Henry Sweet whose phonetic research was, Sampson thought, far superior to that of the Americans. He also surveys the continuation of Sweet’s work by David Jones at UCL and then outlines Michael Halliday’s systemic theory. Sampson’s slant is decidedly British. In fact in his conclusion he states: “semantics cannot be scientific”; and that the Americans think all aspects of language can be treated scientifically. He ends with a prediction that linguistics will shift from psychological linguistics to biological linguistics.
Larry CzerAugust 1, 2001
Source: www2.mlc-wels.edu
http://http://www2.mlc-wels.edu/czer/Sampson_review.htm
Brief Overview and Review
Sampson traces the development of some of the major movements in American and European linguistics in the first half of the 20th century up to about the mid-1970s. He begins with the 19th century Romantic roots of philology and continues through the emergence of linguistics as a legitimate, observable science, and its eventual abandonment of the Darwinian paradigm. Sampson hopes for a return to biological study of linguistics.
As linguistics tomes go, Sampson’s book is very accessible even for the novice linguistic student. One can read selected chapters or the entire book in sequence. I would recommend the latter since he keeps returning to issues raised in previous chapters. For example, he refers back to the strands of Romanticism, the shift to a science, and Saussure’s, Chomsky’s, and the Descriptivists’ influences repeatedly. He does, however, review the issues briefly in the concurrent chapter, which makes it easy to read selectively. One should be familiar with the symbols of phonetic and phonemic descriptions, as much of the early work in linguistics was observation of pronunciation patterns. The Sampson slant I noted was that of his preferential treatment of European linguistics and decidedly anti-Chomskyan.
Sampson does focus on the role of the scientific method throughout the book. This a great book for preparing for comprehensive exams because he outlines the basic philosophies and then surveys the opposing ideologies.
A Chapter-by-Chapter Recap of Significant Issues
Prelude: The nineteenth century
Sampson concludes that this century of linguistic study that was dominated to philology—the study dedicated to reconstruction of the lost proto-language—eventually gave way to synchronic linguistics—the analysis of languages as communicative systems as they exist. Language became a describable entity. The Romantics thought of language as embodying the soul of a race. Modern linguistics study has been linked to trends in scientific thought since 1861, but gradually moved away from Darwin’s paradigm. Key players in this era were Jacob Grimm (of Grimm’s Fairy Tales fame), who stated Grimm’s Law of phonetic sound shifts.
Saussure: language as social fact
Ferdinand de Saussure was credited with founding the notion of the study of synchronic linguistics. His concept of langue (language) vs. parole (speaking) was a dominating issue of the early 20th century linguistic studies. His concept of language is a network of relationships in which the value of each element ultimately depends on the value of the other. For Saussure language comprises a set of signs: a signifier—portion of speech sound; and signified—portion of meaning. His statement that language is not complete in any speaker, it exists perfectly only with a collectivity (society); he thought semantics should be regarded as a social fact, not psychological. Sampson notes because of Saussure European schools tended to ignore or de-emphasize not merely syntax but syntagmatic relationships too.
The Descriptivists
Sampson uses this term to describe the school of linguistics founded by Franz Boas. This movement set the tone for American linguistics until Chomsky’s arrival. The description of an individual language was an end in itself, and a necessary first step to understanding the wider culture of the community. Sampson describes the movement as relativistic—no ideal type of language. The next leader was Leonard Bloomfield who was the prime mover behind the formation of the Linguistic Society of America. Bloomfield emphasized the status of linguistics as a science. Logical positivism exerted a strong influence on scientific field during this time. Bloomfield is credited with moving linguistics into the field of psychology and behaviorism. Bloomfield’s slogan: “Accept everything a native speaker says in his language and nothing he says about it.” The resulting paradigm was measuring language inputs and outputs. Other influences mentioned were Charles Hockett and Kenneth Pike.
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Sampson defines this as: man’s language could mould his perception of reality or that the world a man inhabits is a linguistic construct is credited to Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and his amateur protégé, Benjamin Whorf (1897-1941). Sampson categorizes this as a special development of the Descriptivist School. Sapir is also credited with his “linguistic drift” theory: that over the long-term languages tend of modify itself in some particular direction. The suggestion came close to saying that language had a life of its own. Sampson conducts an in-depth analysis of the hypothesis and focuses on Whorf’s work with the Hopi and his color theory. As he analyzes the hypothesis, Sampson is both critical and complimentary. His conclusion leaves much unanswered.
Functional linguistics: the Prague School
The Prague School saw language in terms of function, particularly phonology. They argued for methodology and diachronics. The real value in this chapter is the treatment of Roman Jakobson, who later influenced many American linguists including Chomsky. Functional Link: http://www.heartfield.demon.co.uk/structure.htm
Noam Chomsky and generative grammar
Sampson credits Chomsky with a “linguistic revolution.” He points to Chomsky’s early influences of Zellig Harris and his collaboration with Roman Jakobson. Accroding to Sampson, Chomsky began the concept of syntactic universals. Sampson outlines Chomsky’s main theories of transformational generative grammar. He also categorizes his linguistic world into Chomskyans and anti-Chomskyans, and I believe comes down on the side of the anti-Chomskyans. The value of this chapter is that Sampson does take a critical look at Chomsky’s ideas, ends up accusing him of scientism, and criticizes his work as establishing a dominant paradigm in linguistic studies which Sampson thinks stifled the field for years. Sampson also discusses the role of Jakobson and phonological universals.
Relational grammar: Hjelmslev, Lamb, Reich
Sampson prefers the grammatical models of Hjelmslev and Lamb to Chomsky’s because he claims they are more easily understood and not as complicated. The main concept in this chapter was that language manifests two distinctions: form vs. substance and content vs. expression. These distinctions intersect to create four strata: form/content, form/expression, substance/content, substance/expression. Hence language consists of external relationships between elements of different strata and internal relationships between elements in one strata.
Sampson sentences tells it all: “All this is highly abstruse, not to say airy-fairy.” Quite.
Generative phonology
This school is so names because of their association with the generative syntactical school. Morris Halle, of MIT, in collaboration with Jakobson were concerned with establishing the concept of phonological universals. Their work led to much of the accepted work in the field of describing phonological studies. Interesting quote: “The truth is, of course, that scientists are fully as fallible and often irrational as other men [sic].” A brief history of the use or lack of use of the IPA phonetic alphabet is included in this chapter.
The London School
Sampson finally gets to his pet school that is “a pure academic discipline of linguistics in Britain.” He pays homage to the work of Henry Sweet whose phonetic research was, Sampson thought, far superior to that of the Americans. He also surveys the continuation of Sweet’s work by David Jones at UCL and then outlines Michael Halliday’s systemic theory. Sampson’s slant is decidedly British. In fact in his conclusion he states: “semantics cannot be scientific”; and that the Americans think all aspects of language can be treated scientifically. He ends with a prediction that linguistics will shift from psychological linguistics to biological linguistics.
Larry CzerAugust 1, 2001
Source: www2.mlc-wels.edu
http://http://www2.mlc-wels.edu/czer/Sampson_review.htm
History of Linguistics and Historical Linguistics
History of linguistics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Further information: History of grammar
Linguistics as a study endeavors to describe and explain the human faculty of language.
In ancient civilization, linguistic study was originally motivated by the correct description of classical liturgical language, notably that of Sanskrit grammar by Pāṇini (fl. 4th century BC), or by the development of logic and rhetoric among Greeks. Beginning around the 4th century BC China also developed their own grammatical traditions and Arabic grammar and Hebrew grammar developed during the Middle Ages.
Modern linguistics began to develop in the 18th century, reaching the "golden age of philology" in the 19th century. The first half of the 20th century was marked by the structuralist school, based on the work of Ferdinand de Saussure in Europe and Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield in the United States. The 1960s saw the rise of many new fields in linguistics, such as Noam Chomsky's generative grammar, William Labov's sociolinguistics and also modern psycholinguistics.
Linguistics
Theoretical linguistics
Generative linguistics
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Lexis
Semantics
Lexical semantics
Statistical semantics
Structural semantics
Prototype semantics
Pragmatics
Systemic functional linguistics
Descriptive linguistics
Phonetics
Historical linguistics
Comparative linguistics
Etymology
Sociolinguistics
Corpus linguistics
Applied linguistics
Language acquisition
Language assessment
Language development
Language education
Psycholinguistics
Neurolinguistics
Linguistic anthropology
Cognitive linguistics
Computational linguistics
Stylistics
Prescription
History of linguistics
List of linguists
Unsolved problems
This box: view • talk • edit
History of science
Background
Theories/sociology
Historiography
Pseudoscience
By era
In early cultures
in Classical Antiquity
In the Middle Ages
In the Renaissance
Scientific Revolution
By topic
Natural sciences
Astronomy
Biology
Chemistry
Ecology
Geography
Geology
Paleontology
Physics
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Political science
Psychology
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Technology
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Computer science
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Navigational pages
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Contents[hide]
1 Antiquity
1.1 India
1.2 Greece
1.3 Rome
1.4 China
2 Middle Ages
2.1 Middle East
2.2 Europe
3 Modern linguistics
3.1 Historical linguistics
3.2 Descriptive linguistics
3.3 Generative linguistics
3.4 Other subfields
4 See also
5 References
//
[edit] Antiquity
Across cultures, the early history of linguistics is associated with a need to disambiguate discourse, especially for ritual texts or in arguments. This often led to explorations of sound-meaning mappings, and the debate over conventional versus naturalistic origins for these symbols. Finally this led to the processes by which larger structures are formed from units.
[edit] India
Main articles: Vyakarana and Tolkāppiyam
Linguistics in ancient India derives its impetus from the need to correctly recite and interpret the Vedic texts. Already in the oldest Indian text, the Rigveda, vāk ("speech") is deified. By 1200 BCE,[1] the oral performance of these texts becomes standardized, and treatises on ritual recitation suggest splitting up the sanskrit compounds into words, stems, and phonetic units, providing an impetus for morphology and phonetics. Over the next few centuries, a great clarity is reached in the organization of sound units, and the the stop consonants get organized in a 5x5 square (c. 800 BCE, Pratisakhyas), eventually leading to the very systematic alphabet, Brāhmī, around the 6th century BCE.
In semantics, the early Sanskrit grammarian Śākaṭāyana (before c. 500 BCE) proposes that verbs represent ontologically prior categories, and that all nouns are etymologically derived from actions. The etymologist Yāska (c. 5th century BCE?) posits that meaning inheres in the sentence, and that word meanings are derived based on sentential usage. He also provides four categories of words—nouns, verbs, pre-verbs, and particles/invariants—and a test for nouns both concrete and abstract: words which can be indicated by the pronoun that.
Pāṇini (c. 4th century BC) opposes the Yāska view that sentences are primary, and proposes a grammar for composing semantics from morphemic roots. Transcending the ritual text to consider living language, Pāṇini specifies a comprehensive set of about 4,000 aphoristic rules (sutras) that:
Map the semantics of verb argument structures into thematic roles
Provide morphosyntactic rules for creating verb forms and nominal forms whose seven cases are called karaka (similar to case) that generate the morphology
Take these morphological structures and consider phonological processes (e.g., root or stem modification) by which the final phonological form is obtained
In addition, the Pāṇinian school also provides a list of 2000 verb roots which form the objects on which these rules are applied, a list of sounds (the so-called Shiva-sutras), and a list of 260 words not derivable by the rules.
The extremely succinct specification of these rules and their complex interactions led to considerable commentary and extrapolation over the following centuries. The phonological structure includes defining a notion of sound universals similar to the modern phoneme, the systematization of consonants based on oral cavity constriction, and vowels based on height and duration. However, it is the ambition of mapping these from morpheme to semantics that is truly remarkable in modern terms.
Grammarians following Pāṇini include Kātyāyana (c. 3rd century BCE), who wrote aphorisms on Pāṇini (the Varttika) and advanced mathematics); Patañjali (2nd century BCE), known for his commentary on selected topics in Pāṇini's grammar (the Mahabhasya) and on Kātyāyana's aphorisms, as well as, according to some, the author of the Yoga Sutras, and Pingala, with his mathematical approach to prosody. Several debates ranged over centuries, for example, on whether word-meaning mappings were conventional (Vaisheshika-Nyaya) or eternal (Kātyāyana-Patañjali-Mīmāṃsā).
The Nyaya Sutras specified three types of meaning: the individual (this cow), the type universal (cowhood), and the image (draw the cow). That the sound of a word also forms a class (sound-universal) was observed by Bhartṛhari (c. 500 AD), who also posits that language-universals are the units of thought, close to the nominalist or even the linguistic determinism position. Bhartṛhari also considers the sentence to be ontologically primary (word meanings are learned given their sentential use).
Of the six canonical texts or Vedangas that formed the core syllabus in Brahminic educational from the first century AD till the eighteenth century, four dealt with language:
Shiksha (śikṣā): phonetics and phonology (sandhi), Gārgeya and commentators
Chandas (chandas): prosody or meter, (Pingala and commentators
Vyakarana (vyākaraṇa): grammar, Pāṇini and commentators
Nirukta (nirukta): etymology, Yāska and commentators
Bhartrihari around 500 AD introduced a philosophy of meaning with his sphoṭa doctrine.
This body of work became known in 19th century Europe, where it influenced modern linguistics initially through Franz Bopp, who mainly looked at Pāṇini. Subsequently, a wider body of work influenced Sanskrit scholars such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Leonard Bloomfield, and Roman Jakobson and Frits Staal[2] discuss the possible European impact of Indian ideas on language. After outlining the various aspects of the contact, Staal posits the theory that the idea of formal rules in language, first proposed by de Saussure in 1894, and finally developed by Chomsky in 1957, based on which formal rules were also introduced in computational languages, may indeed lie in the European exposure to the formal rules of pAninian grammar. In particular, de Saussure, who lectured on Sanskrit for three decades, may have been influenced by Pāṇini and Bhartrihari; his idea of the unity of signifier-signified in the sign is somewhat similar to the notion of Sphoṭa. More importantly, the very idea that formal rules can be applied to areas outside of logic or mathematics, may itself have been catalyzed by Europe's contact with the work of Sanskrit grammarians.
The South Indian linguist Tolkāppiyar (c. 1st century BC or AD) in his Tolkāppiyam presented a grammar of Tamil, derivatives of which are still used today.
[edit] Greece
The first important advancement of the Greeks was the creation of the alphabet based on a system previously used by the Phoenicians adding vowels and other consonants needed in Greek (see Robins, 1997). As a result of the introduction of writing, poetry such as the Homeric poems became written and several editions were created and commented, forming the basis of philology and critic.
Along with written speech, the Greeks commence its study in grammatical and philosophical bases. A philosophical discussion about the nature and origins of language can be found as early in the works of Plato. A subject of concern was whether language was man-made a social artifact or supernatural in origin. Plato in his Cratylus presents the naturalistic view, that word meanings emerge out of a natural process, independent of the language user. His arguments are partly based on examples of compounding, where the meaning of the whole is usually related to the constituents, although by the end he admits a small role for convention. The sophists and Socrates introduced also dialectics as a new text genre. In his platonic dialogs there are definitions about the meter of the poems and tragedy, the form and the structure of those texts (see the Rebublic and Phaidros, Ion etc.).[3]
Aristotle supports the conventional origins of meaning. He defined the logic of speech and the argument. Furthermore Aristotle works on rhetoric and poetics were of utmost importance for the understating of tragedy, poetry, public discussions etc. as text genres. Aristotle's work on logic interrelates with his special interest in language, and his work on this area was fundamentally important for the development of the study of language (logos in Greek means both language and logic reasoning). In Categories, Aristotle defines what is meant by "synonymous," or univocal words, what is meant by "homonymous," or equivocal words, and what is meant by "paronymous," or denominative words. It then divides forms of speech as being:
Either simple, without composition or structure, such as "man," "horse," "fights," etc.
Or having composition and structure, such as "a man fights," "the horse runs," etc.
Next, he distinguishes between a subject of predication, namely that of which anything is affirmed or denied, and a subject of inhesion. A thing is said to be inherent in a subject, when, though it is not a part of the subject, it cannot possibly exist without the subject, e.g., shape in a thing having a shape. The categories are not abstract platonic entities but are found in speech, these are substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action and affection. In de Interpretatione, Aristotle analyzes categoric propositions, and draws a series of basic conclusions on the routine issues of classifying and defining basic linguistic forms, such as simple terms and propositions, nouns and verbs, negation, the quantity of simple propositions (primitive roots of the quantifiers in modern symbolic logic), investigations on the excluded middle (what to Aristotle isn't applicable to future tense propositions — the Problem of future contingents), and on modal propositions.
Stoics made linguistics an important part of their understanding about the cosmos and the human. The important role of the Stoics in defining the linguistic sign terms adopted later on by Ferdinand de Saussure like "significant" and "signifie".[4] The Stoics studied phonetics grammar and etymology as separate levels of study. In phonetics and phonology the articulators were defined. The syllable became an important structure for the understanding of speech organization. One of the most important offers of the Stoics in language study was the gradual definition of the terminology and theory echoed in modern linguistics.
Alexandrian grammarians also studied speech sounds and prosody, defined parts of speech with notions such as noun, verb, etc. There was also a discussion about the role of analogy in language, in this discussions the grammatici in Alexandria supported that language and especially morphology is based on analogy or paradigm, whereas the grammatic in schools Asia Minor consider that language is not based on analogical bases but rather on exceptions.
Alexandrians as their predecessors were very interested about the meter and its relation with poetry. The metrical "feet" in the Greek was based on the length of time taken to pronounce each syllable, which were categorized according to their weight as either "long" syllables or "short" syllables (also known as "heavy" and "light" syllables, respectively, to distinguish from long and short vowels). The foot is often compared to a musical measure and the long and short syllables to whole notes and half notes. The basic unit in Greek and Latin prosody is a mora, which is defined as a single short syllable. A long syllable is equivalent to two moras. A long syllable contains either a long vowel, a diphthong, or a short vowel followed by two or more consonants. Various rules of elision sometimes prevent a grammatical syllable from making a full syllable, and certain other lengthening and shortening rules (such as correption) can create long or short syllables in contexts where one would expect the opposite. The most important Classical meter as defined by the Alexandrian grammarians was the dactylic hexameter, the meter of Homeric poetry. This form uses verses of six feet. The first four feet are dactyls, but can be spondees. The fifth foot is almost always a dactyl. The sixth foot is either a spondee or a trochee. The initial syllable of either foot is called the ictus, the basic "beat" of the verse. There is usually a caesura after the ictus of the third foot.
Subsequently, the text Tékhnē grammatiké (c. 100 BCE, Gk. gramma meant letter, and this title means "Art of letters"), possibly written by Dionysius Thrax, lists eight parts of speech, and lays out the broad details of Greek morphology including the case structures. This text was intended as a pedagogic guide (as was Panini), and also covers punctuation and some aspects of prosody. Other grammars by Charisius (mainly a compilation of Thrax, as well as lost texts by Remmius Palaemon and others) and Diomedes(focusing more on prosody) were popular in Rome as pedagogic material for teaching Greek to native Latin speakers.
One of the most prominent scholars of Alexandria and of the antiquity was Apollonius Dyscolus.[5] Apollonius wrote more than thirty treatises on questions of syntax, semantics, morphology, prosody, orthography, dialectology, and more. Happily, four of these are preserved—we still have a Syntax in four books, and three one-book monographs on pronouns, adverbs, and connectives, respectively.
Lexicography become an important study domain as dictionaries,thesauri and lists of special words "λέξεις" that were old, or dialectical or special such as medical words, botanic words were made at that period by many grammarians. In the early medieval times we find more categories of dictionaries like the dictionary of Suida that is considered the first encyclopedic dictionary, etymological dictionaries etc.
At that period Greek language was considered lingua franca i.e. the language spoken in the known world (from the Greeks and Romans) of that time and as a results prescription i.e. the definition of what is wrong and right in language become a trend, something that modern linguistics straggle to overcome. With the Greeks a tradition commenced in the study of language, Romans and the Medieval world will follow and their laborious work is considered today as a part of our everyday language think for example notions such as the word, the syllable, the verb, the subject etc.
[edit] Rome
In the 4th c., Aelius Donatus compiled the Latin grammar Ars Grammatica that was to be the defining school text through the Middle Ages. A smaller version, Ars Minor, covered only the eight parts of speech; eventually when books came to be printed in the 15th c., this was one of the first books to be printed. Schoolboys subjected to all this education gave us the current meaning of "grammar" (attested in English since 1176).
[edit] China
Similar to the Indian tradition, Chinese philology, Xiaoxue (小學 "elementary studies"), began as an aid to understanding classics in the Han dynasty (c. 3d c. BCE). Xiaoxue came to be divided into three branches: Xungu (訓詁 "exegesis"), Wenzi (文字 "script [analysis]") and Yinyun (音韻 "[study of] sounds") and reached its golden age in the 17th. c. AD (Qing Dynasty). The glossary Erya (c. 3d c. BCE), comparable to the Indian Nighantu, is regarded as the first linguistic work in China. Shuowen Jiezi (c. 2nd c. BCE), the first Chinese dictionary, classifies Chinese characters by radicals, a practice that would be followed by most subsequent lexicographers. Two more pioneering works produced during the Han Dynasty are Fangyan, the first Chinese work concerning dialects, and Shiming, devoted to etymology.
As in ancient Greece, early Chinese thinkers were concerned with the relationship between names and reality. Confucius (6th c. BCE) famously emphasized the moral commitment implicit in a name, (zhengming) saying that the moral collapse of the pre-Qin was a result of the failure to rectify behaviour to meet the moral commitment inherent in names: "Good government consists in the ruler being a ruler, the minister being a minister, the father being a father, and the son being a son... If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things." (Analects 12.11,13.3).
However, what is the reality implied by a name? The later Mohists or the group known as School of Names (ming jia, 479-221 BCE), consider that ming (名 "name") may refer to three kinds of shi (實 "actuality"): type universals (horse), individual (John), and unrestricted (thing). They adopt a realist position on the name-reality connection - universals arise because "the world itself fixes the patterns of similarity and difference by which things should be divided into kinds".[6] The philosophical tradition is well known for conundra resembling the sophists, e.g. when Gongsun Longzi (4th c. BCE) questions if in copula statements (X is Y), are X and Y identical or is X a subclass of Y. This is the famous paradox "a white horse is not a horse".
Xun Zi (3d c. BCE) revisits zhengming, but instead of rectifying behaviour to suit the names, his emphasis is on rectifying language to correctly reflect reality. This is consistent with a more "conventional" view of word origins (yueding sucheng 約定俗成).
The study of phonology in China began late, and was influenced by the Indian tradition, after Buddhism had become popular in China. The rime dictionary is a type of dictionary arranged by tone and rime, in which the pronunciations of characters are indicated by fanqie spellings. Rime tables were later produced to aid the understanding of fanqie.
Philological studies flourished during the Qing Dynasty, with Duan Yucai and Wang Niansun as the towering figures. The last great philologist of the era was Zhang Binglin, who also helped lay the foundation of modern Chinese linguistics. The Western comparative method was brought into China by Bernard Karlgren, the first scholar to reconstruct Middle Chinese and Old Chinese with Latin alphabet (not IPA). Important modern Chinese linguists include Y. R. Chao, Luo Changpei, Li Fanggui and Wang Li.
The ancient commentators to the classics paid much attention to syntax and the use of particles. But the first Chinese grammar, in the modern sense of the word, was produced by Ma Jianzhong (late 19th century). His grammar was based on the Latin (prescriptive) model.
[edit] Middle Ages
[edit] Middle East
Main article: Arabic grammar
Due to the rapid expansion of Islam in the 8th century, many people learned Arabic as a lingua franca. For this reason, the earliest grammatical treatises on Arabic are often written by non-native speakers.
The earliest grammarian who is known to us is ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Isḥāq al-Ḥaḍramī (d. 735-736 AD, 117 AH). The efforts of three generations of grammarians culminated in the book of the Persian linguist Sibāwayhi (c. 760-793).
Sibawayh made a detailed and professional description of Arabic in 760 in his monumental work, Al-kitab fi al-nahw (الكتاب في النحو, The Book on Grammar), bringing many linguistic aspects of language to light. In his book he distinguished phonetics from phonology.
Traditionally, the Arabic grammatical sciences are divided into five branches:
al-luġah (lexicon) concerned with collecting and explaining vocabulary
at-taṣrīf (morphology) determining the form of the individual words
an-naḥw (syntax) primarily concerned with inflection (iʿrāb) which had already been lost in dialects.
al-ištiqāq (derivation) examining the origin of the words
al-balāġah (rhetoric) which elucidates construct quality
[edit] Europe
The Modistae or "speculative grammarians" in the 13th century introduced the notion of universal grammar.
In De vulgari eloquentia ("On the Eloquence of Vernacular"), Dante expanded the scope of linguistic enquiry from Latin/ Greek to include the languages of the day. Other linguistic works of the same period concerning the vernaculars include the First Grammatical Treatise (Icelandic) or the Auraicept na n-Éces (Irish).
The Renaissance and Baroque period saw an intensified interest in linguistics, notably for the purpose of Bible translations by the Jesuits, and also related to philosophical speculation on philosophical languages and the origin of language.
[edit] Modern linguistics
Further information: Philology
Modern linguistics does not begin until the late 18th century, and the romantic or animist theses of Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Christoph Adelung remained influential well into the 19th century.
[edit] Historical linguistics
Further information: Historical linguistics and Indo-European studies
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. In his The Sanscrit Language (1786), Sir William Jones proposed that Sanskrit and Persian had resemblances to classical Greek, Latin, Gothic, and 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 languages, with a concern for finding their common roots and tracing their development.
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).
It was only in the late 19th century that the Neogrammarian approach of Karl Brugmann and others introduced a rigid notion of sound law.
[edit] Descriptive linguistics
Main articles: Descriptive linguistics and structuralism
In Europe there was a parallel development of structural linguistics, influenced most strongly by Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss professor 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."
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.
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.
[edit] Generative linguistics
Main article: Generative linguistics
[edit] Other subfields
Further information: linguistic turn and Linguistics Wars
From roughly 1980 onwards, pragmatic, functional, and cognitive approaches have steadily gained ground, both in the United States and in Europe.
[edit] See also
History of grammar
History of communication
[edit] References
^ Staal, J. F., The Fidelity of Oral Tradition and the Origins of Science. North-Holland Publishing Company, 1986. p. 27
^ The science of language, Chapter 16, in Gavin D. Flood, ed. The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism Blackwell Publishing, 2003, 599 pages ISBN 0631215352, 9780631215356. p. 357-358
^ http://plato-dialogues.org/works.htm
^ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/#Log
^ http://schmidhauser.us/apollonius/
^ Chris Fraser. "Mohist Canons". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mohist-canons/.
Roy Harris and Talbot J. Taylor (1989). Landmarks in Linguistic Thought: The Western Tradition from Socrates to Saussure. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415002907.
John E. Joseph, Nigel Love, and Talbot J. Taylor (2001). Landmarks in Linguistic Thought II: The Western Tradition in the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415063965.
W. P. Lehmann, (ed.) (1967). A Reader in Nineteenth Century Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253348404. http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/books/readT.html.
Bimal Krishna Matilal (1990). The Word and the World: India's Contribution to the Study of Language. Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195625153.
Frederick J. Newmeyer (2005). The History of Linguistics. Linguistic Society of America. http://www.lsadc.org/info/ling-fields-history.cfm.
Mario Pei (1965). Invitation to Linguistics. Doubleday & Company. ISBN 0385065841.
Robert Henry Robins (1997). A Short History of Linguistics. London: Longman. ISBN 0582249945.
Kees Versteegh (1997). Landmarks in Linguistic Thought III: The Arabic Linguistic Tradition. London; New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415140625.
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Further information: History of grammar
Linguistics as a study endeavors to describe and explain the human faculty of language.
In ancient civilization, linguistic study was originally motivated by the correct description of classical liturgical language, notably that of Sanskrit grammar by Pāṇini (fl. 4th century BC), or by the development of logic and rhetoric among Greeks. Beginning around the 4th century BC China also developed their own grammatical traditions and Arabic grammar and Hebrew grammar developed during the Middle Ages.
Modern linguistics began to develop in the 18th century, reaching the "golden age of philology" in the 19th century. The first half of the 20th century was marked by the structuralist school, based on the work of Ferdinand de Saussure in Europe and Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield in the United States. The 1960s saw the rise of many new fields in linguistics, such as Noam Chomsky's generative grammar, William Labov's sociolinguistics and also modern psycholinguistics.
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Theoretical linguistics
Generative linguistics
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Lexis
Semantics
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Statistical semantics
Structural semantics
Prototype semantics
Pragmatics
Systemic functional linguistics
Descriptive linguistics
Phonetics
Historical linguistics
Comparative linguistics
Etymology
Sociolinguistics
Corpus linguistics
Applied linguistics
Language acquisition
Language assessment
Language development
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Contents[hide]
1 Antiquity
1.1 India
1.2 Greece
1.3 Rome
1.4 China
2 Middle Ages
2.1 Middle East
2.2 Europe
3 Modern linguistics
3.1 Historical linguistics
3.2 Descriptive linguistics
3.3 Generative linguistics
3.4 Other subfields
4 See also
5 References
//
[edit] Antiquity
Across cultures, the early history of linguistics is associated with a need to disambiguate discourse, especially for ritual texts or in arguments. This often led to explorations of sound-meaning mappings, and the debate over conventional versus naturalistic origins for these symbols. Finally this led to the processes by which larger structures are formed from units.
[edit] India
Main articles: Vyakarana and Tolkāppiyam
Linguistics in ancient India derives its impetus from the need to correctly recite and interpret the Vedic texts. Already in the oldest Indian text, the Rigveda, vāk ("speech") is deified. By 1200 BCE,[1] the oral performance of these texts becomes standardized, and treatises on ritual recitation suggest splitting up the sanskrit compounds into words, stems, and phonetic units, providing an impetus for morphology and phonetics. Over the next few centuries, a great clarity is reached in the organization of sound units, and the the stop consonants get organized in a 5x5 square (c. 800 BCE, Pratisakhyas), eventually leading to the very systematic alphabet, Brāhmī, around the 6th century BCE.
In semantics, the early Sanskrit grammarian Śākaṭāyana (before c. 500 BCE) proposes that verbs represent ontologically prior categories, and that all nouns are etymologically derived from actions. The etymologist Yāska (c. 5th century BCE?) posits that meaning inheres in the sentence, and that word meanings are derived based on sentential usage. He also provides four categories of words—nouns, verbs, pre-verbs, and particles/invariants—and a test for nouns both concrete and abstract: words which can be indicated by the pronoun that.
Pāṇini (c. 4th century BC) opposes the Yāska view that sentences are primary, and proposes a grammar for composing semantics from morphemic roots. Transcending the ritual text to consider living language, Pāṇini specifies a comprehensive set of about 4,000 aphoristic rules (sutras) that:
Map the semantics of verb argument structures into thematic roles
Provide morphosyntactic rules for creating verb forms and nominal forms whose seven cases are called karaka (similar to case) that generate the morphology
Take these morphological structures and consider phonological processes (e.g., root or stem modification) by which the final phonological form is obtained
In addition, the Pāṇinian school also provides a list of 2000 verb roots which form the objects on which these rules are applied, a list of sounds (the so-called Shiva-sutras), and a list of 260 words not derivable by the rules.
The extremely succinct specification of these rules and their complex interactions led to considerable commentary and extrapolation over the following centuries. The phonological structure includes defining a notion of sound universals similar to the modern phoneme, the systematization of consonants based on oral cavity constriction, and vowels based on height and duration. However, it is the ambition of mapping these from morpheme to semantics that is truly remarkable in modern terms.
Grammarians following Pāṇini include Kātyāyana (c. 3rd century BCE), who wrote aphorisms on Pāṇini (the Varttika) and advanced mathematics); Patañjali (2nd century BCE), known for his commentary on selected topics in Pāṇini's grammar (the Mahabhasya) and on Kātyāyana's aphorisms, as well as, according to some, the author of the Yoga Sutras, and Pingala, with his mathematical approach to prosody. Several debates ranged over centuries, for example, on whether word-meaning mappings were conventional (Vaisheshika-Nyaya) or eternal (Kātyāyana-Patañjali-Mīmāṃsā).
The Nyaya Sutras specified three types of meaning: the individual (this cow), the type universal (cowhood), and the image (draw the cow). That the sound of a word also forms a class (sound-universal) was observed by Bhartṛhari (c. 500 AD), who also posits that language-universals are the units of thought, close to the nominalist or even the linguistic determinism position. Bhartṛhari also considers the sentence to be ontologically primary (word meanings are learned given their sentential use).
Of the six canonical texts or Vedangas that formed the core syllabus in Brahminic educational from the first century AD till the eighteenth century, four dealt with language:
Shiksha (śikṣā): phonetics and phonology (sandhi), Gārgeya and commentators
Chandas (chandas): prosody or meter, (Pingala and commentators
Vyakarana (vyākaraṇa): grammar, Pāṇini and commentators
Nirukta (nirukta): etymology, Yāska and commentators
Bhartrihari around 500 AD introduced a philosophy of meaning with his sphoṭa doctrine.
This body of work became known in 19th century Europe, where it influenced modern linguistics initially through Franz Bopp, who mainly looked at Pāṇini. Subsequently, a wider body of work influenced Sanskrit scholars such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Leonard Bloomfield, and Roman Jakobson and Frits Staal[2] discuss the possible European impact of Indian ideas on language. After outlining the various aspects of the contact, Staal posits the theory that the idea of formal rules in language, first proposed by de Saussure in 1894, and finally developed by Chomsky in 1957, based on which formal rules were also introduced in computational languages, may indeed lie in the European exposure to the formal rules of pAninian grammar. In particular, de Saussure, who lectured on Sanskrit for three decades, may have been influenced by Pāṇini and Bhartrihari; his idea of the unity of signifier-signified in the sign is somewhat similar to the notion of Sphoṭa. More importantly, the very idea that formal rules can be applied to areas outside of logic or mathematics, may itself have been catalyzed by Europe's contact with the work of Sanskrit grammarians.
The South Indian linguist Tolkāppiyar (c. 1st century BC or AD) in his Tolkāppiyam presented a grammar of Tamil, derivatives of which are still used today.
[edit] Greece
The first important advancement of the Greeks was the creation of the alphabet based on a system previously used by the Phoenicians adding vowels and other consonants needed in Greek (see Robins, 1997). As a result of the introduction of writing, poetry such as the Homeric poems became written and several editions were created and commented, forming the basis of philology and critic.
Along with written speech, the Greeks commence its study in grammatical and philosophical bases. A philosophical discussion about the nature and origins of language can be found as early in the works of Plato. A subject of concern was whether language was man-made a social artifact or supernatural in origin. Plato in his Cratylus presents the naturalistic view, that word meanings emerge out of a natural process, independent of the language user. His arguments are partly based on examples of compounding, where the meaning of the whole is usually related to the constituents, although by the end he admits a small role for convention. The sophists and Socrates introduced also dialectics as a new text genre. In his platonic dialogs there are definitions about the meter of the poems and tragedy, the form and the structure of those texts (see the Rebublic and Phaidros, Ion etc.).[3]
Aristotle supports the conventional origins of meaning. He defined the logic of speech and the argument. Furthermore Aristotle works on rhetoric and poetics were of utmost importance for the understating of tragedy, poetry, public discussions etc. as text genres. Aristotle's work on logic interrelates with his special interest in language, and his work on this area was fundamentally important for the development of the study of language (logos in Greek means both language and logic reasoning). In Categories, Aristotle defines what is meant by "synonymous," or univocal words, what is meant by "homonymous," or equivocal words, and what is meant by "paronymous," or denominative words. It then divides forms of speech as being:
Either simple, without composition or structure, such as "man," "horse," "fights," etc.
Or having composition and structure, such as "a man fights," "the horse runs," etc.
Next, he distinguishes between a subject of predication, namely that of which anything is affirmed or denied, and a subject of inhesion. A thing is said to be inherent in a subject, when, though it is not a part of the subject, it cannot possibly exist without the subject, e.g., shape in a thing having a shape. The categories are not abstract platonic entities but are found in speech, these are substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action and affection. In de Interpretatione, Aristotle analyzes categoric propositions, and draws a series of basic conclusions on the routine issues of classifying and defining basic linguistic forms, such as simple terms and propositions, nouns and verbs, negation, the quantity of simple propositions (primitive roots of the quantifiers in modern symbolic logic), investigations on the excluded middle (what to Aristotle isn't applicable to future tense propositions — the Problem of future contingents), and on modal propositions.
Stoics made linguistics an important part of their understanding about the cosmos and the human. The important role of the Stoics in defining the linguistic sign terms adopted later on by Ferdinand de Saussure like "significant" and "signifie".[4] The Stoics studied phonetics grammar and etymology as separate levels of study. In phonetics and phonology the articulators were defined. The syllable became an important structure for the understanding of speech organization. One of the most important offers of the Stoics in language study was the gradual definition of the terminology and theory echoed in modern linguistics.
Alexandrian grammarians also studied speech sounds and prosody, defined parts of speech with notions such as noun, verb, etc. There was also a discussion about the role of analogy in language, in this discussions the grammatici in Alexandria supported that language and especially morphology is based on analogy or paradigm, whereas the grammatic in schools Asia Minor consider that language is not based on analogical bases but rather on exceptions.
Alexandrians as their predecessors were very interested about the meter and its relation with poetry. The metrical "feet" in the Greek was based on the length of time taken to pronounce each syllable, which were categorized according to their weight as either "long" syllables or "short" syllables (also known as "heavy" and "light" syllables, respectively, to distinguish from long and short vowels). The foot is often compared to a musical measure and the long and short syllables to whole notes and half notes. The basic unit in Greek and Latin prosody is a mora, which is defined as a single short syllable. A long syllable is equivalent to two moras. A long syllable contains either a long vowel, a diphthong, or a short vowel followed by two or more consonants. Various rules of elision sometimes prevent a grammatical syllable from making a full syllable, and certain other lengthening and shortening rules (such as correption) can create long or short syllables in contexts where one would expect the opposite. The most important Classical meter as defined by the Alexandrian grammarians was the dactylic hexameter, the meter of Homeric poetry. This form uses verses of six feet. The first four feet are dactyls, but can be spondees. The fifth foot is almost always a dactyl. The sixth foot is either a spondee or a trochee. The initial syllable of either foot is called the ictus, the basic "beat" of the verse. There is usually a caesura after the ictus of the third foot.
Subsequently, the text Tékhnē grammatiké (c. 100 BCE, Gk. gramma meant letter, and this title means "Art of letters"), possibly written by Dionysius Thrax, lists eight parts of speech, and lays out the broad details of Greek morphology including the case structures. This text was intended as a pedagogic guide (as was Panini), and also covers punctuation and some aspects of prosody. Other grammars by Charisius (mainly a compilation of Thrax, as well as lost texts by Remmius Palaemon and others) and Diomedes(focusing more on prosody) were popular in Rome as pedagogic material for teaching Greek to native Latin speakers.
One of the most prominent scholars of Alexandria and of the antiquity was Apollonius Dyscolus.[5] Apollonius wrote more than thirty treatises on questions of syntax, semantics, morphology, prosody, orthography, dialectology, and more. Happily, four of these are preserved—we still have a Syntax in four books, and three one-book monographs on pronouns, adverbs, and connectives, respectively.
Lexicography become an important study domain as dictionaries,thesauri and lists of special words "λέξεις" that were old, or dialectical or special such as medical words, botanic words were made at that period by many grammarians. In the early medieval times we find more categories of dictionaries like the dictionary of Suida that is considered the first encyclopedic dictionary, etymological dictionaries etc.
At that period Greek language was considered lingua franca i.e. the language spoken in the known world (from the Greeks and Romans) of that time and as a results prescription i.e. the definition of what is wrong and right in language become a trend, something that modern linguistics straggle to overcome. With the Greeks a tradition commenced in the study of language, Romans and the Medieval world will follow and their laborious work is considered today as a part of our everyday language think for example notions such as the word, the syllable, the verb, the subject etc.
[edit] Rome
In the 4th c., Aelius Donatus compiled the Latin grammar Ars Grammatica that was to be the defining school text through the Middle Ages. A smaller version, Ars Minor, covered only the eight parts of speech; eventually when books came to be printed in the 15th c., this was one of the first books to be printed. Schoolboys subjected to all this education gave us the current meaning of "grammar" (attested in English since 1176).
[edit] China
Similar to the Indian tradition, Chinese philology, Xiaoxue (小學 "elementary studies"), began as an aid to understanding classics in the Han dynasty (c. 3d c. BCE). Xiaoxue came to be divided into three branches: Xungu (訓詁 "exegesis"), Wenzi (文字 "script [analysis]") and Yinyun (音韻 "[study of] sounds") and reached its golden age in the 17th. c. AD (Qing Dynasty). The glossary Erya (c. 3d c. BCE), comparable to the Indian Nighantu, is regarded as the first linguistic work in China. Shuowen Jiezi (c. 2nd c. BCE), the first Chinese dictionary, classifies Chinese characters by radicals, a practice that would be followed by most subsequent lexicographers. Two more pioneering works produced during the Han Dynasty are Fangyan, the first Chinese work concerning dialects, and Shiming, devoted to etymology.
As in ancient Greece, early Chinese thinkers were concerned with the relationship between names and reality. Confucius (6th c. BCE) famously emphasized the moral commitment implicit in a name, (zhengming) saying that the moral collapse of the pre-Qin was a result of the failure to rectify behaviour to meet the moral commitment inherent in names: "Good government consists in the ruler being a ruler, the minister being a minister, the father being a father, and the son being a son... If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things." (Analects 12.11,13.3).
However, what is the reality implied by a name? The later Mohists or the group known as School of Names (ming jia, 479-221 BCE), consider that ming (名 "name") may refer to three kinds of shi (實 "actuality"): type universals (horse), individual (John), and unrestricted (thing). They adopt a realist position on the name-reality connection - universals arise because "the world itself fixes the patterns of similarity and difference by which things should be divided into kinds".[6] The philosophical tradition is well known for conundra resembling the sophists, e.g. when Gongsun Longzi (4th c. BCE) questions if in copula statements (X is Y), are X and Y identical or is X a subclass of Y. This is the famous paradox "a white horse is not a horse".
Xun Zi (3d c. BCE) revisits zhengming, but instead of rectifying behaviour to suit the names, his emphasis is on rectifying language to correctly reflect reality. This is consistent with a more "conventional" view of word origins (yueding sucheng 約定俗成).
The study of phonology in China began late, and was influenced by the Indian tradition, after Buddhism had become popular in China. The rime dictionary is a type of dictionary arranged by tone and rime, in which the pronunciations of characters are indicated by fanqie spellings. Rime tables were later produced to aid the understanding of fanqie.
Philological studies flourished during the Qing Dynasty, with Duan Yucai and Wang Niansun as the towering figures. The last great philologist of the era was Zhang Binglin, who also helped lay the foundation of modern Chinese linguistics. The Western comparative method was brought into China by Bernard Karlgren, the first scholar to reconstruct Middle Chinese and Old Chinese with Latin alphabet (not IPA). Important modern Chinese linguists include Y. R. Chao, Luo Changpei, Li Fanggui and Wang Li.
The ancient commentators to the classics paid much attention to syntax and the use of particles. But the first Chinese grammar, in the modern sense of the word, was produced by Ma Jianzhong (late 19th century). His grammar was based on the Latin (prescriptive) model.
[edit] Middle Ages
[edit] Middle East
Main article: Arabic grammar
Due to the rapid expansion of Islam in the 8th century, many people learned Arabic as a lingua franca. For this reason, the earliest grammatical treatises on Arabic are often written by non-native speakers.
The earliest grammarian who is known to us is ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Isḥāq al-Ḥaḍramī (d. 735-736 AD, 117 AH). The efforts of three generations of grammarians culminated in the book of the Persian linguist Sibāwayhi (c. 760-793).
Sibawayh made a detailed and professional description of Arabic in 760 in his monumental work, Al-kitab fi al-nahw (الكتاب في النحو, The Book on Grammar), bringing many linguistic aspects of language to light. In his book he distinguished phonetics from phonology.
Traditionally, the Arabic grammatical sciences are divided into five branches:
al-luġah (lexicon) concerned with collecting and explaining vocabulary
at-taṣrīf (morphology) determining the form of the individual words
an-naḥw (syntax) primarily concerned with inflection (iʿrāb) which had already been lost in dialects.
al-ištiqāq (derivation) examining the origin of the words
al-balāġah (rhetoric) which elucidates construct quality
[edit] Europe
The Modistae or "speculative grammarians" in the 13th century introduced the notion of universal grammar.
In De vulgari eloquentia ("On the Eloquence of Vernacular"), Dante expanded the scope of linguistic enquiry from Latin/ Greek to include the languages of the day. Other linguistic works of the same period concerning the vernaculars include the First Grammatical Treatise (Icelandic) or the Auraicept na n-Éces (Irish).
The Renaissance and Baroque period saw an intensified interest in linguistics, notably for the purpose of Bible translations by the Jesuits, and also related to philosophical speculation on philosophical languages and the origin of language.
[edit] Modern linguistics
Further information: Philology
Modern linguistics does not begin until the late 18th century, and the romantic or animist theses of Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Christoph Adelung remained influential well into the 19th century.
[edit] Historical linguistics
Further information: Historical linguistics and Indo-European studies
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. In his The Sanscrit Language (1786), Sir William Jones proposed that Sanskrit and Persian had resemblances to classical Greek, Latin, Gothic, and 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 languages, with a concern for finding their common roots and tracing their development.
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).
It was only in the late 19th century that the Neogrammarian approach of Karl Brugmann and others introduced a rigid notion of sound law.
[edit] Descriptive linguistics
Main articles: Descriptive linguistics and structuralism
In Europe there was a parallel development of structural linguistics, influenced most strongly by Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss professor 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."
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.
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.
[edit] Generative linguistics
Main article: Generative linguistics
[edit] Other subfields
Further information: linguistic turn and Linguistics Wars
From roughly 1980 onwards, pragmatic, functional, and cognitive approaches have steadily gained ground, both in the United States and in Europe.
[edit] See also
History of grammar
History of communication
[edit] References
^ Staal, J. F., The Fidelity of Oral Tradition and the Origins of Science. North-Holland Publishing Company, 1986. p. 27
^ The science of language, Chapter 16, in Gavin D. Flood, ed. The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism Blackwell Publishing, 2003, 599 pages ISBN 0631215352, 9780631215356. p. 357-358
^ http://plato-dialogues.org/works.htm
^ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/#Log
^ http://schmidhauser.us/apollonius/
^ Chris Fraser. "Mohist Canons". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mohist-canons/.
Roy Harris and Talbot J. Taylor (1989). Landmarks in Linguistic Thought: The Western Tradition from Socrates to Saussure. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415002907.
John E. Joseph, Nigel Love, and Talbot J. Taylor (2001). Landmarks in Linguistic Thought II: The Western Tradition in the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415063965.
W. P. Lehmann, (ed.) (1967). A Reader in Nineteenth Century Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253348404. http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/books/readT.html.
Bimal Krishna Matilal (1990). The Word and the World: India's Contribution to the Study of Language. Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195625153.
Frederick J. Newmeyer (2005). The History of Linguistics. Linguistic Society of America. http://www.lsadc.org/info/ling-fields-history.cfm.
Mario Pei (1965). Invitation to Linguistics. Doubleday & Company. ISBN 0385065841.
Robert Henry Robins (1997). A Short History of Linguistics. London: Longman. ISBN 0582249945.
Kees Versteegh (1997). Landmarks in Linguistic Thought III: The Arabic Linguistic Tradition. London; New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415140625.
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