This document provides an outline of a lecture on the history of linguistics. It discusses:
1) The prehistory of linguistics, including early myths and ideas about language from various cultures.
2) Ancient linguistics traditions from Babylonia, India, Egypt, and Greece, including important early grammarians like Panini.
3) The origins of linguistics as a scholarly field in response to language change and the need to explain religious/legal texts in ancient cultures.
4) Key debates and areas of inquiry in early Greek linguistics, such as the nature vs. convention controversy over the origin of language.
This document provides an outline of a lecture on the history of linguistics. It discusses:
1) The prehistory of linguistics, including early myths and ideas about language from various cultures.
2) Ancient linguistics traditions from Babylonia, India, Egypt, and Greece, including important early grammarians like Panini.
3) The origins of linguistics as a scholarly field in response to language change and the need to explain religious/legal texts in ancient cultures.
4) Key debates and areas of inquiry in early Greek linguistics, such as the nature vs. convention controversy over the origin of language.
This document provides an outline of a lecture on the history of linguistics. It discusses:
1) The prehistory of linguistics, including early myths and ideas about language from various cultures.
2) Ancient linguistics traditions from Babylonia, India, Egypt, and Greece, including important early grammarians like Panini.
3) The origins of linguistics as a scholarly field in response to language change and the need to explain religious/legal texts in ancient cultures.
4) Key debates and areas of inquiry in early Greek linguistics, such as the nature vs. convention controversy over the origin of language.
Lecture 3: History of the science of language 1 Outline Your homework from last time Overview of last 2 lectures Why study it? Whats the use of the history of linguistics? Prehistory of linguistics Ancient linguistics Middle ages in Europe Rise of European colonialism and nation states Modern linguistics
The Prague school British structuralism Danish structuralism American structuralism Rejection of structuralism
What are interesting and important issues and questions?
2 Homework from last time What is mathematical induction? How if at all is it like scientific induction? How do mathematicians and philosophers of mathematics regard it?
Are they as cautious and critical of it as in science? 3 So who? 4 Overview of last 2 lectures Lets hear it from you
What is science? What is a scientific approach? Some remarks on the origin and history of science Pseudo-science and hoaxes The philosophy of science Scientific reasoning
Deduction Induction Inference to best explanation Explanation Causality
Conclusion 5 Because its there George Mallory, March 1923 Excitement
Excitement of doing linguistics excitement of doing history
Like all cultural phenomena linguistics has a history, which partly shapes it:
The questions it addresses The methods it employs 6 Why study it? Whats the use of the history of linguistics? Koerner 2002 concludes his Toward a history of American linguistics saying that he feels impelled to comment on the usefulness of the history of linguistics What he comes up with is somewhat disappointing:
The need for a historical perspective in learning linguistics introduction to the subject via history Historical knowledge as part of a scientists education the scientist is not a mechanic, and has more than mechanical skills Historical knowledge as means of evaluating new hypotheses contributes to the development of skills in judgement of new ideas, and safeguards against uncritical acceptance of allegedly novel ideas Historical knowledge as a means of moderating exaggerated theoretical claims, and claims to novelty Historical knowledge as furthering the unity of the the complex subject
7 All of Koerners suggestions seem to be variants on one theme
Understanding what we do and why we do it 8 Thomas, M. 2007. The evergreen story of Psammetichus inquiry into the origin of language. Historiographia Linguistica XXXIV (1): 37-62 has a better suggestion, which might be put crassly as:
To make linguists and students aware of myths in the discipline, and to take a critical line on them She quotes Vivian Law, saying:
a key responsibility of students of the language sciences is to learn to listen to [what texts from other cultures and times] say with openness and acceptance
9 I think there is also another much more important and compelling reason:
Contribution to language documentation and description 10 Prehistory of linguistics People everywhere talk about language: they have ideas about its nature, uses, origins, acquisition, structure, and so on
Recall Hockett!
Some of these notions are enshrined in mythology
Naming things by Adam remember? Tower of Babel accounts for? Others? 11 Linguistics?
Represents a body of knowledge and beliefs about language But, there are differences from linguistics as we understand the term, right?
Such as?
Ethnolinguistics as per ethnomathematics, ethnohistory ( oral history), ethnowhatever 12 13 Rise of linguistics as field of investigation with rise of civilisations, agriculture and writing
In most cases these traditions arose in response to language change and the resulting impact on religious and legal domains
Babylonian clay tablets (cuneiform) emergence of a grammatical tradition around 3000 BC, continuing for 2500 years.
Preservation of Sumerian; translations into Akkadian Comparative paradigms in the two languages Ancient linguistics The linguistic texts from the earliest parts of the tradition were lists of nouns in Sumerian Over the centuries the lists became standardised, and the Sumerian words were provided with Akkadian translations. Ultimately texts emerged that give Akkadian equivalents for not just single words, but for entire paradigms of varying forms for words: one text, for instance, has 227 different forms of the verb gar to place. 14 15 16 Indian tradition, from about 500 BC
Mainly for religious purposes, motivated by linguistic changes, and differences between the spoken language and the written Sanskrit Ritual required the exact verbal performance of the religious texts, and a grammatical tradition emerged that set out rules for the ancient language
Panini most famous of the Indian grammarians date unknown (600BC? 300BC?) His grammar covered
Phonetics including differences between words pronounced in isolation and in connected speech Morphology, expressed largely in the form of rules of word formation, sometimes of a high degree of abstraction.
The Hindu tradition of linguistics far surpassed anything done in Europe for a very long time. Panini introduced the notion of zero into linguistics
18 Egyptian linguistics pharaoh Psammaticus (c. 450 BC) famous for his experiment on origins of human language
If that is what it was Thomas 2007 provides a telling critique and analysis of the myth
Remember? Linguistics in ancient Greece Influence of Greek intellectual traditions in modern European thought
Philosophy Mathematics Linguistics
Some notable differences from the earlier intellectual traditions of Mesopotamia, Egypt, etc. Bloomfield: The ancient Greeks had the gift of wondering at things that other people take for granted 19 Influences on the development of linguistics as a scholarly field:
Developed slightly later than the Hindu tradition, and also initially in response to linguistic change necessitating explanation of the language of Homers epics No evident interest in other language Interest in the dialect varieties of Greek
In the Hellenistic period (from c.300 BC) evidence of systematic study of differences in dialectal varieties of Greek
Robins suggests that the first evidence of linguistic scholarship was in the development of writing
2 nd millennium BC Linear B, syllabic Disappearance of writing with Dorian invasions Reappearance of writing as alphabetic system, derived from Phoenician script an abjad
Modified to an alphabet by reassigning values to some of the consonant symbols 20 21 22 Conscious linguistic thought emerged in the classical age of Greek literature
Observations on language (=Greek) begin with pre-Socratic philosophers Socrates, Plato, Aristotle Later the Stoics founded by Zeno (c.300 BC)
I guess not Zeno of Elea (ca. 490 - 430 BC), as in the paradoxes
Platonic dialogues contain scattered references to language
Cratylus is devoted to linguistic questions 23 As distinct from most other ancient traditions, in Greek linguistics philosophical and theoretical questions about language were also investigated, including:
The origin of language The relation between language and thought The relation between form and meaning 24 Stoics developed linguistics
But their work is only known from later writers their works do not survive
Notably, recognised distinction between form and meaning, and the signifier and signified in language Gave separate treatment to grammar, phonetics, and etymology 25 Linguistic questions concentrated on Greek Focussed on two controversies:
Nature vs. convention (earlier) Regularity/analogy vs. irregularity/anomaly (later)
Cratylus debate on origin of language and relation of words and meanings (nature vs. convention)
Does not reach a conclusion
Naturalist argument invoked sound symbolism and (folk, speculative) etymology
Socrates stance: subsequent changes obscured the natural connections
Conventionalists observed that vocabulary can be readily changed, and language remains as efficient
The position explicitly adopted later by Aristotle 26 Epicurus (341-270BC) took a middle position:
Word forms arose naturally, but were modified by convention Stoics favoured this position
Origins of language in imitation of things
Recall bow-wow and ding-dong theories 27 Aristotle and Stoics also differed on the other controversy:
Basically concerns the extent to which orderliness and paradigmatic regularity is found in language (=Greek) Analogical arguments were sometimes deployed to argue for one word form over another
Some analogists attempted to reform irregular paradigms of Greek
Anomalist position appeared particularly convincing when derivational and inflectional morphology was not distinguished 28 Three main aspects of Greek linguistics:
Etymology stimulated by the nature- convention controversy
Little of value was achieved
Fanciful etymologies proposed seriously, e.g. in Cratylus And continued into Middle Ages 29 Phonetics more impressive progress
Some articulatory classifications, and some understanding of the production of sounds on egressive pulmonic airstream Syllable recognised as a structural unit But problem in not distinguishing speech and writing confusion appears to have been rife
Descriptive framework primarily concerned the pronunciation of letters of the Greek alphabet
Phone/letter as a structural unit
Stoics recognised phonetics as a separate branch of linguistics
Three aspects of written letters:
Phonetic value Written shape Name of letter 30 Stoics studied syllable structure, and distinguished:
Sound sequences attested in actual words (morphemes?) Possible but not attested sequences Impossible sequences
Classifications and descriptions of phones was often impressionistic acoustic
Rather than articulatory as in the more impressive treatment in the Indian tradition 31 Grammar was the domain in which Greek linguistics made its most significant contribution
Influence on the development of modern linguistics in shape of grammatical descriptions, categories, terminology, and theories
Framework the word-paradigm model
Word at the centre Morpheme not recognised 32 Word based grammar involves 3 procedures:
Identification of the word as a linguistic entity Establishment of word classes parts of speech Establishment of grammatical categories to describe the morphology of the words in the paradigms, and their syntax of combination 33 Lets look at the recognition of some grammatical categories:
Nominal gender recognised by Protagoras (5 th
century BC, a Sophist)
Also distinguished sentence types according to illocutionary force wish, question, statement, command
Parts of speech: nominals vs. verbals distinguished by Plato (not the first)
A third class embracing conjunctions, pronouns, articles and possibly prepositions added by Aristotle 34 Stoic grammarians increased the number of parts of speech
Gave better definitions Identified subclasses
Stoics also distinguished
Nominal cases
Which came to be taken as the fundamental criterion for distinguishing nominals and verbs
Verbal categories
Active transitives Passives Neutral intransitives 35 Temporal categories in the verb:
Tense past vs. present Aspect completive vs. incompletive
Future and aorist (aspectually and formally unmarked, reference to past time) were considered to fall outside of this system 36 Roman linguistics also arose in response to perceived changes in the spoken language
Continued interest in the themes of concern to Greek linguistics Primary interest in morphology, particularly parts- of-speech and the forms of nouns and verbs; syntax largely ignored
Varro produced a multi-volume grammar of Latin, only parts of which (6 of 25 books) survive (c. 120 BC) Later grammars of Donatus (C4 AD) and Priscan (C6 AD) were highly influential in the Middle Ages
37 Arabic tradition had beginnings in C7 AD, with the work of Abu al-Aswad ad-Dual (c. 607-688) Also heavily influenced by the Greek grammatical tradition
Focussed on morphology Attention to accurate phonetic descriptions..
The Arabic tradition a major influence on the Hebrew tradition, which began slightly later, in about the ninth century. Saadya ben Joseph al-Fayyum (882-942) produced the first grammar and dictionary of Hebrew (Afroasiatic, Israel). Reached its peak in C13 with David Qimh is (c. 1160-1235) work, which subsequently had a strong impact on European linguistics 38 39 With expansion of writing in the vernacular languages, problem of devising orthographies Rise of descriptive grammars of Latin around AD1000 for speakers of other languages In about 1000 an abbot in Britain wrote a grammar of Latin for Anglo-Saxon speaking children Descriptive grammars of the vernaculars were also written; these generally presented the languages in the mould of Latin Emergence of the notion of the universal nature of grammar in C12
Later refined and developed by Roger Bacon (1214-1294) and others Bacon held that grammar was fundamentally the same in all languages, differences being incidental and shallow Middle Ages in Europe, 500-1400 Notable work is The First Grammatical Treatise, a 12 th century work on Icelandic phonology not widely known for nearly 700 years!
Main concern was spelling reform, to correct inadequacies of the Latin-based writing system of Icelandic Hinted at notions of phoneme and minimal pairs
About same time, Arabic scholars began tradition of accurate phonetic transcription of words
40 41 Rise of European colonialism (and nation states) From C15, colonization brought Europeans into contact with a wide variety of languages in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific Information about them was gathered by explorers, colonial administrators, travellers, missionaries, and others
Subsequently disseminated within Europe in the form of word lists, grammars, and texts
Scholars compiled word lists in many languages and used them in language comparisons Became appreciated that certain languages were related to one another
Techniques were developed and honed over time Ultimately leading to the establishment of the comparative method and the Neogrammarian tradition (beginning in C19)
Colonial period refers to the 400 or so years from late C15 to C20 when European states established colonies on other continents
The Americas Asia Africa Australia and the Pacific
42 Begins soon after the Renaissance (14th17th centuries)
But lasted a couple of centuries longer
For linguistics the periods were characterised by considerable flowering of research in
Europe not my concern The colonies
The bit I am most interested in
Of course, there was significant interaction between them Europe mostly professional academics; the colonies mainly (educated) amateurs, but
I will talk about one piece of late colonial linguistic research in Australia
43 Interest in the diversity of language, and thus the origins
Leibniz (1646-1716) monogenesis of human languages Reland writing in 1706, proposed languages from Madagascar to islands of Indonesia were related Sajnovics and Gyarmati proposed relatedness of Saami, Finnish, and Hungarian, late 1700s William Jones (1746-1794) famously proposed in late 1780s the relatedness of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin
Not the first:
Andreas Jger (c.1660-1730) had previously proposed this in 1686, putting the homeland of this ancient language in the Caucasus mountains, from which the languages spread by waves of migrations into Europe and Asia
But Jones produced most systematic evidence Began study of historical linguistics Rasmus Rask (1787-1832) continued developing the tradition, and served as a precursor to the neogrammarians of late C19. 44 In 1776 Abb Lievain Proyart (c. 1743-1808) observed the relatedness of the African languages Kakongo, Laongo, and Kikongo; In 1787 Jonathan Edwards (1745-1801) argued that the Algonquian languages of North America form a family
Also interests in other linguistic topics: 45 Grammars of European languages were written, as also were grammars of the languages of the colonies
Missionaries played an important role in this, and their grammars of non-European languages dominated from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries Latin grammar formed the basis for the tradition of missionary grammars
Although the best of the missionary grammarians were aware of problems in applying Latin categories and structures to other languages They struggled with varying degrees of success to understand and describe the unfamiliar categories 46 Also notable in C19 was the Finnish academic program of investigation of the non-Indo-European languages of the Russian empire
Also involved Russian academics
This fieldwork-based research yielded grammars, dictionaries, and text collections in Finno-Ugric, Samoyedic, Turkic, Mongolian, Paleo-Siberian, and Tungusic languages Other colonial powers mounted similar academic investigations, though not as ambitious
Often undertaken in conjunction with anthropological, biological, and geological studies 47 48 Modern linguistics Emerged in late C19 and early C20 Focus changed from historical to descriptive (synchronic) studies
Main idea is language can be viewed as a self- contained and structured system situated at a particular point in time This is the basis for structuralist linguistics that developed in the post-First World War period
1886 founding of IPA in Paris (Daniel Jones, Paul Passy, Otto Jespersen and many others) Most important figure was Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
Saussure began as a neo- grammarian
He wrote an important piece within the tradition
On what?
But became increasingly dissatisfied
Published very little himself Initiated modern linguistics with posthumously published Course in general linguistics 49 50 Saussures influence extended beyond linguistics, into neighbouring disciplines including anthropology and semiotics
Championed the idea that language is a system of arbitrary signs His conceptualisation of the sign has been highly influential Remember? 51 Form Meaning tree 52 Early period of modern linguistics was dominated by study of sound systems (phonetics, and phonology):
Daniel Jones (1861-1967) rejection of phonetics/phonology opposition Nikolai Trubetzkoy features, phonology Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) universals Henry Sweet (1845-1912) was one of the leading figures in phonetics in the second half of the nineteenth century He and the Polish linguist Baudouin de Courtenay (1845-1929) were independently instrumental in development of the notion of the phoneme or distinctive sound de Courtenay drew the terminological distinction between phoneme and phone
I seem to recall that there has been recent evidence that someone else beat him to it but I cant find it 53 54 Diversification of linguistics in C20
The Prague school British structuralism Danish structuralism American structuralism Rejection of structuralism (?) Modern bipartition of linguistics
The Prague school Began as a group of Czech and other linguists who formed the Linguistic Circle of Prague in 1926 Primary interest of the Circle was phonological theory
Led by Nicholai Trubetzkoy (1890-1838), a professor in Vienna, whose Grundzge der Phonologie [Principles of phonology] made important contributions to the notion of the phoneme Prague school phonology succeed in placing the notion of the phoneme in the centre of linguistic theory, as one of the most fundamental units 55 Most famous representative was Roman Jakobson (1896-1982)
Did original research in a range of areas of linguistics Jakobson emigrated to the USA in 1942, and subsequently had a significant impact on the development of phonological theory there 56 Began with J.R. Firth (1890-1960) who held the first chair in linguistics, in the University of London, from 1944 to 1956. Firth lived for some time in India and studied its languages Brought a number of original and provocative perspectives to linguistics
He established the London School of linguistics
Questioned the assumption that speech can be divided into segments of sound strung one after the other, regarding this as an artefact of alphabetic scripts used by westerners
His theory of prosodic analysis focussed on phonetic elements larger than individual sounds, and anticipated some developments in phonology by half a century
Firth was also deeply concerned with meaning
Influenced by the Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) Developed a contextual theory of meaning that accorded a crucial role to use in context
Meaning is use in context 57 British structuralism One of his students, Michael A.K. Halliday (1925-) elaborated Firths ideas and developed them into a coherent theory
From the late 1950s, Halliday refined systemic functional grammar; Hallidays ideas have attracted a much attention, especially in applied linguistics The tradition he began is represented in Britain, Australia, America, Spain, China, and Japan.
Firths ideas were developed in other ways as well, including by other students, and their students
Firths singular approach remains a source of inspiration to many including myself and has spawned a range of neo-Firthian theories. 58 59 Luis Hjelmslev (1889-1965), famous Danish structuralist linguist
One of the major proponents of structural linguistics after Saussure Major work Omkring Sprogteoriens Grundlggelse (1943), English translation Prolegomena to a theory of language (1953) From 1935, Hjelmslev called his theory glossematics. Danish structuralism Frans Boas (1858 1942)
Edward Sapir (1884 - 1939)
Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949) 60 American structuralism Boas main concern was to gather information on the languages and cultures Native Americans before they disappeared Methods he and his students developed for the description of these languages became the basis of American structuralism Boas and Sapir strongly upheld the notion that all languages should be described in their own terms, rather than being forced into the mould of European languages They maintained psychological and anthropological orientations, seeing language as intimately connected with the way of life and thought of its speakers
Subsequently developed by Sapirs student Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) into the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis 61 Bloomfields primary concern was to establish linguistics as a science
He opposed the mentalistic orientation of Boas and Sapir He was heavily influenced by the mechanistic outlook of behaviourist psychology His approach focussing on methodology was the dominant force in American linguistics from the 1930s until the mid-1950s Meaning played little part in this enterprise, The analytical methods discovery procedures that were developed attempted to exclude meaning as far as possible 62 Charles Hockett (1916-2000) was regarded as the most promising student of Bloomfield Lots of interesting ideas ...
63 Associated with American linguistics, beginning with Noam Chomskys 1957 Syntactic structures Explicit rejection of behaviourism and discovery procedures of the American linguistics of 1930s-1950s Rise of Generative Grammar
Still a powerful force in linguistics today (Denmark is something of an exception), but increasing number of competing models Forms background for many of the competing theories.
64 Rejection of structuralism 65 Increasingly linguistic historiographers are questioning the alleged Chomskyan revolution
And its rejection of structuralism
Koerner 2002 is one work that overviews the history of Chomskyan construal of themselves and the field
And takes issue with a number of major tenets, e.g. the discontinuity with structuralism 66 What are interesting issues and questions? Here are a few of the ones I consider interesting and certainly not a complete list:
How has the conceptualisation of a grammatical description evolved? Recall here the Boas comment What has been the role of applications/applied linguistics in the origins and development of the subject? How can we understand old descriptions and documentations of exotic languages? Personal biographies and how people have engaged with the subject and how have they shaped it?
What about the rank and file?
How have social and ethical consciousnesses emerged in linguistics? 67 How have our methodologies evolved? How have our theories evolved, and how does this relate to methodological evolution? What has been the role of religion in the development of linguistics? How have local and/or non-mainstream traditions in linguistics related to global and dominant ones? How have linguists struggled with understanding unusual phenomena in the worlds languages, and how has this contributed to the development of theory and description? How does linguistic thought correlate diachronically with thought in other scientific domains soft (anthropology, biology, sociology) and hard (mathematics, physics)? How does linguistic thought correlate diachronically with broad culture-based ideologies?