History of linguistics

Not to be confused with Historical linguistics.
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Linguistics is the scientific study of language,[1] involving analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context.[2]

Language use was first systematically documented in Mesopotamia, with extant lexical lists of the 3rd to the 2nd Millennia BCE, offering glossaries on Sumerian cuneiform usage and meaning, and phonetical vocabularies of foreign languages.[3][4] Later, Sanskrit would be systematically analysed, and its rules described, by Pāṇini (fl. 6-4th century BCE), in the Indus Valley.[5][6] Beginning around the 4th century BCE, Warring States period China also developed its own grammatical traditions.[7][citation needed] Aristotle laid the foundation of Western linguistics as part of the study of rhetoric in his Poetics c. 335 BC.[8] Traditions of Arabic grammar and Hebrew grammar developed during the Middle Ages in a religious context like Pānini's Sanskrit grammar.

Modern approaches began to develop in the 18th century, eventually being regarded in the 19th century as belonging to the disciplines of psychology or biology, with such views establishing the foundation of mainstream Anglo-American linguistics,[9] although in England philological approaches such as that of Henry Sweet tended to predominate. This was contested in the early 20th century by Ferdinand de Saussure, who established linguistics as an autonomous discipline within social sciences.[6] Following Saussure's concept, general linguistics consists of the study of language as a semiotic system, which includes the subfields of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Each of these subfields can be approached either synchronically or diachronicially.

Today, linguistics encompasses a large number of scientific approaches and has developed still more subfields, including applied linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and computational linguistics.

  1. ^ Halliday, Michael A.K.; Jonathan Webster (2006). On Language and Linguistics. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. vii. ISBN 978-0-8264-8824-4.
  2. ^ Martinet, André (1960). Elements of General Linguistics. Studies in General Linguistics, vol. i. Translated by Elisabeth Palmer Rubbert. London: Faber. p. 15.
  3. ^ Smith, Sidney; Gadd, C. J.; Peet, T. Eric (1925). "A Cuneiform Vocabulary of Egyptian Words". The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. 11 (3/4): 230–240. doi:10.2307/3854146. ISSN 0307-5133. JSTOR 3854146.
  4. ^ "Sumerian Lexicon". www.sumerian.org. Retrieved 2022-01-24.
  5. ^ Bod, Rens (2013). A new history of the humanities: the search for principles and patterns from Antiquity to the present (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191757471. OCLC 868068245.
  6. ^ a b François & Ponsonnet (2013).
  7. ^ William S-Y., Wang (1989). "LANGUAGE IN CHINA: A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS / 汉语语言学发展的历史回顾". Journal of Chinese Linguistics. 17 (2): 183–222. JSTOR 23757139. Retrieved February 2, 2024.
  8. ^ Swiggers, Pierre; Wouters, Alfons (2001). "Philosophie du langage et linguistique dans l'Antiquité classique". In Haspelmath, Martin (ed.). Language Typology and Language Universals, Vol. 1. De Gruyter. pp. 181–192. ISBN 978-3-11-019403-6.
  9. ^ Joseph, John E. (2002). From Whitney to Chomsky: Essays in the History of American Linguistics. John Benjamins. ISBN 9789027275370.