THE DEVELOPMENT OF LINGUISTICS FROM THE
ANCIENT GREEK
PERIOD, MEDIEVAL PERIOD, RENAISSANCE PERIOD TO THE 19
TH
CENTURY
INTRODUCTION: The evolution of the scientific study of language ie Linguistics reflects the direction in the general progress of man through the ages. From the ancients to the modern and post modern era, we observe an increasing
complexity of the thought forms that forms the basic structure of language.
In the words of the American linguist, Leonard Bloomfield Language plays a great part in our life, perhaps because of its familiarity, we rarely observe it, taking rather for granted as we do with walking ad breathing. The effects of language are remarkable and include much of
what distinguishes man f rom the other animals. Like in all areas of human endeavour and development, the history of linguistics reflects the debt we owe to our forbears and ancestors.
Hence we have a steady progression of linguistic thought f rom the ancient to the modern period.
ANCIENT GREEK LINGUISTICS
The ancient Greeks had the gift of wondering about things other took for granted. They speculated boldly and persistently about the origin, 1
history and structure of language. Our traditional lore about language is due to them. The Greek grammatical traditional was largely developed originally by
schoolmasters, though we of the modern era got knowledge of this, through the language of the Greek philosophers. The core of Grecian ideas linguistics that has run throughout history includes: history of language; parts of speech and the relationship between language and thought, to mention but a few. Furthermore, a
persistent controversy in Greek linguistics has been the controversy of whether nature or convention accounted for the relationship between words and their meaning. A subject of concern during this
period of linguistics was language was man-made or original or supernatural in origin. The possibilities that the meaning of language , is agreed by consensus or having pre-determined fixed values was also a theme that characterized Greek linguistics. The great and notable scholars during this period as is usual were involved in the debate of whether language was natural ie originated in the idea of things; with the first words imitating the things they name or as earlier s tated developed by convention or a synthesis of the two.
Plato favoured the first position, while Aristotle was for theme of convention. The Stoics however, held that language originated in nature.
It is worthy to mention here that Greek linguistics helped in the development of linguistics by originating generalizations that were later developed by succeeding generations of scholars, notably Roman
Philosophers. The Greek generalizations were not improved upon until the eighteenth century, when scholars ceased to view language as a direct gift f rom God, and put various theories as to its origin.
2
In summary, ancient Greek linguistics served as the basis for succeeding generation of linguists to improve upon the essence and core of the
science of language, thus providing the necessary raw m aterials for the gradual development in linguistic thought, theory and practice. MEDIEVAL LINGUISTICS
Medievalism c ould be widely postulated to mean the history of Europe between the end of the Holy Roman Empire (476 A.D.) and the about the year 1500 A.D. It is generally agreed that medieval period is the
period of the Middle Ages albeit largely European in character and attributes.
Medieval linguistics is an off shoot of Greek linguistics were Latin was the principal language of discourse. The medieval scholar largely
studied only classical Latin. Furthermore, the medieval philosophers also known as the scholastics studied and discovered some features of Latin grammar, such as the distinction between nouns and adjectives and the differences between
concord, government and apposition. The medieval linguists or philosophers contributed much less than the ancients, who had, at any rate, first-hand knowledge of the languages they studied. The medieval scholar saw in Latin the classical normal form of human speech.
However, it should be noted that, the medieval linguists through their studies has provided us with the rules of general grammar. The rules of GENERAL GRAMMAR demonstrate the structure of various languages (especially of Latin) and that these displays the fact that, languages embody universal cannons of logic.
3
The doctrine of GENERAL GRAMMAR seeks to apply logical standards to language. P hilosophers, to this day, in acknowledging the contribution s of Linguistics to the advancement of knowledge, still look for truths about the universe in the formal features of one language or another.
Another dimension of the medieval linguists is the belief that the GRAMMARIAN fortified by his powers of reasoning can ascertain the logical basis of language and prescribe how people ought to speak in
society. The medieval era linguistics coupled with the spread of education also brought about a CLASS dimension in the arena of language and
communication. RENAISSANCE PERIOD The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly th
through the 14
th
to the 17
century beginning in Florence in present
day Italy in the Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe.
As a cultural movement it encompassed a resurgence of learning based on classical sources based educational reform, exploration and experimentation. The Renaissance period can also been seen as the bridge between the Medieval and Modern epochs. The Linguistic horizon naturally widened during the Renaissance period.
At the end of the middle ages, the study of Greek came back into fashion; soon afterward, Hebrew and Arabic was added. The Renaissance was a period of travel and experimentation. Travellers brought back vocabularies, and missionaries translated religious books into the tongues of newly discovered countries.
In other words,
through
Europe
voyages,
conquest
and
colonization,
acquainted with a wide variety of languages. 4
became
Information on languages f rom Asia, Af rica and America became available in the form of word lists, grammar, dictionaries and religious texts. In fact, the Renaissance period can be aptly classified as the era of comparative linguistics. TH
19
CENTURY LINGUISTICS
What is referred to as m odern linguistics began its development in the th
th
18 century reaching the so called golden age of philology in the 19 CENTURY. th
The 19
century witnessed the rise of historical linguistics, and with
the predominance of historical linguistics, linguistics became a science.
It was during this period that the systematic comparison of Indo European languages began, with a lot of Treatises and publications. The period also gave birth to a great stream of historical research and a
small but general accelerated linguistic study. Furthermore, some scholars also examined a variety of languages in order to get a philosophical basis or survey of human speech. We also witnessed the fusion of historical-comparative and philosophical-descriptive to the
study of various languages. In summary the nineteenth century, saw the emergence of divergent interests in the study of linguistics viz, fundamentals of language,
Language structure, psychology of speech, etc, especially on the GERMANIC, ROMANCE AND SLAVIC language stocks, including the ancients languages of Latin, Hebrew, and Sanskrit.
5
SOME
SCHOLARS
and
THEIR
CONTRIBUTIONS
IN
THE
AFOREMENTIONED PERIODS ANCIENT SCHOLARS y
PLATO In his dialogue Cratylus, Plato (427-347 B.C) discusses the origin of words, and particularly the question the relation between things and the words which name is a natural and necessary relation or
merely the result of human convention. This dialogue gives us the first glimpse of into a century long
controversy between the ANALOGISTS and the ANOMALIST. The Analogists believed that language was natural and therefore logical at the bottom of it, while the Anomalist were of the belief that language was irregular, basing their opinion on the irregularity of linguistic structure. To Plato, therefore, we owe the debate to the origin of language in other words; the Etymology of words or language was born. y
ARISTOTLE
In the work De Interpretatione, the scholar, Aristotle also contributed to the Greek grammatical tradition, by favouring that the origin of words was as result of human convention and not natural. y
HERODIAN (Son of Apollonius Dyscolus) This ancient Greek grammarian was able to collate and assemble a vast library of information on the INFLECTIONS and ACCENTS OF
Greek Language
6
y
THE STOICS The Stoics were the class of ancient Greek scholars and
philosophers who also delved into linguistics. They were of the view that, Language originated in nature. They also made linguistics an important part of the study of the cosmos and human. Furthermore, the stoics laid the foundations of sign terms, later adopted by Ferdinand De Saussure. And finally, the
Stoics were also responsible for the gradual definition of terminology and theory now echoed in modern linguistics. MEDIEVAL SCHOLARS y
DANTE In
De
Vulgaria Eloquenta, (On the Eloquence of Vernacular),
Dante expanded the scope of linguistic enquiry into the traditional languages of the day. In a significant reversal of the typical
prioritization of Latin, regarded as the vernacular and primary speech as it was first learned, declared that vernacular without any rules (sine omnia regular ) by which he meant the written
codified rules as taught in schools. Actually DANTE and most of the lesser known medieval scholars were hampered on the
subject because of a lack of comparative texts and elements within them, because the medieval were solely involved in the Latin of the day, as postulated and preached by the Church. y
For the medieval scholars, language meant classical Latin, as it appears in Books, we find few traces of interests in any other form of speech. It was during this period that Latin was changing 7
f rom its ancient form to the present form we now know as
Romance Languages (French, Italian, Spanish and so on). On an aggregate basis, the scholars of the medieval era actually
contributed to the development of Latin Grammar, such as distinction between Noun and Adjectives
and the differences
between concord, government and apposition.
THE RENAISSANCE SCHOLARS y
FRANCISCUS JUNIUS (1589-1677)
Accomplished an enormous amount of work in the study of ancients documents and hence contributed to the development of linguistics. He published an ANGLO SAXON GRAMMAR and a THESAURUS of miscellaneous information about the older stages of English and the sister tongues. Thus, laying further, a stronger and firmer basis for succeeding generations of linguists. TH
THE 19 y
CENTURY SCHOLARS
JAKOB GRIMM Jakob
Grimm (1785-1863), initiator of the Grimms Law, is one of
the largest luminaries of historical linguistics.
Grimms Law is all about sound correspondences among the IndoEuropean languages. He recognized the importance of sound correspondences as evidence of family relationships; implying that his law had important consequences for the history of language and the validity of etymology, and that it (the Grimms
Law) provided sufficient kinship of the languages involved. Grimms Law treats series of changes in certain consonants f rom Proto-Indo European to Proto- Germanic. 8
y
FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE
Ferdinand De Saussure (1856-1913) largely regarded as the father of modern linguistics, emphasized the synchronic study of language structure and how linguistics elements are organized into the system of each language. He also pushed further and developed the theory of signs. In Saussures view, linguistics entities were considered members of a system and were defined by their relations to one another within the system. H e compared language to a game of chess, a highly organized algebraic
system of relations, where everything thing holds together as in an organic system of dependencies.
Saussure was influenced by the eminent sociologist of his day, Emil Durkheim and he saw language as a social fact (rather than a mental or psychological one, as others have held), that is, a
collective consciousness, which is both the possession of society at large but also defines society. Today, nearly all approaches to linguistics are structuralist in
some sense and reflect the great Saussures monumental influence. y
BAUDOUIN DE COURTENAY Badouin De Courtenay (1845-1929), a Polish by birth, together with Saussure developed Linguistic theory independently. His thinking was instrumental in the development of the concept of
phoneme, morpheme, grapheme, distinctive feature and alternation, all basic terminologies in modern linguistics.
9
Bibliography Blackwell Reference Online. The Handbook Of Linguistics (Edited) 2002
Leonard, Bloomfield. Language and Linguistics Compton Printing ,
Ltd, London, 1933 Noam,
Chomsky. Cartesian
University Press, 2009.
10
Linguistics
rd
3
Ed.
Cambridge
