A short history of linguistics download

Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up Log in. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. A short history of linguistics Item Preview. EMBED for wordpress. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! The final section, covering the twentieth century, has been rewritten and divided into two new chapters, so as to deal effectively with the increasingly divergent development of descriptive and theoretical linguistics that took place in the latter half of this century Includes bibliographical references and index Introduction -- Greece -- Rome -- The Middle Ages -- The Renaissance and after -- The eve of modern times -- Comparative and historical linguistics in the nineteenth century -- Linguistics in the presennt century.

American structuralism Franz Boas — , Edward Sapir — , and Leonard Bloomfield — were responsible for setting American linguistics on its course. Boas, along with his student 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. He opposed the mentalistic orientation of Boas and Sapir, and was heavily influenced by the mechanistic outlook of the then fashionable behaviourist psychology.

The focus on methodology and shunning of theory during these decades was perhaps at least partly a consequence of the orientation of American linguistics to the description of the traditional languages of the Americas.

Methods had to be developed in the first place to facilitate the gathering and analysis of information on the languages which were not spoken by the linguist. Likewise, to meet the demands of describing each language in its own terms, it was essential to have bare analytical methods that presupposed as little as possible about the structure of language generally.

Contemporary approaches to linguistics The schools of linguistic thought that arose in the first half of the twentieth century, some of which were mentioned in the previous subsection, continued to proliferate in the twentieth century, spawning even more new schools of thought.

It is usual to divide the vast array of approaches into two primary types, formal and functional, according to whether they adopt an overall focus on form or on function. This corresponds roughly to which of the two fundamental aspects of the Saussurean sign they accord greatest attention although not all theories give a place to the sign. The division into formal and functional approaches is quite messy, and theories do not fall neatly into the categories.

Nevertheless, the formal-functional division has continued to be relevant to the drawing of lines of battle; the last decade has, however, seen a few attempts so far with limited success to foster less antagonistic relations between the two camps. In the following subsections we briefly outline the development first of formal then of functional theories.

We conclude with a few brief comments on some broad aspects of the field as it is today. This material by and large follows the textbook, pp. Formal linguistics In America, mainstream neo-Bloomfieldian structuralism became increasingly algebraic in orientation from the end of the Second World War, and focussed increasingly on syntax.

Grammar is considered to be a formal system making explicit the mechanisms — first in terms of rules, later by other means — by which the grammatical sentences of a language can be generated; and for this reason the tradition is called generative grammar.

Generative theory developed rapidly, and has undergone notable changes and renovations roughly every decade since. Alongside the Chomskian mainstream, alternative generative theories were developed by linguists working within the paradigm, including generative semantics, lexical functional grammar, generalized phrase structure grammar, and head-driven phrase structure grammar.

Functional linguistics The late s also saw new developments in linguistics in Europe, arising from the founding work of the Prague school and J. Both schools continue to this day as minor but significant forces on the linguistic landscape. Later, other functionally oriented schools emerged, mostly in opposition to Chomskian linguistics. One was functional grammar, developed from the late s by the Dutch linguist Simon Dik — A rather amorphous tradition arose in the USA around the same time. With many of its practitioners located on the west coast of America, it was dubbed West Coast Functional Grammar; it was less a school of thought than the others, and had no acknowledged leader.

Prominent in this tradition is the idea that grammatical categories are functional — that they arose to serve some purpose, and are not arbitrary. A major focus of interest was on the emergence over time of grammatical categories and structures grammaticalization.

West Coast Functional Grammar has been superceded by two more coherent schools of functional grammar, also strongly associated the west coast of the USA, cognitive grammar associated with Ronald Langacker — and construction grammar Charles Fillmore — and associates.

In contrast to West Coast Functional Grammar, these two theories construe the Saussurean sign as the centre-piece of grammar.

The Greenbergian tradition is one of the least functional of the functionalist schools, being functional more in its opposition to generative grammar than in its ideas.

Functionalist schools have been more willing to accept and integrate typological and language universal research than mainstream formal linguistics, and today practitioners of Dikian and West Coast functional grammar, and splinter theories, are major players in typological linguistics.

Scope of modern linguistics Contemporary linguistics is a richly diversified field, with so many specializations that no scholar can hope to cover them all.

Many branches acquired their separate identities and methodologies in the second half of the twentieth century, although most had been investigated previously. Generative grammar continues as a major force guiding their orientations and goals, although other theories have also had some impact. The majority of the almost 7, languages spoken in the world today and in the recent past have yet to be adequately documented and described.

A number of linguists are engaged in gathering data on the poorly documented languages, normally by doing fieldwork in remote locations, and describing them, by writing grammars, and compiling dictionaries and collections of texts.

Missionary linguists, many working under the umbrella of SIL International formerly the Summer Institute of Linguistics , a missionary organization established in the USA in , continue to play a prominent role. Over 1, languages are currently under investigation by SIL linguists. This book provides a vital student resource - a single-volume critical survey of the complete history of Western theoretical linguistics grammar and semantics, including logic from Plato till today.

The volume concentrates on those issues that are of central concern to present-day theoretical linguistics, but also draws attention to episodes and issues that have unjustifiably slid into oblivion, such as the 18th century French grammarians or the great subject-predicate debate between and An effort has also been made to interpret events and developments in linguistic theory in terms of the more general cultural and economic movements of the periods concerned.

It contains many expository and exegetic quotations, together with critiques of theoretical positions and, sometimes, of academic behavior. The book can serve as a basic text for a course on the history of linguistics, and as a collateral text in various courses on the theory of grammar and semantics.