1 Introduction
Many “histories” of linguistics have been written over the last two hundred years, and since the 1970s
linguistic historiography has become a specialized subfield, with conferences, professional
organizations, and journals of its own. Works on the history of linguistics often had such goals as
defending a particular school of thought, promoting nationalism in various countries, or focussing on
a particular topic or subfield, for example on the history of phonetics. Histories of linguistics often
copied from one another, uncritically repeating popular but inaccurate interpretations; they also
tended to see the history of linguistics as continuous and cumulative, though more recently some
scholars have stressed the discontinuities. Also, the history of linguistics has had to deal with the
vastness of the subject matter. Early developments in linguistics were considered part of philosophy,
rhetoric, logic, psychology, biology, pedagogy, poetics, and religion, making it difficult to separate
the history of linguistics from intellectual history in general, and, as a consequence, work in the
history of linguistics has contributed also to the general history of ideas. Still, scholars have often
interpreted the past based on modern linguistic thought, distorting how matters were seen in their
own time. It is not possible to understand developments in linguistics without taking into account
their historical and cultural contexts. In this chapter I attempt to present an overview of the major
developments in the history of linguistics, avoiding these difficulties as far as possible.
2 Grammatical Traditions
A number of linguistic traditions arose in antiquity, most as responses to linguistic change and
religious concerns. For example, in the case of the Old-Babylonian tradition, when the first linguistic
texts were composed, Sumerian, which was the language of religious and legal texts, was being
replaced by Akkadian. This grammatical tradition emerged, by about 1900 BC and lasted 2,500 years,
so that Sumerian could be learned and these texts could continue to be read. Most of the texts were
administrative lists: inventories, receipts, and rosters. Some early texts for use in the scribal school
were inventories (lists) of Sumerian nouns and their Akkadian equivalents. From this, grammatical
analysis evolved in the sixth and fifth centuries BC; different forms of the same word, especially of
verbs, were listed in a way that represented grammatical paradigms and matched them between the
two languages (Gragg 1995, Hovdhaugen 1982).
Language change also stimulated the Hindu tradition. The Vedas, the oldest of the Sanskrit
memorized religious texts, date from ca. 1200 BC. Sanskrit, the sacred language, was changing, but
ritual required exact verbal performance. Rules of grammar were set out for learning and
understanding the archaic language. Pāini's (ca. 500 BC) description (which contains also rules
formulated by his predecessors, in a tradition from the tenth to the seventh centuries BC) originated in
comparisons between versions called padapā a (word-for-word recitation) and sa a (continuous
recitation, of divine origin, unalterable) of the same Vedic texts. The grammatical rules were devised
for this comparison and for checking textual accuracy, and technical methods of grammatical
description were developed in connection with the formulation of these rules. In addition to Pāini,
Kātyāyana's rules of interpretation (ca. 300 BC) and Patanjali's commentary (ca. 150 BC) are important
in this tradition. Grammar was considered the most scientific of the sciences in India, and the scholars
in other areas aspired to the ideal embodied in the Hindu grammatical tradition (Staal 1974).
The Greek grammatical tradition, which also owes its origin to language change, was developed
originally by schoolmasters, though it is known only from later writings of philosophers. Homer's
works (ca. 850 BC) were basic in early Greek education, but the Greek of the fifth to the third centuries
BC had changed so much that explanations of Homer's language were important in the school
curriculum. Observations taken from earlier school grammar are found in works of Plato, Aristotle,
and the Stoics (Hovdhaugen 1982: 46). Themes important in the ancient Greek tradition have
persisted throughout the history of linguistics, such as the origin of language, parts of speech
(grammatical categories), and the relation between language and thought, to mention just a few. A
persistent controversy was whether “nature” or “convention” accounted for the relationship between
words and their meaning, and this had implications for the history of language and for the origin of
words. Earlier opinions on the matter are contrasted in Plato's (427–347 BC) Cratylus. At issue was
whether language originated in “nature” (phusis), with the first words supposedly imitating the things
that they name, or in “convention” (nomos or thesis), that is, in usage or naming, whether of human
or divine invention, or in a synthesis of the two. Aristotle (384–322 BC) in De interpretatione favored
convention over nature; the Stoics held that language originated in nature.
For the Greeks, morphology (word structure) was mostly a historical matter, about the creation of the
structure of words (part of “etymology”). Syntax was not described directly, but aspects of syntax were
treated in rhetoric and logic. With respect to parts of speech, we see in Plato's division of the sentence
into onoma (“name”) and rħema (“utterance”) an example where the interpretation of the past has
been based too much on present understanding. Plato's terms are at times equated with the modern
categories “noun” and “verb,” respectively, but they equally had shades of “subject” and “predicate,”
and “topic” and “comment,” or even entity and relation. The parts of speech (grammatical categories)
as understood in traditional grammar developed more fully with the Stoics and others (Hovdhaugen
1982: 41, 48).
Roman linguistics continued Greek themes. Aelius Donatus’ (fourth century AD) Ars minor and Ars
major and Priscian's (sixth century AD) Institutiones grammaticae (18 volumes) became exceedingly
important in the middle ages. Except for Varro (116–27 BC) and Priscian, Roman grammarians also did
not treat syntax (only parts of speech); rather, morphology dominated in an approach focussed on
noun declensions and verb conjugations (Hovdhaugen 1982: 87).
The Arabic grammatical tradition had roots in the Greek grammatical traditions, especially following
Aristotle. For Arabic grammarians, the Arabic language was sacred and immutable as enshrined in the
Qur'ān, and they were concerned with explaining why Arabic was perfect. For example, the system of
inflectional endings was believed to be proof of the symmetry and logicalness of the language. The
major impetus for grammatical study came from linguistic change and the desire to preserve the
integrity of the holy language of the Qur'ān. While no change was acknowledged in formal Arabic after
the eighth century, the realization that the spoken Arabic of the eighth and ninth centuries was
changing stimulated the development of Arabic grammatical study. Abū'l-Aswad ad-Du'alī (died ca.
688) is reputed to be the inventor of this grammatical tradition, which commenced seriously in the
writings of al-Khalīl (died 791) and Sībawayhi (died 804) (a Persian) (Owens 1988). The Hebrew
linguistic tradition began with concern for establishing the correct Hebrew text of the Old Testament.
Hebrew grammarians borrowed descriptive methods wholesale from the Arabic linguistic tradition and
developed a system of analysis for the morphology (analysis of words into their meaningful parts).
Between 900 and 1550, 91 authors composed 145 works on grammar that we know of. Saadya ben
Joseph al-Fayyūmī (a.k.a. Saadya Gaon) (882–942) is generally held to be the first to produce a
Hebrew grammar and dictionary (Tene 1995: 22). Ibn Janā of Cordova's Kitāb al-Luma' , written in
Judeo-Arabic, was the first complete description of Hebrew. For Ibn Janā (born 980 AD), Hebrew,
Arabic, and all other languages had three parts of speech: noun, verb, and particles (as in the Arabic
tradition, inherited from Aristotle). The tradition reached its peak in David Qimi's (ca. 1235) grammar,
Sepher mikhlol, whose main features were analysis of verbal forms with a set of affixes and roots.
This kind of analysis came to have a strong impact on European linguistics. Johannes Reuchlin's
(1506) comprehensive De rudimentis Hebraicis introduced the Hebrew method of morphological
analysis in Europe, and Theodor Bibliander (1548) recommended this analysis of words into roots and
affixes for the study of all languages. He thought languages described in the Hebrew manner would
be “in conformity with nature” and could therefore be meaningfully compared (Percival 1986).
Early Christian writers returned to the philosophical themes of Aristotle and the Stoics. Classical Latin
grammars, mainly Donatus’ Ars minor, were adapted to church education. Teachings of Roman
grammarians were mixed with folk views in a Christian frame. In the seventh and eighth centuries,
Donatus predominated, though ca. 830 Priscian's Institutiones replaced Donatus as the basic
grammar, resulting in a new tradition of commentaries, the first steps towards the shift of interest in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries which gave rise to the theory-oriented speculative grammar of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The origin of languages was also of natural interest to the
multilingual early Christian world, with notions of Babel and of taking the “word” to the nations of the
earth (Hovdhaugen 1982:109). In this environment, the hypothesis that Hebrew was the original
language from which all others sprang became predominant.
3 The Rise of Universal Grammar
Around AD 1000, a shift began in which logic came to dominate linguistic thought. Prior to 1100,
most scholars adhered faithfully to Donatus and Priscian; from the twelfth century onwards there was
a return to dialectics. The recovery through Arabic scholarship of Aristotle's lost writings was an
important factor, and Arabic commentators were quoted amply. Grammarians followed Aristotle's
view that scientific knowledge is universal or general and applies to all subject matter, including
grammar, hence universal grammar. Semantic analysis (or logical theory) came to dominate Europe
for the next four centuries. Pierre Abailard's (Abelard's) (1079–1142) Dialectica (ca. 1130)
systematized logic as expressed through the structure of ordinary language, building on Aristotle and
placing logic at the highest level of contemporary science. Robert Kilwardby (died 1279) insisted on
the universal nature of grammar, a concept more fully developed by Roger Bacon (1214–1294), both
Englishmen who taught in Paris. Bacon is famous for his statement that “grammar is substantially one
and the same in all languages, although it may vary accidentally” (Bursill-Hall 1995: 131).
“Speculative grammar” developed, with concern for the notion of modi significandi “ways of
signifying.” Some 30 authors, called Modistae, most connected with the University of Paris, integrated
Donatus and Priscian into scholastic philosophy (1200–1350), that is, the integration of Aristotelian
philosophy into Catholic theology. According to the Modistae, the grammarian's job was to explain
how the intellect had created a system of grammar; in language the grammarian expressed
understanding of the world and its contents through the modes of signifying (Bursill-Hall 1995: 132).
Such a grammatical system had to mirror reality as grasped by understanding; that is, grammar was
ultimately underwritten by the very structure of the universe (Breva-Claramonte 1983: 47). The
Modistae compiled lists of modes of signifying for Donatus’ and Priscian's parts of speech,
distinguishing essential modes (the same in all languages) from accidental ones. For example,
“predication” (verb) was essential to communication, but “tense” was accidental, since its function
could be signified by something else, for example by temporal adverbs. “Noun” was the most
essential (echoing Aristotle).
In the fourteenth century, teaching grammars began to compete with the scholastic commentaries,
and the Modistic approach faded; however, there was a revival of philosophical grammar in the
sixteenth century, begun with Julius Caesar Scaliger's (l'Escale) (1484–1558) De causis linguae latinae
(1540). For Scaliger, grammar was part of philosophy, including the causation or creation of language
from nature (hence the de causis in his title) (Breva-Claramonte 1983: 62). Francisco Sanchez
(Sanctius) de las Brozas (1523–1601) in Minerva, seu de causis linguae latinae (1587) attempted to
reconcile Plato and Aristotle by explaining that the “convention” favored by Aristotle was “reasoned,”
and, since reasoning is universal, God-given, it comes from ...
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