语言学流派

Summary of the Chapter two: A Brief History of

Linguistics

In this unit, we know that from the earliest period in the human history to more recent times, language studies developed along a route characterised by incremental in depth. From tentative attempts to know about human language till more systematic these inquiries into languages; from the description of particular languages to the description of various languages as a whole; from studying human languages proper to dealing with the relationships between language and thought, Logic, society, and culture, most inquiries seem to have taken us closer to the truth. However, as language is such a complicated phenomenon and each inquiry has its limitations, we are still far from having exhausted all aspects of language. It is safe to say, though, that these inquiries have certainly paved the way for unprecedented linguistic developments in the time that followed.

1.1 The linguistics in the four ancient civilisations

Knowledge of linguistic involves its history. And the history of linguistics is related to the origin of human language.Linguistics in a broad sense boasts a history as long as the history of writing. In this unit, there are altogether four ancient countries which play the important roles in the period of linguistic development, such as ancient India, ancient ancient China, ancient Greece, and ancient Roman. In each country, there are some linguists or philosophers who contributed to language. In the West, many philosophers were interested in a number of disciplines, language being one of their topics of discussion. They debated on the origin of the language, and the relationship between words and meaning. Such debate went on and on between Naturalists and Conventionalists about two oppositions: anomaly vs. analogy, and irreularity vs. regularity. The conventionalists pointed out that words can be changed at will and that language is equally efficient once the language has been accepted. In the East, and ancient China is the representative and enjoys the fame in her theories on the origins of language. Xu Shen , a Chinese linguist in the Han Dynasty, thought that the earliest historical record on writing can be traced back to an ancient figure named Fuxi. And he mentioned that Cangjie created writing .

Whatever stories may be and wherever the stories come from , they belong to myths. They only show how ancient people tried to get to know about language. Linguistics builds on the past. New developments do not only challenge and refute traditional doctrines, but also develop and reformulate them. In the next part , we will mainly explain linguistics in ancient times in the four ancient countries which were connected to the language.

Indian linguistics is essential to the history of the language’s development. In India, Veda and Sutras can be regarded as the sources for the earliest grammar. These earliest forms of literature had been passed down by words of mouth until they were recorded in Sanskrit. It is in the fourth century BC that the great Indian grammarian