(A) ancient Greek linguistics
The study of written language can be traced back to ancient Greece more than 2000 years ago. At that time, language research was carried out within the scope of philosophical research and belonged to a branch of philosophy. Around the fifth century BC, the Greeks had two famous debates about language. The first argument was between "spontaneous school" and "conventional school". The focus of the debate is the relationship between the form and meaning of language. Spontaneous school believes that the form of words reflects the essence of things, that is, the name of things is determined by the nature of things themselves. According to the onomatopoeia words in language, they came to the conclusion that language is natural. "Conventionalism" holds that the naming of things is mutually agreed by people in practice and has nothing to do with the essence of things. There are few onomatopoeia words in the language, and even if there are none, it will not affect language communication. Therefore, they think that language is the product of convention. This argument lasted for a long time. Although it didn't get any results, it promoted the study of etymology and became interested in the classification of various relations of words. It can be said that it was the first to study grammar under the framework of philosophy.
It is worth mentioning that at the end of the Warring States Period, Xun Kuang (335-255 BC) once pointed out in his Zheng Ming Pian: "If the name is not solid, it is advisable to make a Covenant. If it is established, it is appropriate. If it is not the same as the contract, it is inappropriate. The name is not solid, it is related to life, and the established name is the real name. " It can be seen that as early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, China scholars held a view similar to "established practice".
The second debate is closely related to the first debate. It developed between "variation school" and "analogy school". The focus of the debate is whether the grammatical structure is regular. Variants believe that language is irregular because it occurs naturally, and take many irregular phenomena in language as the basis of their argument. "Analogists" believe that the movement of the sun and the moon and the rotation of the four seasons in the universe are regular, and everything in the world is governed by laws, and language is no exception. Although there are irregular phenomena, they are still regular on the whole. Because Greek has both regular and irregular elements, neither side of the debate can convince anyone. However, both sides have made great contributions to the emergence of grammar theory. The contribution of the "school of change" is that they have determined the main grammatical categories; The contribution of "Analogy School" is that they have determined the main forms of buckling.
Early Greek scholars mainly focused on etymology, phonetics and grammar. Among them, grammar is the most outstanding achievement, which has a great influence on the development of traditional linguistics. The philosopher Plato (428-348 BC) was neutral in the debate between the spontaneous school and the conventional school. He thinks that some words directly reflect the essence of things; But there are so many words that it is impossible to judge the connection between their phonetic forms and meanings. When analyzing the relationship between words and meaning, he divided words into two categories (roughly equivalent to nouns and verbs), and was the first scholar to classify words in the history of western linguistics.
Plato's student Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a staunch "traditional theorist". He believes that language is established by convention and has rules to follow. On the basis of Plato's dichotomy of parts of speech, he classified words that neither belong to the subject nor the predicate (about equivalent to what we call conjunctions today). He also noticed some structural features, such as the case change of nouns and the tense change of verbs, and defined words for the first time.
Later, the Stoic school further divided words into articles, nouns, verbs and conjunctions on the basis of Aristotle's three parts of speech. Later, nouns were divided into proper nouns and common nouns. They also studied the tense of verbs and the case of nouns in detail, and thought that nouns could be divided into nominative case, accusative case, dative case, possessive case and vocative case.
In ancient Greece, Trax of Alexandria School (about the first century BC) made great contributions to traditional linguistics. In his 15 page booklet entitled "Reading and Writing Skills", he divided words into eight categories: nouns, verbs, participles, articles, pronouns, prepositions, adverbs and conjunctions. This booklet has a great influence on later generations. In the long history of nearly two thousand years, European grammarians still divide words into eight categories when analyzing other languages, although the terms used are slightly different.
Trax's research on grammar mainly focuses on morphology. Dieskau Lu, who wrote in Alexandria in the second century A.D., was the first to describe and analyze Greek syntax comprehensively. Starting with the relationship between nouns and verbs, this paper analyzes and describes the relationship between other parts of speech and nouns and verbs. At the same time, this paper also studies the consistent relationship between verbs and nouns or pronouns in person and number, and the substitution relationship between one kind of words instead of another. His syntactic analysis and description laid the foundation for distinguishing subject and object and subject and subordinate structure later.
(B) ancient Roman linguistics
From the third century BC to the second century BC, the dominance of Greece was gradually replaced by the Roman Empire. By the first century, the rule of the Roman Empire was quite stable. In the era when the Roman Empire ruled the western civilized world, the atmosphere of language learning was more active. We have learned about two famous debates in ancient Greece, as well as the views and achievements of the Alexandria School and the Stoic School on language issues. Varo (65438 BC+065438 BC+06-27 BC) described and explained the views of "Variation School" and "Analogy School" in detail, and also made a lot of analysis on Latin grammar. He divided the study of language into three parts: etymology, morphology and syntax. He distinguished the derivative structure from the inflectional structure, and found that Latin nouns have not only five cases of Greek nouns, but also one case, which is the first time in the history of western linguistics.
Quintilian (AD 35-95) is a scholar who cares about education, and has also made some comments on grammar. He believes that the correct use of language should conform to reasoning, imitate authority and quote classics. In the process of vocabulary development, meaning is much more important than form, so the choice of vocabulary should follow the basic principles of natural logic and analogy, that is, it should conform to reasoning. To judge whether the current usage is correct, we should turn to those educated authorities to see if they can approve it. If scholars have different opinions on a usage, they should look for evidence in ancient classics. These views undoubtedly had a great influence on later traditional linguists, especially when formulating grammatical rules and imposing certain usages, they always applied these principles consciously or unconsciously.
Among all Latin jurists, donatus (about 4th century A.D.) and Prician (about 5th century A.D.) had great influence on later generations. Prischi Ann wrote a grammar book with a volume of 18, which can be regarded as a masterpiece of Latin grammar. In this masterpiece, Prischi Ann makes a comprehensive analysis and description of Latin grammar by using the theoretical system and methods of Trax and Apollo News. He basically borrowed the grammar system of Greek scholars, but changed Latin into an exclamation point because there was no article, and even the derivative structure and inflectional structure distinguished by Varro were not accepted by him. Generally speaking, the vast majority of Latin jurists, like Puri Stian, pay attention to analyzing Latin grammar with Greek grammar patterns, but make little contribution to grammar theory. Their greatest contribution to linguistics is the establishment of Latin grammar.
Although Puri Stian's Latin grammar has no original ideas, it has played a great role in the spread of traditional grammar. In the following centuries, Latin grammar has been copying this pattern. Grammar books of other languages came out one after another in the Middle Ages, and Hebrew grammar, Arabic grammar and Old Irish grammar appeared in the middle of12nd century. By the end of 16 and the beginning of 17, almost all European languages had their own grammars. But all these grammars are based on Greek grammar or Latin grammar. 2) the development of historical comparative linguistics
19th century is the century of historical comparative linguistics. 1808, Schlaege (1772- 1829) published an academic paper entitled "On Indian Language and Wisdom". He emphasized the study of the internal structure of language, pointing out that Sanskrit is closely related to Latin, Greek and Germanic languages in vocabulary and grammar, and used the term "comparative grammar" for the first time. At the beginning of Danish 1787- 1832, there were German Grimm (1785- 1863) and Baup (17965438). Lasker published a grammar book on Old Scandinavian at 18 1 1 and another grammar book on Old English at 1830. In these two books, he first compared the etymological forms of different languages by phonetic alphabet correspondence. In fact, the correspondence in the later Green's Law was first put forward by Lasker and proved by examples. Grimu's German Grammar (second edition) published in 1822, discusses letters in a large space and expounds the phonetic correspondence between German and other Indo-European languages. These phonetic correspondence laws he discovered are called "Green's Law" by later generations. The purpose of Baup's language study is to find out the original grammatical structure of the language. In his book Comparative Grammar, he declared that his aim was to make a comparative description of related languages and explore the laws governing these languages and the sources of their inflections. It was in the process of exploring the original grammatical structure that he discovered the principle of comparative grammar. Some people think that when evaluating the principle of comparative grammar, his discovery can be compared with Columbus' discovery of the new continent.
1In the middle of the 9th century, almost all linguists used comparative methods to study languages, among which Schleicher (182 1- 1868) was the most famous and influential. Among his numerous works, the most important one is the Outline of Comparative Grammar of Germanic Languages in India. The book was published in 186 1 and reprinted four times later, which had a great influence on the development of historical comparative linguistics. Schleicher divided languages into different language families according to their characteristics, and used genealogical tree to represent the historical origin and system of languages. Influenced by Darwin's theory of biological evolution, he believes that the life of language, like the life of animals and plants, has a growing period and an aging period, so the change of pronunciation is carried out in strict accordance with the law, and there is no essential difference from the natural law. The task of linguists is to study the history of language development and the laws of phonetic changes. In the Outline of Comparative Grammar of Germanic Languages in India, he devoted about one third of his space to the study of phonetics. His views had a particularly obvious influence on later youth grammar schools.
Youth grammar school
The Youth Grammar School came into being at the end of 19, which occupied a dominant position in the linguistic field at that time. Its representative figures are Reqin (1840- 19 16), Osthoff (1847- 1909) and bruggeman (1849-/kloc-0). The young grammar school believes that there is no exception to the phonetic correspondence between languages, and the so-called exception is caused by the cross-application of different laws or other factors. Werner published an article in 1875, which specifically discussed the exceptions in Green's Law, and thought that these exceptions were actually caused by the change of stress. His law of sound change was later called "Werner's law". The youth grammar school also believes that the changes in pronunciation and morphology are due to the role played by analogy. They emphasize the study of modern languages and their dialects. The views and research of the young grammar school have promoted the development of linguistic research methods and exerted great influence on contemporary scholars and future generations.
Third, modern linguistics.
/kloc-at the end of 0/9, most people think that language research has reached its peak, and the scientific language research method is historical comparison. At the beginning of the 20th century, linguistics experienced a major turning point and entered the period of modern linguistics.
(A) Saussure and Structuralist Linguistics
Swiss linguist Saussure (1857- 19 13) is the founder of modern linguistics. Although Saussure has made great contributions to historical comparative linguistics, especially Indo-European comparative linguistics, and made his mark in the field of linguistics, what really earned him the reputation of "the father of modern linguistics" was his "General Linguistics" course from 1906 to191kloc-0/for Geneva University students. 19 13 After his death, two of his colleagues wrote an immortal book, A Course in General Linguistics, based on the notes made by students and those left by him, and published it on 19 16.
Saussure advocates distinguishing between language and speech. He believes that language is an abstract system of grammatical rules and vocabulary, hidden in people's consciousness, a product of society, and does not belong to one person. Characters are spoken or written articles, so people who use the same language rarely have the same characters. Speech is the result that individuals use grammatical rules to organize language units, so speech is the concrete embodiment of language, and language is the abstraction of speech. Although speech is directly accessible material, the research object of linguistics should be language.
He advocated distinguishing internal linguistics from external linguistics. Although he admits that social history, civilization history and other factors have a great relationship with language development, he believes that these factors will not touch the internal system of language. Internal linguistics studies the internal system of language without knowing under what conditions language developed. Therefore, in his view, linguistics is a science that studies the internal system of language.
He advocated separating the study of * * * from the diachronic study. Before him, people often traced the history of language vertically and explained language phenomena from a historical perspective. Some people even think that only diachronic research is scientific. Saussure believes that the study of temporality of language is also a science, that is, a static description of language, and it is better than diachronic research, because historical changes are rarely considered by the speaking public.
Saussure believes that language symbols exist in two kinds of relationships when they form a relational system, namely, combinatorial relationship and aggregation relationship. Combinatorial relations conform to the linear arrangement order of language components, and aggregation relations are conditional on the selection of some components in language projects.
Saussure believes that language is a form rather than an entity, that is, language is a system of rules rather than concrete materials. The rule system is relatively fixed and established, and it is the research object of linguistics.
Saussure's contribution to modern linguistics also lies in his establishment of the necessary characteristics of linguistics as an independent discipline. He pointed out at the end of the Course of General Linguistics: "The only real objects of linguistics are languages and languages studied for languages." Although the second half of this concluding statement is still controversial in the linguistic field, it defines the object of linguistic research and the corresponding research methods, and defines the characteristics that linguistics needs to have as a discipline. Saussure made an indelible contribution to the development of linguistics, and various theories and schools that appeared later were directly or indirectly influenced by his views. Fourthly, contemporary linguistics.
(A) Chomsky and transformational generative linguistics
At the end of 1950s, the publication of the book Syntactic Structure by American linguist Chomsky (1928-) set off a new revolution in the field of linguistics, and a new school-transformational generative school came into being. Transformational generative school was born on the soil of American structuralism school, and grew up in breaking and challenging structuralism.
Chomsky believes that language research should be devoted to exploring people's inherent language ability, and should not be satisfied with observing and describing the superficial phenomena of speech acts. The purpose of structuralism is to classify and describe language, while in Chomsky's view, the purpose of language research is to establish a formal deductive system and a limited set of grammatical rules. This set of rules can not only generate sentences with infinite grammar, but also explain the grammatical relations and semantic ambiguity within various sentences. Because of the different purposes of the research, the research materials and methods are also very different.
Structuralism studies language with a large number of sentences randomly collected. Chomsky believes that the number of randomly collected sentences is very limited, but the number of sentences is infinite, so it is impossible for people to collect all the sentences completely. Therefore, language study should not be human speech act, but human inherent language ability, because it is language ability that makes people constantly produce and understand new sentences. In terms of research methods, structuralism is to collect language materials first, then analyze the materials through a set of discovery procedures and find out the rules, and finally use the obtained rules to explain language phenomena. Chomsky believes that since it is impossible to collect complete language materials, the laws found in sporadic language materials must be incomplete and cannot explain all language phenomena. Therefore, the method of language research should be the same as that in natural science, that is, first make assumptions based on observation, then test or prove the assumptions in practice, and correct the assumptions according to the actual situation. Repeat this for many times until the sentence structure can be correctly explained.
On the issue of children's language acquisition, structuralism accepts the philosophical view of "Whiteboard Theory" put forward by British philosopher Locke (1632- 1704). Locke believes that the primitive state of human mind is just a blank board, and all knowledge and ideas are obtained from experience later. Therefore, structuralists believe that children's language is acquired through repeated imitation and memory, making it a habit. Chomsky believes that the "whiteboard theory" view is difficult to explain two phenomena: first, why animals can't master language after repeated training; Second, there are no more sentences for children to imitate, after all, it is limited. Why can children understand and produce infinite sentences that they have never heard before? Chomsky agrees with Descartes (1596- 1650), a French philosopher in the 7th century. Therefore, he thinks that there is a "language acquisition device" in the human brain. Once this mechanism is triggered by a specific language environment, children can naturally acquire a certain language.
Chomsky also thinks that structuralism only cuts and describes the surface of language structure, so they can't explain why sentences with the same structure are very different in meaning from other language phenomena. Language research should not only pay attention to the surface structure, but also pay attention to its deep structure.
In the process of developing his own language theory, Chomsky advocates distinguishing language ability from speech act. And try to explain people's language ability, try to explain psychological activities with language research. Therefore, he believes that linguistics should be a branch of psychology.
In its development, transformational generative linguistics has undergone many revisions, including four stages: early theory, standard theory, extended standard theory and revised extended standard theory. The latest language theory model consists of syntax, phonetics and semantics. Syntactic part includes basic part, transformation part and case part. The foundation part generates a deep structure, then the transformation part generates a shallow structure, and then the grid part forms a shallow structure with grid marks. The shallow structure with grid can obtain both phonetic expression and semantic expression through the phonetic part.