History of linguistics facts for kids
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It looks at how language is built (its form), what it means (its meaning), and how it is used in different situations (context).
People first started writing down how language worked in Mesopotamia. This was about 4,000 years ago. They made lists of words to help understand Sumerian writing. Later, in India, a scholar named Pāṇini wrote detailed rules for the Sanskrit language around 600-400 BCE. Around the same time, China also began studying grammar. In the West, Aristotle in ancient Greece helped start the study of language as part of rhetoric (the art of speaking or writing effectively). During the Middle Ages, Arabic grammar and Hebrew grammar also developed, often linked to religious texts.
Modern ways of studying language began in the 1700s. By the 1800s, some thought linguistics was part of psychology or biology. But in the early 1900s, Ferdinand de Saussure said that linguistics should be its own field, part of the social sciences. He saw language as a system of signs. This idea led to new areas of study like phonology (sounds), morphology (word parts), syntax (sentence structure), and semantics (meaning). These can be studied as they are now (synchronically) or how they changed over time (diachronically).
Today, linguistics has many different scientific approaches. It includes fields like applied linguistics (how language is used in real life), psycholinguistics (language and the mind), sociolinguistics (language and society), and computational linguistics (language and computers).
Ancient Studies of Language
In ancient times, people studied language to understand important texts better. This was especially true for religious writings. They explored how sounds and meanings were connected. They also looked at how smaller language parts formed bigger structures.
Babylonian Language Lists
The very first writings about language were on clay tablets in cuneiform. These are from about 4,000 years ago in southern Mesopotamia. The first texts were lists of nouns in Sumerian. Sumerian was a special language used for religious and legal texts. But people were starting to speak Akkadian in daily life. So, Sumerian had to be taught like a foreign language. Akkadian scribes wrote down information about Sumerian to help with this.
Over many years, these lists became standard. Sumerian words were given Akkadian translations. Eventually, they made texts that showed Akkadian meanings for whole groups of word forms. For example, one text had 227 different forms of the verb ĝar, which means "to place."
Language Study in India
In ancient India, people studied language to correctly read and understand the Vedic texts. These were very old religious writings. Even in the oldest Indian text, the Rigveda, "speech" (called vāk) was seen as holy. By 1200 BCE, people had set rules for performing these texts aloud. Treatises (written works) on ritual recitation suggested breaking down Sanskrit words into smaller parts. This led to the study of morphology (word parts) and phonetics (speech sounds).
One of the most important early language scholars was Pāṇini (around 6th century BCE). He wrote a rule-based description of the Sanskrit language in his book Aṣṭādhyāyī.
Over the next few centuries, people understood sound units better. They organized stop consonants in a special 5x5 square around 800 BCE. This led to a systematic alphabet called Brāhmī by the 3rd century BCE.
Pāṇini's work was very detailed. He created about 4,000 short rules (called sutras). These rules explained:
- How verb meanings connect to their roles in a sentence.
- How to create different verb and noun forms.
- How sounds change when words are put together.
The Pāṇinian school also listed 2,000 verb roots and a list of sounds. This system was very precise and complex. It led to much discussion and study for centuries. The study of sounds included ideas similar to modern phonemes (basic sound units). It also organized consonants by how they are made in the mouth and vowels by their height and length.
Later grammarians included Kātyāyana (around 3rd century BCE) and Patañjali (2nd century BCE). They wrote commentaries on Pāṇini's work.
Six main texts, called Vedangas, were central to education in India for a long time. Four of these focused on language:
- Shiksha (śikṣā): About phonetics and phonology (sound changes).
- Chandas (chandas): About prosody or meter (rhythm in poetry).
- Vyakarana (vyākaraṇa): About grammar, based on Pāṇini's work.
- Nirukta (nirukta): About etymology (word origins).
Pāṇini's rule-based way of studying language was not well known in the West until recently. His system was different from modern formal linguistics because Sanskrit has a flexible word order, so he didn't focus on syntactic rules. However, the idea that meaning is organized in different layers of language (like sounds and word parts) is still important today.
Greek Language Studies
The Greeks created an alphabet from the Phoenicians. They added signs for vowels and extra consonants. This was a big step because it made writing Greek easier. With writing, poems like the Homeric poems could be written down. This led to the study of philology (the study of language in historical texts) and literary criticism.
The Greeks also started discussing grammar and philosophy. Plato (around 400 BCE) wondered if language was made by humans or if it came from nature. In his dialogue Cratylus, he suggested that word meanings come from a natural process. But he also admitted that some parts of language are based on agreement.
Aristotle (around 300 BCE) believed that word meanings were based on agreement. He studied the logic of speech and arguments. His works on rhetoric and poetics were very important for understanding different types of texts. Aristotle's work on logic was closely linked to his interest in language. He defined different types of words and how they combine.
The Stoics (a group of philosophers) made linguistics a key part of their beliefs. They helped define terms like "significant" (the sound or form of a word) and "signifié" (its meaning), which were later used by Ferdinand de Saussure. The Stoics studied phonetics, grammar, and etymology separately. They defined articulators (parts of the mouth used for speech) and saw the syllable as important for understanding speech.
Alexandrian grammarians also studied speech sounds and prosody (rhythm and stress). They defined parts of speech like "noun" and "verb." They also debated whether language was based on rules (analogy) or exceptions.
The book Tékhnē grammatiké (around 100 BCE), possibly by Dionysius Thrax, is thought to be the first Greek grammar book. It listed eight parts of speech and described Greek word forms. This book was used to teach language.
Apollonius Dyscolus was a famous scholar from Alexandria. He wrote many works on syntax (sentence structure), semantics (meaning), and morphology (word forms).
Lexicography (dictionary making) also became important. Many grammarians created dictionaries and lists of special words. The Greek language was a lingua franca (a common language) throughout the ancient world. The ideas from Greek language study, like "word," "syllable," and "verb," are still part of our language today.
Roman Language Studies
In the 300s CE, Aelius Donatus wrote a Latin grammar book called Ars Grammatica. This book became the main school text throughout the Middle Ages. A shorter version, Ars Minor, only covered the eight parts of speech. When books started to be printed in the 1400s, this was one of the first books ever printed. This education is why we use the word "grammar" today.
Language Study in China
Similar to India, Chinese language study, called Xiaoxue ("elementary studies"), began to help understand classic texts during the Han dynasty (around 3rd century BCE). Xiaoxue had three main parts: Xungu (explaining texts), Wenzi (script analysis), and Yinyun (study of sounds). It was most important in the 1600s CE. The glossary Erya (around 3rd century BCE) is seen as the first Chinese language work. Shuowen Jiezi (around 2nd century BCE), the first Chinese dictionary, organized characters by their main parts, a method still used today. Other early works included Fangyan, the first book on Chinese dialects, and Shiming, which focused on etymology (word origins).
Early Chinese thinkers, like Confucius (6th century BCE), also thought about the link between names and reality. Confucius believed that if names were not correct, language would not match the truth.
The study of sounds in China started later. It was influenced by Indian traditions after Buddhism became popular. Rime dictionarys were created, which organized characters by their tone and rime.
Important modern Chinese linguists include Y. R. Chao and Wang Li. The first Chinese grammar book in the modern sense was written by Ma Jianzhong in the late 1800s. It was based on the Latin model.
Middle Ages Language Studies
Arabic Grammar
As Islam spread quickly in the 700s, many people learned Arabic as a common language. Because of this, the first grammar books on Arabic were often written by people who were not native speakers.
The earliest known grammarian was ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Isḥāq al-Ḥaḍramī (died 735-736 CE). The work of several grammarians led to the book by the Persian linguist Sibāwayhi (around 760–793).
Sibawayh wrote a detailed description of Arabic in 760 in his huge work, Al-kitab fi al-nahw (The Book on Grammar). In his book, he separated phonetics (how sounds are made) from phonology (how sounds work in a language).
European Languages
The Irish Sanas Cormaic (Cormac's Glossary) is Europe's first dictionary of word origins and general knowledge in a non-Classical language.
In the 1200s, scholars called the Modistae introduced the idea of universal grammar. This is the idea that all human languages share some basic rules.
Dante (around 1300 CE) wrote De vulgari eloquentia ("On the Eloquence of Vernacular"). In this work, he expanded the study of language to include the everyday languages people spoke, not just Latin and Greek. Other language works from this time focused on local languages, like the First Grammatical Treatise (for Icelandic) and the Auraicept na n-Éces (for Irish).
During the Renaissance and Baroque periods, people became even more interested in linguistics. This was often for Bible translations and for thinking about philosophical languages and the origin of language.
Modern Linguistics
Modern linguistics really began in the late 1700s. Early ideas about language from scholars like Johann Gottfried Herder were still important into the 1800s.
In America, hundreds of Indigenous languages were never written down. Many were only spoken, so they are now lost. Linguists like Franz Boas tried to set good rules for studying languages they didn't know. Boas was a very important linguist, followed by Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield.
Historical Linguistics
In the 1700s, people often guessed about the history of language and society. Some thought certain languages were "primitive" compared to English. Hugh Blair wrote that for Native Americans, actions and movements could mean as much as words.
In 1786, Sir William Jones noticed that Sanskrit (from India) and Persian were similar to Classical Greek, Latin, Gothic, and Celtic languages. This idea led to the fields of comparative linguistics (comparing languages) and historical linguistics (studying how languages change over time). Throughout the 1800s, European linguistics focused on the history of Indo-European languages. They wanted to find their common roots and see how they developed.
It was discovered that a regular sound pattern existed across languages in Europe, India, and Persia. This led to the idea that all these languages came from a common ancestor. Linguists in the 1800s worked to understand this parent language. They believed it started about 6,000 years ago and led to languages like English, Russian, and Hindi.
In the 1820s, Wilhelm von Humboldt observed that human language is a system with rules. He said this allows language to make "infinite use of finite means." This means we can create endless new sentences from a limited set of words and rules.
Historical linguistics continues today. Linguists have grouped about 5,000 languages into families based on their common ancestors.
Structuralism
In Europe, Ferdinand de Saussure started a new way of thinking called structural linguistics. His lectures, published after he died, guided European language analysis from the 1920s onwards. His ideas were also used in many other fields.
By the 1900s, linguists focused less on how language changed and more on its structure. They saw language as a system governed by rules and principles. This led to new methods of grammatical analysis.
Descriptive Linguistics
During World War II, North American linguists like Leonard Bloomfield created teaching materials for many languages. This was needed for the war effort. This work made linguistics more important. It became a recognized subject in most American universities after the war.
In 1965, linguists from Gallaudet University showed that American Sign Language is a true natural language.
Generative Linguistics
Other Areas of Study
From about 1980 onwards, new approaches gained popularity. These included pragmatic (how context affects meaning), functional (how language is used to achieve goals), and cognitive (how language relates to the mind) approaches.
See also
In Spanish: Historia de la lingüística para niños
