Ergativity

Studium GeneraleSection for linguistics studentsLecture 3: History of the science of language1OutlineYour homework from last timeOverview of last 2 lecturesWhy study it? Whats the use of the history of linguistics?Prehistory of linguisticsAncient linguisticsMiddle ages in EuropeRise of European colonialism and nation statesModern linguistics

The Prague schoolBritish structuralismDanish structuralismAmerican structuralismRejection of structuralism

What are interesting and important issues and questions?

2Homework from last timeWhat is mathematical induction?How if at all is it like scientific induction?How do mathematicians and philosophers of mathematics regard it?

Are they as cautious and critical of it as in science?3So who?4

Overview of last 2 lecturesLets hear it from you

What is science? What is a scientific approach?Some remarks on the origin and history of sciencePseudo-science and hoaxesThe philosophy of scienceScientific reasoning

DeductionInductionInference to best explanationExplanationCausality

Conclusion5Because its there George Mallory, March 1923Excitement

Excitement of doing linguistics excitement of doing history

Like all cultural phenomena linguistics has a history, which partly shapes it:

The questions it addressesThe methods it employs6Why study it? Whats the use of the history of linguistics?

Koerner 2002 concludes his Toward a history of American linguistics saying that he feels impelled to comment on the usefulness of the history of linguisticsWhat he comes up with is somewhat disappointing:

The need for a historical perspective in learning linguistics introduction to the subject via historyHistorical knowledge as part of a scientists education the scientist is not a mechanic, and has more than mechanical skillsHistorical knowledge as means of evaluating new hypotheses contributes to the development of skills in judgement of new ideas, and safeguards against uncritical acceptance of allegedly novel ideasHistorical knowledge as a means of moderating exaggerated theoretical claims, and claims to noveltyHistorical knowledge as furthering the unity of the the complex subject

7All of Koerners suggestions seem to be variants on one theme

Understanding what we do and why we do it8Thomas, M. 2007. The evergreen story of Psammetichus inquiry into the origin of language. Historiographia Linguistica XXXIV (1): 37-62 has a better suggestion, which might be put crassly as:

To make linguists and students aware of myths in the discipline, and to take a critical line on themShe quotes Vivian Law, saying:

a key responsibility of students of the language sciences is to learn to listen to [what texts from other cultures and times] say with openness and acceptance

9I think there is also another much more important and compelling reason:

Contribution to language documentation and description10Prehistory of linguisticsPeople everywhere talk about language: they have ideas about its nature, uses, origins, acquisition, structure, and so on

Recall Hockett!

Some of these notions are enshrined in mythology

Naming things by Adam remember?Tower of Babel accounts for?Others?11Linguistics?

Represents a body of knowledge and beliefs about languageBut, there are differences from linguistics as we understand the term, right?

Such as?

Ethnolinguistics as per ethnomathematics, ethnohistory ( oral history), ethnowhatever1213Rise of linguistics as field of investigation with rise of civilisations, agriculture and writing

In most cases these traditions arose in response to language change and the resulting impact on religious and legal domains

Babylonian clay tablets (cuneiform) emergence of a grammatical tradition around 3000 BC, continuing for 2500 years.

Preservation of Sumerian; translations into AkkadianComparative paradigms in the two languages

Ancient linguisticsThe linguistic texts from the earliest parts of the tradition were lists of nouns in SumerianOver the centuries the lists became standardised, and the Sumerian words were provided with Akkadian translations. Ultimately texts emerged that give Akkadian equivalents for not just single words, but for entire paradigms of varying forms for words: one text, for instance, has 227 different forms of the verb gar to place.1415

16Indian tradition, from about 500 BC

Mainly for religious purposes, motivated by linguistic changes, and differences between the spoken language and the written SanskritRitual required the exact verbal performance of the religious texts, and a grammatical tradition emerged that set out rules for the ancient language

Panini most famous of the Indian grammarians date unknown (600BC? 300BC?)His grammar covered

Phonetics including differences between words pronounced in isolation and in connected speechMorphology, expressed largely in the form of rules of word formation, sometimes of a high degree of abstraction.

The Hindu tradition of linguistics far surpassed anything done in Europe for a very long time.Panini introduced the notion of zero into linguistics

18Egyptian linguistics pharaoh Psammaticus (c. 450 BC) famous for his experiment on origins of human language

If that is what it was Thomas 2007 provides a telling critique and analysis of the myth

Remember?

Linguistics in ancient GreeceInfluence of Greek intellectual traditions in modern European thought

PhilosophyMathematicsLinguistics

Some notable differences from the earlier intellectual traditions of Mesopotamia, Egypt, etc.Bloomfield: The ancient Greeks had the gift of wondering at things that other people take for granted19Influences on the development of linguistics as a scholarly field:

Developed slightly later than the Hindu tradition, and also initially in response to linguistic change necessitating explanation of the language of Homers epicsNo evident interest in other languageInterest in the dialect varieties of Greek

In the Hellenistic period (from c.300 BC) evidence of systematic study of differences in dialectal varieties of Greek

Robins suggests that the first evidence of linguistic scholarship was in the development of writing

2nd millennium BC Linear B, syllabicDisappearance of writing with Dorian invasionsReappearance of writing as alphabetic system, derived from Phoenician script an abjad

Modified to an alphabet by reassigning values to some of the consonant symbols2021

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Conscious linguistic thought emerged in the classical age of Greek literature

Observations on language (=Greek) begin with pre-Socratic philosophersSocrates, Plato, AristotleLater the Stoics founded by Zeno (c.300 BC)

I guess not Zeno of Elea (ca. 490 - 430 BC), as in the paradoxes

Platonic dialogues contain scattered references to language

Cratylus is devoted to linguistic questions23As distinct from most other ancient traditions, in Greek linguistics philosophical and theoretical questions about language were also investigated, including:

The origin of languageThe relation between language and thoughtThe relation between form and meaning24Stoics developed linguistics

But their work is only known from later writers their works do not survive

Notably, recognised distinction between form and meaning, and the signifier and signified in languageGave separate treatment to grammar, phonetics, and etymology25Linguistic questions concentrated on GreekFocussed on two controversies:

Nature vs. convention (earlier)Regularity/analogy vs. irregularity/anomaly (later)

Cratylus debate on origin of language and relation of words and meanings (nature vs. convention)

Does not reach a conclusion

Naturalist argument invoked sound symbolism and (folk, speculative) etymology

Socrates stance: subsequent changes obscured the natural connections

Conventionalists observed that vocabulary can be readily changed, and language remains as efficient

The position explicitly adopted later by Aristotle26Epicurus (341-270BC) took a middle position:

Word forms arose naturally, but were modified by conventionStoics favoured this position

Origins of language in imitation of things

Recall bow-wow and ding-dong theories27Aristotle and Stoics also differed on the other controversy:

Aristotle favoured analogyStoics favoured anomaly

Basically concerns the extent to which orderliness and paradigmatic regularity is found in language (=Greek)Analogical arguments were sometimes deployed to argue for one word form over another

Some analogists attempted to reform irregular paradigms of Greek

Anomalist position appeared particularly convincing when derivational and inflectional morphology was not distinguished28Three main aspects of Greek linguistics:

Etymology stimulated by the nature-convention controversy

Little of value was achieved

Fanciful etymologies proposed seriously, e.g. in CratylusAnd continued into Middle Ages29Phonetics more impressive progress

Some articulatory classifications, and some understanding of the production of sounds on egressive pulmonic airstreamSyllable recognised as a structural unitBut problem in not distinguishing speech and writing confusion appears to have been rife

Descriptive framework primarily concerned the pronunciation of letters of the Greek alphabet

Phone/letter as a structural unit

Stoics recognised phonetics as a separate branch of linguistics

Three aspects of written letters:

Phonetic valueWritten shapeName of letter30Stoics studied syllable structure, and distinguished:

Sound sequences attested in actual words (morphemes?)Possible but not attested sequencesImpossible sequences

Classifications and descriptions of phones was often impressionistic acoustic

Rather than articulatory as in the more impressive treatment in the Indian tradition31Grammar was the domain in which Greek linguistics made its most significant contribution

Influence on the development of modern linguistics in shape of grammatical descriptions, categories, terminology, and theories

Framework the word-paradigm model

Word at the centreMorpheme not recognised32Word based grammar involves 3 procedures:

Identification of the word as a linguistic entityEstablishment of word classes parts of speechEstablishment of grammatical categories to describe the morphology of the words in the paradigms, and their syntax of combination33Lets look at the recognition of some grammatical categories:

Nominal gender recognised by Protagoras (5th century BC, a Sophist)

Also distinguished sentence types according to illocutionary force wish, question, statement, command

Parts of speech: nominals vs. verbals distinguished by Plato (not the first)

A third class embracing conjunctions, pronouns, articles and possibly prepositions added by Aristotle34Stoic grammarians increased the number of parts of speech

Gave better definitionsIdentified subclasses

Stoics also distinguished

Nominal cases

Which came to be taken as the fundamental criterion for distinguishing nominals and verbs

Verbal categories

Active transitivesPassivesNeutral intransitives35Temporal categories in the verb:

Tense past vs. presentAspect completive vs. incompletive

Future and aorist (aspectually and formally unmarked, reference to past time) were considered to fall outside of this system36Roman linguistics also arose in response to perceived changes in the spoken language

Continued interest in the themes of concern to Greek linguisticsPrimary interest in morphology, particularly parts-of-speech and the forms of nouns and verbs; syntax largely ignored

Varro produced a multi-volume grammar of Latin, only parts of which (6 of 25 books) survive (c. 120 BC)Later grammars of Donatus (C4 AD) and Priscan (C6 AD) were highly influential in the Middle Ages

37Arabic tradition had beginnings in C7 AD, with the work of Abu al-Aswad ad-Dual (c. 607-688)Also heavily influenced by the Greek grammatical tradition

Focussed on morphologyAttention to accurate phonetic descriptions..

The Arabic tradition a major influence on the Hebrew tradition, which began slightly later, in about the ninth century.Saadya ben Joseph al-Fayyum (882-942) produced the first grammar and dictionary of Hebrew (Afroasiatic, Israel).Reached its peak in C13 with David Qimhis (c. 1160-1235) work, which subsequently had a strong impact on European linguistics3839With expansion of writing in the vernacular languages, problem of devising orthographiesRise of descriptive grammars of Latin around AD1000 for speakers of other languagesIn about 1000 an abbot in Britain wrote a grammar of Latin for Anglo-Saxon speaking childrenDescriptive grammars of the vernaculars were also written; these generally presented the languages in the mould of LatinEmergence of the notion of the universal nature of grammar in C12

Later refined and developed by Roger Bacon (1214-1294) and othersBacon held that grammar was fundamentally the same in all languages, differences being incidental and shallowMiddle Ages in Europe, 500-1400

Notable work is The First Grammatical Treatise, a 12th century work on Icelandic phonology not widely known for nearly 700 years!

Main concern was spelling reform, to correct inadequacies of the Latin-based writing system of IcelandicHinted at notions of phoneme and minimal pairs

About same time, Arabic scholars began tradition of accurate phonetic transcription of words

4041Rise of European colonialism (and nation states)From C15, colonization brought Europeans into contact with a wide variety of languages in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and the PacificInformation about them was gathered by explorers, colonial administrators, travellers, missionaries, and others

Subsequently disseminated within Europe in the form of word lists, grammars, and texts

Scholars compiled word lists in many languages and used them in language comparisonsBecame appreciated that certain languages were related to one another

Techniques were developed and honed over timeUltimately leading to the establishment of the comparative method and the Neogrammarian tradition (beginning in C19)

Colonial period refers to the 400 or so years from late C15 to C20 when European states established colonies on other continents

The AmericasAsiaAfricaAustralia and the Pacific

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Begins soon after the Renaissance (14th17th centuries)

But lasted a couple of centuries longer

For linguistics the periods were characterised by considerable flowering of research in

Europe not my concern The colonies

The bit I am most interested in

Of course, there was significant interaction between themEurope mostly professional academics; the colonies mainly (educated) amateurs, but

I will talk about one piece of late colonial linguistic research in Australia

43Interest in the diversity of language, and thus the origins

Leibniz (1646-1716) monogenesis of human languagesReland writing in 1706, proposed languages from Madagascar to islands of Indonesia were relatedSajnovics and Gyarmati proposed relatedness of Saami, Finnish, and Hungarian, late 1700sWilliam Jones (1746-1794) famously proposed in late 1780s the relatedness of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin

Not the first:

Andreas Jger (c.1660-1730) had previously proposed this in 1686, putting the homeland of this ancient language in the Caucasus mountains, from which the languages spread by waves of migrations into Europe and Asia

But Jones produced most systematic evidenceBegan study of historical linguisticsRasmus Rask (1787-1832) continued developing the tradition, and served as a precursor to the neogrammarians of late C19.44

In 1776 Abb Lievain Proyart (c. 1743-1808) observed the relatedness of the African languages Kakongo, Laongo, and Kikongo;In 1787 Jonathan Edwards (1745-1801) argued that the Algonquian languages of North America form a family

Also interests in other linguistic topics:45Grammars of European languages were written, as also were grammars of the languages of the colonies

Missionaries played an important role in this, and their grammars of non-European languages dominated from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuriesLatin grammar formed the basis for the tradition of missionary grammars

Although the best of the missionary grammarians were aware of problems in applying Latin categories and structures to other languagesThey struggled with varying degrees of success to understand and describe the unfamiliar categories46Also notable in C19 was the Finnish academic program of investigation of the non-Indo-European languages of the Russian empire

Also involved Russian academics

This fieldwork-based research yielded grammars, dictionaries, and text collections in Finno-Ugric, Samoyedic, Turkic, Mongolian, Paleo-Siberian, and Tungusic languages Other colonial powers mounted similar academic investigations, though not as ambitious

Often undertaken in conjunction with anthropological, biological, and geological studies4748Modern linguisticsEmerged in late C19 and early C20Focus changed from historical to descriptive (synchronic) studies

Main idea is language can be viewed as a self-contained and structured system situated at a particular point in timeThis is the basis for structuralist linguistics that developed in the post-First World War period

1886 founding of IPA in Paris (Daniel Jones, Paul Passy, Otto Jespersen and many others)Most important figure was Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)

Saussure began as a neo-grammarian

He wrote an important piece within the tradition

On what?

But became increasingly dissatisfied

Published very little himselfInitiated modern linguistics with posthumously published Course in general linguistics

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Saussures influence extended beyond linguistics, into neighbouring disciplines including anthropology and semiotics

Championed the idea that language is a system of arbitrary signsHis conceptualisation of the sign has been highly influentialRemember?51FormMeaningtree

52Early period of modern linguistics was dominated by study of sound systems (phonetics, and phonology):

Daniel Jones (1861-1967) rejection of phonetics/phonology oppositionNikolai Trubetzkoy features, phonologyRoman Jakobson (1896-1982) universalsHenry Sweet (1845-1912) was one of the leading figures in phonetics in the second half of the nineteenth centuryHe and the Polish linguist Baudouin de Courtenay (1845-1929) were independently instrumental in development of the notion of the phoneme or distinctive soundde Courtenay drew the terminological distinction between phoneme and phone

I seem to recall that there has been recent evidence that someone else beat him to it but I cant find it53

54Diversification of linguistics in C20

The Prague schoolBritish structuralismDanish structuralismAmerican structuralismRejection of structuralism (?)Modern bipartition of linguistics

The Prague schoolBegan as a group of Czech and other linguists who formed the Linguistic Circle of Prague in 1926Primary interest of the Circle was phonological theory

Led by Nicholai Trubetzkoy (1890-1838), a professor in Vienna, whose Grundzge der Phonologie [Principles of phonology] made important contributions to the notion of the phonemePrague school phonology succeed in placing the notion of the phoneme in the centre of linguistic theory, as one of the most fundamental units55

Most famous representative was Roman Jakobson (1896-1982)

Did original research in a range of areas of linguisticsJakobson emigrated to the USA in 1942, and subsequently had a significant impact on the development of phonological theory there56

Began with J.R. Firth (1890-1960) who held the first chair in linguistics, in the University of London, from 1944 to 1956. Firth lived for some time in India and studied its languagesBrought a number of original and provocative perspectives to linguistics

He established the London School of linguistics

Questioned the assumption that speech can be divided into segments of sound strung one after the other, regarding this as an artefact of alphabetic scripts used by westerners

His theory of prosodic analysis focussed on phonetic elements larger than individual sounds, and anticipated some developments in phonology by half a century

Firth was also deeply concerned with meaning

Influenced by the Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942)Developed a contextual theory of meaning that accorded a crucial role to use in context

Meaning is use in context57British structuralismOne of his students, Michael A.K. Halliday (1925-) elaborated Firths ideas and developed them into a coherent theory

From the late 1950s, Halliday refined systemic functional grammar;Hallidays ideas have attracted a much attention, especially in applied linguistics The tradition he began is represented in Britain, Australia, America, Spain, China, and Japan.

Firths ideas were developed in other ways as well, including by other students, and their students

Firths singular approach remains a source of inspiration to many including myself and has spawned a range of neo-Firthian theories.5859Luis Hjelmslev (1889-1965), famous Danish structuralist linguist

One of the major proponents of structural linguistics after SaussureMajor work Omkring Sprogteoriens Grundlggelse (1943), English translation Prolegomena to a theory of language (1953)From 1935, Hjelmslev called his theory glossematics.

Danish structuralismFrans Boas (1858 1942)

Edward Sapir (1884 - 1939)

Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949)60American structuralism

Boas main concern was to gather information on the languages and cultures Native Americans before they disappearedMethods he and his students developed for the description of these languages became the basis of American structuralismBoas and Sapir strongly upheld the notion that all languages should be described in their own terms, rather than being forced into the mould of European languagesThey maintained psychological and anthropological orientations, seeing language as intimately connected with the way of life and thought of its speakers

Subsequently developed by Sapirs student Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) into the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis61Bloomfields primary concern was to establish linguistics as a science

He opposed the mentalistic orientation of Boas and SapirHe was heavily influenced by the mechanistic outlook of behaviourist psychologyHis approach focussing on methodology was the dominant force in American linguistics from the 1930s until the mid-1950sMeaning played little part in this enterprise, The analytical methods discovery procedures that were developed attempted to exclude meaning as far as possible62Charles Hockett (1916-2000) was regarded as the most promising student of BloomfieldLots of interesting ideas ...

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Associated with American linguistics, beginning with Noam Chomskys 1957 Syntactic structuresExplicit rejection of behaviourism and discovery procedures of the American linguistics of 1930s-1950sRise of Generative Grammar

Still a powerful force in linguistics today (Denmark is something of an exception), but increasing number of competing modelsForms background for many of the competing theories.

64Rejection of structuralism 65

Increasingly linguistic historiographers are questioning the alleged Chomskyan revolution

And its rejection of structuralism

Koerner 2002 is one work that overviews the history of Chomskyan construal of themselves and the field

And takes issue with a number of major tenets, e.g. the discontinuity with structuralism66What are interesting issues and questions?Here are a few of the ones I consider interesting and certainly not a complete list:

How has the conceptualisation of a grammatical description evolved? Recall here the Boas commentWhat has been the role of applications/applied linguistics in the origins and development of the subject?How can we understand old descriptions and documentations of exotic languages?Personal biographies and how people have engaged with the subject and how have they shaped it?

What about the rank and file?

How have social and ethical consciousnesses emerged in linguistics?67How have our methodologies evolved?How have our theories evolved, and how does this relate to methodological evolution?What has been the role of religion in the development of linguistics?How have local and/or non-mainstream traditions in linguistics related to global and dominant ones?How have linguists struggled with understanding unusual phenomena in the worlds languages, and how has this contributed to the development of theory and description?How does linguistic thought correlate diachronically with thought in other scientific domains soft (anthropology, biology, sociology) and hard (mathematics, physics)?How does linguistic thought correlate diachronically with broad culture-based ideologies?

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