History of linguistics E-Book

El Mouatamid Ben Rochd

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 165

Beschreibung

THIS BOOK Swiss Ferdinand de Saussure is known as 'the father of modern Linguistics.' For others, the 'champion of Linguistics' came later on in the person of American Noam Chomsky. As a matter of fact, the infatuation for language goes much earlier in history. It was strongly felt under remote horizons, in the Far and Middle East, before reaching Europe and North America. This book is an attempt to give a glimpse on this long journey of language studies from different regions of the world, such as India, Iraq, Cordoba, and ancient Greece amongst others.

Leseprobe

To Haddadi and Touzani

Contents

Forward

Why study language?

History of linguistic studies

Language

Japan

China

Babylon

Panini

Aristotle

Arabs

Hebrews

Historicism

Saussure

Copenhagen

Prague

Marrism

Wittgenstein

Bloomfieldians

Chomsky

Phonology

Labov

Translation

Phonetics

Conclusion

Glossary

Bibliography

FORWARD

Swiss Ferdinand de Saussure (1916) is known as ‘the father of modern Linguistics.’ For others the ‘champion of Linguistics’ came later on in the person of American Noam Chomsky (1957). As a matter of fact, the infatuation for language, goes far earlier in the past, and was indeed felt under different horizons, in the Far and Middle East before reaching Europe and North America. This book is an attempt to give a glimpse on this long journey of language studies from remote areas of the world such as India (Panini), Iraq (Sibawaihi), Cordoba (Ibn Janah) and ancient Greece (Aristotle).

To put it in the most simple fashion, one can define ‘LANGUAGE’ as a ‘coin’ with two faces: ‘sound and sense’. More sophisticated definitions were given by famous specialists. Their definitions remain dualist though: ‘qawl/kalam’ (Ibn Jinni), ‘langue/parole’ (Saussure), ‘Deep/surface’ (Chomsky), ‘Classical/colloquial’ (Ferguson) etc. ‘Language’ remains a puzzle to the best and a miracle for some (Einstein?). Many were brought to the ‘Labor’ including philosophers (Spinoza), historians (Ibn Khaldun), psychologists (Watson), sociologists (Durkheim), and even brilliant amateurs (Jonathan Miller).

The student of linguistics soon finds options and ramifications that he has to favour one at the expense of the others. The major roads of the split are: micro-linguistics (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.) and macrolinguistics (sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, mathematical linguistics, historical linguistics, etc.)

‘Historical linguistics’ and ‘history of linguistics’ sound close. As a matter of fact, they are not, but are related in an inclusive relationship. History of linguistics must include a survey of historical Linguistics as one of its chapters. It was the ‘fashion’ of 19th c. European linguistic researchers (Schleicher and Paul). And then the student of linguistics must move to consider preceding trends and those that came later. Europe and America have largely dominated this field. Still, for a much broader perspective of our discipline, one must also include Arab linguists such as Sibawaihi, and Ibn Jinni, Hebrew linguists and philosophers such as Ibn Janah and Spinoza, besides the purely linguistic ‘tenors’.

1. WHY STUDY LANGUAGE?

‘Why study language?’ you may ask. To answer this question, READ:

Dr. Mazen Al-Waer, “When someone introduces himself in a party as a doctor, people will wonder in which hospital he works, and when somebody introduces himself as a lawyer, everybody will think when he has a legal problem, the lawyer would be able to help. But when you introduce yourself as a linguist people will be astonished and ask what do you mean by linguistics? And when you try to explain to them that linguistics is a scientific study of languages, they will say, ‘well, why do you bother and study languages since we speak them naturally? Do you think that linguistics can change people’s opinions one day, and do you think the study of linguistics is important?”

Chomsky: “In our own intellectual tradition going back to the Greeks it has always been assumed, and I think correctly, that the most important topic to study is the human being, the question what is the nature of humans, and in particular, how the human mind works. There can hardly be a more significant topic for investigation for us than the human mind and how it functions. The most interesting aspects of the human mind are those intellectual achievements that are carried out naturally, that seem so obvious to us that we cannot even see at first that there is a problem to be studied. The first difficulty that you have to overcome if you want to study human beings is to try to attain a sense of wonder and surprise at the fact that you are able to do what you are able to do normally. If you do not think about it, it seems obvious that you just talk and say what is on your mind. But the question is: how are you able to do this? What is it about the child [italics mine] that makes it possible for the child to acquire this ability but does not make it possible for an ape or a dog [italics mine] or any other organism to acquire this ability? What is this capacity? What underlies it? What are its properties? What are its features?

The psychologist, Wolfgang Kohler, once remarked that it is necessary to develop a kind of “psychic distance” [italics mine] from the acts that you perform naturally. You have to be able to look at them as it were from the outside, to recognize how amazing they are, before you can begin to try to find out what are the capacities on which these acts are based. It is not a problem when you study, say, physics because, since we are studying something that is external to us, we already have psychic distance. We do not move the planets so therefore the fact that the planets move already seems remarkable. But since we are the ones who are doing the speaking, what we are doing sometimes does not seem remarkable, but rather somewhat obvious. However, it is really much more remarkable than the fact that the planets are moving the way they are.”

(Dr. Mazen Al-Waer, 1980).

PHILOSOPHY

The ultimate goal of philosophers has always been the pursuit of TRUTH. But usually, they (and people in general) disagree about what is true and what is false [cf. Shakespeare’s “wisdom and goodness”]. In Europe alone, there were indeed big and bitter intellectual fights, in the Middle Ages, about the sources of (true) knowledge to begin with. Some believed it should be ecclesiastic (Church), others opted for rational (reason), still others for empiricist (sense data) sources. The Pope in Rome, Martin Luther and Hegel represent the first trend. French René Descartes (Discours de la méthode) represents the second [cf. Deists]. English Roger Bacon is considered to be the pioneer of the last one (followed by Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum).

There are, at least, three levels of influence of philosophy on linguistics, viz. ‘ideological umbrella’, epistemology and (more specifically) linguistic theory. The first one – ideology [cf. Marr] or religion [cf. Pike] – concerns the linguist as much as the layman in a given society. It is a sort of general umbrella that covers all members of a given society. Epistemology [theory of knowledge] concerns the scientist – whatever his specialty may be; as each researcher is busy digging his own (narrow) field not knowing how to situate himself vis-à-vis other scientists. Epistemology will guide him find his position and his relation with researchers in neighboring disciplines.

The last level of influence of philosophy is found in linguistic theorizing. After observation and experiments, the linguist, like all other scientists, opts for the construction of general theories – using reason and logic. He is actually philosophizing (hence, the appellation “PhD” as the top title for every discipline).

PSYCHOLOGY

Many people believe that the structure of language and its general features are universal and are deeply embedded in the human mind. At any rate the human body displays an amazing organic unity synchronized and harmonized by God. Without signals from the nervous system no air would escape from the throat to produce speech sounds. So no separation is possible between speech, biology and physiology; nor is it possible to separate them from the ideas which are shaped by speaking.

Language is closely linked to psychology. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, language had soon attracted the attention of American psychologists such as Watson and Skinner (see Glossary), amongst others. They were the representatives of the Bahaviourist School of psychology in the US in the 50s. They were themselves influenced by the works of Russian biologist Pavlov [see glossary]. The latter is the initiator of ‘stimulus-response’ brain mechanisms, using dogs for his experiments.

By opposition to this school, Chomsky’s innate theory suggests that the human child is unique as he comes to life pre-programmed for language acquisition. Chomsky seems to have in some sort revived Plato’s notion of ‘prenatal life’.

SCIENCE

Linguistics is usually defined as ‘the science of languages’. We may then wonder about science itself; its foundations, stages, limits, etc. and how it could apply to languages? The human language is essentially made up of sounds and words organized in a structure and conveying meaning.

Linguistics is a science, like physics or biology, because it follows the scientific stages which are: observation, hypothesis, experiment (not to confuse with experience i.e. experiences that one has in his own life, happy, cheerful, etc.) and finally theory. Linguistics, as Chomsky noted, is a special science, since language is part of our person. So we tend to take it for granted. We do not even see that there is a problem to be studied unlike when we study, for instance, the motion of the stars. So what we need to do first is to try and achieve a certain psychicdistance [see above] before we can start our inquiry i.e. a certain detachment; objectivity.

The English proverb rightly says ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ or ‘familiarity breeds stupidity’. My hand has been with me and served me for years. I do not see anything amazing about it, as I should! Now, each one of the four scientific stages has its own defects and limitations. It is perhaps difficult for us to achieve psychic-distance when studying language because Arabic is our language, French is the language of those who made our parents work like donkeys, English is full of figures and imperialism. So, you cannot really achieve ‘psychic-distance’ i.e. absolute objectivity.

The first scientific principle, i.e. observation has problems too; like visual illusions. We all know about the railway bars. You must have noticed that when you observe those long parallel bars, they seem to narrow progressively till they merge into one another. This is one of the problems with observation. Our senses cannot be trusted hundred per cent. Another example, we all think we know the color of blood – red, but once you look at it in the microscope, you find that it is yellow.

In linguistics, our observation is usually auditory. We hear sounds and utterances but again we face problems of perception. I remember once being told about the Scottish legend of the bird called haggis [who happens to have one leg shorter than the other to suit the leaning slopes of the hill!] I had problems determining whether it was with an‘s’ or a‘t’ viz. haggis or haggit.

After the problems of perception, we face problems with formulating scientific hypotheses. I suggested once to my students to explain the biological problem of two rotten pieces of meat, one containing maggots and one without. Some suggested that the origin of these maggots was the sun, others time, etc. They were all wrong, because the true answer was the flies. Some ninetieth century scientists had suggested that it was the meat itself that produced the maggots by spontaneous generation. So we can see that hypotheses are just a game of imagination. This is for those who may think that science is hundred per cent objective, concrete, tangible and true.

Hypothesis leads you to a series of experiments, which are again a mere game of trial and error tests. (cf. bikussuf!) Add to that the fact that you might be short-sighted, your hand may shake while measuring say the length of a table, your ruler may not be as sharp as it should be. So all these human and instrumental shortcomings give doubtful results. You could try and eliminate…Sorry, reduce those defects both in quantity and quality by improving your instruments and by repeating your experiments as many times as possible. Still, the result is quantitative and a mere approximation [cf. ‘Delta d’Erreur’!]

As you cannot count the number of red blood globules of a human being, you work by induction. [See the story of that American tourist who said, ‘Moroccans are crazy!’ from a shop experience. He made a hasty ‘scientific’ generalization, instead of a solid LOGICAL deduction]. Scientific theories are further based on probabilities. When the Americans send their missiles [from Kennedy Canaveral Cape /keip/] to some planet, say Mars, they are never sure about where it will land or where it would come back with exactitude! All they can tell is probabilities. This is the opposite of how assertive (pseudo-scientific) minds tend to work. Finally, science is abstract e.g. a human mouth, for the phonetician, is no longer a real mouth made of bones, nerves and muscles. It is simply two curved lines. You can see how science is far from reality, but we accept it in the absence of better means. This is the lot of the mortals!

Another example: once upon a time in Europe, there were scientists who believed that they had discovered and known everything – especially doctors. They believed that there was nothing new they could see that they had not already seen. But there came a ‘little’ biologist who said, wait a minute! There are biological forms that cannot be seen to the mortals, yet they are responsible for the death of millions of them, each year. Who was that scientist? What did he discover? And how did he prove his claim? It was very simple (!), Pasteur (1828-1885) by accident!

Finally, ‘theory’: it is ‘a formal set of ideas that is intended to explain why something happens or exists”.(…) It’s mere philosophy.

2. HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC STUDIES

For many scholars, the twentieth century was the starting point of serious (scientific) research in linguistics. It was mainly concentrated in Europe and North America. “After world war II, it appears that the histories by Malmberg (1964) and others fulfilled a similar function of summing up previous attainments in linguistic science. This time the focus of attention was post-1916 period in the history of linguistics, following the success story of Saussure’s Cours, with its perceived emphasis on a non-historical approach to language.” (Koerner and Asher, 1995)

“In 1980, Frederick Newmeyer published a book which constitutes the best example to date of this pro-domo, whiggish type of history writing. It selected and reinterpreted past linguistic research in an attempt to prove his view that linguistics was made a science only in 1955 or in 1957, and by Chomsky, and that previous work was totally inadequate…(Newmeyer’s Linguistics in America (1980) ”( ibid)

Still, other (rather shy!) attempts to write about the history of linguistics, going beyond euro-centrism started to point out their heads. Amongst the best of these works, one can mention: Aren’s Sprachwischenshft (1955), Robins, R.H. A Short history of linguistics (1967), Samson G. Schools of Linguistic (1980), and excellent Koerner and Asher’s Concise History of the Language Sciences (1995).

So the ‘fashion’ was to ignore remote geographical origins of linguistics, the subject supposedly started in the twentieth century. By opposition to this narrow (ideological) denial of anything coming from outside Europe and North America, some suggested recognizing and benefiting from broader horizons. “The best known example is probably Leonard Bloomfield who stated in a number of his publications that he was making use of concepts and techniques that were to be found in Panini’s work on Sanskrit produced some two and a half millennia ago.” (ibid)

Bloomfield further described Panini’s work, on other occasions, as a “monument of intelligence.”

For much broader perspectives of our discipline, one must also include Arab linguists such as Sibawaihi, and Ibn Jinni, and Hebrew linguists and philosophers such as Ibn Janah and Spinoza.

3. LANGUAGE

Albert Einstein once said, “ There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” (Awakin Org.)

So, obviously LANGUAGE is a miracle, if not the miracle of miracles. It is the best thing that man was God-given. It is a so-wonderful miracle that is has attracted the attention of early philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, to modern philosophers like Austin and Wittgenstein. They all tried to capture the nature of this ‘miracle’ by giving it acceptable –reasonabledefinitions. Some have succeeded to some extent in their endeavour and some have only “lured the fly into the bottle!” Starting from the nineteenth century, language has become the field of research of the specialists, viz. philologists such as Hermann Paul and August Schleicher, and more recently –modern linguists: Saussure, Bloomfield and Noam Chomsky (in the Western tradition)!

The language miracle can be clearly seen, as it is the key to man’s communication with his fellow men!! Man was given the secret and the power to give symbols to (referents), i.e. different places (Paris, NY), people (Jesus, Marx) and different things (tree, table) by naming them. Man assigns uttered-expressions to concrete objects. This has a tremendous value in his life. We can appreciate this only by imagining a world without language: the extreme difficulty to work, if we did not have this semiotic power; the hardship of communication and bitter interrelations when we would have to bring about the thing itself that we have to talk about in front of our very eyes, say a tree, or go to the Himalayas, or bring the person, we want to talk about (no backbiting!). This situation would have been a tremendous hardship making our lives close to impossible. (cf. Aboriginal Australians!)

LANGUAGE can be seen as a coin with two faces i.e. “sound and sense.” This is to put it in the most simplistic way. The specialists have much more to say about this subject; its NATURE, ORIGIN and USE.

As a first approximation, we could say that Languages differ in many aspects (and look alike indeed in many others). So when you listen to a foreign language you get the impression that you are hearing a stretch of unintelligible sounds. If you read an alien language, it is as “if you give a book to an illiterate soldier, he will take it up-side-down, and all he will see is barbed wire.” (Professor Khalid Touzani)(!)

For the native speaker though, each stretch of sound switches in an image in his mind. The word “Paris” for instance stands for the Eiffel tower, even to the remote Gujarati, Igbo or Hausa speaker. Still, there is a difference between ‘know how to drive a car’ and how ‘its mechanics works’ when you first ignite the engine. The nature of each phenomenon remains to be defined – language in this case.

Many have been interested in this “phenomenonmiracle” including religious people, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, philologists and finally modern linguists.

WHAT IS LANGUAGE?

This question, raises many others:

A) What’s the use of linguistics?

B) How dialects develop and change;

C) Ideas about whether (and how) our language affects the way we think;

D) How children learn to speak;

E) How all the parts of language fit together;

F) To find the parts of our brain which hold different grammatical items, exotic languages, with complicated, sentence and word structures;

G) How language evolved;

H) The spell-checker on our PC (see “grammarly” for instance);

I) Synthetic speech on your telephone, including convincing intonation;

J) Monolingual and bilingual dictionaries;

K) Automatic translation systems;

L) Teaching Methods and learning foreign languages;

M) Later life and speech problems.

N) Linguistics relations with neighbouring disciplines: psychology, philosophy, epistemology, etc.