THE DEVELOPMENT OF LINGUISTICS FROM THE ANCIENT GREEK

PERIOD, MEDIEVAL PERIOD, RENAISSANCE PERIOD TO THE 19 TH

CENTURY

INTRODUCTION:
The evolution of the scientific study of language ie Linguistics reflects
the direction in the general progress of man through the ages. From the
ancients to the modern and post modern era, we observe an increasing
complexity of the “thought forms that forms the basic structure of
language”.
In the words of the American linguist, Leonard Bloomfield “Language
plays a great part in our life, perhaps because of its familiarity, we
rarely observe it, taking rather for granted as we do with walking ad
breathing. The effects of language are remarkable and include much of
what distinguishes man from the other animals”.
Like in all areas of human endeavour and development, the history of
linguistics reflects the debt we owe to our forbears and ancestors.
Hence we have a steady progression of linguistic thought from the
ancient to the modern period.

ANCIENT GREEK LINGUISTICS

The ancient Greeks had the gift of wondering about things other took
for granted. They speculated boldly and persistently about the origin,

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history and structure of language. Our traditional lore about language is
due to them.
The Greek grammatical traditional was largely developed originally by
schoolmasters, though we of the modern era got knowledge of this,
through the language of the Greek philosophers.
The core of Grecian ideas linguistics that has run throughout history
includes: history of language; parts of speech and the relationship
between language and thought, to mention but a few. Furthermore, a
persistent controversy in Greek linguistics has been the controversy of
whether “nature” or “convention” accounted for the relationship
between words and their meaning. A subject of concern during this
period of linguistics was language was man-made or original or
supernatural in origin. The possibilities that the meaning of language , is
agreed by consensus or having pre-determined fixed values was also a
theme that characterized Greek linguistics.
The great and notable scholars during this period as is usual were
involved in the debate of whether language was natural ie originated in
the idea of things; with the first words imitating the things they name
or as earlier stated developed by convention or a synthesis of the two.
Plato favoured the first position, while Aristotle was for theme of
convention. The Stoics however, held that language originated in
nature.
It is worthy to mention here that Greek linguistics helped in the
development of linguistics by originating generalizations that were later
developed by succeeding generations of scholars, notably Roman
Philosophers. The Greek generalizations were not improved upon until
the eighteenth century, when scholars ceased to view language as a
direct gift from God, and put various theories as to its origin.

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In summary, ancient Greek linguistics served as the basis for succeeding
generation of linguists to improve upon the essence and core of the
science of language, thus providing the necessary raw materials for the
gradual development in linguistic thought, theory and practice.

MEDIEVAL LINGUISTICS
Medievalism could be widely postulated to mean the history of Europe
between the end of the Holy Roman Empire (476 A.D.) and the about
the year 1500 A.D. It is generally agreed that medieval period is the
period of the Middle Ages albeit largely European in character and
attributes.
Medieval linguistics is an offshoot of Greek linguistics were Latin was
the principal language of discourse. The medieval scholar largely
studied only classical Latin.
Furthermore, the medieval philosophers also known as the scholastics
studied and discovered some features of Latin grammar, such as the
distinction between nouns and adjectives and the differences between
concord, government and apposition.
The medieval linguists or philosophers contributed much less than the
ancients, who had, at any rate, first-hand knowledge of the languages
they studied. The medieval scholar saw in Latin the classical normal
form of human speech.
However, it should be noted that, the medieval linguists through their
studies has provided us with the rules of general grammar. The rules of
GENERAL GRAMMAR demonstrate the structure of various languages
(especially of Latin) and that these displays the fact that, languages
embody universal cannons of logic.

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The doctrine of GENERAL GRAMMAR seeks to apply logical standards to
language. Philosophers, to this day, in acknowledging the contributions
of Linguistics to the advancement of knowledge, still look for truths
about the universe in the formal features of one language or another.
Another dimension of the medieval linguists is the belief that the
GRAMMARIAN fortified by his powers of reasoning can ascertain the
logical basis of language and prescribe how people ought to speak in
society.
The medieval era linguistics coupled with the spread of education also
brought about a CLASS dimension in the arena of language and
communication.

RENAISSANCE PERIOD
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly
through the 14th to the 17th century beginning in Florence in present
day Italy in the Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe.
As a cultural movement it encompassed a resurgence of learning based
on classical sources based educational reform, exploration and
experimentation. The Renaissance period can also been seen as the
bridge between the Medieval and Modern epochs.
The Linguistic horizon naturally widened during the Renaissance period.
At the end of the middle ages, the study of Greek came back into
fashion; soon afterward, Hebrew and Arabic was added.
The Renaissance was a period of travel and experimentation. Travellers
brought back vocabularies, and missionaries translated religious books
into the tongues of newly discovered countries. In other words,
through voyages, conquest and colonization, Europe became
acquainted with a wide variety of languages.

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Information on languages from Asia, Africa and America became
available in the form of word lists, grammar, dictionaries and religious
texts. In fact, the Renaissance period can be aptly classified as the era
of comparative linguistics.

19TH CENTURY LINGUISTICS

What is referred to as modern linguistics began its development in the
18th century reaching the so called “golden age” of philology in the 19th
CENTURY.
The 19th century witnessed the rise of “historical linguistics”, and with
the predominance of historical linguistics, linguistics became a science.
It was during this period that the systematic comparison of Indo
European languages began, with a lot of Treatises and publications.
The period also gave birth to a great stream of historical research and a
small but general accelerated linguistic study. Furthermore, some
scholars also examined a variety of languages in order to get a
philosophical basis or survey of human speech. We also witnessed the
fusion of historical-comparative and philosophical-descriptive to the
study of various languages.
In summary the nineteenth century, saw the emergence of divergent
interests in the study of linguistics viz, fundamentals of language,
Language structure, psychology of speech, etc, especially on the
GERMANIC, ROMANCE AND SLAVIC language stocks, including the
ancients languages of Latin, Hebrew, and Sanskrit.

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SOME SCHOLARS and THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS IN THE
AFOREMENTIONED PERIODS

ANCIENT SCHOLARS
 PLATO
In his dialogue Cratylus, Plato (427-347 B.C) discusses the origin of
words, and particularly the question the relation between things
and the words which name is a natural and necessary relation or
merely the result of human convention.
This dialogue gives us the first glimpse of into a century long
controversy between the ANALOGISTS and the ANOMALIST.
The Analogists believed that language was natural and therefore
logical at the bottom of it, while the Anomalist were of the belief
that language was irregular, basing their opinion on the
irregularity of linguistic structure.
To Plato, therefore, we owe the debate to the origin of language
in other words; the Etymology of words or language was born.
 ARISTOTLE
In the work De Interpretatione, the scholar, Aristotle also
contributed to the Greek grammatical tradition, by favouring that
the origin of words was as result of human convention and not
natural.
 HERODIAN (Son of Apollonius Dyscolus)
This ancient Greek grammarian was able to collate and assemble
a vast library of information on the INFLECTIONS and ACCENTS OF
Greek Language

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  THE STOICS
The Stoics were the class of ancient Greek scholars and
philosophers who also delved into linguistics. They were of the
view that, Language originated in nature. They also made
linguistics an important part of the study of the cosmos and
human. Furthermore, the stoics laid the foundations of sign
terms, later adopted by Ferdinand De Saussure. And finally, the
Stoics were also responsible for the gradual definition of
terminology and theory now echoed in modern linguistics.

MEDIEVAL SCHOLARS
 DANTE
In De Vulgaria Eloquenta, (On the Eloquence of Vernacular),
Dante expanded the scope of linguistic enquiry into the traditional
languages of the day. In a significant reversal of the typical
prioritization of Latin, regarded as the vernacular and “primary”
speech as it was first learned, declared that vernacular “without
any rules” (sine omnia regular) by which he meant the written
codified rules as taught in schools. Actually DANTE and most of
the lesser known medieval scholars were hampered on the
subject because of a lack of comparative texts and elements
within them, because the medieval were solely involved in the
Latin of the day, as postulated and preached by the Church.
 For the medieval scholars, language meant classical Latin, as it
appears in Books, we find few traces of interests in any other
form of speech. It was during this period that Latin was changing

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 from its ancient form to the present form we now know as
Romance Languages (French, Italian, Spanish and so on). On an
aggregate basis, the scholars of the medieval era actually
contributed to the development of Latin Grammar, such as
distinction between Noun and Adjectives and the differences
between concord, government and apposition.

THE RENAISSANCE SCHOLARS

 FRANCISCUS JUNIUS (1589-1677)
Accomplished an enormous amount of work in the study of
ancients documents and hence contributed to the development
of linguistics. He published an ANGLO SAXON GRAMMAR and a
THESAURUS of miscellaneous information about the older stages
of English and the sister tongues. Thus, laying further, a stronger
and firmer basis for succeeding generations of linguists.

THE 19TH CENTURY SCHOLARS

 JAKOB GRIMM
Jakob Grimm (1785-1863), initiator of the Grimm’s Law, is one of
the largest luminaries of historical linguistics.
Grimm’s Law is all about sound correspondences among the Indo-
European languages. He recognized the importance of sound
correspondences as evidence of family relationships; implying
that his law “had important consequences for the history of
language and the validity of etymology”, and “that it (the Grimm’s
Law) provided sufficient kinship of the languages involved”.
Grimm’s Law treats series of changes in certain consonants from
Proto-Indo –European to Proto- Germanic.

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 FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE
Ferdinand De Saussure (1856-1913) largely regarded as the father
of modern linguistics, emphasized the synchronic study of
language structure and how linguistics elements are organized
into the system of each language. He also pushed further and
developed the theory of signs. In Saussure’s view, linguistics
entities were considered members of a system and were defined
by their relations to one another within the system. He compared
language to a game of chess, a highly organized “algebraic”
system of relations, where everything thing holds together as in
an organic system of dependencies.
Saussure was influenced by the eminent sociologist of his day,
Emil Durkheim and he saw language as a “social fact” (rather than
a mental or psychological one, as others have held), that is, a
“collective consciousness”, which is both the possession of society
at large but also defines society.
Today, nearly all approaches to linguistics are “structuralist” in
some sense and reflect the great Saussure’s monumental
influence.
 BAUDOUIN DE COURTENAY
Badouin De Courtenay (1845-1929), a Polish by birth, together
with Saussure developed Linguistic theory independently. His
thinking was instrumental in the development of the concept of
“phoneme”, “morpheme”, “grapheme”, “distinctive feature” and
“alternation”, all basic terminologies in modern linguistics.

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 Bibliography

Blackwell Reference Online. The Handbook Of Linguistics (Edited)

2002

Leonard, Bloomfield. Language and Linguistics, Compton Printing

Ltd, London, 1933

Noam, Chomsky. Cartesian Linguistics 3rd Ed. Cambridge

University Press, 2009.

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