Page 32 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes The conventionalists refuted this theory. They asserted that the names of things were due purely
to convention and had no deep appropriateness.
This dispute is discussed at length in Plato’s Cratylus. The importance of this controversy is that it
gave rise to ‘etymological’ investigations. It was Plato again who first of all began grammatical
analysis and distinguished between nouns and verbs.
3.1.2 ‘Analogists’ and ‘Anomalists’
The early debate between the ‘naturalists’ and ‘conventionalists’ with exclusive reference to the
Greek language merged later in a more far-reaching controversy between the ‘analogist’ and
‘anomalist’ theories of language, to some extent championed respectively by Aristotle and Stoic
philosophical schools. Those who maintained that language was essentially systematic and regular
are generally called ‘analogists’, and those who took the contrary view, are referred to as
‘anomalists’. The analogists emphasized the regularities of grammatical structures and word forms,
and the parallels between grammatical forms, word meanings, as constituting the essence of
language and the direction in which standards of correctness should be sought, and tended to take
up a ‘conventional’ attitude towards language itself. The anomalists stressed the numerous irregular
forms in grammatical paradigms, and ‘anomalous’ associations of plural number with singular
entities, genders divorced from any sex reference, and the like, and leaned more towards the
naturalist ‘view of language, accepting its anomalies as they stood.’ The anomalists were of the
opinion that the relationship between the form of a word and its meaning was frequently
‘anamalous’. The anomalists also said that language, a product of ‘nature’, was only partly
susceptible to description in terms of analogical patterns of formation and that due attention had
to be given to ‘usage’.
The controversy contributed to the study of language by drawing attention to the analogies and
anomalies, regularities and irregularities of the language. Both the theories contributed to the
systematization of grammar. It was in the course of this controversy that the patterns of Greek
grammar were first worked out and codified, subsequently to be taken over and applied to Latin
by the Latin grammarians, and thence to form the basis of traditional grammatical theory and
language teaching throughout Europe.
3.1.3 Alexandrian Period
The manuscripts of the authors of the past, especially of the Homeric period were edited and re-
edited. While deciding between genuine and spurious works, and publishing commentaries on
the texts and grammatical treatises, the scholars at Alexandria produced competent grammars of
Greek in which tense, mood, case, gender and other traditional categories were fully dealt with.
The most famous is the grammar of Dionysius Thrax, written in the second century B.C. Most
traditional grammars of Greek are the contributions of the Alexandrian scholars.

At the beginning of the third century B.C. in the Hellenistic era, Alexandria in the Greek
colony became the centre of intense literary and immense linguistic study, because a
great library was established there.

3.1.4 Greek Grammar
Grammarians dealt with many of the topics that fall within the linguistic study of language today,
though they concerned themselves almost exclusively with their own language, and within it,
with the dialects used in literature, particularly Homeric and Attic Greek. Phonetics, grammar and
the analysis of meaning were all treated, but by far the greatest attention was paid to grammar’.

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