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Unit 3: Brief History of the Growth of Modern Linguistics: Bloomfield to Chomsky

(ii) The most famous latin grammars, which were used as standard textbook as late as Middle Notes
Ages, written by ............... .
(a) Donatus (b) Priscian
(c) Virgil (d) Both (a) and (b)
(iii) The linguistic circle of Prague was founded in ............... .
(a) 1915 (b) 1920
(c) 1926 (d) None of these
(iv) The tradition of American linguistic may be said to have begun with ............... .
(a) Franz Beas (b) William Dwight Whitey
(c) Edward Sapir (d) None of these.

3.15 Summary

• Linguistics is the study of language, sometimes called the science of language. {1} The subject
has become a very technical, splitting into separate fields: sound (phonetics and phonology),
sentence structure (syntax, structuralism, deep grammar), meaning (semantics), practical
psychology (psycholinguistics) and contexts of language choice (pragmatics). {2} But originally,
as practised in the nineteenth century, linguistics was philology: the history of words. {3}
Philologists tried to understand how words had changed and by what principle. Why had
the proto-European consonants changed in the Germanic branch: Grimm’s Law? Voiceless
stops went to voiceless fricatives, voiced stops to voiceless stops, and voiced aspirates to
voiced stops.
• The Greeks and the Indians are the first to have started speculations about language and
contributed tremendously to linguistic studies. In the words of John Lyons, “Traditional
grammar, like so many other of our academic traditions, goes back to Greece of the fifth
century before Christ. For the Greeks ‘grammar’ was from the first a part of ’Philosophy’.
• A beginning of what is known now as ‘traditional grammar’ was made by the Greeks with
discussions on the origin of language. The Greek philosophers debated whether language
was governed by ‘nature’ or ‘convention’.
• 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. The manuscripts of the authors of the past, especially of the
Homeric period were edited and re-edited.
• In linguistic studies, the Romans were content largely to model themselves on Greek patterns.
They copied the Greeks slavishly in all aspects of the linguistic scholarship. Grammars of
Latin were fitted in a Greek framework. In dealing with the ‘parts of speech’ the Latin
grammarians made only such minor modifications as the differences between Greek and
Latin forced to their attention. They, however, encouraged the view that the parts of speech,
case, number, tense, etc. were universals and necessary categories of language.
• The leader and pioneer of this school was Saussurre who will be discussed below. In general,
the supporters of this school have tried to remain whole-heartedly loyal to the teaching and
spirit of Saussure. For a long time the leaders were Charles Bally and A. Sechehaye, who had
assumed the responsibility of publishing the Course.
• A mathematician, psychologist, sociologist, philosopher, linguist, Noam Chomsky is the
most dynamic, influential and revolutionary linguist of today. He is the Panini of modern

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