Intro To Linguistics - Second and Third Lecture

A Historical Introduction
Part A
1.The Early Contribution of Ancient Linguists
2023 – 2024
Second Lecture
Dr. Salwa Ben Amer
OBJECTIVES
 By the end of this session, students should be able to:
 Recognize the early contribution of ancient linguists of Indians and the contribution of the grammarian
Panini.
 Recognize the earliest linguistics debate among Greek philosophers and have brief information of the
contribution of the following:
Plato – Aristotle – Thrax – Stocisim
 Recognize the contribution of the Arab and Muslim linguists to the study of the Arabic language. Give
some information about:
 The Arabic grammatical theory – features of The Arabic linguistic tradition – the contribution of Sibawaihi
– Ibn Sina
 Differentiate between Prescriptive and Descriptive Linguistics.
 Differentiate between Synchronic and Diachronic Linguistics.
 Have some knowledge about:
 Structural Linguistics.
 Transformational Generative Grammar.
The Indians
 They believed that their language diverged from sacred texts.
The motivation for their work was certain religious ceremonies.
Indian linguists recognize the verb as central to a sentence. They also recognize the distinction
between nouns and verbs, between preposition and particle.
 Panini was a Sanskrit of philogist, grammarian and revered scholar in ancient India. Panini’s
comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is taken to mark the start of classical Sanskrit.
He has been considered the first descriptive linguist.
His theory of morphological analysis was more advanced than any equivalent Western theories
before the 2oth century.
The Greeks
 They were interested in linguistics as part of the whole system of philosophy.
The Greek philosophers debated:
 the origin of language.
 the nature of meaning.

 whether language was governed by nature or convention.
 Their interest was in the field of grammar which was regarded as “the art of
reading” and etymology “the origin of words” rather than in phonetics.
 Some important Greek philosophers of this period are: Plato, Aristotle and Thrax.
Plato
 As one of the Greek scholars:
 He offered valuable insights into language.
 He distinguished between vowels and consonants.
 He divided sentences into nominal and verbal sentences.
 In his book “Catylus”, he discussed about the origin of language either by
nature or convention.
Aristotle
 His first great contribution to the study of language is that he saw language
as an object of rational enquiry, a means of expressing and communicating
thoughts.
 For him, language can be seen as a valid part due to his theory of truth.
 He is regarded as the founder of classical European grammar.
 He classified the parts of speech.
 He recognized the category of tense in Greek verbs.

Dionysius Thrax
He was a Greek grammarian and considered to be the author of the earliest
grammatical texts on Greek language and he was regarded as the ground work of the
entire Western grammatical tradition.
He defined grammar as practical knowledge of general usages in poetry and prose, he
recognized the sentence as a group of words that express a complete thought.
He identified eight basic word classes: nouns, verbs, participles, pronouns articles,
prepositions, conjunctions and adverbs.
He noted the properties of classes of words such as gender, number, and case for
noun, and those conjugation, tense, voice, mood and person for verb.
Stoicism
 An ancient Greek’s school of philosophy that gave more attention to language.
 Scholars in this school were interested in linguistics as a separate science.
 They distinguished between four parts of speech (nouns, verbs, conjunctions

and articles).
 They distinguished between the active and the passive, and between transitive
and intransitive verbs, and between proper and common nouns.
 The focus was on the written language.

The contribution of the Arab and Muslim linguists to the
study of the Arabic language
 As a result of the spread of Islam outside Arabia, interest in the

linguistics study of Arabic began and formal Arabic needed because
classical language began to be corrupted by the influence of non-
Arabic speakers.
 The preservation of the Qur’an was the most direct aim of the
beginning of Arabic grammatical studies.
Sibawaihi’s contribution to the study of Arabic Phonetics
 He is a Persian Muslim studied under the famous teachers of Basra’s school.
 He is a very famous grammarian of the Arabic language, and he is the author of the first
grammar of Arabic.
 The main work carried out in Arabic phonetics is the statement and the analysis by
Sibawaihi and his teacher AL-Khalil . It was the first book of Arabic grammar.
He recognizes many of the issues which are essential in modern phonetic analysis for
example:
 The manner of articulation.
 The presence or absence voice.
 He recognizes 29 phonemes in ordering the Arabic sounds.

Ibn Sina’s Contribution to The Study of Arabic Phonetics
 Ibn Sina, is a Persian Muslim philosopher and a scientist. His treatise, is a

unique linguistic scientific treatise, which is written in Arabic, about Arabic
phonetics from both scientific and linguistic properties.
 He was the first one to start a purely scientific approach to the study of sounds.
 One of the important things in Ibn Sina’s work is his recognition of the nature of
vowels. He divides them into long and short vowels as a first description of Arabic
vowels.
The Arabic Grammatical Theory in the Period
Between 8th and 10th
 It was the most interesting period in the history of

Arabic grammar. The period when the sharpest
linguistic debates went on between two Arabic school
of linguistics, the Kufan and the Basra.
Sources of the study of Arabic :
1.The Holy Qur’an.
2.The saying and actions of the prophet.
3.The Arabic language as spoken by reliable native speakers.

A Historical Introduction
Part B
2. Mid to Late Twentieth Century
2023 - 2024
Third Lecture
Dr. Salwa Ben Amer
Synchronic Linguistics VS Diachronic Linguistics
Synchronic and diachronic are two different and

complementary viewpoints in linguistic analysis.
These concepts were theorized by the Swiss linguist

Ferdinand de Saussure who was the first person made a sharp
distinction between historical (diachronic) and non-historical
(synchronic) approaches to language study.
Synchronic Linguistics VS Diachronic Linguistics
 Synchronic Linguistics :
 Saussure stated that language can be used in a community in a given
time. It is a non-historical approach which is concerned with analysis of
a language at a particular time.
 Diachronic Linguistics :
• Saussure stated that language deals with different states of language
that happened through time.
• It is a historical approach which is concerned with the development of a
language through history. Historical linguistics is typically a diachronic
study.
Prescriptive VS Descriptive Linguistics
They are two different ways of speaking in language in areas that focus on
language use.
 Prescriptive :
 From the mid 18th century until the 20th century, linguistics was essentially
prescriptive.
 The term prescriptive linguistics refers to a set of norms and rules governing how a
language should or should not be used.
 It attempted to prescribe the norms of proper language usage (how language ought
to be).
 Descriptive :
 20th century modern linguistics is descriptive science.
 It describes the ways in which a language is actually used. It describes the ways in
which speakers use their language without certain rules of proper language usage.
Structural Linguistics : since the early 1930s until the late 1950s
 It was associated with the American linguist Bloom Field. He was the pioneer among
American structuralists. He asserted that the basis for understanding language should
be limited to scientific observable analysis.
Bloomfield's approach represented a behaviorist view of linguistics and his approach

is linked with psychological theory of behaviorism and it is restricted to
what is concrete and observable and excludes the mind from linguistics consideration.
Also his approach is called “Structuralism” because it classifies features of sentences
which is concerned with the analysis of the sentences into their constituents.
Transformational-Generative Grammar (TGG)
 Syntactic structure (1957) by Chomsky marks of beginning of TGG. It is a

theory of grammar which holds that a sentence typically has more than one
level of structure. The surface structure is also has an abstract underlying
structure (the deep structure).
 TGG is a system of language analysis that recognizes a relationship among

the various elements of a sentence, and uses processes or rules to express
these relationship.
Characteristics of TGG
1. Generative: it means that grammar must generate all, and only, the grammatical
sentences in a given language.
2. Transformational: it is a grammar that sets up two levels of structure; deep
structure and surface structure, and it relates these levels by means of operations
known as transformation.
So TGG, considers grammar as a system of all the rules that generate combinations of
words which form grammatical sentences in a given language and involves the use of
defined operations (which is called Transformations) to produce new sentences from
existing ones.
• To recap
 Giving a general view of the science of linguistics among the Indians, the
Greeks and the Arabs throughout history. Have brief information of the
contribution of the scholars and philosophers of the Indians, Greeks and
Arabs.
 Differentiate between Prescriptive and Descriptive Linguistic / Synchronic and

Diachronic Linguistics.
 Have some knowledge about:

 Structure Linguistics.
 Transformational Generative Grammar.

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A Historical Introduction

1.The Early Contribution of Ancient Linguists

The motivation for their work was certain religious ceremonies.

He has been considered the first descriptive linguist.

 the nature of meaning.

 He offered valuable insights into language.

 He distinguished between vowels and consonants.

 He divided sentences into nominal and verbal sentences.

 In his book “Catylus”, he discussed about the origin of language either by

 He is regarded as the founder of classical European grammar.

 He classified the parts of speech.

 He recognized the category of tense in Greek verbs.

 An ancient Greek’s school of philosophy that gave more attention to language.

 Scholars in this school were interested in linguistics as a separate science.

 They distinguished between four parts of speech (nouns, verbs, conjunctions

 The focus was on the written language.

 As a result of the spread of Islam outside Arabia, interest in the

 The presence or absence voice.

 He recognizes 29 phonemes in ordering the Arabic sounds.

 Ibn Sina, is a Persian Muslim philosopher and a scientist. His treatise, is a

 It was the most interesting period in the history of

1.The Holy Qur’an.

2.The saying and actions of the prophet.

3.The Arabic language as spoken by reliable native speakers.

2. Mid to Late Twentieth Century

Synchronic and diachronic are two different and

These concepts were theorized by the Swiss linguist

Bloomfield's approach represented a behaviorist view of linguistics and his approach

 Syntactic structure (1957) by Chomsky marks of beginning of TGG. It is a

 TGG is a system of language analysis that recognizes a relationship among

 Differentiate between Prescriptive and Descriptive Linguistic / Synchronic and

 Have some knowledge about:

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