This document provides a historical overview of the study of linguistics from ancient Sumerians to modern times. It covers the following key periods and figures: - The Sumerians in Mesopotamia developed the earliest known written texts in cuneiform around 400 BC that included lists of nouns. - Greek linguistics from the 5th century BC investigated philosophical questions about language including the origin of language and the relationship between language and thought. - Roman linguistics continued Greek traditions and focused on morphology, with notable linguist Varro producing an influential Latin grammar. - Structuralism emerged in the 20th century with Ferdinand de Saussure distinguishing between langue and parole and

1. Group
presentation
Presented by :
Mikka Ealla Matulac
& Chrest Ianne Peusca

2. Summerians (400 years
before the present)
The earliest written texts written in
cuneiform on clay tables.
The linguistic texts from the earliest part
of the tradition were list of nouns in
Sumerian

3. The Greeks (5th
Century BC Onwards)
Philosophical and theoretical questions were investigated.
Themes of importance include the origin of language,
parts-of-speech-system the relation between language
and thought, and the relation between the two aspects pf
word signs – whether form and meaning are connected by
nature (iconicity) or purely by convention (arbitrary)

4. The Romans (1st Century
BC to approximately 500
AD)
Roman Linguistic continued studying the themes of interest to Greek
linguistics.
The primary interest was in morphology, syntax was largely ignored.
notable among Roman linguist in Varro (116-27 BC) who
Produced a multi-volume grammar of latin , of which only about a quarter
has survived.
- Later grammars of Donatus (4th Century AD) and Priscan (6th Century
AD) were highly influential in the Middle Ages

5. Isidore of seville

6. Thomas of Efut

7. Aelfric the
Grammarian

8. Manuel Chrysoloras
Produced the
first grammar
book of Greek
in Western
Europe

9. Pierre Ramee
Produced the first grammar
book of G- Grammarian who
thought precludes modern
concepts of European and
American Structuralism. He
made pokes at Aristotelian
(from which Formalism would
sprout) approaches to
language, and argued that all
languages should be
appreciated in their own right.
reek in Western Europe

10. Port Royal
Took a rationalist
approach to language.
They believed in
language universals as
evidenced by a common
thought structure in
people thoughout the
civilized world.

11. William Jones
A judge in the British Royal
Court in India; in 1786, he
wrote a paper to the Royal
Asiatic Society in Calcutta
about the historical
connection between
Sanskrit and Western
European languages such as
Greek, the Romance
Languages, and the
Germatic Languages.

12. J.G Herder
Believe that language
and thought are
inseparable. His
teachings serve as a
strong precedent to the
teachings of Benjamin
Whorf and Noam
Chomsky (generative
grammar)

13. Wilhelm Von Humboldt
Wrote the variety of
human language
structure, which
was later hailed by
Leonard Bloomfield
as the first great
book on general
linguistics.

14. Fredrich Von Schlegel ( 1772 - 1829
Coined the phrase
‘comparative
grammar’, which
originally referred to
comparing morphology
in Sankrit and other
Indo-European
languages to determine
genetic relationships.

15. Jacob Grimm ( 1785 - 1863)
Devised grimm’s law which
states that “If there is found
between two languages
agreement in the forms of
indispensable words to such
an entent that rules of letter
changes can be discovered
for passing from one to the
other, then there is a basic
relationship between this
languages.

16. Franz Bopp (1791 - 1867)
Worked further
on classification
of genetic
relations among
the Germanic
languages

17. 20th Century
Structuralism
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
- Ferdinand de Saussure tentatively suggested that
language be seen as a game of chess, where the history of
past moves is irrelevant to the players, a way though the
impasse was quickly recognized.

18. - Saussure sketched some possibilities. If the word high-
handed falls out of use, then synonyms like arrogant and
presumptuous will extend their uses. If we drop the final
for the results in English are not momentous (we might
still recognize belle as belief from the context), but not if
the finals is dropped (we should then have to find some
new way of indicating plurals).

19. langue (the whole language which no
one speaker entirely masters) and
parole (an individual's use of
language).

20. - Saussure had a theory of meaning.
He envisaged language as a series of
contiguous subdivisions marked off
on the indefinite planes of ideas and
sounds.

21. One exception was an hypothesis of Edward Sapir
(1884-1934) and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941), Man’s
language, they argued, moulds his perception of reality.
The Hopi Indians pf Arizona plurialize clouds as though
they were animate objects, do not use spatial
metaphors for time, and have no past tense as such.
Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis

22. Edward Sapir
Ferdinand De Saussure
Roman Jakobson
Benjamin Lee Wolf

23. Generative
Grammar
(Formalism)

24. Avran Noam Chomsky ( 1928)
- Avram Noam Chomsky (1928-)
and his followers have
transformed linguistics. Indeed,
despite many difficulties and
large claims later retracted, the
school of deep or generative
grammar still holds centre
stage.
- Chomsky came to prominence
in a 1972 criticism of the
behavourist's B.F. Skinner's book
Verbal Behaviour.

25. George Lakoff
- Is famous for being
one of the founding
fathers of cognitive
linguistics, for battling
Noam Chomsky, and for
arguing that using the
right metaphors is the
key to winning a
political debate.

26. Thank
You!