It is the forth session of Introduction of Linguistics course. It talks about The History of Linguistics.

1. Edi Brata
Mathla’ul Anwar University

2. Before Nineteenth Century
o Language was of interest mainly to
philosophers (Plato and Aristotle)
o Fisis Vs. Nomos Controversy
o Analogy Vs. Anomaly Controversy
o Nature Vs. Nurture Controversy

3. Nineteenth Century:
Historical Linguistics
o 1786 is the year which many people regard as
the birthdate of linguistics.
o Sir William Jones discovers Sanskrit, Greek,
Latin, Celtic and Germanic had striking
structural similarities.
o In the mid-19th century Darwin published The
Origin of Species.

4. Early to Mid-20th Century:
Descriptive Linguistics
Emphasis shifted from language change to
language description.

5. Early to Mid-20th Century:
Descriptive Linguistics
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913),
‘the father of modern linguistics’:
• Synchronic and Diachronic
• La Langue and La Parole
• Signifiant and Signifie
• Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic

6. Early to Mid-20th Century:
Descriptive Linguistics
Leonard Bloomfield (1877-1949),
‘Structuralism Linguistics’ :
• Linguistics should deal
objectively and systematically
with observable data.
• IC Analysis

7. Early to Mid-20th Century:
Descriptive Linguistics
John Rupert Firth (1890-1960),
‘Phonology Prosody’:
• Segmental
• Supra-segmental

8. Mid- to late- 20th Century:
Generative Linguistics
• Born: December 7, 1928
• Son of a professor of Hebrew
• Wife: also a linguist
• Ph.D. in linguistics from the
University of Pennsylvania,
1955

9. Mid- to late- 20th Century:
Generative Linguistics
Universal Grammar
• Knowledge (internal structure of the
human mind)  problem of how this
knowledge is acquired
• Many people believe that Chomsky claims
that language is innate and that there is a
universal grammar. This is, in fact, an
incorrect interpretation of Chomsky’s
theory.
• Universal grammar (UG) is a question of
how language is acquired, based on
universal principles of language.

10. Thank You