The document summarizes the historical development of linguistics from ancient Greece to modern times. It covers early developments in traditional grammar with Greek and Roman scholars, developments in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and more modern developments including historical comparative linguistics, American structural linguistics, and transformational generative grammar. The key periods and influential scholars at each stage of the development of linguistics are discussed.

1. THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS
OF LINGUISTICS
Oleh Kelompok VII
Putri darma pratiwi Marliah Amaliah Umar
Asriani Syahrul Saharuddin
Universitas Muhammadiyah Parepare

2. •Early Developments ( Traditional Grammar )
The Greek philosophers who were concerned with the study of language were Plato,
Aristotle, the Stoics, and Dionysius Thrax.
-Plato ‘ s system was based on meaning and had only two-word classes: onoma and
rhema.
- Aristotle, Plato’s most gifted pupil added a third word class called syndesmoi .
- Stoics added one more word class, that is articles.
-Dionysius Thrax expanded the word classes to eight classes namely: nouns,
pronouns, verbs, participles, articles, adverbs, conjunctions, and
prepositions.
1. Ancient Greek

3. 2. Ancient Roma
The scholars who were interested in the study of language were Varro, Quintilian,
Donatus, and Priscian.
-Quintilian stressed the importance of including the study of grammar and rethoric
in the education of the cultured Roman.
- Varro made independent contributions to grammatical study.
-Donatus wrote one book on parts of speech and another, Ars Minor, in which he
summarized the “basics” of Latin Grammar.

4. 3. The Middle Ages
Among the Medieval scholars whose work has recently been shown to have been
familiar to those who followed were St. Anslem, Peter of Spain and Peter Helias.
- St. Anslem wrote a treatise with the title “ De Grammatico “.
-Peter of Spain detected an important difference between the “significatio” and
the “supposition “ of a word.
-Peter Helias stressed that is the philosopher rather than grammarian who
discovers the real significance of grammar study.

5. 4. The Renaissance
Renaissance scholars were Fransisco Sanches de las Brocas or simply Sanctius,
Huarte, and Peter Ramus.
-Sanctius wrote a book “ Minerva “( around 1587 ), was for many years
considered the standard work on Latin Grammar.
-Huarte argued that humans can distinguished from animals because humans
alone possess two powers.
Peter Ramus wrote grammars of Greek, Latin, and French.

6. 5.The Seventeenth Century and Beyond
The important scholars were Rene Descartes, John Locke, and David Hume.
-Rene Descartes, who believe that human abilities, capabilities, and ideas were
innate.
-John Locke and David Hume, insisted that everything humans come to know
including language – is entirely explainable as
sense – oriented, “ learned ” behaviour.

7. B. New Developments
1. Historical Comparative Linguistics
According to La Palombara (1976:91), among the conclusion on which comparative
language scholars soon reached agreement were the following:
•It seemed certain beyond reasonable doubt that humans had lived in civilized societies
at least as early as six thousand years before the birth of Christ.
•Enough evidence had been accumulated to convincingly support the theory of related
languages, or language “families.”.
•The development of the existing “sister” languages had taken place independently but
simultaneously.
•This development had, furthermore, taken place over a very long period of time
•The original Indo-European language had vanished long ago.
•All existing vernacular languages were still changing and developing.

8. the linguistic investigations of the American structuralists followed a specific
order:
-first, they must isolate and identify the significant sounds (phonemes) of a
language;
-next, they must determine which particular sounds sequences make up the
words of the language;
-and last, the structure of the language’s sentences must be analyzed and
recorded.
2. American Structural Linguistics

9. -This time, most of the Structuralists had been extremely critical of traditional
grammar as unscientific.
-Most of the structuralists expressed their utmost concept for the methods of
traditional grammarians.
-The important structuralists in this time were George L. Trager and Henry Lee
Smith, W. Nelson Francis, Mary Haas, Archibald Hill, Zelling Herris, and Charles
Hock
3. Structural Grammar of English

10. C. Latest Developments
1. Transformational Generative Grammar
In 1957, Noam Chomsky published a book with the little Syntactic
Structures and had four main aims in writing Aspects :
1. To clear up misunderstandings and to answer questions that had been
raised about TG theory, especially those raised by the structuralists,
2. To point out the weaknesses and defects in the early model, along with the
arguments and evidence that had convinced him of validity of some
criticisms,
3. To suggest revisions and modifications which would remedy these defects,
4. To call attention to unresolved problems still in need of investigation.

11. 2. Challenges to the Aspects Grammar
The revisions which Chomsky suggested about Challenges to the Aspects Grammar :
•The base: The lexicon should be “enriched” by the addition of stems, prefixes, and
suffixes.
•The Transformational Component: The transformational component contains
transformation rules which relate deep structures to surface structures.
•The Phonological Component: Phonological rules relate surface structures to spoken
forms.
•The Semantic Component: Semantic rules, which are consulted at all levels, relate
both deep structures and surface structures to semantic, meaning representation.