history of linguistics_class-3

LINGÜÍSTICA – LINGUISTICS –LINGÜÍSTICA – LINGUISTICS – LINGUISTIQUE –LINGUISTIQUE –

语言学语言学 – – בלשנותבלשנות - - 言語学 – 言語学 – भा�षा� वै�ज्ञा�न भा�षा� वै�ज्ञा�न - - اللغة اللغة علم LINGÜÍSTICA LINGÜÍSTICA -- علم

A BRIEF HISTORYArabic and Hebrew Traditions, Middle ages.

Topics

1. Linguistic ideas in antiquity: Arabic and Hebrew Traditions (Qur'ān, al-Khalīl , morphologic tradition) – Garcés – Muñoz - Veloso

2. Linguistic ideas in the Middle Ages (Bacon, Modistae, Bible, Saint Jerome, universal notion of grammar) – Ivaca

The Arabic TraditionThe Arabic Tradition

Historical ContextHistorical Context• The harshness of the environment forced on Arabs

a nomadic, tribal existence.

• Bedouins, were pastoralists and moved their herds from place to place in search of scarce resources and water. They lived in small, tightly-knit hereditary tribes

• The expansion of Roman, and then Byzantine, and then Sabaean power begins period in which Arab cities found themselves as client and tributary states to three major world powers: the Byzantine empire in the north, the Persians in the east, and the southern Arabic kingdom of Himyar (the Sabaeans).

• During this period, both Christianity and Judaism spread rapidly among the Arabs..

Historical ContextHistorical Context

• Around the 500 AD the Mecca was conquered by the tribe of the Quraysh

• Mecca had already become a religious center of Arabic culture as its name suggests—one possible derivation of the name, "Mecca," is the word, "makorba," or "temple." The religion of the pre-Islamic Arabs was a mixture of Bedouin polytheism, Judaism, and a little bit of Christianity.

• Mecca was the center of this religion with its Ka'ba, or "Cube," which served as the temple for the religion. Thus, their ethnic and language unity became a fact.

Historical Context: Muhhamad and the Historical Context: Muhhamad and the Qur'ānQur'ān

• Their new linguistic and ethnic unity was seen as an opportunity to Muhhamad.

• Muhhamad belonged to the Koraischi clan, which ruled Mecca.

• He had married to a wealthy widow and later on he secluded himself and engaged in meditation in a little cave on a hill outside of Mecca.

• Muhammad heard a voice commanding: "Recite thou in the name of thy Lord who created" (Koran 96: 1). Evidently it was the first observation that the Jews had a book, a revelation, and the Christians had a book and were all progressive and prosperous, whereas the Arabians had no book and were comparatively backward.

• He names his religion ISLAM (submmition to God) which principles are recorded in Al-Qur'ān

• The seven verses (ayat) of Al-Fatiha, the first chapter (sura) of the Qur'an.

• For devout Muslims, even benign images of the Prophet are considered blasphemous.

Historical Context: Arabic WorldHistorical Context: Arabic World • When Muhammad died in 632 AD, he left a political

organization that was entirely centered around him. He was a political and military leader and he was the source of revelation.

• With Muhhamad’s death, muslims created caliphates, where the caliphas where direct Muhammad’s and Ala’s successors.

• The first caliphate was placed at Damascus (661-750 AD), capital City Meca,

• The second was in Baghdad (750-1053 AD) (present day Iraq). It was the golden age of the muslim, in terms of literature, achitecture, science, arts and politics.

• Baghdad was likely the largest city in the world from shortly after its foundation until the 930’s

• Qasr-Al-Khalifa or Abassid Palace in Samarra was built in 221 AH (AD 836) and is one of the most famous of Islamic palaces in the world. It was built by the descendant of Muhammad's youngest uncle, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib

• Baghdad nowadays

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samarra

Historical Context: Arabic WorldHistorical Context: Arabic World

• The conquest of great part of the African world, Spain, the Crusades in Europe, in the end, the rise of the arab empire, made Arabic Language get to be widespread.

• Great influence had in the first begining the arrival of Arabic thought into Europe, specially on their arrival to Toledo, where three great cultures lived together and an impressive amount of intelectual work took place, stimulating the arrival of Reinassance into Spain and subsequently into all Europe.

• During the centuries IX to XV, The Caliphate of Baghdad (present day iraq), would be splited apart into the caliphate of Cairo and Córdoba (España), the decay of the empire begins.

Muslim Empire

Linguistic Context:Linguistic Context:

• The Arabic grammatical tradition had roots in the Greek grammatical traditions, especially following Aristotle (convention).

• To Arabic grammarians, the Arabic language was sacred and immutable as enshrined in the Koran.

• They were concerned with explaining why Arabic was perfect.

• The inflectional endings (like the periphrastic [comparative with -er] of one-syllabe adjectives in English) was believed to be proof of the symmetry and logicalness of the language.

Linguistic Context:Linguistic Context:

• The major impetus for grammatical study came from linguistic change and the desire to preserve the integrity of the holy language of the Qur'ān.

• The realization that the spoken Arabic of the eighth and ninth centuries AD (being Baghdad the Caliphate) was changing stimulated the development of Arabic grammatical study.

• Also the study of grammar came with the necessity of translation from Greek and Latin, the languages spoken as lingua franca in Europe.

The Hebraic TraditionThe Hebraic Tradition

Historical ContextHistorical Context• The people of Israel (also called the "Jewish

People") trace their origin to Abraham, who established the belief that there is only one God, the creator of the universe (Old Testament).

• Abraham, his son Yitshak (Isaac), and grandson Jacob (Israel), are referred to as the patriarchs of the Israelites.

• All three patriarchs lived in the Land of Canaan, that later came to be known as the Land of Israel. They and their wives are buried in the Ma'arat HaMachpela, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, in Hebron.

The Cave of the Patriarchs or the Cave of Machpelah (Hebrew: מערת המכפלה,


• The descendants of Abraham crystallized into a nation at about 1300 BCE after their Exodus from Egypt under the leadership of Moses (Moshe in Hebrew).

• Soon after the Exodus, Moses transmitted to the people of this new emerging nation, the Torah, and the Ten Commandments.

• After 40 years in the Sinai desert, Moses led them to the Land of Israel, that is cited in The Bible as the land promised by God to the descendants of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.


• In 587 BCE, Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar's army captured Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, and exiled the Jews to Babylon (modern day Iraq).

• The year 587 BCE marks a turning point in the history of the region. From this year onwards, the region was ruled or controlled by a succession of superpower empires of the time in the following order: Babylonian, Persian, Greek Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Empires, Islamic and Christian crusaders, Ottoman Empire, and the British Empire.


• The people of modern day Israel share the same language and culture shaped by the Jewish heritage and religion passed through generations starting with the founding father Abraham (ca. 1800 BCE).

• Thus, Jews have had continuous presence in the land of Israel for the past 3,300 years

Linguistic ContextLinguistic Context

• Hebrew linguistic tradition began with concern for establishing the correct Hebrew text of the Old Testament.

• The Jewish Sacred Scriptures Torah (Hebrew: ה Aּתֹוָר) were written in semitic languages such Aramaic and Hebrew, but by the 3rd century after Christ, a great portion of the followers of Judaism spoke Greek, and the laws given by Yahve to Moses could not be understood.

• Then grammar lists, word lists of equivalents in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek were the begining of the Hebraic Linguistic Tradition.


• Hebrew grammarians borrowed descriptive methods wholesale from the Arabic linguistic tradition and developed a system of analysis for the morphology (analysis of words into their meaningful parts).

• Between 900 and 1550, 91 authors composed 145 works on grammar that we know of.


• “Dos son las más grandes contribuciones al estudio del lenguaje: La primera, la asignación de los nombres a los animales por parte de Adán, y la segunda, la historia de la Torre de Babel.”

(Rodriguez, op.cit.)

SummarySummary

Contexts in which linguistics aroseContexts in which linguistics arose

• philosophy (Greece)• language teaching (Alexandria)• philology (study of ancient texts, often of sacred

nature) (India, Greece, Arabia, Jewish)

The Middle AgesThe Middle Ages

Historical ContextHistorical Context• The middle age is a period of European History.

• It extends from te 5th to the 15t centuries

• The beginning of the Middle Ages is called the Dark Ages because the great civilizations of Rome and Greece had been conquered.

• The end of the Middle Ages in about 1450 led to the beginning of the Renaissance.

• Life was very hard in the Middle Ages. Very few people could read or write. The people thought that fate ruled their existence; therefore, there was little hope for improving their condition.

Historical ContextHistorical Context• During the years of the Roman Empire, the poor

people were protected by the soldiers of the emperor. When the empire fell, there were no laws protecting them, so they turned to the lords to keep the peace and to act on their behalf.

• This willingness to be ruled by the lords led to the beginnings of feudalism.

• The only hope that most people had was their belief that Christianity would make their lives better or at least that life in heaven would be better than life on earth.

• Under the feudal system, everyone but the king had a ruling lord above him to whom he owed loyalty and service in exchange for land and protection.

Historical ContextHistorical Context• Monks taught boys from wealthy noble families

how to read and write Latin. This was important because both the Bible and the church services used the language. Some boys from wealthy families were tutored privately.

• Students began learning with the seven liberal arts: Latin grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. Girls were not taught to read or to write.

• Children of the poor spent their time working the fields and caring for the home. They learned what they needed to know to survive in society.

Historical ContextHistorical Context• The Curch was the most powerfull

institution durin the Middle Ages.

• The end of this era is set out by the fall of the Bizantine Empire (Constantinople), the Discovery of America, The Guttenberg Printing Machine, among other historical facts.

Linguistic ContextLinguistic Context• In Europe Latin was highly regarded as the

language of the public sphere as well as the primary written language.

• Teachings of Roman grammarians were mixed with folk views in a Christian frame.

• Great importance was given to the translation of the bible. Since the languages of the old testament were being lost and accurate translation were needed.

• The translation neede to be both exact in te words and needed to express the dogmatic view which was embeded in it

Linguistic ContextLinguistic Context• The translation of the Bible into Latin was

done by Saint Jerome (347-420 AD)

• The text was requested by pope at the request of Pope St. Damasus I in 382 AD, his patron. The Vulgate was intended to replace the Old Latin version (the "Itala"), which was translated from the Greek.

• Ultimately, this bible called Vulgata”, became the definitive and officially promulgated Latin version of the Bible in the Roman Catholic Church.

• Saint Jerome made use of the old theories of grammar built up by Plato and Aristotle and based his translating approach in the roman beliefs of word-by-word and sense-by-sense where necessary.

• To do his translation he called upon the descriptive grammar created by Priscian and Donatus, as well as the books done by the Jews on the grammar of Hebrew and the philological studies on Aramaic.


• For several centuries the studies of grammar and the application of it to language teaching and translation took the most of linguistic analysis attention.

Linguistic ContextLinguistic Context• In the seventh and eighth

centuries,Donatus predominated,

• though aprox. in 830 AD, Priscian's Institutiones replaced Donatus as the basic grammar, resulting in a new tradition of commentaries,

• In this environment, the hypothesis that Hebrew was the original language from which all others sprang became predominant.


• Around AD 1000, a shift began in which logic came to dominate linguistic thought.

• Gradually, interest in the vernacular languages increased.

• In about 1000 a grammar of Latin fo Anglo-Saxon speaking children was published in Britain.

• Descriptive grammars of vernacular languages (native languages of the countries) were written in the mould of Latin.

Linguistic ContextLinguistic Context• In the 12th century the notion of universal

nature of grammar arose

• Grammarians followed Aristotle's view that scientific knowledge is universal or general and applies to all subject matter, including grammar, hence universal grammar

• Roger Bacon (1214-1294).held that grammar was fundamentally the same in all languages and that differences were incidental and shallow

Bacon is famous for his statement that “grammar is substantially one and the same in all languages, although it may vary accidentally” (Bursill-Hall 1995: 131, on Campbell online: http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/uid=532/tocnode?id=g97814051025)

Roger Bacon (1214?-1294) english monk, scientist, philosopher, mathematicien,

Linguistic ContextLinguistic Context• Some 30 authors, most connected with the

University of Paris formed what is called Modistae

• They integrated Aristotelian philosophy into Catholic theology.

• “According to the Modistae, the grammarian's job was to explain how the intellect had created a system of grammar[...]”

• “In language the grammarian expressed understanding of the world and its contents through the modes of signifying” (Bursill-Hall 1995: 132, on

Campbell Ibid.).

Linguistic ContextLinguistic Context• The grammatical system proposed by

Modistae, had to mirror reality as grasped by understanding; that is, “grammar was ultimately underwritten by the very structure of the universe” (Breva-Claramonte 1983: 47, Campbell Ibid.).


• The tradition of linguistic analysis was as well focused on the study of grammar, maintaining the questioning of whether language was a ‘natural’ or ‘conventional’ phenomenon, only complenting this view with the idea that grammar was universal to all languages and that it contained all the information regarding the structure of the universe.

• The change in the focus of linguistics came along with history.

• The new beliefs of a rounded earth, the influence of the arabian world, the change from a God-Religious centered vision of life towards a cientific perspective, the glorious discovery of America and of a great deal of languages never seen before gave birth to Renaissance and different linguistic traditions.

history of linguistics_class-3

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