Linguistics
Linguistics is the science that studies the phenomenon of human language. An important part of linguistics is the study of the history and origins of languages. Applied linguistics is the discipline which concerns with the understanding of foreign languages and the development of improved methods of teaching them.
Most linguists study foreign languages as a tool for his work, but their aim is not to gain the kind of knowledge that permit them to speak as a native of the country. This kind of knowledge, which enables to understand, speak, read, and write a language, is called implicit knowledge. The goal of a linguist, instead, is to acquire explicit knowledge about the language. Explicit knowledge has as its object the understanding of a language's properties, whether or not this understanding permits its owner to speak fluently the language.
Traditional grammar
The first linguistic studies were concerned with the establishing of grammar rules. Greek and Latin grammarians worked on this, and in the time of ancient Romans (6th century AD) elaborate grammar systems had been developed for both languages. These systems constituted the traditional grammar.
Later on, when the fall of the Roman empire and the barbarian invasions gave rise to the emergence of Romance languages (Italian, French, and Spanish), traditional grammar was not longer apt to the analysis of these new languages. The maladjustment grew bigger when the increasing number of exploration voyages in the 15th century uncovered languages that were not at all related to the Indo-European languages such as Greek and Latin. This had a positive consequence in that it brought up a philosophical interest in universal logic that led (in the 17th century) to attempt the development of a general grammar.
Modern linguistics
The colonization of India in the 18th century had as one of its consequences the encounter of European scholars with an ancient Hindu language, Sanskrit, which had remarkable similarities with Greek and Latin. This resemblance, and the fact that Sanskrit had been extensively studied by the Hindu Panini with greater philosophical rigor than traditional grammar did with Greek and Latin, set the orientation for European linguistics. During this century and the next, European linguists dedicated to study the history and the relationships of all the Indo-European languages they could find. An important figure of the time was Sir William Jones (1746-1794), who conjectured that Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin had all the same root.
With the arrival of the 20th century, the attention of linguists was turned to other aspects than the historical. Influential in this change was the work of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), whose book, "Course in General Linguistics," was published in 1916 after his death. The new approach was called 'synchronic linguistics,' while the former was called 'diachronic linguistics.' Both approaches have persisted since then, providing two complementary analytic perspectives. After World War I, linguistic science developed rapidly both in America and in Europe. Significant work was accomplished by the Prague school led by Roman Jakobson.
Linguistics and behaviorism
Since the 1920s, linguistics experienced a great development in the United States. A great deal of descriptive work was made on the Indian languages, which was associated with anthropological studies. This field work gradually gave place to the formulation of theoretical principles, and in 1933 these principles were exposed in a book by Leonard Bloomfield, "Language." Bloomfield was very influenced by the psychological theory of behaviorism.
During World War II, linguistics' development in Europe was stalled, and in the USA linguists worked principally in matters related to the war effort like the production of foreign language teaching materials. After the war, linguistic studies resurged in a number of European countries, and in the USA a theory of language analysis known as 'structural linguistics' was consolidated. The chief tenet of this theory was, in accordance with behaviorism, that the properties of sentences and other linguistic units (verbs, vowels, etc.) should be manifested by the external behavior of speakers.
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