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First, establish

The study of language can be traced back to more than 2000 years ago. But it was not until the early 19th century that linguistics became an independent discipline with a history of only one hundred and twenty years. The symbol of its establishment is generally considered to be the rise and establishment of historical comparative linguistics.

Second, the development of linguistics.

Throughout the development of linguistics, it can be roughly divided into the following stages:

(A) language and literature stage

1, origin

Literature is the study of ancient literature and written language. The ancestors of mankind left many brilliant documents to future generations in words. However, with the passage of time, it is more and more difficult for future generations to read these documents. This requires someone to do some explanation and annotation work on ancient documents, with the aim of making future generations understand the documents, rather than studying the language. This is the origin of philology.

2. Three sources of China literature.

China literature can be traced back to more than two thousand years ago. Indian, Greek, Roman and China are considered as the three major sources of China literature.

3. The characteristics of China literature

(1) The purpose of research is generally to help people understand the documents and classics at that time, not to study language for the sake of language;

(2) As far as the research object is concerned, written language is the main research material, while oral language is neglected, and most of them are confined to the study of mother tongue;

(3) The research status is low, it is in a vassal position, and there is no independent discipline;

(4) In research methods, most of them lack systematicness and comprehensiveness, and lack the viewpoint of development. Despite these limitations, the study of philology laid the foundation for the later development of linguistics. And later the development of linguistics broke through these limitations.

(B) the stage of historical comparative linguistics

/kloc-At the beginning of the 9th century, western linguists began to use the historical comparison method to study languages. Historical comparison method is to compare similar languages or dialects with each other, find out the corresponding relationship between them, and thus determine their common source and historical development. Thus, historical comparative linguistics (also called comparative grammar) came into being.

Historical comparative linguistics rose rapidly in the atmosphere of modern scientific spirit, which in turn supported and promoted the development of modern science. Its representatives are Lasker of Denmark, Baup of Germany, Green of Russia and Votokov. They dare to cross the barriers of their own languages and compare different languages vertically, which not only proves that languages, like the biological world, have an objective history of continuous evolution, but also proves that Indo-Iranian and most European languages have a common source, that is, there is a primitive Indo-European language. They and later scholars established a set of scientific historical comparison methods and genealogical classification to find out the kinship of different languages.

Their research made linguistics get rid of its vassal status in the past, marking that linguistics has become a truly independent discipline.

Historical comparative linguistics also has limitations:

(1) overemphasizes the diachronic study of language and ignores the systematic description of synchronicity, so the premise of its research is not sufficient.

(2) As a research method, historical comparison method is only applicable to the study of kinship languages, for those languages that have no kinship, such as Japanese and Korean; And many native languages in Africa, America and Australia.

(3) The most serious shortcoming is the closed concept of language development, which simply compares language with natural phenomena of organisms. Ignoring the relationship between social history and language development, we think that language is the process and result of differentiation and re-differentiation from the initial common language in the form of tree diagram. After language differentiation, it is closed except for vertical relationship.

(C) the stage of structuralist linguistics

At the beginning of the 20th century, after a century of development of historical comparative linguistics, linguistics entered a new milestone, which was the birth of structuralist linguistics.

Saussure is the founder of structuralism, also known as "the father of modern linguistics". After his death, his colleagues edited and published the Course of General Linguistics according to the students' notes and his notes, which reflected his linguistic thoughts. This book strictly distinguishes between language and speech, synchronicity and diachrony, internal linguistics and external linguistics, combinatorial relationship and associative relationship (aggregation relationship) and so on. Saussure thinks:

(1) In the field of linguistics, there are two kinds of linguistics, namely linguistic linguistics and verbal linguistics. At that time, I should mainly study linguistics.

(2) Language is essentially a symbolic system with the characteristics of arbitrariness and linearity, so linguistics should study the internal structure of this system;

(3) Language has synchronic and diachronic states, which calls for shifting the research focus to synchronic linguistics at that time.

Under the influence of Saussure, a structuralist school of language emerged. Structuralist linguistic school has three main branches:

(1) Prague School. Represented by Matthews and Jacobson. He gave full play to Suo's social language view, attached importance to the social function of language, and made a major breakthrough in the theory of phoneme and phoneme difference characteristics, also known as functionalism.

② Danish School, also known as Copenhagen School. Represented by Blondall and Hjelmslev. This school has developed Sohn's linguistic sign theory to the extreme. It is believed that language is only a symbol composed of content form and expression form. Also known as symbolism.

(3) American schools. The most developed and important school of structural linguistics. Representative figures are Sapir and Bloomfield. Both Lisa and Bob have representative works in language. The American school pays attention to recording the actual language and emphasizes the description and induction of time (that is, synchronic). And founded the composition analysis, also known as the descriptive school.

Structuralist linguistics also has limitations:

(1) later fell into a dead end of formalism, pursuing form too much and ignoring the specific content of the sentence. Separate form from meaning. For example, there is a lack of explanatory power for homographs in language. He is opposed to the research method.

(2) It emphasizes the description and induction of existing language facts, but fails to discuss the generative ability of human language. Only describe, not explain. This gave birth to another new revolution in the history of linguistics. That is, the creation of transformational generative grammar.

Formal linguistics stage (transformational generative grammar)

In the middle and late 1950s, the rise of transformational generative grammar broke the pattern that structuralist linguistics dominated the world. The founder of transformational generative grammar is Chomsky in America. 1957 The publication of Syntactic Structure marks the birth of transformational generative grammar. Transformational generative grammar is developed in the process of criticizing and revising American descriptive linguistics theory, and it is also the most influential school in western linguistics in recent decades.

Why can people learn to speak in a short time, but other animals can't? Chomsky assumes that there is a potential congenital language acquisition device in the human brain, and through acquired stimulation, people can consciously learn any language they come into contact with; There is a critical period for children to acquire language, from one or two years old to eleven or twelve years old. It is more difficult to learn a language after eleven or twelve. )

He divides language into language competence and language behavior, and thinks that language research mainly reveals language competence, that is, reveals grammatical rules that can generate infinite sentences. Its goal is to find a grammar system that can generate all sentences, that is, universal grammar. So as to find the formal explanation of language; Pay attention to the commonness of language; The research method mainly adopts deduction in mathematics and logic to formalize language description.

Transformation-generation grammar mainly includes two parts: transformation and generation. Generation rules include a set of phrase structure rules and vocabulary insertion rules. "Transformation" mainly refers to the transformation of sentence patterns and structures.

His theory can be called "formal linguistics" because formal symbols are used in the process of transforming and generating sentences.

The advantage of this theory is that it is suitable for computer application, and it overcomes the deficiency that structuralist linguistics only pays attention to the surface structure and ignores the deep structure. It opens up a new way and direction for language study and promotes the development of cognitive science. It has a far-reaching impact on computer science, artificial intelligence, especially human-computer translation and dialogue.

Transformational generative syntax also has limitations:

(1) ignores the language environment and communication.

(2) The operating procedures are complicated.

(E) Cross-language stage (also called multi-language stage)

In the history of western linguistics, traditional linguistics, historical comparative linguistics and structuralist linguistics have all dominated. Since the 1950s and 1960s, many linguistic theories have emerged, forming a diversified situation: both traditional and modern; Formal linguistics and functional linguistics (text linguistics, cognitive linguistics, systemic functional linguistics, etc.). ); There are both microscopic (language itself) and macroscopic (sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, mathematical linguistics, etc. ).