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Class Notes Bloomfield

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Nandhu Matta
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37 views3 pages

Class Notes Bloomfield

Uploaded by

Nandhu Matta
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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(the opening lines of Chapter 1)

 Language plays a great part in our life. Perhaps because of its familiarity we
rarely observe it taking it rather for granted, as we do breathing or walking.
 Though language is a natural process some educated are conscious as to
how to speak or pronounce their language.
 Analogists= who believed that language was natural and logical (etymology)
Anamologist= pointed out irregularities of linguistic structures.
 The Greeks studied no language but their own. They did not go deep into
the nuances of languages,but only in the eighteenth century generalizations
were solved by theories like:
- Man’s attempt to imitate noises (bow wow theory)
- His natural sound producing impulses (ding dong theory)
- His violent outcries and exclamations ( pooh- pooh theory)
 The Romans constructed the Latin grammars on the Greek model. They
contributed much less than the ancients. The studied the distinction
between the nouns and adjectives and differences between the concord
government and apposition.
 For the medieval scholar language meant classical Latin. Hebrew and Arabic
added later.
 The era of exploration brought a superficial knowledge of many languages.
Travelers brought back vocabularies; missionaries translated religious
books.
 The increase of commerce and travel led to the compilation of grammars
and dictionaries for languages closer at hand.
 Mithridates J C Adelung & J S Vater which contained the lord’s prayer in
nearly five hundred languages.
 Eighteenth century scholars analyzed grammatical features of the language
in philosophical terms and took no account of structural differences
between languages.
 In modern languages like English speech forms of the upper classes
remained at purer level and ‘vulgarisms’ of the common people branched
off as corruptions by a process of linguistic decay.

 This linguistic decay affected the study of modern languages.

 Languages of Europe fell in three categories (see table on page 9).


Outside Europe several nations (like China, Japan, and Arabia) had
developed linguistic doctrines chiefly on antiquarian basis (study based on
antics old traditions).
 In India, Brahmin religion (?!) guarded the ancient collections of hymns
(esoterically) in Rig Veda 1200 B.C. all in Sanskrit. In time systematic
arrangement of grammar and lexicon was worked out. Panini’s grammar
around 350-250 BC is one of the greatest monuments of human
intelligence.
 Similarities of Sanskrit and some European languages are a good example
for study.
 Mata = mother
 Dvau = two
 Trayah= three

 The Hindu grammar taught Europeans to analyse speech forms. Also


Sanskrit, Latin, Greek came from one prehistoric language as stated by
William Jones (1746-1794) led to the study of Indo European languages (as
they are now called).This became a main concern in the nineteenth
century. Baltic languages such as Lithuanian, Lettish, Old Prussian,
Albanian, and Armenian were also studied as Indo European languages.

 The study of Indo European languages became focused in the nineteenth


century though knowledge of Sanskrit grammar was not very much
sufficient on the part of the scholars of language. The nomenclature
emerged as some related languages are born due to people speaking some
base languages in different parts of the world. French, Spanish, Portuguese
and so on are some examples. (to know the rest, read p 13). The root of all
the languages must have been one Primitive Indo European (parent
language) Franz Bopp (1791-1867) Rasmus Kristian Rask (1787-1832) made
comparative study of IELs.
 A lot of other studies also emerged in the nineteenth century (see pp-14-
17).
 The first great book of general linguistics (in 1836) was a treatise on the
varieties of human speech by Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835).A lot
of other studies and books followed till date especially till the first quarter
of the twentieth century (see pages 18-20)

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