1.

The birth of linguistics as

an autonomous discipline .
The term linguistics itself was
first used in the middle of the 19
cet. The earliest Greek linguistic
conceptualizations appear in the
5 and 4 cent. B.C. The earliest
Western document of linguistic
analysis is Platos dialogue
Cratylus Platos notion of
language in the dialogues.
Words, by means of their
sounds, symbolize the reality of
things. It was the Greeks who
laid the foundations of four basic
linguistic disciplines: theory of
language; grammar; rhetoric;
dialectics. The theory of
language and the grammar had
to describe a concrete language
independent of the
circumstances. Rhetoric, on the
contrary, tried to analyze the
use of language in particular
linguistic situations, resulting
from specific goals. Rhetoric is
not so popular today, in its
classical form. But linguistics is
returning to rhetoric in different
ways: linguistic stylistics;
pragmatics. The relationship
between form and meaning has
been studied in linguistics since
ancient times. It takes various
forms. One of the long-standing
dispute about the nature of the
word. The distinction between
signifier and signified, attribute
to Saussure, is actually ancient.
Expressed in a different way, it
appears in Aristotles work in
which he distinguishes between
what is in the sound from
what is in the soul. The
relationship between the
signifier an the signified, defined
by Saussure as arbitrary, was
discussed by Aristotle too. In hid

words, words don not mean by

their nature but by what is
agreed.

2. Three approaches to
language: Prescriptive,
Descriptive and Explanatory
implications
The task of modern linguistics
was to describe the way people
actually speak, not to prescribe
how they are ought to speak.
Descriptive linguistics is
empirical and understands
language as a closed text. It
regards the distinction between
the systematic and the random
language.The beginning of
Comparative Philology is
associated with the belief that
Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Gothic,
Celtic and Persian hypothesis
was formulated by William
Jones. Germans Schlegel and
Jacob Grimm made the first
attempt to postulate a genetic

relationship among the

languages hypothetical source
language postulated proto IE.
Schlegel proposed a primitive
typology of languages based on
morphological criteria:
languages without morphology
and languages with morphology.
Schlegel took the modern view
that linguistics should have
scientific status, like natural
sciences. Each language
represented a branch in his
family tree. For him language is
a natural organism. Grammar
has its origin from the
Alexandrian school, the Latin
term grammatical comes from
the Greek art of writing.
Traditional grammar assumes
that spoken language is inferior
and dependent upon standard
written language. Linguistics
maintains that spoken language
is primary, writing is a means of
representing speech in another
medium. Speech is older and
more widespread, we could not
study languages without writing.
Grammatical theory
concentrated on the word as
unit of description and analysis.
For Saussure the language
system is word-concetrated, the
sentence is the rule-governed
expression of thought, is not
taken into consideration.
Sentence syntax is part of
parole not of langue. The
importance of the distinction
between language system and
speech, attributed to Saussure is
intuitive awareness of the users
of language. Many languages
possess separate words for
langue and parole.