下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
Like all modern subjects of social science, LINGUISTICS did not come into its present shape all of a sudden. Its origins lie quite specifically in one academic tradition, the European grammatical tradition. GRAMMAR was one of the "liberal arts", taught by specialists and for centuries an important component in school and university studies. It was not until the nineteenth century that "linguistics" emerged under that name and was recognized as a field of scholarly inquiry distinct from neighboring fields (Harris, 1998: 7). So you will find such basic grammatical notions as "noun", "verb" and "parts of speech" still used in linguistics today. But try to look at them in a new light in the process of studying linguistics.
In the west the study of language began in ancient Greece. For Plato, linguistics is the study of word origins and especially origins of Greek words. With the broadening of trade routes and colonialism, in the 15 th century, Europe encountered other languages which forced scholars to look for a universal grammar. In the 18 th century SANSKRIT—an ancient Indian language was found by British colonialism and linguists began to perceive the similarities between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin. In the 19 th century, linguists were making historical comparisons between languages to sort out the relationship and inheritance between languages. By the end of the 19 th century, people shifted their attention from the history and development of languages to their structure and function. Saussure's general linguistics course book was first published in 1916 and he was considered the forefather of modern linguistics. Then we have American structuralism represented by Bloomfield and Chomsky, and functional linguistics represented by M. A. K. Halliday, to mention here only an influential few. In this introductory course, we only have space to survey the basic concepts and fields of linguistic studies, leaving other things for further studies.
Now, what is linguistics? —The question may be still lingering on your mind when you have read this far.
Type in the word "linguistics" on the internet search engines, and you find a lot of descriptions of it from the websites as a course from the linguistics department of well-known universities. For example, this one from Stanford University:
Linguistics concerns itself with the fundamental questions of what language is and how it is related to the other human faculties. In answering these questions, linguists consider language as a cultural, social, and psychological phenomenon and seek to determine what is unique in languages, what is universal, how language is acquired, and how it changes. Linguistics is, therefore, one of the cognitive sciences; it provides a link between the humanities and the social sciences, as well as education and hearing and speech sciences.
Other descriptions may vary in its scope of study and its theoretical orientations. In short, linguistics is commonly conceived as an "objective" investigation of a language or languages. We are invited to see linguistics as a branch of science as well as a body of knowledge. In this book you are invited to approach it as a useful skill of using language more efficiently and reflecting on language more fruitfully.