DOCSLIB.ORG

1 a Guide to the Linguists' Guide to Grammar

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
1 a Guide to the Linguists' Guide to Grammar Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-48602-6 — Grammar Tom Rankin , Melinda Whong Excerpt More Information 1 A Guide to the Linguists’ Guide to Grammar It’s the natural worry of every novice teacher: that question which you have no idea how to answer. I’ll never forget the very bright Korean student who brought me every piece of written work containing feed- back from me, on which he had highlighted every instance of the use of the English article, along with a log he was keeping of his encoun- ters with correct and incorrect article use, and every explanation of the grammatical properties of articles he could find in the range of pedagogical materials he had collected. After setting out his findings, he was hoping I would explain the dozen or so ‘exceptions’ in his list of examples that he could not account for. What this experience and this student taught me was that knowing how to approach challen- ging points of grammar is much more valuable, and appropriate, than expert knowledge of each and every challenging point of grammar that exists. One motivation for this volume is to provide a degree of linguistics training, so that you have the tools to address any challen- ging question about grammar that you might encounter. I was, in fact, not able to provide ready answers for my Korean student. But as is often the case with students, he provided the way forward himself. By collecting instances of the grammatical phenomenon in question, he had collated a data set which we were able to work through to make sense of the complex properties of articles in English. We hope that the language-data-based approach we take in this book will achieve our overarching aim: to help you develop a methodology for approaching the complexity of language – and grammar in particu- lar – so that you are better able to facilitate the development of lan- guage amongst your learners. A secondary aim is to boost your own knowledge base of language and languages and linguistics, in order to add to your ever-growing expertise as a language teacher. We will, for example, provide insight into the properties of the English article system (see Case in Point 1.1 on Specificity). But alongside grammatical explanations in English, we will be exploring how linguistic properties 1 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-48602-6 — Grammar Tom Rankin , Melinda Whong Excerpt More Information 2 a guide to the linguists’ guide to grammar 1.1 CASE IN POINT: SPECIFICITY Particular grammatical structures may be made complicated due to ‘hidden’ grammatical properties. By this we mean features of semantic or grammatical meaning which play a role in regulating usage, but which do not have an obvious marking. Specificity with regard to English articles illustrates this. There is no explicit gram- matical form in English noun phrases which overtly indicates spe- cificity. Specific meaning is nonetheless grammatically relevant in English, and cuts across the perhaps more familiar definite/indefi- nite grammatical distinction. The sentences (i)–(iv) show how defi- niteness combines with specificity to result in differences in meaning (examples from Lyons, 1999, p. 167). (i) He didn’t see a car parked at the door – until two men got out of it and asked for directions. indefinite / specific (ii) He didn’t see a car parked at the door – so he knew the visitors hadn’t arrived yet. indefinite / unspecific (iii) I didn’t meet the professor during my visit to the philosophy department yesterday morning – but I managed to get hold of him in the afternoon. definite / specific (iv) I didn’t meet the professor during my visit to the philosophy department yesterday morning – so I began to wonder whether that chair had been filled yet. definite / unspecific Later, we will see how this sort of meaning is manifested in other languages and is relevant in the acquisition and learning of gram- mar (see Chapter 3 for more on articles and specificity). are manifested in language in general, and provide examples from across a wide range of languages. As you see, we are relying on a set of text boxes, each called ‘Case in Point’, within which we will present language data that illustrate a particular grammatical phenomenon. We will walk you through how these work in this chapter (see Case in Point 1.2, which explains how to read these). You will find that we make use of a large range of languages, most of which are likely to be foreign to you, including some that you are likely to have never heard of. We have done this intentionally in order to widen the scope of your knowledge of lan- guages in the world. However, as we progress you will find that we highlight larger more ‘well-known’ languages more because we are drawing from published research on language learning and acquisi- tion, and, for better or for worse, it is these languages that have © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-48602-6 — Grammar Tom Rankin , Melinda Whong Excerpt More Information A Guide to the Linguists’ Guide to Grammar 3 received the most attention in research terms. While we hope you will want to develop your expertise in language, we also recognise that making sense of linguistic data is hard work. For this reason, we have tried to ensure that the general conceptual point being made in the Case in Point is clear in the surrounding narrative that would allow you to skip a Case in Point in your reading as you might find it more useful to examine the Case in Points separately. In fact, we have written this book in such a way that it would be possible to save all the Case in Points to work through separately. The narrative, by con- trast, is designed to develop concepts in an accumulative way that might not as readily allow for the reading of chapters in isolation. One obvious truth about all learners of a ‘foreign’ language is that they already have full competence in (at least) one other language. Given that one fundamental tenet of education is the value of building on existing knowledge, we take the view that when teaching a ‘target’ language, one would do well to make as much use of students’ existing language knowledge as possible, a point which is not uncontroversial in foreign language teaching, and which we develop more fully in Chapter 5. At the same time, we realise that it is unrealistic that you would have full mastery of all of your students’ existing language knowledge, especially if working with a class of multilingual speakers. What this book aims to do is to expose you to a wide range of linguistic phenomena across many languages in order to raise your awareness of what’s possible (and not possible) in the grammar of a language. Along the way, you’re likely to learn a thing or two about specific languages; but the overriding aim is to equip you with a more sophisticated understanding of how language works. In doing this, we will intro- duce the notion of Grammatical Concepts as an important aspect of what we will call a Virtual Grammar. We hope that adopting this understanding of grammar will ensure that you have more confidence when you encounter a student who challenges you, like mine did with English articles. But it will also allow you to think in a different way about how to approach grammatical properties of language in your teaching. As may be clear already, we are linguists with background and some training in teaching. For this reason, our aim is not to make sugges- tions on how you should teach. It is, instead, to provide a better under- standing of what you are teaching. Like all areas of academic study, within the discipline of linguistics there has been great advancement in our understanding of language. Unfortunately, another feature of academia is that development in one area does not always make its way into another area of study. The fields of Linguistics and Education © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-48602-6 — Grammar Tom Rankin , Melinda Whong Excerpt More Information 4 a guide to the linguists’ guide to grammar are two academic areas of study which have developed away from each other in the recent past. We hope to do our small part to address this by exploring the intricacies of grammar through the eyes of the linguist, but with the interests and concerns of the language teacher in mind. We start by presenting a brief overview of the field of linguis- tics in a way that attempts to provide an outline of the complexity of language. 1.1 THE LINGUISTIC TERRAIN Linguistics is a relatively young independent academic discipline, though language itself has been a topic of inquiry since antiquity. There is a level of fragmentation in the field of modern linguistics which is, perhaps, not surprising, given the rich complexity of lan- guage. The starting (and ending) point of this overview of Linguistics is the reminder that linguists are all trying to understand and explain the same thing: Language. Because the object of study is shared, one would think that the conclusions that linguists come to would also be shared. However, the sheer complexity of language means that there are many different ways to approach the study of language, each with a different emphasis and, concurrently, with different omissions.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 1 Descriptive Versus Prescriptive Grammar Eli Hinkel Seattle Pacific University [email protected] Word Count 2,453 Abstract A
    Page 1 of 5 TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching Descriptive versus Prescriptive Grammar Eli Hinkel Seattle Pacific University [email protected] Word Count 2,453 Abstract A descriptive grammar is a study of a language, its structure, and its rules as they are used in daily life by its speakers from all walks of life, including standard and nonstandard varieties. A prescriptive grammar, on the other hand, specifies how a language and its grammar rules should be used. A prescriptivist view of language implies a distinction between "good grammar" and "bad grammar," and its primary focus is on standard forms of grammar and syntactic constructions. Main Text Section 1: Framing the Issue A definition of a descriptive grammar: A descriptive grammar is a study of a language, its structure, and its rules as they are used in daily life by its speakers from all walks of life, including standard and nonstandard varieties. That is, descriptive grammar describes the language, its structure, and the syntactic rules that govern sentence and phrase constructions (Greenbaum & Quirk, 1990). A descriptive study of grammar is non-judgmental, and it does not have the goal of determining what represents good or bad language, correct or incorrect structures, or grammatical or ungrammatical forms (Leech, Deuchar, & Hoogenraad, 2006). A descriptive grammar is typically studied by linguists, anthropologists, ethnographers, psychologists, or other researchers who seek to identify how the grammar of a language is actually used in various contexts and for various purposes. (Books that describe and present the grammar of any language are called reference grammars, or sometimes "a grammar" by non-specialists.) In this light, sentences such as Him and me, we are neighbors or I don't know nothing simply reflect how the language is used by its speakers.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 1 Basic Categorial Syntax
    Hardegree, Compositional Semantics, Chapter 1 : Basic Categorial Syntax 1 of 27 Chapter 1 Basic Categorial Syntax 1. The Task of Grammar ............................................................................................................ 2 2. Artificial versus Natural Languages ....................................................................................... 2 3. Recursion ............................................................................................................................... 3 4. Category-Governed Grammars .............................................................................................. 3 5. Example Grammar – A Tiny Fragment of English ................................................................. 4 6. Type-Governed (Categorial) Grammars ................................................................................. 5 7. Recursive Definition of Types ............................................................................................... 7 8. Examples of Types................................................................................................................. 7 9. First Rule of Composition ...................................................................................................... 8 10. Examples of Type-Categorial Analysis .................................................................................. 8 11. Quantifiers and Quantifier-Phrases ...................................................................................... 10 12. Compound Nouns
    [Show full text]
  • TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR REVIEW I. Parts of Speech Traditional
    Traditional Grammar Review Page 1 of 15 TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR REVIEW I. Parts of Speech Traditional grammar recognizes eight parts of speech: Part of Definition Example Speech noun A noun is the name of a person, place, or thing. John bought the book. verb A verb is a word which expresses action or state of being. Ralph hit the ball hard. Janice is pretty. adjective An adjective describes or modifies a noun. The big, red barn burned down yesterday. adverb An adverb describes or modifies a verb, adjective, or He quickly left the another adverb. room. She fell down hard. pronoun A pronoun takes the place of a noun. She picked someone up today conjunction A conjunction connects words or groups of words. Bob and Jerry are going. Either Sam or I will win. preposition A preposition is a word that introduces a phrase showing a The dog with the relation between the noun or pronoun in the phrase and shaggy coat some other word in the sentence. He went past the gate. He gave the book to her. interjection An interjection is a word that expresses strong feeling. Wow! Gee! Whew! (and other four letter words.) Traditional Grammar Review Page 2 of 15 II. Phrases A phrase is a group of related words that does not contain a subject and a verb in combination. Generally, a phrase is used in the sentence as a single part of speech. In this section we will be concerned with prepositional phrases, gerund phrases, participial phrases, and infinitive phrases. Prepositional Phrases The preposition is a single (usually small) word or a cluster of words that show relationship between the object of the preposition and some other word in the sentence.
    [Show full text]
  • Grammar for Academic Writing
    GRAMMAR FOR ACADEMIC WRITING Tony Lynch and Kenneth Anderson (revised & updated by Anthony Elloway) © 2013 English Language Teaching Centre University of Edinburgh GRAMMAR FOR ACADEMIC WRITING Contents Unit 1 PACKAGING INFORMATION 1 Punctuation 1 Grammatical construction of the sentence 2 Types of clause 3 Grammar: rules and resources 4 Ways of packaging information in sentences 5 Linking markers 6 Relative clauses 8 Paragraphing 9 Extended Writing Task (Task 1.13 or 1.14) 11 Study Notes on Unit 12 Unit 2 INFORMATION SEQUENCE: Describing 16 Ordering the information 16 Describing a system 20 Describing procedures 21 A general procedure 22 Describing causal relationships 22 Extended Writing Task (Task 2.7 or 2.8 or 2.9 or 2.11) 24 Study Notes on Unit 25 Unit 3 INDIRECTNESS: Making requests 27 Written requests 28 Would 30 The language of requests 33 Expressing a problem 34 Extended Writing Task (Task 3.11 or 3.12) 35 Study Notes on Unit 36 Unit 4 THE FUTURE: Predicting and proposing 40 Verb forms 40 Will and Going to in speech and writing 43 Verbs of intention 44 Non-verb forms 45 Extended Writing Task (Task 4.10 or 4.11) 46 Study Notes on Unit 47 ii GRAMMAR FOR ACADEMIC WRITING Unit 5 THE PAST: Reporting 49 Past versus Present 50 Past versus Present Perfect 51 Past versus Past Perfect 54 Reported speech 56 Extended Writing Task (Task 5.11 or 5.12) 59 Study Notes on Unit 60 Unit 6 BEING CONCISE: Using nouns and adverbs 64 Packaging ideas: clauses and noun phrases 65 Compressing noun phrases 68 ‘Summarising’ nouns 71 Extended Writing Task (Task 6.13) 73 Study Notes on Unit 74 Unit 7 SPECULATING: Conditionals and modals 77 Drawing conclusions 77 Modal verbs 78 Would 79 Alternative conditionals 80 Speculating about the past 81 Would have 83 Making recommendations 84 Extended Writing Task (Task 7.13) 86 Study Notes on Unit 87 iii GRAMMAR FOR ACADEMIC WRITING Introduction Grammar for Academic Writing provides a selective overview of the key areas of English grammar that you need to master, in order to express yourself correctly and appropriately in academic writing.
    [Show full text]
  • 2 Conceptions of Language and Grammar
    2 Conceptions of Language and Grammar KEY CONCEPTS The study of language The roles of the English teacher What is a language? Competence and performance Approaches to the study of language THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE The study of spoken and writtenlanguage occupies a significant part of contemporary primary and secondary school and university curricula. The grammars, handbooks of style, and composition texts used in these cur- ricula are based on various assumptions about language and about why it should be studied. It is important that teachers have a critical understanding of these assumptions, which in many instances are either indirectly stated or omitted entirely. These books are designed to help you to: • develop the critical resources you need as a teacher to respond to many language-related issues; • understand the many concepts needed to talk appropriately and accurately about language; • develop skills that you will use in everyday teaching of language, literature, reading, and writing. In the pages to follow you will encounter ideas about language that may be new to you and which may contradict ideas you’ve been taught. We cannot guarantee that these new concepts will be easy to master, but we do believe that they are worth your best efforts. We will, as we said earlier, try to begin with what you know about language. For example, you have probably been taught to avoid non-standard expressions such as seen or seed instead of saw, to avoid multiple nouns as modifiers, to make sure that your subjects and verbs agree, to use parallel structures where possible, and the like.
    [Show full text]
  • • an Adjective Is a Word That Describes a Noun. an Adjective Usually Comes Before the Noun It Describes
    Grammar: Adjectives Name • An adjective is a word that describes a noun. An adjective usually comes before the noun it describes. • Some adjectives are descriptive. They tell what kind of person, place, or thing the noun is. • Some adjectives tell how many. • Some adjectives are limiting, such as this, that, these, and those. Draw one line under each adjective. Circle the noun that the adjective describes. 1. Gramps has a brown horse. 2. Rex is the name of this big animal. 3. I am a good helper when I visit Gramps. 4. I take Rex out for long rides. 5. I feed Rex juicy apples. Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 6. Gramps lets me polish the heavy saddle. 7. In June I will help him paint the old barn. 8. Gramps let me pick out the new color. 9. I chose a bright red. 10. I think Rex will like that color. 126 Grammar • Grade 3 • Unit 6 • Week 1 Grammar: Articles Name • The articles a, an, and the are special adjectives. • Use an before an adjective or a nonspecifi c singular noun that begins with a vowel. • Use the before singular and plural nouns when referring to something specifi c. • Some adjectives are limiting, such as this, that, these, and those. Write a, an, or the to fi nish each sentence. 1. I went to see first game of the World Series. 2. I wrote essay about my exciting day. 3. I took baseball with me in hopes of getting it signed. 4. After game, I looked around for my favorite pitcher.
    [Show full text]
  • Linguistic Background: an Outline of English Syntax
    Allen 1995: Chapter 2 - An Outline of English Syntax Allen 1995 : Natural Language Understanding Contents Preface Introduction previous Part I Part II Part III - Context / World next chapter chapter Knowledge Syntactic Processing Semantic Interpretation Appendices Bibliography Index Summaries Further Readings Exercises Chapter 2: Linguistic Background: An Outline of English Syntax 2.1 Words 2.2 The Elements of Simple Noun Phrases 2.3 Verb Phrases and Simple Sentences 2.4 Noun Phrases Revisited 2.5 Adjective Phrases 2.6 Adverbial Phrases Summary Related Work and Further Readings Exercises for Chapter 2 [Allen 1995: Linguistic Background: An Outline of English Syntax 23] http://www.uni-giessen.de/~g91062/Seminare/gk-cl/Allen95/al199502.htm (1 / 23) [2002-2-26 21:16:11] Allen 1995: Chapter 2 - An Outline of English Syntax This chapter provides background material on the basic structure of English syntax for those who have not taken any linguistics courses. It reviews the major phrase categories and identifies their most important subparts. Along the way all the basic word categories used in the book are introduced. While the only structures discussed are those for English, much of what is said applies to nearly all other European languages as well. The reader who has some background in linguistics can quickly skim this chapter, as it does not address any computational issues. You will probably want to use this chapter as a reference source as you work through the rest of the chapters in Part I. Section 2.1 describes issues related to words and word classes. Section 2.2 describes simple noun phrases, which are then used in Section 2.3 to describe simple verb phrases.
    [Show full text]
  • Some Problems Related to the Development of a Grammar Checker
    Some problems related to the development of a grammar checker Kristin Hagen, Janne Bondi Johannessen and Pia Lane University of Oslo {kristiha, jannebj, pial}@mail.hf.uio.no 1. Introduction Developing a grammar checker presents problems to the linguist and to linguistic software that are far from trivial. In this paper we will discuss various kinds of problems that we have encountered during our work with developing a grammar checker for Norwegian (Bokmål). The grammar checker in question, developed in cooperation with Lingsoft OY and to be used in Microsoft Word from the summer 2001, will be applied on text that has been grammatically tagged and disambiguated by the Constraint Grammar method (Karlsson et al 1995, Hagen and Johannessen 1998, and Hagen, Johannessen and Nøklestad 2000a, 2000b). The fact that the input text has been multi-tagged and disambiguated before grammar checking has certain advantages, but also presents certain problems, as we shall see. Below, we shall give a brief review of statistical measures and an outline of the structure of the grammar checker, and then give an overview of the error types that our grammar checker is meant to cover. Many people find it hard to believe that grammar errors occur to any large extent. We shall therefore show some authentic examples from manually proofread tests. The errors can be categorised in two main groups: 1) Errors caused by a sloppy use of the "cut and paste" options of modern text editors, and 2) errors due to people's mistaken beliefs about the written language norms. We shall then focus on problems that present a challenge in more ways than the obvious ones that deal with recognising mistakes and suggesting improvements.
    [Show full text]
  • Symbolic Logic: Grammar, Semantics, Syntax
    Symbolic Logic: Grammar, Semantics, Syntax Logic aims to give a precise method or recipe for determining what follows from a given set of sentences. So we need precise definitions of `sentence' and `follows from.' 1. Grammar: What's a sentence? What are the rules that determine whether a string of symbols is a sentence, and when it is not? These rules are known as the grammar of a particular language. We have actually been operating with two different but very closely related grammars this term: a grammar for propositional logic and a grammar for first-order logic. The grammar for propositional logic (thus far) is simple: 1. There are an indefinite number of propositional variables, which we have been symbolizing as A; B; ::: and P; Q; :::; each of these is a sen- tence. ? is also a sentence. 2. If A; B are sentences, then: •:A is a sentence, • A ^ B is a sentence, and • A _ B is a sentence. 3. Nothing else is a sentence: anything that is neither a member of 1, nor constructable via successive applications of 2 to the members of 1, is not a sentence. The grammar for first-order logic (thus far) is more complex. 2 and 3 remain exactly the same as above, but 1 must be replaced by some- thing more complex. First, a list of all predicates (e.g. Tet or SameShape) and proper names (e.g. max; b) of a particular language L must be specified. Then we can define: 1F OL. A series of symbols s is an atomic sentence = s is an n-place predicate followed by an ordered sequence of n proper names.
    [Show full text]
  • Latin-Grammar-And-Syntax.Pdf
    Resource Book III GRAMMAR AND SYNTAX KMHS LATIN Chapter 1 THE NOMINATIVE CASE SECTION 1 Subject Nominative The nominative case is used for the subject of a sentence. In the passive voice, the subject receives the action of the The subject is the focus of the sentence. In most sentences, verb. the subject is the person or thing doing the action of the verb. The subject is often, but not always, the first word in the sentence. Example: Pila ā puellīs iaciētur. Examples: The ball will be thrown by the girls. Puellae pilam iaciunt. The girls throw the ball. Not every sentence in Latin will have a stated subject. Since the person and number of the subject can be determined from the ending on the verb, a personal pronoun is not al- Lupus in silvā cēlābat. ways necessary for the subject. The wolf was hiding in the woods. Examples: Raedārius raedam necessaryglegenter agit. Herī sub arbore legēbam. The coachman drives the carriage carelessly. Yesterday I was reading under the tree. 2 Crās ad Forum ambulābimus. Tom or ro w we will walk to the Forum. 3 SECTION 2 Predicate Nominative A predicate nominative is a word in a sentence that is linked to the subject. It can be a noun or an adjective. When it is an adjective, it is often referred to as a predicate adjective. These two words are always joined by a linking verb, most com- monly the verb “to be.” Examples: Puella est Cornelia. The girl is Cornelia. Cornelia est laeta. Cornelia is happy. Cicerō ōrātor praeclārissimus factus est.
    [Show full text]
  • GRAMMATICALITY and UNGRAMMATICALITY of TRANSFORMATIVE GENERATIVE GRAMMAR : a STUDY of SYNTAX Oleh Nuryadi Dosen Program Studi Sa
    GRAMMATICALITY AND UNGRAMMATICALITY OF TRANSFORMATIVE GENERATIVE GRAMMAR : A STUDY OF SYNTAX Oleh Nuryadi Dosen Program Studi Sastra Inggris Fakultas Komunikasi, Sastra dan Bahasa Universitas Islam “45” Bekasi Abstrak Tulisan ini membahas gramatika dan kaidah-kaidah yang menentukan struktur kalimat menurut tatabahasa transformasi generatif. Linguis transformasi generatif menggunakan istilah gramatika dalam pengertian yang lebih luas. Pada periode sebelumnya, gramatika dibagi menjadi morfologi dan sintaksis yang terpisah dari fonologi. Namun linguis transformasi generatif menggunakan pengertian gramatika yang mencakup fonologi. Kalimat atau ujaran yang memenuhi kaidah-kaidah gramatika disebut gramatikal, sedangkan yang berhubungan dengan gramatikal disebut kegramatikalan. Kegramatikalan adalah gambaran susunan kata-kata yang tersusun apik (well-formed) sesuai dengan kaidah sintaksis. Kalimat atau ujaran yang tidak tersusun secara well-formed disebut camping atau ill-formed. Gramatika mendeskripsikan dan menganalisis penggalan-penggalan ujaran serta mengelompokkan dan mengklasifikasikan elemen-elemen dari penggalan-penggalan tersebut. Dari pengelompokan tersebut dapat dijelaskan kalimat yang ambigu, dan diperoleh pengelompokkan kata atau frase yang disebut kategori sintaksis. Kegramatikalan tidak tergantung pada apakah kalimat atau ujaran itu pernah didengar atau dibaca sebelumnya. Kegramatikalan juga tidak tergantung apakah kalimat itu benar atau tidak. Yang terakhir kegramatikalan juga tidak tergantung pada apakah kalimat itu penuh arti
    [Show full text]
  • 4. the History of Linguistics : the Handbook of Linguistics : Blackwell Reference On
    4. The History of Linguistics : The Handbook of Linguistics : Blackwell Reference On... Sayfa 1 / 17 4. The History of Linguistics LYLE CAMPBELL Subject History, Linguistics DOI: 10.1111/b.9781405102520.2002.00006.x 1 Introduction Many “histories” of linguistics have been written over the last two hundred years, and since the 1970s linguistic historiography has become a specialized subfield, with conferences, professional organizations, and journals of its own. Works on the history of linguistics often had such goals as defending a particular school of thought, promoting nationalism in various countries, or focussing on a particular topic or subfield, for example on the history of phonetics. Histories of linguistics often copied from one another, uncritically repeating popular but inaccurate interpretations; they also tended to see the history of linguistics as continuous and cumulative, though more recently some scholars have stressed the discontinuities. Also, the history of linguistics has had to deal with the vastness of the subject matter. Early developments in linguistics were considered part of philosophy, rhetoric, logic, psychology, biology, pedagogy, poetics, and religion, making it difficult to separate the history of linguistics from intellectual history in general, and, as a consequence, work in the history of linguistics has contributed also to the general history of ideas. Still, scholars have often interpreted the past based on modern linguistic thought, distorting how matters were seen in their own time. It is not possible to understand developments in linguistics without taking into account their historical and cultural contexts. In this chapter I attempt to present an overview of the major developments in the history of linguistics, avoiding these difficulties as far as possible.
    [Show full text]