Language

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521250283.007

6 - Language

from PART II - LOGIC AND LANGUAGE

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Dirk M. Schenkeveld and

Edited by

Jaap Mansfeld and

Dirk M. Schenkeveld: Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Keimpe Algra: Affiliation:
Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
Jonathan Barnes: Affiliation:
Université de Genève
Jaap Mansfeld: Affiliation:
Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
Malcolm Schofield: Affiliation:
University of Cambridge

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Summary

Linguistics

The study of language

In the classical period, the Greek language was studied by philosophers, sophists and rhetoricians, and the contributions of Aristotle and Theophrastus in particular are very valuable. But only in the Hellenistic era does grammar show significant development and almost becomes a discipline in its own right. Although their origin as students of poetry is never forgotten, grammarians now start to be acknowledged as teachers and scholars in the fields of phonology and morphology. To some extent they also study syntax and pragmatics, while semantics provides, as it were, their basic approach. This development is the result of the concurrence of three kinds of linguistic analysis: in philosophy, rhetoric and scholarship. Students of each of these disciplines look at language from their own specific point of view and in a different context. Thus, philosophers, especially Stoics, are interested in the nature of language and its relationships to reality and knowledge, and analyse speech in the context of their study of logic, which analysis has its consequences for their physics and ethics. Rhetoricians are more concerned with ways of manipulating people by means of language; and scholars develop tools for language analysis in order to edit and explain the texts of Homer and other poets. These different concerns greatly advance the study of language although the complete emancipation of grammar as a discipline to be studied for its own sake, like mathematics, is not achieved in this period.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy , pp. 177 - 226

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521250283.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 1999

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