---
title: "History of linguistics"
chunk: 4/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:59:52.500696+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== China ===
Similar to the Indian tradition, Chinese philology (小學; xiǎoxué; 'elementary studies') emerged as an aid to understanding the Chinese classics c. the 3rd century BCE, during the Western Han dynasty. Philology came to be divided into three branches: exegesis (訓詁; xùngǔ), grammatology (文字; wénzì) and phonology (音韻; yīnyùn). The field reached its golden age in the 17th century, during the Qing dynasty. The Erya (c. 3rd century BCE), comparable to the Indian Nighantu, is regarded as the first linguistic work in China. Shuowen Jiezi (c. 100 CE), the first Chinese dictionary, classifies Chinese characters by radicals, a practice that would be followed by most subsequent lexicographers. Two more pioneering works produced during the Han dynasty are Fangyan, the first Chinese work concerning dialects, and Shiming, devoted to etymology.
As in ancient Greece, early Chinese thinkers were concerned with the relationship between names and reality. Confucius (c. 551 – c. 479 BCE) famously emphasized the moral commitment implicit in a name, (zhengming) stating that the moral collapse of the pre-Qin was a result of the failure to rectify behaviour to meet the moral commitment inherent in names: "Good government consists in the ruler being a ruler, the minister being a minister, the father being a father, and the son being a son... If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things." (Analects 12.11, 13.3).
However, what is the reality implied by a name? The later Mohists or the group known as School of Names,
consider that a name (名; míng may refer to three kinds of actuality (實; shí): type universals (horse), individual (John), and unrestricted (thing). They adopt a realist position on the name-reality connection – universals arise because "the world itself fixes the patterns of similarity and difference by which things should be divided into kinds".  The philosophical tradition features a well known conundrum "a white horse is not a horse" by Gongsun Longzi (4th century  BCE), which resembles those of the sophists; Gongsun questions if in copula statements (X is Y), are X and Y identical or is X a subclass of Y.
Xunzi (c. 310 – c. after 238 BCE) revisits the principle of zhengming, but instead of rectifying behaviour to suit the names, his emphasis is on rectifying language to correctly reflect reality. This is consistent with a more "conventional" view of word origins.
The study of phonology in China began late, and was influenced by the Indian tradition, after Buddhism had become popular in China. The rime dictionary is a type of dictionary arranged by tone and rime, in which the pronunciations of  characters are indicated by fanqie spellings. Rime tables were later produced to aid the understanding of fanqie.
Philological studies flourished during the Qing dynasty, with Duan Yucai and Wang Niansun as the towering figures. The last great philologist of the era was Zhang Binglin, who also helped lay the foundation of modern Chinese linguistics. The Western comparative method was brought into China by Bernard Karlgren, the first scholar to reconstruct Middle Chinese and Old Chinese with Latin alphabet (not IPA). Important modern Chinese linguists include Yuen Ren Chao, Luo Changpei, Li Fanggui and Wang Li.
Ancient commentators on the classics focused their attention on  lexical content and the function of linking words rather than syntax; the first modern Chinese grammar was produced by Ma Jianzhong (late 19th century), based on a Western model.

== Middle Ages ==

=== Arabic grammar ===

Owing to the rapid expansion of Islam in the 8th century, many people learned Arabic as a lingua franca. For this reason, the earliest grammatical treatises on Arabic are often written by non-native speakers.
The earliest grammarian who is known to us is ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Isḥāq al-Ḥaḍramī (died 735-736 CE, 117 AH). The efforts of three generations of grammarians culminated in the book of  the Persian linguist Sibāwayhi (c. 760–793).
Sibawayh made a detailed and professional description of Arabic in 760 in his monumental work, Al-kitab fi al-nahw (الكتاب في النحو, The Book on Grammar). In his book he distinguished phonetics from phonology.