---
title: "History of linguistics"
chunk: 2/6
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"
---

Map the semantics of verb argument structures into thematic roles
Provide morphosyntactic rules for creating verb forms and nominal forms whose seven cases  are called karaka (similar to case) that generate the morphology
Take these morphological structures and consider phonological processes (e.g., root or stem modification) by which the final phonological form is obtained
In addition, the Pāṇinian school also provides a list of 2000 verb roots which form the objects on which these rules are applied, a list of sounds (the so-called Shiva-sutras), and a list of 260 words not derivable by the rules.
The extremely succinct specification of these rules and their complex interactions led to considerable commentary and extrapolation over the following centuries.  The phonological structure includes defining a notion of sound universals similar to the modern phoneme, the systematization of consonants based on oral cavity constriction, and vowels based on height and duration.  However, it is the ambition of mapping these from morpheme to semantics that is truly remarkable in modern terms.
Grammarians following Pāṇini include Kātyāyana (c. 3rd century BCE), who wrote aphorisms on Pāṇini (the Varttika) and advanced mathematics; Patañjali (2nd century BCE), known for his commentary on selected topics in Pāṇini's grammar (the Mahabhasya) and on Kātyāyana's aphorisms, as well as, according to some, the author of the Yoga Sutras, and Pingala,  with his mathematical approach to prosody. Several debates ranged over centuries, for example, on whether word-meaning mappings were conventional (Vaisheshika-Nyaya) or eternal (Kātyāyana-Patañjali-Mīmāṃsā).
The Nyaya Sutras specified three types of meaning: the individual (this cow), the type universal (cowhood), and the image (draw the cow).
That the sound of a word also forms a class (sound-universal) was observed  by Bhartṛhari (c. 500 CE), who also posits that language-universals are the units of thought, close to the nominalist or even the linguistic determinism position. Bhartṛhari also considers the sentence to be ontologically primary (word meanings are learned given their sentential use).
Of the six canonical texts or Vedangas that formed the core syllabus in Brahminic education from the 1st century CE until the 18th century, four dealt with language:

Shiksha (śikṣā): phonetics and phonology (sandhi), Gārgeya and commentators
Chandas (chandas): prosody or meter, Pingala and commentators
Vyakarana (vyākaraṇa): grammar, Pāṇini and commentators
Nirukta (nirukta): etymology, Yāska and commentators
Bhartrihari around 500 CE introduced a philosophy of meaning with his sphoṭa doctrine.
Pāṇini's rule-based method of linguistic analysis and description has remained relatively unknown to Western linguistics until more recently. Franz Bopp used Pāṇini's work as a linguistic source for his 1807 Sanskrit grammar but disregarded his methodology. Pāṇini's system also differs from modern formal linguistics in that, since Sanskrit is a free word-order language, it did not provide syntactic rules. Formal linguistics, as first proposed by Louis Hjelmslev in 1943, is nonetheless based on the same concept that the expression of meaning is organised on different layers of linguistic form (including phonology and morphology).
The Pali Grammar of Kacchayana, dated to the early centuries CE, describes the language of the Buddhist canon.

=== Greece ===
The Greeks developed an alphabet using symbols from the Phoenicians, adding signs for vowels and for extra consonants appropriate to their idiom (see Robins, 1997). In the Phoenicians and in earlier Greek writing systems, such as Linear B, graphemes indicated syllables, that is sound combinations of a consonant and a vowel. The addition of vowels by the Greeks was a major breakthrough as it facilitated the writing of Greek by representing both vowels and consonants with distinct graphemes. As a result of the introduction of writing, poetry such as the Homeric poems became written and several editions were created and commented on, forming the basis of philology and criticism.
Along with written speech, the Greeks commenced studying grammatical and philosophical issues. A philosophical discussion about the nature and origins of language can be found as early as the works of Plato. A subject of concern was whether language was man-made, a social artifact, or supernatural in origin. Plato in his Cratylus presents the naturalistic view, that word meanings emerge from a natural process, independent of the language user.  His arguments are partly based on examples of compounding, where the meaning of the whole is usually related to the constituents, although by the end he admits a small role for convention. The sophists and Socrates introduced dialectics as a new text genre. The Platonic dialogs contain definitions of the meters of the poems and tragedy, the form and the structure of those texts (see the Republic and Phaidros, Ion, etc.).
Aristotle supports the conventional origins of meaning. He defined the logic of speech and of the argument. Furthermore, Aristotle's works on rhetoric and poetics became of the utmost importance for the understanding of tragedy, poetry, public discussions etc. as text genres. Aristotle's work on logic interrelates with his special interest in language, and his work on this area was fundamentally important for the development of the study of language (logos in Greek means both "language" and "logic reasoning"). In Categories, Aristotle defines what is meant by "synonymous" or univocal words, what is meant by "homonymous" or equivocal words, and what is meant by "paronymous" or denominative words. He  divides forms of speech as being: