History of Linguistics

In all ancient cultures, the early history of linguistics is linked to the need to share discourse, especially in the case of ritual texts or arguments. This has often led to the study of sound maps and to debates about the conventional and naturalistic origin of these symbols. Finally, it has led to processes in which larger structures are formed from units.

Since antiquity, people have been touching on language issues because language was indispensable part of human existence and development of civilization. It was about not only speech mistakes, misunderstanding of interlocutors, interaction with native speakers of other languages, but also vows, magic spells, etc. With the advent of writing, a significant role in the life of society played a literacy training: reading and writing. However even with appearance of writing it is impossible to speak about any theories of language, therefore it is hardly possible to speak about such theories in ancient civilizations, for example, at Hittites, in Ancient Egypt, Urartu, in civilizations of native Indians [18].

The word antiquity can be understood in various ways. In Western historiography, including European, or rather outside Oriental studies, the word antiquity most often refers to the world of Greek-Latin civilization. In oriental studies, this word tends to be used in a broader sense – as a culture, formed during the formation of civilization. From here we can talk about Chinese, Indian, West Asian, Mediterranean antiquity [3, p.154].

In a broader sense of the word, antiquity is understood as a time of formation of writing, creation of written monuments, defining the main regional features of the first civilizations [25, p. 37].

The end of antiquity in spiritual culture can be considered the transfer of ancient civilizations on another ground (the spread of Christianity in Northern and Eastern Europe, Buddhism in China, etc.), after which the time of the middle history of culture begins. It is clear that chronological framework of such division is very flexible. However, there is undoubtedly another thing: no one as if denies the difference of these stages in the history of world culture. The essence of ancient theories of language is that they give the rules for using the language created as a result of earlier naming things that determine the construction of human language. Such rules are called grammatical art or the art of writing. In the ancient theory of language two areas are presented independently enough: the theory of naming and grammatical art. They differ both in the subject matter of description and in the method of handling the material [9].

In all cultures, the early history of linguistics is associated with the elimination of ambiguity in speech, which was primarily required in sacred texts and disputes. This often led to the study of the relationship between the sound (form) and meaning of words, there was a confrontation between two versions of the origin of words: whether the name of a thing is given by nature or it is chosen by man, as discussed, for example, Plato was thinking about this question in his dialogue "Kratil".

The earliest linguistic texts are written in cuneiform on special tablets. Their age is almost 4 thousand years. In the first century BC in southern Mesopotamia arose a grammatical tradition that lasted 2.5 thousand years. The first linguistic texts of this tradition were lists of Sumerian nouns, the language of religious and legal texts of that time. Instead of Sumerian, Akkadian, which was not related to Sumerian in any way, was used in everyday speech. Shumerian, however, existed for a long time, and religious and legal texts continued to be written in it, although it was studied by Mesopotamians as a foreign language. Information about Sumerian was recorded by the Akkadian scribes. Over the centuries, the lists became standardised, and the Sumerian words were provided with Akkadian translations [22].