Philologia
（
φιλολογία). The terms “philology” and
“philological” are so convenient as frequently to be used in various
senses in modern times; and this diversity of application is found also in the corresponding
words among the ancients. Plato is the first Greek writer to employ the terms
φιλολογία and
φιλόλογος. In the
Theaetetus (146 A)
φιλολογία denotes a
fondness for argument; in the
Laws(641 E)
φιλόλογος means one who is given to talking as opposed to the
βραχύλογος Spartan. He develops the meaning a little further in the
Laches (188 C), where it is applied to a person fond of philosophical
discussion as opposed to
μισόλογος. In Aristotle
φιλολογία means a love of learning, and Cicero quotes the word in the
same sense in a letter to Atticus (ii. 17). In a passage of Pericles, cited by Stobaeus (428,
53), it is opposed to
ἀπαίδευτος, and in Plutarch
(
Lucull. 42) it is contrasted with
πολιτικός.
In the Alexandrian period (280 + B.C.) it is often restricted to the sense of a
“scholar” and “a learned man,” and was so applied to
Eratosthenes, who was not, first of all, a student of language or literature, but a
mathematician and astronomer. In Plutarch it is oftenest, however, used of a linguist (
Plut. ii. 645C). See Gudeman,
Outlines of the Hist. of Class.
Philology, pp. 1-5
(2d ed. Boston, 1894).
At Rome the prevailing sense was that of “a scholar,” and it was so
applied to Aelius Stilo, the teacher of Varro (
De Grammat. p. 108 Reiff.). This
comprehensive sense is also seen in a remarkable passage of Seneca (
Epist. 108,
29), in which he distinguishes the respective standpoints of the philologist, the grammarian,
and the philosopher. Hence we find that the word philology has, at different times, been
understood to mean “a love of speaking,” “the study of
language,” and finally “learning” in a wider sense of the word.
Language-study among the Greeks originated as an adjunct to psychological research. In an
attempt to answer the question as to the nature of thought and the expression of thought, an
endeavour was made to discover just what the nature of language is in its relation to the
thought which it expresses; and this led to an investigation of the original meaning of
words. Languagestudy, therefore, did not begin as a distinct science, but only as an adjunct
to another branch of learning, and therefore it took the form of etymology. The Greeks never
thought of connecting their own language with that of any other people, though Plato once came
near to such an idea in a passage of his
Cratylus (410 B.C.), where he notes
the similarity between the Greek and Phrygian names for certain common objects.
Such etymologizing as was done by the Greeks and Romans was largely in the nature of
guesswork; but in the dialogue of Plato just mentioned some suggestions of considerable
acuteness are put forth. In fact, this treatise embodies all that was best and truest in
ancient linguistic speculation, and to it not much was added by writers on language down to
the beginning of the present century. Plato is the first to draw attention to the distinction
between simple and compound words; and his classification of the letters of the alphabet is
the first that we find in any of the ancient writings. He separates them into
“voiced” letters (
φωνήεντα) or vowels and
“voiceless” letters or consonants (
ἄφωνα); the latter he subdivides into semi-vowels (
ἡμίφωνα—i. e.
λ, μ, ν, ρ, ς) and true
mutes (
ἄφθογγα).
The discussion as to the original meaning of words in course of time led to a consideration
of the origin of human speech, as to which two schools arose. One set of scholars (the
Anomalists) held that language arose by mere convention (
θέσει), that words were arbitrarily assigned to objects, and that there was no
inherent appropriateness in giving any particular object its name. The other set of thinkers
(the Analogists), who were of the Eleatic School of philosophers, held that words are
essentially and necessarily expressive of the objects which they describe, that they are made
by nature (
φύσει), that thought was stamped on words in their
genesis, and that words have the same relation to things as exists between sensation and that
which causes the sensation. Heraclitus illustrated his meaning by saying that the names of
objects are, as it were, their shadows, representing them just as images in water represent
the objects which they reflect. The theory of language which was put forth to explain this
inherent appropriateness was the so-called mimetic or onomatopoetic theory (see
Onomatopoeia), which is found expressed in a
passage of Epicurus, cited by Diogenes Laertius (ix. 75) and by Lucretius
(v. 1028). The mimetic theory they did not push very far, but merely
asserted that there is something in the sound of primitive words appropriate to the sense.
This Plato illustrates in his
Cratylus by saying that, in order to arrive at
the earliest meaning of a word, the word must be resolved not merely into its simplest form,
but into the very letters which compose it; for these, or rather the sounds which they denote,
possess a meaning. This fact, he says, was well known to the first makers of language, who
observed that the sound of
α denotes vastness and the sound of
η denotes length; that
ρ
expresses motion, as in
ῥέω, τρόμος, ῥυμβέω, because, in
uttering this letter, the tongue is most agitated and least at rest; that
φ, ψ, ς, and
ζ require a great
expenditure of breath, and are therefore used in the expression of such notions as are
contained in
ζέω, σεισμός, etc., and, in
general, wherever the thought of air is involved; that the limpid movement of
λ, in whose pronunciation the tongue slips easily along, enables that
letter to express smoothness, as in
λεῖος, λίπαρον: that the
sound of
γ detains the slipping tongue, so that when it is
prefixed to
λ there is given an impression of what is
glutinous and clammy, as in
γλισχρός, γλυκύς, γλοιώδης:
that
ν, being sounded within, gives the notion of inwardness,
while
ο suggests roundness. Thus, Plato says, the first
language-makers impressed thought on names by giving them an imitative quality. Gesture is the
method which a deafand-dumb person would use to make his meaning plain; and language is only
vocal gesture— the gesture of the tougue. Yet, he adds, though thought was stamped
on words in their genesis, the original meaning has in most cases been lost; so that the use
of a word may now be metaphorical, accidental, or conventional, and thus may have no real
relation to the thought or feeling of the speaker who uses it. Language has, therefore, both a
natural element and a conventional element. In another portion of the
Cratylus
Plato ridicules many of the popular etymologies, such as
αἰθήρ as a contraction of
ἀειθεήρ (
ἀεί+
θέειν), “always
running”;
τέχνη from
ἐχονόη, “possession of mind,” on which Socrates says
ironically that “you have only to take away the
τ,
insert
ο between the
χ and the
ν, and another
ο between the
ν and the
π,” and
thus you have
ἐχονόη! (See Jowett's introduction to his
translation of the
Cratylus.）
The Sophists were much given to etymologizing, and made a great use of the so-called
principle of Antiphrasis, which in later times was taken up by the Romans, and prevailed also
to some extent in the Middle Ages. Antiphrasis explains names as being suggested by what is
opposed to them in meaning, as when
aridus (“dry”) is
derived from
ἀρδεύειν:
bellum from
bellus (“fine”), because it is not a fine thing;
caelum from
celare (“to conceal”),
because it conceals nothing; and the very famous etymology, which has in modern times become
proverbial,
lucus a non lucendo. The philosophical principle on which
this notion was based is of course a sound one—i. e. that of two antithetical ideas
one is apt to suggest the other, as light suggests darkness, as truth suggests falsehood,
etc.; but the application of it to etymology was absurd. It appears to have been suggested to
the ancients by the existence of certain well-known euphemisms, such as that which calls the
Furies
Eumenides or “the well-wishers,” the left hand
“the wellnamed,” and so forth. They also observed in irony a similar
principle; and, therefore, putting the two together, inferred that there is something in the
human mind that instinctively describes objects by recalling their opposites. Among the
writers who treated of etymological subjects at this period were Gorgias (
Περὶ Ὀνομάτων), Protagoras (
Περὶ
Ὀρθοεπείας), Prodicus (
Περὶ Ὀνομάτων), and
Licymnius (
Περὶ Λέξεων), the last of whom, in the course
of his teaching, noted and partly classified synonyms, root-words, compounds, and cognates.
In the Alexandrian Period language was studied on its strictly grammatical side, and formal
grammar arose at Alexandria in the writings of men like Zenodotus, Aristophanes, Aristarchus,
and Tryphon, and at Pergamum with Crates of Mallos, who introduced philological study to
the Romans, though formal grammar was first carefully studied at Rome after the time of
Dionysius Thrax. (See
Grammatica.) At the same
time lexicography was developed in the form of special glossaries, on which see
Lexicon.
During the later Middle Ages speculation as to the origin and nature of language was a
favourite amusement of scholars; but no advance was made by them in linguistics, owing to the
fact that Greek and Latin were both supposed to be derived from the Hebrew. Upon the proof of
this thesis an enormous amount of labour was wasted by generations of scholars, of whom
Guichard and Gebelin may be taken as types. It was not until 1786, when Sir William Jones
initiated the study of Sanskrit, that philology began to be set upon a scientific basis by a
recognition of the fact that Sanskrit, Avestan, Greek, Latin, Gothic, and Keltic belong to the
same family of languages; and soon after Franz
Bopp
(q.v.) became the founder of the special science of Comparative
Philology, which deals with the study of each language in its relation to the other
members of the same family. His monumental treatise on Comparative Grammardealt with the
phonetic laws of the several languages, and traced their general forms back to a common origin
in an Indo-European or “Aryan” speech now lost. Bopp's work was carried on
and developed by such men as Jakob Grimm, who first scientifically studied the Teutonic
languages; by Pott and by Benfey, the accomplished Sanskritist. The new science was applied to
Greek by Georg Curtius, and to Latin by the German, Wilhelm
Corssen (q.v.), and the Frenchman, Michel Bréal.
It now began to be accepted as a truth that the change which is always going on in languages
is regulated by law; that in each form of speech there is a regular sequence of sound, which
is not due to chance or to the conscious desire of those who speak it, but which has a
definite, ascertainable course; and that the science of language is a science because the
knowledge of these sequences can be acquired and understood. The most famous laws of
sound-change are those known as Grimm's Law and Verner's Law. See
Grimm's Law;
Verner's Law.
Until comparatively recent years students of language held that the operation of phonetic
law did not always exclude the possibility of what they called “sporadic
change”—that is to say, changes that are found in some words, though not
in every word in which the sound so affected occurs. To this notion of sporadic change the
so-called New School of philologists vigorously objects. Brugmann, Paul, Osthoff, Ascoli,
Leskien, and Verner (to mention only a few distinguished names) hold that phonetic change, so
far as it is due to physical causes, is absolutely uniform in any one language at the same
time; that the new form, when produced by such a change, invariably drives out the old one;
and that in consequence there is no such thing as “sporadic change”; for
phonetic law is as exact and definite as the law of any physical science. The “New
School” of philologists has devoted itself very largely to an investigation of
language on its inner or psychical side, and has therefore brought psychology into a close
relation with the study of language. In so doing they have recognized the immense importance
of the principle of analogy, which tends to reduce words of like function
to a certain likeness of form, and thus conditions every new word that is made by the forms of
like words that already exist. According to the New School, therefore, the two chief factors
in word-formation are Phonetic Change due to the desire for euphony, and which is largely
destructive, doing away with sounds or combinations which are inconvenient to pronounce; the
other principle is Analogy, which comes from the imitative habit of the mind, and is rather
restorative than destructive, constantly producing new forms on the analogy of old ones to
supply each want that arises in the course of man's intellectual development.
At the present time the term “Linguistics” (Ger.
Linguistik) is supplanting the word Philology in the sense of language-study
pure and simple; while Philology, or rather
Classical Philology, is coming to be used as a comprehensive name for the general
study of ancient life in all its various political, social, and intellectual phases, as handed
down in the literary, epigraphic, and monumental remains of Greece and Rome. It embraces,
then, not only Grammar, Lexicography, Text Criticism, and Hermeneutics, but Epigraphy,
Numismatics, and Art; or as Karl Otfried Müller said: “Philology does not
strive to establish isolated facts or to get an acquaintance with abstract forms, but to grasp
the ancient spirit in its broadest meaning, in its works of reason, of feeling, and of
imagination.”
Bibliography.—On the philological studies of the
ancients, see Lersch,
Sprachphilosophie der Alten, 3 vols.
(Bonn,
1841); Gräfenhan,
Geschichte der classischen Philologie, vol.
i.
(Bonn, 1843-50); Steinthal,
Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei den
Griechen und Römern, 2 vols.
(2d ed. Berlin, 1892); Urlichs in
I. Müller's
Handbuch, I. i. pp. 126 foll.; Sayce,
Introduction
to the Science of Language, vol. i. pp. 1-25; and Max Müller's
Science of Language, vol. i. —On modern linguistics, see F.
Müller's introduction to his
Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft
(Vienna, 1876-1887); Delbrück,
Introduction to the Study of
Language (Eng. trans., London, 1882); Brugmann,
Zum heutigen
Stand der Sprachwissenschaft (Strassburg, 1885); La Grasserie,
Les Divisions de la Linguistique (Paris, 1888); Strong, Logeman,
and Wheeler,
Introduction to the Study of the History of Language, based on
Paul
(New York and London, 1891);
Collitz, Die neueste
Sprachforschung (1886); Wheeler,
Analogy and the Scope of its
Application in Language (Ithaca, 1887); and Clark,
Manual of
Linguistics (New York and Edinburgh, 1893). See also
Bopp;
Corssen;
Curtius;
Indo-European Languages;
Pott.
