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Philology () is the study of language in oral and
written Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols. Writing systems do not themselves constitute h ...
historical source Historical source is an original source that contains important historical information. These sources are something that inform us about history at the most basic level, and are used as clues in order to study history. Historical sources can includ ...
s; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as the study of literary texts as well as oral and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist. In older usage, especially British, philology is more general, covering comparative and historical linguistics.
Classical philology Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...
studies
classical languages A classical language is any language with an independent literary tradition and a large and ancient body of written literature. Classical languages are typically dead languages, or show a high degree of diglossia, as the spoken varieties of the ...
. Classical philology principally originated from the Library of Pergamum and the Library of Alexandria around the fourth century BC, continued by Greeks and Romans throughout the
Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...
/
Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
. It was eventually resumed by European scholars of the Renaissance, where it was soon joined by philologies of other European ( Germanic,
Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language *Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Foo ...
), Eurasian ( Slavistics, etc.), Asian (
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
,
Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
, Sanskrit,
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...
, etc.), and African ( Egyptian,
Nubian Nubian may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Nubia, a region along the Nile river in Southern Egypt and northern Sudan. *Nubian people *Nubian languages *Anglo-Nubian goat, a breed of goat * Nubian ibex * , several ships of the Britis ...
, etc.) languages. Indo-European studies involve the comparative philology of all Indo-European languages. Philology, with its focus on historical development (
diachronic Synchrony and diachrony are two complementary viewpoints in linguistic analysis. A ''synchronic'' approach (from grc, συν- "together" and "time") considers a language at a moment in time without taking its history into account. Synchronic l ...
analysis), is contrasted with linguistics due to Ferdinand de Saussure's insistence on the importance of synchronic analysis. The contrast continued with the emergence of structuralism and
Chomskyan Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...
linguistics alongside its emphasis on syntax, although research in historical linguistics is often characterized by reliance on philological materials and findings.


Etymology

The term '' philology'' is derived from the Greek (''philología''), from the terms (''phílos'') "love, affection, loved, beloved, dear, friend" and (''lógos'') "word, articulation, reason", describing a love of learning, of literature, as well as of argument and reasoning, reflecting the range of activities included under the notion of . The term changed little with the Latin ''philologia'', and later entered the English language in the 16th century, from the Middle French ''philologie'', in the sense of 'love of literature'. The
adjective In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
(''philólogos'') meant 'fond of discussion or argument, talkative', in Hellenistic Greek, also implying an excessive (" sophistic") preference of argument over the love of true wisdom, (''philósophos''). As an
allegory As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory t ...
of literary erudition, ''philologia'' appears in fifth-century postclassical literature ( Martianus Capella, ''De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii''), an idea revived in Late Medieval literature (
Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...
, Lydgate). The meaning of "love of learning and literature" was narrowed to "the study of the historical development of languages" ( historical linguistics) in 19th-century usage of the term. Due to the rapid progress made in understanding
sound law A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic cha ...
s and language change, the "golden age of philology" lasted throughout the 19th century, or "from
Giacomo Leopardi Count Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi (, ; 29 June 1798 – 14 June 1837) was an Italian philosopher, poet, essayist, and philologist. He is considered the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century and one of ...
and Friedrich Schlegel to Nietzsche".


Branches


Comparative

The
comparative linguistics Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness ...
branch of philology studies the relationship between languages. Similarities between Sanskrit and European languages were first noted in the early 16th century and led to speculation of a common ancestor language from which all these descended. It is now named Proto-Indo-European. Philology's interest in ancient languages led to the study of what were, in the 18th century, "exotic" languages, for the light they could cast on problems in understanding and
decipher DECIPHER is a web-based resource and database of genomic variation data from analysis of patient DNA. It documents submicroscopic chromosome abnormalities ( microdeletions and duplications) and pathogenic sequence variants (single nucleotide ...
ing the origins of older texts.


Textual

Philology also includes the study of texts and their history. It includes elements of textual criticism, trying to reconstruct an author's original text based on variant copies of manuscripts. This branch of research arose among ancient scholars in the Greek-speaking world of the 4th century BC, who desired to establish a standard text of popular authors for the purposes of both sound interpretation and secure transmission. Since that time, the original principles of textual criticism have been improved and applied to other widely distributed texts such as the Bible. Scholars have tried to reconstruct the original readings of the Bible from the manuscript variants. This method was applied to Classical Studies and to medieval texts as a way to reconstruct the author's original work. The method produced so-called "critical editions", which provided a reconstructed text accompanied by a "
critical apparatus A critical apparatus ( la, apparatus criticus) in textual criticism of primary source material, is an organized system of notations to represent, in a single text, the complex history of that text in a concise form useful to diligent readers and ...
", i.e., footnotes that listed the various manuscript variants available, enabling scholars to gain insight into the entire manuscript tradition and argue about the variants. A related study method known as higher criticism studies the authorship, date, and provenance of text to place such text in historical context. As these philological issues are often inseparable from issues of interpretation, there is no clear-cut boundary between philology and hermeneutics. When text has a significant political or religious influence (such as the reconstruction of Biblical texts), scholars have difficulty reaching objective conclusions. Some scholars avoid all critical methods of textual philology, especially in historical linguistics, where it is important to study the actual recorded materials. The movement known as
New Philology New Philology generally refers to a branch of Mexican ethnohistory and philology that uses colonial-era native language texts written by Indians to construct history from the indigenous point of view. The name New Philology was coined by James Lock ...
has rejected textual criticism because it injects editorial interpretations into the text and destroys the integrity of the individual manuscript, hence damaging the reliability of the data. Supporters of New Philology insist on a strict "diplomatic" approach: a faithful rendering of the text exactly as found in the manuscript, without emendations.


Cognitive

Another branch of philology, cognitive philology, studies written and oral texts. Cognitive philology considers these oral texts as the results of human mental processes. This science compares the results of textual science with the results of experimental research of both psychology and artificial intelligence production systems.


Decipherment

In the case of
Bronze Age literature Ancient literature comprises religious and scientific documents, tales, poetry and plays, royal edicts and declarations, and other forms of writing that were recorded on a variety of media, including stone, stone tablets, papyri, palm leaves, and ...
, philology includes the prior decipherment of the language under study. This has notably been the case with the Egyptian, Sumerian,
Assyrian Assyrian may refer to: * Assyrian people, the indigenous ethnic group of Mesopotamia. * Assyria, a major Mesopotamian kingdom and empire. ** Early Assyrian Period ** Old Assyrian Period ** Middle Assyrian Empire ** Neo-Assyrian Empire * Assyri ...
, Hittite, Ugaritic and
Luwian The Luwians were a group of Anatolian peoples who lived in central, western, and southern Anatolia, in present-day Turkey, during the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. They spoke the Luwian language, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian sub-fam ...
languages. Beginning with the famous decipherment and translation of the Rosetta Stone by Jean-François Champollion in 1822, a number of individuals attempted to decipher the writing systems of the
Ancient Near East The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, southeast Turkey, southwest Iran and northeastern Syria), ancient Egypt, ancient Iran (Elam, ...
and Aegean. In the case of
Old Persian Old Persian is one of the two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan language, Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native ...
and Mycenaean Greek, decipherment yielded older records of languages already known from slightly more recent traditions ( Middle Persian and Alphabetic Greek). Work on the ancient languages of the Near East progressed rapidly. In the mid-19th century, Henry Rawlinson and others deciphered the Behistun Inscription, which records the same text in
Old Persian Old Persian is one of the two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan language, Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native ...
, Elamite, and
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic ...
, using a variation of
cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic writing system, script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East, Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is nam ...
for each language. The elucidation of cuneiform led to the decipherment of Sumerian. Hittite was deciphered in 1915 by
Bedřich Hrozný Bedřich (Friedrich) Hrozný (; 6 May 1879 – 12 December 1952) was a Czech orientalist and linguist. He contributed to the decipherment of the ancient Hittite language, identified it as an Indo-European language and laid the groundwork for th ...
. Linear B, a script used in the ancient Aegean, was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris and
John Chadwick John Chadwick, (21 May 1920 – 24 November 1998) was an English linguist and classical scholar who was most notable for the decipherment, with Michael Ventris, of Linear B. Early life, education and wartime service John Chadwick was born at ...
, who demonstrated that it recorded an early form of Greek, now known as Mycenaean Greek. Linear A, the writing system that records the still-unknown language of the Minoans, resists deciphering, despite many attempts. Work continues on scripts such as the Maya, with great progress since the initial breakthroughs of the phonetic approach championed by
Yuri Knorozov Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov (alternatively Knorosov; russian: link=no, Юрий Валентинович Кнорозов; 19 November 1922 – 31 March 1999) was a Soviet-Russian linguist, epigrapher and ethnographer, who is particularly renow ...
and others in the 1950s. Since the late 20th century, the Maya code has been almost completely deciphered, and the Mayan languages are among the most documented and studied in Mesoamerica. The code is described as a
logosyllabic In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced ''hanzi'' in Mandarin, '' kanji'' in Japanese, '' hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, ...
style of writing, which could be used to fully express any spoken thought.


Contention

In the Anglo-Saxon world, the term philology to describe work on languages and literatures, which had become synonymous with the practices of German scholars, was abandoned as a consequence of anti-German feeling following World War I. Utz, Richard. "Them Philologists: Philological Practices and Their Discontents from Nietzsche to Cerquiglini." ''The Year's Work in Medievalism'' 26 (2011): 4–12. Most continental European countries still maintain the term to designate departments, colleges, position titles, and journals. J. R. R. Tolkien opposed the nationalist reaction against philological practices, claiming that "the philological instinct" was "universal as is the use of language". In
British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Oxford Dictionaries, "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly ...
usage, and in British academia, ''philology'' remains largely synonymous with "historical linguistics", while in
US English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances ...
, and US academia, the wider meaning of "study of a language's grammar, history and literary tradition" remains more widespread. Based on the harsh critique of Friedrich Nietzsche, some US scholars since the 1980s have viewed philology as responsible for a narrowly scientistic study of language and literature. Disagreements in the modern day of this branch of study are followed with the likes of how the method is treated amongst other scholars, as noted by both the philologists R.D Fulk and Leonard Neidorf who have been quoted saying "This field "philology's commitment to falsification renders it “at odds with what many literary scholars believe, because the purpose of philology is to narrow the range of possible interpretations rather than to treat all reasonable ones as equal”. This use of falsification can be seen in the debate surrounding the etymology of the Old English character Unferth from the heroic epic poem
Beowulf ''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The ...
. James Turner further disagrees with how the use of the term is dismissed in the academic world, stating that due to its branding as a "simpleminded approach to their subject" that the term has become unknown to college-educated students, furthering the stereotypes of "scrutiny of ancient Greek or Roman texts of a nit-picking classicist" and only the "technical research into languages and families".


In popular culture

In the ''
Space Trilogy ''The Space Trilogy'' or ''Cosmic Trilogy'' is a series of science fiction novels by C. S. Lewis. The trilogy consists of '' Out of the Silent Planet'' (1938), '' Perelandra'' (1943), and ''That Hideous Strength'' (1945). A philologist named ...
'' by C.S. Lewis, the main character, Elwin Ransom, is a philologist – as was Lewis' close friend J. R. R. Tolkien. Dr. Edward Morbius, one of the main characters in the science fiction film '' Forbidden Planet'', is a philologist. Philip, the main character of
Christopher Hampton Sir Christopher James Hampton (Horta, Azores, 26 January 1946) is a British playwright, screenwriter, translator and film director. He is best known for his play ''Les Liaisons Dangereuses'' based on the novel of the same name and the film a ...
's 'bourgeois comedy' The Philanthropist, is a professor of philology in an English
university town A college town or university town is a community (often a separate town or city, but in some cases a town/city neighborhood or a district) that is dominated by its university population. The university may be large, or there may be several s ...
.
Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld is the main character in a series of short, humorous novels by Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith. In the books, Von Igelfeld is depicted as: *a "Professor Dr" *proud, stoic, and unable or unwilling to admit or face ...
, the main character in
Alexander McCall Smith Alexander "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE (born 24 August 1948), is a British writer. He was raised in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and formerly Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. He became an expert on medical law and ...
's 1997 comic novel ''
Portuguese Irregular Verbs ''Portuguese Irregular Verbs'' is a short comic novel by Alexander McCall Smith, and the first of McCall Smith's series of novels featuring Professor Dr von Igelfeld. It was first published in 1997. Some consider the book to be a series of con ...
'' is a philologist, educated at Cambridge. The main character in the Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language film in 2012, '' Footnote'', is a
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
philologist, and a significant part of the film deals with his work. A main character of the science fiction TV show ''
Stargate SG-1 ''Stargate SG-1'' (often stylized in all caps, or abbreviated ''SG-1'') is a military science fiction adventure television series within Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's ''Stargate'' franchise. The show, created by Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner, i ...
'', Dr. Daniel Jackson, is mentioned as having a PhD in philology.


See also

* ''
American Journal of Philology The ''American Journal of Philology'' is a quarterly academic journal established in 1880 by the classical scholar Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve and published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. It covers the field of philology, and related areas ...
'' *
Codicology Codicology (; from French ''codicologie;'' from Latin , genitive , "notebook, book" and Greek , ''-logia'') is the study of codices or manuscript books. It is often referred to as "the archaeology of the book," a term coined by François Masai. ...
* Elocution * Etymology * Palaeography *
Stylistics Stylistics, a branch of applied linguistics, is the study and interpretation of texts of all types and/or spoken language in regard to their linguistic and tonal style, where style is the particular variety of language used by different individu ...
*
Textual scholarship Textual scholarship (or textual studies) is an umbrella term for disciplines that deal with describing, transcribing, editing or annotating texts and physical documents. Overview Textual research is mainly historically oriented. Textual scholars s ...
* Western canon


References


External links


Philology in Runet
��(A special web search through the philological sites of
Runet Runet (russian: Рунет), a portmanteau of ru (code for both the Russian language and Russia's top-level domain) and net/network, is the Russian-language community on the Internet and websites. The term Runet was coined in Israel in th ...
) * v: Topic:German philology
CogLit: Literature and Cognitive Linguistics


{{Authority control Academic disciplines Historical linguistics Writing Textual scholarship