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In 19th century, Europe discovered
Sanskrit, and Europeans discovered or rediscovered the scientific
study of language. The 19th century was concerned about the genetic
relationships of languages to each other, their historical affinities,
and little by little more scientific and universal techniques were
worked out that could be used to study any language. Previously, the
study of Sanskrit and the framework developed for it worked best only
for Skt;. the model devised by the Greeks worked best only for Greek,
that for Chinese for Chinese, etc. Linguistic theories were at first
language-specific; it was the task of 19th and 20th century linguists
to developed universal theories that could be applied to any language.
That is what we will try to learn here: universally applicable
techniques and theories for analyzing any or all languages.
Simultaneously, in America, researchers were `discovering' Amerindian
languages, and wanted to transcribe them and study them, but their
knowledge of European classical languages did not prepare them at all
for this. American Anthropology developed the 4-pronged approach:
cultural, archeological, physical, and linguistic. Franz Boas (who
brought in a German tradition of linguistic analysis.)
Harold Schiffman
Fri Jan 17 09:48:04 EST 1997