philologia

• In gen., love of learning or letters, literary pursuits, the study of polite literature (class.): ne et opera et oleum philologiae nostrae perierit, Cic. Att. 2, 17, 1; Vitr. 7 praef. § 4: Homerus philologiae omnis dux, id. ib.—
• II In partic., explanation, interpretation of the writings of others, philology (post-Aug.): quae philosophia fuit, facta est philologia, Sen. Ep. 108, 24.

• , φιλυλογία, love of study, literary culture: nostra.

(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. Language study, 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), 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.