Linguistics

The simplest way to define linguistics is to say that it is the scientific study of language. Of course, then you need to define "language", which is something that the linguists still haven't conclusively done. This means, that it's your best bet to just kinda guess what "language" and "linguistics" are. A simple (and unfortunate) example of "language" being used is this very page that you're reading right now.

A person who studies linguistics is a linguist. To the chagrin of many linguists, the word has an older and arguably more common meaning: a person who speaks several languages, a translator. This sense of the word is still used by militaries and corporations across the globe. Many scholars of language are monolingual. While you technically don't need to speak more than one language to study it, some would argue that linguists would be better at their jobs if they did. For some reason, monolingual linguists vehemently disagree.

So why study linguistics in the first place if we can all speak our respective languages just fine? To put it simply: there are no good reasons. Except for one. To not end up on this wiki.

Proto-linguistics
Language is something that we all use, and the fact that the disgusting barbarians across the wall speak a different one, made humans develop awareness of it pretty early on. This is why people started writing about language back in antiquity, though they have possibly been talking about it even during prehistory, think of the Tower of Babel narrative for instance. Descriptive (but at the same time prescriptive) grammars start popping up around the same time. For better or for worse (you know it's for worse), contemporary linguistics inherits a lot of the baggage of the Roman grammatical tradition. Some important ancient texts about language: Plato's ', a dialogue about arbitrariness of linguistic form; ' by the Confucian philosopher Xunzi on a similar topic; Pāṇini's , a complete grammatical description of Sanskrit that's similar to modern generative approaches.

These dusty old tomes laid the foundation for further thought on language in their respective regions of the world. While grammarians kept producing new and influential grammars, like somewhere in the 8th century, ideas resembling the notion of a universal grammar start emerging, for example in Roger Bacon's  and among his  followers. This continues until the 17th century with no significant progress. Proto-comparative speculation abounds, like what the language that Adam spoke in the Garden of Eden looked like. Mystics like Astarabadi, St. Hildegard or John Dee reveal an assortment of "divine languages", all with their own grammars and dictionaries. In 1660, two French abbots finish the , a book that anticipates future developments in linguistics a great deal and even ends up influencing Noam Chomsky. In the end, it's mostly just a grammar of French, with some comparative evidence drawn from the Classical languages and some important European languages of the time. In 1725, Giambattista Vico writes , a highly original treatise that anticipates many ideas in cognitive linguistics and semiotics. Nobody reads it and it gets immediately forgotten.

The closer we get to today, the more things start resembling modern linguistics, shocking, right? By the 18th century, a lot of groundwork for what we now know as historical linguistics has already been laid down. In fact, were noting things like the similarity of Sanskrit and European languages like Latin back in the 16th century; but you know what they say — shy kids get no sweets. A British guy named finally formulated the idea of linguistic kinship coherently in the 1780s, thanks to his knowledge of Linnaeus’ methods of classification, Sanskrit and many other languages. William Jones' proposed kinship between Sanskrit and the languages of Europe, even included the Celtic family, even though it would take the scholars of the following century some time to realise that Celtic languages really are Indo-European. Don't get distracted by his amazing insight though: "If has proved (as he firmly believes, and as we, from our knowledge of his accuracy, may fairly presume) that clear vestiges of one ancient language are discernible in all the insular dialects of the southern seas from Madagascar to the Phillipines, and even to the remotest islands, lately discovered, we may infer from the specimens in his account of Sumatra, that the parent of them all was no other than the Sanscrit." It probably doesn't need to be said that the Austronesian family has nothing to do with Indo-European. Yeah, we're not quite there yet.

19th century
Still, despite his complete lack of method, William Jones' discovery is considered to be the true start of comparative linguistics. The 19th century starts only six years after his death, and this is the time when the study of language really starts blooming.