Philology

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Philology (from

Ancient Greek φιλολογία (philología) 'love of word') is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology.[1][2][3] Philology is also defined as the study of literary texts and 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.[4][5]

Sanskrit, Chinese, etc.), and African (Egyptian, Nubian, etc.) languages. Indo-European studies involve the comparative philology of all Indo-European languages
.

Philology, with its focus on historical development (

synchronic analysis. While the contrast continued with the emergence of structuralism and the emphasis of Noam Chomsky on syntax
, research in historical linguistics often relies on philological materials and findings.

Etymology

The term philology is derived from the Greek φιλολογία (philología),[7] from the terms φίλος (phílos) 'love, affection, loved, beloved, dear, friend' and λόγος (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 λόγος. 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

sophistic") preference of argument over the love of true wisdom, φιλόσοφος
(philósophos).

As an

Chaucer, Lydgate
).

The meaning of "love of learning and literature" was narrowed to "the study of the historical development of languages" (

Nietzsche".[8]

Branches

Comparative

Main article:
Comparative philology
Cover of Indo-European Philology: Historical and Comparative by William Burley Lockwood (1969)

The

deciphering
the origins of older texts.

Textual

Main article: Textual criticism

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 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 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", 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.[10]

A related study method known as

higher criticism studies the authorship, date, and provenance of text to place such text in a historical context.[10] As these philological issues are often inseparable from issues of interpretation, there is no clear-cut boundary between philology and hermeneutics.[10]
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,

new philology 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.[11]
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

Main article: Cognitive philology

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

Egyptian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Hittite, Ugaritic, and Luwian languages. Beginning with the famous decipherment and translation of the Rosetta Stone by Jean-François Champollion in 1822, some individuals attempted to decipher the writing systems of the Ancient Near East and Aegean. In the case of Old Persian 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,

cuneiform for each language. The elucidation of cuneiform led to the decipherment of Sumerian. Hittite was deciphered in 1915 by Bedřich Hrozný
.

Minoans
, resists deciphering, despite many attempts.

Work continues on scripts such as the

logosyllabic
style of writing.

Contention

In English-speaking countries, usage of the term "philology" to describe work on languages and works of literature, which had become synonymous with the practices of German scholars, was abandoned as a consequence of anti-German feelings following

US English, and US academia, the wider meaning of "study of a language's grammar, history and literary tradition" remains more widespread.[15][16] 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.[12]

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".[17] 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.

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"[18] 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".[19]

In popular culture

In the Space Trilogy 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

university town
.

Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, the main character in Alexander McCall Smith's 1997 comic novel Portuguese Irregular Verbs 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 philologist, and a significant part of the film deals with his work.

The main character of the science fiction TV show Stargate SG-1, Dr. Daniel Jackson, is mentioned as having a PhD in philology.

See also

References

  1. ISBN 9780199261444
    . Retrieved 21 March 2020.
  2. ISBN 9782070761166
    .
  3. ^ Peile, John (1880). Philology. Macmillan and Co. p. 5. Retrieved 2011-07-16.
  4. ^ "philology". dictionary.com. Archived from the original on 2017-11-04. Retrieved 2016-12-26.
  5. ^ "philology". oxforddictionaries.com. Archived from the original on December 26, 2016.
  6. ^ Hall, F. W. (1968). A Companion to Classical Texts. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press. pp. 22–52.
  7. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert. "φιλολογία". A Greek-English Lexicon. Perseus.tufts.edu. Archived from the original on 2019-10-28. Retrieved 2017-05-23.
  8. ^ "Nikolaus Wegmann, Princeton University Department of German". Scholar.princeton.edu. Archived from the original on 2017-07-19. Retrieved 2013-12-04.
  9. Friedrich von Schlegel
    . Mascaro says this is the beginning of modern study of the roots of the Indo-European languages.
  10. ^
    ISBN 9780815317913
    . Retrieved 2011-07-16.
  11. doi:10.1080/00393274.2023.2228845
    .
  12. ^ a b Utz, Richard. "Them Philologists: Philological Practices and Their Discontents from Nietzsche to Cerquiglini." The Year's Work in Medievalism 26 (2011): 4–12.
  13. doi:10.1093/ywes/IV.1.20
    .
  14. ^ Utz, Richard. "Englische Philologie vs. English Studies: A Foundational Conflict", in Das Potential europäischer Philologien: Geschichte, Leistung, Funktion, ed. Christoph König (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2009), pp. 34–44.
  15. ^ A. Morpurgo Davies, History of Linguistics (1998) 4 I. 22.
  16. ^ M. M. Bravmann, Studies in Semitic Philology. (1977) p. 457.
  17. ^ Neidorf, Leonard (2016). R.D Fulk and the Progress of Philology. Boydell & Brewer. p. 3.
  18. ISBN 978-0-691-16858-6
    .
  19. ISBN 978-0-691-16858-6
    .

External links

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