Foreign Philology

Foreign Philology

Philology is the study of literary and written texts. A philologist is a person who specializes in the study of ancient written texts. The main aim is to establish the authenticity of the texts and determine their meaning. A philologist is also a kind of linguist dealing especially with comparative and historical linguistics. A more obsolete use of the word philology refers to a love of words and literature. The origin of the term philology has been recorded in 1350-1400. Philology was used in Middle English as philologie. Philology is derived from the Latin philologia and Greek philologia which means “love of learning and literature”. The related forms of the noun philology are philologic in the adjective form and philologically as an adverb. A philologist is a person interested in the study of philology. A philologist is different from an etymologist. A philologist is a kind of linguist interested in the scientific study of language. An etymologist, on the other hand, is a linguist whose primary focus is to study the history and origin of words.

What is the difference between a Philologist and Linguist?

A Philologist studies the written text in the context of its historical and literary source. It thus involves a combination of literary, historical and linguistic study of the text. A linguist, on the other hand, engages in the scientific study of language which includes the form and meaning of language in a context. So while a Linguist is keenly associated with the scientific aspect of a language, a philologist is engaged with the humanistic study of literature and language.

How to become a Philologist?

It helps to know that philology is linked closely with history and consequently the texts which are the focus of study are written in an ancient language. It is important to know the difference between the function of a philologist and a linguist. A philologist looks at the text as a whole entity unlike the linguist who breaks down the structure of language. A philologist has to train in a number of disciplines having a historical base. A philologist is usually trained in linguistics, any language of one’s choice and background knowledge in history and archaeology.

Is Philology Necessary?

Philology deals with the scientific and specialized analysis of literary and ancient written records. Philology was the predecessor of the present day linguistics. The different branches of philology such as historical philology and comparative philology wherein words from various languages are studied to determine the historical relationships existing in different languages, have given way to the scientific study of language by the modern linguists.

Philology in itself was linked to texts. The history is long and complex. It had to do with both, interpreting the texts (hermeneutics, exegesis) and preserving the “original” texts in a world were transmission was based on manual copying.

From 19th century on the reconstruction of texts had to variants,based on Bedier or Lachmann. Lachmann would proposed a reconstitution of the omega text, and Bedier would answer that maybe never existed such a text and thus it would be morescientific to just give whatever the copy had arrived to our hands.

However, in order to deal with this reconstruction of texts knowledge about grammar, metrics, phonology, graphic systems, calligraphy, literary criticism, etc was required. So, in Continental Europe departments like “English” didn’t exist as such, but “English Philology.” Likewise, departments of linguistics were imported from Chomskyan views, because comparativist linguistics (and then Structural Linguistics) were already included in the concept of Philology. In those Philology departments, the recosntruction of texts in order to stablish the cannonical text, the omega text so to say, were aplied to the study of the history os languages (and the reconstruction of long lost languages such as Hebrew), and also to the standardization of minority languages which, for political reasons, couldn’t make it to the writen sphere in the turn of the 17th century as the rest of the European languages, such as Basque language.

Адрес публикации: https://www.prodlenka.org/metodicheskie-razrabotki/325568-foreign-philology