Language Through History

Language through history

Introduction.

Language is the means by which man communicates what he feels and what he thinks, either verbally, which can be oral or written, or nonverbal through gestures, signs, facial and body expressions, posture , looks, physical appearance, colors, among others, making use of all the senses to communicate.

On the other hand, communication is one that is established between two or more people using a language or shared code that allows you to transmit to the person with whom we speak information, ideas, feelings, emotions, beliefs, opinions, attitudes, etc., This is what we know as a language.

Developing.

Speech, is the physical means by which the individual transmits what he thinks, in other words, is the individual use that each person makes of his language. Language has been studied from different points of view, and from a wide variety of science, such as linguistics, psychology, anthropology, biology, sociology, history, philosophy, among others. Each of them has approached language according to the currents that were taking place at the time giving this different approaches.

For example, language has been considered since:

• Sociology, as an expression and cause of social differences.
• Psychology, as a form of behavior or behavior.
• Philosophy, as an instrument and expression of power.

In any case, it is important In order to understand its origin and behavior.

First, it is important to know how linguistics became considered a science, since language studies have had such diverse methodological and theoretical approaches that we could barely make a small group of the most important authors who contributed to this science and how they influenced THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE. Linguistics as an autonomous science, was not consolidated until the nineteenth century, because although there had been previously studies on languages, grammar and structure, there was no scientific method to establish the properties of language.

Linguistics was mainly based on three currents: structuralism, transformational generativism and textual linguistics, which played a fairly significant role in the history of this. Ferdinand de Saussure, is considered by many as the father of modern linguistics thanks to the work; The general linguistic course, published by his students Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, this one of the most important titles because from this one begins to apply structuralism to the analysis of language.

The structuralism proposed by Saussure bases language on a system composed of elements that relate to each other and form a structure, this proposes language as a set of signs, where meaning is the concept and signifier is the representation or image that is produces in our brain of the sign.

Years later, Luis Hjelmslev, states that it is important And the society behind language ‘, that author also claimed that linguistics can become a science, but it is not yet; The essential qualities of a science are objectivity and precision, and these are still lacking.

With the passing of time, it begins to notice that Saussure’s theory leaves aside the natural determination of language, as Gonzalez explains in his writing; The study of language as a natural science, in which through the argument of impossible languages, rebounds structuralist reasoning. This argument exposes that the wide variety of possible particular languages ​​are naturally limited, which justifies the importance of a natural science referred to language.

González proposes that in structuralism we can obviously notice an abuse of the idea of ​​’sign’ and, more specifically, of its position between the facts of language, so the need for the study of the natural within the disciplines dedicated to the disciplines dedicated to Study of phenomena related to speaking, so it supports Chomsky’s theory.

Chomsky, one of the best known and respected scientists in the world, proposed generative grammar, changing learning methods and placing the order and relationship of words in the center of research in terms of linguistics. His revolutionary contributions collided with the traditional ideas of other experts, receiving recognition but also a lot of criticism, placing him as one of the most controversial scientists in the history of language.

Conclusions.

The mind/brain includes, among other faculties, that of language, faculty that can be defined as a property of the species, common to all and exclusive to it, which in the essential is capable of producing a complex, rich and well structured language to from quite rudimentary data. His language approach has always been naturalistic; He states that children have the innate ability to understand language, a skill that they develop through their experiences and learning regardless of their family or cultural context. To designate this theory, he uses the term "universal grammar". This change led to modern linguistics to share with other sciences, whether natural such as biolinguistics and neolinguistics or social such as cognitive and cultural anthropology affirms Tobón, in its essay the linguistics of language seen as the study of the processes of meaning.