A History Of European And American Semantics (1825-1960) Exploration

The academics are the products of the history.Clarifying the academic history helps to improve the theories,to know the research direction,and to promote the academic development.Western scholars started the research on the meaning in the ancient Greece,but as a discipline,semantics(Semasiologie?Semantique/Semantics)was established in 1825(Reisig),and since then it has had a series of achievements.Since the 1930s,the semantic research has been rejected by the formalism.The academic history was not within the view of the European and American linguistic historians for a long time.In the mid-1960s,the semantic study attracted some scholars' attention following the semantic turn of the Western Linguistics.And the research on the semantic history started in 1980.So far,we have found only two and a half books about the semantic history of Europe and America.In 1982,W.T.Gordon,the Canadian scholar,published the first book entitled The History of Semantics.It has the following features and disadvantages:1.It takes the semanticists as a unit,without constructing the research framework;2.The study object includes the semantics in Germany,France,UK and USA,lacking Russian semantics;3.The early study is insufficient,lacking some semanticists who created some important theories.In 1992,the British scholar B.Nerlich published The Theory of European Semantics 1830-1930,which is a richer semantic history.Its main features and disadvantages are following:1.It describes the nations as the framework,and the descriptions about the major theoretical innovation need to be deepened;2.The study object includes the semantics in Germany,France and UK(The British traditional semantics contains the American semantics which has nothing to do with the British traditional semantics),lacking the Russian semantics;3.The low limit of the studying time is 1930,and the content of the modern semantics is not included.In 2010,the Belgian scholar D.Geeraerts published The Theory of Lexical Semantics.Although the author emphasizes that the book is not a history of lexical semantics,we still regard it as "the half book of the semantic history".Its main features and disadvantages are following:1.The lexical semantics has a clear outline and is divided into five stages,but some summarizations are not appropriate;2.It also lacks the research on the Russian semantics;3.Some of the expressions,statements or evaluations are inaccurate or insufficient.In a word,the two and a half books have the common disadvantages:they haven't revealed the forming processes and the academic backgrounds of the major theories,lacking the study on the Russian semantics.In this way,we need a relatively complete(temporally,it covers the period 1825-1960;spatially,it includes the American and Russian traditional semantics),clearly outlined book about the history of European and American semantics(the traditional semantics plus the modern semantics,not including the contemporary semantics which the scholars are familiar with).Based on the first-hand literatures and the secondary sources,this study adopted the groupinspecting and outline-sorting model,exploring the forming processes and the academic backgrounds,in order to improve or reconstruct the relatively complete history of European and American semantics(1825-1960;Germany,France,UK,USA and Russia).It is hard to collect the first-hand literatures,find the outline,reveal the background and evaluate the scholars accurately.Thus,this study relies on the academic team to collect the first-hand literatures in many ways(we completed the program-the translations and annotations of the classical books on the European and American semantics),refer to the secondary sources as well as the network resources,and try to reveal the forming processes and the academic backgrounds of the major theories by analyzing the important books.The research mainline of the traditional semantics(1825-1920)is the creation and development of German classical semantics(the key point is the inheritance and development of the three generations from the teacher Reisig to the students Haase and Heerdegen)—the creation of French mental semantics(the key point is Bréal)—the features of British context semantics(the key point is Smart in the first half of the 19th century,Gardiner and Malinowski in the 1930s)—the American semantic history(the 1840s and 1990s,the two-time entrances of the Germany and French semantics into America)—the Russian semantic history(?????? ?????????? ?????????? at the end of the 19th century,????????? ???????? ??????????and ?????? ???????????? ?????????? in the mid-20th century).The research key point of the modern semantics(1930-1960)is the theory of German mental semantic field(1920-1930)—American semantic analytic method(1930-1960),French and German semantic analytic method(1960)-the theory of British relational semantics(1960).Finally,the study has clarified the four ways(1930-1940)by which the European and American traditional semantics entered into China.This study tries to form the following three combinations:1.The historical facts are combined with the historical comments;2.The first-hand literatures are combined with the secondary sources;3.Paper materials are combined with the network resources.The specific methods are:1.The literature-seeking method:translating,studying and commenting the first-hand literatures from Germany,France,UK,USA and Russia.2.The source-tracing method:extracting the formational and developmental clues of the European and American semantics,including the research orientations or schools and developmental relations.3.The case-analyzing method:studying the key works and its background,correcting the errors and omissions in the previous works.In a word,the study tries to learn more about the value of the European and American semantic history by the Academic Dialogues among the show of the original works,the researcher's summary and the reader's understanding.Compared with the previous studies,this study has some main innovations:1.illuminating the academic backgrounds and the immediate sources by which Reisig created Semasiologie for the first time;2.showing the value of Bréal's Une science nouvelle:la sémantique for the first time;3.Refining Locke's view about the meaning of the words for the first time;4.clarifying the formational and developmental track of British context theory of meaning for the first time;5.exploring the American semantic history for the first time(the key point is Gibbs's and Lanman's studies);6.exploring the Russian semantic history for the first time(the key point is ?????? ?????????? ??????????'s research on the historical semantics(1895,1896);7.Illuminating the formational process and background of the mental semantic field theory,the semantic analytic method and the relationship semantic theory for the first time;8.Tracing the ways by which the European and American traditional semantics entered into China for the first time.This study has two inter-related characteristics.On the one hand,it is based on the translation and the commentary of the first-hand literatures in order to avoid the subjective review,even the errors of some researchers without the first-hand literatures in the past.The key point is to show the original books written by the semanticists in the 19th century,including Germany Reisig(1825)who created Semasiologie,French Bréal(1883,1897)who recreated mental semantics,the first American semanticist Gibbs(1847),as well as the scholar ?????? ?????????? ??????????(1895)who firstly studied the historical semantics in Russia and the like.On the other hand,it is based on the academic backgrounds of the scholars,studying semantics by learning their academic life.For example,the research reveals the reasons why Halley University could produce Semasiologie by exploring the academic backgrounds.The research reveals Reisig's immediate academic sources by studying his works and answers the questions in Nerlich(1992).Exploring the life background and the academic backgrounds of the scholars who created the theory of the semantic field,the study also reveals that the Gestalt psychology and mental semantic field are the reflection of the cultural behavior "national revival" in psychology and linguistics,which the Germans sought for after they were defeated in World War One.Making a general survey of the history of the European and American traditional semantics,the research on semantics can be theoretically summarized into three orientations:the historical orientation(including the logic,philosophical orientation)highlights the accumulating language knowledge;the psychological orientation(including cognitive,understanding orientation)outstands the changing awareness of the language;the context orientation(including the social,behavioral orientation)outstands the language behavior with communicative intents.The study has shown that the European linguistics in the 19th century developed along two mainlines:one is historical phonetic comparison,and the other is historical semantic evolution.The birth of semantics was related to the atmosphere of classical and hermeneutics,connected closely to etymology,rhetoric and lexicography.The growth of semantics benefited from philosophy,biology,psychology,sociology,semiotics and anthropology,and the mark of its mature is the formation of the communicating semantics and the understanding semantics.The so-called new theory of Contemporary Linguistics-form(Breal 1866),function(Breal 1866),psychology(Steinthal 1855),society(Meillet 1893,1921),context(Smart 1831,Stout 1891,Malinowski 1920),discourse act(Malinowski 1920),metaphor(Reisig 1825,Breal 1897),grammaticalization(Breal 1883,1897;Leumann 1927),karyotype or semantic domain(Stout 1891,Gardiner 1932),subjective(Breal 1897)among others are in the previous semantic works.The semantic history is an open subject.There are lots of difficulties in the field so it is impossible to succeed easily.Overall,as an international third(or fourth)History of the European and American semantics,the study has enriched the research framework of the History of the European and American semantics,correcting the mistakes of the former researches,making up for the insufficiency in the previous studies,broadening the research horizons of the semantic history.It can not only promote the development of the contemporary semantic and linguistic research,but also offer a reference to the research on the general history of linguistics.