A Contrastive Study Of The Linguistic Metalanguage Keywords Systems Of Chinese And The Western Linguistics

For the purpose of solving various problems in linguistics, it is necessary to look back at the process of the development of linguistics, to grasp the fundamental associations in history and to probe into the laws of its development and evolution. To a certain extent, only if the process of the origination and procession of language had been made clear, the problems in history concerning language and linguistics had been understood and the attempts made in history had been interpreted, could the present situation of linguistics be fully understood and the right track for its future development be correctly established.However, as Yao Xiaoping points out,"there is little special study on the history of Chinese linguistics, less special study on the history of western linguistics, and far less special study on the history of linguistics from a contrastive perspective in China (as well as in the world) (Yao Xiaoping, 2006: 61)."This research, applying the basic method of contrast, starting from the perspective of metalanguage and the system of metalanguage keywords in linguistics, is to study the overall development of linguistic study throughout history from a new perspective by combing the linguistic metalanguage keywords in both the western linguistics and Chinese linguistics to set up a system: the route of development, the present situation of study and the tendency for further development. As its name suggests, the study belongs to the field of history of linguistics. To be specific, it is a kind of comprehensive and integrated contrastive study of the history of linguistics in the west and in China.Applying the theories and methodologies in contrastive linguistics and historical linguistics, using the previously relevant study for reference, choosing linguistic metalanguage keywords system as the Tertium Comparationis, we mainly deal with the ups and downs of the mainstream linguistic schools in history at the points of great changes of linguistic study as well as the supplants and successions in the development of linguistics throughout history. The similarities and differences, as can be seen from metalganuage keywords between western linguistics and Chinese linguistics and the tendency of convergence of Chinese linguistics with that of the west, are our major concerns.In a word, our study will follow a chronological order of linguistic studies to comb out the most eseential metalanguage keywords in the history of linguistics in both China and the west, making clear the originating, developing, succeeding and supplanting of metalanguage keywords of linguistics and the constructing of metalanguage keywords systems so as to better understand the respective trace of development of linguistics in both China and the west.The dissertation is made up of eight chapters:Apart form the discussion of the necessities, the contents as well as the methodological routes of the study, the definitions of metalanguage and linguistic metalanguage as well as the principles for metalanguage keywords selecting have also been discussed in Chapter One of the dissertation. Here, metalanguage is defined as"the languages used to explain language its self", and linguistic metalanguages is defined as"the basic terms used to define language phenomena and fundamental tools used to analyze linguistic problems". The four principles for linguistic metalanguage selecting are also decided as Principle of Prominence (PP), Principle of Historical Order (PHO), Principle of Succession (PS) and Principle of Hierarchy (PH).Chapter Two mainly deals with the previous studies in this field, including the studies on the history of the linguistics both in the western countries and in China, the studies on metalanguages and on linguistic metalanguages, so as to clear the ground for our study, i.e. to search for a rarely-traced path for historical study of linguistics. The necessity of the study has been made clearer by reviewing the literature of previous studies in the same and neighbor academic fields.Chapter Three mainly discusses the problem of historical division of linguistics development both in the west and in China to put forward a frame of historical division of linguistics for the convenience of a contrastive study.Chapters four, five, six and seven make up the body of the dissertation to deal with the contrastive study of the systems of linguistic metalanguage keywords between the western linguistics and Chinese linguistics chronologically from the antiquity to modern times.Chapter Four deal with the situation in ancient Greece and Rome to the Middle Ages till in and after the Renaissance in the west as contrast to that in the long period from the pre-Qin to the end of the Yuan Dynasty in China. Western linguistics in this stage mainly concerned with grammatology, which had been completely, scientifically and systematically set up till the end of the Roman Empire with a nature of strong prescriptiveness. Then, west linguistics began to convert from mere grammar to other linguistic problems and started to take some color of descriptiveness as well as explanation during the Middle Ages and in and after the Renaissance, owing to various reasons. The traditional Chinese linguistics, on the other hand, though initiated from the similar motivation of the philosophical issue as that of the west, experienced a completely different way from that of the west, and established a linguistics with Xungu, Wenzi and Yinyun as its major branches with prominent characteristics of descriptiveness and explanation, though without systematical study of grammar or even the sense of grammatology.Chapter Five copes with the contrast of linguistic studies in the eighteenth century in the west and the early Qing Dynasty in China. Thanks to the exploration on the origin of language, the continuous study on the universality of language, the widening of study horizons, especially the study on Sanskrit and the knowledge of Indian linguistics, western linguistics in this period showed a prominent trend of moving gradually from being merely prescriptive to being more descriptive. Traditional Chinese linguistics, on the other hand, came to its peak in all aspects of Xungu, Wenzi and Yinyun, with the study of ancient sounds as the most remarkable and the priority of sounds in language being noticed for the first time. However, owing to its lack of self-consciousness for theory constructing and its retrospective research method, traditional Chinese linguistics had not broken away from philology to become an independent discipline of linguistics, but had been enslaved completely by the study of the classics.Chapter Six forms a contrast of linguistic studies of the nineteenth century and the later Qing Dynasty. In this period, Western linguistics changed its perspective from prescriptiveness to historical-comparative descriptiveness. Historical-comparative linguistics made an unprecedented progress in the 19th century and promoted the generating of general linguistics in the century to follow. And in China, the publication of Mashi Wentong marked a real turning of linguistics from traditional linguistics toward grammatology, signifying the beginning of Chinese linguistics converging with west linguistics.Chapter Seven is the contrast of modern linguistics after the beginning of the twentieth century between in the west and in China. In the beginning of the twentieth century, general linguistics came into being with the Swiss linguist de Saussure as its founder, then it blossomed with the nature of structuralism in essence in Europe and the United States. The linguistic ideas and concepts of Saussure have been succeeded and developed by linguists of different schools. Although they dealt with language and linguistics from different perspectives, the linguistic ideas and theories, as well as the methodologies of linguistic study developed by them were actually structuralism in essence. On the other hand, Chinese linguistics, with a gradual introduction of various foreign linguistic theories and methodologies, have made great achievements in almost every area of linguistic studies both in theory and practice, especially in grammatology and dialects investigation, description and explanation, demonstrating a tendency of convergence with the foreign linguistics in theory and methodology.As a conclusion of the whole dissertation, Chapter Eight sums up the similarities and differences as well as the tendency of convergence between the two traditions of linguistics, and points out the limitations of the study as well as the suggestions for further study. The major differences between western linguistics and Chinese linguistics, based on the analysis of the evolution of their respective systems of metalanguage keywords, are the differences in languages, differences in methodologies, differences in research horizons and differences objectives for study, which are mutually determined to result in different development of linguistics as a whole. The similarities between the two, on the other hand, could be seen in that they both originated from philosophical thinking at proximately the same time in history and motivated all the way by pragmatic purposes; that they have shared the same objects of study as languages and linguistics problems; that they have demonstrated a similar trend of development/evolution; that they showed a similar feature of"ancestor-hopping"in theory construction by succeeding and supplanting their previous; and that they both have demonstrated a rise of the positions of human beings in the order of prominence in linguistic studies and thus a rise of recognition of human itself. The contrastive study of the systems of linguistic metalanguage keywords of Chinese linguistics and Western Linguistics manifests the evolution (successions and supplantations) of linguistic theories and the tendency of constant and continuous convergence of Chinese linguistics with that of the west, which could be seen from the three contacts of Chinese linguistics with that of the foreign in the history of linguistics.