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53-570: Tolkien, a philologist , became fascinated by constructed languages , and invented stories to provide his languages with a suitable world, Middle-earth . This resulted in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion . He peopled Middle-earth with Elves and other races, and in the Lhammas presented the theory that all Middle-earth's languages had a shared origin. In the document, he diagrammed

106-510: A dialect of the ancient language of Quenya, and it had changed little, unlike Sindarin. The Lhammas and The Etymologies had been describing Sindarin (but calling it Noldorin). Tolkien hastened to redraw the "Tree of Tongues", in a version recorded in Parma Eldalamberon 18, to accommodate this restructuring. Philologist Philology (from Ancient Greek φιλολογία ( philología )  'love of word')

159-567: A frame story , the text is presented as a summary by an unnamed editor of the last chapter of the Lhammas . The subject-matter is "direct thought-transmission" ( telepathy ), or sanwe-latya "thought-opening" in Quenya . Pengolodh included it as last chapter to the Lhammas because of the implications of spoken language on thought-transmission, and since the Incarnates (Elves, and Men) use

212-501: A nit-picking classicist" and only the "technical research into languages and families". 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 Christopher Hampton 's 'bourgeois comedy' The Philanthropist ,

265-406: A piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration. ... The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows." The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger writes that it is important to remember that all of Tolkien's studies, the focus of his profession, was a concentration on

318-473: 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. A related study method known as higher criticism studies the authorship, date, and provenance of text to place such text in a historical context. As these philological issues are often inseparable from issues of interpretation, there

371-531: A script used in the ancient Aegean, was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick , who demonstrated that it recorded an early form of Greek, now known as Mycenaean Greek . Linear A , the writing system that records the still-unknown language of the Minoans , resists deciphering, despite many attempts. Work continues on scripts such as the Maya , with great progress since the initial breakthroughs of

424-613: A spoken language, but it appears that it was adopted as part of their assumption of physical, humanlike forms. Tolkien at first decided that Valarin, the tongue of the Valar as it is called in the Elvish language Quenya , would be the proto-language of the Elves, the tongue Oromë taught to the speechless Elves. He then developed the Valarin tongue and a grammar for it in the early 1930s. In

477-534: A spoken language, telepathy can become more difficult with time (cf. hröa). Tolkien later revised the internal history of the Elvish languages, stating that the Elves were capable of constructing their own languages, but did not update the Lhammas to be coherent with this. The essay as it stands in The Lost Road and Other Writings can be thus seen as an interpolated manuscript , badly translated by Men in

530-494: A world in which his languages could have existed. In that world, the splintering of the Elvish peoples mirrored the fragmentation of their languages. The Lhammas was written in 1937. It exists in three versions. The two long versions, A and B, are closely similar, so Christopher Tolkien published B in The Lost Road and Other Writings , annotating it with A's minor variations on the text. The third, latest, and much

583-454: Is "marred" (passive participle) and amanaišal as "unmarred" (hence Aman , the unmarred continent of the Valar), but he does not supply the roots of the associated verbs. The linguist Helge Fauskanger notes that the exact structure of the endings for these verb forms cannot be determined from this limited evidence. One other possibility relates to the word ayanûz , meaning Ainu , one of

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636-588: Is a professor of philology in an English 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

689-465: Is best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , both set in Middle-earth . He created a family of invented languages for Elves , carefully designing the differences between them to reflect their distance from their imaginary common origin. He stated that his languages led him to create the invented mythology of The Silmarillion , to provide

742-462: Is contrasted with linguistics due to Ferdinand de Saussure 's insistence on the importance of 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. The term philology is derived from the Greek φιλολογία ( philología ), from

795-524: Is known as a philologist . In older usage, especially British, philology is more general, covering comparative and historical linguistics . Classical philology studies classical languages . Classical philology principally originated from the Library of Pergamum and the Library of Alexandria around the fourth century BC, continued by Greeks and Romans throughout the Roman and Byzantine Empire . It

848-516: Is no clear-cut boundary between philology and hermeneutics . 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, especially in historical linguistics, where it is important to study the actual recorded materials. The movement known as new philology has rejected textual criticism because it injects editorial interpretations into

901-440: 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 . 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

954-417: 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". This use of falsification can be seen in

1007-585: Is unrelated to the other languages constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien . Only a few words (mainly proper names) of Valarin are recorded by the Elves. According to the earlier conception set forth in Tolkien's sociolinguistic text, the Lhammas , the Valarin language family is subdivided into Oromëan , the Dwarves' Khuzdul (Aulëan), and Melkor's Black Speech . In this work, all Elvish languages are descended from

1060-546: The Fourth Age or even later: "For many thousands of years have passed since the fall of Gondolin ." In Tolkien's frame story , no autograph manuscripts of the Lhammas of Pengolodh remained; the three surviving manuscripts came from the original manuscript through an unknown number of intermediate copies. A tradition of philological study of Elvish languages exists within the fiction; Tolkien mentions that "The older stages of Quenya were, and doubtless still are, known to

1113-661: The Lhammas is: Language of the Valarindi (some of these junior Valar became Maiar in Tolkien's later conception) [Vala] Oromë : Languages of the Quendi (Tolkien gives much detail of the branches of the tree here) [Vala] Aulë : Khuzdul (language of the Dwarves ) [former Vala]: Melko : Orcish languages Valarin is alien to the ears of the Elves sometimes to the point of genuine displeasure, and few of them ever learn

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1166-797: The Middle French philologie , in the sense of 'love of literature'. The adjective φιλόλογος ( philólogos ) meant 'fond of discussion or argument, talkative', in Hellenistic Greek , also implying an excessive (" sophistic ") preference of argument over the love of true wisdom, φιλόσοφος ( philósophos ). As an allegory of literary erudition, philologia appears in fifth-century postclassical literature ( Martianus Capella , De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii ), an idea revived in Late Medieval literature ( Chaucer , Lydgate ). The meaning of "love of learning and literature"

1219-498: The 1940s, he decided to drop that idea, and the tongue he had developed became Primitive Quendian instead. He then conceived an entirely new tongue for the Valar, still called Valarin in Quenya. The Valar as spiritual immortal beings have the ability to communicate through thought and have no need for a spoken language, but it appears that Valarin develops because of their assumption of physical, humanlike (or elf-like) forms. Valarin

1272-400: The Elvish linguist Rúmil , in one of his frame stories . His biographer John Garth comments that while Rúmil's lack of omniscience might seem convenient, saving Tolkien from having to work on Valarin in any detail, "the unknown is essential to the legendarium, part of the illusion of depth so vital to its aura of authenticity." The structure of the root of the first "Tree of Tongues" in

1325-533: The Noldor", mentioned by the Tolkienesque character Faramir in a draft of The Lord of the Rings , sounds, and looks from the "Tree of Tongues" in the Lhammas , as if it must be Quenya "as we would expect". But, Welden writes, it's actually "almost exactly" Sindarin, which Tolkien derived from Welsh. Further, the version of The Lord of the Rings that he submitted to his publisher relied on "pretty much"

1378-496: The Noldor, as they lived closer to the Valar. Some of the Elven names of the Valar, such as Manwë, Ulmo, and Oromë, are adapted loanwords of their Valarin names. Almost nothing is known of the grammar of Valarin. A plural is formed with -um- as an infix; so, Mâchanâz becomes in the plural Mâchanumâz , meaning "Authorities, Aratar". Verb endings are not explained. Tolkien gives akašân as "he says" (present tense); dušamanûðân

1431-599: The ancient languages of the Near East progressed rapidly. In the mid-19th century, Henry Rawlinson and others deciphered the Behistun Inscription , which records the same text in Old Persian , Elamite , and Akkadian , using a variation of cuneiform for each language. The elucidation of cuneiform led to the decipherment of Sumerian . Hittite was deciphered in 1915 by Bedřich Hrozný . Linear B ,

1484-483: 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" the term has become unknown to college-educated students, furthering the stereotypes of "scrutiny of ancient Greek or Roman texts of

1537-541: The document and in the contemporaneous The Etymologies , soon became the Sindarin found in The Lord of the Rings , while the new Noldorin became just a dialect of Quenya ; Tolkien redrew his "Tree of Tongues" accordingly. From his schooldays, J. R. R. Tolkien was in his biographer John Garth 's words "effusive about philology"; his schoolfriend Rob Gilson called him "quite a great authority on etymology ". Tolkien

1590-535: 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

1643-574: The immortal Elves the proto-language is remembered rather than reconstructed . This "concept of increasing separation" was also employed for the Sundering of the Elves in Tolkien's legendarium. The Lhammas indicates on Tolkien's diagrams of the "Tree of Tongues" that there were at various times some thirty Elvish languages and dialects. After he had written the contemporaneous Lhammas and The Etymologies (also published in The Lost Road and Other Writings ), Tolkien decided to make Sindarin

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1696-480: The importance of the word. His profession as philologist and his vocation as writer of fantasy/theology overlapped and mutually supported one another". In other words, Flieger writes, Tolkien "did not keep his knowledge in compartments; his scholarly expertise informs his creative work." This expertise was founded, in her view, on the belief that one knows a text only by "properly understanding [its] words, their literal meaning and their historical development." Tolkien

1749-602: The language, only adopting some Valarin words into their own language, Quenya. The Valar know Quenya and use it to converse with the Elves, or with each other if Elves are present. Valarin contains sounds that the Elves find difficult to produce, and the words are mostly long; for example, the Valarin word for Telperion, one of the Two Trees of Valinor , Ibrîniðilpathânezel , has eight syllables. The Vanyar adopt more words into their Vanyarin Tarquesta dialect from Valarin than

1802-634: The languages of the three divisions of the Eldar , Lindarin, Noldorin, and Telerin. What Tolkien called 'Elf- Latin ', Qenya , the classical and ancient language of the Eldar, derived from Lindarin with influence from Noldorin. The Ósanwe-kenta , or Enquiry into the Communication of Thought , was written as a typescript of eight pages, probably in 1960, and was first published in Vinyar Tengwar (39) in 1998. Within its fictional context,

1855-448: The loremasters of the Eldar. It appears from these notices that besides certain ancient songs and compilations of lore that were orally preserved, there existed also some books and many ancient inscriptions." The Lhammas and related writings like " The Etymologies " illustrate Tolkien's conception of the languages of Middle-earth as a language family analogous to Indo-European , with diverging branches and sub-branches — though for

1908-985: The major language of the Elves in exile in Beleriand . As such, it largely replaced Noldorin; eventually Tolkien settled on the explanation that after the Noldor returned to Beleriand from Valinor , they adopted the language used by the Sindar (Grey Elves) already settled there. The Lhammas thus represents a stage in Tolkien's development of his Elvish languages (and of the Silmarillion legendarium ), documented also in The Etymologies and an essay, "The Feanorian Alphabet". Bill Welden, writing in Arda Philology , comments that "the High-elven tongue of

1961-515: 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

2014-524: The origins of older texts. 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,

2067-615: The phonetic approach championed by Yuri Knorozov and others in the 1950s. Since the late 20th century, the Maya code has been almost completely deciphered, and the Mayan languages are among the most documented and studied in Mesoamerica . The code is described as a logosyllabic style of writing. In English-speaking countries, usage of the term "philology" to describe work on languages and works of literature, which had become synonymous with

2120-632: The practices of German scholars, was abandoned as a consequence of anti-German feelings following World War I . Most continental European countries still maintain the term to designate departments, colleges, position titles, and journals. J. R. R. Tolkien opposed the nationalist reaction against philological practices, claiming that "the philological instinct" was "universal as is the use of language". In British English usage, and British academia, philology remains largely synonymous with "historical linguistics", while in US English , and US academia,

2173-449: The relationship between languages. Similarities between Sanskrit and European languages were first noted in the early 16th century and led to speculation of a common ancestor language from which all these descended. It is now named Proto-Indo-European . Philology's interest in ancient languages led to the study of what was, in the 18th century, "exotic" languages, for the light they could cast on problems in understanding and deciphering

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2226-529: The resulting "Tree of Tongues" and described the fictional history of the evolution of some 30 Elvish languages . Scholars have noted the realism of Tolkien's family of Elvish languages, analogous to the Indo-European family, as well as his changing views of their linguistic history, which he shifted radically soon after creating the Lhammas . The result was that the Noldorin language described in

2279-508: 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. In the case of Bronze Age literature , philology includes the prior decipherment of the language under study. This has notably been the case with the Egyptian , Sumerian , Assyrian , Hittite , Ugaritic , and Luwian languages. Beginning with

2332-626: The same conception of the Elvish language family, with Noldorin instead of Sindarin as the language of Gondor . Tolkien tried several schemes to make the change to Sindarin work in terms of rates of linguistic change. Because the Noldor's use of Sindarin was rather sudden, he settled on a radically new scheme: when the Noldor arrived back in Middle-earth from Valinor , they adopted the native language of Beleriand where they settled. The Elves of Beleriand were Sindar, Silvan Elves who had never gone to Valinor. The Noldor had been speaking Noldorin,

2385-540: The science fiction TV show Stargate SG-1 , Dr. Daniel Jackson , is mentioned as having a PhD in philology. Valarin Valarin is a fictional language in the fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien . One of the languages of Arda in Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium , Valarin is the language spoken by the Valar . As immortal spiritual beings, the Valar have the ability to communicate through thought, with no need for

2438-589: The shortest version is the Lammasathen . The Lhammas as published presents the theory that all the languages of Middle-earth descend from the language of the angelic beings or Valar, Valarin , and were divided into three branches: The Elves developed the language they were taught into the language of the Laiquendi (Green-Elves) and Eldarin, the shared language of the Eldar . This in turn gave rise to

2491-515: 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

2544-404: The text and destroys the integrity of the individual manuscript, hence damaging the reliability of the data. Supporters of new philology insist on a strict "diplomatic" approach: a faithful rendering of the text exactly as found in the manuscript, without emendations. Another branch of philology, cognitive philology, studies written and oral texts. Cognitive philology considers these oral texts as

2597-531: The tongue of Oromë, while the Dwarves speak the tongue devised by Aulë, and the Black Speech of the Orcs is invented for them by Melkor. Tolkien placed Valarin at the root of each version of his " Tree of Tongues ", indicating that in his conception at the time of the Lhammas , it was the original language from which developed all the languages of Middle-earth . Tolkien attributed his "Descent of Tongues" to

2650-401: The wider meaning of "study of a language's grammar, history and literary tradition" remains more widespread. 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. Disagreements in the modern day of this branch of study are followed with the likes of how the method

2703-411: Was a professional philologist , a scholar of comparative and historical linguistics . He was especially familiar with Old English and related languages. He remarked to the poet and The New York Times book reviewer Harvey Breit that "I am a philologist and all my work is philological"; he explained to his American publisher Houghton Mifflin that this was meant to imply that his work was all of

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2756-525: Was eventually resumed by European scholars of the Renaissance , where it was soon joined by philologies of other European ( Romance , Germanic , Celtic ), Eurasian ( Slavic , etc.), Asian ( Arabic , Persian , 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 ( diachronic analysis),

2809-413: Was narrowed to "the study of the historical development of languages" ( historical linguistics ) in 19th-century usage of the term. Due to the rapid progress made in understanding sound laws and language change , the "golden age of philology" lasted throughout the 19th century, or "from Giacomo Leopardi and Friedrich Schlegel to Nietzsche ". The comparative linguistics branch of philology studies

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