Philology (from Ancient Greek φιλολογία ( philología ) 'love of word') 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 is known as a philologist . In older usage, especially British, philology is more general, covering comparative and historical linguistics .
55-571: New Philology can refer to: The nineteenth-century intellectual movement in philology known in German as Neuphilologie New Philology (Latin America) , a branch of Mexican ethnohistory and philology New Philology (medieval studies) , an intellectual movement beginning around the late 1980s Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with
110-487: A beautiful park is beautiful, but a car park is not "car". The modifier often indicates origin (" Virginia reel"), purpose (" work clothes"), semantic patient (" man eater") or semantic subject (" child actor"); however, it may generally indicate almost any semantic relationship. It is also common for adjectives to be derived from nouns, as in boyish , birdlike , behavioral (behavioural) , famous , manly , angelic , and so on. In Australian Aboriginal languages ,
165-447: A cause "), relative clauses (as in "the man who wasn't there "), and infinitive phrases (as in "a cake to die for "). Some nouns can also take complements such as content clauses (as in "the idea that I would do that "), but these are not commonly considered modifiers . For more information about possible modifiers and dependents of nouns, see Components of noun phrases . In many languages, attributive adjectives usually occur in
220-501: 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 ,
275-420: A nominal element within a particular context. They generally do this by indicating definiteness ( a vs. the ), quantity ( one vs. some vs. many ), or another such property. An adjective acts as the head of an adjective phrase or adjectival phrase (AP). In the simplest case, an adjective phrase consists solely of the adjective; more complex adjective phrases may contain one or more adverbs modifying
330-640: A noun, they are far more circumscribed than adjectives in their use—typically, only a single determiner would appear before a noun or noun phrase (including any attributive adjectives). This means that, in English, adjectives pertaining to size precede adjectives pertaining to age ("little old", not "old little"), which in turn generally precede adjectives pertaining to colour ("old white", not "white old"). So, one would say "One (quantity) nice (opinion) little (size) old (age) round (shape) [ or round old] white (colour) brick (material) house." When several adjectives of
385-401: A proper town (a real town, not a village) vs. They live in the town proper (in the town itself, not in the suburbs). All adjectives can follow nouns in certain constructions, such as tell me something new . In many languages, some adjectives are comparable and the measure of comparison is called degree . For example, a person may be "polite", but another person may be " more polite", and
440-473: 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
495-531: 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
550-688: A small closed class of adjectives, and new adjectives are not easily derived. Similarly, native Japanese adjectives ( i -adjectives) are considered a closed class (as are native verbs), although nouns (an open class) may be used in the genitive to convey some adjectival meanings, and there is also the separate open class of adjectival nouns ( na -adjectives). Many languages (including English) distinguish between adjectives, which qualify nouns and pronouns, and adverbs , which mainly modify verbs , adjectives, or other adverbs. Not all languages make this exact distinction; many (including English) have words that can function as either. For example, in English, fast
605-433: A special comparative form of the adjective. In such cases, as in some Australian Aboriginal languages , case-marking, such as the ablative case may be used to indicate one entity has more of an adjectival quality than (i.e. from —hence ABL) another. In English, many adjectives can be inflected to comparative and superlative forms by taking the suffixes "-er" and "-est" (sometimes requiring additional letters before
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#1732772431895660-547: A specific order. In general, the adjective order in English can be summarised as: opinion, size, age or shape, colour, origin, material, purpose. Other language authorities, like the Cambridge Dictionary , state that shape precedes rather than follows age. Determiners and postdeterminers—articles, numerals, and other limiters (e.g. three blind mice)—come before attributive adjectives in English. Although certain combinations of determiners can appear before
715-414: A statement is only tentative or tendential: one might say "John is more the shy-and-retiring type", where the comparative "more" is not really comparing him with other people or with other impressions of him, but rather, could be substituting for "on the whole" or "more so than not". In Italian, superlatives are frequently used to put strong emphasis on an adjective: bellissimo means "most beautiful", but
770-486: A third person may be the " most polite" of the three. The word "more" here modifies the adjective "polite" to indicate a comparison is being made, and "most" modifies the adjective to indicate an absolute comparison (a superlative ). Among languages that allow adjectives to be compared, different means are used to indicate comparison. Some languages do not distinguish between comparative and superlative forms. Other languages allow adjectives to be compared but do not have
825-459: A type of noun. The words that are today typically called nouns were then called substantive nouns ( nōmen substantīvum ). The terms noun substantive and noun adjective were formerly used in English but are now obsolete. Depending on the language, an adjective can precede a corresponding noun on a prepositive basis or it can follow a corresponding noun on a postpositive basis. Structural, contextual, and style considerations can impinge on
880-588: 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
935-503: Is already absolute in its semantics. Such adjectives are called non-comparable or absolute . Nevertheless, native speakers will frequently play with the raised forms of adjectives of this sort. Although "pregnant" is logically non-comparable (either one is pregnant or not), one may hear a sentence like "She looks more and more pregnant each day". Comparative and superlative forms are also occasionally used for other purposes than comparison. In English comparatives can be used to suggest that
990-519: Is an adjective in "a fast car" (where it qualifies the noun car ) but an adverb in "he drove fast " (where it modifies the verb drove ). In Dutch and German , adjectives and adverbs are usually identical in form and many grammarians do not make the distinction, but patterns of inflection can suggest a difference: A German word like klug ("clever(ly)") takes endings when used as an attributive adjective but not when used adverbially. Whether these are distinct parts of speech or distinct usages of
1045-503: Is being fronted . For example, the usual order of adjectives in English would result in the phrase "the bad big wolf" (opinion before size), but instead, the usual phrase is "the big bad wolf". Owing partially to borrowings from French, English has some adjectives that follow the noun as postmodifiers , called postpositive adjectives , as in time immemorial and attorney general . Adjectives may even change meaning depending on whether they precede or follow, as in proper : They live in
1100-420: Is called a "big house". Such an analysis is possible for the grammar of Standard Chinese and Korean , for example. Different languages do not use adjectives in exactly the same situations. For example, where English uses " to be hungry " ( hungry being an adjective), Dutch , French , and Spanish use " honger hebben ", " avoir faim ", and " tener hambre " respectively (literally "to have hunger",
1155-527: Is derived from the Greek φιλολογία ( philología ), from 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
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#17327724318951210-462: Is in fact more commonly heard in the sense "extremely beautiful". Attributive adjectives and other noun modifiers may be used either restrictively (helping to identify the noun's referent, hence "restricting" its reference) or non-restrictively (helping to describe a noun). For example: Here "difficult" is restrictive – it tells which tasks he avoids, distinguishing these from the easy ones: "Only those tasks that are difficult". Here difficult
1265-516: 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
1320-490: Is non-restrictive – it is already known which task it was, but the adjective describes it more fully: "The aforementioned task, which (by the way) is difficult." In some languages, such as Spanish , restrictiveness is consistently marked; for example, in Spanish la tarea difícil means "the difficult task" in the sense of "the task that is difficult" (restrictive), whereas la difícil tarea means "the difficult task" in
1375-882: Is that some nominals seem to semantically denote entities (typically nouns in English) and some nominals seem to denote attributes (typically adjectives in English). Many languages have participle forms that can act as noun modifiers either alone or as the head of a phrase. Sometimes participles develop into functional usage as adjectives. Examples in English include relieved (the past participle of relieve ), used as an adjective in passive voice constructs such as "I am so relieved to see you". Other examples include spoken (the past participle of speak ) and going (the present participle of go ), which function as attribute adjectives in such phrases as "the spoken word" and "the going rate". Other constructs that often modify nouns include prepositional phrases (as in "a rebel without
1430-417: 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
1485-661: 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 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
1540-510: The , this , my , etc., typically are classed separately, as determiners . Examples: Adjective comes from Latin nōmen adjectīvum , a calque of Ancient Greek : ἐπίθετον ὄνομα (surname) , romanized : epítheton ónoma , lit. 'additional noun' (whence also English epithet ). In the grammatical tradition of Latin and Greek, because adjectives were inflected for gender, number, and case like nouns (a process called declension ), they were considered
1595-844: The English language in the 16th century, from 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"
1650-496: The adjective moorrooloo 'little' in the phrase moorrooloo baawa 'little child' can stand on its own to mean 'the little one,' while the attributive noun aamba 'man' in the phrase aamba baawa 'male child' cannot stand for the whole phrase to mean 'the male one.' In other languages, like Warlpiri , nouns and adjectives are lumped together beneath the nominal umbrella because of their shared syntactic distribution as arguments of predicates . The only thing distinguishing them
1705-512: The adjective (" very strong"), or one or more complements (such as "worth several dollars ", "full of toys ", or "eager to please "). In English, attributive adjective phrases that include complements typically follow the noun that they qualify ("an evildoer devoid of redeeming qualities "). In many languages (including English) it is possible for nouns to modify other nouns. Unlike adjectives, nouns acting as modifiers (called attributive nouns or noun adjuncts ) usually are not predicative;
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1760-599: 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 ,
1815-485: The comparative philology of all Indo-European languages . Philology, with its focus on historical development ( diachronic analysis), 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
1870-483: 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
1925-476: The distinction between adjectives and nouns is typically thought weak, and many of the languages only use nouns—or nouns with a limited set of adjective-deriving affix es—to modify other nouns. In languages that have a subtle adjective-noun distinction, one way to tell them apart is that a modifying adjective can come to stand in for an entire elided noun phrase, while a modifying noun cannot. For example, in Bardi ,
1980-535: 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
2035-515: 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
2090-524: 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,
2145-615: 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
2200-464: The phrase "a Ford car", "Ford" is unquestionably a noun but its function is adjectival: to modify "car". In some languages adjectives can function as nouns: for example, the Spanish phrase " un rojo " means "a red [one]". As for "confusion" with verbs, rather than an adjective meaning "big", a language might have a verb that means "to be big" and could then use an attributive verb construction analogous to "big-being house" to express what in English
2255-632: 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,
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2310-409: The pre-or post-position of an adjective in a given instance of its occurrence. In English, occurrences of adjectives generally can be classified into one of three categories: Adjectives feature as a part of speech (word class) in most languages . In some languages, the words that serve the semantic function of adjectives are categorized together with some other class, such as nouns or verbs . In
2365-449: 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
2420-508: 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
2475-511: The same part of speech is a question of analysis. While German linguistic terminology distinguishes adverbiale from adjektivische Formen , German refers to both as Eigenschaftswörter ("property words"). Linguists today distinguish determiners from adjectives, considering them to be two separate parts of speech (or lexical categories ). Determiners formerly were considered to be adjectives in some of their uses. Determiners function neither as nouns nor pronouns but instead characterize
2530-516: The same type are used together, they are ordered from general to specific, like "lovely intelligent person" or "old medieval castle". This order may be more rigid in some languages than others; in some, like Spanish, it may only be a default ( unmarked ) word order, with other orders being permissible. Other languages, such as Tagalog , follow their adjectival orders as rigidly as English. The normal adjectival order of English may be overridden in certain circumstances, especially when one adjective
2585-544: The science fiction TV show Stargate SG-1 , Dr. Daniel Jackson , is mentioned as having a PhD in philology. Adjective An adjective ( abbreviated adj. ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase . Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main parts of speech of the English language, although historically they were classed together with nouns . Nowadays, certain words that usually had been classified as adjectives, including
2640-420: The sense of "the task, which is difficult" (non-restrictive). In English, restrictiveness is not marked on adjectives but is marked on relative clauses (the difference between "the man who recognized me was there" and "the man, who recognized me , was there" being one of restrictiveness). In some languages, adjectives alter their form to reflect the gender, case and number of the noun that they describe. This
2695-438: The suffix; see forms for far below), respectively: Some adjectives are irregular in this sense: Some adjectives can have both regular and irregular variations: also Another way to convey comparison is by incorporating the words "more" and "most". There is no simple rule to decide which means is correct for any given adjective, however. The general tendency is for simpler adjectives and those from Anglo-Saxon to take
2750-411: The suffixes, while longer adjectives and those from French , Latin , or Greek do not—but sometimes the sound of the word is the deciding factor. Many adjectives do not naturally lend themselves to comparison. For example, some English speakers would argue that it does not make sense to say that one thing is "more ultimate" than another, or that something is "most ultimate", since the word "ultimate"
2805-404: 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
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#17327724318952860-555: The title New Philology . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_Philology&oldid=1150163175 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Philology Classical philology studies classical languages . Classical philology principally originated from
2915-401: 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
2970-419: The words for "hunger" being nouns). Similarly, where Hebrew uses the adjective זקוק ( zaqūq , roughly "in need of" or "needing"), English uses the verb "to need". In languages that have adjectives as a word class, it is usually an open class ; that is, it is relatively common for new adjectives to be formed via such processes as derivation . However, Bantu languages are well known for having only
3025-413: 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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