II. GENERAL PLAN
The study of language has concentrated on three
main fields: the origin of language, the relation be-
tween language and reality, and the structure of lan-
guage. The first is bound up with questions of religion
or cosmogony, the second is epistemological, while the
third may be called the field of pure linguistics or
grammar. The fields are, however, interrelated. When
outlining the history of language study it seems advisa-
ble to treat them all together.
We shall start our account with Greek linguistics,
including the Latin grammarians. The period starts
with Plato (ca. 400 B.C.) and ends with Priscianus (ca.
A.D. 500). After that, we shall describe the development
in Europe, noticing first the Schoolmen and then the
general grammarians of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. The last section will deal with the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, including a brief account of
Indian linguistics. As Chinese and Japanese linguistics
have hardly contributed to the mainstream of linguistic
though outside their native countries, they are not
dealt with here.
