The Greek study of language may be said to start
with Plato and Aristotle. Both of them approach lan-
guage from a philosophical point of view. They are
concerned with the nature of language and its relation
to thought and reality, rather than with the more
technical matter of providing an exact description of
linguistic forms. Such questions were later to be taken
up by the Hellenistic grammarians of Alexandria, who
were mainly concerned with establishing correct edi-
tions of Homer and other classical poets, and with
preserving the purity of the Greek language as it be-
came the common vehicle of communication through-
out the eastern half of the Roman empire.
The history of Western linguistics ever since has been
characterized by this double heritage: philosophical
and philological. On the whole Western linguists have
continued to be somewhat stronger on the philo-
sophical than on the formal side, until the discovery
of Sanskrit and Indian grammar, which enriched the
Western grammatical tradition in the direction of de-
scriptive accuracy and power.
