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Philology
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.[1][2][3] 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.[4][5]

Classical philology studies classical languages. Classical philology principally originated from the
Library of Pergamum and the Library of Alexandria[6] 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 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.

Etymology
The term philology is derived from the Greek φιλολογία (philología),[7] 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 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).

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The meaning of "love of learning and literature" 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".[8]

Branches

Comparative
The comparative linguistics branch of philology studies the
relationship between languages. Similarities between Sanskrit and
European languages were first noted in the early 16th century[9]
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 the
origins of older texts.

Textual
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
Cover of Indo-European Philology:
standard text of popular authors for both sound interpretation and
Historical and Comparative by
secure transmission. Since that time, the original principles of
William Burley Lockwood (1969)
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 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.[10]

A related study method known as higher criticism studies the authorship, date, and provenance of text
to place such text in a historical context.[10] As these philological issues are often inseparable from
issues of interpretation, there is no clear-cut boundary between philology and hermeneutics.[10] When
text has a significant political or religious influence (such as the reconstruction of Biblical texts),
scholars have difficulty reaching objective conclusions.

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Some scholars avoid all critical methods of textual philology,[10] 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 the text and destroys the
integrity of the individual manuscript, hence damaging the reliability of the data.[11] Supporters of
new philology insist on a strict "diplomatic" approach: a faithful rendering of the text exactly as found
in the manuscript, without emendations.

Cognitive
Another branch of philology, cognitive philology, studies written and oral texts. Cognitive philology
considers these oral texts as 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.

Decipherment
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 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 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, 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 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.

Contention
In English-speaking countries, usage of the term "philology" to describe work on languages and works
of literature, which had become synonymous with the practices of German scholars, was abandoned
as a consequence of anti-German feelings following World War I.[12] Most continental European
countries still maintain the term to designate departments, colleges, position titles, and journals. J. R.

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R. Tolkien opposed the nationalist reaction against philological practices, claiming that "the
philological instinct" was "universal as is the use of language".[13][14] In British English usage, and
British academia, philology remains largely synonymous with "historical linguistics", while in US
English, and US academia, the wider meaning of "study of a language's grammar, history and literary
tradition" remains more widespread.[15][16] 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.[12]

Disagreements in the modern day of this branch of study are followed with the likes of how the
method 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".[17] This use of
falsification can be seen in 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"[18] the term has become
unknown to college-educated students, furthering the stereotypes of "scrutiny of ancient Greek or
Roman texts of a nit-picking classicist" and only the "technical research into languages and
families".[19]

In popular culture
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, 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 the science fiction TV show Stargate SG-1, Dr. Daniel Jackson, is mentioned as
having a PhD in philology.

See also
American Journal of Philology

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Codicology – Study of codices or manuscript books


Elocution – Study of formal speaking in pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone
Etymology – Scientific study of the origin and evolution of root morphemes
Lexicography – Art and science of compiling dictionaries
Lexicology – Linguistic discipline studying words
Palaeography – Study of handwriting and manuscripts
Stylistics – Branch of applied linguistics
Textual scholarship – Academic analysis of texts
Western canon – Cultural classics valued in the West
Kokugaku

References
1. SAUSSURE, Ferdinand de (2006). Writings in general linguistics (https://books.google.com/book
s?id=QqHK8vawv68C). Oxford University Press. p. 118. ISBN 9780199261444. Retrieved
21 March 2020.
2. SAUSSURE, Ferdinand de (2002). Ecrits de linguistique generale. Paris: Gallimard.
ISBN 9782070761166.
3. Peile, John (1880). Philology (https://archive.org/details/philology00peiluoft). Macmillan and Co.
p. 5 (https://archive.org/details/philology00peiluoft/page/5). Retrieved 2011-07-16.
4. "philology" (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/philology). dictionary.com. Archived (https://web.arc
hive.org/web/20171104143458/http://www.dictionary.com/browse/philology) from the original on
2017-11-04. Retrieved 2016-12-26.
5. "philology" (https://web.archive.org/web/20161226221454/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definiti
on/philology). oxforddictionaries.com. Archived from the original (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/
definition/philology) on December 26, 2016.
6. Hall, F. W. (1968). A Companion to Classical Texts (https://books.google.com/books?id=WzW7AA
AAIAAJ&pg=PA22). Oxford, England: Clarendon Press. pp. 22–52.
7. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert. "φιλολογία" (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=
Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%23111282). A Greek-English Lexicon.
Perseus.tufts.edu. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20191028205626/http://www.perseus.tuft
s.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%23111282) from the
original on 2019-10-28. Retrieved 2017-05-23.
8. "Nikolaus Wegmann, Princeton University Department of German" (http://scholar.princeton.edu/n
wegmann/). Scholar.princeton.edu. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20170719130647/http://
scholar.princeton.edu/nwegmann) from the original on 2017-07-19. Retrieved 2013-12-04.
9. This is noted in Juan Mascaro's introduction to his translation of the Bhagavad Gita, in which he
dates the first Gita translation to 1785 (by Charles Williams). Mascaro claims the linguist
Alexander Hamilton stopped in Paris in 1802 after returning from India, and taught Sanskrit to the
German critic Friedrich von Schlegel. Mascaro says this is the beginning of modern study of the
roots of the Indo-European languages.
10. Greetham, D. C. (1994). Textual Scholarship: An Introduction (https://books.google.com/books?id
=JewJCYZlYV8C&pg=PA9). Garland Publishing. ISBN 9780815317913. Retrieved 2011-07-16.
11. Klaus Johan Myrvoll, 'The Ideo-Political Background of "New Philology" ', Studia Neophilologica
(2023), doi:10.1080/00393274.2023.2228845 (https://doi.org/10.1080%2F00393274.2023.222884
5).
12. Utz, Richard. "Them Philologists: Philological Practices and Their Discontents from Nietzsche to
Cerquiglini." The Year's Work in Medievalism 26 (2011): 4–12.

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13. Tolkien, J. R. R. (1923). "Philology: General Works". The Year's Work in English Studies. 4 (1):
36–37. doi:10.1093/ywes/IV.1.20 (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fywes%2FIV.1.20).
14. Utz, Richard. "Englische Philologie vs. English Studies: A Foundational Conflict", in Das Potential
europäischer Philologien: Geschichte, Leistung, Funktion, ed. Christoph König (Göttingen:
Wallstein, 2009), pp. 34–44.
15. A. Morpurgo Davies, History of Linguistics (1998) 4 I. 22.
16. M. M. Bravmann, Studies in Semitic Philology. (1977) p. 457.
17. Neidorf, Leonard (2016). R.D Fulk and the Progress of Philology. Boydell & Brewer. p. 3.
18. Turner, James (2015). Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities (The William G.
Bowen Book 70). Princeton University: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-16858-6.
19. Turner, James (2015). Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities. Princeton
University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-16858-6.

External links
Philology in Runet (http://ruthenia.ru/tiutcheviana/search/en/metlit.html)—(A special web search
through the philological sites of Runet)
v: Topic:German philology
CogLit: Literature and Cognitive Linguistics (http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Culture/coglit.html)
A Bibliography of Literary Theory, Criticism, and Philology (ed. José Ángel García Landa,
University of Zaragoza, Spain) (https://personal.unizar.es/garciala/bibliography.html)

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