without passing value judgements or normative rules.
Linguistics can be studied under two basic approaches:
Synchronic linguistics: study of language at a given point of time.( for example colloquial construcions in present – day English).
Diachronic linguistic study: study of language I-LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS

I-1 DEFINITION OF LANGUAGE

I 1.1DEFINITION WITH RESPECT TO FORM

Language is a system of speech symbols. It is realised acoustically (sound waves), visually, spatially (sign language) and in written form.
Speech symbols
Entity consisting of formal element which has been assigned a meaning, the correlation between form and meaning is arbitrary, but conventionalised within a speech community.
I 1.2 DEFINTION WITH RESPECT TO FUNCTION
Language is the most important means of human communication. It is used to
- convey and exchange information (informative function)
- prompt actions( appellative function)
- commit oneself to do something(obligatory function)
- open, hold and end social actions( content functions)
- convey and exchange artistic and/aesthetic function(poetic function)
I.2 MEANINGS OF THE TERM LANGUAGE
- refers to the human language faculty.
e.g. The philogenesis of human language lies in the dark of prehistory
-refers to a single language system
e.g. English is a Germanic language
- refers to a concrete utterance
e.g. Don’t say that it is bad language


Language includes a wide range of concepts in itself, as it is used for reflecting the communication system of any kind of species including animals. Yet, our concern here is human language; so definitions of language and discussions will be concerning the language of human beings (not bee communication or the sign language of chimps etc.). In this respect, it would be appropriate to draw upon the definitions of famous scholars by analyzing the underlying trends, beliefs and ideas within their words.
According to Sapir (1921) “Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntary produced symbols.”
In this definition, some of the words and phrases are worth discussing in order to reveal Sapir’s understanding of language. By using “communicating ideas, emotions and desires” Sapir stresses importance to both transactional and interactional functions of language (which will further be discussed in II. i ). In other words, the informative and social perspectives of language are reflected. Another point to discuss is “voluntary produced symbols” by which he means language consists of symbols produced voluntarily unlike animal communication which is dominantly instinctive. Another definition is put forward by Bloch&Trager (1942):
“A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group co-operates.”
In this definition, there are two striking points to discuss. The first one is “arbitrary”, which reflects the idea that the relation between the signifier and signified has an arbitrary nature. In other words, there is no direct relation between the concept and the vocalic symbol that is used to name the related concept. It may be argued that this definition- as it reflects the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign- has roots from Saussurean structuralism. The other point to consider in this definition lies under “by which a social group co-operates”. Here, the social aspect of language is reflected as it is viewed as the tool used for the co-operation of a social group. In addition to this definition, Hall (1968) states that:
“Language is the institution whereby human communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols.”
This definition also reflects the arbitrary nature of symbols in a language. The difference emerges from the word “habitually”, which carries a behaviouristic perspective. The idea behind a behaviouristic view of language is the belief that language is a set of stimuli-response patterns and it is a process of habit formation. This approach to the nature of human language was opposed by Noam Chomsky, who defines language (1957) as:
“A set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.”
Chomsky’s view of language includes its creative aspect as it is claimed that it is possible to produce an infinite number of sentences from a finite number of rules and structures. Therefore, this definition includes a rationalist and mentalist perspective. All the definitions mentioned above reflect some particular aspect of human language and are mainly affected by schools of thought like behaviourism, structuralism or rationalism. A comprehensive definition of language should include all aspects of language free from a particular philosophical thought and should reflect the nature of language holistically:
Language is a dynamic, creative and systemic tool for communication of information and building interpersonal relations by means of verbal and non-verbal signs and codes, which are community specific, arbitrary as well as productive.
This broad definition of language includes all its aspects:
“Dynamic”: Language is dynamic as it tends to change through time according to the needs of the society, or randomly. Any diachronic analysis is the proof for the dynamic nature of language.
“Creative”: There is no clear cut limitation for the creativeness of human language. Human beings can produce infinite number of sentences or unlimited utterances by making use of finite number of structures in language or rules in grammar.
“Systemic”: Language has a system in itself which composes of many particular signs and results with a synergic whole.
“Communication of information”: Language is used for transference of information and content of knowledge from an individual to another or from one generation to the next.
“Interpersonal relations”: Language is the primary source for the continuation of a society and each individual necessarily uses language to be a part of any social group or to build interpersonal relations and rapport.
“Verbal and non-verbal”: In addition to verbal signs, human language includes non-verbal signs which we generally name as body language, but it covers more than this. Areas of study like para-linguistics, proxemics, kinesics etc. analyzes this aspect of language.
“Community specific”: The signs and codes of language are unique to a particular community. In this respect, the term “culture” is avoided; since a specific culture may not be always homogeneous. However, the term community covers any sort of social group.
“Arbitrary”: The nature of the linguistic sign is arbitrary; there is no specific relation between the signifier and signified (except for onomatopoeic words).

After dealing with the definition of language with all its components, it may be appropriate to focus on the functions of language.
I 3. The functions of language
According to linguistic philosophers and discourse analysts, language has two major functions. These two functions will be dealt concerning two views as: the transactional view and the interactional view. Brown (1983:1) states that “the distinction between transactional and interactional functions stands in general correspondence to other functional dichotomies as; ‘representative/expressive’ (Buhler), ‘referential/emotive’ (Jakobson), ‘ideational / inter-personal’ (Halliday), and ‘descriptive/social-expressive’ (Lyons)”.
I.3.1 Transactional view
Transactional view reflects the idea that the most important function of language is the expression of content. According to the supporters of this view, the aim to communicate information dominates the use of language. According to Bennett (1976) “communication is primarily a matter of a speaker’s seeking either to inform a hearer of something or to enjoin some action upon him”.
The speaker sets the transference of information as his/her primary goal for communication; thus the use of language is mostly message oriented. In educational settings, the nature of the classroom also seems to be message oriented which is mostly informative. The teacher seeks to transfer the content as informative as possible; yet it should be kept in mind that the affective considerations has an important function in classroom and this may be well understood by the interactional view.
I.3.2 Interactional view:
The function of language involved in expressing social relations and personal attitudes is interactional function of language. It is the case that a great deal of everyday human interaction is characterized by the primarily interpersonal rather than transactional use of language. The interactional function mostly refers to emotive and affective uses of language in daily discourse and is claimed to be in spoken form in general. At this point, some exceptions may be given like love letters which have emotive function rather than an informative one.


I.4 Design features of communication:
There is an ongoing communication process in our lives. But what does communication consist of? To answer this question, Charles Hockett proposed design features of communication (adopted from: Miller; 1963)
a) Auditory-vocal channel: Sound is used between mouth and ear.
b) Broadcast transmission and directional reception: A signal can be heard by any auditory system within earshot, and the source can be located using the ears’ direction finding ability.
c) Interchangeability: Speakers of language can reproduce any linguistic message they can understand.
d) Total Feedback: Speakers hear and can reflect upon everything that they say.
e) Specialization: The sound waves of speech have no function other than to signal meaning.
f) Semanticity: The elements of the signal convey meaning through their stable association with real-world situations.
g) Arbitrariness: There is no dependence of the element of the signal on the nature of the reality to which it refers.
h) Discreteness: Speech uses a small set of sound elements that clearly contrast with each other.
i) Displacement: It is possible to talk about events remote in space or time from the situation of the speaker.
j) Productivity: There is an infinite capacity to express and understand meaning
k) Traditional transmission: Language is transmitted from one generation to the next primarily by a process of teaching and learning.
l) Duality of patterning: The sounds of language have no intrinsic meaning, but combine in different ways to form elements that do convey meaning.
All these features are components of human communication system and a language teacher should have a heightened awareness of communication as an ongoing verbal and non-verbal process.
I. 5 Human language Versus Animal Language
Language is the modeling of human language in non- human animal systems. While the term is widely used, most researchers agree that animal languages are not as complex or expressive as that which they attempt to model - the human language.
Some researchers argue that there are significant differences separating human language from animal communication even at its most complex, and that the underlying principles are not related.
Others argue that an evolutionary continum exists between the communication methods these animals use and human language.
The following properties of human language have been argued to separate it from animal communication:
Arbitrariness: There is no rational relationship between a sound or sign and its meaning. (There is nothing "housy" about a house.)
Cultural transmission: Language is passed from one language user to the next, consciously or unconsciously.
Discreteness: Language is composed of discrete units that are used in combination to create meaning.
Displacement: Languages can be used to communicate ideas about things that are not in the immediate vicinity either spatially or temporally.
Duality: Language works on two levels at once, a surface level and a semantic (meaningful) level.
Metalinguistics: Ability to discuss language itself.
Productivity: A finite number of units can be used to create an infinite number of utterances.
Research with apes, like that of Francine Patterson with Koko, suggested that apes are capable of using language that meets some of these requirements. However, now the validity of such research is widely disputed and, for some, discredited.
In the wild chimpanzees have been seen "talking" to each other, when warning about approaching danger. For example, if one chimpanzee sees a snake, he makes a low, rumbling noise, signalling for all the other chimps to climb into nearby trees.
Arbitrariness has been noted in meerkat calls; bee dances show elements of spatial displacement; and cultural transmission has occurred with the offspring of many of the great apes who have been taught sign languages.
However, these single features alone do not qualify such instances of communication as being true language.


II DEFINITION OF LNGUISTICS
Linguistics in a broader sense: collective term for sciences which study language (language philosophy- philology- dialectology,…)
General Linguistics /Linguistics in a narrower sense: study of systematic properties of natural language.
Systematic properties of language: Language is as system; i.e.; an entity of elements which are in relation to each other, making the system work.
Main property of a system: a system has structure (pattern of interrelated elements.) Thus, General linguistics studies the structure of language.
The system we describe is not a real object, but a model of reality. It can not b true or false, only more or less adequate.
Linguistics, basically, is the scientific study of language. The founder of modern linguistics is accepted as the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) who proposed that language should be analyzed synchronically and systematically as opposed to diachronic analysis. He suggested language is the modeling of human language in non human animal systems. While the term is widely used, most researchers agree that animal languages are not as complex or expressive as that which they attempt to model .
Linguistics makes use of a descriptivist methodolgy,i.e., scientific methods of clarifying /describing propreties of language change ( for example historical phonology).


II 1 LINGUISTICS AND OTHER APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE
Language has long been a concern for manhood throughout centuries and was studied by ancient civilizations like Greeks and Romans. There were also comparative and historical linguistics; however our concern here is the scientific study of language, so we will mainly focus on modern linguistics. Linguistics may be studied and well understood drawing upon Lyon’s distinction among micro and macro linguistics. This distinction clearly shows how linguistics is scientific in itself and how it is interrelated with other disciplines like sociology, psychology, anthropology, neurology etc.




II.1.1. Micro-linguistics
Micro-linguistics is concerned solely with the structure of language systems in itself and for itself. It includes phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. The case about semantics seems to be problematic; since semantics may be concerned beyond sentential level. Therefore, it is a question of debate among linguists. For some linguists, semantics – the scientific study of meaning- should be located in macro-linguistics, because studying meaning needs a holistic approach.





a) Phonetics:
Phonetics is the study of the production, classification and transcription of the speech sounds. There are three corresponding branches of phonetics: articulatory (the analysis of speech production), acoustic (acoustic properties of production) and auditory (the audition of speech production) phonetics (Demirezen: 1987).
Phonetic alphabet is an indispensable guide for a language teacher as it is an important reference for appropriate articulation. If we consider the fact that a language teacher is a model for students, his knowledge in phonetics becomes an important determinant in the learning environment.
b) Phonology:
Phonology is the study of the distribution and patterning of speech sounds in a language. It is the study of the distinctive sounds of a language, the so-called phonemes. Phonology examines the functions of sounds within a language. Focus in phonetics is on finding gross characteristics of speech sounds that are adequate for description and classification of phone perception in language use.
Phonetics and phonology may help to a language teacher in various ways. He/she may use the contrastive analysis of sound patterns among the native language and target language. In addition to this, examples of minimal pairs or exercises on problematic sounds may help students overcome problems in target language pronunciation.
c) Morphology:
Morphology, basically, is the study of how words are formed out of smaller units. Morphology studies the smallest meaningful elements of a language, which are called morphemes.There are free and bound morphemes. The former can stand alone within a given discourse. Morphology can be divided into two areas as derivational and inflectional. Affixes play the primary role in this distinction.
Affixes may be in three forms: suffix (attached to the end of a word), infix (attached within a word) and prefix (attached to the beginning of a word). Derivational affixes have the potential to change the part of speech of a word. In English, infixes are not so common (except examples like mother-in-law etc.). In Turkish, there are not so much prefixes except the examples like namusait, namağlup which have an Arabic origin.

d)Syntax:
Basically, syntax is concerned with the ways in which words can be combined together to form phrases and sentences(Radford:1997). It deals with the structural or grammatical rules that define how symbols in a language are to be combined to form words, phrases, expressions, and other allowable constructs. In syntactic analysis, tree diagrams are used in order to reveal how phrases come together and form grammatical sentences:
IP
I
D
I VP

We V


IP
are
I VP
trying
V D
to

protect you.

Chomsky’s transformational generative grammar and the recent minimalist approach mainly drew upon syntactic analysis. However, he was severely criticized as he generally used isolated sentences in his analysis which are free from their context. Many linguists believe that naturally occurring data should be used in any form of language analysis; isolated sentences neglect semantic and contextual considerations.
A language teacher, surely, should have a broad knowledge on the syntactic structures of both his native language and the language to be taught. Therefore, it may be claimed that a pre-performed syntactic and morpho-syntactic study will be helpful for a language teacher and relatedly for a student. Syntactic knowledge of a speaker will obviously lead to a comprehensive and holistic competence in a particular grammar.

e) Semantics:
In simple terms, semantics is the study of meaning. Meaning in a specific discourse may be analyzed in terms of lexis, sentence, grammar and utterance. The relation between lexical meaning, sentence meaning, grammatical meaning and utterance meaning is mutual; as they can not be saperated from each other in revealing the meaning in a particular discourse.
Therefore, it does not seem to be appropriate to put semantics in micro-linguistics, as it would narrow its scope. Semantics deals with meaning at also beyond-sentence level, which is a fact that John Lyons may have missed in building a distinction between micro and macro linguistics.


II 1.2 Macro-linguistics:
Macro-linguistics is concerned with everything that pertains in any way at all to language and languages (Lyons:1981). It is also named as applied linguistics by many scholars drawing upon its interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary nature. It builds relations with other sciences like sociology, psychology, neurology, anthropology etc.
There are plenty of sub-disciplines in macro-linguistics like anthropological linguistics, geographical linguistics, computational linguistics, corpus linguistics, bio-linguistics, field linguistics, clinical linguistics, forensic linguistics, philo
sophical linguistics etc. But here, it is not possible to deal with all these macro-linguistic areas; so some important ones, namely sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics, semiotics and educational linguistics will be explained briefly.

a) Sociolinguistics:
In general terms, sociolinguistics may be defined as the study of language in relation to society. It has become a thriving area within linguistics since 1960s, and the father of sociolinguistics is claimed to be William Labov. Sociolinguistics studies issues like accents, dialects, language change, age, gender, etchnicity, social context, pidgins and creoles, language planning, power, code-switching and code-mixing etc. (Bloomer&Trott:1988).
Sociolinguistic research in language teaching may be performed in different ways. As classroom is a heterogeneous social group, there may be different students from different cultural backgrounds, ethnic identities, genders, socio-economic backgrounds etc. Revealing these diversities in discourse may help a language teacher overcome some difficulties in learning by modifying the classroom discourse.
b) Psycholinguistics:
Psycholinguistics is concerned with language and the brain. In other terms, it builds relations with psychology and linguistics. A Psycholinguist should have a comprehensive understanding of neurology (brain mechanisms), psychology (the processes by which we interpret the world) and linguistics (the variety of cathegories that are found in human language) (Bloomer&Trott:1988).
Psychological mood of a learner is an effective determinant in the success of learning in a language classroom setting. A language teacher should have the capability to analyze and overcome the psycholinguistic problems of a learner by analyzing the language use. This will obviously lead to betterment in the learning process.
c) Discourse analysis:
Discourse analysis is defined as the analysis of language 'beyond the sentence'. Discourse analysts study larger chunks of language as they flow together. Although it’s originated back to the birth of rhetoric 2000 years ago, 1960s may be suggested as the emergence of modern Discourse Analysis. A discourse analyst deals with naturally occuring data unlike a sentence grammarian who uses isolated sentences in studying language. Discourse analysis studies discourse markers, turn-taking, speech acts, conversation analysis as well as the discourse of media, politics, sports etc.
Discourse Analysis has a lot to serve to language teachers. In adressing the importance of discourse analysis, Mc Carthy (1991) states that “ Discourse analysis is of immediate interest to language teachers because we too have long had the question of how people use language uppermost in our minds when we design teaching materials, or when we engage learners in exercises and activities aimed at making them proficient users of their target language...”.


d) Pragmatics:
Pragmatics is the study of the use of signs and the relationship between signs and their users. The distinction between pragmatics and discourse analysis is that pragmatics is mainly concerned with written texts; whereas discourse analysis is concerned with naturally occuring discourse of daily language used in various contexts.
Language teachers use various written materials in their courses, and they also get written assignments or exam papers from their students. Both in the written materials to be used in class or in evaluating the papers of the students, knowledge in pragmatics is of great importance for a language teacher.
e) Semiotics/ Semiology:
Semiotics (or semiology within Saussurean trend), basically, is the systemic study of signs in communication processes. The foundation of semiotics as a scientific discipline dates back to the works of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913). The sign is the basic unit in semiotics and is handled in different ways by the co-founders of semiotics, F. Saussure and C.S.Peirce. Saussure defines sign as being composed of a signifier (the form that the sign takes) and signified (concept to which sign refers) and asserts that the relation between the signifier and signified is arbitrary. Peirce has a triadic model of sign as representement (the form which the sign takes, an interpretant (the sense of the sign) and an object (to which the sign refers). Peirce introduces types of sign as icon, symbol and index (Chandler: 2002).
Social signs and codes play an important role in semiotics and lead to the emergence of cultural semiotics and educational semiotics as scientific areas of study. These areas are of great importance for a language teacher; since he/she should teach the cultural signs and codes of the target language to his students keeping in mind that teaching of a language can not be isolated from teaching its culture.

f) Educational Linguistics:
Educational linguistics tries to build links between pedagogy and linguistics and focuses on language use in educational contexts for educational purposes. In addition to analysis of classroom discourse, it is mainly concerned with teacher training and teacher development (Stubbs:1986).
It has a multi-disciplinary nature as it is in close relationship with macro-linguistics (especially discourse analysis and almost any form of applied linguistics) and disciplines like psychology, pedagogy, sociology etc. Although ELT is located in Applied linguistics by many scholars, the exact location of ELT seems to be within educational linguistics. The reason is that Educational linguistics builds direct relations between education as an interdisciplinary area and any form of linguistic research-either micro or macro. However, Applied linguistics is an umbrella term referring to any form of linguistic study which is applied.
II 2. Trends in linguistics:
Linguistics –like any scientific discipline- has undergone an evolution in relation to advances in other social sciences throughout the history. There have been eras in linguistics called historical linguistics, comparative linguistics etc. But here, we will deal with structuralism, functionalism, and generativism; as our aim is to reflect the development of linguistics as a science in the scientific era. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that if diachronic and comparative studies did not exist, language families could not have been established.




I. Structuralism
The birth of structuralism in linguistics traces back to the publication of Saussure’s “Cours de linguistique generale” (Course in General Linguistics) in 1916. According to the structuralists every language system is unique and should be described on its own terms. Because the relation between the signifier and signified is arbitrary; so the linguistic sign is not a meaningful form. The phonological shape of a word results from the network of contrasts and equivalences that a particular language system imposes upon the continuum of sound (Lyons:1981).
Structuralism is mainly concerned with the relations which hold among entities than with the entities themselves. In other words, the synergy of the system (in our case language) is much more than the amount of the total energy of the sum of each element in the system. This structuralist view reveals the consideration of a particular language as a whole system.
II 2 2. Functionalism:
Functionalism is characterized by the belief that the phonological, grammatical and the semantic structure of languages is determined by the functions that they have to perform in the societies in which they operate (Lyons:1981). The best known figures of functionalism are Roman Jakobson and Nikolaj Trubetskoy representing the Prague Linguistic Circle founded in 1926.
Functionalists emphasize the multifunctionality of language and the importance of its expressive , social and conative functions, in contrast with or in addition to its descriptive function. Although it seems to be a new trend in structuralism, it should be considered as a separate trend with its new ideas on functionality and evolutionary steps through scientifity.

II 2 3. Generativism:
Generativism, the founder of which is Noam Chomsky, describes human languages by means of generative grammars. Chomsky opposes to behaviorists (like Bloomfield and Skinner) in saying that human behaviour and language acquisition includes creativity; they can not be described with stimuli-response patterns and conditioning. This creativity serves as the basis of transformational generative grammar: It is possible to create an infinite number of sentences from finite grammatical structures.
Generativists emphasized language universals as opposed to structuralists like Bloomfield who defended the structural diversity of languages. Innateness hypotheses (human beings have an innate capacity to acquire language), mentalism, universal grammar and the competence-performance distinction are key concepts in generativism and Chomskyan revolution.


III LINGUISTIC DICHOTOMIES

Introduction to Modern linguitics (20th century)

Ferdinand De Saussure , a swiss scholar, is seen to be the father of modern linguistics. His book ‘ cours de linguistique generale’, published posthumously by his students in 1916 , stresses the importance of styding language for its own sake.(as an autonomous object of analysis). As such De Saussure defined language as a system of interwoven elements. This definition of language as a system o structure forms the basis of structural linguistics.
De Saussure introduced the following basic dichotomies

III.1-Synchronic V.S Diachronic linguistics
Synchronic :study of language is concerned with its form at a given moment.
Diachronic: study covers the historical development of a language, watching language with all its feature changes

III 2-Langue V.S Parole
‘Langue’ is the system of a language ( lexical, grammatical; and phonological constitution of a language), whereas, ‘ parole’ is the actual speech. a ‘langue’ is what the individual assimilates when he learns a language , a set of forms deposited by the practice of speech in the speakers who belong to the same community.’ parole’, on the other hand, is the actual manifestation of ‘langue’. ‘Langue’ is the same for all speakers of the same speech community. ‘ Parole’, however differs from one individual to another.

III 3 Syntagmatic VS Paradigmatic Relations
syntagmatic relations are relations of combination. They are said to operate on the horizontal axis of language. Words in a sentence are related syntagmatically to one another. Paradigmatic relations, on the other hand are relations of substitution. They are said to operate on the vertical axis of language.
e.g. He wrote the lesson
She read the book
‘ He’ and ‘She ‘ ; ‘wrote’ and ‘opened’ ; ‘lesson’ and ‘book’ are in a paradigmatic relation ( one item ca n substitute the other in a given linguistic environment).
These syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations serve to explain the structural view of language.

III4.The Arbitrary Nature of the Sign
The sign is the union of a form which signifies, which Saussure calls the ‘signifiant’ (signifier) , and an idea signified, ‘the signifie’(signified). We may speak of signifier and signified as if they were separate entities, though they exist only as components of the sign.
The linguistic sign is arbitrary . That is , there is no natural or inevitable link between the signifier and the signified. There no intrinsic reason why one particular signifier rather another should be linked to a particular signified.


IV Language History
IV .1 A Brief Survey of the History of Linguistics
The science that has been developed around the facts of language passed through three stages before finding its true and unique object;
1-‘ Grammar’ was studied . This study, initaited by the Greeks and continued by the French, was based on logic.It lacked a scientific approach and was detached from language itself.Its only aim was to give rules for distinguishing between correct and incorrect forms; it was a normative discpline, far removed from for actual observation, and its scope was limited.
2- The second stage was marked by the philologists .The early philologists sought especially to correct, interpret and comment upon written texts. Their studies also led to literary history, customs,etc.They applied the methods of criticism for their own purposes.When the dealt with linguistic questions, it was for the express purpose of comparing texts of different periods, determining the language peculiar to each aauthor, or deciphering and explaining inscriptions made in an archaic or obscure language.Doubtless these investigations broke the ground for historiacl linguistics.But phiological criticism is still defecient on one point:it follows the written language too slavishly and neglects the living langauge.Moreover, it is concerned with little except Greek and Latin antiquity.
3- The third stage began when scholars discovered that languages can be compared with one another.However, the comprartive school, which had themerit of opening anew and fruitful field, did not succeed in setting up the true science of linguistics.It failed to seek out the nature of its object of study.Clearly, without this elementary step, no science can develop a method.