Comparative (1969)
Philology's interest in ancient languages led ultimately to the
deciphering, and the pursued study of what was, in the 19th century, "exotic" languages, for the light they could cast on understanding the origins of older texts. The
comparative linguistics branch of philology studies the relationship between languages. Whereas speculation of a common ancestor language from which all these descended has its roots in the philologist's adherence to the
biblical idea of humankind's common ancestry - the common ancestor language of
Indoeuropean languages is now named
Proto-Indo-European - no doubt this interest proved to be a dynamic factor. Similarities between
Sanskrit and
European languages were first noted in the early 19th century. This is noted in
Juan Mascaró'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 holds this as the beginning of modern study of the roots of the Indo-European languages.
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 standard text of popular authors for both sound interpretation and secure transmission. Since that time, 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 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 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 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.
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 ==