Editing History of linguistics (section)

===India===
{{main|Vyakarana|Tolkāppiyam}}
Linguistics in [[Vedic civilization|ancient India]] derives its impetus from the need to correctly recite and interpret the [[Vedas|Vedic]] texts. Already in the oldest Indian text, the [[Rigveda]], {{IAST|''[[vāk]]''}} ("speech") is deified.  By 1200 BCE,<ref>Staal, J. F., ''The Fidelity of Oral Tradition and the Origins of Science''. North-Holland Publishing Company, 1986.  p. 27
</ref> the oral performance of these texts becomes standardized, and treatises on ritual recitation suggest splitting up the [[Sanskrit]] compounds into words, [[word stem|stem]]s, and phonetic units, providing an impetus for [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]] and [[phonetics]].

Some of the earliest activities in the [[descriptive linguistics|description of language]] have been attributed to the [[India]]n grammarian [[Pāṇini]] (6th century BCE),<ref>{{Cite book|title=A New History of the Humanities: The Search for Principles and Patterns from Antiquity to the Present|last=Bod|first=Rens|author-link=Rens Bod|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0199665211|year=2014|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KaOcAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA14}}</ref><ref>Sanskrit Literature The Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 2 (1909), p. 263.</ref><ref name="FPencyclo" /> who wrote a rule-based description of the [[Sanskrit|Sanskrit language]] in his ''[[Aṣṭādhyāyī]]''.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Ashtadhyayi of Panini (2 Vols.) |author=S.C. Vasu (Tr.) |publisher=Vedic Books |year=1996 |isbn=9788120804098|url=http://www.vedicbooks.net/ashtadhyayi-panini-vols-p-2313.html}}</ref>

Over the next few centuries, clarity was reached in the organization of sound units, and the [[stop consonant]]s were organized in a 5x5 square ({{Circa|800 BCE}}, [[Pratisakhya]]s), eventually leading to a systematic alphabet, [[Brāhmī script|Brāhmī]], by the 3rd century BCE.<ref>{{Cite web|date=|title=Brāhmī Alphabet|url=https://www.omniglot.com/writing/brahmi.htm|website=Omniglot|access-date=September 28, 2023}}</ref>{{Better source needed|date=September 2023}}

In semantics, the early Sanskrit grammarian [[Śākaṭāyana]] (before {{Circa|500 BCE}}) proposes that verbs represent ontologically prior categories, and that all nouns are etymologically derived from actions.  The [[etymologist]] [[Yāska]] (c. 5th century BCE) posits that meaning inheres in the sentence, and that word meanings are derived based on sentential usage.  He also provides four categories of words—[[noun]]s, [[verb]]s, pre-verbs, and particles/invariants—and a test for nouns both concrete and abstract: words which can be indicated by the pronoun ''that''.{{citation needed|date=October 2020}}

Pāṇini (c. 6th century BCE) opposes the Yāska view that sentences are primary, and proposes a grammar for composing [[semantics]] from [[morpheme|morphemic]] roots. Transcending the ritual text to consider living language, Pāṇini specifies a comprehensive set of about 4,000 aphoristic rules (''[[sutra]]s'') that:

# Map the semantics of verb argument structures into [[thematic relation|thematic role]]s
# Provide morphosyntactic rules for creating verb forms and nominal forms whose seven cases  are called ''karaka'' (similar to [[grammatical case|case]]) that generate the [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]]
# Take these morphological structures and consider [[phonology|phonological]] processes (e.g., root or stem modification) by which the final phonological form is obtained
In addition, the Pāṇinian school also provides a list of 2000 verb [[Root (linguistics)|roots]] which form the objects on which these rules are applied, a list of sounds (the so-called ''Shiva-sutras''), and a list of 260 words not derivable by the rules.

The extremely succinct specification of these rules and their complex interactions led to considerable commentary and extrapolation over the following centuries.  The phonological structure includes defining a notion of sound universals similar to the modern [[phoneme]], the systematization of [[consonant]]s based on oral cavity constriction, and [[vowel]]s based on height and duration.  However, it is the ambition of mapping these from [[morpheme]] to semantics that is truly remarkable in modern terms.

Grammarians following Pāṇini include [[Katyayana|Kātyāyana]] (c. 3rd century BCE), who wrote aphorisms on Pāṇini (the ''Varttika'') and advanced [[Indian mathematics|mathematics]]; [[Patañjali]] (2nd century BCE), known for his commentary on selected topics in Pāṇini's grammar (the ''Mahabhasya'') and on Kātyāyana's [[aphorisms]], as well as, according to some, the author of the ''[[Yoga Sutras of Patanjali|Yoga Sutras]]'', and ''[[Pingala]]'',  with his mathematical approach to [[Prosody (linguistics)|prosody]]. Several debates ranged over centuries, for example, on whether word-meaning mappings were conventional (''[[Vaisheshika]]-[[Nyaya]]'') or eternal (''Kātyāyana-Patañjali-[[Mīmāṃsā]]'').

The ''[[Nyaya Sutras]]'' specified three types of meaning: the individual (''this cow''), the [[Universal (metaphysics)|type universal]] (''cowhood''), and the image (''draw the cow'').
That the sound of a word also forms a class (sound-universal) was observed  by [[Bhartṛhari]] (c. 500 CE), who also posits that language-universals are the units of thought, close to the [[nominalism|nominalist]] or even the [[linguistic determinism]] position. Bhartṛhari also considers the sentence to be ontologically primary (word meanings are learned given their sentential use).

Of the six canonical texts or ''[[Vedanga]]s'' that formed the core syllabus in [[Brahmin]]ic education from the 1st century CE until the 18th century, four dealt with language:
*''[[Shiksha]]'' (''{{IAST|śikṣā}}''): [[phonetics]] and [[phonology]] ([[sandhi]]), Gārgeya and commentators
*''[[Chandas]]'' (''{{IAST|chandas}}''): [[prosody (poetry)|prosody]] or [[Meter (poetry)|meter]], Pingala and commentators
*''[[Vyakarana]]'' (''{{IAST|vyākaraṇa}}''): [[grammar]], Pāṇini and commentators
*''[[Nirukta]]'' (''{{IAST|nirukta}}''): [[etymology]], Yāska and commentators

[[Bhartrihari]] around 500 CE introduced a philosophy of meaning with his ''[[sphoṭa]]'' doctrine.{{citation needed|date=March 2022}}

Pāṇini's rule-based method of linguistic analysis and description has remained relatively unknown to Western linguistics until more recently. [[Franz Bopp]] used Pāṇini's work as a linguistic source for his 1807 Sanskrit grammar but disregarded his methodology.<ref>The science of language, Chapter 16, in [[Gavin D. Flood]], ed. ''The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism'' [[Blackwell Publishing]], 2003, 599 pages {{ISBN|0-631-21535-2}}, {{ISBN|978-0-631-21535-6}}.  p. 357-358</ref> Pāṇini's system also differs from modern [[formal linguistics]] in that, since Sanskrit is a free word-order language, it did not provide [[syntax|syntactic]] rules.<ref name="Kiparsky_2009">{{cite book |last=Kiparsky |first=Paul|author-link=Paul Kiparsky |editor-last1=Huet |editor-first1=G. |editor-last2=Kulkarni |editor-first2=A. |editor-last3=Scharf |editor-first3=P. |title=Sanskrit Computational Linguistics, ISCLS 2007, ISCLS 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 5402 |publisher=Springer |date=2015 |pages=33–94 |chapter= On the Architecture of Pāṇini's Grammar |volume=5402 |doi=10.1007/978-3-642-00155-0_2|isbn= 978-3-642-00155-0 }}</ref> Formal linguistics, as first proposed by [[Louis Hjelmslev]] in 1943,<ref name="Seuren_1998">{{cite book |last=Seuren|first=Pieter A. M.|author-link=Pieter Seuren|title=Western linguistics: An historical introduction |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |isbn=0-631-20891-7 |pages=160–167 |date=1998}}</ref> is nonetheless based on the same concept that the expression of [[semantics|meaning]] is organised on different layers of linguistic form (including phonology and morphology).<ref name="Hjelmslev_1969">{{cite book |last=Hjelmslev |first=Louis |title=Prolegomena to a Theory of Language |publisher=University of Wisconsin Press |date=1969 |orig-year=First published 1943 |isbn= 0299024709 |author-link=Louis Hjelmslev}}</ref>

The Pali Grammar of Kacchayana, dated to the early centuries CE, describes the language of the Buddhist canon.{{citation needed|date=March 2022}}