Philology

The philology is the science which treats of a language from a historical point of view, starting from written documents. It aims at establishing texts, i.e. to choose the best possible text at the beginning of manuscripts, printed editions or other sources available, by comparing the preserved versions of these texts, or to restore the best text by correcting the existing sources.

Object and definitions of philology

The philology is also interested in the problems of dating, of localization and of text-editing, it uses the intelligence, the capacity of reflection, the mental conscious one, general or specialized knowledge and érudite. With this intention, it rests on Histoire and its derivative (Histoire of the religions, etc), the Linguistique, the Grammaire, the Stylistique, but also on disciplines related to the Archéologie like the epigraphy or the Papyrologie like with the edition of the old texts (Paléographie, Codicologie). For more details on the philological edition of old texts, to consult the article Paleography .

The term is often used like somewhat out-of-date Synonyme with compared Linguistique . It is wrongly, because this last discipline compares different languages but does not establish the texts of them, whereas each language has its philology.

A very modern branch of philology is the cognitive Philologie, which aims at studying the texts as products of the mental lawsuits human.

Ferdinand de Saussure (1915) there sees an intermediate stage between the Grammaire and the compared Grammaire in the “science of the facts of language” (or “Linguistique”):

The science which was constituted around the facts of language passed by three successive phases before knowing which is its true object. (...) the grammar (...) only aims at giving rules to distinguish the correct forms from the incorrect forms… Then appeared the philology (...) which wants above all to fix, to interpret, to comment on the texts; this first study leads it to also deal of the literary history, manners, the institutions, etc Partout it uses of its own method, which is the critical . If it deals with linguistic questions, it is especially to compare texts of various times, to determine the language particular to each author, to decipher and to explain inscriptions written in an antiquated or obscure language (...) but philological criticism is at fault on a point: it sticks too servilely to the written language and forgets the living language… The third time started when it was discovered that one could compare the languages between them. It was the origin of comparative philology or compared grammar .

Some philologists

See too

Internal bonds

External bonds

  1. Philology and history of philology bond seems inaccessible
  2. Service of history of education - INRP - CNRS

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