François Thurot and the First History of Grammar

Abstract

François Thurot’s Discours préliminaire (1796), a first attempt at a historiography of grammar, sums up the language theories of the philosophes, while prefiguring the 19th century in both his concept of language and his attitude towards the science of language. He accepts, for instance, the theory that the perfection of a language reflects the progress of the mind but rejects the metaphysical speculation on the origin of language that characteristically accompanied such a theory. And although Thurot, like his contemporaries, still preoccupies himself with the method of logico-linguistic analysis which would lead to a langue bien faite, his study opens up to a new variety of linguistic phenomena in the vernacular. Thus, his view of language embraces both the mechanical reductionism aimed at scientific language with its pretention to universality as well as the creative dynamism of discursive language with its recognition of cultural relativity. Furthermore, Thurot assimilates the interest in the genetic relationship among languages, that was already in the air, to the historicism of the philosophes, whose historical tableaux unfolded within their theories of language. Thurot’s interest in natural language is an outgrowth of the prevailing ‘climate of opinion’. The data-oriented approach to language had begun with the invention of the printing press, from which time there was an ever increasing accumulation and distribution of material on non-European languages. The French Revolution was to dramatize the importance of discursive language, since the unification of the nation depended, in part, on the democratization and standardization of daily language. Such a climate proved favorable for subsequent work on genetic classification and on Indo-European in the 19th century.

Linguística, Filosofia, E Suas Historiografias

“…Na sua introdução, Thurot traçou um panorama retrospectivo das ciências gramaticais, atividade que situou entre o Crátilo, de Platão (429 -c.347 a.C.), e a Logique, de Étienne Condillac (1714−1780). Se a relevância do Discours de Thurot advém do fato de ter sido apontado como a primeira historiografia linguística do nosso horizonte retrospectivo (Coseriu, 1980;Swiggers, 1996), ou de ter exercido um papel de divisor de águas em questões de metodologia linguística, como interpreta Andresen (1978) Essa prática generalizada de fazer preceder a um estudo contemporâneo uma resenha histórica sobre a questão, como de hábito também no Brasil, frequentemente se limita a uma introdução panorâmica ao tema das teses acadêmicas, ou aos manuais de linguística geral, mesmo os mais clássicos, como, por ex., Saussure (1916), ou Bloomfield (1933). De maneira geral, essas introduções históricas visam a mostrar os avanços da disciplina desde estágios anteriores até o momento em que se encontra o seu autor.…”