Linguistics: Past, present and future

Abstract

Linguistics is a discipline that is concerned with the study of
languages. Linguistics is an aspect of learning that has gone
through different phases. The framework under which this paper
is discussed is, Historical Revisionism. Historical Revisionism is
an approach to study which aid’s one in tracing the history of a
thing in order to be able to explain its present status. Some of the
objectives of this paper are: to give a brief insight into the
developmental stages of Linguistics, to comment on the present
state of Linguistics and to project into the prospects of
Linguistics. Information for this paper was gotten from textual
materials. Some of the findings of this paper are: that Linguistics
as an academic enterprise was confronted with a lot of
challenges at the developmental stages as seen in the controversy
between the analogists and anomalists, that translation began in
the Medieval era of traditional grammar with studies in
semantics, that the comparative study of language was done
through the study of changes in sound, that Linguistics can help
in the documentation, preservation and revitalization of the
cultures of many people and their languages ( both endangered
and non-endangered languages), and that Linguistics has helped
in the development of the orthographies of undeveloped
languages. This paper is thus, beckoning on individuals and
governments to aid studies in Linguistics towards the
development and use of all the languages of the world to prevent
the extinction of many languages. It is also calling for the development of the human persons to continue the research in
linguistic studies.