The Development Of Modern Western Nol In The First Half Of The 2^Th Century

Human beings have never given up their interest in language, and the understanding of language has thus been in a consistent and constant development. But it is not until the early 20th century that philosophers represented by Russell and Wittgenstein et al began to explore the nature, properties and origination of language from the perspective of natural science and at the height of philosophy, which has brought about the linguistic turn of philosophy and given birth to a new discipline– the philosophy of language. Since then, a multitude of philosophers try to apply the linguistic approach to philosophical problems. In the meantime, modern linguists represented by Saussure and Chomsky focus unprecedentedly on the studies of language. It can be said in a certain sense that the Western philosophy of the 20th century was one of linguistics.From the perspective of the philosophy of language and by combining synchronic and diachronic methods, the present thesis focuses on the development of linguistics and the philosophy of language in the first half of the 20th century, and the major representatives and the significance of their notions of language (abbreviated as NOL hereafter). The paper consists of five parts: Chapter 1, Introduction, provides some background information about the study, and underlines the significance of the study, added with a preview of the structure of the thesis. Chapter 2, Literature Review, gives an overview of the achievements of the studies on NOL in and prior to the 20th century at home and abroad. Chapter 3 offers a more specific introduction to the NOL of such important linguistic philosophers and linguists as Russell, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Saussure, Bloomfield, and Chomsky. Chapter 4 comes up with an attempt of approaching the horizontal developing trend of NOL through the analysis of the co-existence of and mutual impacts among these concepts, and another of approaching the vertical development process through the discussion of inheritance and transcendence relationships among different NOL. Chapter 5 comes to the conclusion, on the basis of the above efforts, that the combination of synchronic and diachronic studies renders the development of NOL ever more scientific, systematic and profound in the 20th century. The linguistic orientation offers a brand new perspective for the development of philosophy, and the philosophical altitude of linguistics in turn makes the NOL ever more comprehensive, complete, and distinct. In addition, the philosophy of language and linguistics show an intimate relationship in the course of NOL cognition, the philosophy of language providing linguistics with fundamental directions and methods of the studies while linguistics also exerting a positive influence on the development of the philosophy of language.