Nineteenth century: historical linguistics

It is significant that the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle made major contributions to the study of language. Plato is said to have been the first person to distinguish between nouns and verbs.

1786 is the year which many people regard as the birthdate of linguistics. On the 27th of september, 1786, an Englishman, Sir William Jones, read a paper to the Royal Asiatic Society in Calcutta pointing out that Sanskrit (the old indian language), Greek, Latin,Celtic and Germanic all had striking structural similarities.