|
Keywords
|
Modern Philosophy, Sujet, Subject, Modern European
Languages, Medieval Languages, Ancient Languages,
|
|
Abstract
|
The Philosophy of Descartes marked the starting point of modern philosophy. One
of the main characteristics of this French rationalistic philosophy, which was
followed by English empiricism and German Idealism, is a special attention to the
"subject" instead of the cosmos, being or God. But the question is what caused
such a turn to "subject"? With a historical linguistic approach it can be shown that
the replacement of old languages of philosophy, namely Greek, Arabic and Latin by
modern European languages, namely French, English and German can be one of
the causes of this turn to "subject". In this research, we will concentrate on the
word order and the possibility of the omission of the subject in the sentences of
languages pertaining to different philosophical traditions from different historical
contexts. In modern European languages of philosophy (French, English, German)
there is an insistence on the subject to appear at the beginning of the sentence.
These three languages are among the very limited number of Non Null Subject
languages which do not permit the subject to be omitted from the beginning of the
sentence. These languages were null subject in the course of their history, but at the
same time with the appearance of modern philosophy (first half of the 17th century)
they became non null subject languages.
|