appendix A History of linguistics
As all good stories start with “Once upon a time,” we too wanted to start with the history. Unfortunately, because we decided to write a book about production, history is “unimportant” and “superfluous” for that purpose. We agree with this, so we’ve put it to the side, here in the back of the book. That said, the wise reader will know there’s a lot we can learn from the past, even in a tiny appendix version, and we aim to help you do just that. We promise to make it worth your while.
Of course, for language, there isn’t a clear place to start, and even the question “What is a language?” is still in the same boat as “What is a sandwich?” Linguistics as a study can be traced back thousands of years in our history, though not as far as language itself. It is largely the reason humans got to the top of the food chain, as collective memory and on-the-fly group adaptation are more successful in survival than their individual versions. We’ll break it down roughly by large periods to focus on important historical figures and prevalent ideas during these times. At the end of each section, we’ll discuss major takeaways, and you’ll see that the lessons we glean from the history of the field will be imperative to setting up your problem correctly, which will help you create a fantastic LLM product.