panini- the 4thC BC originator of linguistics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%81%E1%B9%87ini

D - and he influenced Chomsky's works on linguistics.
What is amazing is that his contributions were basically allowed to lie fallow for so long.

He is known for his Sanskrit grammar, particularly for his formulation of the 3,959 rules[2] of Sanskrit morphology, syntax and semantics in the grammar known as Ashtadhyayi (अष्टाध्यायी Aṣṭādhyāyī, meaning "eight chapters"), the foundational text of the grammatical branch of the Vedanga, the auxiliary scholarly disciplines of Vedic religion.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure (French pronunciation: [fɛʁdinɑ̃ də sosyʁ]) (26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. Saussure is widely considered to be one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics,[1][2] though modern linguists and philosophers of language all but universally consider his ideas outdated, inadequate, and misunderstood or deliberately distorted by literary theorists.[3][4] [5][6][7][8] [9][10][11][12][13][14] Saussure's concepts receive little or no attention in modern linguistic textbooks.[15] Saussure's concepts—particularly semiotics—have nonetheless exterted a monumental impact throughout the humanities and social sciences.

Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of cultural sign processes (semiosis), analogy, metaphor, signification and communication, signs and symbols. Semiotics is closely related to the field of linguistics, which in its part, studies the structure and meaning of language more specifically. Semiotics is usually divided into three branches, which include:

* Semantics: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata, or meaning
* Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structures
* Pragmatics: Relation between signs and the effects they have on the people who use them

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Leibniz#Symbolic_thought

D: a supergenius friend of mine, a "God in ruins" to borrow from Emerson, keeps all his notes in coded logic form.
Hopefully, I'll manage to ground a language firmly enough in such precise terms that notation will be optional.

Note: I'm revising musical notation to get back into piano.
It's looking like a vertically scrolling system that matches the setup of a piano. I'll be tweaking the chromatic notation system.
I see why so many musicians don't /can't / won't use our standard musical notation system. It is far removed from the playing of music itself by a number of mental stps.
CVN. Seven. 7. An octave of 7 whole notes lends itself to a naming convention derived from consonant voiced/voiceless pairs.
Chords could be expressed in my variant-prime # scheme for compound concepts. (See earlier blogs.)


The Ashtadhyayi is one of the earliest known grammars of Sanskrit, although he refers to previous texts like the Unadisutra, Dhatupatha, and Ganapatha.[2] It is the earliest known work on descriptive linguistics and generative linguistics, and together with the work of his immediate predecessors (Nirukta, Nighantu, Pratishakyas) stands at the beginning of the history of linguistics itself.

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I imagine the fact that his book is in Sanskrit served as a barrier to further dissemination.


Pāṇini's work became known in 19th century Europe, where it influenced modern linguistics initially through Franz Bopp, who mainly looked at Pāṇini. Subsequently, a wider body of work influenced Sanskrit scholars such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Leonard Bloomfield, and Roman Jakobson. Frits Staal discussed the impact of Indian ideas on language in Europe.