The document provides a brief history of linguistics, beginning with the Phoenician alphabet and its influence on ancient Greek and Roman traditions. The Phoenicians developed one of the first alphabets around 1500 BC, using letters to represent sounds. Their alphabet spread and was adopted by the Greeks, who made further developments in linguistic analysis. Figures like Plato and Aristotle debated the origins of language and analyzed parts of speech. Roman grammarians then built upon Greek traditions, with scholars such as Varro and Donatus analyzing Latin morphology and rhetoric. The document traces the evolution of linguistic study from ancient civilizations to its foundations in modern linguistics.