Philology, also known as traditional linguistics, refers to language research before the emergence of historical comparative linguistics in the19th century.
It is to annotate the classic works of ancient cultural heritage-politics, history and literature, with the purpose of helping people read ancient books and language teaching, and serving the rulers in governing the country or other disciplines. This is not an independent discipline, but exists as a vassal of other disciplines. It is also the general name of disciplines that emphasize the study of language and characters from the perspective of literature, which generally includes philology, exegetics, phonology, collation and so on.
China is rich in ancient documents, with special characters and developed philology. Philology in a broad sense should also include linguistics, that is, the general term of linguistics and philology. However, because linguistics is a big category in international academic disciplines, philology is subordinate to linguistics and becomes a branch of linguistics. His knowledge of phonetics, grammar and word meaning laid the foundation for the emergence of linguistics, and it is still the basic content of linguistics.
Philology (traditional linguistics) is also called "pre-scientific period" linguistics in modern west. Literature and Linguistics in the Same Language —— Linguistics in the "scientific period" in the modern sense. Western and Soviet scholars divide linguistics into "pre-scientific period" and "scientific period" with the first quarter of19th century as the watershed.