The most remarkable achievement of contemporary linguistics is probably the final assertion of its legitimacy as a completely autonomous discipline with its own object, aims, and methods. Whereas ‘philology’ had never severed the ties that linked it to the old texts and classical education, ‘linguistics’, as a practically new term in English, labels its contents as free from any dependence and servitude. On the Continent, where classical scholars were wont to distinguish between their philological and their linguistic pursuits, ‘linguistics’, was, until Saussure and long after the publication of his 'Cours', largely identified with comparative grammar, and, accordingly, the difference between the former and the present status of ‘linguists’ is the more striking. Yet this newly won autonomy is frequently lost sight of, since many linguists are prone to stress, less the unity and the recent self-sufficiency of their discipline, than its multivarious connexions with other branches of research, old and new, humanistic or scientific,such as psychology, logic, anthropology, cybernetics, and electronics. This, of course, mainly results from the fact that, in the scientific world of today, few linguists are just linguists and nothing else.
- Martinet (1962), Pag. 1