Blog Archives

Program August-December 2015

[Updated 16 September 2015] 5August Esperanto: some observations of a speaker-linguistKen MinerUniversity of Kansas 19August John Stoddart’s The Philosophy of Language: the “last truly universalist work”Joseph SubbiondoCalifornia Institute of Integral Studies 2September Las disciplinas lingüísticas en la España decimonónica: Julián…

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Salon: Anachronism in linguistic historiography

Welcome to the first salon. The purpose of our salons is to provide a forum for discussing topics of interest in linguistic historiography and related fields. This salon will focus on ‘anachronism in linguistic historiography’. The discussion opens below with…

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Posted in Article, History, Linguistics, Salon

Somewhat caught between lexicology and syntax: a look at Phraseology

Sabine Fiedler University of Leipzig Terminology and characteristics A number of different terms have been used to name the topic of this blog entry. For example, in English, the following expressions are used synonymously: multi-word lexemes, phrasemes, set phrases, prefabricated…

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Posted in 20th century, Article, History, Lexicography, Linguistics, Phraseology

Program February-June 2015

11February Somewhat caught between lexicology and syntax: a look at phraseologySabine FiedlerUniversity of Leipzig 25February Examining material aspects of manuscripts (Part II)Anna PytlowanyUniversity of Amsterdam 13March Some Remarks on Objectivity in PragmaticsSamuel LewinUniversity of Sydney 25March Sensualism for dummiesEls ElffersUniversity…

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“Some Americans could not by any means count to 1000”: the cognitive effects of the lack of names for numbers in exotic languages from the perspective of linguistic theorists before Humboldt

Gerda Haßler Universität Potsdam The limited number word vocabulary in some languages for quantities above a specific amount has for some time been a much-debated topic. A study published in 2008 (Butterworth, Reeve, Reynolds, Lloyd 2008), which attracted much attention,…

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Posted in 18th century, America, Article, Germany, History, Linguistics

(Non-)universality of word-classes and words: The mid-20th century shift

Martin Haspelmath Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig While looking at a range of views by grammarians on word-class distinctions (noun, verb, adjective etc.) and word division in two recent papers (Haspelmath 2011; 2012a), I was struck by what…

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Posted in 20th century, Article, History, Linguistics, Typology, Uncategorized

Saussure’s sound symbolism

John Joseph University of Edinburgh “The most celebrated opponent of the sound symbolic hypothesis,” writes Magnus (2013: 201), “was, of course, Ferdinand de Saussure”. Of course. One of Saussure’s key contributions to modern linguistics is the principle of the arbitrariness…

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Posted in 19th century, 20th century, Article, Europe, History, Linguistics, Structuralism

ConSOLE XXIII Call for Papers

Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe XXIII The University Paris Diderot-Paris 7 will host the 23rd Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe (ConSOLE XXIII) from 7 to 9 January 2015 in Paris. Graduate students…

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Posted in Announcements, Conferences and workshops, Europe, Linguistics

Program August-December 2014

[Program updated 2 October 2014.] 6August Saussure’s sound symbolismJohn JosephUniversity of Edinburgh 20August Break 3September The lost Tesoro de ydioma ylocoRebeca Fernández RodríguezCentro de Estudos em Letras (CEL)Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD) 17September ‘You don’t see what you…

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The Latin-Portuguese grammarian Manuel Álvares (1526-1583) and his De institvtione grammatica libri tres

Rolf Kemmler University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro A little more than 440 years ago, in September 1572, the Portuguese typographer João da Barreira printed the first edition of a quite elaborate grammar of the Latin language. Little did the…

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Posted in 16th century, Article, Europe, Grammars, History, Portugal

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La linguistique ‘fonctionnelle’ cent ans après la fondation du Cercle linguistique de Prague


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Esperanto – 140 years: this is no longer a project


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Language abuse and language criticism in the history of linguistics


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