Blog Archives

Martin Burr Grant 2019

[Post updated 14 May 2018] Application deadline 30 September 2018 The Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas invites applications for the Martin Burr Grant, which awards small amounts of funding (usually up to a maximum of £500)

Posted in Announcements, Jobs and funding

CfP: Sprache und Globalisierung

Die Gesellschaft für Interlinguistik e.V. (GIL) lädt herzlich ein zu ihrer Jahrestagung 2018 mit dem Schwerpunkthema Sprache und Globalisierung

Posted in Announcements, Conferences and workshops

Call for Papers: “A host of tongues” – Multilingualism, lingua franca and translation in the Early Modern period

FCSH-UNL, Lisbon, 13th to 15th December 2018 In the 15th and 16th centuries, the linguistic situation in Europe was one of remarkable fluidity. Latin, the great scholarly lingua franca of the medieval period, was beginning to crack as the tectonic

Posted in Announcements, Conferences and workshops

Grant proposals: Language Acts and Worldmaking

The deadline for this round of funding is midnight on 27th May 20. Application form available here Languages Memory is the theme for the first Language Acts and Worldmaking conference, due to be held in Bush House, London, 13-14 June

Posted in Announcements, Jobs and funding

Recent publications in the history and philosophy of linguistics, April 2018

Below is a list of some monographs and collected volumes in the history and philosophy of linguistics that have appeared recently.

Posted in Announcements, Publications

Some reflections on the uses and abuses of theory in linguistic thought

Jon Orman My purpose in this piece is to offer a few brief thoughts on a series of questions with which I have become increasingly interested in recent months. Linguistics, it seems to me, is awash with theories and theoretical

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Posted in Article, Linguistics, Philosophy

Lawyers, Linguists and Truthiness

Douglas Kibbee University of Illinois Are lies information? This was the question before the Supreme Court of Michigan in a 2016 case (People v. Harris, based on a 2009 incident). A police officer was charged with pulling a motorist out

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Posted in America, Article, Linguistics, Semantics

Making of the Humanities VII, 15–17 November 2018, Amsterdam

The Making of the Humanities VII University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands ‘The Making of the Humanities’ conference returns to Amsterdam! This is the place where the conference series started in 2008, 10 years ago. The University of Amsterdam will host

Posted in Announcements, Conferences and workshops

SHLP6 – Adelaide 13-14 December 2018

UPDATE 28 August 2018: conference program now live We are pleased to announce that the sixth biennial conference of the Society for the History of Linguistics in the Pacific (SHLP) is to be held on December 13th-14th 2018 at the

Posted in Announcements, Conferences and workshops

Wilhelm Wundt and the Lautgesetze Controversy

Lia Formigari Sapienza Università di Roma A long-dominant historiographical tradition, culminating in Hugo Schuchardt’s essay Über die Lautgesetze (1885), depicted the Neogrammarians as the irreducible upholders of the unconditioned validity of phonetic laws. It is my view that, if we

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Posted in 19th century, Article, History, Linguistics, Psycholinguistics

Upcoming events


17–20 March 2026
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona (Spain)
XV Congreso Internacional de la Sociedat Española de Historiografía Lingüística
Prescriptivism and descriptivism from the peripheries


23–25 March 2026
Montpellier (France)
Asian Languages in the History of Lexicography


2-4 September 2026
Nottingham (UK)
Henry Sweet Society Colloquium 2026
(Non-)Native Speakers in the History of Linguistic Ideas


10-11 September 2026
Fribourg (Switzerland)
The Prague Linguistic Circle in Geneva and Paris: Circulations and Decenterings


19-21 November 2026
Sofia (Bulgaria)
La linguistique ‘fonctionnelle’ cent ans après la fondation du Cercle linguistique de Prague


23-27 August 2027
Niterói, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
ICHoLS XVII