In this episode, we look first at August Schleicher’s proposal for a linguistic “morphology” and its intellectual background in nineteenth-century biology. We then compare Schleicher’s approach to the scheme of language classification developed by H. Steinthal within Völkerpsychologie, or “psychology…
In this episode, we look at the expansion of comparative-historical linguistics around the middle of the nineteenth century. We focus in particular on the figure of August Schleicher, the great consolidator of the field, and his “materialist” philosophy of science.
In this episode, we talk to Jürgen Trabant about Wilhelm von Humboldt.
In this episode, we look at language classification in the first half of the nineteenth century and at some key ideas in the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt.
In this episode, we look at the emergence of comparative-historical grammar, focusing on the work of Franz Bopp and Jacob Grimm.
The first series of the History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences Podcast looks at the history of modern linguistics. We begin in this episode by examining the pre-history of comparative-historical grammar.
James McElvenny University of Edinburgh In lieu of an introduction Below I offer an English translation of the last essay Georg von der Gabelentz (1840–1893) personally submitted for publication, “Hypologie [Typologie] der Sprachen, eine neue Aufgabe der Linguistik”. This essay…
What secondary literature exists on the historical context and significance of Franz Boas’ (1889) essay “On alternating sounds” or on his approach to phonology more generally?
James McElvenny Universität Potsdam Research into grammaticalization has an established pedigree, first certified by Lehmann (2015[1982]: 1-9) and confirmed, with various additions, by Heine et al (1991: 5-23) and Hopper & Traugott (2003[1993]: 19-38).[1] The standard genealogy records the birth…
James McElvenny University of Sydney The public image of the Vienna Circle, a group of thinkers active in Vienna in the 1920s and 30s (see Haller 1993; Stadler 2001[1997]), was characterised by a near-fanatical faith in ‘scientific’ thinking. In their…
History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences 