Review ofRandy Allen Harris: The Linguistics Wars: Chomsky, Lakoff, and the Battle over Deep Structure. Second edition. Oxford University Press. 2021. John GoldmithUniversity of Chicago Randy Harris has written an extremely engaging account of the rise of generative syntax and…
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Raymond de Saussureâs Freudian appropriation of Antoine Meilletâs historical and general linguistics
John JosephUniversity of Edinburgh One hundred years ago, Raymond de Saussure (1894-1971), the second son of Ferdinand and Marie de Saussure, published a review of a collection of papers by his fatherâs most famous and devoted student, Antoine Meillet (1866-1936).…
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The Facts of Whorfâs Hopi Research
In this talk, Penny Lee presents some preliminary results from her research into the personal diaries of Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897â1941).
A Danish Framing of Roman Jakobson’s American Years â Review of From the early years of Phonology
Patrick Flack University of Fribourg Over the last decade or so, we have been treated to a steady succession of book-length publications dedicated to the intellectual legacy of Roman Jakobson. This near continuous stream started with the release of the…
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The return of the human in the study of writing
Piers Kelly University of New England In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the study of writing systems. Much of the new impetus has come from linguists investigating the interactions between graphic structure and linguistic structure. Yet practitioners…
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Death of a purist or how Dutch appeared to be a dangerous mother tongue
Camiel HamansUniversity of Amsterdam/Adam Mickiewicz University PoznaĆ 27 June 1668, the Amsterdam prosecutor demanded a remarkable punishment: the accused should be displayed on the scaffold, his right thumb should be cut off, his tongue should be pierced with a glowing…
Significs and Jacques van Ginneken
Els Elffers University of Amsterdam Introduction The Dutch Signific movement (ca. 1900â1960) is not widely known, although in the last few decades it has attracted considerable scholarly interest. This has resulted in some valuable publications (see the bibliography). The movementâs…
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Racialization, language science, and nineteenth century anthropometrics
Margaret Thomas Boston College Introduction In May 2019, the Executive Committee of the Linguistic Society of America approved of a âStatement on Raceâ (https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/lsa-statement-race), which puts on record the societyâs opposition to racialization in the study of language, and in…
Lénine, Saussure et la théorie des hiéroglyphes
Patrick SĂ©riot UniversitĂ©s de Lausanne et de Saint-PĂ©tersbourg Introduction La rĂ©ception positive de Saussure est bien connue, elle est au fondement des manuels de linguistique gĂ©nĂ©rale dans la plupart des pays. Curieusement, on sâattarde beaucoup moins sur sa rĂ©ception nĂ©gative,…
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Johann Christoph Adelung, a forerunner of modern bilingual lexicography
Jacques François University of Caen-Normandy http://www.interlingua.fr 1. A forgotten German Enlightenment philosopher Johann Christoph Adelung (1732â1806) was one of the main promoters of the VolksaufklĂ€rung (popular Enlightenment) in the vein of Christian Wolff, eager to synthetize what the broad cultivated…
History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences 