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…
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Galant grammarians: Donneau de VisĂ©âs Mercure galant
Doyle Calhoun Yale University (Department of French) What was the Mercure galant and why should it interest historians of linguistics? Founded in 1672 by Jean Donneau de VisĂ© (1638â1710) â journalist and royal historiographer under Louis XIV â the bestselling…
Une bonne langue pour chanter ? Réflexions sur les caractéristiques phonétiques des langues et sur le chant baroque
Claudia Schweitzer Histoire des ThĂ©ories Linguistiques, CNRS, UniversitĂ© de Paris Dans sa Lettre sur la musique française (1753 : 91), Rousseau dĂ©clare « quâil nây a ni mesure ni mĂ©lodie dans la Musique Française, parce que la langue nâen est pas…
The foreign entanglements of Mandarin Chinese in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
MĂ„rten Söderblom Saarela Academia Sinica in Taipei This blog post will discuss some transnational aspects of the history of Mandarin Chinese, what in the twentieth century became codified as the national language of China. I will first briefly discuss what…
Pierre-Philippe Potier’s Elementa Grammaticae Huronicae (1745)
Zanna Van Loon University of Leuven Introduction Instead of imposing European languages, Catholic friars conducting missions in the Americas in the early modern period opted to learn indigenous tongues to more efficiently teach local communities the religious doctrine. To guarantee…
Tagged with: circulation of knowledge, grammar, missionary linguistics, New France, pierre-philippe potier
Posted in 18th century, America, Article, History, Missionary Linguistics
Posted in 18th century, America, Article, History, Missionary Linguistics
Towards a history of concept list compilation in historical linguistics
Johann-Mattis List Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena A large proportion of lexical data of the world’s languages is presented in the form of word lists in which a set of concepts was translated into the…
Tagged with: concept list, historical linguistics, Morris Swadesh, Swadesh list
Posted in 18th century, 19th century, 20th century, Article, historical linguistics, Lexicography, Linguistics
Posted in 18th century, 19th century, 20th century, Article, historical linguistics, Lexicography, Linguistics
What Zarathustra said: The sixty-year controversy regarding Anquetil-Duperron’s Zend-Avesta
Floris Solleveld University of Amsterdam In 1771, a French scholarly adventurer by the name of Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron shocked the Republic of Letters with his translation of Zend-Avesta, Ouvrage de Zoroastre. Published in three volumes with a long series of appendices…
Anforderungen an eine serielle Untersuchung des Pariser Wettbewerbs von 1797/99 zum Einfluss der Zeichen auf das Denken
Kerstin Ohligschlaeger-Lim UniversitĂ€t Potsdam Im folgenden soll die Untersuchung des Pariser Wettbewerbs zum Einfluss der Zeichen auf das Denken (1797/99) vorgestellt werden. Dieser Wettbewerb gliedert sich in epistemologische und semiotische Diskurse des ausgehenden 18. Jahrhunderts in Frankreich ein, in denen…
Spanish language in Portuguese texts (16th to 19th centuries)
SĂłnia Duarte Centro de LinguĂstica da Universidade do Porto Despite the geographic and linguistic proximity between Spain and Portugal, the first Spanish grammar to be printed in Portugal and for Portuguese native speakers only dates back to 1848, as explored…
Tagged with: history of linguistics, Portugal
Posted in 16th century, 17th century, 18th century, 19th century, Article, History, Linguistics, Portugal, Spain
Posted in 16th century, 17th century, 18th century, 19th century, Article, History, Linguistics, Portugal, Spain
John Stoddart’s The Philosophy of Language: the “last truly universalist work”
Joseph L. Subbiondo California Institute of Integral Studies Introduction Sir John Stoddart (1773-1856) served as Englandâs advocate in Malta from 1803-1807, editor of The Times from 1814 to 1816, founder and editor of The New Times from 1816 to 1826,…
Tagged with: John Stoddart, universal grammar, William Hazlitt
Posted in 18th century, 19th century, Article, History, Philosophy
Posted in 18th century, 19th century, Article, History, Philosophy
History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences 