Yukun Zeng University of Chicago 1. The Problem of Scaling in Language Classification Language classification is a matter of scale and scaling. Most basically, it assigns languages into mutually exclusive categories. The scale underpins the categorization but does not come…
Blog Archives
Joseph Greenberg’s comparative notebooks
Judith Kaplan University of Pennsylvania In John Webster Spargo’s 1931 translation of Holger Pedersen’s contribution to the genre of Disziplingeschichte, readers are introduced to a legion of mostly well-bearded men, marching toward the ‘discovery’ of the Comparative Method. Summing up…
The Prague Linguistic Circle and the Analogy between Musicology and Linguistics
Bart Karstens University of Amsterdam In recent historiography an upsurge in interest in the interaction between academic disciplines can be seen. This is in no small part due to the rise of the history of humanities as a specialized field…
Tagged with: history of humanities, musicology, Prague Linguistic Circle, Roman Jakobson
Posted in 20th century, Europe, History, Linguistics, Phonology
Posted in 20th century, Europe, History, Linguistics, Phonology
La langue de Boas. Quelques remarques à propos de l’écriture de Franz Boas.
Chloé Laplantine UMR 7597 – Laboratoire Histoire des Théories Linguistiques, Université Paris Diderot As we require a new point of view now, so future times will require new points of view and for these the texts, and ample texts, must…
Tagged with: Franz Boas
Posted in 19th century, 20th century, America, Field linguistics, History, Linguistics
Posted in 19th century, 20th century, America, Field linguistics, History, Linguistics
Mapping Language: linguistic cartography as a topic for the history of science
Jan David Braun University of Vienna Introduction Beginning with the history of cartography, this paper will first discuss the development of spatial thinking in different scientific contexts. It will then deal with the practice of linguistic mapping in German dialectology.…
Tagged with: cartography, dialect geography, Dialectology
Posted in 20th century, Austria, Dialectology, Europe, Germany, History, Linguistics
Posted in 20th century, Austria, Dialectology, Europe, Germany, History, Linguistics
Missionary linguistics and the German contribution to Central Australian language research and fieldwork 1890-1910
David Moore University of Western Australia Introduction This article explores the outstanding contribution of German Lutheran missionaries to linguistics, language documentation and translation in Aboriginal languages in Central Australia from the last decade of the nineteenth century to the years…
Tagged with: Strehlow
Posted in 19th century, 20th century, Australia, Field linguistics, History, Linguistics, Missionary Linguistics
Posted in 19th century, 20th century, Australia, Field linguistics, History, Linguistics, Missionary Linguistics
Ludwig Noiré and the Debate on Language Origins in the 19th Century
Jacopo D’Alonzo Sorbonne Nouvelle & Sapienza Università di Roma Introduction Linguistic naturalism was one of the main positions taken in linguistic research during the 19th century (for France, see Auroux 1984 and Desmet 1996; for England, see Aarsleff 1983; for…
Tagged with: animal communication systems, language and labour, language origins, linguistic naturalism, linguistics, Ludwig Noiré
Posted in 19th century, 20th century, Europe, History, Linguistics, Philosophy
Posted in 19th century, 20th century, Europe, History, Linguistics, Philosophy
The Chilean Academy of the Spanish Language: the institutionalization of a discourse community
Darío Rojas University of Chile In the present entry, I will make an initial case for the thesis that the Academia Chilena de la Lengua (Chilean Academy of the Spanish Language, from this point forward “Chilean Academy”), founded in 1885,…
Tagged with: Academia Chilena de la Lengua, Chile, Spanish
Posted in 19th century, 20th century, America, Chile, History, Language teaching, Lexicography, Linguistics, Spanish
Posted in 19th century, 20th century, America, Chile, History, Language teaching, Lexicography, Linguistics, Spanish
The secret history of grammaticalization
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…
Tagged with: aesthetics, agglutination, Gabelentz, grammaticalization, Heine, Hopper and Traugott, idealism, Lehmann, Meillet, positivism, Vossler
Posted in 19th century, 20th century, Europe, History, Linguistics, Pragmatics, Semantics
Posted in 19th century, 20th century, Europe, History, Linguistics, Pragmatics, Semantics
Aree, volumi e spazi: la geometria linguistica di Hjelmslev
Lorenzo Cigana Université de Liège Questo nostro intervento si concentra su alcuni aspetti del pensiero hjelmsleviano e della teoria glossematica in cui è più forte il respiro interdisciplinare che intreccia tra loro almeno i seguenti problemi: a) il ruolo gnoseologico…
