Jacques François University of Caen-Normandy http://www.interlingua.fr 1. A forgotten German Enlightenment philosopher Johann Christoph Adelung (1732–1806) was one of the main promoters of the Volksaufklärung (popular Enlightenment) in the vein of Christian Wolff, eager to synthetize what the broad cultivated…
Blog Archives
Galant grammarians: Donneau de Visé’s 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 Visé (1638–1710) — journalist and royal historiographer under Louis XIV — the bestselling…
Podcast episode 4: Interview with Jürgen Trabant on Wilhelm von Humboldt
In this episode, we talk to Jürgen Trabant about Wilhelm von Humboldt.
Podcast episode 3: Language classification
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.
Podcast episode 2: Comparative-historical linguistics – Bopp and Grimm
In this episode, we look at the emergence of comparative-historical grammar, focusing on the work of Franz Bopp and Jacob Grimm.
Has the LSA Been a Generativist-Dominated Organisation?
Frederick J. Newmeyer University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and University of Washington There are two stories about how the field of linguistics (at least in the United States) reacted sociologically to the advent of generative grammar. I call…
Podcast episode 1: Pre-history of comparative-historical linguistics
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.
Une bonne langue pour chanter ? Réflexions sur les caractéristiques phonétiques des langues et sur le chant baroque
Claudia Schweitzer Histoire des Théories Linguistiques, CNRS, Université de Paris Dans sa Lettre sur la musique française (1753 : 91), Rousseau déclare « qu’il n’y a ni mesure ni mélodie dans la Musique Française, parce que la langue n’en est pas…
The journal WORD and the structural heritage of usage-based linguistics: Three functional tenets and an overarching principle
Enrico Torre Università degli Studi di Genova The first issue of WORD was launched in 1945, announced on its front cover as “the journal of the Linguistic Circle of New York, devoted to the study of linguistic science in all…
The foreign entanglements of Mandarin Chinese in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
MÃ¥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…
History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences 