David Moore University of Western Australia Introduction The view that Australian Aboriginal languages are primitive endured into the twentieth century and is still widespread throughout the Australian community. ‘Primitive languages’ were a means of using linguistic evidence from a language to…
Blog Archives
Primitive Languages: linguistic determinism and the description of Aranda eighty years on
Tagged with: Arrernte, Strehlow
Posted in 19th century, 20th century, Article, Australia, Grammars, History, Linguistics, Missionary Linguistics, Typology
Posted in 19th century, 20th century, Article, Australia, Grammars, History, Linguistics, Missionary Linguistics, Typology
Benvenuto Terracini and the history of linguistics between the 19th and 20th century
Diego Stefanelli University of Pavia Benvenuto Terracini (1886–1968) was a notable Italian linguist who lived through all the most important methodological innovations that characterize linguistics in the first half of the 20th century. In the Italian context, he played a…
Tagged with: Benedetto Croce, Benvenuto Terracini, Hugo Schuchardt, linguistic historiography, stylistics
Posted in 19th century, 20th century, Article, History, Italy, Linguistics
Posted in 19th century, 20th century, Article, History, Italy, Linguistics
From godly analogy to “distant like floating clouds”: the inevitability of the Sino-Dene hypothesis and the scalability of comparative linguistics
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…
Speech act theory and Georg von der Gabelentz
Sven Staffeldt University of Würzburg 1. The modernity of the ancestors There is a trend in linguistics – or maybe even in general – to reclaim the works of older authors. Older authors are sometimes used as sources of information…
Tagged with: Gabelentz, pragmatics, speech act theory
Posted in 19th century, Article, Europe, History, Linguistics, Pragmatics
Posted in 19th century, Article, Europe, History, Linguistics, Pragmatics
Missionary-induced language change, on the trail of the conditional in Nafsan, central Vanuatu
Nick Thieberger University of Melbourne Can a missionary make a change to a language so that an existing construction is replaced by one based on English? This is what appears to have happened in Nafsan, Efate, in Vanuatu, which has independently…
Tagged with: Efate, missionary linguistics, Vanuatu
Posted in 19th century, Article, Field linguistics, Grammars, History, Linguistics, Missionary Linguistics
Posted in 19th century, Article, Field linguistics, Grammars, History, Linguistics, Missionary Linguistics
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…
Tagged with: Joseph Greenberg
Posted in 20th century, America, Article, History, Linguistics, Typology
Posted in 20th century, America, Article, History, Linguistics, Typology
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, Article, Europe, History, Linguistics, Phonology
Posted in 20th century, Article, 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, Article, Field linguistics, History, Linguistics
Posted in 19th century, 20th century, America, Article, 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, Article, Austria, Dialectology, Europe, Germany, History, Linguistics
Posted in 20th century, Article, 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, Article, Australia, Field linguistics, History, Linguistics, Missionary Linguistics
Posted in 19th century, 20th century, Article, Australia, Field linguistics, History, Linguistics, Missionary Linguistics
