Recent publications in the history and philosophy of the language sciences – July 2021

Christelle Dodane & Claudia Schweitzer, dir. 2021. Histoire de la description de la parole : de l’introspection à l’instrumentation. Paris : Champion. Bibliothèque de grammaire et de linguistique, 65. 406 p. ISBN : 9782745355959
Publisher’s website

L’objectif de ce livre est de retracer les changements qui se sont opérés dans la description de la parole du XVIe jusqu’au début du XXe siècle et de rassembler des travaux de spécialistes de différentes époques historiques et spécialités, qui sont généralement traitées séparément. C’est ce croisement interdisciplinaire qui permet de montrer et d’expliquer de manière fine le passage progressif d’une méthode introspective utilisée par les anciens grammairiens à une méthode de type expérimentale utilisée par les phonéticiens de la fin du XIXe siècle. Grâce aux différentes spécialités des auteur(e)s (histoire de la langue, articulation, prosodie, phonétique, acoustique, prononciation, phoniatrie, musicologie, rhétorique, gestualité), il est possible d’aborder une variété de méthodes et d’approches d’étude de la langue parlée.

Organisé en trois parties, cet ouvrage propose une description de la prosodie du XVIe au début du XXe siècle, de l’articulation des sons de la parole et présente ensuite des travaux qui allient une description historique à des méthodes d’analyse contemporaines.

Il convie ainsi le lecteur à cheminer au cours des siècles et à découvrir, en compagnie des différents auteur(e)s qui ont contribué à la richesse de cet ouvrage, l’évolution de la pensée et de la description de la parole qui en découle, tout en s’inscrivant dans les courants esthétiques et culturels de chaque époque.

Table of contents

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Posted in Publications

Podcast episode 16: Interview with Chloé Laplantine on Émile Benveniste

In this episode, we talk to Chloé Laplantine about the life and work of French structuralist Émile Benveniste.

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Posted in Podcast

CfP: Abralin International Congress, 22–30 Sept 2021

The main theme of InterAb 12 will be “Linguistics Challenges in Open Science”. This edition will be completely online. Proposals in all areas of linguistics are welcome. Papers covering the main theme will be considered for keynote.

All InterAb12 activities will be broadcast on Abralin’s YouTube channel with free and open access to everyone.

Submission deadline: 15 July (talks), 31 July (posters)

Further information: https://interab12.abralin.org/en/about/

Posted in Announcements, Conferences and workshops

Recent publications in the history and philosophy of the language sciences – June 2021

Velmezova, Ekaterina, ed. 2020. La Discussion Linguistique de 1950: 70 Ans Après [Epistemologica et Historiographica Linguistica Lausannensia 2]. Faculté des lettres, UNIL & Индрик. Lausanne & Moscou. 194 p. ISBN : 978-5-91674-626-6
Publisher’s website

The authors of the volume – researchers from Switzerland, Russia, Georgia, France, Estonia and Finland – share their thoughts on an event that occurred seventy years ago: the famous linguistic discussion that took place in the Soviet Union in 1950 and which radically changed the Soviet humanities. Articles published in Russian, French and English discuss the general context of the Soviet era that made the discussion possible, the Soviet languages and “national linguistic traditions” that were in one way or another influenced by or referred to in the discussion and the reception of the discussion in the West.

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Posted in Publications

Public talk online: The “Political” and the Language-Dialect Dichotomy, or Fact-Checking Noam Chomsky

Monday 21 June 2021, 11:00am CEST

The “Political” and the Language-Dialect Dichotomy, or Fact-Checking Noam Chomsky

Alexander Maxwell (Victoria University of Wellington)

In this talk, Alexander Maxwell suggests that linguists pondering the language-dialect dichotomy fall into two schools: apolitical agnostics who view the dichotomy as something political and therefore not linguistic, and objective assertionists, who declare the dichotomy ought to be analyzed on linguistic grounds to the exclusion of political factors. Since Noam Chomsky seems to straddle both schools, the paper then examines his comments on the dichotomy at length, fact-checking assertions concerning the linguistic diversity of Romance and Chinese and the putative scholarly consensus about Dutch and German. The extraordinary role of “the political” as a bugbear in linguistic thought also informs how scholars invoke the Weinreich witticism, and why it generates so much cognitive dissonance.

Please register using this form to receive the Zoom link to the talk: https://forms.gle/Dfc9w93rk8UuFzs77

This talk is organized by Raf Van Rooy (University of Oslo & KU Leuven Center for the Historiography of Linguistics), and partly frames the course “The history of western linguistics: A survey in myths”, taught at the University of Graz this spring.

Posted in Announcements, Conferences and workshops

Podcast episode 15: Roman Jakobson, Prague Circle structuralism and phonology

Picasso: Girl with a Mandolin

In this episode, we enter the age of classical structuralism by exploring the phonological research of Roman Jakobson and his colleague Nikolai Trubetzkoy undertaken within the Prague Linguistic Circle.

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Posted in Podcast

Recent publications in the history and philosophy of the language sciences – May 2021

Maupas, Charles. 2021. Grammaire et syntaxe françoise. Édition de Nathalie Fournier. Paris : Classiques Garnier. (Descriptions et théories de la langue française, 4, in Grammaires françaises des xviie et xviiie siècles, 2). 637 p. ISBN : 978-2-406-10455-1
Publisher’s website

La Grammaire & syntaxe françoise de Charles Maupas (1607 et 1618) se signale par sa puissance théorique, son caractère méthodique et sa fine observation de l’usage du français. Cette édition critique entend montrer en quoi elle est un jalon décisif dans la jeune tradition grammaticale du français.


Chiflet, R. P. Laurent. 2021 [1659]. Essay d’une parfaite grammaire de la langue françoise. Édition de Cendrine Pagani-Naudet. Paris : Classiques Garnier (Grammaires françaises des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, 3, in Descriptions et théories de la langue française 5). 525 p. ISBN : 978-2-406-10458-2
Publisher’s website

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Posted in Publications, Uncategorized

Interview 1 : The Owl of Minerva takes flight only when dusk begins to gather”: Inverview with Sylvain Auroux

Interview conducted in Lyon, on March 10th, 2021 by Chloé Laplantine.
Film directed by Emilie Aussant, Chloé Laplantine and Rafaello Pisu.
Translation by Andrew Eastman.
Music from Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Indes galantes (interpreted by Les Arts Florissants, at the Philarmonie de Paris).

The text of the interview has been edited in a bilingual version French / English, available here.

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Posted in Interviews

John Goldsmith – Battle in the Mind Fields

John Goldsmith (University of Chicago) has made a series of 10 videos – one for each chapter – about the book Battle in the Mind Fields, which he wrote with Bernard Laks (University of Paris) and published in 2019. A French version (Aux origines des sciences humaines: Linguistique, philosophie, logique, psychologie 1840–1940) is coming out from Gallimard in fall 2021.

You can find the first of John’s videos embedded below and all ten up on his YouTube channel.

Posted in 19th century, 20th century, History, Linguistics

Les Dossiers d’HEL déménagent !

Les Dossiers d’HEL, the electronic supplement of the journal Histoire Épistémologie Langage, have moved.
You can find them at their new address :
http://shesl.org/index.php/les-dossiers-dhel/

Here are the issues already published :


Dossiers d’HEL n°1
Wilhelm Von Humboldt : éditer et lire Humboldt



Dossiers d’HEL n°2
Karl Bühler : Science du langage et mémoire européenne


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Posted in Announcements, Publications

Upcoming events


2-4 September 2026
Nottingham (UK)
Henry Sweet Society Colloquium 2026
(Non-)Native Speakers in the History of Linguistic Ideas


10-11 September 2026
Fribourg (Switzerland)
The Prague Linguistic Circle in Geneva and Paris: Circulations and Decenterings


19-21 November 2026
Sofia (Bulgaria)
La linguistique ‘fonctionnelle’ cent ans après la fondation du Cercle linguistique de Prague


28-29 January 2027
Paris (France)
SHESL Conference 2027
History of terminology – Diachronic terminology The emergence of a terminological conscienceness


31 March–3 April 2027
Vigo (Spain), Vila Real (Portugal)
13th International Conference on Missionary Linguistics


23-27 August 2027
Niterói, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
ICHoLS XVII