In this interview, we talk to Philip Kraut about the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, their scholarly contributions and political engagement.
Read more ›Recent publications in the history and philosophy of the language sciences – April 2025
Velmezova, Ekaterina, ed. 2024. Tartu in the History of Slavic Philology, vol. 2 : Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845-1929). Tartu: University of Tartu Press (Acta Slavica Estonica, 18). 160 p. ISBN 978-9916-27-795-9
Publisher’s webpage
Значение Тарту в истории филологии переоценить трудно. На протяжении долгого времени этот город находился — как находится и сегодня — на пересечении разных культурных и академических традиций, что во многом и обусловило как его богатейшую интеллектуальную историю, так и сегодняшнюю репутацию одного из важнейших университетских центров северной Европы. Несомненно значение академического Тарту и для истории славянской филологии — этой теме уже посвящались и многочисленные работы, и академические конференции. Научное сообщество продолжает размышлять над ней и сегодня. Тарту в истории славянской филологии посвящен и этот сборник, в котором приняли участие ученые, работающие в рамках разных академических дисциплин и научных традиций в нескольких странах; среди них — и лингвисты, и литературоведы, и историки науки. Продолжение работы над этой интереснейшей темой последует.
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The Neogrammarians as a Scientific School?
Beijia Chen
Freie Universität Berlin
My dissertation, titled Die Junggrammatiker als wissenschaftliche Schule? – eine wissenschaftssoziologische Untersuchung anhand linguistischer Zeitschriftenzitationen aus einer Netzwerkperspektive (submitted in February 2025, Freie Universität Berlin), was recently discussed in episode 45 of the History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences podcast. However, the conversation primarily focused on the broader concepts and thoughts underpinning the research framework without delving into the details of the project. This post aims to share a more detailed account of the research, including its design, methodology, and key findings.
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CHSTM History of the Language Sciences upcoming online meetings
The CHSTM working group History of the Language Sciences has two upcoming meetings, in April and May. All meeting are held online. For further information and meeting link, see the working group website. The working group will resume in September 2025, after the northern summer break.
Tuesday, April 8, 2025, 9:00 – 10:30 am EDT (US)
Anna Schewelew (University of California, Santa Barbara) will be joining us to discuss research from her dissertation project. Anna’s research draws on translation theory, media theory and the history of science in order to examine assumptions about language, meaning, multilingualism and the act of reading that are implicit in machine translation systems. Her presentation will be informed by other interests that include mathematical and non-mathematical notions of probability in literature and art, fictions of translation, performance studies and the Soviet Cosmopolis.
Tuesday, May 13, 2025, 9:00 – 10:30 am EDT (US)
Bethany Anderson (University of Illinois) “Towards a (Cybernetic) Human Science’: Margaret Mead, Communication, and the Study of Culture at a Distance”
Posted in Announcements, Conferences and workshops
Podcast episode 45: Beijia Chen on Neogrammarian networks
In this interview, we talk to Beijia Chen about the citation networks binding the Neogrammarians as a school.
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Posted in Podcast
12th International Conference on Missionary Linguistics – Early Linguistic Encounters between Europe and Asia
Organized by National Science and Technology Council, R.O.C.; Institute of History, NTHU; Institute of Linguistics, NTHU; Institute of Taiwan Languages and Language Teaching, NTHU; Center for Sustainable Development of Linguistic Diversity in Taiwan (SDLD); Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, NTHU; Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, HU Berlin.
Dates: 28-30 March, 2025
Place: Hsinchu (Taiwan)
Information and program: https://sites.google.com/gapp.nthu.edu.tw/icmlxii/home
The 12th International Conference on Missionary Linguistics will take place in Hsinchu (Taiwan) from March 28 to 30, 2025, organized by the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences and the Center for Sustainable Development of Linguistic Diversity in Taiwan (SDLD) of National Tsinghua University. Situated at the intersections of linguistic historiography, historical linguistics and historical sociolinguistics, research in the field of Missionary Linguistics aims at understanding how and for what purpose Western missionaries documented and analyzed hitherto unknown languages of Asia, Africa and the Americas. Covering the period from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, primary sources of interest are grammars, dictionaries, and teaching manuals.
The aim of the conference is to bring together researchers who study historical language change, the historical development of linguistic terms and concepts, early ideological conceptualizations of language or other relevant topics through the lens of missionary documents. As with the previous conferences in Oslo, São Paulo, Macau/Hong Kong, Valladolid (Spain), Mérida (Mexico), Tokyo, Bremen (Germany), Lima, Manila, Rome, and Santa Rosa (Argentina), the conference aims to cover a broad spectrum of regions and periods.
Posted in Conferences and workshops
Recent publications in the history and philosophy of the language sciences – March 2025
Joby, Christopher. 2025. Christian Mission in Seventeenth-Century Taiwan. A Reception History of Texts, Beliefs, and Practices. Leiden: Brill (Brill Series in Taiwan Studies, 3). ISBN 978-90-04-71635-3
Publisher’s website
This is the first book-length study of the reception of Christianity and the epistemic outcomes of contact between Protestant and Catholic missionaries and Indigenous Austronesians in the contact zone of seventeenth-century colonial Taiwan.
In the Age of European Expansion, Dutch Reformed and Spanish Catholic missionaries attempted to win the souls of Indigenous Austronesian people in Taiwan. Christopher Joby examines the strategies that the missionaries employed to overcome the gap between their own cultures and languages and those of the Indigenous Austronesians or Formosans in the contact zone of seventeenth-century Taiwan, and evaluates the success of these strategies. As such, this book is a reception history of the texts, beliefs, and practices that Reformed Protestant and Catholic missionaries introduced to convert the Formosans to their mode of Christianity. Using many linguistic and non-linguistic examples, this approach allows for a ‘complementary colour perspective’ by comparing the epistemic outcomes of the Dutch Reformed and Spanish Catholic missions.
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Podcast episode 44: Ian Stewart on the Celts and historical-comparative linguistics
In this interview, we talk to Ian Stewart about modern ideas surrounding the Celts and how these relate to historical-comparative linguistics.
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Posted in Podcast
Recent publications in the history and philosophy of the language sciences – February 2025
Dubourg Glatigny, Pascal, ed. 2024. Esperantists in the Twentieth Century: Making Connections in an Age of Division. [Special issue] Cultural History 13(2). ISSN 2045-290X
Publisher’s website
Introduction: Esperantists in the Twentieth Century: Making Connections in an Age of Division
Pascal Dubourg Glatigny
Two Communist Esperantists: A Bulgarian-Japanese Dialogue
Ulrich Lins
Revolutionary Tongues: Esperanto, Marxist Linguistics, and Anti-imperial Struggles in East Asia, 1930s–1940s
Edwin Michielsen
Facing the Choice of Language in Esperanto Literature: Edwin de Kock, Hasegawa Teru and Julius Balbin between Emotion and Ideology
Pascal Dubourg Glatigny
Posted in Publications
Cfp – XV Congreso Internacional de la Sociedat Española de Historiografía Lingüística XV CISEHL2026
Date : 17-20 March 2026
Place : Barcelona (Spain)
Prescriptivism and descriptivism from the peripheries
The Department of Translation and Language Sciences of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, with the collaboration of the research group Infolex, is pleased to announce the celebration of the XV Congreso Internacional de la Sociedat Española de Historiografía Lingüística, with the title: Prescriptivismo y descriptivismo desde las periferias. It will be held at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Poblenou campus) on 17, 18, 19 and 20 March 2026.
Following the consolidated trajectory in the holding of on-site conferences, this event will include plenary lectures, round tables and communications. This edition will deal particularly with the historiography of prescriptive and descriptive works, although the general topics of linguistic historiography (history of theoretical problems, history of linguistic models and theories, etc.) will be present, as usual in the international congresses that the SEHL dedicates to this discipline.
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Posted in Announcements, Conferences and workshops
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