Diversity, linguistics and domination: how linguistic theory can feed a kind of politics most linguists would oppose

Posted on 11 May 2016 by nickriemer — 18 Comments

Nick Riemer
University of Sydney & HTL, Université Paris-Diderot

Antonio Gramsci, a co-founder of the Italian Communist Party and one of the twentieth century’s most prominent intellectuals. Gramsci studied linguistics and wrote about linguistic topics throughout his life. ‘Study, because we’ll need all your intelligence’.

What connections might linguists’ professional activities have to politics? Most recently, the question has been posed by the collective self-dismissal of the Lingua board and the journal’s metamorphosis into the open-access Glossa – a welcome attempt to break the monopoly of profiteering multinationals over the dissemination of research. Initiatives like Glossa or Language Science Press are much-needed, and all too rare, instances of scholarly activism against the widespread ‘enclosure’ of knowledge characteristic of our age (Riemer forthcoming). As such, they are compatible with the ‘vague form of liberal progressiveness’ that Hutton (2001: 295) has identified as the ethos of contemporary linguistics. But how might other aspects of linguistics as an institution fit, or not, into this frame? What can we say about how linguistics might relate to characteristic progressive priorities like support for diversity, opposition to discrimination and domination, commitment to democracy, and to the overall political contexts in which efforts to advance those priorities are situated?

There’s been little shortage of critical discussion of linguistics’ ideological and political valencies, though it has often come from sources other than linguists themselves.[1] Linguists have, in fact, on the whole been strikingly reluctant to direct against their own discipline the kinds of critique that swept over the rest of the humanities in the final third of the last century. Linguistics’ scientistic pretensions act as a strong brake on any attempt even to think in critical terms about the epistemic status of the discipline’s results, let alone to explore the field’s wider political effects or determinants.[2]

Reflection on both, however, is important, in the interests of disciplinary self-awareness at least. Not just that, though: linguists who identify with the ‘vague form of liberal progressiveness’ mentioned by Hutton, or whose political sympathies lie further to the left, have an interest in thinking not just about how social and political factors influence linguistics, but also about how what they do as linguists might feed back into the societies to which they belong. Like other academic corporations, linguists probably mostly have a strong sense of their own distinctness. But we are nevertheless a part of the body politic, and our professional activities influence it in various ways.
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Tagged with: critical theory, Gramsci, philosophy of linguistics
Posted in Article, Linguistics

The secret history of grammaticalization

Posted on 28 April 2016 by James McElvenny — 4 Comments

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 of the term “grammaticalization” in more or less its present-day sense with Antoine Meillet (1866–1936), but recognises an intellectual lineage extending back at least to the Enlightenment. Among the immediate predecessors of Meillet, Georg von der Gabelentz (1840–1893) is accorded a significant place for proposing an account of the emergence of grammatical forms that prefigures Meillet’s in several key respects. The standard narrative is without doubt correct, but at the same time excessively sketchy, omitting important details. The place of Gabelentz, in particular, deserves greater attention.

Christian Karl Reisig as an upholder of philosophical linguistics in 19th century Germany

Posted on 13 April 2016 by jacqueslouisfrancois — 1 Comment

Jacques François
Université de Caen & CNRS

In his introduction (p.6-18) to the Vorlesungen über lateinische Sprachwissenschaft (Lectures on Latin Linguistics, 1839), Christian Karl Reisig offered a philosophically grounded account of the epistemology of language as a Prinzipienwissenschaft (“Science of Principles”, in Hermann Paul’s wording, 1880). There is a crucial difference however between these two endeavours, namely : Reisig – who gave his lectures in 1817, i.e. twelve years before their publication – was a successor both to Wilhelm von Humboldt (and indirectly to Johann Gottfried Herder) in terms of conflating language, people and nation (in his principles 2 and 5, see below) and to Immanuel Kant in terms of his application to language of the latter’s table of the categories of understanding (see principles 6-7). In constrast to Paul, the impact of comparative grammar is hardly perceptible (see principles 12-13), although Reisig was certainly aware of the works of Friedrich Schlegel (1808) and Franz Bopp (1816).[1]
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Tagged with: Humboldt, Karl Reisig, semantics, semasiology
Posted in 19th century, Article, Europe, Germany, History, Linguistics, Pragmatics, Semantics

How Galilean is the ‘Galilean Method’?

Posted on 2 April 2016 by christinab4 — 17 Comments

Christina Behme
Mount St Vincent University

In many recent (and some not so recent) publications Noam Chomsky makes an appeal to Galilean science and claims the Galilean framework justifies his own approach to scientific inquiry (e.g., Chomsky, 2002, 2009, 2010, 2012). Allegedly, this approach has a distinguished scientific and philosophical tradition. “Chomsky’s science of language is a science in the Cartesian-Galilean tradition. It is a branch of the study of biology” (McGilvray 2005: 4). In this blog post I argue that this approach should be rejected because it rests on a superficial and incorrect interpretation of Galileo’s work, has been rejected already by Rene Descartes, and is contrary to established scientific practice.

Without a doubt, Noam Chomsky is the best known linguist and his success has been linked to his persuasive debating style and his emphasis on rigorous scientific methodology for linguistic research. Yet, over the years Chomsky’s attitude towards the scientific method has changed, and he acts now as if no data can challenge his own proposals. For example when asked what kind of empirical discovery would lead to the rejection of the strong minimalist thesis, Chomsky replied: “All the phenomena of language appear to refute it” (Chomsky, 2002, 124, emphasis added). Yet, he is not willing to abandon the minimalist thesis. Instead he suggests dismissing the data that seem to challenge it. Chomsky claims that such a large-scale dismissal of data that are inconvenient for his view is based on a “Galilean style… [which] is the recognition that…the array of phenomena is some distortion of the truth … [and] it often makes good sense to disregard phenomena and search for principles” (Chomsky, 2002, 99). Chomsky calls this attitude the “Galilean move towards discarding recalcitrant phenomena” (Chomsky, 2002, 102). He claims that massive data dismissal was advocated by Galileo: “[Galileo] dismissed a lot of data; he was willing to say: ‘Look, if the data refute the theory, the data are probably wrong.’ And the data that he threw out were not minor” (Chomsky, 2002, 98). He then proposes that is was accepted by other famous scientists (e.g., Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Monod) and that it “is pretty much the way science often seems to work …You just see that some ideas simply look right, and then you sort of put aside the data that refute them” (Chomsky, 2009, 36). Data-dismissal has been advocated numerous times in Chomsky’s publications, culminating in the argument from the Norman Conquest: “… if you want to study distinctive properties of language – what really makes it different from the digestive system … you’re going to abstract away from the Norman Conquest. But that means abstracting away from the whole mass of data that interests the linguist who wants to work on a particular language” (Chomsky, 2012, 84, emphasis added). Arguably the most bizarre invocation of the Galilean style occurs when Chomsky suggests: “…if we want a productive theory-constructive [effort], we’re going to have to relax our stringent criteria and accept things that we know don’t make any sense, and hope that some day somebody will make some sense out of them” (Chomsky, 2012, 169).

Chomsky is not the only defender of the Galilean style. It has been suggested that “[a] significant feature of the Generative Revolution in linguistics has been the development of a Galilean style in that field” (Freidin & Vergnaud, 2001, 647). Attaching the label Galilean to a style of inquiry suggests two things. First, it implies that Galileo worked using the same or a very similar style. Second, given the massive success of the Galilean scientific revolution, it suggests that work adopting a Galilean style is superior to (all) other work. While the second suggestion seems uncontroversial, the first needs support from the actual work of Galileo. Below I argue that the success of Galileo as a scientist was not based on a massive dismal of data that were inconvenient to his theories and that he would have rejected proposals that required him “to accept things that make no sense”.

Aree, volumi e spazi: la geometria linguistica di Hjelmslev

Posted on 10 March 2016 by Lorenzo Cigana — Leave a comment

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 della lingua, b) la modalità in cui la teoria linguistica rappresenta il suo oggetto, c) la questione di stabilire se tale modalità sia iconica, metaforica o costitutiva. Il filo rosso che intendiamo seguire, e che collega i problemi appena menzionati, è l’idea di spazio nella lingua e nella teoria glossematica del linguaggio. Si tratta di un aspetto già studiato approfonditamente da Picciarelli (1999), cui rimandiamo senz’altro. D’altra parte, il motivo per cui intendiamo tornare su tali questioni non è solo per dare continuità a una prospettiva di ricerca sovente trascurata, ma anche perché alcune considerazioni, forse di dettaglio ma proprio per questo importanti, restano in qualche modo pendenti: su di esse vale la pena tornare. Read more ›

Tagged with: Hjemslev
Posted in 20th century, Article, Denmark, Europe, History, Linguistics, Structuralism

Networking and obstacles to the development of the language sciences as reflected in the correspondence of Rodolfo Lenz and Hugo Schuchardt

Posted on 17 February 2016 by Johannes Mücke — 3 Comments

Silvio Moreira de Sousa & Johannes Mücke
Hugo Schuchardt Archive, University of Graz

Rodolfo Lenz (1863-1938). Source: Filosofía U. De Chile, via Wikimedia Commons

As the call for papers for the upcoming Coloquio Rodolfo Lenz 2016 is open until February 22^nd (the conference will be held on May 5^th 2016, at the Universidad de Chile), a second look at the correspondence between Rodolfo Lenz and Hugo Schuchardt would seem to be timely and fortuitous.[1] The goal of this article, however, relates to Bachmann (2004), where a survey of the works of Rodolfo Lenz provides a sketch of his theoretical positions on linguistics – Lenz had a strong background in linguistics as practised in Germany – and an explanation of his range of works on Amerindian languages, which were influenced by his life in Chile (Bachmann 2004: 380).

While the letters from Lenz to Schuchardt were easily accessible – the Hugo Schuchardt Nachlass is preserved at the Sondersammlung of the university library in Graz – the letters from Schuchardt required a fair bit of networking: the Archivo Lenz is maintained by the Universidad Metropolitana de las Ciencias de Educación in Santiago de Chile and we had no contacts whatsoever to Chile. Luckily, through our participation in the 13^th International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences, we met Darío Rojas, who kindly provided us with pictures of the letters.

With a good amount of biographical information on both linguists already available online (cf. Dannemann 2000-2001, Hurch 2007, 2007-, Maas 2010, Mücke & Sousa 2015a), we will not repeat too many details here. Rodolfo (or Rudolf) Lenz, who studied in Bonn and Berlin, was hired by the Chilean government to teach at the Instituto Pedagógico and insofar took part in the German emigration movement to Chile in the 19^th century. Read more ›

Tagged with: history of creolistics, Hugo Schuchardt, Rudolf Lenz
Posted in 19th century, Article, Field linguistics, Germany, History, Linguistics

Program February-June 2016

Posted on 3 February 2016 by The Editor — Leave a comment

17 February	Networking and obstacles to the development of the language sciences as reflected in the correspondence of Rodolfo Lenz and Hugo Schuchardt. Silvio Moreira de Sousa and Johannes Mücke Hugo Schuchardt Archive, University of Graz
10 March	Aree, volumi e spazi: la geometria linguistica di Hjelmslev. Lorenzo Cigana Université de Liège
16 March	break
2 April	How Galilean is the ‘Galilean Method’? Christina Behme Mount St Vincent University
13 April	Christian Karl Reisig as an upholder of philosophical linguistics in 19th century Germany Jacques François Université de Caen & CNRS
28 April	The secret history of grammaticalization. James McElvenny Universität Potsdam
11 May	Diversity, linguistics and domination: how linguistic theory can feed a kind of politics most linguists would oppose Nick Riemer University of Sydney & Laboratoire d’histoire des théories linguistiques, Université Paris-Diderot
29 May	Anforderungen an eine serielle Untersuchung des Pariser Wettbewerbs von 1797/99 zum Einfluss der Zeichen auf das Denken Kerstin Ohligschlaeger Universität Potsdam
22 June	The utility of constructed languages A.W. Carus MCMP, LMU, Munich

Posted in Programs

Society for the History of Linguistics in the Pacific SHLP5

Posted on 4 January 2016 by The Editor — 2 Comments

Call for Papers
5-7 September 2016, Universität Potsdam

[Program now available: https://hiphilangsci.net/shlp-5-program/ ]

The fifth biennial conference of the Society for the History of Linguistics in the Pacific will be held in Potsdam, Germany, 5-7 September 2016. With a strong contingent of participants from Australia and the Pacific region expected, the conference should provide an excellent opportunity for intercontinental contact and exchange.

Papers will be 20 minutes in length followed by 10 minutes of discussion. The theme of the conference is “Philological fieldwork”, although papers on any relevant topic are welcome.

Please submit abstracts by 30 April 2016 to James McElvenny, james.mcelvenny@gmail.com

Tagged with: SHLP2016, SHLP5, Society for the History of Linguistics in the Pacific
Posted in Announcements, Conferences and workshops

Spanish language in Portuguese texts (16th to 19th centuries)

Posted on 9 December 2015 by duartesonia2014 — 3 Comments

Sónia Duarte
Centro de Linguística da Universidade do Porto

Despite the geographic and linguistic proximity between Spain and Portugal, the first Spanish grammar to be printed in Portugal and for Portuguese native speakers only dates back to 1848, as explored in a previous post on this blog (Duarte 2014). That is especially interesting if we keep in mind that bibliographical resources concerning other not so similar or more distantly related languages appear as early as the 16^th century.

Nevertheless, as it is common knowledge to most people, Spanish was no stranger to Portuguese speakers prior to 1848. In fact, from the 16^th up to the 18^th century, it coexists with the native tongue in Portuguese territory, assuming the role of a prestige language favoured for political and editorial purposes – and this makes the whole situation even more bewildering. That period is commonly known as a period of bilingualism, although, in fact, it describes a diglossic situation.

We might ask ourselves, therefore, exactly what knowledge Portuguese people had of the Spanish language and what kind of information circulated in Portugal about such language and how. In this post I will attempt to address this issue by referring to the data that can be found in Portuguese grammars and orthographies from the beginning of the Portuguese metalinguistic tradition up to 1848 and concerning both the language itself as well as the linguistic representations or images and the purposes of that same information.

Bearing this in mind, I will now briefly approach the outcomes of the investigation on a corpus of texts from before 1848 that I’ve been studying for some time, which contains the 34 Portuguese grammatical and orthographical works listed bellow. Read more ›

Tagged with: history of linguistics, Portugal
Posted in 16th century, 17th century, 18th century, 19th century, Article, History, Linguistics, Portugal, Spain

Antoine Meillet et les massacres d’Arménie de 1915

Posted on 30 November 2015 by sebmoret — Leave a comment

Sébastien Moret
Université de Tartu / Université de Lausanne

L’année 2015 marque le centième anniversaire des tragiques événements que subirent les populations arméniennes de l’empire ottoman en 1915[1], événements auxquels la quasi-totalité de la communauté internationale attribue le terme de génocide. A cette occasion, l’année a vu se succéder toute une série de manifestations souvent symboliques. Ainsi, le 12 avril, lors d’une messe en l’honneur des Arméniens en la basilique Saint-Pierre de Rome, le pape François utilisa publiquement pour la première fois le terme génocide, donnant ainsi un cadre solennel et retentissant à la réitération de la reconnaissance par le Vatican du caractère génocidaire des massacres[2] ; quelques jours après, c’étaient les députés du Parlement européen qui avaient, à leur tour, réaffirmé la reconnaissance du génocide[3], lui adjoignant un hommage rendu aux victimes arméniennes et l’idée d’une journée internationale de commémoration des génocides « afin de réaffirmer le droit de tous les peuples et de toutes les nations du monde à la paix et à la dignité »[4].

A côté de ces manifestations « politiques », il faut mentionner aussi toute une série d’importantes manifestations scientifiques, publications ou colloques, souhaitant revenir sur ces événements[5]. Parmi ces dernières, nous en mentionnerons quelques-unes : l’ouvrage de Vincent Duclert (2015) sur La France face au génocide des Arméniens ; le colloque international « Le génocide des Arméniens de l’Empire ottoman dans la Grande Guerre 1915-2015 : cent ans de recherche » tenu à Paris en mars 2015 et dont les Actes ont déjà paru (Becker et al. 2015) ; enfin le livre du journaliste allemand Jürgen Gottschlich (2015) qui revient sur le rôle des Allemands dans les massacres.

Dans le cadre de ces quelques lignes, nous aimerions aussi revenir sur ces événements, mais en les appréhendant du point de vue de celui qui était à ce moment-là en Europe certainement « le meilleur connaisseur du domaine [arménien] parmi les linguistes occidentaux » (Lamberterie 2006, p. 161), celui qui avait à deux reprises déjà (en 1891 et en 1903) visité les territoires arméniens de Russie et de l’empire ottoman (Gandon 2014b, p. 27-33), celui enfin vers lequel, alors « maître incontesté » (Lamberterie 2006, p. 162) et spécialiste adoubé (ibid., p. 152), se tournaient non seulement ses collègues philologues et linguistes (ibid., p. 155), mais aussi les hommes politiques[6] quand il s’agissait de problèmes arméniens, à savoir Antoine Meillet (1866-1936).
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Tagged with: Antoine Meillet, Armenian, Ottoman Empire, Turkey
Posted in 20th century, Anatolia, Article, Europe, History, Linguistics