In this interview, we talk to Nick Riemer about how linguistic theory and political ideology can interact.
Read more ›Podcast episode 40: Interview with Nick Riemer on politics, linguistics and ideology
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PhD funding â Histoire des thĂ©ories linguistiques (UniversitĂ© Paris CitĂ©)
Université Paris Cité, the host institution for the Histoire des théories linguistiques (HTL; https://htl.cnrs.fr/) research group, has earmarked PhD funding for international students starting this year.
Students will enroll in the Linguistics Department (https://u-paris.fr/linguistique/en/home/) and be supervised by a member of HTL.
For some possible PhD (or MA) topics and a list of HTL researchers able to supervise dissertations, please see https://htl.cnrs.fr/formation/theses/
Any other member of the research group (https://htl.cnrs.fr/equipe/) can co-supervise a PhD student.
Funding is for 3 years. Knowledge of French is helpful but not necessary. Dissertations can be written in English or French.
Please contact any member of the research group before June 7th if interested.
Finalized proposals must be submitted to the doctoral school by June 23rd; interviews (zoom possible) will be held on July 1st.
Posted in Jobs and funding
Recent publications in the history and philosophy of the language sciences â May 2024
Minervini, Laura &Â Frank Savelsberg, ed. 2024. New Perspectives on Judeo-Spanish and the Linguistic History of the Sephardic Jews. Leiden: Brill. (Brill’s Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture, 41). 335 p. + index. ISBN 978-90-04-68502-4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004685062
Publisher’s website
At the intersection of Jewish studies and linguistic research, the essays assembled in this book approach the topic of the languages of Sephardic Jews from different perspectives, spanning chronologically from the Middle Ages to the present day. Drawing on diverse sources â from medical glossaries to inquisition archives, from rabbinic responsa to recordings of today’s speakers â the scholars collaborating on this project have endeavoured to reconstruct fragments of a complex and elusive linguistic reality, which over the centuries has been shaped by the historical experience of its speakers. An innovative collection of rigorously conducted synchronic and diachronic studies that contributes to expanding our knowledge and opening new perspectives on crucial issues, such as the effects of contact on the linguistic structures, the possibility of a norm for polycentric languages, the relationship between the lexicon of a language and the vitality of its speech community.
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Posted in Publications
Podcast episode 39: Interview with Ingrid Piller on Life in a New Language
In this interview, we talk to Ingrid Piller about her forthcoming co-authored book Life in a New Language.
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Posted in Podcast
A Tale of Two Translators
Floris Solleveld
University of Bristol
Linguistic fieldwork in the Indonesian archipelago, throughout the 19th century, was largely the province of the Dutch Bible Society (NBG). Two Bible translators stand out for their contributions to linguistic scholarship: J.F.C. Gericke on Javanese in the late 1820s-1850s, and Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk on Toba Batak, Malay, Lampung, Balinese, and various other languages in the second half of the century. Their methods were as similar as their personalities were different. Gericke was pious, deferential, a bit naĂŻve, and well liked by the colonial and Javanese elites; Van der Tuuk was an inveterate polemicist and open atheist who went half native, and whose eccentricities and vituperative letters earned him something of a legendary status. Here he is pouring out his heart to liberal theologian and orientalist Pieter Veth:
It is very sad that the bigoted part of the nation has to pay for the study of languages, the knowledge of which is of such interest to us. […] After all I was in the pay of a bunch of saints, who donât give a cuss about study, and speculate on the pockets of the pious cheese-buyers.
I gave up, and hold my mission for a complete failure, even if we may have learned something. All that has been done so far for indigenous languages I hold for trash, and this will not change as long as languages are not studied for their own sake. Whoever studies a language to translate the Bible into it is a miserable wretch, and so I despise myself more than anyone else. It was a cruel twist of fate that drove me into the arms of the Bible Society. […] In the Indies the Bible translatorâs job is anything but a honourable profession, as they always confuse you with a missionary, that is, a guy who has escaped from behind a counter; they even think you a pious figure, when they hear about your Biblical task. I donât need to tell you that I am not at all flattered by the predicate pious, and hold it for a swear word.[Van der Tuuk to Pieter Veth, Amsterdam, 14 June 1864]
Both Gericke and Van der Tuuk figure prominently in J.L. Swellengrebelâs history of the NBG in Indonesia, In Leijdeckers Voetspoor (2 vols., 1974-78); but while little has been written about Gericke since, Van der Tuukâs correspondence as preserved in the NBG archives has been edited not once but twice. The titles of both collections are telling: Rob Nieuwenhuisâ pocket volume of letters selected for their historical or literary merit is called De Pen in Gal Gedoopt (the pen dipped in bile, 1962/82), while Kees Groeneboerâs near-exhaustive annotated edition bears the title Een Vorst onder de Taalgeleerden (a king among linguists, 2002). Annoyingly enough, the sole passages that Groeneboer sometimes intentionally omits are about linguistic details.
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Posted in Article
Podcast episode 38: Interview with Dan Everett on C.S. Peirce and Peircean linguistics
In this interview, we talk to Dan Everett about the life and work of the American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce and Everett’s application of Peirce’s ideas to create a Peircean linguistics.
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Posted in Podcast
Recent publications in the history and philosophy of the language sciences â March 2024
Drechsel, Emanuel J. 2024. Wilhelm von Humboldt and Early American Linguistics: Resources and Inspirations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 346 p. ISBN 9781108966801. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108966801
Publisher’s webpage
Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767â1835), an early pioneer in the philosophy of language, linguistic and educational theory, was not only one of the ïŹrst European linguists to identify human language as a rule-governed system âthe foundational premise of Noam Chomsky’s generative theory â or to reïŹect on cognition in studying language; he was also a major scholar of Indigenous American languages. However, with his famous naturalist brother Alexander ‘stealing the show,’ Humboldt’s contributions to linguistics and anthropology have remained understudied in English until today. Drechsel’s unique book addresses this gap by uncovering and examining Humboldt’s inïŹuences on diverse issues in nineteenth-century American linguistics, from Peter S. Duponceau to the early Boasians, including Edward Sapir. This study shows how Humboldt’s ideas have shaped the ïŹeld in multiple ways. Shining a light on one of the early innovators of linguistics, it is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the ïŹeld.
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Posted in Publications
Podcast episode 37: Interview with Michael Lynch on conversation analysis and ethnomethodology
In this interview, we talk to Michael Lynch about the history of conversation analysis and its connections to ethnomethodology.
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Posted in Podcast
Language and the Missionary World Map
Floris Solleveld
University of Bristol
Two unpublished histories of the British and Foreign Bible Society were written in the 1820s to 1830s (BFBS Archives, Cambridge University Library, GBR/0374/BFBS/BSA/E3/8/1 and E3/8/2). It is unclear to me why there were two, both by BFBS staff, written at roughly the same time; they cover much the same topics, figures, and languages and do not express notably strong or divergent views. What is clearer is why they were never published. Both manuscripts are very lengthy compilations of excerpts, transcripts, summaries, and in the case of the largest manuscript, of literal cutting and pasting from printed BFBS reports. All that material is arranged by language, with a chapter for each language into which the Bible was translated before or during that period, and no attempt at overarching narrative or analysis.
The largest of the two manuscripts â in 15 volumes and envelopes of some 200 quarto pages each â was compiled by Thomas Pell Platt, the BFBS librarian from 1822 to 1831 and editor of its Greek, Amharic, and Ethiopic (Geez) versions. By far the largest chapter, filling two half-volumes, is taken up by the Serampore Mission. Serampore was a Danish colony near Calcutta, where a trio of Baptist missionaries churned out the unlikely number of 34 translations between 1800 and1837 (i.e. in part before the BFBS was founded). What makes the chapter so large is also that it is mostly a collage of the successive printed reports of the Serampore Brethren â reports that are otherwise hard to find even in Cambridge University Library. The same goes for Plattâs chapter about Sinhalese (the main language of Sri Lanka), where disagreements between missionaries turned into a veritable translation war. This recycling process makes Plattâs history a valuable historical source despite its lack of originality.
Read more ›Recent publications in the history and philosophy of the language sciences â February 2024
Dumarty, Lionel, ed. 2024. Langue idéale, langue réelle. Description et normalisation des langues classiques du IIIe s. av. J.-C. au XIIe s. de notre Úre. Turnhout : Brepols. (Corpus Christianorum). 268 p. ISBN 978-2-503-60901-0
Publisher’s website
Depuis la naissance de la grammaire, les premiers thĂ©oriciens de la langue se sont heurtĂ©s Ă un paradoxe : est-il possible de rĂ©duire la somme indĂ©finie des faits de langue Ă un ensemble fini de rĂšgles ? Ce paradoxe appelle dâautres prolongements : les travaux des grammairiens tĂ©moignent-ils tous, et tous de la mĂȘme maniĂšre, du rapport, parfois contradictoire, entre la langue quâils observent, avec ses variantes, ses particularismes, et celle quâils donnent Ă voir comme un systĂšme ordonnĂ© et fondĂ© en raison ? Et sâil y a pour eux tension entre les deux dĂ©marches, comment se comportent-ils face Ă la difficultĂ© ? Cherchent-ils Ă rĂ©soudre la contradiction ou Ă la contourner ? Y parviennent-ils et, dans ce cas, quelles stratĂ©gies dĂ©ploient-ils pour y parvenir ?
Les huit contributions de ce volume couvrent une large pĂ©riode, courant sur plus dâun millĂ©naire, depuis les scholiastes dâHomĂšre, pĂšres de la grammaire alexandrine (IIIe s. av. J.-C.), jusquâau commentateurs mĂ©diĂ©vaux de Priscien (XIIe s. ap. J.-C.). Le problĂšme du rapport entre norme et usage y est abordĂ© dans divers domaines et sous de nombreux aspects : la question de lâorthographe et de la syntaxe et le statut de la correction de la langue (la puretĂ© linguistique : Hellenismos, Latinitas) et de la faute (barbarisme et solĂ©cisme) ; le problĂšme de la rĂšgle (analogia), de ses extensions, de ses limites ; le rĂŽle fondamental de lâĂ©tymologie et, derriĂšre le rapport entre la forme et le sens, la question de la pathologie linguistique.
Posted in Publications
History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences 