Online working group: History of the Language Sciences
Conveners: Judith Kaplan (CHSTM), Floris Solleveld (University of Bristol)
Hosted by the Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Monthly meetings: Tuesday 12 Sep, 10 Oct, 14 Nov, 12 Dec, 9 Jan, 13 Feb, 12 Mar, 14 May
Waugh, Linda R., Monique Monville-Burston, John E. Joseph, ed. 2023. The Cambridge History of Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 900 p. ISBN 9780511842788. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9780511842788
Publisher’s website
The establishment of language as a focus of study took place over many centuries, and reflection on its nature emerged in relation to very different social and cultural practices. Written by a team of leading scholars, this volume provides an authoritative, chronological account of the history of the study of language from ancient times to the end of the 20th century (i.e., ‘recent history’, when modern linguistics greatly expanded). Comprised of 29 chapters, it is split into 3 parts, each with an introduction covering the larger context of interest in language, especially the different philosophical, religious, and/or political concerns and socio-cultural practices of the times. At the end of the volume, there is a combined list of all references cited and a comprehensive index of topics, languages, major figures, etc. Comprehensive in its scope, it is an essential reference for researchers, teachers and students alike in linguistics and related disciplines.
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In this interview, we talk to Nick Thieberger about the value of historical documentation for linguistic research, and how this documentation can be preserved and made accessible today and in the future in digital form.
Read more ›Laplantine, Chloé, John E. Joseph & Émilie Aussant, ed. 2023. Simplicité et complexité des langues dans l’histoire des théories linguistiques. Paris: SHESL (HEL Livres, 3). 486 p. ISBN 979-10-91587-21-1. DOI : 10.5281/zenodo.8098638
Publisher’s website
Book in Open access
« Toutes les langues et toutes les cultures sont également complexes ! ». Cette position a été, à travers le XXe siècle, la réplique des linguistes et des ethnologues aux théories jugées intenables de leurs prédécesseurs, qui avaient produit des classifications hiérarchisantes de l’humanité et des langues. Après une période d’interdit scientifique, des mesures de complexité linguistique, non suspectes de propager des idées racistes ont été de nouveau proposées
Les contributions rassemblées dans ce volume abordent les représentations de la simplicité / complexité linguistique dans le temps long d’une histoire des idées et rendent compte d’une diversité de perspectives. On est ainsi amené à suivre les raisonnements des grammairiens et des théoriciens du langage de l’Antiquité jusqu’à la période contemporaine, en parcourant des thèmes tels l’ordre naturel, la naïveté, l’abondance, etc. Des motivations théologiques, idéologiques, pédagogiques, des critiques sociales apparaissent comme les soubassements des évaluations de simplicité ou de complexité linguistiques et des hiérarchisations. Des modèles de théories biologiques, psychologiques, philosophiques semblent encore avoir servi d’appui à la formulation de ces évaluations.
In this episode, we talk to Mary Laughren about research into the languages of Central Australia in the mid-twentieth century, with a focus on the contributions of American linguist Ken Hale.
Read more ›Most, Glenn W., Dagmar Schäfer & Mårten Söderblom Saarela, ed. 2023. Plurilingualism in Traditional Eurasian Scholarship. Thinking in Many Tongues. Leiden: Brill. (Ancient Languages and Civilizations, 3). xvi, 484 p. ISBN 978-90-04-46466-7
Publisher’s website
Book in open access
Was plurilingualism the exception or the norm in traditional Eurasian scholarship? This volume presents a selection of primary sources—in many cases translated into English for the first time—with introductions that provide fascinating historical materials for challenging notions of the ways in which traditional Eurasian scholars dealt with plurilingualism and monolingualism. Comparative in approach, global in scope, and historical in orientation, it engages with the growing discussion of plurilingualism and focuses on fundamental scholarly practices in various premodern and early modern societies—Chinese, Indian, Mesopotamian, Jewish, Islamic, Ancient Greek, and Roman—asking how these were conceived by the agents themselves. The volume will be an indispensable resource for courses on these subjects and on the history of scholarship and reflection on language throughout the world.
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In this episode, we examine the formalist aspects of the linguistic work of Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield, and see how their methods were turned into the doctrines of distributionalism by the following generation.
Read more ›Cavaliere, Ricardo. 2023. História da gramática no Brasil, séculos XVI a XIX. São Paulo: Editora Vozes. 656 p. ISBN 9786557136348
Publisher’s website
A origem da gramática está no interesse de compreensão e interpretação do texto, seja o texto poético, o texto religioso ou o texto político. Foi essa motivação, por exemplo, que levou os gramáticos gregos a desenvolverem a arte de gramática ou techne grammatike que daria conta dos textos de Homero e possibilitaria seu melhor entendimento. Assim evoluiu a gramática até nossos dias, ampliando seus domínios e objetivos, mas sempre de alguma forma vinculada à análise do texto como uma forma de entender o mundo. Em sua história, a gramática acompanha os rumos da sociedade, ajusta-se a suas mudanças e a seus novos valores. Este livro trata do papel da gramática na construção da sociedade brasileira a partir do século XVI, como fruto da atividade missionária dos jesuítas, até o final do século XIX, quando expressa o esplendor do cientificismo na seara dos estudos linguísticos. Seu propósito, pois, resume-se a contribuir para melhor entendermos como a sociedade brasileira abriu as sendas de seu caminho mediante análise das obras que cuidaram da língua falada por seu povo.
Read more ›Call for papers
SHESL conference 2024
Ethnolinguistics – Linguistic anthropology: history and current trends
organized by Chloé Laplantine (HTL), Cécile Leguy (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – LACITO), Valentina Vapnarsky (LESC & EPHE)
Paris, 1-2 February, 2024
Please send abstracts for contributions by 21 July 2023 to shesl2024@listes.u-paris.fr
Abstracts should be around 250 words long and include a bibliography.
Information: https://shesl.org/index.php/en/conference-2024/ and shesl2024@listes.u-paris.fr
Conference description
Linguistic anthropology is one of four research fields belonging to anthropology in the North American tradition, along with archeology, physical anthropology, and socio-cultural anthropology; this organization is commonly recognized as originating with Franz Boas, though the historical situation is in fact somewhat more complex (Hicks 2013). As a result, the work of linguistic anthropologists has been diffused in conferences and journals devoted to general anthropological study as well as in specialized conferences[1] and in journals such as Anthropological Linguistics (founded in 1959), Language in Society (1972), or The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology (1990). In France, where the discipline was first called “ethnolinguistics”, works such as those of Geneviève Calame-Griaule or Bernard Pottier, the cross-fertilizations between linguistics and anthropology effected by Émile Benveniste, Roman Jakobson, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, as well as the influence of the British and American traditions, have given rise to a tradition made both specific and complex by the multiple approaches it has interwoven. The field of ethnolinguistics witnessed important developments in France during the 1970s and 1980s[2], leading to the founding and federating of research groups[3] and journals[4]. At present, at least five research seminars in ethnolinguistics or linguistic anthropology are active in Paris, a sign of the continuing vitality of this field of study.
Université Paris Cité, the host institution for the Histoire des théories linguistiques (HTL; https://htl.cnrs.fr/en/home/) research group, has earmarked PhD funding for international students starting this year.
Students will register at the Linguistics Department (https://u-paris.fr/linguistique/en/home/#pll_switcher), 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 3rd.
History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences 