In this interview, we talk to Ingrid Piller about her forthcoming co-authored book Life in a New Language.
Read more ›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 naïve, 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 don’t 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 translator’s 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 don’t 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. Swellengrebel’s history of the NBG in Indonesia, In Leijdeckers Voetspoor (2 vols., 1974-78); but while little has been written about Gericke since, Van der Tuuk’s correspondence as preserved in the NBG archives has been edited not once but twice. The titles of both collections are telling: Rob Nieuwenhuis’ 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 Groeneboer’s 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 – 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 (1767–1835), an early pioneer in the philosophy of language, linguistic and educational theory, was not only one of the first European linguists to identify human language as a rule-governed system –the foundational premise of Noam Chomsky’s generative theory – or to reflect 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 influences 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 field 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 field.
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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 – in 15 volumes and envelopes of some 200 quarto pages each – 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 – reports that are otherwise hard to find even in Cambridge University Library. The same goes for Platt’s chapter about Sinhalese (the main language of Sri Lanka), where disagreements between missionaries turned into a veritable translation war. This recycling process makes Platt’s history a valuable historical source despite its lack of originality.
Read more ›Recent publications in the history and philosophy of the language sciences – 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 ère. Turnhout : Brepols. (Corpus Christianorum). 268 p. ISBN 978-2-503-60901-0
Publisher’s website
Depuis la naissance de la grammaire, les premiers théoriciens de la langue se sont heurtés à un paradoxe : est-il possible de réduire la somme indéfinie des faits de langue à un ensemble fini de règles ? Ce paradoxe appelle d’autres prolongements : les travaux des grammairiens témoignent-ils tous, et tous de la même manière, du rapport, parfois contradictoire, entre la langue qu’ils observent, avec ses variantes, ses particularismes, et celle qu’ils donnent à voir comme un système ordonné et fondé en raison ? Et s’il y a pour eux tension entre les deux démarches, comment se comportent-ils face à la difficulté ? Cherchent-ils à résoudre la contradiction ou à la contourner ? Y parviennent-ils et, dans ce cas, quelles stratégies déploient-ils pour y parvenir ?
Les huit contributions de ce volume couvrent une large période, courant sur plus d’un millénaire, depuis les scholiastes d’Homère, pères de la grammaire alexandrine (IIIe s. av. J.-C.), jusqu’au commentateurs médiévaux de Priscien (XIIe s. ap. J.-C.). Le problème du rapport entre norme et usage y est abordé dans divers domaines et sous de nombreux aspects : la question de l’orthographe et de la syntaxe et le statut de la correction de la langue (la pureté linguistique : Hellenismos, Latinitas) et de la faute (barbarisme et solécisme) ; le problème de la règle (analogia), de ses extensions, de ses limites ; le rôle fondamental de l’étymologie et, derrière le rapport entre la forme et le sens, la question de la pathologie linguistique.
Posted in Publications
Making of the Humanities XI, Lund, 9–11 Oct 2024
In 2024, the eleventh conference on the history of the humanities will be hosted by the Lund Center for the History of Knowledge (LUCK), Lund University between 9 and 11 October 2024.
The call for papers and panels is now open: https://www.historyofhumanities.org/upcoming-meetings/the-making-of-the-humanities-xi-lund-2024/
Goal of the Making of the Humanities (MoH) Conferences
The MoH conferences are organized by the Society for the History of the Humanities and bring together scholars and historians interested in the history of a wide variety of fields, including archaeology, art history, historiography, linguistics, literary studies, media studies, musicology, and philology, tracing these fields from their earliest developments to the modern day.
We welcome panels and papers on any period or region. We are especially interested in work that transcends the history of specific humanities disciplines by comparing scholarly practices across disciplines and civilisations.
This year’s special conference theme is Shifting Cultures of Knowledge in the History of the Humanities. In 2024, we encourage papers that address the history of the humanities in relation to broader, multidisciplinary studies on knowledge and scholarship. In what ways can the role of knowledge in the history of the humanities be understood and analyzed? To what extent have the humanities fostered specific cultures of knowledge? Is it time to rethink the history of the humanities in relation to other epistemic formations? Has the relationship between the history humanities and the history of the human/social sciences been sufficiently explored? How should the history of the humanities be understood in light of longstanding debates on the so-called two (or three) cultures and their respective functions and values?
Although we invite submissions that explore this theme, we remain fully open to abstracts addressing other subjects as well.
Please note that the Making of the Humanities conferences are not concerned with the history of art, the history of music or the history of literature, and so on, but instead with the history of art history, the history of musicology, the history of literary studies/philology, etc.
Keynote speakers
Suzanne Marchand (Louisiana State University)
Helge Jordheim (University of Oslo)
Paper Submissions
Abstracts of single papers (30 minutes including discussion) should contain the name of the speaker, full contact address (including email address), the title and a summary of the paper of maximally 250 words.
Deadline for abstracts: May 1
Notification of acceptance: June
Panel Submissions
Panels last 90 minutes and can consist of 3-4 papers and possibly a commentary on a coherent theme including discussion. Panel proposals should contain respectively the name of the chair, the names of the speakers and commentator, contact information, the title of the panel, titles of the individual papers, a description of the panel’s content and aims, including brief summaries of each paper (400 words).
Deadline for panel proposals: May 1
Notification of acceptance: June
Posted in Announcements, Conferences and workshops
ICHoLS 16 Thematic Workshops
The deadline for abstract submission to ICHoLS 16 is March 1, 2024.
The submission web page for ICHoLS 16 is https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ichols16
Here is information about the open thematic workshops (see below).
Please see the attachments and send your abstract to the organizers of the workshops.
- 1 – Pluricentric Contributions to the Historiography of Portuguese Linguistics: In Tribute to the Scholar Maria Helena de Moura Neves (1931–2022)
- 2 – Orality and writing in the production of linguistic knowledge
- 3 – The birth of national languages mirrored by their grammars in perspective
- 4 – The history of lexicography: language variation in bilingual lexicography 1500-1900
- 5 – Traditions in the study of writing worldwide
- 6 – Western General Linguistics and China: 101 Years after Hu Yilu’s Rudiments of the Chinese Spoken Language
- 7 – Compositionality, over- or under- summativity? Parts & wholes in Language and Languages
- 8 – Social capital and academic personality: Julius von Klaproth, Anders Johan Sjögren and Other Founding Fathers of Caucasian Linguistics
Further information at ichols.org
Posted in Announcements, Conferences and workshops
Recent publications in the history and philosophy of the language sciences – January 2024
McElvenny, James. 2024. A History of Modern Linguistics: From the Beginnings to World War II. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 208 p. ISBN 9781474470025
Publisher’s website
In this book, McElvenny offers a concise history of modern linguistics from its emergence in the early nineteenth century up to the end of World War II. Written as a collective biography of the field, it concentrates on the interaction between the leading figures of linguistics, their controversies, and the role of the social and political context in shaping their ideas and methods.
While A History of Modern Linguistics focuses on disciplinary linguistics, the boundaries of the account are porous: developments in neighbouring fields – in particular, philosophy, psychology and anthropology – are brought into the discussion where they have contributed to linguistic research.
Posted in Publications
