Federico Garlanda’s The Philosophy of Words (1886) and The Fortunes of Language (1887): models in their class

Abstract

ABSTRACT Federico Garlanda (1857–1913) contributed towards the popularisation of linguistics in nineteenth-century Europe and the United States. Garlanda’s popular books on the science of language, The Philosophy of Words and The Fortunes of Words, are precursors of the university textbook in introductory linguistics. This article examines three recurring themes in Garlanda’s books on linguistics: history and science, history and linguistics, and language and consciousness. Forward-looking for his time, Garlanda argued that the present state of a language was an excellent starting point for studying its historical development. He contended that a study of child language acquisition could lead to discovering the origins of language. He held that the history of words of a language provided an insight into the evolution of consciousness. Garlanda was among the first linguists to present a brief critical and popular history of linguistics.