Language & History最新文献

{"title":"William Dwight Whitney’s study of language acquisition in <i>The Life and Growth of the Science of Language</i> (1875): His entry point to his scientific method and theory of language and mind","authors":"Joseph L. Subbiondo","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2023.2258330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2023.2258330","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTWilliam Dwight Whitney (1827–1894) began The Life and Growth of the Science of Language: An Outline of Linguistic Science (1875) with an initial chapter fully devoted to language acquisition. He began his study of linguistic science with language acquisition because for him it was the logical starting point for a study of language, and it introduced his scientific method and his theory of language and mind. Throughout the chapter, Whitney exemplified the centring of his scientific method on direct observation. By beginning his study of language with language acquisition, he rejected the prevailing divine origin theory of his time, which contended that language was divinely created, given to humans, and in decline ever since. Rather, Whitney argued that language began with language acquisition, and that it was continually evolving to meet the ever-changing social and personal needs of its speakers. He also used language acquisition to introduce his reader to his theory of language and mind: a theory that would run consistently throughout his book. Whitney’s scientific method and his theory of language and mind positioned linguistics prominently among the emerging sciences of the late nineteenth century and would significantly influence a new course for linguistics in the twentieth century.KEYWORDS: language acquisitionlanguage evolutionlanguage and mindcommon-sense philosophyscience of linguistics Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Reid’s collection Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) is especially relevant to our understanding of the eighteenth-century Scottish Common-Sense Philosophy which he inspired, and which greatly influenced Whitney. Reid pointed out that philosophers traditionally used the word ‘sense’ solely to identify the human senses like sight, touch, and taste, and not judgement. In Chapter II ‘Of Common Sense’ of his ‘Essay 6 - Of Judgement’, he referred to the popular meaning of ‘sense’ as used in ‘common sense’ as one would today: ‘ … in common language, sense always implies judgment. A man of sense is a man of judgment. Good sense is good judgment. Nonsense is what is evidently contrary to right judgment. Common sense is that degree of judgment which is common to men with whom we can converse and transact business’ (Reid Citation[1785] 1815, 99).Drawing on the popular and not the philosophical meaning, Reid laid out his scientific method: ‘For if the sole province of the senses, external and internal, be to furnish the mind with the ideas about which we judge and reason, it seems to be a natural consequence; that the sole province of judgment should be to compare those ideas, and to perceive their necessary relations’ (Silverstein Citation1971, xlv). He added: ‘All knowledge, and all science, must be built upon principles that are self-evident and of such principles, every man who has common sense is a competent judge, when he conceives them distinctly’ ","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134902121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘Brief Conversations for Pilgrims’: Rasputin, Russian-speaking travellers and the pilgrim experience in Jerusalem in 1911–1912","authors":"Rachel Mairs","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2023.2248452","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2023.2248452","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136104420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The development of the concept of ʽevidentialityʼ and its exogenous application to European languages","authors":"G. Hassler","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2023.2171701","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2023.2171701","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The concept of ‘evidentiality’ is the only example of an exogenous application of a category derived from the description of Amerindian languages to the description of European languages. In this contribution, first the consideration of evidentiality in ancient descriptions of American Indian languages is addressed. The missionaries followed the model of Latin grammars, but in some cases, they realised that these languages were substantially different. Without perceiving the systematic value of the evidentials, some missionaries grouped them in different classes constituted by elements that had particular meanings and that were different from the European languages. Second, the emergence of the concept of ‘evidentiality’ as an obligatory element in certain languages is studied. Third, the integration of evidentiality into functional and pragmatic linguistics is analysed.","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45485721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The notion of ‘adjective’ in the history of Pamean language descriptions","authors":"Jennifer Brunner, B. Hurch","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2023.2169369","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2023.2169369","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The issue of word classes has a long-standing tradition in the European history of the language sciences.   Amongst scholars of Otopamean languages there is a rather clear agreement that little positive evidence for the existence of a proper class of adjectives is to be found in this very language family. Such analyses are not at all rare for Mesoamerican languages. The paper will focus on the representation of this discussion in old colonial and postcolonial grammars, dictionaries and texts about the Pamean subgroup – works which mostly stem from the context of missionary writers in the first place. Specifically, it will try to illustrate the indecisiveness and sometimes seemingly hesitant treatment of how to deal with the European concept of ‘adjectives’ in those languages – even in postcolonial times. We will argue that the critical points brought up in the recent theoretical and descriptive discussion reflect problems that authors in the history up to the 20th century had with this very category (like overlaps with certain verb types or with nouns, according to adjective classes). With varying breadth and depth, the sources taken into account concern Pamean, namely Northern, Southern and Central Pame.","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49431351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction: the crosslinguistic application of grammatical categories in the history of linguistics","authors":"Raf Van Rooy","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2023.2167647","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2023.2167647","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the present introduction, I aim to provide some general context for the case studies in this special issue by introducing some recent developments in linguistics that inspired them (in particular the Haspelmath – Newmeyer debate) and by roughly sketching tendencies in the long history of linguistic description. I argue that the crosslinguistic application of linguistic categories is an old phenomenon, going back two millennia, that offers an entire array of research opportunities. This introduction also surveys the papers in the special issue, embedded in the aforementioned historical sketch, and the principal questions to which they offer some first tentative answers. I lay particular emphasis on the interplay between linguistic historiography and linguistics, advocating the view that conceptual-historical criticism should be part and parcel of the linguist’s modus operandi.","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48476190","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The curious case(s) of the Hebrew article: on a conflated grammatical category and how it emerges from sixteenth-century student notes","authors":"M. Maleux","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2023.2167646","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2023.2167646","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT When Hebrew appeared at the linguistic horizon of western humanists at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the first Hebraists tried with difficulty to render its grammatical knowledge into Latin and Latinate terminology. One such issue was created by the Hebrew definite article. Greek grammar disposed of a separate part of speech for this feature, viz. ἄρθρον (árthron), which was translated into Latin as articulus – even when Latin lacked the definite article. In Hebraist grammars, the article is often treated together with prepositions to represent a Hebrew case system in which ‘articles’ would indicate the case instead of a morphological ending. In this contribution, I aim to shed light on how sixteenth-century Hebraists based in Louvain dealt with this challenging problem, since many Hebraists were educated at the city’s Collegium Trilingue (‘College of the Three Tongues’, founded in 1517). In addition, evidence of lessons given at the Trilingue (specifically course notes) offers additional information on how Hebrew grammar, including the article, was taught in this period. These sources have thus far been neglected by research in the history of linguistics and they offer an alternative perspective on the treatment of challenging grammatical concepts.","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46698941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Grammatical category versus comparative concept in missionary grammars of Tamil (16th-18th centuries): the description of the relative clause","authors":"Cristina Muru","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2023.2168360","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2023.2168360","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Linguists today presuppose that for both description/analysis and comparison of languages, there is a substantial set of universal crosslinguistic categories. In the same way, in the grammaticisation of non-European languages, missionaries took the grammatical categories elaborated for Latin as a set of universal crosslinguistic categories. One could assume that they fell into the trap of transferring time-tested terminology from traditional Latin grammar adapting it to the description of a language with rather different structural properties without really capturing its ‘genius’. Even if this assumption may certainly be true to some extent, it does not present the whole picture and it does not do justice to the efforts missionaries made in describing new languages. Therefore, focusing on how missionaries understood and described the Tamil relative clause and relativiser marker, this paper aims to discuss the tension arising in grammatical descriptions between language-particular categories and crosslinguistic conceptual transfer. The paper thus demonstrates how missionaries did not limit their accounts to the transfer of a priori grammatical categories, tailored for Latin and applied to Tamil, but rather how they refined their descriptions through a crosslinguistic conceptual transfer that may be considered the first step towards comparative concepts.","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46813526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The journey of the middle voice: from antiquity to linguistic typology","authors":"G. Inglese","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2023.2172791","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2023.2172791","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The notion of middle voice finds its roots in classical antiquity, when it was first proposed by grammarians to describe a particular (set of) forms in the verbal paradigm of Ancient Greek. From medieval to modern times, the middle retained centre stage in linguistic descriptions of Latin and Greek, and in the 19th century, when combined with insights from Indian grammatical thought, it became a popular topic in comparative Indo-European linguistics. With the rise of linguistic typology and a more intense practice of language documentation, the reception of the middle voice in modern linguistics followed erratic and at times conflicting paths, engendering an inconsistency of usages that renders the term vague, if not useless. It is only recently that, in the wake of the discussion on the comparability problem in typology, a new comparative concept of the middle has been proposed, which might reconcile the millennia-long history of research on the topic with current needs of typology and language description.","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48705750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The French aorist in sixteenth-century grammar, or how to make the best of a bad Greek concept","authors":"Raf Van Rooy","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2023.2171705","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2023.2171705","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this paper, I argue that sixteenth-century French grammarians subtly adapted the Greek concept of aorist to their native language in order to fill a gap left by past tense descriptions in Latin grammar. In this French aorist concept, they amalgamated features today associated with tense and aspect. I start out by recalling the origin of the aorist concept in Greek antiquity, Byzantium, and the Italian Renaissance. Then I look at French grammarians’ dealings with their past tense system, and especially how they inserted the aorist into it. I focus on the French grammatical tradition up to Henri Estienne’s well-known Traicté de la conformité du language françois auec le grec (1565). My main conclusion is that French grammarians made the best of a bad Greek concept, primarily out of a descriptive need, and only secondarily in order to give a Hellenic aura to French, even though the latter was fashionable in sixteenth-century France. As such, these grammarians developed a new language-particular concept rather than merely transposing the Greek concept to the French context.","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49463239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Chapters of Dependency Grammar: A historical survey from Antiquity to Tesnière","authors":"Zheyuan Dai, Haitao Liu","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2022.2092705","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2022.2092705","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45764699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}