This comprehensive history of linguistics is part of a 5 volume set. Together, the volumes examine the social, cultural and religious functions of language, its place in education, the prestige attached to different varieties of language, and the presentation of lexical and grammatical descriptions. They explore the linguistic interests and assumptions of individual cultures in their own terms, without trying to transpose and reshape them into the context of contemporary ideas of what the scientific study of language ought to be. The authors of individual chapters are all specialists who have been able to analyse the primary sources, and so produce original syntheses which offer an authoritative view of the different traditions and periods. Volume Two examines the Greek, Roman and Medieval European traditions, which between them developed the grammatical and syntactical models which form the basis of our inherited linguistic assumptions.

History of Linguistics Volume II (Longman Linguistics Library)

Literature & Fiction

Lepschy, Giulio C.

History & Criticism

Routledge

The History of Linguistics, to be published in five volumes, aims to provide the reader with an authoritative and comprehensive account of the attitudes to language prevailing in different civilizations and in different periods by examining the very varied development of linguistic thought in the specific social, cultural and religious contexts involved. Issues discussed include the place of language in education, variation and prestige, and approaches to lexical and grammatical description. The authors of the individual chapters are specialists who have analysed the primary sources and produced original syntheses by exploring the linguistic interests and assumptions of particular cultures in their own terms, without seeking to reinterpret them as contributions towards the development of contemporary western conceptions of linguistic science. In Volume IV: Nineteenth Century Linguistics, Anna Morpurgo Davies shows how linguistics came into its own as an independent discipline separated from philosophical and literary studies and enjoyed a unique intellectual and institutional success tied to the research ethos of the new universities, until it became a model for other humanistic subjects which aimed at 'scientific status'. The linguistics of the nineteenth century abandons earlier theoretical discussions in favour of a more empirical and historical approach using new methods to compare languages and to investigate their history. The great achievement of this period is the demonstration that languages such as Sanskrit , Latin and English are related and derive from a parent language which is not attested but can be reconstructed. This book discusses in detail the theories developed and the individual findings obtained. In contrast with earlier historiographical trends it denies that the new approach originated entirely from German Romanticism, and highlights a form of continuity with the eighteenth century, while stressing that a deliberate break took place round the 1830s. By the end of the century the results of comparative and historical linguistics had been generally accepted, but it soon became clear that a historical approach could not by itself solve all questions that it raised. At this point the new interest in description and theory which characterizes the twentieth century began to gain prominence.

History of Linguistics, Volume IV: Nineteenth-Century Linguistics (Longman Linguistics Library)

Reference

Davies, Anna Morpurgo

Words, Language & Grammar

History of Linguistics Volume II: Classical and Medieval Linguistics (Longman Linguistics Library)

TheHistory of Linguistics, to be published in five volumes, aims to provide the reader with an authoritative and comprehensive account of the attitudes to language prevailing in different civilizations and in different periods by examining the very varied development of linguistic thought in the specific social, cultural and religious contexts involved. Issues discussed include the place of language in education, variation and prestige, and approaches to lexical and grammatical description. The authors of the individual chapters are specialists who have analysed the primary sources and produced original syntheses by exploring the linguistic interests and assumptions of particular cultures in their own terms, without seeking to reinterpret them as contributions towards the development of contemporary western conceptions of linguistic science.The third volume of the History of Linguistics covers the Renaissance and the Early Modern Period. The chapter on the Renaissance (15th and 16th centuries), examines the study of Latin in both the new Humanist and rationalist traditions, along with the foundations of vernacular grammar in the study of Romance, Germanic and Slavic. The chapter on the Early Modern Period (17th and 18th centuries) presents the study of language in its philosophical context (Bacon, Port-Royal, Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz, the Enlightenment), as well as the accumulation of data which led to the foundation of Comparative Philology in the 19th century.

History of Linguistics Vol III: Renaissance and Early Modern Linguistics (Longman Linguistics Library)

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