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History of Linguistics (Linguistics)

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  1. Introduction
  2. The term linguistics is a product of the 19th century, as are the academic field and the form of enquiry that it designates. This enquiry is however continuous with modes of analysis that date back to ancient times, as practiced in various traditions in Asia and Europe (together with the African parts of the Alexandrian Empire). The History of Linguistics itself has mid-19th-century beginnings and has taken its scope as ranging over the whole of this ancient-to-modern continuum. Given that language and its analysis have played a part in every academic area, and that modern linguistics has interests that overlap with those of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, informatics, legal theory, literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, semiotics, sociology, and other subjects, it is not obvious where the boundaries of the History of Linguistics lie, and scholarly disputes over where to draw them are not uncommon. This bibliography will focus on the prototypical areas of language analysis, while not excluding those areas that, if more peripheral, have nevertheless had a considerable impact on what linguists think and do.
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  4. General Overviews
  5. Looking back at the development of these general overviews since the 1970s, it is not clear that they have progressed as steadily as one might expect. They have in some cases moved from studies aimed at specialists toward work conceived for a more general audience, including students. Of course this has not been true in every case: some of the newer work brings in bold new perspectives and creates real insight. The point is that one’s choice of what to read in this area should not be based on publication date: venerability suggests but does not guarantee wisdom, any more than newness guarantees originality. Robins 1997 and Thomas 2011 are the most accessible introductions for students of linguistics taking a first serious interest in the field’s heritage. Koerner 1978, an annotated bibliography, with a format not unlike the present one, is excellent for the period 1822 to 1976. The chapters of Harris and Taylor 1997 and Joseph, et al. 2001 assume no prior study of either linguistics or the philosophical tradition. Each begins with a text from a key author or, in some cases, a key movement; this text serves as the basis for a commentary that also gives a capsule history of the relevant intellectual context. The four volumes of Lepschy 1994–1998, originally published in Italian, are impressive in their range and depth. They aim to reconstruct the concerns about language of different times and places rather than working backward to find antecedents of today’s interests. Swiggers 1997 makes fewer concessions to readers who may come to it without a traditional classical education. Allan 2009 is particularly useful for anyone looking for the background of a particular sub-discipline.
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  7. Allan, Keith. 2009. The Western classical tradition in linguistics. 2d ed. London: Continuum.
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  11. Allan ties current concerns of linguistics to the writings of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and Varro, the Alexandrian grammarians, the ancient rhetoricians, and early medieval grammarians. The book is distinguished by its determination to locate women authors in the history of grammar, and by its partly topic-based arrangement, versus other textbooks’ more strictly chronological order, sometimes modified by geographical considerations.
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  15. Harris, Roy, and Talbot J. Taylor. 1997. Landmarks in linguistic thought: The Western tradition from Socrates to Saussure. 2d ed. London and New York: Routledge.
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  19. The early chapters on Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, Varro, Quintilian, Thomas of Erfurt, and Caxton are mainly concerned with providing students with a gentle guiding hand. From the 17th century forward the chapters gain in complexity and depth, focusing on the Port-Royal grammar, Bishop Wilkins, Locke, Condillac, Horne Tooke, Humboldt, Max Müller, Frege, and Saussure.
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  23. Joseph, John E., Nigel Love, and Talbot J. Taylor. 2001. Landmarks in linguistic thought II: The Western tradition in the twentieth century. London and New York: Routledge.
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  27. This book is distinguished from other treatments of 20th-century linguistics in its ambition to trace the continuity between linguistics (Sapir, Jakobson, Whorf, Firth, Chomsky, Labov) and other fields that have language as a central concern: anthropology (Goffman), philosophy (Austin, Derrida, Wittgenstein), psychology (Skinner, Bruner). There are also chapters on Orwell, the “integrationism” of Roy Harris, and language research with nonhuman primates.
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  31. Koerner, E. F. K. 1978. Western histories of linguistic thought: An annotated bibliography, 1822–1976. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  32.  
  33. DOI: 10.1075/sihols.11Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  34.  
  35. Koerner’s annotated descriptions are always accurate and his assessments judicious. The book perhaps errs on the side of completeness: just about any work that cites figures from the past is apt to be included here. Coverage ends just when institutionalized academic study of the history of linguistics—with Koerner himself as its principal organizational leader—was hitting its stride.
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  39. Lepschy, Giulio, ed. 1994–1998. History of linguistics. 4 vols. London and New York: Longman.
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  43. Volume 1 is on the traditions of the “Ancient East” (Chinese, Indian, Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hebrew, and Arabic). Volume 2 covers Greece, Rome, and medieval Europe, Volume 3 the Renaissance and Early Modern periods. Volume 4, on the 19th century, has a single author (Anna Morpurgo Davies) and limits itself to the work of “the professional linguists of the time.”
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  47. Robins, Robert H. 1997. A short history of linguistics. 4th ed. London and New York: Longman.
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  50.  
  51. Despite its modest title, this remains the best monographic introduction to the subject. It assumes that its reader is well educated, with some prior knowledge of modern linguistics. The arrangement is chronological, with occasional asides on the relevance of ancient and medieval concerns to modern ones. Each chapter is followed by a bibliography of work “for further consultation.”
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  54.  
  55. Swiggers, Pierre. 1997. Histoire de la pensée linguistique: Analyse du langage et réflexion linguistique dans la culture occidentale de l’Antiquité au XIXe siècle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
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  58.  
  59. An in-depth study of the history of linguistic thought, including its ramifications in philosophy and other relevant domains, in European culture from Ancient Greece to the start of the 19th century, hence ending before the institutionalization of academic linguistics. Swiggers’s knowledge of all the periods covered is strong, and the book reflects and embodies his many years of concern with problems and methods of historiography.
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  62.  
  63. Thomas, Margaret. 2011. Fifty key thinkers on language and linguistics. London and New York: Routledge.
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  66.  
  67. Focused on the contributions of individual figures, but with each sufficiently contextualized to give good, up-to-date coverage of linguistic thought worldwide from ancient times to the present. Like Harris and Taylor 1997, it does not assume prior knowledge of linguistics, and it has the added feature of a quite extensive glossary of linguistic terms that makes it particularly useful for students.
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  70.  
  71. Reference Works
  72. Like the General Overviews, reference works have not generally improved with time. They have tended too often to recycle many of the same specialist authors, with the result either that the authors repeat themselves, or, in an effort not to do so, become more concerned with making novel points than with providing the same quality of coverage as in their earlier attempts. Many of the articles in Sebeok 1975 set a high standard that later work has yet to match, and the same may be said of Auroux 1989–2000 in the French domain. Auroux, et al. 2001–2006, by contrast, is, like its title, sprawling and unpredictable, with all the advantages and limitations that implies. Allan 2013, while long, is more contained and accessible than any of the other works listed here. Koerner and Asher 1995 is a compendium of entries relating to the history of linguistics from the original edition of the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, of which Asher was general editor, with Koerner in charge of these entries. For biographical entries, Stammerjohann 2009 is unlikely to be surpassed in breadth of coverage by a printed work, though eventually an online source is bound to do so.
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  74. Allan, Keith, ed. 2013. The Oxford handbook of the history of linguistics. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  75.  
  76. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585847.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  77.  
  78. This large volume contains thirty-four essays on thematic topics, Roughly a third are by scholars with a track record in the history of linguistics, the rest by practicing linguists giving their perspective on their particular speciality. Many of the essays are innovative in conception and represent the first real attempt at sketching the history of a given line of research.
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  81.  
  82. Auroux, Sylvain, ed. 1989–2000. Histoire des idées linguistiques. 3 vols. Liège, Belguim: Mardaga.
  83.  
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  85.  
  86. These volumes attempt to cover vast stretches of linguistic and philosophical thought over all of history. Volume 1 is on “The birth of metalanguages in the East and the West.” Volume 2 is on “The development of Western grammar,” extending from Antiquity to the French Revolution. Volume 3, “The hegemony of comparativism,” covers the “long 19th century,” reaching into the 1930s.
  87.  
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  89.  
  90. Auroux, Sylvain, E. F. K. Koerner, Hans-Josef Niederehe, and Kees Versteegh, eds. 2001–2006. History of the language sciences—Histoire des sciences du langage—Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaften: An international handbook on the evolution of the study of language from the beginnings to the present/Manuel international pour le développement de l’étude du langage des débuts au présent/Ein internationales Handbuch zur Geschichte der Sprachforschung von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. 3 vols. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.
  91.  
  92. DOI: 10.1515/9783110194210Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  93.  
  94. The articles are in English, French, or German, which might not have been a problem in the 19th century, but is a limitation today. Still, for certain topics in 19th- and 20th-century linguistics, including the study of particular language families, and linguistics outside Europe, the coverage here is not matched by any of the other collective reference works.
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  97.  
  98. Koerner, E. F. K., and R. E. Asher, eds. 1995. Concise history of the language sciences: From the Sumerians to the cognitivists. Oxford and New York: Pergamon.
  99.  
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  101.  
  102. A number of the entries are authored by the major figure in the area covered: André Martinet on Functional Grammar, M. A. K. Halliday on Systemic Theory. These entries have been complemented but not superseded by those in the second edition of the Pergamon Encyclopedia, for which however no comparable “spin-off” volume has been issued.
  103.  
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  105.  
  106. Sebeok, Thomas A., ed. 1975. Current trends in linguistics. Vol. 13, Historiography of linguistics. 2 vols. The Hague: Mouton.
  107.  
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  109.  
  110. Despite a few weak contributions, a number of the articles have not been surpassed, including Jan Pinborg’s on Greece and Rome and Geoffrey Bursill-Hall’s on the medieval period. E. F. K. Koerner’s article on the sources of European structuralism is excellent. The chapter on “American structuralism” by Dell Hymes and John Fought was later issued as a stand-alone volume.
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  113.  
  114. Stammerjohann, Harro, ed. 2009. Lexicon grammaticorum: A bio-bibliographical companion to the history of linguistics. 2d ed. Tübingen, Germany: Niemeyer.
  115.  
  116. DOI: 10.1515/9783484971127Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  117.  
  118. Originally published in 1996. Contains 2,000 entries by 670 authors, giving a sketch of the life and work of linguists of all periods and places, many of them individuals on whom information is not readily available elsewhere. The selection of entries and authors for various sub-areas was done in collaboration with prominent historians of linguistics specializing in those areas.
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  121.  
  122. Journals
  123. Work in the history of linguistics appears sporadically in most linguistics journals, as well as in journals of the history of ideas, the history of medicine, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and other adjacent fields. Moreover, there is the important series of volumes emanating from the International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS), held every three years in a different city, with selected papers published by John Benjamins of Amsterdam and Philadelphia. The journals listed here specialize in the history of linguistics, although neither the Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure nor the Cahiers de de L’Institut de Linguistique et des Sciences du Langage de l’Université de Lausanne does so exclusively. While all the journals accept articles in English, four of them have a geographical or language focus: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft for German, Histoire—Épistémologie—Langage for French, Language & History for the English-speaking world, Revista argentina de historiografía lingüística for South America. Historiographia Linguistica is the most resolutely international in its scope. The growth in the number of specialized journals is a sign of the discipline’s good health.
  124.  
  125. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft.
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  128.  
  129. Founded in 1991 and published by Nodus (Münster) in two issues per year. Articles are in English, French, German, and Spanish, and most volumes include reports on conferences on the history of linguistics held during the year.
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  132.  
  133. Cahiers de L’Institut de Linguistique et des Sciences du Langage de l’Université de Lausanne.
  134.  
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  136.  
  137. Begun in 1992 by Patrick Sériot, this is somewhere between a journal and a regularly appearing series of edited volumes, with a new entry appearing once or twice a year. The papers are invited and are first presented at a themed colloquium organized by the ILSL. The volumes range across a wide variety of topics, with particular strengths in the Slavic domain.
  138.  
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  140.  
  141. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure.
  142.  
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  144.  
  145. Founded as a journal of general linguistics in 1941, the Cahiers have since the 1950s been a significant venue for work in the history of linguistics, not restricted to Saussurean studies though of course with that as its focus. Published in a single issue per year by Droz (Geneva).
  146.  
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  148.  
  149. Histoire—Épistémologie—Langage.
  150.  
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  152.  
  153. Founded in 1979 and published in one or two issues per year. HEL contains mostly articles in French, and occasionally (and increasingly) in English. For the last few years most issues have been themed, often emanating from symposia held by the Société d’Histoire et d’Épistémologie des Sciences du Langage (SHESL), of which the journal is the official organ.
  154.  
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  156.  
  157. Historiographia Linguistica.
  158.  
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  160.  
  161. Founded in 1974 by E. F. K. Koerner, still its general editor, HL was the first journal devoted exclusively to the history of linguistics. It is not restricted by period or sub-discipline, and publishes articles in German, French, Spanish, and occasionally Italian, though the bulk are in English. It appears in two issues per year.
  162.  
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  164.  
  165. Language & History.
  166.  
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  168.  
  169. Published by Maney (Leeds, London, and Philadelphia) under this title since 2009, this journal began life as the Bulletin of the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas. It is not restricted by period or sub-discipline, and appears in two issues per year.
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  172.  
  173. Revista argentina de historiografía lingüística.
  174.  
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  176.  
  177. Begun in 2009 by Guillermo Toscano y García, this journal appears in two issues per year, almost entirely in Spanish and Portuguese, with one article to date in English. Not limited by period or topic, but a preponderance of the articles in RAHL have focused on Argentina, Brazil, and Spain.
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  180.  
  181. Ancient Period
  182. The history of linguistics in ancient times is generally taken to cover not just phonological and grammatical analysis, but any enquiry into language and meaning, etymology, poetics, rhetoric, proper and improper usage, religion and language origins, and the interpretation of texts. Where cultures have left written records that do not include direct reflection on language, historians have tried to infer a “theory” of language from the nature of the writing system—not always with persuasive results.
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  184. Greco-Roman Tradition
  185. The Greek tradition is especially rich in linguistic reflection, starting with the pre-Socratics and their enquiry into whether language operates by physis or thesis (nomos)—nature or convention—and whether a logos, a universal intelligence generally translated as verbum “the Word,” underlies the cosmic plan. The nature vs. convention debate became a staple of Sophistic training in rhetoric, and it is at the center of the first complete enquiry into the origins and operation of language, Plato’s Cratylus, as well as figuring in the opening of Aristotle’s treatise “On Interpretation.” Soulez 1991 and Joseph 2000 both focus on Plato, and Arens 1984 on Aristotle, while Gera 2003 takes a broader view of Greek writings on language. The beginnings of the grammatical tradition are to be found in the Hellenic Empire, and were carried over to Rome, to become the basis of the Latin tradition. Luhtala 2000 traces the earlier heritage down to Stoic logic and grammar, and Luhtala 2005 further still to Rome. Taylor 1974 is similarly situated at the meeting point between Late Greek and Roman grammatical theory.
  186.  
  187. Arens, Hans. 1984. Aristotle’s theory of language and its tradition: Texts from 500 to 1750. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  188.  
  189. DOI: 10.1075/sihols.29Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  190.  
  191. This useful book is focused on the opening of Aristotle’s Peri hermeneias (usually translated “On interpretation,” though Arens renders it as “On judgement”) and the long tradition of commentaries upon it. Arens provides original text, translation, and his own commentary on the treatment of Aristotle’s theory in Ammonius, Boethius, Abelard, Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, Martin of Dacia, John of St Thomas, and James Harris.
  192.  
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  194.  
  195. Gera, Deborah Levine. 2003. Ancient Greek ideas on speech, language, and civilization. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
  196.  
  197. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199256167.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  198.  
  199. Gera’s book is not about the analysis of language but broader ideas concerning the origin of language, along with views about the speech of gods, children, women, slaves, savages (living and mythical), deaf mutes, and animals. Particular attention is given to Herodotus’s account of the experiment of Psammetichus, the story of Prometheus, and the “great myth” of Plato’s Protagoras.
  200.  
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  202.  
  203. Joseph, John E. 2000. Limiting the arbitrary: Linguistic naturalism and its opposites from Plato’s Cratylus to modern theories of language. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  204.  
  205. DOI: 10.1075/sihols.96Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  206.  
  207. The first half is a close analysis of Plato’s Cratylus read as a dialogue about the nature of linguistic meaning and the prospects for acquiring knowledge through etymology. The second half traces three of the dialogue’s main lines of enquiry into the “naturalness” of language through their subsequent history, culminating with the views of Chomsky, Pinker, iconicity studies, and optimality theory.
  208.  
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  210.  
  211. Luhtala, Anneli. 2000. On the origin of syntactical description in Stoic logic. Münster, Germany: Nodus.
  212.  
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  214.  
  215. Adapted from Luhtala’s doctoral thesis, this book argues that logic and grammar were inseparable issues for the Stoic philosophers in just the way they would be for their medieval successors. Her study traces in detail the description of parts of speech from Plato’s The Sophist, to Aristotle’s Peri hermeneias, and on to the Stoics and Apollonius Dyscolus.
  216.  
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  218.  
  219. Luhtala, Anneli. 2005. Grammar and philosophy in Late Antiquity: A study of Priscian’s sources. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  220.  
  221. DOI: 10.1075/sihols.107Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  222.  
  223. A short book that usefully makes the case that grammar and philosophy “interacted” significantly in the work of the Latin grammarians, particularly Priscian, and that traces the impact of such interaction into the writings of Augustine.
  224.  
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  226.  
  227. Soulez, Antonia. 1991. La grammaire philosophique chez Platon. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
  228.  
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  230.  
  231. This book is concerned principally with Plato’s The Sophist, treating Cratylus as a sort of preliminary study for it. As with most studies of Plato by philosophers and classicists until the first decade of the 21st century, it treats the considerations of language in these dialogues as a sidelight to Plato’s concern with epistemological matters.
  232.  
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  234.  
  235. Taylor, Daniel J. 1974. Declinatio: A study of the linguistic theory of Marcus Terentius Varro. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  236.  
  237. DOI: 10.1075/sihols.2Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  238.  
  239. A close study of the surviving books of Varro’s De lingua latina, which furnishes the source of most of our detailed knowledge of the Hellenic linguistic debates as well as giving Varro’s own views on the nature and operation of language and on how it should be regulated.
  240.  
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  242.  
  243. Asian Traditions
  244. For the ancient period the two great traditions of reflection on language are the Chinese and the Indian. We still await a proper monographic treatment of the latter; meanwhile, good accounts can be found in Allan 2013 (cited under Reference Works), Volume 1 of Lepschy 1994–1998 (cited under General Overviews), and the other reference works. The Chinese tradition is better served by Hansen 1983 and Harbsmeier 1998, but the views of these two specialists remain polarized. Both are convinced of the deep link between Chinese language and logic, but they disagree over how this link has traditionally been analyzed in Western thought. The van Bekkum, et al. 1997 volume looks specifically at how linguistic meaning is treated across four traditions, three of them Asian, though of course the Greek and Arabic empires were spread over three continents, as was the Hebrew tradition.
  245.  
  246. Hansen, Chad. 1983. Language and logic in ancient China. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.
  247.  
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  249.  
  250. Hansen, a philosopher, argues provocatively, but based on profound knowledge of the language, that the structure of classical Chinese grammar influenced the form taken by logical thought in the Chinese world. An important book that has yet to receive its due.
  251.  
  252. Find this resource:
  253.  
  254. Harbsmeier, Christoph. 1998. Language and logic. Vol. 7, Part I, of Science and civilisation in China. Edited by Joseph Needham. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  255.  
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  257.  
  258. Harbsmeier argues contra Hansen that other cultural factors besides logic should be taken into account, including the impact of Buddhist philosophy, as well as the practice of “scribal reticence” that has left us with a condensed version of classical Chinese from which one must take care in drawing psychological inferences.
  259.  
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  261.  
  262. van Bekkum, Wout, Jan Houben, Ineke Sluiter, and Kees Versteegh. 1997. The emergence of semantics in four linguistic traditions: Hebrew, Sanskrit, Greek, Arabic. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  263.  
  264. DOI: 10.1075/sihols.82Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  265.  
  266. The book contains a chapter on each of the traditions written by the author specializing in that area, plus a jointly authored concluding synthesis. It adds up to a readable history of how the study of meaning developed within each of these cultures, even if little is ventured in the way of possible cross-cultural interchanges.
  267.  
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  269.  
  270. Medieval Period
  271. In recent decades scholars have been struck by how deeply Christian theological thinking is rooted in theories of language and indeed of grammar. Amsler 1989, Kelly 2002, and Law 2003 are all fundamentally concerned with this link, whereas Covington 1984 is aimed more at locating similarities and differences vis-à-vis late-20th-century syntatic theory. Wollock 1997, on the other hand, explores the physical rather than the metaphysical dimensions of language, in particular the role of speech in the theory and practice of medicine. Grammatical enquiry into Arabic flourished from the 10th century onward. Hebrew and Syriac too had their own grammatical traditions, never quite as strong; and, mirroring this, it is the Arabic tradition that has commanded the largest amount of attention in recent decades, including Versteegh 1997 and Suleiman 1999. Its Hebrew counterpart is however well served in Lepschy 1994–1998 (cited under General Overviews).
  272.  
  273. Amsler, Mark. 1989. Etymology and grammatical discourse in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  274.  
  275. DOI: 10.1075/sihols.44Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  276.  
  277. A detailed yet readable study of how etymological and grammatical analysis was used in the construction of theological conceptions and arguments, centering on Priscian, Augustine, and Jerome, then focusing on Isidore of Seville and later grammarians. While claiming Foucault as one of his key intellectual guides, Amsler keeps any post-modern tendencies well in check in this book.
  278.  
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  280.  
  281. Covington, Michael. 1984. Syntactic theory in the High Middle Ages: Modistic models of sentence structure. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  282.  
  283. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511735592Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  284.  
  285. A well-informed study of the work of the Modistae, a name given to the group of grammarians and logicians who congregated in Paris in the second half of the 13th century.
  286.  
  287. Find this resource:
  288.  
  289. Kelly, L. G. 2002. The mirror of grammar: Theology, philosophy and the Modistae. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  290.  
  291. DOI: 10.1075/sihols.101Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  292.  
  293. A thorough study of the concepts of vox and dictio from their classical heritage through to the late medieval modistic grammars. Kelly’s erudition, on both the grammatical and theological fronts, is formidable, as is his ability to communicate it to a broad reading audience.
  294.  
  295. Find this resource:
  296.  
  297. Law, Vivien. 2003. The history of linguistics in Europe: From Plato to 1600. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  298.  
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  300.  
  301. The strength of this book lies in its treatment of the Latin grammatical tradition that began with Donatus in the 4th century and carried on, with significant developments and extensions, for more than a thousand years. Law’s book includes rich guides to further reading, in both primary and secondary sources, and attends to both grammatical analysis and historical, religious, and philosophical considerations.
  302.  
  303. Find this resource:
  304.  
  305. Suleiman, Yasir. 1999. The Arabic grammatical tradition: A study in ta‘līl. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press.
  306.  
  307. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  308.  
  309. The concept of ta‘līl covers a wide scope within the analysis of Arabic grammar: description, methodology, epistemology, and explanation. The book includes two introductory chapters on the concept and its ramifications, followed by studies of its treatment in the writings of five Arabic grammarians between the 10th and the early 16th centuries.
  310.  
  311. Find this resource:
  312.  
  313. Versteegh, Kees. 1997. Landmarks in linguistic thought. Vol. 3, The Arabic linguistic tradition. London: Routledge.
  314.  
  315. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  316.  
  317. This book follows the format established in Harris and Taylor 1997, cited under General Overviews. It does not assume any prior knowledge of Arabo-Islamic culture or Arabic linguistics. Each chapter begins with a passage from a medieval Arabic grammarian or commentator on language, which Versteegh uses as a springboard to introduce the wider context into which the text fits.
  318.  
  319. Find this resource:
  320.  
  321. Wollock, Jeffrey. 1997. The noblest animate motion: Speech, physiology, and medicine in pre-Cartesian linguistic thought. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  322.  
  323. DOI: 10.1075/sihols.83Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  324.  
  325. This encyclopedic account of the long medical tradition of the study of speech and language, from Aristotle and Galen through to the Renaissance, gains coherence by focusing on a small number of problems and puzzles. The introduction explains how modern linguistics has been impoverished by the willful forgetting of how, until the 19th century, natural philosophy overlapped with the study of medicine.
  326.  
  327. Find this resource:
  328.  
  329. Renaissance and Enlightenment
  330. The term “Renaissance” dates from the 19th century and embodies a perspective that makes more sense in architecture and art than in an intellectual domain such as the history of linguistics, where it tends to make us expect rupture and ignore continuity. Where it ends and the “Enlightenment” begins is no less nebulous. The 17th and 18th centuries have in any case been of intense interest to historians of linguistics, being when the modern discourse about “languages,” and nations, took shape. Salmon 1988 and Percival 2004 are collections of essays by two scholars of vast erudition, and although not written as continuous narratives, provide broad and deep perspective on linguistic thought in the early modern period. Formigari 2004, in contrast, presents itself as a coherent monograph covering the whole history of linguistic thought, yet has its greatest strengths in this particular period. Lewis 2007 homes in on what was, in England, the crux of thinking about language in the 17th century: the desire for an ideal language. Lauzon 2010 and Gambarota 2011 each focus on some particular aspect of linguistic thought, yet manage to attain wide-ranging significance. As with Lauzon 2010, the many papers in the Zwartjes, et al. 2009 series are grounded in the Old World’s confrontation with the New, as is Andresen 1990, an account that carries the story forward into the early 20th century.
  331.  
  332. Andresen, Julie Tetel. 1990. Linguistics in America, 1769–1924: A critical history. London and New York: Routledge.
  333.  
  334. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  335.  
  336. An admirably full and clear account of the development of linguistic thought in North America from colonial days to the founding of the Linguistic Society of America. Andresen’s broad knowledge of European philosophical traditions helps to enrich her insightful study.
  337.  
  338. Find this resource:
  339.  
  340. Formigari, Lia. 2004. A history of language philosophies. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  341.  
  342. DOI: 10.1075/sihols.105Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  343.  
  344. Originally published in Italian in 2001, this account starts from Aristotle, but it is really in the Renaissance and Enlightenment, Formigari’s strongest areas, that it is at its best. It includes considerations on the links of language theory to emerging nationalisms, as well as its philosophical entailments.
  345.  
  346. Find this resource:
  347.  
  348. Gambarota, Paola. 2011. Irresistible signs: The genius of language and Italian nationalism. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press.
  349.  
  350. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  351.  
  352. Gambarota links the philosophical, political, linguistic, and rhetorical-stylistic aspects of the “genius” concept from its rise in the late 16th century to the 19th. Her close studies of Muratori, Vico, Cesarotti, and Leopardi are framed by a thematic introduction and overview chapter, and a brief postscript on the impact of new media as the themes move forward into the 20th century.
  353.  
  354. Find this resource:
  355.  
  356. Lauzon, Matthew. 2010. Signs of light: French and British theories of linguistic communication, 1648–1789. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell Univ. Press.
  357.  
  358. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  359.  
  360. This excellent study extends beyond the usual focus on Locke and Condillac, and their concerns with communication and representations as the functions of language, to give equal space to expression and emotion. The book consists of two chapters each on “Animal Communication,” “Savage Eloquence,” and “Civilized Tongues,” plus an introduction and a coda that briefly extends the scope into the 19th century.
  361.  
  362. Find this resource:
  363.  
  364. Lewis, Rhodri. 2007. Language, mind and nature: Artificial languages in England from Bacon to Locke. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  365.  
  366. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  367.  
  368. A solid study of a question that, although not neglected over recent decades, has not seen its full philosophical importance exploited. Readers with a good knowledge of Bacon and Locke will emerge with a richer understanding of what links them in terms of their conceptions of language and mind, in both its epistemological and its political dimensions.
  369.  
  370. Find this resource:
  371.  
  372. Percival, W. Keith. 2004. Studies in Renaissance grammar. Aldershot, Hampshire, UK; and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Variorum.
  373.  
  374. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  375.  
  376. A collection of papers on a range of topics in “Renaissance” grammar and its relations to what went before it, as well to rising vernaculars and national identities, including a particularly interesting group of papers on Nebrija.
  377.  
  378. Find this resource:
  379.  
  380. Salmon, Vivian. 1988. The study of language in 17th-century England. 2d ed. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  381.  
  382. DOI: 10.1075/sihols.17Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  383.  
  384. A collection of eleven quite wide ranging papers, divided into three sections: Applied Linguistics, Grammatical Theory, and Universal Language. Salmon’s greatest achievement may have been her patient dismantling of Chomsky’s Cartesian linguistics (1966), but nothing that she wrote was ever less than scrupulous and compelling.
  385.  
  386. Find this resource:
  387.  
  388. Zwartjes, Otto, et al., eds. 2009. Missionary linguistics/lingüística misionera. 4 vols. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  389.  
  390. DOI: 10.1075/sihols.114Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  391.  
  392. These volumes (Vol. 1, 2004; Vol. 2, 2005; Vol. 3, 2007; Vol. 4, 2009) contain selected papers from a series of conferences organized by Zwartjes and others since 2003. They cover a vast range of writing by missionaries from across Europe, both Catholic and Protestant, writing descriptions of indigenous languages of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Australia. Volume II focuses on orthography and phonology, Volume III on morphology and syntax, and Volume IV on lexicography.
  393.  
  394. Find this resource:
  395.  
  396. Nineteenth Century
  397. For most contemporary linguists, it is with the 19th century that they begin to see work that connects directly with their own concerns and in which they recognize elements of the methodologies they employ. This was also the period when the term “linguistics” itself came into use. In the last quarter of the century, the discoveries of the “Neogrammarians” centered in Leipzig brought unprecedented scientific renown to the field. It is not surprising then, that we find as much historical enquiry into this century as we do into the previous three and a half combined, and more still than into the thousand “medieval” years that preceded them. Amsterdamska 1987 surveys the whole period from 1816 to 1916, as does Morpurgo Davies in Volume 4 of Lepschy 1994–1998 (cited under General Overviews). The other works cited are specialized by either theme or school. Trabant 1992 is a fine study of the work of arguably the most important linguist of the first half of the century, Wilhelm von Humboldt. Jankowsky 1972 covers the junggramatische Richtung (Neogrammarians) whose historical work, based on a principle of (virtually) exceptionless sound laws, brought unprecedented recognition to linguistics as a science; while Desmet 1996 is an account of the “naturalists” centered in Paris who opposed them. Olender 2002, which overlaps with all of these, is a study of the ideologically driven construction of polarized visions of Aryan and Semitic cultural origins in the work of linguists over the long 19th century. Alter 1999 treats a particularly significant episode in 19th-century linguistics: its importance for the theories of Charles Darwin. Joseph 2012 is a biography of Saussure that also details his published and unpublished writings, and includes a chapter on the history of linguistics, particularly the 19th-century developments that led up to Saussure’s early work on the primitive Indo-European vowel system. Leopold 1999 is an account of the Prix Volney, the most prestigious award in linguistics from its inception in 1822 until at least the end of the century, and still much aspired toward in France. The volumes include the first publication of seven papers submitted for the award in the 19th century.
  398.  
  399. Alter, Stephen G. 1999. Darwinism and the linguistic image: Language, race, and natural theology in the nineteenth century. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
  400.  
  401. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  402.  
  403. Darwin used findings from linguistics to argue for parallels between the development of languages and of species, and to position himself relative to “natural theology.” This brought him into the Whitney–Max Müller debate, which attracted world attention in the 1860s. Alter explores the reception of the debate and of Darwin’s views, including in little-known clerical periodicals of the time.
  404.  
  405. Find this resource:
  406.  
  407. Amsterdamska, Olga. 1987. Schools of thought: The development of linguistics from Bopp to Saussure. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel.
  408.  
  409. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-3759-8Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  410.  
  411. This book was the author’s PhD thesis from the Yale Sociology Department. Its sociology of science perspective ought perhaps to have given deeper insights into the field than is the case, but it remains unusual simply for taking that perspective.
  412.  
  413. Find this resource:
  414.  
  415. Desmet, Piet. 1996. La linguistique naturaliste en France (1867–1922): Nature, origine et évolution du langage. Leuven, Belgium, and Paris: Peeters.
  416.  
  417. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  418.  
  419. A detailed study of the 19th-century French linguists who established a “naturalist” school in opposition to the Neogrammarian-inspired Parisian mainstream, and the work that they published in the organ of their movement, the Revue de linguistique et de philologie comparée.
  420.  
  421. Find this resource:
  422.  
  423. Jankowsky, Kurt. 1972. The Neogrammarians: A re-evaluation of their place in the development of linguistic science. The Hague and Paris: Mouton.
  424.  
  425. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  426.  
  427. This remains the definitive study of the linguists centered at the University of Leipzig who brought linguistics international prestige as a leading science for the first time. Jankowsky’s account cannot be fully appreciated without immersing oneself in the details of Indo-European historical linguistics.
  428.  
  429. Find this resource:
  430.  
  431. Joseph, John E. 2012. Saussure. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  432.  
  433. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  434.  
  435. Because of Saussure’s cardinal position in the development of modern linguistics, this first complete biography of him and first comprehensive account of his work ends up covering much of the history of linguistics, particularly in the 19th and early 20th century.
  436.  
  437. Find this resource:
  438.  
  439. Leopold, Joan, ed. 1999. The Prix Volney: Its history and significance for the development of linguistic research. 3 vols. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.
  440.  
  441. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  442.  
  443. These volumes—really four in number, as the first is divided into Volumes 1a and 1b—include nine submissions for the prize, all from the 19th century, of which seven were previously unpublished. Volume 1a, by Leopold, is a history of the award and the authors. The essays appear here in their original language, with a lengthy commentary in English.
  444.  
  445. Find this resource:
  446.  
  447. Olender, Maurice. 2002. Languages of paradise: Aryans and Semites, a match made in heaven. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. New York: Other Press.
  448.  
  449. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  450.  
  451. Originally published in French in 1989, with an expanded edition in 1994. The English translation originally appeared in 1992 with the subtitle Race, Religion and Philology in the Nineteenth Century. Key figures whose treatment of Aryans and Semites are examined include Herder, Renan, Max Müller, and Saussure’s early mentor, Adolphe Pictet.
  452.  
  453. Find this resource:
  454.  
  455. Trabant, Jürgen. 1992. Humboldt, ou le sens du langage. Liège, Belguim: Mardaga.
  456.  
  457. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  458.  
  459. This remains the definitive study of the most important linguist of the early 19th century, written by the one contemporary linguist who has succeeded in presenting the full range of his thinking, and in a comprehensible and readable way.
  460.  
  461. Find this resource:
  462.  
  463. 20th Century and After
  464. The telescoping effect whereby more appears to be happening in a field as one approaches the present time has meant that, in the view of some linguists, the discipline only properly began in 1957 with the publication of Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures. That, clearly, is a historical illusion. But it is true that the 20th century was a vibrant period for investigation of language, with two profound paradigm shifts, each brought on by work that identified a specific object of study for linguistic enquiry. It is also the first period for which we have rich accounts by linguists themselves giving their own reflections on their work.
  465.  
  466. 1900–1960
  467. The Course in General Linguistics of Saussure took the object of linguistics to be la langue, defined as a socially shared system of signs. This became the basis for structuralism, with all its European and American variants, down to and including Chomsky, who redefined the subject subtly but significantly, as described in 1960-Present. Joseph 2002 surveys this whole period, starting with the American linguist William Dwight Whitney’s influence on Saussure, and including considerable material on the man behind many of the developments within structuralism, Roman Jakobson, who is also the subject of Bradford 1994. Sampson 1980 also covers the full period, taking a “schools” approach that reflects how most linguists of the 20th century saw their work, even though certain schools (notably the London School) consisted of individuals whose disagreements overshadowed any shared outlook. Matthews 1993 is focused on grammatical theory, although most theoretical concern in the 1930s and 1940s was about phonology, as can be seen in the quasi-ethnographic account of Murray 1994. Lee 1996 is the best study to date of the published and unpublished work of Whorf. Falk 1999 is a fine-grained examination of the careers of three women who played overlooked key roles in American linguistics. The edited volumes Davis and O’Cain 1980 are valuable resources for the history of this period, even if it is true that a person’s recounting of his or her own life and work, however honest in intention, is bound to require some readerly adjustment for objectivity.
  468.  
  469. Bradford, Richard. 1994. Roman Jakobson: Life, language, art. London and New York: Routledge.
  470.  
  471. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  472.  
  473. Although it does not delve deeply into his linguistic work, this book gives a useful overview of the broad conception of language held by Jakobson, arguably the most important linguist of the central decades of the 20th century.
  474.  
  475. Find this resource:
  476.  
  477. Davis, Boyd H., and Raymond K. O’Cain, eds. 1980. First person singular. Vol. 1. Papers from the Conference on an Oral Archive for the History of American Linguistics, 9–10 March 1979, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  478.  
  479. DOI: 10.1075/sihols.21Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  480.  
  481. Volumes 2 and 3 (1991 and 1998) edited by E. F. K. Koerner. Recollections of their life and career by sixteen linguists, including Archibald Hill, Yakov Malkiel, Charles Hockett, William Bright, Einar Haugen, Winfred Lehmann, Fred Householder, and Dell Hymes. Those represented in the 1991 book include Dwight Bolinger, Joshua Fishman, Paul Garvin, Joseph Greenberg, and Henry Kahane; in the 1998 book, J. C. Catford, Charles Ferguson, Kenneth Pike, and Robert Stockwell.
  482.  
  483. Find this resource:
  484.  
  485. Falk, Julia S. 1999. Women, language and linguistics: Three American stories from the first half of the twentieth century. London and New York: Routledge.
  486.  
  487. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  488.  
  489. A thoroughly researched and well-written study of the work of Alice Vanderbilt Morris, Gladys Amanda Reichard, and E. Adelaide Hahn, which reveals both the central role that each of the three played in developing and supporting different areas of linguistic research, and the prejudices that they sometimes had to overcome.
  490.  
  491. Find this resource:
  492.  
  493. Joseph, John E. 2002. From Whitney to Chomsky: Essays in the history of American linguistics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  494.  
  495. DOI: 10.1075/sihols.103Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  496.  
  497. This book consists of nine chapters, some of them revised from previously published papers. Amongst the topics covered are the sources of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis; the relationships of Whitney, Bloomfield, and Chomsky to Saussure; the gap between the content of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior and how Chomsky represented it; and what lay behind popular misunderstandings of Whorf and Chomsky.
  498.  
  499. Find this resource:
  500.  
  501. Lee, Penny. 1996. The Whorf theory complex: A critical reconstruction. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  502.  
  503. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  504.  
  505. The first account of Whorf’s whole intellectual development, based on a thorough study of the archives of his unpublished writings, and the place of his influential ideas about language within that development.
  506.  
  507. Find this resource:
  508.  
  509. Matthews, Peter H. 1993. Grammatical theory in the United States from Bloomfield to Chomsky. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  510.  
  511. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511620560Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  512.  
  513. Confusingly, this book was catalogued by the Library of Congress without the words “in the United States” in the title. It is particularly strong on Bloomfield, Zellig Harris, and the early Chomsky, and is written from the reasonably neutral perspective of a semi-detached observer.
  514.  
  515. Find this resource:
  516.  
  517. Murray, Stephen O. 1994. Theory groups and the study of language in North America: A social history. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  518.  
  519. DOI: 10.1075/sihols.69Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  520.  
  521. This book developed out of Murray’s PhD thesis on the sociology of scientific groups and what makes for a scientific revolution in the Kuhnian sense. A first version was published in 1983, and a spin-off limited to American sociolinguistics followed in 1998. Murray’s work is extremely useful for what it shows about the relationship between the intellectual and the organizational leadership of what he calls theory groups.
  522.  
  523. Find this resource:
  524.  
  525. Sampson, Geoffrey. 1980. Schools of linguistics. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
  526.  
  527. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  528.  
  529. Although Sampson does not cover all that many “schools”—the Prague School, the London School, the Chomskyans, the American descriptivists, and a few more isolated figures are his focus—he deals with all of them in depth and in an intelligent and accessible way, making this still a fine introduction to 20th-century linguistics, with a “prelude” on its 19th-century roots.
  530.  
  531. Find this resource:
  532.  
  533. 1960-Present
  534. In the United States, the early 1960s saw the steady rise of Chomskyan linguistics, for which the object of study is the knowledge of a language possessed by an idealized native speaker-hearer in a perfectly homogeneous (thus also idealized) speech community, with the aim of discovering what is universal to all languages, because physically specified in the architecture of the brain. In France, meanwhile, structuralism had been spreading its wings from linguistics to anthropology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and literary studies. The late 1960s saw the most talented members of the first generation of Chomsky’s students break away from him to form a “generative semantics” movement, a story well told by Harris 1993 and Goldsmith and Huck 1996. Chomsky himself seemed to be moving into phonology, where developments are covered by Anderson 1985, which also treats the earlier half of the century. In the 1970s Chomsky made a comeback in syntactic theory, retaking the leading position in that field for another twenty years, as Newmeyer 1986 recounts. Graffi 2001 and Seuren 1998 both take a much wider historical sweep, but are included in this section because it is for this period that they are most valuable. Brown and Law 2002 and Chevalier 2006 are, like Davis and O’Cain 1980 cited under 1900–1960, valuable historical resources in the form of memoirs and interviews, where the same provisos about objectivity apply.
  535.  
  536. Anderson, Stephen R. 1985. Phonology in the twentieth century: Theories of rules and theories of representations. Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press.
  537.  
  538. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  539.  
  540. A well informed study that serves as a model for how to integrate historical investigation into the field with a serious enquiry into contemporary methodological and epistemological concerns.
  541.  
  542. Find this resource:
  543.  
  544. Brown, Keith, and Vivien Law, eds. 2002. Linguistics in Britain: Personal histories. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell.
  545.  
  546. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  547.  
  548. This is a British equivalent to the First Person Singular volumes (1980 edited by Boyd and O’Cain and 1991 and 1998 edited by Koerner; see Boyd and O’Cain 1980, cited under 1900–1960), with autobiographical accounts from twenty-three linguists, including Jean Aitchison, David Crystal, Michael Halliday, John Lyons, Peter Matthews, Anna Morpurgo Davies, and Peter Trudgill.
  549.  
  550. Find this resource:
  551.  
  552. Chevalier, Jean-Claude, with Pierre Encrevé. 2006. Combats pour la linguistique, de Martinet à Kristeva: Essai de dramturgie épistémologique. Lyons, France: ENS Éditions.
  553.  
  554. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  555.  
  556. Interviews with fourteen important French linguists of the second half of the 20th century, including Martinet, Greimas, Culioli, Kristeva, and Chevalier himself, who is a key figure in the modern history of linguistics in France. There is also a substantial essay by Chevalier and Encrevé on the creation of French linguistics journals in the 1960s.
  557.  
  558. Find this resource:
  559.  
  560. Goldsmith, John A., and Geoffrey J. Huck. 1996. Ideology and linguistic theory: Noam Chomsky and the Deep Structure debates. London and New York: Routledge.
  561.  
  562. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  563.  
  564. A rather more earnest enquiry into the collapse of Generative Semantics than Harris 1993, upon which it builds. Making use of interviews with many of the central figures, the book shows how antisocial egos and dug-in heels play at least as much a role in the development of intellectual movements as the “social” factors evoked by Kuhn and others.
  565.  
  566. Find this resource:
  567.  
  568. Graffi, Giorgio. 2001. 200 years of syntax: A critical survey. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  569.  
  570. DOI: 10.1075/sihols.98Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  571.  
  572. Graffi does devote space to 19th-century treatments of syntax, but since it did not emerge as a core topic until the 20th century, the center of gravity lies squarely in the second half of his 200 years. The book’s strength is its treatment of recent approaches in the light of what has gone before.
  573.  
  574. Find this resource:
  575.  
  576. Harris, Randy Allen. 1993. The linguistics wars. New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  577.  
  578. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  579.  
  580. A well-documented and entertaining account of the conflict between Chomsky and those of his students who broke away to pursue Generative Semantics.
  581.  
  582. Find this resource:
  583.  
  584. Newmeyer, Frederick J. 1986. Linguistic theory in America. 2d ed. New York: Academic Press.
  585.  
  586. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  587.  
  588. This is a history of Chomskyan linguistics, written from a Chomskyan perspective, and as such it is a definitive account. The one-sidedness inevitably entails a certain distortion of the contributions made by predecessors and (sometimes unacknowledged) contemporaries. But the book serves as a fine guide to understanding Chomsky’s shifting theoretical positions.
  589.  
  590. Find this resource:
  591.  
  592. Seuren, Pieter A. M. 1998. Western linguistics: An historical introduction. Oxford and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
  593.  
  594. DOI: 10.1002/9781444307467Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  595.  
  596. Seuren’s idiosyncratic book deals with Antiquity to the 17th century in one 50-page chapter, then with the 18th and 19th centuries in another 100 pages. The 20th century gets 150 pages—at which point the book changes tack for some 225 pages on predicate calculus and the study of meaning. Seuren writes engagingly and, in the later sections, authoritatively.
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