Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17597536.2021.1888369
José Miguel Blanco Pena
ABSTRACT In modern linguistics, coherence is considered a fundamental property of text. The study of this phenomenon is quite novel, since its origin dates back to the 1960s. However, although in the historiography of linguistics we find no traces of it, both the concept and its study are not so modern as one might think. By studying text unity, current linguistics addresses a central question both in Aristotle’s Poetics and in 19th–century hermeneutical speculation. Also, linguists are addressing a basic notion of ancient Chinese literary criticism, which we cannot ignore. Thus, the objectives of this paper are to analyse these little-known antecedents, with the purpose of contrasting them; to insert the modern study of coherence in the tradition of both Western and Chinese thought; and to assess directly the contributions and merits of these traditions within the history of linguistics. The research carried out shows surprising results. A similar idea of text coherence is identified in both Western and Chinese traditions, but the most astonishing finding is the existence of a pioneering theory of coherence which was fully developed in China more than 1,500 years ago, predating modern explanatory models by many centuries.
{"title":"On ancient vs. modern, eastern vs. western, contributions to text coherence theory","authors":"José Miguel Blanco Pena","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2021.1888369","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2021.1888369","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In modern linguistics, coherence is considered a fundamental property of text. The study of this phenomenon is quite novel, since its origin dates back to the 1960s. However, although in the historiography of linguistics we find no traces of it, both the concept and its study are not so modern as one might think. By studying text unity, current linguistics addresses a central question both in Aristotle’s Poetics and in 19th–century hermeneutical speculation. Also, linguists are addressing a basic notion of ancient Chinese literary criticism, which we cannot ignore. Thus, the objectives of this paper are to analyse these little-known antecedents, with the purpose of contrasting them; to insert the modern study of coherence in the tradition of both Western and Chinese thought; and to assess directly the contributions and merits of these traditions within the history of linguistics. The research carried out shows surprising results. A similar idea of text coherence is identified in both Western and Chinese traditions, but the most astonishing finding is the existence of a pioneering theory of coherence which was fully developed in China more than 1,500 years ago, predating modern explanatory models by many centuries.","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":"64 1","pages":"27 - 43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17597536.2021.1888369","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46052924","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}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17597536.2020.1864983
Greg Brooks
ABSTRACT Joseph Neef (1770–1854) was one of Pestalozzi’s earliest collaborators in Switzerland (1800). He took his mentor’s ideas and principles first to Paris (1803), and then to Pennsylvania (1806). In 1808 he published the first book on educational method written in English in the United States, and in 1809 opened the first Pestalozzian school in the Americas. He was the first to devise a linguistic phonics approach to the initial teaching of literacy in English based on regular sound-symbol patterns, and published a book setting out his system in 1813. This was based on three main principles: start from the phonemes of spoken English; introduce them and the graphemes used to write them very gradually and practise them intensively; and use, initially, only simple, regularised syllables, words and sentences. His principal innovation was to adapt a phonetic notation for vowel phonemes from a 1791 British book on elocution, and add it to the Pestalozzian approach. He had little impact on the teaching of literacy, but deserves to be recognised as a radical innovator.
{"title":"Joseph Neef (1770-1854): a forgotten pioneer of applying phonetics and regularised phonic materials to the initial teaching of literacy in English","authors":"Greg Brooks","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2020.1864983","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2020.1864983","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Joseph Neef (1770–1854) was one of Pestalozzi’s earliest collaborators in Switzerland (1800). He took his mentor’s ideas and principles first to Paris (1803), and then to Pennsylvania (1806). In 1808 he published the first book on educational method written in English in the United States, and in 1809 opened the first Pestalozzian school in the Americas. He was the first to devise a linguistic phonics approach to the initial teaching of literacy in English based on regular sound-symbol patterns, and published a book setting out his system in 1813. This was based on three main principles: start from the phonemes of spoken English; introduce them and the graphemes used to write them very gradually and practise them intensively; and use, initially, only simple, regularised syllables, words and sentences. His principal innovation was to adapt a phonetic notation for vowel phonemes from a 1791 British book on elocution, and add it to the Pestalozzian approach. He had little impact on the teaching of literacy, but deserves to be recognised as a radical innovator.","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":"64 1","pages":"1 - 26"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17597536.2020.1864983","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45254385","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}
Pub Date : 2020-09-08DOI: 10.1080/17597536.2020.1806523
F. Newmeyer
ABSTRACT Charles Hockett had been one of the leading American linguists in the period between Leonard Bloomfield and Noam Chomsky, that is, throughout much of the 1940s and 1950s. His empiricist outlook on linguistic theorising led him to principled disagreements with Chomsky’s generative grammar, which by the mid-1960s he saw as dominating American linguistics and its principal organisation, the Linguistic Society of America (LSA). In 1982, spurred by the announcement of a fund drive in support of the Society’s activities, he sent LSA Secretary-Treasurer Victoria Fromkin a letter of resignation. This paper documents the reaction of some of the leading members of the Society to Hockett’s letter, availing itself of previously unpublished correspondence.
{"title":"A post-Bloomfieldian’s last stand: Charles Hockett’s attempt to resign from the LSA in 1982","authors":"F. Newmeyer","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2020.1806523","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2020.1806523","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Charles Hockett had been one of the leading American linguists in the period between Leonard Bloomfield and Noam Chomsky, that is, throughout much of the 1940s and 1950s. His empiricist outlook on linguistic theorising led him to principled disagreements with Chomsky’s generative grammar, which by the mid-1960s he saw as dominating American linguistics and its principal organisation, the Linguistic Society of America (LSA). In 1982, spurred by the announcement of a fund drive in support of the Society’s activities, he sent LSA Secretary-Treasurer Victoria Fromkin a letter of resignation. This paper documents the reaction of some of the leading members of the Society to Hockett’s letter, availing itself of previously unpublished correspondence.","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":"64 1","pages":"44 - 60"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17597536.2020.1806523","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43577911","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}
Pub Date : 2020-08-17DOI: 10.1080/17597536.2020.1802164
F. Vonk, J. Noordegraaf, Roland de Bonth, G. Rutten
The Dutch Anglicist Frans Wilhelm passed away on 12 June this year after a short period of illness. Frans was one of few scholars in the Netherlands with an extensive knowledge of foreign language ...
{"title":"Frans Wilhelm (1945–2020)","authors":"F. Vonk, J. Noordegraaf, Roland de Bonth, G. Rutten","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2020.1802164","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2020.1802164","url":null,"abstract":"The Dutch Anglicist Frans Wilhelm passed away on 12 June this year after a short period of illness. Frans was one of few scholars in the Netherlands with an extensive knowledge of foreign language ...","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":"63 1","pages":"237 - 239"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17597536.2020.1802164","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47851166","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}
Pub Date : 2020-07-07DOI: 10.1080/17597536.2020.1784622
John E. Joseph
{"title":"Pleasure of Imitation: Naturalismo e filogenesi del linguaggio nelle teorie di Hensleigh Wedgwood e di Charles Darwin","authors":"John E. Joseph","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2020.1784622","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2020.1784622","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":"64 1","pages":"129 - 132"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17597536.2020.1784622","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49012892","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}
Pub Date : 2020-07-04DOI: 10.1080/17597536.2020.1755110
C. Schweitzer
RÉSUMÉ La voix humaine fascine, et cela, depuis toujours. Elle intrigue, et par sa force d’expression, elle provoque des réactions auprès des auditeurs et interlocuteurs. Aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, on ne dispose pas encore des moyens modernes pour analyser la voix. Grammairiens, mais aussi rhétoriciens, médecins et musiciens, tous les spécialistes de la voix, cherchent alors un moyen pour s’approcher de ce phénomène difficile à cerner. Une astuce est la comparaison entre la voix et la phonation d’un côté, et un instrument de musique de l’autre. Cette comparaison permet de poser la voix en un objet plus facilement compréhensible et descriptible que le sont les processus se déroulant à l’intérieur de l’appareil phonatoire. Plusieurs types d’instruments sont proposés dans les textes, que l’on peut résumer en trois grands groupes: l’instrument à vent, l’instrument à cordes et un type combiné. Nous nous intéressons aux contextes d’utilisation et à la valeur épistémologique de chacun de ces types, aux objectifs qui déterminent le choix des auteurs pour un certain type, et aux raisons de l’abandon de la comparaison.
{"title":"La voix humaine: instrument à vent ou instrument à cordes? Un parcours historique (XVIIe/XVIIIe siècles) autour de cette question","authors":"C. Schweitzer","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2020.1755110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2020.1755110","url":null,"abstract":"RÉSUMÉ La voix humaine fascine, et cela, depuis toujours. Elle intrigue, et par sa force d’expression, elle provoque des réactions auprès des auditeurs et interlocuteurs. Aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, on ne dispose pas encore des moyens modernes pour analyser la voix. Grammairiens, mais aussi rhétoriciens, médecins et musiciens, tous les spécialistes de la voix, cherchent alors un moyen pour s’approcher de ce phénomène difficile à cerner. Une astuce est la comparaison entre la voix et la phonation d’un côté, et un instrument de musique de l’autre. Cette comparaison permet de poser la voix en un objet plus facilement compréhensible et descriptible que le sont les processus se déroulant à l’intérieur de l’appareil phonatoire. Plusieurs types d’instruments sont proposés dans les textes, que l’on peut résumer en trois grands groupes: l’instrument à vent, l’instrument à cordes et un type combiné. Nous nous intéressons aux contextes d’utilisation et à la valeur épistémologique de chacun de ces types, aux objectifs qui déterminent le choix des auteurs pour un certain type, et aux raisons de l’abandon de la comparaison.","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":"63 1","pages":"173 - 192"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17597536.2020.1755110","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44881178","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}
Pub Date : 2020-06-04DOI: 10.1080/17597536.2020.1760066
F. Solleveld
ABSTRACT Karl Richard Lepsius (1810–1884) is mainly remembered as a founder of Egyptology. However, the largest share of his published work was about linguistics and philology, going from the decipherment and comparison of ancient writing systems to the classification of African languages. This article explores his linguistic work and the tensions within it: between different areas of expertise, between theory and observation, and between the study of languages with high and low philological prestige. In particular it focuses on his fieldwork in the Nile region in 1844, his design for a phonetic Standard Alphabet, and the hypothesis of a ‘Hamitic’ language family that connected Egyptian, Coptic, and Ethiopian with Berber as well as Khoisan languages.
{"title":"Lepsius as a linguist: fieldwork, philology, phonetics, and ‘the Hamitic hypothesis’","authors":"F. Solleveld","doi":"10.1080/17597536.2020.1760066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17597536.2020.1760066","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Karl Richard Lepsius (1810–1884) is mainly remembered as a founder of Egyptology. However, the largest share of his published work was about linguistics and philology, going from the decipherment and comparison of ancient writing systems to the classification of African languages. This article explores his linguistic work and the tensions within it: between different areas of expertise, between theory and observation, and between the study of languages with high and low philological prestige. In particular it focuses on his fieldwork in the Nile region in 1844, his design for a phonetic Standard Alphabet, and the hypothesis of a ‘Hamitic’ language family that connected Egyptian, Coptic, and Ethiopian with Berber as well as Khoisan languages.","PeriodicalId":41504,"journal":{"name":"Language & History","volume":"63 1","pages":"193 - 213"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17597536.2020.1760066","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42664988","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}
Pub Date : 2020-05-03DOI: 10.1080/17597536.2019.1649854
Rolf Kemmler, María José Corvo Sánchez
ABSTRACT The present paper explores the role of a grammar-translation based teaching concept known in English as ‘Method Gaspey-Otto-Sauer’ (MGOS) amongst the first textbooks of the German language, published for a specifically Portuguese target audience between 1863 and 1926. Given that the underlying teaching concept by means of ‘conversation grammars’, ‘elementary grammars’ and auxiliary works was put forth as the exclusive product of the ‘Julius Groos Verlag’ in Heidelberg, the most essential information on the publishing house is summarized, as well as on the three authors Thomas William Gaspey (1819–1872), Emil Otto (1813–1878) and Karl Marquard Sauer (1827–1896), to whom the MGOS owes its name. Following a brief presentation of the very first German textbooks for Portuguese learners, the paper focuses on the editions of the ‘conversation grammar’ and the ‘elementary grammars’ of German and their importance in the above context of a corpus of German textbooks for Portuguese learners.
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Pub Date : 2020-05-03DOI: 10.1080/17597536.2020.1771537
J. Subbiondo
ABSTRACT In An Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language (1668), John Wilkins (1614–1672) invented a real character, an artificial language, to express his philosophical language. The Essay was a culmination of Wilkins’ long-term analyses of the interrelationships among language, communication, science, and learning. His lesser known publication on language, Mercury: or the Secret and Swift Messenger (1641), was Wilkins’ earliest published study of these interrelationships. The real character and the philosophical language that Wilkins presented in his Essay were far more advanced than any artificial language he surveyed in Mercury. His was the most comprehensive real character and philosophical language published to date as Wilkins attempted to represent and communicate the ever-expanding knowledge emerging from the new science. Moreover, he intended that his philosophical language remedy the imperfection of natural languages that he believed were caused by the Biblical ‘confusion of tongues.’ Mercury provides Wilkins’ initial published observations regarding the nature of language as well as the types and roles of artificial languages from antiquity to his day. It reflects his forward-thinking understanding of language early in his career; and it foreshadows his continuing development of a philosophical language.
约翰·威尔金斯(John Wilkins, 1614-1672)在《论真实人物与哲学语言》(1668)中创造了一个真实的人物，一种人工语言来表达他的哲学语言。这篇论文是威尔金斯对语言、交流、科学和学习之间相互关系的长期分析的巅峰之作。他不太为人所知的关于语言的著作《墨丘利》(Mercury: or the Secret and Swift Messenger, 1641)是威尔金斯最早发表的关于这些相互关系的研究。威尔金斯在《随笔》中所呈现的真实人物和哲学语言，远比他在《墨丘利》中所考察的任何人工语言都要先进得多。他是迄今为止出版的最全面的真实人物和哲学语言，因为威尔金斯试图代表和交流新科学中不断扩大的知识。此外，他打算用他的哲学语言来弥补自然语言的缺陷，他认为自然语言的缺陷是由圣经中的“语言混乱”造成的。《水星》提供了威尔金斯最初发表的关于语言本质的观察，以及从古代到他那个时代人工语言的类型和作用。这反映了他在职业生涯早期对语言的前瞻性理解;这也预示着他将继续发展哲学语言。
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Pub Date : 2020-04-29DOI: 10.1080/17597536.2020.1755204
S. Turton
ABSTRACT The empirical advancements of scientific lexicography, on whose principles the Oxford English Dictionary was founded, paralleled the developments made in a range of other sciences in the nineteenth century. Rejecting the overt linguistic prescriptivism of many earlier lexicographers, the OED’s editors aimed to approach language as a natural system akin to any other; like their fellow scientists, they were concerned only with objective fact. Yet the representation of any human behaviour will necessarily be selective and subjective, and the conflicting evidence of real linguistic usage would complicate the lexicographers’ ideals of impassive collection and analysis. The better to cast this problem into relief, this paper juxtaposes scientific lexicography with another, more controversial nineteenth-century science: sexology. Sexologists’ pathologisation of ‘deviant’ sexual desires gave rise to an extensive new taxonomy, which the OED began documenting in the early decades of the twentieth century. Drawing on unpublished draft material from the dictionary’s archives, this paper examines the scientific ideologies of lexicography and sexology as they interacted in the OED, exploring what they reveal about the tension between scholarly principles and social practice.
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