Historiographia Linguistica - Volume 1, Issue 3, 1974

Three centuries after its publication, John Wallis' Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae (1653) is still worth the attention of the readers interested in the study of English. Considered within the context of its day, it appears as a significant contribution to the field, and indeed a work which constitutes a landmark in the history of the study of English. Its author, a remarkable mathematician looked upon as one of the most important precursors of Newton, succeeded in handling facts of the English language (both phonetics and grammar) better than any of his predecessors. His work, which illustrates the empirical approach, is important through the degree of independence attained in it from the Latin model which, at that time, still exerted a strong influence on attempts at describing the European vernaculars. In the advent of comparative linguistics in the 19th century Wallis' grammar fell into disgrace. Even in our time scholars often repeat, with little justification, earlier criticisms of Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae - thus suggesting that Wallis' contribution to the study of English has not always been examined in terms of the advances it represented when it was first published more than three centuries ago. When mapping out the development of linguistics in a historiography of our discipline there are two aspects in which Wallis' grammar of English deserves special mention: when tracing the evolution of articulatory phonetics and when examining the roots of modern structural descriptivism.

By providing an assured basis in morphology for subsequent phonological comparison Sir William Jones's celebrated remarks about the resemblance and relationship between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin marked a turning point in the study of language. Some scholars anticipated his conclusions, but their findings appear to have remained largely unknown. At much the same time as the forms of languages were beginning to be compared, investigations were being made in greater detail than hitherto into structural resemblances between different species of plants and animals. In biological studies explicit evolutionary statements based on such observations are few and far between, but in the study of language, similarity of form implied filiation. The present study sets out to compare some of the lines of thought common to comparative linguistics and comparative anatomy, and to suggest that in the biological sciences, too, resemblance implied common origin sooner and more generally than is sometimes held.

Humboldt's theory of language reflects Kant's influence to a far greater extent than is generally realized. In fact, Kantian cognitive and perceptual universals play a crucial role in the later formulations of Humboldt's linguistic thinking. Indeed, not only did Humboldt derive the universals of grammatical case from the Kantian categories of relation in his mature work, but he also applied Kant's schema concept in a systematic way to the fundamental problems of language during his last period of scholarly activity. Moreover, it can be shown that the Kantian aspects of his theory do riot conflict with his widely quoted and misinterpreted formulations concerning the nature of linguistic diversity. It is suggested that much of the confusion in regard to just what Humboldt actually meant would have been dispelled long ago had researchers made adequate use of two neglected, but extremely important, major manuscripts from his mature period. More importantly still, one can plausibly argue that Humboldt was correct in assuming that Kant, not Descartes, provided linguistics with the key for dealing adequately with the central problems of language and mind.