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- Volume 37, Issue, 2010
Historiographia Linguistica - Volume 37, Issue 3, 2010
Volume 37, Issue 3, 2010
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Premodern Letters and Textual Consciousness: From the Pre-Socratics to the First Grammatical Treatise
Author(s): Mark E. Amslerpp.: 279–319 (41)More LessModern linguistics textbooks devote little, if any, space to writing systems. Shifting our attention from naming precursors or proto-theories to reading earlier language study and linguistics as theorizing and description, the present paper explores ancient and early medieval concepts of the letter in terms of the semiotics of written language and the emergence of textual consciousness in manuscript culture. Early concepts and uses of the letter in alphabetic writing were ambiguous, multilayered, and occasionally contested, but they were not confused. Ancient and early medieval concepts of the letter were based on a semiotics of language and writing which connected spoken and visual signs as multimodal textual activity. Theories of the letter included: (a) the written character (gramma, littera) is a visual sign signifying a particular sound or group of sounds; (b) letters can function as arbitrary second-order signifying systems, such as numbers or diacritics; (c) different alphabets are rooted in the history of peoples although the Roman alphabet is a plastic medium for inscribing the emerging European vernaculars; (d) letters are material substances; (e) the written character is a mute sign; (f) the written character is imperfect or incomplete when detached from sound and the practice of reading aloud.
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William Dwight Whitney and the Social Dimension of Lexical Diffusion
Author(s): Stephen G. Alterpp.: 321–340 (20)More LessThe paper traces how the American linguist William Dwight Whitney (1827–1894) and his intellectual descendants anticipated, and in part influenced, modern-day discussions of ‘lexical diffusion’, the piecemeal spread of phonological changes both through an individual speaker’s word-inventory and speaker-to-speaker through an entire community. Whitney regarded these two processes as inextricably linked; he also stressed comparison between different speech communities in search of locally distinct diffusionary patterns that challenged the Neogrammarian regularity hypothesis. Recent discussions of these and other aspects of lexical diffusion suggest that comparative-local studies, such as Whitney pioneered, remain essential for working out the explanatory nexus between lexical diffusion’s internally-phonological and social contexts.
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On “Eskimo Words for Snow”: The life cycle of a linguistic misconception
Author(s): Piotr Cichocki and Marcin Kilarskipp.: 341–377 (37)More LessThis article examines the complex interdependence of linguistics and the discourses of social sciences and philosophy based on the example of the Eskimo words for snow. In particular, we trace the life cycle of the example through three phases: (1) the origin of the misconception in the studies of Franz Boas (1858–1942) and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941); (2) its propagation in textbooks and in sympathetic and alternative theoretical contexts, and (3) the contemporary status quo following the exposition of the misconception by Laura Martin (1986), Geoffrey Pullum (1989) and Steven Pinker (1994, 2007). Further, we examine the theoretical and methodological shortcomings of the exposition, and their implications for the poverty of critical and impartial discussion on the nature of linguistic categorization and its cognitive implications, as originally discussed by Boas and Whorf.
Volumes & issues
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Volume 50 (2023)
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Volume 49 (2022)
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Volume 48 (2021)
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Volume 47 (2020)
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Volume 46 (2019)
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Volume 45 (2018)
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Volume 44 (2017)
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Volume 43 (2016)
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Volume 42 (2015)
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Volume 41 (2014)
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Volume 40 (2013)
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Volume 39 (2012)
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Volume 38 (2011)
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Volume 37 (2010)
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Volume 36 (2009)
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Volume 35 (2008)
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Volume 34 (2007)
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Volume 33 (2006)
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Volume 32 (2005)
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Volume 31 (2004)
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Volume 30 (2003)
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Volume 29 (2002)
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Volume 28 (2001)
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Volume 27 (2000)
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Volume 26 (1999)
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Volume 25 (1998)
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Volume 24 (1997)
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Volume 23 (1996)
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Volume 22 (1995)
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Volume 21 (1994)
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Volume 20 (1993)
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Volume 19 (1992)
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Volume 18 (1991)
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Volume 17 (1990)
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Volume 16 (1989)
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Volume 15 (1988)
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Volume 14 (1987)
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Volume 13 (1986)
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Volume 12 (1985)
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Volume 11 (1984)
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Volume 10 (1983)
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Volume 9 (1982)
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Volume 8 (1981)
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Volume 7 (1980)
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Volume 6 (1979)
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Volume 5 (1978)
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Volume 4 (1977)
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Volume 3 (1976)
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Volume 2 (1975)
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Volume 1 (1974)
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