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- Volume 43, Issue 1-2, 2016
Historiographia Linguistica - Volume 43, Issue 1-2, 2016
Volume 43, Issue 1-2, 2016
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A Note on Varro and Etymologiae a Contrariis
Author(s): Daniel J. Taylorpp.: 1–9 (9)More LessMarcus Terentius Varro (116–27 B.C.) has often been accused of propagating etymologies from contraries, e.g., war (bellum) is so called because it is not pretty (bellum). The facts prove otherwise, however, for he adduces only two such etymologies in his De Lingua Latina; one he rejects entirely, and the other he merely transmits. The mistaken attribution of etymologiae a contrariis to Varro derives from a misreading of Marcus Fabius Quintilian’s (c.5–100 A.D.) memorable diatribe against etymological excess wherein Varro can be guilty of formulating etymologiae a contrariis only by a false and unwarranted associatio,
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Tradiciones, paradigmas y escuelas
Author(s): Ascensión Hernández Triviñopp.: 11–59 (49)More LessAfter “discovering” a New World at the end of the 15th century, missionaries soon began to produce grammars of the languages spoken there. It can be said that ‘missionary linguistics’ was born and thus the nature of the American languages was becoming known. In this paper the author proposes to analyse a corpus of fifty-six grammars from Mesoamerica, i.e., the central region of the American continent. In the analysis, the author distinguishes five schools according to the established religious orders in New Spain: Franciscan, Dominican, Jesuit, Augustinian, and the secular Church. Although the grammars written in these schools are almost exclusively based on the Latin tradition, many of them contain innovative descriptions of the specific structures found in these Mesoamerican languages.
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British Eighteenth-Century Orientalism and Arabic Dialectology
Author(s): Araceli González Vázquez and Montserrat Benítez Fernándezpp.: 61–97 (37)More LessThis article examines a relatively unknown 18th century European source on Moroccan Arabic. It is the article entitled “Dialogues on the vulgar Arabick of Morocco”, published in London in 1797 by William Price (1771–1830), a self-taught linguist and orientalist from Worcester, England. Price’s work is one of the few European texts predating 1800 focused on Moroccan Arabic, and providing some information about this linguistic variety. As we explain, Price obtained these “Dialogues” from “some natives of Barbary”, who happened to be in London. In the first four sections of the article, we examine the life and works of William Price, we place his activities as an expert in Arabic and other of the so-called “Oriental languages” in the context of 18th century British Orientalism, and we analyse the contents of the “Dialogues” provided in his article. These “Dialogues” consist of a conversation between two interlocutors who are taking a stroll in a walled coastal town of the Moroccan Atlantic strip. The fifth section of our contribution is a linguistic dialectological analysis of both the Arabic and Latin character transcriptions of Moroccan Arabic provided by Price. We analyse different issues concerning the transcriptions given, and we focus our linguistic study on phonological, morphological and syntactical issues.
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Protestant Pioneers in Sanskrit Studies in the Early 18th Century
Author(s): Toon Van Halpp.: 99–144 (46)More LessSanskrit has played a notable role in the history of the language sciences. Its intensive study at the turn of the 19th century went hand in hand with the institutionalization of linguistics as an independent academic discipline. This paper endeavours to trace the earliest Sanskrit studies conducted by Protestant missionaries in Tranquebar (present-day Tharangambadi in Tamil Nadu) under the auspices of the Dänisch-Hallesche Mission from 1706 onwards. In contrast to some of their Jesuit colleagues, the Protestant missionaries did not leave us full-blown manuscript grammars. However, this does not imply that the Tranquebar missionaries had no interest in the sacred language of the Hindus. It was, of course, the primary concern of all missionaries to spread the word of Christ among the indigenous people. Hence, they placed an extremely high value on a firm command of the local vernacular languages. In the case of the Tranquebar missionaries, the study of both Portuguese and Tamil was, therefore, prioritized. In a second stage, however, many of the Tranquebar missionaries, once they had mastered the local vernaculars, gained interest in Sanskrit, which they frequently styled ‘Malabaric Latin’. Partly on the basis of unpublished manuscript sources, this paper (a) investigates why the Tranquebar missionaries were interested in Sanskrit in the first place, (b) surveys the numerous problems they had to overcome, and (c) studies their interaction with scholars working in Europe, from whom they received many incentives. In so doing, the paper investigates to what extent this 18th-century interest in Sanskrit reflects a fascination with the original traditional culture and religion of South India. In conjunction with this, the paper also examines to what extent this largely overlooked chapter in early Sanskrit philology may shed an indirect light on the specific role of Sanskrit in the institutionalization of linguistics.
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“Sanskrit has guided me to the Finnish language”
Author(s): Lukasz Sommerpp.: 145–173 (29)More LessHerman Kellgren (1822–1856) was a Finnish Orientalist and national activist. He lived and worked at a time when the cultural and intellectual life of Finland was still dominated by Swedish, while Finnish, the majority language, was just beginning to make its way into the sphere of high culture and education. At an early stage of his career, Kellgren published several works on the Finnish language, in which national engagement meets fascination with Sanskrit. His accounts of Finnish are clearly evaluative; they seek to raise interest in Finnish and promote its prestige, both at home and abroad. One of the more significant inspirations discernible in his works on Finnish was the language philosophy of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). One of the challenges of the endeavor to describe Finnish in Humboldtian terms was determining the status of Finnish within Humboldtian hierarchies of language perfection — hierarchies which clearly favored inflection (as exemplified by Sanskrit) as a grammatical procedure and disfavored agglutination which is characteristic for Finnish. In his efforts to remain true to the spirit of Humboldt, and to present Finnish in a positive light, Kellgren insisted on labeling it as inflected rather than agglutinative.
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A Late 19th-Century British Perspective on Modern Foreign Language Learning, Teaching, and Reform
Author(s): Marjorie Perlman Lorchpp.: 175–208 (34)More LessThe late 19th century saw a great rise in private foreign language learning and increasing provision of Modern foreign language teaching in schools. Evidence is presented to document the uptake of innovations in Thomas Prendergast’s (1807–1886) “Mastery System” by both individual language learners and educationalists. Although it has previously been suggested that Prendergast’s method failed to have much impact, this study clearly demonstrates the major influence he had on approaches to language learning and teaching in Britain and around the world both with his contemporaries and long after his death. This detailed case study illuminates the landscape of modern language pedagogy in Victorian Britain.
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Martin Gimm, Georg von der Gabelentz zum Gedenken (Wiesbaden, 2013); Kennosuke Ezawa & Annemete von Vogel (Hgg.), Georg von der Gabelentz. Ein biographisches Lesebuch (Tübingen, 2013); Kennosuke Ezawa, Franz Hundsnurscher & Annemete von Vogel, Hrg., Beiträge zur Gabelentz-Forschung (Tübingen, 2014)
Author(s): Manfred Ringmacherpp.: 238–244 (7)More Less
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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