Historiographia Linguistica - Volume 48, Issue 2-3, 2021

Summary

Linguistic historiography analyzes how linguistic knowledge has been acquired, stored, used and diffused. This article examines what can happen if linguists rely on copies of source data rather than the source data itself. It takes as a case study linguistic data from Siraya, a now-extinct Formosan language. Documents compiled in the seventeenth century by Dutch missionaries in Taiwan form a significant source of data for Siraya. One such document, a wordlist known as the Utrecht Manuscript (UM), is the principal source for the lexicon of one variety of Siraya, “Siraya Proper”. It has been published three times. Each edition, however, contains many errors. These editions, rather than the manuscript, have been used by scholars investigating Siraya. This article aims to correct errors in the editions and secondary literature on the UM with my readings of the manuscript itself. It therefore presents a more accurate record of the lexicon of “Siraya Proper” as well as illustrating the importance of using primary rather than secondary sources of linguistic data. Finally, it introduces an online edition of the UM, which will provide scholars and language revivalists with a useful resource for this lexicon.

Summary

The concept of a colloquial variety of Latin as an intermediate variety between Latin and the Romance languages has a long standing. Sometimes called Vulgar or Popular Latin, this variety is often conceptualized as a discrete linguistic variety, which is held responsible for the changes in the provincial realization of Latin. Since a great deal of evidence for this variety is collected from written texts, studies on the emergence of the Romance languages have tended to ignore the actual process of language acquisition in the provinces of the Roman empire. In the present paper I draw attention to the work of two early scholars, the Italian Celso Cittadini (1533–1627) and the Frenchman Pierre-Nicolas Bonamy (1694–1770), who did concern themselves with the acquisition of Latin, referring to the role of the Roman army in spreading the Latin language throughout the empire. Their suggestions about the process of Latinization can be substantiated with data on the military presence in the provinces of the Roman empire.

Summary

In this paper I discuss the varied contributions of Erminnie Adele Smith (1836–1886), a linguist, ethnologist, and geologist, who has a significant but underestimated place in the history of the study of North American languages. Among others, Smith was among the first scholars to collaborate extensively with Indigenous consultants and the first woman in the history of Western linguistics who published works on grammatical gender. Such achievements point to the need to reconsider her life and work in the context of the reception of the first generation of women in American anthropology as well as the study of gender in Iroquoian languages since the mid-19th century.

Zusammenfassung

Der von Wilhelm von Humboldt geprägte und von Heymann Steinthal Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts propagierte Begriff der Inneren Sprachform hat eine bewegte und von Diskontinuitäten geprägte Geschichte und eine äußerst vage und plastische Bedeutung. Der Text rekonstruiert einige Stationen dieser Begriffsgeschichte, mit Blick auf deren Brüche und Richtungswechsel. Besonderes Augenmerk gilt der Rezeption und der heuristischen Weiterentwicklung des Begriffs in den USA. Kontrastiert wird die US-Rezeption (in Sprachpsychologie, Spracherwerbsforschung und Ethnolinguistik) mit der zeitgleichen ideologischen Verwendung des Ausdrucks in der sprachnationalistischen deutschen Tradition.

Summary

Over the years, Noam Chomsky has constructed a historiographic narrative according to which Generative Grammar is the outcome of a mix comprising the early awareness of creativity by Galileo, the Cartesians, and Humboldt, the formalization of recursive functions by computational theorists, and an incipient internalist ‘language’ concept notably foreshadowed by Otto Jespersen. This paper tries to show that the latter ingredient is to be removed from the historical recipe for Chomskyan linguistics. More specifically, the paper claims that the almost ritual repetition of the name of the Danish linguist belongs to a component of the generativist rhetoric that is ‘non-rational’. Such a component is part and parcel of most ground-breaking theories.

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