A History of Modern Linguistics
From the Beginnings to World War II
- Offers a concise history of modern linguistics up to World War II
- Examines the connections between linguistics and neighbouring fields, including philosophy, psychology and anthropology
- Focuses on historical figures in linguistics, and the social and political contexts that shaped their ideas and methods
- Provides extensive suggestions for further reading
In this book, McElvenny offers a concise history of modern linguistics from its emergence in the early nineteenth century up to the end of World War II. Written as a collective biography of the field, it concentrates on the interaction between the leading figures of linguistics, their controversies, and the role of the social and political context in shaping their ideas and methods.
While A History of Modern Linguistics focuses on disciplinary linguistics, the boundaries of the account are porous: developments in neighbouring fields - in particular, philosophy, psychology and anthropology - are brought into the discussion where they have contributed to linguistic research.
1. Introduction
2. Comparative-historical grammar
3. Language classification
4. The consolidation of comparative-historical linguistics
5. The pragmatic turn of the mid-nineteenth century
6. Neogrammarian doctrine
7. Critiques of Neogrammarian doctrine
8. Language as a system
9. The phoneme
10. Prague Circle structuralism
11. The beginnings of functionalism
12. Meaning and British linguistics
13. Functionalism in Central Europe and North America
14. The beginnings of American structuralism
15. Linguistic relativity
16. The culmination of American structuralism
ConclusionAcknowledgementsBibliography
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To any student of linguistics, anyone who works in the field: James McElvenny’s A History of Modern Linguistics will wonderfully enrich your understanding of the scientific trajectory you are part of. If you have done work on the heritage of language analysis, you will find here, as I have, a new and compelling historical arc that resituates developments across the period when linguistics was established as an academic field and took its modern form. The book gets its points across with perfect clarity, speaking directly to you whether specialist or newcomer. A tour de force, beautifully written and authoritative.
It is a truly wonderful book, by far the best history of Western linguistics in the pre-Chomskyan period. I recommend it to any students or correspondents who are interested in doing a project on one of the historical topics discussed.
Throughout his text, McElvenny never loses sight of his primary interlocutors—including readers new to the history of linguistics and humanists coming to the text from other disciplines. At the same time, he pays readers the compliment of expecting them to be able to tolerate naturally occurring complexity and multidimensional relationships across events and texts.
I recommend A history of modern linguistics to colleagues and students in linguistics and all allied fields. This book as a whole has a big story to tell, but it will also reward selective reading. Whatever their goals, thoughtful linguists will find questions of interest and echoes of the present day in James McElvenny’s lively, stimulating discussion of our past.
