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Abstracts
1. Alford, Dan Moonhawk (California
Institute of Integral Studies): "From Before
Humboldt to Here: A Still
Hidden Cycle in the History of Linguistics"
It is remarkable: the
time seems to be at hand for regressing to all the hidden and mystic matters
which the recent past has found contemptuous or ridiculous. What
might actually prejudice one in favor of such regressing is that the recent
era of clear, pure, but by no means deep rationality really was blameworthy
in many aspects, and is largely responsible for the weaknesses and excesses
of the present.
Mysticism of course
may easily go too far, but nonetheless there is more truth in it than in
shallow rationality. The real truth of things always lies deep, it cannot
be easily or clearly demonstrated and can only be found through a genuine
and pure attunement of our entire psychic constitution, just as apure tone
can only be produced in a purely tuned instrument.
(Wilhelm von Humboldt:1809, 8:122)
The worst failing of
much of contemporary linguistics is that it is boring. As foreseen
two generations ago, linguistics recently became a virtual academic isolate
because of its increased mathematization, jargon, and idealized removal
from the context of reality. However, this was a passing fad, a point
on a circle which is constantly turning, leading presently to new
directions in the study of the human spirit and how it functionally manifests
itself in space-time reality.
This paper presents
an unorthodox, alternative history of linguistics as seen from the holistic
viewpoint, showing how many of the "unacceptable" notions found in the
writings of influential linguists of the past are actually based on a tradition
of language study which, like modern linguistics itself, traces all the
way back to ancient India. This holistic view concentrates on the living
process, the power of language, as well as the formal structure of manifest
speech and by so doing is able to show a historic oscillation over
time between the holistic and analytic points of view.
Not remaining
content with a congenial history, we shall briefly explore new topics of
research in holistic linguistics: brainwave states and communicative processes
in altered states of consciousness; brainwave synchronization between individuals
in normal conversation as well as during telepathy; what Amerindians say
about the emotional/telepathic basis of language and its power to create
reality; and the role of language in hypnosis.
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2. Boe, David (Northern Michigan
University): "Chomsky's Tractarian
Antecedents"
There are a number
of interesting historical parallels between the initial works of Chomsky
(The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, 1955/1975) and Wittgenstein
(Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922). Both texts were composed during
rather nontraditional graduate school experiences, both served as
doctoral dissertations after the authors were offered positions as university
faculty, and both came to represent important paradigmatic breakthroughs
in the respective domains of formal linguistics and
analytical philosophy. The similarities run considerably deeper, however.
This paper suggests that both works deal with very similar foundational
issues, and demonstrates, through close readings of these texts, that Chomsky's
syntactic proposals in the early 1950s were largely anticipated by the
propositions of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, as well as by the Tractatus-influenced
Vienna Circle. Further, although Chomsky and Wittgenstein were both initially
trained in the context of philosophical empiricism, Chomsky's theoretical
innovations represented a distinct move away from a descriptivist/behaviorist
form of linguistic empiricism, while Wittgenstein's early work inspired
development in what would eventually become logical positivism. That the
seeds of Chomsky's rationalist syntax might be found in a radically empiricist
text is suggestive, particularly in light of Chomsky's subsequent critique
of the later Wittgenstein's post-positivist ordinary language philosophy.
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3. Bronson, Matthew C. (California
Institute of Integral Studies): "The Grammar
of Life: Animacy and
Consciousness in Three Linguistic Traditions"
Animacy refers to the way in
which grammars mark human and other living referents distinctly from non-human
or non-living referents. In Russian, for example, the accusative of animate
nouns like “boy” is equivalent to the genitive form, whereas the accusative
of inanimate masculine nouns like “table” is equivalent to the nominative.
The account of animacy that
any given linguistic theory renders is emblematic of the relationship of
language and consciousness embodied in that theory. Structuralist
approaches treat animacy as a “property of noun phrases,” identifying anomalies
within otherwise “rational” paradigms. The lack of a sufficiently
articulated theory of categorization and the mis-location of animacy in
structure rather than socially constructed and biologically grounded features
of language suggest little or no role for consciousness as an explanatory
concept. Generativist approaches, which emphasize an autonomous syntax
provide no “explanatory” account of animacy phenomena, as for example,
in studies of Surinamese Creole grammar. If animacy is indeed deeply
implicated in grammaticalization in this context as my own research shows,
then we have a case of semantics “driving” syntax, which would be anathema
to the entire generativist program. A linguistics informed by both
neuro-cognitive and socio-cultural orientations can show animacy to be
a paradigm case of recognizing the intimate connections of language and
consciousness. Through the careful investigation of animacy within
an appropriately ample theoretical framework, we can discern the interactions
of biology and culture in the elaboration of linguistic structure.
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4.Cavaliere, Ricardo (Universidade
Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro):
"Theoretical Sources of Linguistics
in Brazil"
This paper refers to
the linguistic ideas that have influenced Brazilian philological and linguistic
studies from the final decades of the nineteenth century when the
scientific research of grammatical facts, mostly based on the historical
comparative paradigm, settles down in the academic scenery of the New World
until the last decades of the twentieth century, when several new
branches of linguistic schools are imported from the main foreign research
centers. Vernacular language texts produced in Brazil during this
extensive period initially reveal a significant predominance of doctrinaire
sources from Europe, the German, English and French ones above all, besides
a relevant contribution of American Linguistics, mainly from the third
decade of 20th century on. Concerning specifically the nineteenth century
sources, the theoretical influence in Brazilian works comes from well-known
European linguists, such as Max Müller, Michel Bréal, Émile
Littré, Darmesteter, Diez and Coelho, besides the Neogrammarian
group members, such as Bertold Delbruck and Karl Brugmann. In the
first decades of the twentieth century, Brazilian linguistic works
bifurcate, so that one branch continues to follow the old theories
based on historical analysis, and the other one goes through the way opened
by structural linguistics, in which the exponential figure of Mattoso Câmara
Júnior appears. From the sixties on, several new branches of linguistic
science, such as Generative Grammar, Functionalism and Pragmatics, besides
Discourse Analysis, gain academic followers in Brazilian universities,
opening a new era of research in which the study of vernacular language
is pretermitted in favor of universal aspects of language.
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5. Choi, E-Jung (University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign): "Reflections on
Synonymy in Eighteenth Century
France: Its Contributions to Language Science"
In the history of the
French language, during the Classical age, the notion of synonymy was often
discussed among grammarians. However, the notion itself was not established,
and it was often mentioned in terms of syntax, in order to avoid redundancy,
in sentences written by great classical authors.
It is in the eighteenth
century that the idea of synonymy was studied in depth and gave a new perspective
to French lexicology. Among others, Girard introduced a new concept
of synonymy to the French public in Synonymes français (1748).
According to him, the "general idea (idée générale)"
makes synonyms, and the "accessory idea (idée accessoire)” makes
them differentiated one from the other in nuance. After him, many
grammarians followed this work as a model and cited him in their own works.
In this stream, it is also interesting to notice that the Académie
française shows a somewhat different attitude toward synonymy at
that time.
By examining the presentations
of sample words in major French dictionaries in the eighteenth century,
I will show how the notion of synonymy was developed and how the contributions
made in the eighteenth century in French lexicology are related to today's
tradition of French language science.
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6. Davis, Stuart (Indiana University):
"Francis Lieber and Laura Bridgman: An Untold
Story"
This paper describes the involvement of the linguist Francis Lieber in
the education of Laura Bridgman, the first blind-deaf child to be taught
language successfully. Lieber was born in Germany in 1800, studied with
Wilhelm von Humboldt, emigrated to America in 1827 and was the first
editor of the "Encyclopedia Americana". While Lieber became a professor
of political economy at South Carolina College (1835-1856), he kept an
active interest in the language-related issues of his day. In the
Lieber papers in the Huntington Library there is an extensive correspondence
with Samuel Gridley Howe, the head of the Perkins School for the
Blind (in Boston), and the first person who designed an effective way to
teach language to the blind-deaf (through a finger-spelling system using
the sense of touch). In my presentation, which is based on my research
at the Huntington, I delineate Lieber's involvement with the education
of Laura Bridgman that includes linguistic-related correspondences with
Howe and with Bridgman's teachers. I also describe a book-length
manuscript that Lieber wrote (between 1839 and 1841) but never published
about Laura Bridgman that contains various interesting linguistic observations.
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7. de Souza Filho, Danilo Marcondes
(Pontifical University, Rio de Janeiro):
"Giambattista Vico’s conception
of language"
In early modern philosophy
the role of language in the philosophical system was generally discussed
in relation to its contribution to knowledge and to the development of
scientific theories, especially in the natural sciences, e.g. by authors
such as Descartes and Locke. Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) can be considered
an exception to this dominant trend, and his theory of language, which
influenced nineteenth century thinkers such as Herder and, by way of Herder,
other German and French authors, can be considered as highly original.
Vico criticized Descartes and the Cartesians as well as Locke and the
empiricists, gave a central role in his conception
of science to philology, rhetoric and eloquence, and developed an epistemology
based on the maker’s knowledge principle, the Verum factum, allowing him
to include language among those things we know because we create them.
I shall examine some of the main aspects of Vico’s contribution to the
study of language and to the development of a “science of language”,
taking into consideration his main works: De nostri temporis studiorum
ratione (1709), De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia (1710), and his magnum
opus, the Scienzia Nuova (1725, 1744).
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8. Eto, Hiroyuki (The Seifu Institute
for English Linguistics and Philology,
Osaka/Nagano): "C.
T. Onions’s (1873–1965) undiminished Influence on English
Language Education in Japan"
In the history
of English philology, C[harles] T[albut] Onions is remembered primarily
as one of the most distinguished lexicographers—as an editor and reviser
of the NED (1884–1928), A Shakespeare Glossary (1911), The Shorter Oxford
English Dictionary on Historical Principles (1933), and The Oxford Dictionary
of English Etymology (1966).
Compared with his outstanding lexicographical
work, many of his other contributions may hardly be evaluated as appropriately
as they should be. Among them is his Advanced English Syntax Based on the
Principles and Requirements of the Grammatical Society (1904), which is
particularly important for scholars of the English language and linguistics
in Japan since it has had—and still has—an enormous impact on English language
education in Japan.
In this paper
I will investigate the undiminished influence (or rather, the traces of
this influence) of Onions’s Grammar on today’s most standard and prevailing
English grammar books for Japanese high school students. In particular,
I will compare Onions’ Advanced English Syntax and Itsuki Hosoe’s (1884–1947),
one of the eminent Japanese English Grammarians, Outline of English Syntax
(1917, 1971) with special reference to Five Forms of the Predicate or Five
Sentence Patterns and the concept of Equivalents.
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9. Falk, Julia S. (La Jolla):
"Hockett’s Turn to the History of Linguistics"
As a young linguist Charles
F. Hockett was so engrossed in the linguistics of Leonard Bloomfield that
he saw no need to look into the writings of Bloomfield’s predecessors.
His own work in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s said almost nothing about the history
of linguistics. In A Manual of Phonology (1955) there are just five
very brief historiographic comments. For the Course in Modern
Linguistics (1958) Hockett deliberately excluded history of linguistics.
But then the 1960s brought two works built on a historiographic base.
Hockett’s 1964 LSA presidential address (Language 41.185-204[1965]) traced
four ‘great breakthroughs’ in the history of modern linguistics, beginning
with Sir William Jones and ending with Noam Chomsky. Then in 1968
he published The State of the Art in which the longest chapter is ‘a survey
of the development of linguistic theory, largely in the United States,
from about 1900 up to about 1950’ (5). The impetus for Hockett’s
shift to the history of linguistics was Chomsky’s own turn to that
subject, not in Cartesian Linguistics (1966), but rather in his 1962 address
to the Ninth International Congress of Linguists, published in several
versions in 1964.
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10. Hass, Wil (Minnesota School
of Professional Psychology): "Cosmologies,
Evolutions, Histories
and Life-spans in the Description of Language Origin, Change
and Termination"
The diachronic
nature and features of language have interested many philosophers, philologists,
linguists, and other authorities within the modern Western tradition. Little
serves to unite their observations on how and why language changes ---
no disciplinary norms or commonalities of world view --- othe
than reliance on several root metaphors, of which the principal ones derive
from four sources: (1) cosmology (origin and formation of the universe);
(2) organic evolution (chiefly, origin and extinction of species
via
natural selection); (3) human history (societal
innovation, domination and diffusion); and (4) life-span ontogenesis
(individual birth, growth and death).
These metaphors provide analogies
for addressing many issues, such as:
(1) accounting for why language appeared vs. how language changes;
(2) emphasis on origin, alteration, or termination of language;
(3) distinctions between surface (phenotypic) and underlying (genotypic)
aspects of language;
(4) particular area of language (phonological; morphological, etc.) focused
on;
(5) reliance on specific putative natural/universal gradients of change;
(6) implication of different internal and external factors in language
change;
(7) emphasis on one or another adaptive (directive or selective) force;
(8) individual/group (population) as linguistic unit;
(9) particularistic/holistic scopes of change;
(10) gradualistic/saitatory time courses.
Citations illustrate how different
authorities exemplify these varied applications. The resulting reference
models have not gained paradigmatic status; most instances strike current
readers as facile, fadish and ad hoc. Generating a principled and potentially
cumulative synoptic approach to language change remains challenging.
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11. Heitner, Reese M. (City University
of New York): : "Reducing the Phoneme:
Meaning,
Bloomfield and the Neo-Positivist Reduction of Linguistic Equivalence"
Among the defining issues of
early Twentieth Century linguistics, particularly within the
pre-Chomskyan framework of American Structural
or Descriptivist linguistics, concerned a definition of phonemic equivalence
untainted by semantic considerations. Committed to firmly placing
phonology and the study of language generally on a secure scientific basis,
the search for an objective standard of phonological classification free
of subjective and interpretive semantics inspired the work of such prominent
American linguists as L. Bloomfield, Z. Harris, B. Bloch and C. Hockett.
"Reducing the phoneme" characterized a vocal, if not entirely cohesive
or even coherent, movement in pre-Chomskyan American linguistics.
Less well known, however, is the distinctive Viennese historiography of
American Descriptivism, as some of the parallels between "Bloomfieldian"
linguistics and contemporaneous behavioristic psychology are more the result
of a common positivistic inheritance from the philosophical foundationalism
of Logical Positivism than direct cross-fertilization. In particular,
the self-conscious role Leonard Bloomfield played in transmitting and linguistically
implementing the scientific methodology and aspirations of The Vienna Circle
is charted. If Behaviorism was the psychological ally of Logical
Positivism, American Descriptivism remains its most transparent but largely
undocumented linguistic legacy.
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12. Hodson, Jane (University
of Sheffield/UC Berkeley): "The Mother Tongue and the
Mother-Grammarian
in Eighteenth Century England and America"
The eighteenth
century, as has been well documented, saw the rise of Standard English,
and the publication of an ever-increasing flood of grammar books.
The same century also saw the development of highly idealised and sentimentalised
concepts of childhood and motherhood. In this paper I shall consider
the relationship between motherhood and standardisation, and explore some
of the conflicting roles that mothers were assigned. In their role
as the earliest educators of their children, the responsibility and intellectual
ability of mothers is often emphasised. Noah Webster, for example,
singles it out as a matter of particular praise for American women that
they "are not generally above the care of educating their own children",
and he recommends that particular attention should therefore be paid to
the education of young ladies. At the same time, women's language
was often identified as inherently less correct than that of men, and a
potential source of contagion for their children. Such tensions,
I shall argue, show up in Lady Eleanor Fenn's The Child's Grammar and The
Mother's Grammar, where good grammar is equated with good mothering, but
the need to cite male authorities sometimes results in confusion, as in
the case of Fenn's multiple definitions of the participle.
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13. Kerecuk, Nadia (London):
"Internal Form, Obraz and Consciousness in
O. O. Potebnia"
This paper will examine
the core concepts of the theory of meaning in Potebnia’s theory and philosophy
of language, namely, internal form and obraz. He postulates three complex
components: the external form, the internal form and the content in language.
As I argued elsewhere, Potebnia’s theory presupposes the interaction of
language, thought and cognition. Internal form is intrinsically connected
with the representation of the complexes of signs/marks of apperceived
universe(s). The internal form is discussed in conjunction with the concept
of ‘obraz’. Obraz means both ‘form’ and ‘icon (sign, image, symbol)’. Potebnia
argues that the word or language ‘can be both an instrument of analysing
the thought and of condensation of the thought uniquely because it is a
representation, i.e. not an obraz, but the obraz of an obraz. If an obraz
is an act of consciousness, then a representation is the cognition of that
consciousness (1862/1913:138).’ This discussion is also linked to what
Potebnia refers to as the ‘etymological form’ or semantic form. This has
been often misinterpreted because of the lack of awareness that the term
‘semantics’ was coined at the close of the nineteenth century.
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14. Merrilees, Brian (University
of Toronto): "Cross-referencing and Synonymy in a
Fifteenth Century
French–Latin Dictionary"
In the Bibliothèque
municipale of Angers, in the Loire Valley, there are two manuscript volumes,
497 and 498, that comprise two thirds of an unusual fifteenth century French-Latin
dictionary. They are both substantial : 497 contains 621 folios, and covers
the letters G to P; 498 contains 561 folios and covers Q toZ . A first
volume which contained the letters A-F is missing.
What is interesting in this
dictionary is its form, both from its apparent method of compilation and
its internal structures. It is from an analysis of these internal structures
that this paper is derived. It hinges on the relationships between the
articles of the dictionary that lead to a an understanding of the compiler’s
sense of the whole, a linking of synonyms and semantic and lexical similarities.
The basis of our analysis is the technique of cross-referencing, used it
appears, in a planned and intentional manner to create an overall network
of meaning. We examine both the structure and the nature of this cross-referencing,
showing how the work represents an advancement on earlier lexicographical
works.
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15. Radchenko, Oleg A. (Moscow
City Pedagogic University): ""Humboldt redivivus"
and the Problem
of Historiographic Correctness in Modern Linguistic Historiography"
I want to apply the principle
of historiographic correctness to the Neo-Humboldtian school in modern
German language philosophy (represented mainly by J.L. Weisgerber, J. Trier,
W. Porzig, H. Brinkmann etc.). Into modern language philosophy, they introduced
the very first language relativity theory considering every language as
a system of unique concepts and as a special way of cognition, a permanent
process of reconstructing reality by original means of the given language
community. Very special results of their research were (among others) a
content -oriented grammar of German, an ergologic etymology, and a field
approach to lexical resources of language. Inspite of their strong influence
upon every field of Germanic studies in European linguistics, the Neo-Humboldtians
have been attacked since the 1960s in Germany and outside for having presumably
collaborated with the Nazi regime (a trace of this unfair opinion can be
found in Chr. M. Hutton's newly published opus on linguistics during the
Nazi period). In my report, I will demonstrate an opposite view of this
case, especially using archive materials from J.L. Weisgerber's Rostock
University file (the case Leffers) in order to find an objective approach
to the description of linguists trying to survive under a totalitarian
regime.
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16. Ryan, Jim (California Institute
of Integral Studies): "The Theoretical Framework
of Bhartãhari:
A Study of the Relationship of Grammar and Consciousness in Fifth
Century India"
The science of grammar
was developed in India because language, i.e., the Sanskrit language, was
considered to be divine. (One school of Indian philosophy believed that
even the gods only existed because there were mantras that spoke their
names.) The grammar of Påïini (ca. 550 BCE), the earliest complete
grammar in the world, was created to preserve the sacred forms of the Sanskrit
language.
The connection between
language and consciousness was established very early in the Indian mind.
It was argued that the Sanskrit language was the highest consciousness,
manifesting itself in the form of words and then in the form of reality.
A later grammarian, Bhartãhari (ca.400 BCE), was perhaps the only
linguist in the world to theorize that the study of grammar itself could
lead to complete salvation (from birth and rebirth.) He developed earlier
Indian notions about the connection between language and (divine) consciousness
into a theory that became one of the authoritative views regarding language
in the Indian tradition. This paper will detail the theoretical framework
of Bhartãhari and some of his later followers.
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17. Schwink, Frederick (University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign): "Lambert ten
Kate and the Discovery
of Germanic Gender"
Dutch scholar, Lambert ten Kate (1674-1731), is the prototypical voorloper,
the overlooked predecessor to later researchers who now get the credit
for discoveries that had already been made much earlier. Lambert
ten Kate has in recent years been "rediscovered" (Rompelmann 1953, Polomé
1983 etc.) as the first to work out the system of the Germanic verbal system,
and a good deal of debate has ensued as to whether Jacob Grimm was familiar
with this earlier work and whether it influenced his own treatment of the
verb. However, in the study of the origin and history of grammatical
gender in Germanic, an area for which again Grimm is justly considered
a founding father (cf. volume III of the Deutsche Grammatik, 1831, pp.
311-563), ten Kate also was ahead of his time, writing a lengthy section
in his Aenleiding of 1723, pp. 396-468 on that very subject and producing
a hitherto overlooked comparative analysis of grammatical gender in Germanic
that is worthy of closer attention. In this paper, I discuss ten
Kate's scholarly context as an early 18th century Dutch thinker by looking
at his use of sources, in articular of van Hoogstraten's Aenmerkingen
over de Geslagten. I then look at ten Kate's understanding of the interface
of semantic and morphological or phonological principles in gender assignment
rules. I finally attempt to answer the question why he was not more
successful in gaining an audience by examining a series of references to
ten Kate's work from the 18th and 19th centuries.
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18. Seegmiller, Steve (Montclair
State University): "The Marrist Period in Soviet
Linguistics and
Its Effects on Descriptive Practice"
The linguistic
doctrines of N. Ja. Marr dominated Soviet linguistics from the late 1920'
until the early 1950's. Marrism rejected certain standard assumptions of
linguistics, such as the accepted views of language relationship and change,
and it had a profound effect on linguistic practice in the Soviet Union.
One effect of how linguists working on practical projects such as grammars
and dictionaries conducted their work.
This paper will
describe the impact of Marrism on Turkic linguistics. This is a particularly
interesting domain Marrism was on because the 1920's had been marked by
a huge amount of descriptive and practical linguistic work on the Turkic
languages. Beginning at the end of the decade, when Marrism was adopted
as the official doctrine, and continuing until well after 1951, the effects
of Marrist doctrines on Turkic linguistics were significant in that
the number of publications on Turkic languages diminished
radically, and the content of the work changed
as well, although more subtly.
Data will
be presented on the volume of publication in Turkic linguistics in the
1930's and 1940's, as opposed to the decades preceding and following; on
the kinds of works published; and on their content.
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19. Steadman-Jones, Richard (University
of Sheffield): "'A File for the Serpent':
The Romantic Hero
and the Practice of Grammar"
In December 1816
Byron wrote to his publisher to tell him about his latest undertaking:
"a study of the Armenian language, which I acquire, as well as I can, at
the Armenian convent, where I go every day to take lessons of a learned
Friar". In other letters written that winter Byron sketches a vivid picture
of himself as orientalist and grammarian. He satirises the teaching
of Armenian in France depicting it as a military adventure undertaken with
risible earnestness and defeated on the field of the language's "Waterloo
of an Alphabet". By contrast he depicts himself as a jaded man of
leisure, his mind "in need of
something craggy to break on" and sympathetic
to an "Oriental and difficult" language because of his own "Eastern
and difficult way of thinking". Thus, in a deft series of sketches he positions
himself both inside and outside the contemorary field of linguistic
orientalism.
This paper investigates
the ways in which, like Byron, a number of early nineteenth-century thinkers
depict their activities in the fields of grammar and philology as an aspect
of their own 'romantic' alienation and it discusses the implications of
such autobiographical texts for us as contemporary historians of disciplines.
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20. Thomas, Margaret (Boston
College): "The Specious Battle between 'Contrastive
Analysis' and
'Creative Construction'"
Since the early 1980s, generativists who study second language (L2) acquisition
have developed a coherent and powerful representation of the etiology
of their discipline in North America. It centers on the replacement
of what is taken to be one hypothesis about the nature of L2 acquisition,
"contrastive analysis," by another, "creative construction." Contrastive
analysis is seen as an expression of mid-century American structuralist
linguistics grounded in Bloomfieldian behaviorism. In the conventional
narrative, empirical and conceptual flaws in contrastive analysis resulted
in its abandonment (c. 1970s) in favor of a generativist-inspired account
of L2 acquisition as a process of "creative construction" driven by an
innate language faculty. The central assertion of creative construction
has since been sustained and elaborated to mirror the development of generative
theory. As a case study in how one subfield of modern linguistics
misrepresents its recent past, I question the validity of this narrative.
First, it does not accurately communicate the orientation of contrastive
analysis, at least not that of its central proponents Fries and Lado. Second,
contrastive analysis and creative construction are incommensurate in content
and in their positions vis-à-vis linguistic theory; the two aren't
really rivals to the same conceptual space.
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21. Tsiapera, Maria (University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill): "The Logique and
Port-Royal"
The Logique of Antoine
Amauld and Pierre Nicole was extremely successful long after the Grammaire
générale et raisonnée. The Logique was written for
a young noble and was intended to be a treatise on the basics of logic.
The authors thought it would be a public service to take what was useful
in training students in judgment from the standard logics and to present
this with many observations and reflections of their own. Further they
acknowledged that some of the observations were "des livres d'un célebre
Philosophe de ce sié cle, qui a autant de netteté d'esprit
qu'on trouve de confusion dans les autres." This is an obvious reference
to Descartes, although some of the observations were take from Pascal.
The four parts of the
Logique represent the various operations of the mind, namely conception,
judgment, reasoning and ordering. Speculation over the reasons for the
Logique is nothing more than that. A look at the history of the petites-écoles
suggests that the motive for the book was the Port-Royal educational philosophy
and perhaps it was intended to be a companion piece of the GGR, as indeed
later grammarians took it to be. Thus the discussion focuses on the place
of the Logique within Port-Royal education.
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22. Waugh, Linda R. (University
of Arizona): "Roman Jakobson in America: What
He Brought to
America, What America Gave to Him"
Roman Jakobson was one
of the great thinkers of the 20th century, who was able to stimulate others
with the originality of his thinking. But at the same time, he was also
influenced by the most interesting ideas of any place he lived: he
was always in a dialogue with others. When he came to America in 1941,
he brought with him many 'European' ideas, and eventually, over the course
of 41 years, he was greatly influential on American linguistics --
as well as anthropology, semiotics, literary studies, mythology, and
folklore. Yet, there are many linguists who are not aware that certain
of his concepts and discoveries are so ingrained in modern-day linguistics
that they seem to be commonplace or self-evident. Even fewer are
aware that there was much here that stimulated Jakobson to new work and
new directions. In particular his settling in America coincided with
a broadening of his vision and with more attention to the theoretical bases
of his linguistic research -- and he wrote much on the history of linguistics.
This talk will delineate the ways in which Jakobson influenced American
linguistics and the ways in which others here influenced by him.
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