History of Linguistics, Volume IV

Nineteenth-Century Linguistics

Anna Morpurgo Davies, Giulio C. Lepschy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780582294783
• eBook ISBN: 9781134959587
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The History of Linguistics, to be published in five volumes, aims to provide the reader with an authoritative and comprehensive account of the attitudes to language prevailing in different civilizations and in different periods by examining the very varied development of linguistic thought in the specific social, cultural and religious contexts involved. Issues discussed include the place of language in education, variation and prestige, and approaches to lexical and grammatical description. The authors of the individual chapters are specialists who have analysed the primary sources and produced original syntheses by exploring the linguistic interests and assumptions of particular cultures in their own terms, without seeking to reinterpret them as contributions towards the development of contemporary western conceptions of linguistic science.

In Volume IV: Nineteenth Century Linguistics, Anna Morpurgo Davies shows how linguistics came into its own as an independent discipline separated from philosophical and literary studies and enjoyed a unique intellectual and institutional success tied to the research ethos of the new universities, until it became a model for other humanistic subjects which aimed at 'scientific status'. The linguistics of the nineteenth century abandons earlier theoretical discussions in favour of a more empirical and historical approach using new methods to compare languages and to investigate their history. The great achievement of this period is the demonstration that languages such as Sanskrit , Latin and English are related and derive from a parent language which is not attested but can be reconstructed.

This book discusses in detail the theories developed and the individual findings obtained. In contrast with earlier historiographical trends it denies that the new approach originated entirely from German Romanticism, and highlights a form of continuity with the eighteenth century, while stressing that a deliberate break took place round the 1830s. By the end of the century the results of comparative and historical linguistics had been generally accepted, but it soon became clear that a historical approach could not by itself solve all questions that it raised. At this point the new interest in description and theory which characterizes the twentieth century began to gain prominence.

1
Historiography and institutions

1.1 The first 'scientific' linguistics?

In a number of standard textbooks written between the 1860s and the 1960s the early nineteenth century is taken as the point of departure for the history of 'scientific' linguistics. The implicit or explicit claim is that only at that date linguistics entered 'la voie rationelle' (Leroy 1971, 17). Yet it is clear that serious concern with language at a descriptive or philosophical level existed at a much earlier stage. If so, why this arbitrary starting point? This is a question in the history of historiography, but is equally relevant to the history of linguistics. An answer may help to define the specific characters of nineteenth-century linguistic thought and to provide an account of the links between that thought and modern linguistic work.

1.1.1 A unitary purpose?

The first impression of someone reading in, or about, the literature of the period is that the scholarly linguistic work of the nineteenth century in, e.g. France, England, Italy, Germany and to a certain extent in the United States is characterized by a unity of intent and purpose, which, if allowance is made for the predictable academic squabbles and the necessary divergencies of opinion about individual points, allows the observer to produce a coherent characterization of the work of the time. In brief, as has often been stated, the main concern of the century is with linguistic history and linguistic comparison. The main achievements are, on the one hand, the establishment of a set of discovery procedures which are used to classify languages from a genetic point of view in language families, to determine their subgrouping, to establish the main points of their historical developments, and to a certain extent to reconstruct unattested protolanguages; on the other hand, the collection and classification in the terms indicated of an immense amount of linguistic data and philological material. The most spectacular results concern the Indo-European linguistic family and the reconstruction reached by the end of the century of the main features of Indo-European, the unattested parent language. Thus in the history of nineteenth-century linguistics it seems possible to trace a straightforward line of development conceived in terms of linear progress based on increased factual information and on the solution of a series of technical problems; the very coherence of the century's work would then explain our attitude towards it.

1.1.2 A monolithic subject?

This analysis is partly correct but is heavily oversimplified. Above all our impression of a monolithic subject is to a certain extent the result of a selection consciously or subconsciously operated on what was actually written and published. Among other things it ignores national differences, which especially in the first part of the century were considerable, and tends to concentrate on the German development as paradigmatic. The slow arrival in England, for instance, of the 'new philology', i.e. of what is normally taken to be the typical approach of nineteenth-century linguistics, breaks the general pattern (Aarsleff 1983). Similarly in France the new discipline was slow to become established (Hültenschmidt 1987) and even at the end of the century, thanks to Bréal, preserved closer links with the earlier centuries than it had done in Germany. But 'German' linguistics too is less monolithic than it seems. There is a multitude of German and Austrian nineteenth-century publications on linguistic matters which the main-stream practitioners hardly ever mention. An obscure dissertation published in 1829 (Loewe 1829) lists some 25 books about 'philosophical grammar' published in German between 1800 and 1828; most of these authors were hardly ever quoted by their more famous successors or contemporaries and are now unknown (see below, p. 25). Much later the reviews written by established scholars are often more instructive about what was being published and discussed than the references which we find in their substantive work. As late as 1877, the young Karl Brugmann reviewed under the same heading no less than three books by reputable authors (Marty, Steinthal, Noiré) about the origin of language (Brugman 1877). These books could not have had much general impact in a period in which the newly founded Société de Linguistique de Paris had undertaken not to discuss the question of the origin of language. In fact our historiography has blotted away not only 'minor' authors, but also unpalatable work by 'major' authors; the forms of glottogonic thought which so frequently accompany the achievements of the century in historical linguistics are normally ignored (Vallini 1987). Similarly, nobody remembers the time and effort spent by the best brains of the period in Germany and elsewhere in the attempt to define criteria for a typological classification of languages, an attempt which later fell into discredit and consequently into obscurity (Morpurgo Davies 1975).

1.1.3 Institutional facts and historiographical assumptions

How do we explain the selectivity of our account? Internal data are not sufficient. Two 'external' factors are also important: institutions and historiography.

Aarsleff (1982, 4) has argued that a coherent history of 'the craft of linguistics' as such cannot be pushed back behind the creation of comparative and historical philology as academic disciplines in the early decades of the nineteenth century. This is probably correct; the institutionalization of linguistics in the Universities (starting with the German Universities) is a nineteenth-century phenomenon. It marked off the 'new' linguistics from that of the earlier period, it helped to give the subject a new identity, and finally established a link between our linguistics and that of the previous century. The selection of University teachers largely from within the University system guaranteed an element of continuity which previously had been lacking and opened new possibilities for a coherent development. When we speak of main-stream linguists we in fact refer to those who were accepted by the academic establishment.

The period was also characterized by public self-analysis and/or hagiography to a level previously unheard of. Institutionalization predictably led to the multiplication of that published matter which rates half-way between history and ephemera: obituaries, elogia, institutional accounts are the necessary by-products of academies, periodicals, Universities, etc. But linguists were also tireless in trying to write the history of their subject and of their own achievements. For no earlier period do we have an equal wealth of secondary literature which classifies and defines the work done, reconstructs its development and traces its intellectual ancestry. This contemporary historiography is bound to have had an influence on our own views and our approach to our predecessors.

If so, we cannot any longer postpone a brief exploration of institutional facts and historiographical assumptions.

1.2 Linguistics and academe

In the nineteenth century, linguistic scholarship came to find in the Universities its natural habitat. This was not so in the previous two centuries. A history of linguistics (admittedly incomplete) such as Arens (1969) lists among the influential authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Bacon, Wallis, Holder, Locke, Arnauld, Nicole, Comenius, Leibniz, Junius, L. Ten Kate, J. Ludolf, Condillac, Maupertuis, Rousseau, Ch. de Brasses, Beauzée, Herder, Lichtenberg, Monboddo, Home Tooke. Of these authors only a few have been labelled linguists rather than e.g. philosophers (such as Bacon, Locke, Leibniz, Condillac, etc.); even fewer would count as professional academics. Wallis, who is among the latter, was in fact a professor of geometry (not of anything to do with language) at Oxford. By contrast, the names mentioned by Arens for the middle or the second half of the nineteenth century (Pott, Böhtlingk, von Raumer, Steinthal, Brücke, Schleicher, Georg Curtius, Whitney, Scherer, Johannes Schmidt, Leskien, Sievers, Verner, Brugmann, Henry Sweet, Baudouin de Courtenay, Wenker, Ascoli, Saussure, Schuchardt, Gaston Paris, Paul Meyer, Rousselot, etc.) belong to scholars who can mostly be called linguists and held relevant University or research positions mainly in Germany but also, to judge from this list, in Austria, Denmark, England, France, Italy, Poland, Russia, Switzerland and the United States. If we look at the end of the century and the more modern period, Arens' selection, which is certainly not afflicted by anti-German prejudice, reveals a disappearance of the German predominance; even so all scholars included were professional academics holding chairs in linguistics or allied disciplines.

1.2.1 University expansion

This superficial test then confirms our first impression about the institutionalization of linguistics and its link with the newly formed or remodelled Universities. Three phenomena of different nature contributed. The first is a tremendous increase in the number and/or size of higher education institutions in Europe and North America. The German data are particularly impressive, partly because of the special nature of University development in the German states (especially in North Germany), partly because they are fuller than those available for other countries and have been the object of more intense scrutiny. A few figures, even if not absolutely exact, make the point: in Germany during the Napoleonic wars the number of University students fell to c. 5,500 but by 1889-90 the number had reached 28,820, by 1914 60,748 (Jarausch 1982, 27ff.). In Germany as elsewhere the increase in student numbers was accompanied by an increase in the number of teachers. In 1840 the German states had a total of 1,212 University teachers (including Ordinarii, Extraordinarii and Privatdozenten), in 1892-3 the total was 2,275 (Conrad 1893, I, 144). In other European countries the development was much slower but, in general. Universities show strong numerical expansion towards the end of the century. The examples that follow are arbitrarily chosen but significant.

In England and Wales (as contrasted with Scotland) the century starts with higher education limited to two Universities only, Oxford and Cambridge, but ends with a number of additional new institutions and the impulse for the creation of further Universities. We can speak of 17,839 students in higher education in 1901 as contrasted with 3,385 in 1861 (Lowe 1983) and less than 1,500 in 1800 (Sanderson 1975). At Oxford - to offer an example which was statistically significant at the time - the teaching staff increased from 50 to 191 between 1814 and 1900 while the undergraduates increased from 945 to 3,091 (Engel 1983, 288).

France is a special case. The French revolution had abolished all Universities, and the facultés, which were formed later, were not devoted to research but were mainly concerned with administering the baccalauréat; the Universities come seriously to the fore only in the 1880s. The data available are far less circumstantial than for Germany but between 1861 and 1865 we assume that there was an annual average of 91 licences (degrees which qualified graduates to teach in schools) in letters and 95 in sciences for the whole country (Prost 1968, 243); between 1881 and 1885 the numbers had risen to 256 and 309, and between 1906 and 1910 to 537 and 532.¹

If we exclude the preparatory schools for the faculties of medicine and pharmacy, in 1876 there were c. 9,400 students. These rose to c. 15,200 in 1890 and c. 40,300 in 1914 (Weisz 1983, 236). In the faculties of letters according to Weisz (loc. cit.) the figures were of 238 students in 1876, 1,834 in 1890 and 6,586 in 1914. In 1865 there were 79 professors in the faculties of letters, as contrasted with 116 in 1888 and 178 in 1919 (Weisz 1983, 318). Seminars and research institutes begin to appear on the German model only at the end of last century and the beginning of our century (Charle 1994, 47ff.).

For Italy good statistical data are available from 1861, the creation of the Italian kingdom. In that year 20 Universities had a total of 6,504 students; by contrast in 1900 26 universities had 26,033 students, and the number increased to 29,624 in 1914. In 1861 we are told that there were only 163 students in all faculties of letters as contrasted with 2,049 in 1900 and 2,734 in 1914 (Sommario 1958, 78-9).

At the same time the North America Universities began to make their impact known. Here higher education did not necessarily imply a form of instruction similar to that of German Universities but the number of students involved in 1800 has been reckoned to be 1,237 as contrasted with 12,964 in 1840, 62,000 in 1870 and 256,000 in 1900 (Burke 1983, III).

1.2.2 The academic class

Statistics about student numbers are perhaps not as important as the other facts to which we referred earlier: the creation in Europe and North America of an academic professional class underpinned by new possibilities of a regular academic career and the beginning of a new attitude towards research and scholarship. The increase in student numbers was accompanied by an increase in the number of professors; the scholarly life was open even to those of middle-class origin who depended on a salary for their livelihood. At the same time, specialized research and its publication came to be seen as part of the duties of University teachers. Here too the German Universities had a leading function: 'By 1835 much professorial learning had narrowed into disciplinary channels oriented toward research, discovery and specialization' (Turner 1975, 530). The other European and American Universities lagged behind. In 1893, in a statement not entirely deprived of chauvinistic pride, F. Paulsen (in Lexis 1893, 3ff.) noted that the pursuit and advancement of Wissenschaft ('science') were typical of all German Universities. In England, he argued, well-known names such as those of Macaulay, Gibbon, Darwin, H. Spencer, Grote, Bentham, Ricardo, James Mill and John Stuart Mill were not connected with Universities (cf. for the same point Perkin 1983, 209), but in Germany the position was different. There the reaction to the name of any important Gelehrte ('scholar') was bound to be: 'At what University is he?' and to the name of any professor: 'What has he written?'. Paulsen also noted that there were signs that in England and in France the situation was changing and that the United States was following suit. Yet in 1928 a great Italian classicist partly trained in Germany could still maintain that in England the greatest scholars had no connection with the Universities and that these were half finishing schools and half institutions of learning (Pasquali [1928] 1968, 392L). This is exaggerated but it is certainly true that the creation of a professorial class which owed its allegiance both to a University institution and to the advancement of a discipline (Turner 1975) occurred in England and France only towards the end of the century. During the bad period of French Universities, research and scholarship had been associated with some écoles spéciales, with the Collège de France and with the academies but the other facultés had had little to contribute. As has been said, until the 1860s in higher education one could speak of 'Paris and the desert' (Charle and Verger 1994, 71). The foundation of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 1868 is to a certain extent the result of the frustration of a minister, Duruy, who had not succeeded in his projects of University reform. A serious role of the Universities in the advancement of learning can only be seen in the last two decades of the century and after the impact of the process of University reform which was then initiated.

In the United States the Association of American Universities, founded in 1900 to promote research as the essential function of the Universities, was initially able to admit only 13 institutions (Light 1983, 352ff.). Here too specialization and advanced research in University teaching came to the fore at a late stage in the course of lively discussions.

Almost everywhere this movement towards a research ethos in the European and American Universities is consciously associated with a German model. As Renan put it in 1867, 'ce qui a vaincu à Sadowa c'est la science germanique' ('at Sadowa the victor was German science'; Prost 1968, 228). In England in 1868 Thomas Huxley quoted the Royal Commissioners, who had reported on the University of Oxford in 1850, and one of the Oxford reformers, Mark Pattison, in order to say that 'in Germany the Universities are exactly what the Rector of Lincoln [sc. Mark Pattison] and the Commissioners tell us the English Universities are not; that is to say, corporations of "learned men devoting their lives to the cultivation of science, and the direction of academical education"'. He had previously said that the German Universities had in the course of a century become 'the most intensely cultivated and the most productive intellectual corporations the world has ever seen' (Huxley [1868] 1971, 95f.). In 1885, in the preface to a translation of Conrad's book about German Universities, an Oxford professor stated that 'the prosecution of inquiry and research ... in Scotland is not provided for at all and in England is being somewhat awkwardly attempted' (cf. Conrad 1885, xxv). The German model, he argued, had to be studied very seriously. Conrad himself had written (I qu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 Historiography and institutions
• 2 The old and the new: data collection and data comparison
• 3 Friedrich Schlegel and the discovery of Sanskrit
• 4 Historicism, organicism and the scientific model
• 5 Wilhelm von Humboldt, general linguistics and linguistic typology
• 6 Comparative and historical grammar: Rask, Bopp and Grimm
• 7 Comparative studies and the diffusion of linguistics
• 8 Theoretical discussions of the mid century
• 9 The neogrammarians and the new beginnings
• 10 The end of the century: general perspectives
• References
• Index