A History of Modern Linguistics

From the Beginnings to World War II

James McElvenny

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN:
  9781474470032
• Edition: 0

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• 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
• 17 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index