This book presents in a single volume a comprehensive history of the language sciences, from ancient times through to the twentieth century. While there has been a concentration on those traditions that have the greatest international relevance, a particular effort has been made to go beyond traditional Eurocentric accounts, and to cover a broad geographical spread. For the twentieth century a section has been devoted to the various trends, schools, and theoretical framework developed in Europe, North America and Australasia over the past seventy years. There has also been a concentration on...

The year 1924 was the founding of the Linguistic Society of America, the year when linguistics in America was beginning to become professionalized and no longer the domain of philologists or amateur students of language. From an initial consideration of 17th century missionary study of indigenous languages, Toward a History of American Linguistics goes on to focus mainly on the ideas of scholars who dominated linguistic thinking post-1924. Beginning with the anthropological linguistics tradition associated primarily with the names of Franz Boas, Edward Sapir and their students and concluding...

Writing in English, German, or French, more than 300 authors provide a historical description of the beginnings and of the early and subsequent development of thinking about language and languages within the relevant historical context. The gradually emerging institutions concerned with the study, organisation, documentation, and distribution are considered as well as those dealing with the utilisation of language related knowledge. Special emphasis has been placed on related disciplines, such as rhetoric, the philosophy of language, cognitive psychology, logic and neurological science.