From the Renaissance onwards, European scholars began to collect and study the various languages of the Old and the New Worlds. The recognition of language diversity encouraged them to explain how differences between languages emerged, why languages kept changing, and in what language families they could be classified. The present volume brings together the papers of the late George J. Metcalf (1908 1994) that discuss the search for possible genetic language relationships, and the study of language developments and origins, in Early Modern Europe. Two general chapters, surveying the period...