‫ امال محمد هاني‬: ‫اسم الطالب‬

‫ ثالثة‬:‫المرحلة‬
‫الجامعة المستنصرية‬
‫كلية اآلداب‬ ‫ انكليزي‬:‫القسم‬
2020-2019 ‫السنة الدراسية‬
‫ اللغة‬:‫المادة‬
‫ المسائيه‬:‫الدراسة‬

2020-2019 ‫التقرير العلمي لطلبة الدراسات االولية للسنة الدراسية‬

History of linguistics /‫عنوان التقرير العلمي‬

Introduction
The term linguistics is a product of the 19th century, as are the academic field and
the form of enquiry that it designates. This enquiry is however continuous with
modes of analysis that date back to ancient times, as practiced in various traditions
in Asia and Europe (together with the African parts of the Alexandrian Empire).
The History of Linguistics itself has mid-19th-century beginnings and has taken its
scope as ranging over the whole of this ancient-to-modern continuum. Given that
language and its analysis have played a part in every academic area, and that
modern linguistics has interests that overlap with those of anthropology, artificial
intelligence, education, informatics, legal theory, literary criticism, philosophy,
psychology, semiotics, sociology, and other subjects, it is not obvious where the
boundaries of the History of Linguistics lie, and scholarly disputes over where to
draw them are not uncommon. This bibliography will focus on the prototypical
areas of language analysis, while not excluding those areas that, if more peripheral,
have nevertheless had a considerable impact on what linguists think and do.
 ‫ امال محمد هاني‬: ‫اسم الطالب‬
‫ ثالثة‬:‫المرحلة‬
‫الجامعة المستنصرية‬
‫كلية اآلداب‬ ‫ انكليزي‬:‫القسم‬
2020-2019 ‫السنة الدراسية‬
‫ اللغة‬:‫المادة‬
‫ المسائيه‬:‫الدراسة‬

General Overviews

Looking back at the development of these general overviews since the 1970s, it is
not clear that they have progressed as steadily as one might expect. They have in
some cases moved from studies aimed at specialists toward work conceived for a
more general audience, including students. Of course this has not been true in
every case: some of the newer work brings in bold new perspectives and creates
real insight. The point is that one’s choice of what to read in this area should not be
based on publication date: venerability suggests but does not guarantee wisdom,
any more than newness guarantees originality. Robins 1997 and Thomas 2011 are
the most accessible introductions for students of linguistics taking a first serious
interest in the field’s heritage. Koerner 1978, an annotated bibliography, with a
format not unlike the present one, is excellent for the period 1822 to 1976. The
chapters of Harris and Taylor 1997 and Joseph, et al. 2001 assume no prior study
of either linguistics or the philosophical tradition. Each begins with a text from a
key author or, in some cases, a key movement; this text serves as the basis for a
commentary that also gives a capsule history of the relevant intellectual context.
The four volumes of Lepschy 1994–1998, originally published in Italian, are
impressive in their range and depth. They aim to reconstruct the concerns about
language of different times and places rather than working backward to find
antecedents of today’s interests. Swiggers 1997 makes fewer concessions to
 ‫ امال محمد هاني‬: ‫اسم الطالب‬
‫ ثالثة‬:‫المرحلة‬
‫الجامعة المستنصرية‬
‫كلية اآلداب‬ ‫ انكليزي‬:‫القسم‬
2020-2019 ‫السنة الدراسية‬
‫ اللغة‬:‫المادة‬
‫ المسائيه‬:‫الدراسة‬

readers who may come to it without a traditional classical education.

Allan 2009 is particularly useful for anyone looking for the background of a
particular sub-discipline.

Allan, Keith. 2009. The Western classical tradition in linguistics. 2d ed. London:
Continuum.

Allan ties current concerns of linguistics to the writings of Plato, Aristotle, the
Stoics and Varro, the Alexandrian grammarians, the ancient rhetoricians, and early
medieval grammarians. The book is distinguished by its determination to locate
women authors in the history of grammar, and by its partly topic-based
arrangement, versus other textbooks’ more strictly chronological order, sometimes
modified by geographical considerations.

Harris, Roy, and Talbot J. Taylor. 1997. Landmarks in linguistic thought: The
Western tradition from Socrates to Saussure. 2d ed. London and New York:
Routledge.

The early chapters on Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, Varro, Quintilian, Thomas of
Erfurt, and Caxton are mainly concerned with providing students with a gentle
guiding hand. From the 17th century forward the chapters gain in complexity and
 ‫ امال محمد هاني‬: ‫اسم الطالب‬
‫ ثالثة‬:‫المرحلة‬
‫الجامعة المستنصرية‬
‫كلية اآلداب‬ ‫ انكليزي‬:‫القسم‬
2020-2019 ‫السنة الدراسية‬
‫ اللغة‬:‫المادة‬
‫ المسائيه‬:‫الدراسة‬

depth, focusing on the Port-Royal grammar, Bishop Wilkins, Locke, Condillac,

Horne Tooke, Humboldt, Max Müller, Frege, and Saussure.

Joseph, John E., Nigel Love, and Talbot J. Taylor. 2001. Landmarks in linguistic
thought II: The Western tradition in the twentieth century. London and New York:
Routledge.

This book is distinguished from other treatments of 20th-century linguistics in its

ambition to trace the continuity between linguistics (Sapir, Jakobson, Whorf, Firth,
Chomsky, Labov) and other fields that have language as a central concern:
anthropology (Goffman), philosophy (Austin, Derrida, Wittgenstein), psychology
(Skinner, Bruner). There are also chapters on Orwell, the “integrationism” of Roy
Harris, and language research with nonhuman primates.

Koerner, E. F. K. 1978. Western histories of linguistic thought: An annotated

bibliography, 1822–1976. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Koerner’s annotated descriptions are always accurate and his assessments

judicious. The book perhaps errs on the side of completeness: just about any work
that cites figures from the past is apt to be included here. Coverage ends just when
 ‫ امال محمد هاني‬: ‫اسم الطالب‬
‫ ثالثة‬:‫المرحلة‬
‫الجامعة المستنصرية‬
‫كلية اآلداب‬ ‫ انكليزي‬:‫القسم‬
2020-2019 ‫السنة الدراسية‬
‫ اللغة‬:‫المادة‬
‫ المسائيه‬:‫الدراسة‬

institutionalized academic study of the history of linguistics—with Koerner

himself as its principal organizational leader—was hitting its stride.

Lepschy, Giulio, ed. 1994–1998. History of linguistics. 4 vols. London and New
York: Longman.

Volume 1 is on the traditions of the “Ancient East” (Chinese, Indian, Egyptian,

Sumerian, Akkadian, Hebrew, and Arabic). Volume 2 covers Greece, Rome, and
medieval Europe, Volume 3 the Renaissance and Early Modern periods. Volume 4,
on the 19th century, has a single author (Anna Morpurgo Davies) and limits itself
to the work of “the professional linguists of the time.”

Robins, Robert H. 1997. A short history of linguistics. 4th ed. London and New
York: Longman.

Despite its modest title, this remains the best monographic introduction to the
subject. It assumes that its reader is well educated, with some prior knowledge of
modern linguistics. The arrangement is chronological, with occasional asides on
the relevance of ancient and medieval concerns to modern ones. Each chapter is
followed by a bibliography of work “for further consultation.”
 ‫ امال محمد هاني‬: ‫اسم الطالب‬
‫ ثالثة‬:‫المرحلة‬
‫الجامعة المستنصرية‬
‫كلية اآلداب‬ ‫ انكليزي‬:‫القسم‬
2020-2019 ‫السنة الدراسية‬
‫ اللغة‬:‫المادة‬
‫ المسائيه‬:‫الدراسة‬

Swiggers, Pierre. 1997. Histoire de la pensée linguistique: Analyse du langage et

réflexion linguistique dans la culture occidentale de l’Antiquité au XIXe siècle.
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

An in-depth study of the history of linguistic thought, including its ramifications in

philosophy and other relevant domains, in European culture from Ancient Greece
to the start of the 19th century, hence ending before the institutionalization of
academic linguistics. Swiggers’s knowledge of all the periods covered is strong,
and the book reflects and embodies his many years of concern with problems and
methods of historiography.

Thomas, Margaret. 2011. Fifty key thinkers on language and linguistics. London
and New York: Routledge.

Focused on the contributions of individual figures, but with each sufficiently

contextualized to give good, up-to-date coverage of linguistic thought worldwide
 ‫ امال محمد هاني‬: ‫اسم الطالب‬
‫ ثالثة‬:‫المرحلة‬
‫الجامعة المستنصرية‬
‫كلية اآلداب‬ ‫ انكليزي‬:‫القسم‬
2020-2019 ‫السنة الدراسية‬
‫ اللغة‬:‫المادة‬
‫ المسائيه‬:‫الدراسة‬

from ancient times to the present. Like Harris and Taylor 1997, it does not assume
prior knowledge of linguistics, and it has the added feature of a quite extensive
.glossary of linguistic terms that makes it particularly useful for students