A short history of linguistics

Abstract

In this fourth edition, the last as far as the present author is concerned, some rearrangements have been made, apart from the correction of minor errors and the updating of bibliographies and notes in the light of recent scholarship. Two major changes have been made. First, in chapters six and seven the work and the thoughts of Wilhelm von Humboldt have been transferred almost entirely to chapter six, dealing largely with the eighteenth century, from chapter seven, dealing with nineteenth-century comparative and historical linguistics. This cannot but be an arbitrary decision: von Humboldt's life ( 1 767-1 835) straddled the tum of the century almost equally, and his influence on later work and his reaction to the work of his own day are of almost equal importance. The reader must be the judge of this reordering...