BookAuthors: R. H. Robins (1997)
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 r... 
