The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics

In this outstanding book leading scholars from around the world examine the history of linguistics from ancient origins to the present. They consider every aspect of the field from language origins to neurolinguistics, explore linguistic traditions in east and west, chronicle centuries of explanations for language structures, meanings, and usage, and look at how it has been practically applied. The book is organized in six parts. The first looks at the origins of language, the invention of writing, the nature of gesture, and sign languages. Part II examines the history of the analysis and description of sound systems. Part III considers the history of linguistics in China, Korea, Japan, India, and the Middle East, as well as the history of the study of Semitic and Afro-Asiatic. Part IV examines the history of grammar and morphology in the west from the classical world to the present. Part V surveys the history of lexicography semantics, pragmatics, and text and discourse studies. Part VI looks at the history the application of linguistics in fields that include the language classification; social and cultural theory; psychology and the brain sciences; education and translation; computational science; and the development of linguistic corpora. The book ends with a history of the philosophy of linguistics. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics makes a significant contribution to the historiography of linguistics. It will also be a valuable reference for scholars and students in linguists and related fields, including philosophy and cognitive science. [A] fine resource for scholars and teachers who want to go beyond textbook treatments in introductory courses... Highly recommended. E. L. Battistella, Choice1. The Origins and the Evolution of Language ; 2. The History of Writing as a History of Linguistics ; 3. History of the Study of Gesture ; 4. The History of Sign Language Linguistics ; 5. Orthography and the Early History of Phonetics ; 6. From IPA to PRAAT and Beyond ; 7. Nineteenth Century Study of Sound Change From Rask to Saussure ; 8. Discoverers of the Phoneme ; 9. A History of Sound Symbolism ; 10. East Asian Linguistics ; 11. Linguistics in India ; 12. From Semitic to Afro-Asiatic ; 13. From Plato to Priscian: Philosophy's legacy to grammar ; 14. Pedagogical Grammars Before the Eighteenth Century ; 15. Vernaculars and the Idea of a Standard Language ; 16. Word-based Morphology From Aristotle to Modern WP ; 17. General or Universal Grammar From Plato to Chomsky ; 18. American Descriptivism ('structuralism') ; 19. Noam Chomsky's Contribution to Linguistics: a sketch ; 20. European Linguistics Since Saussure ; 21. Functional and Cognitive Grammars ; 22. Lexicography From Earliest Times to the Present ; 23. The Logico-philosophical Tradition ; 24. Lexical Semantics From Speculative Etymology to Structuralist Semantics ; 25. Post-structuralist and Cognitive Approaches to Meaning ; 26. A Brief Sketch of teh Historic Developments of Pragmatics ; 27. Meaning in Texts and Contexts ; 28. Comparative, Historical, and Typological Linguistics Since the Eighteenth Century ; 29. Language, Culture, and Society ; 30. Language, The Mind, and The Brain ; 31. Translation: the intertranslatability of languages; translation and language teaching ; 32. Computational Linguistics ; 33. The History of Corpus Linguistics ; 34. Philosophy of Linguistics ; References ; Index