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This comprehensive history of linguistics is part of a 5 volume set. Together, the volumes examine the social, cultural and religious functions of language, its place in education, the prestige attached to different varieties of language, and the presentation of lexical and grammatical descriptions. They explore the linguistic interests and assumptions of individual cultures in their own terms, without trying to transpose and reshape them into the context of contemporary ideas of what the scientific study of language ought to be. The authors of individual chapters are all specialists who have been able to analyse the primary sources, and so produce original syntheses which offer an authoritative view of the different traditions and periods.
Volime One examines the developments of Chinese linguistics, Indian grammatical tradition, the linguistic interests of the Near East, the Hebrew tradition, and the Arabic grammatical system of the Middle Ages.
List of contents
Introduction
Acknowledgements
Notes on the contributors
1. Chineses linguistics, Göran Malmqvist
1.1 Introduction
1.2 The period prior to the Qin (-221BC)
1.3 The periods of Qin and Han (221 BC-220 AD)
1.4 The periods of Wei, Jin and Nanbeichao (220-581)
1.5 The periods of Sui, Tang and Song (581-1279)
1.6 The periods of Yuan and Ming (1260-1644)
1.7 The period of Qing (1644-1912) up to the end of the nineteenth century
2. Indian Linguistics, George Cardona
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Early work on phonetics and phonology
2.3 Etymology
2.4 Panini
2.5 Panini and later commentators
2.6 Interest in dialects
2.7 Developments of a philosophy of language
2.8 Summary
3. Linguistics in the ancient Near East, Erica Reiner
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Ancient Egyptian linguistics, Janet H. Johnson
3.3 Sumerian, Miguel Civil
3.4 Akkadian, Erica Reiner
4. Hebrew linguistics, Raphael Loewe
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Time concepts
4.3 Language and metaphysics: Torah, Hebrew and Babel
4.4 Late antiquity. Languages in Palestine and in the Jewish diaspora
4.5 Jewish language-satellites
4.6 Philological, philosophical and theological interests
4.7 The cabbalistic transformer
4.8 Renaissance illusions: Haskalah and Auf Kl™rung
4.9 The handmaiden of nineteenth-century nationalism
4.10 The dethronement of tradition
4.11 Master and servant
5. Arabic linguistics, Henri Fleisch
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Classical Arabic
5.3 The Holy Book
5.4 The 'Grammarians'
5.5 Linguistic analyses of the grammarians
5.6 Greek influences
Index
About the author
Lepschy, Giulio C.
Summary
Aims to provide a history of linguistic thought rather than an account of the development of linguistic science. For different societies and different periods, the editor presents prevailing attitudes towards language: its social, cultural, religious and liturgical functions and so on.
