Theories of language

BMNEN-01100A

András Cser

Monday 08:15–09:45 (lecture), 10:15–11:45 (consultation), 107/B (first two weeks via Teams!)

cser.andras@btk.ppke.hu

This course provides a survey of the history of linguistics as a series of chapters from general intellectual history, with an emphasis on the links to related fields of inquiry. The list of readings to be read for the consultations is given below. Please enter your names into this chart to let me know when you are coming for consultation and what you will have read by that time. The consultations are one-on-one occasions, and I want to see each of you at least twice during the term.

On the first two weeks, there will be lectures in both slots, no consultations!

Slides will be uploaded to this site.

Topics covered:

  • The beginnings: archaic thinking about language; ancient Greece: Plato and Aristotle. Slides

  • The Stoics and Alexandrian philology; Roman grammarians: the emerging systematic grammars. Slides

  • The early Middle Ages and Christianity: the reassessing and repositioning of the tradition. Slides

  • The Carolingian renaissance and the later Middle Ages. Slides

  • Early modern times 1: the sacred languages and the beginnings of vernacular grammar. Slides

  • Early modern times 2: the return of philosophical issues in the study of language: artificial languages. Slides

  • Early modern times 3: the origins of language and other topics. Slides

  • The comparative and typological study of languages Slides

  • The beginnings of Finno-Ugric and Indo-European comparative linguistics. Slides

  • Historical linguistics as a mature science. Slides

  • The Neogrammarian movement. Slides

  • Saussure's place in the history of linguistics. Slides

  • Early structuralism and major trends in the 20th century

Required readings:

  • Vivien Law The history of linguistics in Europe from Plato to 1600. Cambridge: CUP, 2003

  • Anna Morpurgo Davies Nineteenth-century linguistics. London: Longman, 1998. (You don't have to read the whole book; choose some chapters that seem interesting to you.)

  • Either of the following two books:

    • Matthews, Peter H. (1998) A Short History of Structural Linguistics. Cambridge: CUP.

    • Matthews, Peter H. (1993) Grammatical Theory in the United States from Bloomfield to Chomsky. Cambridge: CUP.

Optional readings:

  • Chinese linguistics. In: G. Lepschy (ed., 1994) History of Linguistics. Vol. 1.

  • Arabic linguistics. In: G. Lepschy (ed., 1994) History of Linguistics. Vol. 1.

  • Hebrew linguistics. In: G. Lepschy (ed., 1994) History of Linguistics. Vol. 1.

  • Indian linguistics. In: G. Lepschy (ed., 1994) History of Linguistics. Vol. 1.

  • Cser András: A magyar nyelvtudomány történetének áttekintése a kezdetektől a 20. század elejéig. – In: Magyar nyelv / ed. Kiefer Ferenc. – Budapest : Akadémiai Kiadó, 2006, 481–512. Available (here) (This is a short survey of the study of language in Hungary between 1500 and the early 20th century.)

  • Cser András: A nyelvészeti gondolkodás fejlődése a humanizmus idejétől a 20. századig. Budapest: PPKE BTK, 2015 (This is a longer survey of European linguistics from the beginnings, with a focus on post-1500 developments.)

  • C. Vladár Zsuzsa: A korai magyar grammatikák. Budapest: Tinta, 2016.

  • And here is a longer annotated list of readings I tend to recommend. Feel free to browse! (The comments are in Hungarian but most of the books on the list are not.)