Danielle Candel, Didier Samain & Dan Savatovsky, ed. 2023. Eugen Wüster et la terminologie de l’école de Vienne. Paris : SHESL (HEL Livres, 2). 338 p. ISBN 979-10-91587-18-1. DOI : 10.5281/zenodo.7503185 Book in open access Publisher’s website La terminologie, avec ses analyses théoriques et ses applications, représente un secteur multidisciplinaire, qui s’est développé parallèlement aux progrès scientifiques ou industriels et aux échanges internationaux. Rares restent toutefois les linguistes ou les épistémologues et historiens de la linguistique bien au fait des ..read more

Michaël Crevoisier & Aurélien Galateau, ed. 2022. Langage et Idéologie. Penser le devenir de la langue avec Klemperer. Nice : Éditions Unes. Unes Idée. 184 p. ISBN 978-2-87704-251-2, Publisher’s website Depuis une vingtaine d’années, on commence à mieux connaître en France la vie et l’œuvre de Victor Klemperer, ce philologue juif allemand qui a décrypté la langue du Troisième Reich et lui a miraculeusement survécu. Ses carnets, dans lesquels il a consigné pendant plus d’une décennie les distorsions que les nazis faisaient subir à la langue allemande, sont devenus un document incontournabl ..read more

In this episode we talk to Andrew Garrett about the life, work and legacy of American anthropologist Alfred Kroeber. Kroeber achieved a number of firsts in American anthropology: he was Boas’ first Columbia PhD and the first professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. But Kroeber is not only of historical interest. The recent “denaming” of Kroeber Hall at UC Berkeley illustrates the clash of the past with our present-day social and political concerns. Download | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts References for Episode 30 Primary sources Dixon, Roland, and Alfr ..read more

In this interview, we talk to Marcin Kilarski about the history of the documentation and description of the languages of North America. Download | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts References for Episode 29 Primary sources Bloomfield, Leonard. 1946. “Algonquian”. Linguistic structures of native America ed. by Harry Hoijer, 85-129. New York: Viking Fund. Boas, Franz & Ella Cara Deloria. 1941. Dakota grammar. Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office. Deloria, Ella Cara. 1932. Dakota texts. (= Publications of the American Ethnological Society 14.) New York: G. E. Stechert. (Re ..read more

Review of Randy Allen Harris: The Linguistics Wars: Chomsky, Lakoff, and the Battle over Deep Structure. Second edition. Oxford University Press. 2021. John Goldmith University of Chicago Randy Harris has written an extremely engaging account of the rise of generative syntax and of some of the linguists who participated in this development, focusing on the scruffy fights that held a lot of people’s attention in the second half of the 1960s, and then tracking the trajectories of the linguists after that very belligerent moment. The book is great fun to read—Randy is a terrific writer, the like ..read more

In this episode, we begin our exploration of American linguistics by looking at the innovative contributions of Franz Boas (1858–1942) and his circle of students. Download | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts References for Episode 28 Primary sources Bastian, Adolf (1893), Controversen in der Ethnologie I, die geographischen Provinzen in ihren culurgeschichtlichen Berührungspuncten, Berlin: Weidmannische Buchhandlung. archive.org Benedict, Ruth (1946), The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese culture, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. archive.org Boas, Franz (1887a), ‘The occurren ..read more

John Joseph University of Edinburgh One hundred years ago, Raymond de Saussure (1894-1971), the second son of Ferdinand and Marie de Saussure, published a review of a collection of papers by his father’s most famous and devoted student, Antoine Meillet (1866-1936). Saussure (henceforth the surname used alone will designate Raymond) was not a linguist, but a psychologist who had become attached to Freudian psychoanalysis. He was personally psychoanalysed by Freud, who contributed a preface to Saussure’s first book in 1922, the same year as the review of Meillet. Saussure was a founding member o ..read more

Didier Samain & Pierre-Yves Testenoire, ed. 2022. La linguistique et ses formes historiques d’organisation et de production. Paris: SHESL. HEL Livres 1. 336 p. ISBN : 979-10-91587-16-7. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6675029 Publisher’s website La production et la transmission des savoirs scientifiques s’effectuent par des instances dédiées (exemplairement l’Université), mais aussi par la médiation de multiples structures, qui se sont agrégées autour d’une thématique (académies, sociétés savantes), d’une affiliation (dans le cas notamment des « écoles »), ou encore d’un projet (comme la grammatisati ..read more

In this interview, we talk to Peter Trudgill about how the structure of speaker communities may influence the structure of languages. Download | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts References for Episode 27 Aronoff, Mark. 1994. Morphology by itself: stems and inflectional classes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dahl, Östen. 2004. The growth and maintenance of linguistic complexity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dediu, Dan, & Stephen Levinson. 2013. On the antiquity of language: the reinterpretation of Neandertal linguistic capacities and its consequences. Front ..read more

In this interview, we talk to Philipp Krämer about the history of the study of creole languages and present-day efforts to standardise creoles around the world. Download | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts References for Episode 26 Primary sources Adam, Lucien (1883): Les idiomes négro-aryen et maléo-aryen. Essai d’hybridologie linguistique. Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie. Baissac, Charles (1880): Etude sur le patois créole mauricien. Nancy: Berger-Levrault et Cie. Dietrich, Adolphe (1891): Les parlers créoles des Mascareignes. In: Romania, 20: 216-277. Focard, Volcy (1885): Du patois créo ..read more