Synopses & Reviews
This is an entirely new translation of one of the fundamental works in the development of the study of language. Published in 1836, it formed the general introduction to Wilhelm von Humboldt's three-volume treatise on the Kawi language of Java. It is the final statement of his lifelong study of the nature of language, and presents a survey of a great many languages, exploring ways in which their various grammatical structures make them more or less suitable as vehicles of thought and cultural development. Empirically wide-ranging - von Humboldt goes far beyond the Indo-European family of languages - it remains one of the most interesting and important attempts to draw philosophical conclusions from comparative linguistics.
Review
"The editor's introduction contains a fine summary of Humboldt'd career." Notes on Linguistics
Synopsis
This classic study of human language was first published in 1836, as a general introduction to Humboldt's treatise on the Kawi language of Java. It is the final statement of his lifelong study of language, exploring its universal structures and its relation to mind and culture. It remains one of the most interesting and important attempts to draw philosophical conclusions from comparative linguistics. This volume presents a modern translation by Peter Heath together with a new introduction by Michael Losonsky that places Humboldt's work in its historical and philosophical context.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. xxxvii-xxxix) and index.
Table of Contents
Distribution and cultural connections of the Malayan races; plan of the present work -- General consideration of the course of man's development -- The same, continued -- Effects of exceptional mental power; civilization, culture and education -- Conjoint action of individuals and nations -- The same, continued -- Transition to closer consideration of language -- Form of languages -- Nature and constitution of languages as such -- Sound-system of languages; nature of the articulated sound; sound-changes; allocation of sounds to concepts; designation of general relation; the sense of articulation; sound-system of languages; technique of this -- Inner linguistic form -- Combination of sound with inner linguistic form -- The procedure of language more fully explained; verbal affinity and verbal form -- Isolation, inflection and agglutination of words -- Verbal unity more closely examined; incorporative system of languages; means of designating verbal unity; the pause; letter-change -- Accent -- Incorporative system of languages; framing of the sentence -- Congruence of sound-forms in languages with grammatical requirements -- Main division of languages, according to the purity of their formative principle -- Character of languages; poetry and prose -- Power of languages, to evolve felicitously from one to another; act of spontaneous positing in languages; the verb; the conjunction; the relative pronoun; inflected languages, considered in their progressive development; languages evolved from Latin -- Retrospect on the course of the inquiry so far; languages that deviate from purely regular form -- Nature and origin of less perfect language-structure; the Semitic languages; the Delaware language -- The Chinese language; the same, continued; the Burmese language -- Whether the polysyllabic language-structure has evolved from the monosyllabic.