Historical Linguistics or Linguistic History?
100 Historical Things, Number 9
At some point, I really should talk about my own research. Seeing as this is a public set of posts, I'll keep it fairly anonymous and won't mention my real name or the exact titles of my publications, nor will I expound in detail the theories that are my intellectual property. Because, you know, academia is one of those worlds where you do have to guard your intellectual property jealously, especially because it's the coinage by which you hoist yourself up the career ladder of Babel (to mix my Biblical metaphors).
Instead, let me begin with some remarks about the precise field in which I work. Some of you will be familiar with the term Historical Linguistics. This refers, in a broad sense, to various strands of the study of the development of languages in the past, one very significant part of which is the study of the ways in which languages are related to each other. I teach various historical-linguistic things a lot, usually with a focus on Greek and Latin and their Indo-European origins, but it's not actually my area of research. (Actually I have to lecture on the Indo-European verb next year, so I should probably do a whole separate post on that!)
I would categorise my own research not as Historical Linguistics but as Linguistic History. Now, you'll notice that you can't click on the words 'Linguistic History' there. That's because there's no Wikipedia page for this phenomenon, and that in itself should tell you something: perhaps that I made it up I made it up (:P), or that it isn't a very well defined concept, or that it's an idea so new that it hasn't made it to Wikipedia yet. Really it's the middle of the three - it isn't very well defined because it is covers several ideas and it is very much dependent on the geographical area with which you're working, and in some ways it is a fairly new way of thinking about synthesising information too.
To illustrate what I mean: If you google for 'linguistic history', one of the highest results thrown up is a Wikipedia page on the linguistic history of the Indian subcontinent. Now, if you read that, you'll find that the primary information the article gives you is all about how to divide up the languages found in the Indian subcontinent, where the primary division is between the Indo-European languages (e.g. Sanskrit, Hindi; these are related to most European languages, inc. Greek, Latin, English, etc.) and the Dravidian languages (e.g. Tamil, Telugu; these are not related to European languages). Partly, that is what I mean by 'Linguistic History', but there is more to it as well - you can get hints from that article that as well as knowing the ways in which the languages relate to each other historically (i.e. 'Historical Linguistics'), you also need to know when and where they were spoken, you need to read the literature written in them, you need to understand the scripts in which they were written - and, vitally, you need to understand the full context of each language.
Context is a key factor, I think, in the distinction between Historical Linguistics and Linguistic History. When studying the ways in which languages are related, very often you are dealing with the quasi-mathematical formulae to which your units are reduced. However, when studying the history of a language, you need to know who was speaking it, when and where they were doing so, who was writing and how that was restricted, whether any particular political entities had any influence over any of that, how much contact there was between speakers of this language and speakers of other languages, and so on. That is what I mean by Linguistic History.
I intend to take this up again, but for the time being I need to hide for a while, while I finish writing an article for a journal named after a woman who copulated with a bull to produce a monstrous child, to quote one of my friends on Facebook this morning. In the meantime, please do check out the questions here if you haven't answered them already - and thank you very much to those who have so far!
At some point, I really should talk about my own research. Seeing as this is a public set of posts, I'll keep it fairly anonymous and won't mention my real name or the exact titles of my publications, nor will I expound in detail the theories that are my intellectual property. Because, you know, academia is one of those worlds where you do have to guard your intellectual property jealously, especially because it's the coinage by which you hoist yourself up the career ladder of Babel (to mix my Biblical metaphors).
Instead, let me begin with some remarks about the precise field in which I work. Some of you will be familiar with the term Historical Linguistics. This refers, in a broad sense, to various strands of the study of the development of languages in the past, one very significant part of which is the study of the ways in which languages are related to each other. I teach various historical-linguistic things a lot, usually with a focus on Greek and Latin and their Indo-European origins, but it's not actually my area of research. (Actually I have to lecture on the Indo-European verb next year, so I should probably do a whole separate post on that!)
I would categorise my own research not as Historical Linguistics but as Linguistic History. Now, you'll notice that you can't click on the words 'Linguistic History' there. That's because there's no Wikipedia page for this phenomenon, and that in itself should tell you something: perhaps that I made it up I made it up (:P), or that it isn't a very well defined concept, or that it's an idea so new that it hasn't made it to Wikipedia yet. Really it's the middle of the three - it isn't very well defined because it is covers several ideas and it is very much dependent on the geographical area with which you're working, and in some ways it is a fairly new way of thinking about synthesising information too.
To illustrate what I mean: If you google for 'linguistic history', one of the highest results thrown up is a Wikipedia page on the linguistic history of the Indian subcontinent. Now, if you read that, you'll find that the primary information the article gives you is all about how to divide up the languages found in the Indian subcontinent, where the primary division is between the Indo-European languages (e.g. Sanskrit, Hindi; these are related to most European languages, inc. Greek, Latin, English, etc.) and the Dravidian languages (e.g. Tamil, Telugu; these are not related to European languages). Partly, that is what I mean by 'Linguistic History', but there is more to it as well - you can get hints from that article that as well as knowing the ways in which the languages relate to each other historically (i.e. 'Historical Linguistics'), you also need to know when and where they were spoken, you need to read the literature written in them, you need to understand the scripts in which they were written - and, vitally, you need to understand the full context of each language.
Context is a key factor, I think, in the distinction between Historical Linguistics and Linguistic History. When studying the ways in which languages are related, very often you are dealing with the quasi-mathematical formulae to which your units are reduced. However, when studying the history of a language, you need to know who was speaking it, when and where they were doing so, who was writing and how that was restricted, whether any particular political entities had any influence over any of that, how much contact there was between speakers of this language and speakers of other languages, and so on. That is what I mean by Linguistic History.
I intend to take this up again, but for the time being I need to hide for a while, while I finish writing an article for a journal named after a woman who copulated with a bull to produce a monstrous child, to quote one of my friends on Facebook this morning. In the meantime, please do check out the questions here if you haven't answered them already - and thank you very much to those who have so far!