This book is a concise history of structural linguistics, charting its development from the 1870s to the present day. It explains what structuralism was and why its ideas are still central today. For structuralists, a language is a self-contained and tightly organized system whose history is of changes from one state of the system to another. This…

Covering a 500-year span, this article traces the changes in and evolution of the Spanish language from its earliest written accounts in the eleventh century to the Spanish that was brought by the Conquistadores to the New World. (DS)

Examines the effects of literacy on cultural traditions, linguistic behavior, socioeconomic organization, cognitive processes, and child development. Considers the implications for anthropological, psychological, and linguistic theories from the increased attention given to the study of literacy. Includes suggestions for socially and culturally…

Examines (1) the historical development of humanistic linguistics through five stages of western renaissances--Carolingian renaissance, twelfth-century renaissance, Italian renaissance, neo-humanism, and impressionism and idealism and (2) how the late twentieth century continues the tradition. Expressionism and structuralism, philology,…

Reviews the development of English dictionaries in general and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in particular. The discussion covers the decision by the Philological Society to create the dictionary, the principles that guided its development, the involvement of James Augustus Henry Murray, the magnitude and progress of the project, and the…

Philosophy was created by accident out of nothing. The verb "to be" can be confused with "to exist." The accidents of the fact that the "copula" is both a transitive and an intransitive verb are sometimes thought to have plagued ancient Greek thinking until Aristotle discovered logic and thus saved the world from…

Discusses the beginning of the ascendancy of the language sciences in the past 50 years to become the "queen" of social studies. Focuses on contributions by Mikhail Bakhtin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Noam Chomsky, Erving Goffman, and Michael Halliday. (SC)

The contributions of Peter Stephen DuPonceau and John Pickering to American linguistics in the early nineteenth century are reviewed and discussed. Despite their probable status as amateurs in the study of American Indian languages and their very limited fieldwork, they made some significant contributions to the general field of language studies…

In tracing the development of language curriculum in public schools, one discovers that prior to the twentieth century grammar was the center of linguistic attention. Around the beginning of the century, psychologists and others were doing research on the supposed efficacious results of such study and were finding that such supposed results were…

Writing development in preschool children has only recently begun to receive attention; however, Russian researchers dealt with the subject in the 1920s and 30s. Arguing that writing was a fundamental assist to cognitive growth as well as a tool for communication, Lev Vygotsky believed that the preschool child was ready to be taught writing.…

Weaves a Navajo elementary teacher's anecdotes from her own and her father's educational experiences with archival materials to provide a historical context for Navajo literacy. Discusses early written Navajo; the role of schools and churches in the expansion of written Navajo; and the advancement of Navajo linguistics during John Collier's…