Philology On The English Language

An exploration of how philology contributed to the study of English language and literature in the nineteenth century.

This collection of articles covers a wide range of topics in English philology and history of linguistics. The volume proceeds from Old English studies offering a unique perspective and approach in literary and linguistic research into Anglo-Saxon England. Two articles deal with English phonology from both historical and contemporary standpoints, and another with a theoretical discussion of etymological inquiry. The last section contains three articles focusing on the history of linguistics or the history of ideas. The wide range of topics addressed in the 12 chapters of this volume reflects the diversity of interests in the research efforts of Shoichi Watanabe, professor emeritus at Sophia University, to whom this volume is dedicated by his former students. He is not only highly valued as a distinguished professor of English philology, but also acknowledged for his critique of civilization with his unique view of history and culture.

A prehistory of today's humanities, from ancient Greece to the early twentieth century Many today do not recognize the word, but "philology" was for centuries nearly synonymous with humanistic intellectual life, encompassing not only the study of Greek and Roman literature and the Bible but also all other studies of language and literature, as well as history, culture, art, and more. In short, philology was the queen of the human sciences. How did it become little more than an archaic word? In Philology, the first history of Western humanistic learning as a connected whole ever published in English, James Turner tells the fascinating, forgotten story of how the study of languages and texts led to the modern humanities and the modern university. The humanities today face a crisis of relevance, if not of meaning and purpose. Understanding their common origins—and what they still share—has never been more urgent.

An exploration of how philology contributed to the study of English language and literature in the nineteenth century.

Empirical and Analytical Advances in the Study of English Language Change continues the project of initiating and energizing the conversations among historians of the English language fostered by the series of conferences on studying the history of the English language (SHEL), begun in 2000 at UCLA. It follows in the footsteps of three high-profile SHEL-based collections of peer-reviewed research papers and point-counterpoint commentaries. In the current volume, the editors invited contributors to reflect upon their approaches and practices in undertaking historical studies, focusing particularly on the methods deployed in selecting and analyzing data. The essays in this volume represent interests in the study of linguistic change in English that range across different periods, genres, and aspects of the language and show different approaches and use of evidence to deal with the subject. They also represent the current state of research in the field and the nature of the debates in which scholars and historians engage as regards the nature of the evidence adduced in the explanation of change and the robustness of heuristics. The editors share a strong interest in examining the evidence that informs and grounds research in their fields at the same time as interrogating the heuristics employed by their colleagues for the histories they present. The contributions to the volume give expression to these interests. Contributors are: Richard Hogg (to whose memory the volume is dedicated), William Labov, Elizabeth Traugott, Rob Fulk, Thomas Cable, Jennifer Tran-Smith, Charles Li, Christina Fitzgerald, David Denison, Christopher Palmer, Don Chapman, Graeme Trousdale, Joan Beal, Connie Eble, Stefan Dollinger and Raymond Hickey. The volume is of interest to scholars and postgraduate and research students in the history of English, English philology, and (English) historical linguistics.