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  3. Cambridge Library Collection - Linguistics

From the earliest surviving glossaries and translations to nineteenth-century academic philology and the growth of linguistics during the twentieth century, language has been the subject both of scholarly investigation and of practical handbooks produced for the upwardly mobile, as well as for travellers, traders, soldiers, missionaries and explorers. This collection will reissue a wide range of texts pertaining to language, including the work of Latin grammarians, groundbreaking early publications in Indo-European studies, accounts of indigenous languages, many of them now extinct, and texts by pioneering figures such as Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm von Humboldt and Ferdinand de Saussure.

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171 results in Cambridge Library Collection - Linguistics

Page 9 of 9

Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes
  • Ferdinand de Saussure
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    26 November 2009
    First published in:
    1879
  • Written in 1878, while the author was a twenty-year-old student in Berlin, Saussure's only full-length work proposed the existence of two additional sonant coefficients in the Indo-European parent language. Applying the methods of comparison and internal reconstruction to Proto-Indo-European, Saussure argued that the long vowels had developed from a short vowel plus a sonant coefficient. A hypothesis far ahead of its time, his proposal was not confirmed until 1927 when a consonantal phoneme etymologically derived from Saussure's A was discovered in newly deciphered Hittite, the oldest attested Indo-European language. Not only is the Mémoire a dramatic demonstration of the method of internal reconstruction, but it also paved the way for further developments in historical phonology including laryngeal theory, and may have stimulated Saussure's later development of structuralism. This reissue includes, as an appendix, Antoine Meillet's 1913 obituary of Saussure.

Esquisse d'une histoire de la langue latine
  • Troisième édition revisée et augmentée
  • 3rd edition
  • Antoine Meillet
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    26 November 2009
    First published in:
    1928
  • Antoine Meillet mentored a generation of influential twentieth-century linguists and philologists, including Émile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, and André Martinet. One of the most influential comparative linguists of his time, he recognised that language is a social phenomenon, influenced by sociological factors. Originally published in 1933, this third edition of his 1928 history of Latin was the last to be published during his lifetime. In it, Meillet explores the historical context and significance of Latin. He describes how it developed from Indo-European and evolved according to the fluctuating fortunes of the Roman empire, imitating and borrowing from Greek in many ways but unified by the centralising influence of Rome. As the empire declined, the regional dialects of Latin began to develop into the modern Romance languages, with religion, philosophy and science ensuring the survival of Latin itself into the modern period.

Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines
  • Walter Edmund Roth
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    21 January 2010
    First published in:
    1897
  • Walter E. Roth's 1897 study of the Aborigines of North-West-Central Queensland was among the first of its kind in Australia, and established his international reputation as a leading anthropologist and ethnologist. Roth, a physician who was later appointed 'protector of Aboriginals' by the government, gained the confidence and trust of the Aboriginal people among whom he lived, and tried to stop the exploitation and injustice they suffered, in the face of fierce political opposition. His book provides a fascinating and closely observed account of the Aborigines' traditional way of life, including their language, kinship and customs. It describes social organisation, food, tools and weapons, personal decoration, travel and trade, birth and death, and even cannibalism. Containing over 430 illustrations and a glossary summarising key vocabulary, this thoroughly-researched book is widely recognised as a valuable and enduring anthropological record.

Principien der Sprachgeschichte
  • Hermann Paul
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    26 November 2009
    First published in:
    1880
  • Principien der Sprachgeschichte (1880) is Hermann Paul's best-known work. In this book, the German literary scholar and linguist argues that although language is a product of human culture and the study of language is therefore best categorised as history, language can most effectively be analysed with methods taken from the natural sciences. Paul develops a system of principles that draws heavily on cognitive and psychological elements in order to account for how language has developed. In 14 chapters he sets out a detailed account of the history of language that includes general observations on the development of language, the consequences of sound change, semantic shift and the divergence of etymologically connected words, and aspects of syntax. He also compares written and spoken language varieties, and the origins of dialects and standard languages.

The American Race
  • A Linguistic Classification and Ethnographic Description of the Native Tribes of North and South America
  • Daniel Garrison Brinton
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    26 November 2009
    First published in:
    1891
  • First published in 1891, this book was the earliest attempt to construct a systematic classification of all the indigenous languages of the Americas, focusing particularly on the relationship between culture and grammar and vocabulary. It addresses the various theories of the origins of the American race, and the archaeological evidence for the presence of humans in the Americas. It discusses geologists' opinions and the physical geography of the Americas in relation to Europe, and considers the physical characteristics of the Native Americans, their culture, religion, domestic habits and family organisation, providing a comprehensive anthropological and historical context for the linguistic work. Special attention is paid to the parts of the continent, mostly south of Mexico, whose ethnography was little known at the time of writing. Each chapter covers a particular region, and there is a detailed linguistic appendix.

Geschichte der deutschen Sprache
  • Volume 1
  • Jacob Grimm
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    26 November 2009
    First published in:
    1848
  • Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) became a household name around the world through the collections of fairy tales he compiled with his brother Wilhelm. Jacob's specialism was the history of the German language, which he studied in the broader context of Indo-European philology. Others working in this burgeoning field included the older scholar Rasmus Rask and Grimm's contemporary Franz Bopp (also published in this series). Grimm's two-volume Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, reissued here, was first published in 1848. It is noteworthy especially for the chapter on the major sound shift now known as Grimm's Law or die erste deutsche Lautverschiebung, which sets out regular mappings between Germanic consonants and those found in earlier Indo-European languages, such as English father and Latin pater. The book also contains a wealth of comparative material on phonology, vocabulary and grammar within Germanic and across the Indo-European spectrum.

Geschichte der deutschen Sprache
  • Volume 2
  • Jacob Grimm
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    26 November 2009
    First published in:
    1848
  • Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) became a household name around the world through the collections of fairy tales he compiled with his brother Wilhelm. Jacob's specialism was the history of the German language, which he studied in the broader context of Indo-European philology. Others working in this burgeoning field included the older scholar Rasmus Rask and Grimm's contemporary Franz Bopp (also published in this series). Grimm's two-volume Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, reissued here, was first published in 1848. It is noteworthy especially for the chapter on the major sound shift now known as Grimm's Law or die erste deutsche Lautverschiebung, which sets out regular mappings between Germanic consonants and those found in earlier Indo-European languages, such as English father and Latin pater. The book also contains a wealth of comparative material on phonology, vocabulary and grammar within Germanic and across the Indo-European spectrum.

Über das Alter und die Echtheit der Zendsprache und des Zend-Avesta, und Herstellung des Zend-alphabets
  • Nebst einer Übersicht des gesammten Sprachstammes
  • Rasmus Rask
  • Translated by Friedrich Heinrich Von der Hagen
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    26 November 2009
    First published in:
    1826
  • Rasmus Rask (1787–1832) was a Danish scholar who, having devoted the early part of his career to the Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon languages and literature, embarked upon a journey overland through Russia to India in search of the cradle of the Indo-European languages. He was delighted to rediscover the Avestan Zoroastrian texts preserved by the Parsis which Anquetil du Perron had first reported on sixty years earlier, and further Avestan materials, as well as a lively Zoroastrian community. On his return, he published, first in Danish and then in this German translation (1826), a thorough phonological and morphological analysis which showed that, contrary to the opinion of Anquetil's opponents, the Avestan language and its religious texts were neither a dim folk memory or a deliberate coinage based on Sanskrit, but a very ancient language, originating in Persia, and an important member of the Indo-European language family.

Grammatici Latini
  • Volume 2, Prisciani Institutionum Grammaticarum Libri I–XII
  • Edited by Heinrich Keil, Martin Hertz
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    21 January 2010
    First published in:
    1855
  • The eight volumes of the Grammatici Latini, published by Teubner between 1855 and 1880 under the general editorship of Heinrich Keil (1822–1894), are an outstanding monument of nineteenth-century German philology. Keil published editions of Propertius and of Pliny's letters before turning to the works of the Latin grammarians, whose attempts to define and describe their own language have influenced the way in which modern researchers in language and linguistics have approached their discipline. Keil's only predecessor in this field was Helias Putsch, who in 1605 published Grammaticae Latinae auctores antiqui; Keil uses the same order in which to present his versions of the texts. The second volume contains the first twelve books of Priscian's Institutiones Grammaticae.

Indogermanische Grammatik
  • Volume 3, Das Nomen
  • Hermann Alfred Hirt
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    26 November 2009
    First published in:
    1927
  • Hermann Alfred Hirt (1865–1936) taught Greek, Latin and early Germanic languages at Leipzig University from 1892 to 1912 before moving to the chair of Sanskrit and comparative linguistics at Giessen. Born around the time when Bopp and Schleicher were publishing their ground-breaking work on Indo-European, and a young man when Brugmann published his monumental comparative grammar (all available in this series), Hirt began this seven-volume grammar in the 1920s soon after the exciting discovery of Tocharian and the decipherment of Hittite. The project arose out of his extensive research on the historical phonology of Indo-European vowels, which led him to consider much wider issues. Volume 3 (1927) is devoted mainly to the noun system in the Indo-European languages, focusing first on indeclinable nouns and moving on to nominal declensions. He also discusses adjectives, interjections, and gender, as well as stem formation.

Die Hianákoto-Umáua
  • Theodor Koch-Grünberg
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    26 November 2009
    First published in:
    1908
  • Die Hianákoto-Umáua, first published in 1908, is Theodor Koch-Grünberg's illustrated account of the expedition he made together with other scientists to Northern Brazil in the years 1903–1905. The German researcher, a pioneer in the field of South American ethnology, describes his encounters with the indigenous people who lived in the region of the Japurá River and the Rio Negro. The Omagua tribe had lived there before the Spanish conquest of South America in the sixteenth century. Koch-Grünberg explains that although the words Omagua and Umáua are alike, the sixteenth-century Omagua tribe was culturally and linguistically quite distinct from the Umáua tribe he himself met. The main focus of the book is a systematic record of the vocabulary of the Umáua tribe based upon the author's own observations. He lists words relating to a variety of topics including body parts, medicine and religion.

Page 9 of 9