History of Modern Linguistics

James McElvenny is a Researcher in the Collaborative Research Centre “Media of Co-operation” at the University of Siegen, and has previously held positions at the universities of Edinburgh, Cambridge and Potsdam. He is the author of Language and Meaning in the Age of Modernism (EUP, 2018), and editor of The Limits of Structuralism (2023) and Form and Formalism in Linguistics (2019).

• 1. Introduction2. Comparative-historical grammar3. Language classification4. The consolidation of comparative-historical linguistics5. The pragmatic turn of the mid-nineteenth century6. Neogrammarian doctrine7. Critiques of Neogrammarian doctrine8. Language as a system9. The phoneme10. Prague Circle structuralism11. The beginnings of functionalism12. Meaning and British linguistics13. Functionalism in Central Europe and North America14. The beginnings of American structuralism15. Linguistic relativity16. The culmination of American structuralismConclusionAcknowledgementsBibliography

To any student of linguistics, anyone who works in the field: James McElvenny’s A History of Modern Linguistics will wonderfully enrich your understanding of the scientific trajectory you are part of. If you have done work on the heritage of language analysis, you will find here, as I have, a new and compelling historical arc that resituates developments across the period when linguistics was established as an academic field and took its modern form. The book gets its points across with perfect clarity, speaking directly to you whether specialist or newcomer. A tour de force, beautifully written and authoritative.