Re: Is there a word for the Study of the History of Languages?

Joachim Pense wrote:

> I do not know much of the man [Saussure], except that he discovered the laryngeals as a
> student and invented what he called Semiology in his later days. I do not
> know what he did in between. I also read that his early discovery was not
> widely accepted during his lifetime, because the Hittite evidence came to
> light only after his death.
>
> Comparing the ingenious reconstruction detail work that led to the laryngeal
> hypothesis with the handwaving stuff called Semiology, I wildly speculate
> that the latter looks like the work of an aging scientist who gets the idea
> of turning the things upside-down that were relevant to him before: move
> from detail to generalities, drop diachronic analysis in favour of
> synchronic, and written language in favour of spoken language.
>
> Probably I am just unfair to him and should not talk about biographies I do
> not know. But y'all will surely correct me.

He published almost nothing after the 1879 Mémoire. ("His" famous
textbook of 1916 was assembled posthumously from his students' course
notes, and there's an entire industry devoted to figuring out just what
he himself did believe; all the notes the book is based on have now been
published, as well as those from a course he taught in a different
year.)

The foundation of semiotics (the US name for semiology) is attributed
more to the American Charles Sanders Peirce than to Saussure.

His work on the laryngeals was not understood in his lifetime. He had
invented something entirely new -- an unattested segment that could be
used to explain attested phenomena -- but at the time it seems to have
been treated as nothing more than a notational variant. The term
"laryngeal" was bestowed by Möller, who was mostly interested in
Semitic-IE comparison. It was the young Kurylowicz who applied
Saussure's idea to the study of Hittite (in 1927, over a decade after
the decipherment), but he apparently didn't have a great understanding
of Hittite. The laryngeal theory was not widely and immediately
accepted; note that the participants in the 1959 "Evidence for
Laryngeals" conference were, at the time, all young rising stars (I
asked Henry Hoenigswald, who was the oldest among them, if he minded
that characterization, and he replied that he didn't) who are now the
seniormost IEists: Watkins, Hamp, Lehmann, Winter, etc. (See my article
in the McCawley volume, MIT 2005.)

What you wrote after "relevant to him before:" is simply insulting.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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