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Chapter 17. The structuralist quest for general meanings

Mapping the history of monosemy in grammatical semantics
  • Lorenzo Cigana and Henrik Jørgensen
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History of Linguistics 2021
This chapter is in the book History of Linguistics 2021

Abstract

This article reconstruct the history and development of the methodology known as “of general meanings”, widely adopted in 20th century structural linguistics and grammatical semantics starting from the Thirties onwards, tracking its roots in the framework of German Allgemeine Sprachlehre and discussing the debate that it engendered within the structural paradigm, where the notions of “general” vs. “fundamental meanings” (Gesamt- vs. Grundbedeutung) were defined and gained currency, often marking the competing approaches of Prague vs. Copenhagen schools. In so doing, the paper offers a detailed insight on the philosophical background of such a methodology, reconstructing its epistemological framework and its legacy, contributing in mapping the evolution of one of its most important corollary: monosemy.

Abstract

This article reconstruct the history and development of the methodology known as “of general meanings”, widely adopted in 20th century structural linguistics and grammatical semantics starting from the Thirties onwards, tracking its roots in the framework of German Allgemeine Sprachlehre and discussing the debate that it engendered within the structural paradigm, where the notions of “general” vs. “fundamental meanings” (Gesamt- vs. Grundbedeutung) were defined and gained currency, often marking the competing approaches of Prague vs. Copenhagen schools. In so doing, the paper offers a detailed insight on the philosophical background of such a methodology, reconstructing its epistemological framework and its legacy, contributing in mapping the evolution of one of its most important corollary: monosemy.

Chapters in this book

  1. 日本言語政策学会 / Japan Association for Language Policy. 言語政策 / Language Policy 10. 2014 i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Foreword & acknowledgments 1
  4. Editors’ introduction 3
  5. Part 1. General and particular issues in the history of linguistics
  6. Chapter 1. Can linguistics and historiography of linguistics profit from each other? 14
  7. Chapter 2. Type or descent? 31
  8. Chapter 3. Le futur antérieur des linguistes (fin 19 e – début 20 e siècle) 47
  9. Chapter 4. Ethics and language in (and around) Philipp Wegener 60
  10. Chapter 5. Walter Benjamin’s idea of language 77
  11. Chapter 6. Eléments pour une histoire de l’interprétation 88
  12. Chapter 7. “Computational linguistics” as the horizon of projection of early machine translation 102
  13. Part 2. Antiquity
  14. Chapter 8. Declension and description 116
  15. Chapter 9. Constituent-order in Sanskrit Bahuvrīhi compounds 129
  16. Chapter 10. The internal order of Sanskrit compounds 145
  17. Part 3. Sixteenth to twentieth century works
  18. Chapter 11. How far are the horizons of descriptive linguistics? 160
  19. Chapter 12. The relevance of B. Delbrück’s work on Indo-European syntax (a century after his death) 179
  20. Chapter 13. Three documents bearing on the foundation of the Linguistic Society of America in the age of scientific racism 198
  21. Chapter 14. Archival resources for the study of the historiography of American linguistics 211
  22. Chapter 15. Courses in general linguistics by Roman Jakobson at the École Libre des Hautes Études 220
  23. Chapter 16. Contribution de Agostino Gemelli (1878–1959) à l’analyse des variations phoniques du langage 238
  24. Chapter 17. The structuralist quest for general meanings 248
  25. 日本言語政策学会 / Japan Association for Language Policy. 言語政策 / Language Policy 10. 2014 279
  26. 日本言語政策学会 / Japan Association for Language Policy. 言語政策 / Language Policy 10. 2014 283
https://doi.org/10.1075/sihols.133.17cig

Chapters in this book

  1. 日本言語政策学会 / Japan Association for Language Policy. 言語政策 / Language Policy 10. 2014 i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Foreword & acknowledgments 1
  4. Editors’ introduction 3
  5. Part 1. General and particular issues in the history of linguistics
  6. Chapter 1. Can linguistics and historiography of linguistics profit from each other? 14
  7. Chapter 2. Type or descent? 31
  8. Chapter 3. Le futur antérieur des linguistes (fin 19 e – début 20 e siècle) 47
  9. Chapter 4. Ethics and language in (and around) Philipp Wegener 60
  10. Chapter 5. Walter Benjamin’s idea of language 77
  11. Chapter 6. Eléments pour une histoire de l’interprétation 88
  12. Chapter 7. “Computational linguistics” as the horizon of projection of early machine translation 102
  13. Part 2. Antiquity
  14. Chapter 8. Declension and description 116
  15. Chapter 9. Constituent-order in Sanskrit Bahuvrīhi compounds 129
  16. Chapter 10. The internal order of Sanskrit compounds 145
  17. Part 3. Sixteenth to twentieth century works
  18. Chapter 11. How far are the horizons of descriptive linguistics? 160
  19. Chapter 12. The relevance of B. Delbrück’s work on Indo-European syntax (a century after his death) 179
  20. Chapter 13. Three documents bearing on the foundation of the Linguistic Society of America in the age of scientific racism 198
  21. Chapter 14. Archival resources for the study of the historiography of American linguistics 211
  22. Chapter 15. Courses in general linguistics by Roman Jakobson at the École Libre des Hautes Études 220
  23. Chapter 16. Contribution de Agostino Gemelli (1878–1959) à l’analyse des variations phoniques du langage 238
  24. Chapter 17. The structuralist quest for general meanings 248
  25. 日本言語政策学会 / Japan Association for Language Policy. 言語政策 / Language Policy 10. 2014 279
  26. 日本言語政策学会 / Japan Association for Language Policy. 言語政策 / Language Policy 10. 2014 283
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