Law V. The History of Linguistics in Europe - From Plato to 1600

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. — XVIII, 307 p.Authoritative and wide-ranging, this book examines the history of western linguistics over a 2,000-year timespan, from its origins in ancient Greece up to the crucial moment of change in the Renaissance that laid the foundations of modern linguistics.Vivien Law explores how ideas about language over the centuries have changed to reflect evolving modes of thinking.Some of today’s burning questions about language date back a long way: in 400 BC Plato was asking how words relate to reality, and medieval philosophers put forward one hypothesis after another to explain the interaction of language and mind. Other questions go back just a few generations, such as our interest in the mechanisms of language change, or in the social factors that shape the way we speak. Vivien Law explores how ideas about language over the centuries have changed to reflect changing modes of thinking. A survey chapter brings the coverage of the book up to the present day.Classified bibliographies and chapters on research resources and the qualities the historian of linguistics needs to develop provide the reader with the tools to go further.A book very useful for scholars. Each chapter is readable, entertaining, and full of background information needed to put things in context. Anthropologists will find this book of particular interest because of its emphasis on understanding people different from oneself.