linguistics and politics in 19th英文电子书.pdfVIP

History of EuropeanIdeas, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 1-18, 1997 Pergamon Copyright © 1997Elsevier Science Ltd $0191-6~9 (97) 00004-1 All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain 0191-6599/97 $17.00 + 0.00 LINGUISTICS AND POLITICS IN THE EARLY 19TH CENTURY: JAMES COWLES PRICHARDS MORAL PHILOLOGY HANNAH FRANZISKA AUGSTEIN* In the wake of the scientific specialization of the early 19th century philology changed its character. Hitherto, it had been tied to classical studies and Biblical criticism; in the 19th century, it turned into a science whose pursuit was increasingly independent of religious considerations. Accordingly, the search for the ultimate origin of language became less important. As human nature and culture were no longer seen as universal, universal grammar gave way to a preoccupation with the grammatical structure of particular languages. During the 18th century philologists had been prepossessed with inquiries into the change of meaning of particular words in time; now they became increasingly concerned with the grammatical make-up of existing languages, l As is well known, the main spur for these changes came from Germany. After the orientalist Sir William Jones (1746-94) had discovered relationships between Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, and their linguistic offspring, all of which he unified under the name of the Indo-European languages,2 the Germans Friedrich and August Wilhelm