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Einar Haugen as a Historian of Linguistics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

E. F. K. Koerner
E. F. K. Koerner
Affiliation:
Department of LinguisticsUniversity of OttawaOttawa OntarioCanadaKIN 6N5 [koerner@uottawa.ca]
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Extract

In this short paper, the author takes a closer look at Einar Haugen's (1906–1994) writings in as far as they touch upon the historiography of linguistics. After a sketch of his scholarly background and the role he played in the Linguistic Society of America generally and, more particularly, as a historian of linguistic thought from his well-known LSA presidential address of 1950 onwards, Haugen's treatment of the so-called First grammatical treatise comes under closer scrutiny. In particular, the author discusses two expressions in Haugen's 1950 edition of the text that seem to have given rise to much speculation, namely, the word grein and the (probably juridical) phrase skipta máli. It is argued that Haugen and others—notably Hreinn Benediktsson—are at best overinterpreting them by assigning modern structural phonologist meanings to the words, turning them into metalinguistic terms. It is maintained instead that the First Grammarian had made a practical argument in favor of the addition of four vowels not found in the five-vowel Roman alphabet necessitated by the facts of Old Icelandic, and that the text was basically a pedagogical treatise on orthographic requirements and not a precocious phonological discussion.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Germanic Linguistics , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , Fall 1997 , pp. 221 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Germanic Linguistics 1997

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