Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Gabelentz family in their own words
- 3 Georg von der Gabelentz as a pioneer of information structure
- 4 The Basque-Berber connection of Georg von der Gabelentz
- 5 Phenomenological aspects of Georg von der Gabelentz's Die Sprachwissenschaft
- 6 Content and Form of Speech
- Index
5 - Phenomenological aspects of Georg von der Gabelentz's Die Sprachwissenschaft
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Gabelentz family in their own words
- 3 Georg von der Gabelentz as a pioneer of information structure
- 4 The Basque-Berber connection of Georg von der Gabelentz
- 5 Phenomenological aspects of Georg von der Gabelentz's Die Sprachwissenschaft
- 6 Content and Form of Speech
- Index
Summary
Abstract
When Georg von der Gabelentz's (1840–1893) book Die Sprachwissenschaft (1891) was published, the historical-comparative paradigm was the dominant perspective in empirical linguistic enquiry, and the then current theory of language was firmly rooted in language psychology. While itself based in this tradition, Gabelentz's Sprachwissenschaftnevertheless strikes another chord, which sets it apart from contemporary sources. This chapter argues that the book is particularly noteworthy for its wide-ranging bottom-up approach to linguistic phenomena and its propensity to conceive of language both as object and instrument of enquiry in a sense akin to the ‘reflexive’ stance that later would become a hallmark of Edmund Husserl's (1859–1938) phenomenology. The ‘phenomenological mindset’ can in particular be retraced in the way a different philosophy of the language sciences and theory of meaning take shape in Die Sprachwissenschaft.
Keywords: phenomenology, philosophy of science, theory of meaning, 19th-century psychology of language
… it is necessary to divide the general but at the same time to bring together into a unity that which emerges as specific. To reach such a centre, the nature of language itself gives us a hand.
– Wilhelm von Humboldt, über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues, § 13.Introduction
In this chapter, I examine the philosophy of science and theory of meaning in Georg von der Gabelentz's (1840–1893) treatise on general linguistics, Die Sprachwissenschaft (2016 [1891]), and the extent to which they can be regarded as being ‘phenomenological’ in nature for reasons to be explained below. The term phenomenological, to be sure, does not occur in Gabelentz's book. I use the term to refer to a general philosophical mindset towards consciousness, scientific analysis and language. Authors such as Spiegelberg (1982, p. xxvii), Lembeck (1994, p. 3), Sokolowski (2000, p. 47) and others rightly observe that phenomenology is not, as is sometimes assumed, a clear-cut doctrine or body of knowledge which scholars can either adopt or reject. It is, however, widely accepted that a detailed description of the specific ‘phenomenological mindset’ or ‘attitude’ in the modern sense of the term has been provided by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) from c. 1900 onwards.
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- Information
- Gabelentz and the Science of Language , pp. 99 - 130Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019
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