Chapter 01: The Origins and the Evolution of Language
The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics
Visual Summaries
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Table Summary
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Core Terminology
Master key academic terminology through active recall and spaced repetition concepts.
Uniformitarians
Which group of scholars argues that evolutionary mechanisms are the same in both phylogenetic and historical periods of language change?
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
Which 18th-century philosopher argued that language is a man-made tool resulting from human rationality rather than a divine gift?
Natural cries and gestures expressing passions
Jean-Jacques Rousseau hypothesized that the earliest phylogenetic stages of language were dominated by _____.
The bow-wow theory
What name did Friedrich Max Müller give to the theory that language began with the imitation of animal sounds?
The need for communication
How did William Dwight Whitney define the 'only conscious motive' for the development of language?
Energeia
​What dynamic concept did Wilhelm von Humboldt use to describe the 'inner linguistic sense' that shapes a community's language?