Od natury słowa do słowa o naturze. Recenzja książki Bolesława Andrzejewskiego pt. Filozofia słowa. Zarys dziejów

Herethis paper is review on monographical pulication „Filozofia słowa. Zarys dziejów” [The Philosophy of the Word. A Short History] by Bolesław Andrzejewski. The Polish philosopher’s book is one and only publication which dares to present and contrast concepts and theories on the word which appears in the history of Western Civilisation from the times of ancient Greek philosophers, through Christian thinkers and German romantics and representants of Enlightenment, ending with English and American pragmatists and positivists, not to omit prominent linguists like Ferdynand de Saussure, Noam Chomsky, Ernst Cassirer or Wilhelm von Humboldt. Original view of the author on philosophy of language makes the reviewed book unique, since Andrzejewski tries to break through the analytic, so common nowadays, paradigm and proposes to run the consideration concerning language in the spirit of lingua ac communitas, so to speak, he treats language basically as a tool for interpersonal communication and a way of gaining understanding within community.

Innere Sprachform

Zusammenfassung Der von Wilhelm von Humboldt geprägte und von Heymann Steinthal Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts propagierte Begriff der Inneren Sprachform hat eine bewegte und von Diskontinuitäten geprägte Geschichte und eine äußerst vage und plastische Bedeutung. Der Text rekonstruiert einige Stationen dieser Begriffsgeschichte, mit Blick auf deren Brüche und Richtungswechsel. Besonderes Augenmerk gilt der Rezeption und der heuristischen Weiterentwicklung des Begriffs in den USA. Kontrastiert wird die US-Rezeption (in Sprachpsychologie, Spracherwerbsforschung und Ethnolinguistik) mit der zeitgleichen ideologischen Verwendung des Ausdrucks in der sprachnationalistischen deutschen Tradition.

SYNCHRONOUS AND DIACHRONIC LANGUAGE RESEARCH (ORIGINS, DIFFERENTIATION, DEVELOPMENT)

The article is devoted to the analysis and description of the formation of diachronic and synchronic linguistics. The birth and formation of the science of language from the standpoint of its synchronicity and diachrony was of great importance for the development of linguistics at the end of the 19th century. and in the 20th century. Starting from Wilhelm von Humboldt and Ferdinand de Saussure, the examination of language in statics and dynamics (language and speech) is intertwined with the study of language in diachronic and synchronic aspects. In modern linguistics, both theoretically and practically in this regard, all written languages have been investigated, therefore the science of language gives an idea of all languages, but with varying degrees of research, primarily of the diachronic aspect.In terms of synchronicity, modern languages have been studied quite deeply and widely, which is confirmed by textbooks and other teaching materials for their study and teaching. In the process of writing the article, methods such as the method of theoretical analysis, the method of linguistic analysis, and the comparative method were used.

Offenheit für unterschiedliche Formungen der Erkenntnis

Multilingualism is of central importance for the human experience of alterity in culture and scholarship. In this discussion, Carolin Krahn and Jürgen Trabant explore the challenges and benefits of multilingualism in academia, especially in the humanities. The dominance of the English language in global academic life is addressed, as are the Bologna reform and the role of international research institutes such as the German Historical Institute. The dialogue illustrates the importance of language for intellectual life, addressing further topics ranging from Wilhelm von Humboldt and the city of Rome to the relationship between music and language and the question of European identity.

Sprachabenteuer: Yoko Tawadas exophone Erkundungen des Deutschen

Adventures in Language: Yoko Tawada’s Exophonic Explorations of German. Yoko Tawada (1960) is for good reason one of the prime examples for contemporary German exophonic literature. She is a very successful writer in Japanese and in German and provides in her Germanophone writings an ethnography of the German worldview, as Wilhelm von Humboldt famously called languages, or of the German language-mindset. This article focuses on her 2010 poetry volume Abenteuer der deutschen Grammatik (‘Adventures of German Grammar’) to demonstrate how exophonia can allow us to develop an acute awareness of the ways in which language structures shape our patterns of thinking. Coming from a very differently organised language, Japanese, Tawada comments in playful ways on the implications of German, and compares it translinguistically with Japanese. Looking at German from an outside position enables her to be very creative and to make Germans discover their language with new eyes. Translingual writing, even though also present in a real mixing of languages in Tawada, appears here as a way to understand how much our ideas are shaped by our linguistic structures, and that there are alternative worldviews. It thus contributes greatly to a relativisation of one’s own perspective and helps to open up to difference and creativity.

Structural Semantics in the Romance Languages

Structural semantics is a primarily European structural linguistic approach to the content level of language which basically derives from two historical sources. The main inspiration stems from Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale (1916), where the Genevan linguist also formulates the fundamental principles of semantic analysis: the twofold character of the linguistic sign, the inner determination of its content by the—allegedly autonomous—linguistic system, the consequent exclusion of the extralinguistic reality, the notion of opposition inside the system, and the concept of “associative relations” in the domain of semantics. This tradition was later refined by Hjelmslev and Coseriu, who introduced theoretical and methodological strength and rigor, suggesting systematic analyses in terms of semantic features linked by (binary) opposition. The second source of inspiration was the more holistic concept elaborated by Wilhelm von Humboldt, who saw language as a means of structuring the world. In the second half of the 20th century, structural semantics was mainstream semantics (to the extent that semantic analysis was accepted at all). A long series of authors deepened these historical traditions in theoretical and empirical studies, some of them suggesting secondary and/or partial models. Finally, prototype semantics and cognitive semantics strove to downgrade structural semantics by turning back to a more holistic conception of meaning including the speakers’ knowledge of the world, although not without introducing the alternative structural notion of “network.”

Conclusion

University reforms that institutionalized research education in the principal European countries and in the United States have been well studied; the remainder of this paragraph offers a quick summary of the received wisdom. The so-called Humboldtian reforms made Prussian universities, and Berlin in particular, leaders in higher education from the early nineteenth century onward. The Prussian university reformers, including Wilhelm von Humboldt, established original research and the training of students in research into important objectives for the university, and this research ethos quickly spread across German states in the next few decades. The reception of the research ethos was late and slow in France. The Napoleonic reforms at the beginning of the nineteenth century radically reorganized the ...