Making a genealogy of “American linguistics” with John Eliot’s Indian
Grammar Begun (1666)
In the history of linguistics John Pickering (1777–1846) and
Stephen Du Ponceau’s (1760–1844) decision to reedit and republish John Eliot’s
(ca. 1604–1690) The Indian Grammar Begun is an important but
underrecognized event. Eliot’s grammar was first published in 1666, but by the early 1800s had been
mostly forgotten. Applying book history and critical discourse approaches, I
argue the new 1822 edition assembled by Pickering and Du Ponceau was at the
center of a newly emergent knowledge project aimed to establish an ‘American’
mode of comparative linguistics on the world intellectual stage. The grammatical
analysis of Native American languages, especially Algonquin, and the critique of
current European models and typologies of morphology and syntax, especially von
Humboldt’s, were central to Pickering and Du Ponceau’s project. Du Ponceau may
be “the father of American philology”, but he was not working alone nor did the
concept of ‘Comparative Philology’ derive solely from Du Ponceau. Rather, Du
Ponceau was the strategist for a more collaborative, organized approach based on
the study of American Indian languages. The new edition of Eliot’s grammar
reveals how Du Ponceau and Pickering were establishing an informal research
network devoted to North American indigenous languages. The production and
arrangement of their book depended on a broad, complex, and ultimately
institutionally-supported network of scholars and amateur linguists. Their
edition also shows how Du Ponceau and Pickering responded to the underlying
ideological debate over “savage” languages with an emergent discourse grounded
in Native American languages, ‘facts’, and ‘scientific’ linguistics.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Eliot’s grammar and early American language ecology
- 3.Pickering and Du Ponceau retext Eliot
- 4.New contexts for linguistic research
- 5.Retexting Eliot’s grammar
- 6.Institutionalizing American comparative linguistics
- Acknowledgements
-
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