Cover not available
Part of
Missionary Linguistics VI: Missionary Linguistics in Asia
Edited by Otto Zwartjes and Paolo De Troia
[Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 130] 2021
► pp. 265–288

On the ‘affinities of Oriental languages’

Wilhelm von Humboldt and his British connections

| KU Leuven Belgium
| KU Leuven Belgium
| KU Leuven Belgium
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The scholarly exploitation of missionary linguistics: Humboldt’s pursuit
  • 3.Behind the ideas: Linguistic documentation
  • 4.From colonial and missionary linguistics to scholarly networks: The relevance of Humboldt’s Essay
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 2 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sihols.130.11swi
References

A.Primary sources

Anonymous
1778a Gramatica marastta: a mais vulgar que se practica nos Reinos do Nizamazà, e Idalxà offerecida aos muitos reverendos Padres Missionarios dos dittos reinos. Roma: Na Estamperia da Sagrada Congregação de Propaganda Fide. Reedited in Lisbon 1805.Google Scholar
1778b Gramatica indostana: a mais vulgar que se practica no Imperio do gram Mogol offerecida aos muitos reverendos Padres Missionarios do ditto Imperio. Roma: Na Estamperia da Sagrada Congregação de Propaganda Fide. Google Scholar
1829 “Review of books: Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland [1829]”. Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register 27.313–330.Google Scholar
Babington, Benjamin Guy
1828 Letter to Wilhelm von Humboldt July 27, 1828. Cracow, Jagielloński Library (Coll. ling. fol. 56, pp. 47–50).Google Scholar
Beschi, Costantino Giuseppe
. [no date]. Clavis Humaniorum Litterarum Sublimioris Tamulice Idiomatis. Ms. possessed by von Humboldt. (cf. Mueller-Vollmer 1993: 100, 287). See also Beschi (2013 [1822]).Google Scholar
1728 Grammatica Latino-Tamulica. Ubi de Vulgari Tamulicae Idiomate. Trangambariae [Tranquebar]: Typis Missionis Danicae.Google Scholar
2013 [1822] A Grammar of the High Dialect of the Tamil Language, termed Shen-Tamil, to which is added an introduction to Tamil Poetry. Translated from the original Latin by Benjamin Guy Babington. Madras: Printed at the College [of Fort St. George] Press. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Translation of Beschi’s manuscript grammar of Tamil (cf. supra); however, this ‘translation’ is considerably different in arrangement from the original).Google Scholar
Bopp, Franz
1824–1825 Vergleichende Zergliederung des Sanskrits und der mit ihm verwandten Sprachen (I). Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften.Google Scholar
Burnouf, Eugène
1825 Review of Bopp (1824–1825). Journal Asiatique 6.56–62; 113–117.Google Scholar
1826 “Mémoire sur quelques noms de l’île de Ceylan, et particulièrement sur celui de Taprobane, sous lequel elle était connue des anciens”. Journal Asiatique 9.129–149.Google Scholar
Caldwell, Robert
1856 A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages. London & Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate.Google Scholar
Campbell, A. D.
1821 A Dictionary of the Teloogo language commonly termed the Gentoo, peculiar to the Hindoos of the North Eastern Provinces of the Indian Peninsula. Madras: Printed at the College [of Fort St. George] Press.Google Scholar
Carey, William
1805 Grammar of the Mahratta Language. To which are added Dialogues on Familiar Subjects. Serampore: Mission Press.Google Scholar
1810 A Dictionary of the Mahratta Language. Serampore: Mission Press.Google Scholar
Haughton, Graves Champney
1821 Rudiments of Bengálí Grammar. London: Printed for the Author.Google Scholar
1822 Bengálí Selections, with Translations and a Vocabulary. London: Printed for the Author.Google Scholar
Humboldt, Wilhelm von
1822 Letter to Benjamin Guy Babington June 29, 1828. Copy conserved in the Library of the American Philosophical Society (B: H88.11 nr. 16).Google Scholar
1828 An Essay on the Best Means of Ascertaining the Affinities of Oriental Languages […] contained in A Letter Addressed to Sir Alexander Johnston, Knt., V.P.R.A.S. London: J.L. Cox. 11 p. [Separate publication of the text published in Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 2 (1829), 213–221, with ‘Errata’ on p. xii].Google Scholar
1836 Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts. Berlin: Königliche Akademie der Wissenschaften.Google Scholar
Mackintosh, James
1806 Plan of a Comparative Vocabulary of Indian Languages. Read at the Literary Society of Bombay on the 26th May 1806. Bombay: Literary Society of Bombay.Google Scholar
Marsden, William
1827 Bibliotheca Marsdeniana philologica et orientalia. A catalogue of works and manuscripts collected with a view to the general comparison of languages, and to the study of Oriental literature. London: J. L. Cox.Google Scholar
Schlegel, August-Wilhelm
1832 Réflexions sur l’étude des langues asiatiques adressées à Sir James Mackintosh suivies d’une lettre à M. Horace Hayman Wilson, ancien secrétaire de la Société Asiatique à Calcutta, élu professeur à Oxford. Bonn: Weber; Paris: Maze.Google Scholar

B.Secondary sources

Abel, Carl
1886 Einleitung in ein aegyptisch-semitisch-indoeuropaeisches Wurzelwörterbuch. Leipzig: Friedrich.Google Scholar
Beckingham, Charles
1979 “A History of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1823–1973”. The Royal Asiatic Society: its History and Treasures ed. by Stuart Simmonds and Simon Digby, 1–77. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Brown, Roger Langham
1967 Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Conception of Linguistic Relativity. The Hague & Paris: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Di Cesare, Donatella
1990 “The Philosophical and Anthropological Place of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Linguistic Typology. Linguistic comparison as a means to compare the different processes of human thought”. Leibniz, Humboldt, and the Origins of Comparativism, ed. by Tullio de Mauro & Lia Formigari, 157–180. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dorow, Wilhelm
1836 Facsimile von Handschriften berühmter Männer. Berlin: Sachse.Google Scholar
Farrington, Anthony
2002 Trading Places: The East India Company and Asia, 1600–1834. London: British Library.Google Scholar
Folie, Ulrike, Volker Heeschen & Frank Zimmer
eds. 2017 Wilhelm von Humboldt: Südsee- und Südostasiatische Sprachen. Vorarbeiten zu „Über die Kawi-Sprache auf der Insel Java“. Paderborn: Schöningh.Google Scholar
Harnack, Otto
1896 “Briefe von und an Wilhelm von Humboldt”. Biographische Blätter 2.52–76.Google Scholar
Hoenigswald, Henry M.
1984 “Etymology against Grammar in the Early 19th Century”. Histoire, Épistémologie, Langage 6:2.95–100. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Keay, John
2010 The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company. London: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Keller, Vera
2015 Knowledge and the Public Interest, 1575–1725. New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lawson, Philip
1993 The East India Company: A History. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Leitzmann, Albert
1908 Briefwechsel zwischen Wilhelm von Humboldt und August Wilhelm Schlegel. Halle a/d Saale: M. Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Maheshwari, Shriham R.
2002 A Dictionary of Public Administration. New Delhi: Orient Longman.Google Scholar
Mattson, Philipp
1980 Verzeichnis des Briefwechsels Wilhelm von Humboldts. (2 vols.) Heidelberg: Wilhelm-von-Humboldt-Briefarchiv.Google Scholar
Meillet, Antoine
1925 La méthode comparative en linguistique historique. Oslo: Aschehoug; Paris: Champion.Google Scholar
Mueller-Vollmer, Kurt
1993 Wilhelm von Humboldts Sprachwissenschaft. Ein kommentiertes Verzeichnis des sprachwissenschaftlichen Nachlasses. Paderborn: F. Schöningh.Google Scholar
Mueller-Vollmer, Kurt & Volker Heeschen
2007 “W[ilhelm] v[on] Humboldts Bedeutung für die Beschreibung der südostasiatisch-pazifischen Sprachen und die Anfänge der Südostasien-Forschung”. Sprachtheorien der Neuzeit III/2: Sprachbeschreibung und Sprachunterricht, Teil 2 ed. by Peter Schmitter and Lefteris Roussos, 430–461. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Oertel, Hanns
1902 Lectures on the Study of Language. New York & London: C. Scribner’s Sons & Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Read, Allen Walker
1966 “The Spread of German Linguistic Learning in New England during the Lifetime of Noah Webster”. American Speech 41.163–181. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reutter, Georg
2011 Kosmos der Sprachen: Wilhelm von Humboldts linguistisches Projekt. Paderborn: F. Schöningh. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rocher, Ludo & Rosane Rocher
2012 The Making of Western Indology: Henry Thomas Colebrooke and the East India Company. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sweet, Paul
1980 Wilhelm von Humboldt: A Biography. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Swiggers, Pierre
1985 “Catégories grammaticales et catégories culturelles dans la philosophie du langage de Humboldt: les implications de la ‘forme grammaticale’”. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 38.729–736. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1995 “Les débuts de la ‘philologie comparée’ et la fin de la grammaire générale: Humboldt entre l’Europe et le Nouveau Monde”. Incontri Linguistici 18.39–60.Google Scholar
2012 “Définition et statut de la grammaire comparée chez Antoine Meillet”. Polymêtis. Mélanges en l’honneur de Françoise Bader, ed. by Alain Blanc, Laurent Dubois & Charles De Lamberterie, 353–364. Paris & Leuven: Peeters.Google Scholar
Swiggers, Pierre & Piet Desmet
1996 “L’élaboration de la linguistique comparative. Comparaison et typologie des langues jusqu’au début du XIXe siècle”. Geschichte der Sprachtheorie, 5: Sprachtheorien der Neuzeit II: Von der Grammaire de Port-Royal (1660) zur Konstitution moderner linguistischer Disziplinen, ed. by Peter Schmitter, 122–177. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Van Hal, Toon
2015 “Friedrich Gedike on why and how to compare the world’s languages: A stepping stone between Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Wilhelm von Humboldt?”. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft 25.53–76.Google Scholar
2016 Review of Colonialism and Missionary Linguistics ed. by Klaus Zimmermann and Birte Kellermeuer-Rehbein. Historiographia Linguistica 43.245–250. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Hal, Toon & Raf Van Rooy
2017 ““Differing only in dialect,” or How collocations can co-shape concepts”. Language & Communication 56.95–109. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Winternitz, Moriz
1902 A Catalogue of South Indian Sanskrit Manuscripts (especially those of the Whish collections) belonging to the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. With an appendix by F. W. Thomas. London: Royal Asiatic Society.Google Scholar
Xavier, Ângela Barreto & Ines G. Županov
2015 Catholic Orientalism: Portuguese Empire, Indian Knowledge (16th–18th Centuries). Oxford & New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zwartjes, Otto
2011 Portuguese Missionary Grammars in Asia, Africa and Brazil, 1550–1800. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 “The Historiography of Missionary Linguistics. Present state and further research opportunities”. Historiographia Linguistica 39.185–242. DOI logoGoogle Scholar