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- Lectures
- Institute of History and Philology
- Location
Room 701, 7th Floor, IHP Research Hall
- Speaker Name
Dr. Lutz Marten (President, The Philological Society; Professor of General and African Linguistics, SOAS)
- State
Definitive
- Url
2026-03-09 15:30 - 17:30
[IHP Guest Lecture]
Organizer: Research Center of Cultural and Intellectual History, IHP, Accademia Sinica
Contact: Research Center of Cultural and Intellectual History, cihasihp@gmail.com
Remark: This lecture will be given in English, and no prior registration is required.
Abstract:
The concepts of uniformity (of sound change) and inheritance (of linguistic systems through time) have been at the heart of much philological work over the last two centuries: The guiding idea of language reconstruction is that languages diverge and over time form daughter languages, which can be analysed like a genetic tree. However, recently doubt has been cast over the (universal) applicability of this methodological stance. Much as the concepts help to illuminate some aspects of language history, they risk obscuring other, equally significant, aspects – in particular effects of multilingualism and language contact. In this talk I survey some of this discussion and place it in a wider context of the history of (Western) science. I will explore some consequences of this multilingual critique, if taken seriously, for our understanding of language and language change, speech communities through time, and the wider intellectual enterprise of European enlightenment.
