HiPhiLangSci
hiphilangsci.bsky.social
HiPhiLangSci
@hiphilangsci.bsky.social
A blog devoted to exploring and promoting the great diversity that exists in the study of language, in the past and today.

https://hiphilangsci.net

Posts by: @teapotlinguist.bsky.social
Reposted by HiPhiLangSci
#OTD 175 years ago, Eduard Sievers (1850–1935) was born 🎂 A historical linguist and one of the leading Neogrammarians, he is best known for his analysis of Old English metre and for formulating the so-called Sievers’ Law.

#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 25, 2025 at 9:21 AM
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#OTD 175 years ago, Gustav Meyer (1850–1900) was born 🎉 A pioneer in the study of Albanian, he is famous for demonstrating that it belongs to the Indo-European family. A school in Tirana is named after him, and the Albanian Post has issued a stamp with his name.

#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 25, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Reposted by HiPhiLangSci
#OTD 152 years ago, Matteo Giulio Bartoli (1873–1946) was born 🎂 A historical linguist and dialectologist, he is best known for his descriptions of the now-extinct Dalmatian language. He is also known as the founder of the linguistic school known as Neolinguistics.

#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 22, 2025 at 11:00 AM
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#OTD 238 years ago, Rasmus Rask (1787–1832) was born 🎉 A comparative historical linguist and author of a number of grammar books, he is today best known for showing the systematic links between the (North) Germanic languages and other Indo-European languages.

#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 22, 2025 at 10:38 AM
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#OTD 212 years ago, Franz von Miklosich (1813–1891) was born 🎂 He was a pioneering scholar of historical-comparative Slavic linguistics. He also studied Romani dialects as well as the areal convergence between Slavic and Romance varieties in the Balkans.

#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 20, 2025 at 8:40 AM
Reposted by HiPhiLangSci
#OTD 89 years ago, Suzette Haden Elgin (1936–2015) was born 🎉 Best known for her work on verbal self-defence and for the conlang Láadan from her Native Tongue series. The Elgin Award for the best sci-fi poetry collection is named in her honour.

#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 18, 2025 at 9:03 AM
Episode no. 52 is out 🚲

James McElvenny (@jamesmcelvenny.bsky.social) talks with Gereon Müller (@unileipzig.bsky.social) about his new book Lanes to Language, which unites the worlds of history of linguistics and cycling.

🎙️ hiphilangsci.net/2025/11/15/p...

#Histlx
Podcast episode 52: Gereon Müller on Lanes to Language
In this interview, Gereon Müller discusses his new book Lanes to Language, which unites the worlds of history of linguistics and cycling.
hiphilangsci.net
November 14, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Reposted by HiPhiLangSci
#OTD 223 years ago, August Friedrich Pott (1802-1887) was born 🥳 He started working as a schoolmaster in Celle, but would later become one of the pioneers of (historical comparative) linguistics as well as the leading scholar of Romani in the 19th century.

#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 14, 2025 at 9:53 AM
Reposted by HiPhiLangSci
#OTD 206 years ago, Daniel Sanders (1819–1897) was born 🎉 A lexicographer and poet, he is best known as the co-author of the Muret-Sanders English-German Dictionary and as a critic of Jacob Grimm’s dictionary. The German city of Neustrelitz awards a prize in his honour.

#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 12, 2025 at 10:49 AM
Reposted by HiPhiLangSci
And Meillet's /Altarmenisches Elementarbuch/ (1913) is a go-to, easy-to-find-stuff-in, concise grammar.
#OTD 159 years ago, Antoine Meillet (1866–1936) was born 🎉 He was one of the most influential historical linguists of the twentieth century, who formulated the so-called Meillet’s Law on Proto-Slavic accents and in 1912 coined the term “grammaticalisation.”

#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 11, 2025 at 11:25 AM
Joyeux anniversaire, cher Antoine 🎂

To celebrate, remember that "each language forms a system where everything hangs together".

#LinguisticQuotes #Histlx
November 11, 2025 at 11:12 AM
Reposted by HiPhiLangSci
#OTD 159 years ago, Antoine Meillet (1866–1936) was born 🎉 He was one of the most influential historical linguists of the twentieth century, who formulated the so-called Meillet’s Law on Proto-Slavic accents and in 1912 coined the term “grammaticalisation.”

#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 11, 2025 at 11:02 AM
Reposted by HiPhiLangSci
#OTD 124 years ago, Dorothy Whitelock (1901–1982) was born 🥳 She was a leading scholar of Old English, best known today for her editions of Old English texts. She was the first woman to hold the Elrington and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon.

#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 11, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Reposted by HiPhiLangSci
#OTD 134 years ago, Ida Suter (1891–1974) was born 🎉 An expert dialectologist, she spent 30 years working on the Swiss German Dictionary (@ch-idiotikon.bsky.social) and contributed to the edition of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s (1746–1827) letters.

#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 10, 2025 at 8:52 AM
The next Henry Sweet Society (@henrysweetsoc.bsky.social) Colloquium will be held on 2-4 September 2026 at the University of Nottingham (@uniofnottingham.bsky.social).

Thematic focus: (Non-)Native Speakers in the History of Linguistic Ideas

CfP: hiphilangsci.net/2025/11/08/c...

#Histlx
Cfp: Henry Sweet Society Colloquium 2026
The 2026 annual colloquium of the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas will be held on 2–4 September 2026 at the University of Nottingham, UK. Confirmed plenary speaker: Cécile V…
hiphilangsci.net
November 10, 2025 at 7:54 AM
Reposted by HiPhiLangSci
#OTD 114 years ago, Ruth Klappenbach (1911-1977) was born 🎉 She focused on lexicography, became one of the co-founders and co-editors of the Dictionary of Contemporary German Language (Wörterbuch der deutschen Gegenwartssprache, 1952-1977).

#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 7, 2025 at 8:44 AM
Reposted by HiPhiLangSci
#OTD 191 years ago, Lucy C. Lloyd (1834-1914) was born 🥳 She was an ethnologist as well as a linguist, she collected an archive of ǀXam and ǃKung texts, who, in 1913, received an honorary doctorate for her work as the first woman in South Africa.

#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 7, 2025 at 8:23 AM
Reposted by HiPhiLangSci
#OTD 127 years ago, Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain (1898-1975) was born 🎂 During her anthropological and linguistic career, she investigated the origins of Haitian Creole and conducted field research in Haiti, but also in Congo, Togo, and Nigeria.

#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 6, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Reposted by HiPhiLangSci
Yuen-Ren Chao was a phenomenal linguist. I recently discussed the enduring relevance of his key 1934 article here: dlc.hypotheses.org/3381
#OTD 134 years ago, Yuen Ren Chao (1892-1982) was born 🎉 He was an expert on Chinese grammar and phonology and the author of the Gwoyeu Romatzyh, a Latinised spelling system for Standard Chinese. He served as the president of the Linguistic Society of America in 1945.

#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 3, 2025 at 9:18 AM
Reposted by HiPhiLangSci
#OTD 134 years ago, Yuen Ren Chao (1892-1982) was born 🎉 He was an expert on Chinese grammar and phonology and the author of the Gwoyeu Romatzyh, a Latinised spelling system for Standard Chinese. He served as the president of the Linguistic Society of America in 1945.

#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
November 3, 2025 at 9:02 AM
Episode no. 51 is out 🤩

Martin Haspelmath (@haspelmath.bsky.social) talks about how he got started in linguistics, the rise of large-scale areal typology in the 1990s, language description vs language comparison, and the current state of the field.

🎙️ hiphilangsci.net/2025/11/01/p...

#Histlx
Podcast episode 51: Martin Haspelmath
In this interview, Martin Haspelmath talks about how he got started in linguistics, the rise of large-scale areal typology in the 1990s, language description vs language comparison, and the current…
hiphilangsci.net
October 31, 2025 at 3:01 PM
The October 2025 edition of our regular update on recently published works in the history and philosophy of the language sciences is now available 🤩

📚 hiphilangsci.net/2025/10/30/p...

#Histlx
Recent publications in the history and philosophy of the language sciences – October 2025
Histoire Epistémologie Langage 47(1). 2025. Grammaticalisation : histoire et perspectives, dossier thématique sous la direction de Benjamin Fagard. Paris: SHESL. 340 p. ISSN:  0750-8069Publisher’s …
hiphilangsci.net
October 29, 2025 at 4:03 PM
Reposted by HiPhiLangSci
Great new article by Geoff Pullum on Post, Chomsky, and the roots of generative grammar, written with his customary verve, depth, and precision. doi.org/10.1075/hl.0.... #histlx #Linguistics #LangSky
The prehistory of generative grammar and Chomsky’s debt to Emil Post | John Benjamins
Summary Generative linguistics has a longer prehistory than most linguists realize. The rewriting systems that Chomsky brought into linguistics as generative grammars were explicitly defined more than...
doi.org
October 28, 2025 at 11:44 AM