Ogden and Richards’ The Meaning of Meaning and early analytic philosophy

C.K. Ogden (1889–1957) and I.A. Richards’ (1893–1979) The Meaning of Meaning is widely recognised as a classic text of early twentieth-century linguistic semantics and semiotics, but less well known are its links to the ‘logical atomism’ of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), one of the foundational doctrines of analytic philosophy. In this paper a detailed comparison of The Meaning of Meaning and logical atomism is made, in which several key similarities between the two theories in subject matter and approach are identified: both attempt to describe meaning in terms of the latest psychological doctrines and both pursue a normative program aimed at rectifying the perceived deficiencies of language. But there are also a number of differences between the theories. Ogden and Richards – most probably inspired by Victoria Lady Welby (1837–1912) – offered a pragmatically oriented account of ordinary language, while Russell sought a ‘logically perfect language’ beyond interpretation, and rejected the work of Welby and her allies. These differences contributed significantly to Russell’s largely negative opinion of The Meaning of Meaning. Despite this, several ideas pioneered in The Meaning of Meaning re-appear in Russell’s later writings. The Meaning of Meaning, it would seem, not only drew inspiration from Russell’s philosophy but may have also contributed to its further development

International Language and the Everyday: Contact and Collaboration Between C.K. Ogden, Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath

Although now largely forgotten, the international language movement was, from the 1880s to the end of the Second World War, a matter of widespread public interest, as well as a concern of numerous scientists and scholars. The primary goal was to establish a language for international communication, but in the early twentieth century an increasing accent was placed on philosophical considerations: wanted was a language better suited to the needs of modern science and rational thought. In this paper, we examine the example of the English scholar C.K. Ogden’s international language Basic English and his efforts to win the Vienna Circle philosophers Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap over to the project. Basic is shown to be an implementation of key ideas in Ogden’s philosophy of language, ideas shared to a large extent with Neurath and Carnap. This we see through an examination of their unpublished correspondence, as well as through the collaboration that emerged between Ogden and Neurath, in which Neurath’s Isotype, a system for graphically representing statistical data, became closely aligned with Basic. Through the ideas and endeavours we investigate here, we gain a new perspective on this crucial period in the history of analytic philosophy

The application of C.K. Ogden’s semiotics in Basic English

Although a relatively minor project in terms of its impact on the broader international language movement, Basic English is interesting for the elaborate semiotic theory that lies behind it. The creator of Basic, Charles Kay Ogden (1889–1957), is today remembered chiefly as co-author of The Meaning of Meaning, a book widely regarded as a classic of early twentieth-century semiotics. In this paper, we engage in a critical examination of the design of Basic and demonstrate how it essentially represents an implementation of the key doctrines set out in that book, tempered by the practical exigencies of language construction. We focus on Ogden’s method of ‘panoptic conjugation’, which he used to select the Basic core vocabulary of 850 words, as well as his conception of the grammar of Basic as an outgrowth of its vocabulary. We observe additionally how Ogden’s approach does not result in a self-contained, independent international language, but rather a language that is subservient to Standard English idiom

Grammar, typology and the Humboldtian tradition in the work of Georg von der Gabelentz

A frequently mentioned if somewhat peripheral figure in the historiography of late nineteenth-century linguistics is the German sinologist and general linguist Georg von der Gabelentz (1840–1893). Today Gabelentz is chiefly remembered for several insights that proved to be productive in the development of subsequent schools and subdisciplines. In this paper, we examine two of these insights, his analytic and synthetic systems of grammar and his foundational work on typology. We show how they were intimately connected within his conception of linguistic research, and how this was in turn embedded in the tradition established by Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), especially as it was further developed by H. Steinthal (1823–1899). This paper goes beyond several previous works with a similar focus by drawing on a wider range of Gabelentz’ writings, including manuscript sources that have only recently been published, and by examining specific textual connections between Gabelentz and his predecessors

Georg von der Gabelentz

The German sinologist and general linguist Georg von der Gabelentz (1840–1893) occupies an interesting place at the intersection of several streams of linguistic scholarship at the end of the nineteenth century. As Professor of East-Asian languages at the University of Leipzig from 1878 to 1889 and then Professor for Sinology and General Linguistics at the University of Berlin from 1889 until his death, Gabelentz was present at some of the main centers of linguistics at the time. He was, however, generally critical of mainstream historical-comparative linguistics as propagated by the neogrammarians and instead emphasized approaches to language inspired by a line of researchers including Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), H. Steinthal (1823–1899), and his own father, Hans Conon von der Gabelentz (1807–1874)

Linguistic Aesthetics from the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century: The Case of Otto Jespersen’s “Progress in Language”

From the early nineteenth century up until the first half of the twentieth century, many leading scholars in the emerging field of linguistics were occupied with what would today be considered a kind of linguistic typology. The various classifications of languages they proposed were generally intertwined with speculation about the “racial” traits or national mentalities that different language types might represent and their putative value relative to one another. This article investigates these schemes from the perspective of Otto Jespersen’s (1860–1943) theory of “progress in language.” It first shows how Jespersen, inspired by theoretical developments in linguistics and neighboring sciences, inverted the traditional rankings and praised the modern “analytic” European languages over their classical “synthetic” ancestors. It then explores contemporary reactions to Jespersen’s theory and traces the gradual disappearance of language evaluation and related questions from the discipline. Charles Bally (1865–1947) receives special attention for his nuanced critique of Jespersen’s position, which casts unique light on linguistic ideology in the period that saw the birth of structuralism in its different varieties

Meaning in the Age of Modernism: C. K. Ogden and his contemporaries

This dissertation is a historical study of influential currents in the philosophy of language and linguistics of the first half of the twentieth century, explored from the perspective of the English scholar C. K. Ogden (1889–1957). Although no ‘Great Man’ in his own right, Ogden had a personal connection, reflected in his work, to several of the most significant figures of the age. The background to the ideas espoused in Ogden’s book The Meaning of Meaning, co-authored with I.A. Richards (1893–1979), is examined in detail, along with the application of these ideas in his international language project Basic English. A richly interlaced network of connections is revealed between early analytic philosophy, semiotics and linguistics, all inevitably shaped by the contemporary cultural and political environment. In particular, significant interaction is shown between Ogden’s ideas, the varying versions of ‘logical atomism’ of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and Ludwig Wittgensten (1889–1951), Victoria Lady Welby’s (1837–1912) ‘significs’, and the philosophy and political activism of Otto Neurath (1882–1945) and Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) of the Vienna Circle. Amid these interactions emerges a previously little known mutual exchange between the academic philosophy and linguistics of the period and the practically oriented efforts of the international language movement. In exploring these connections, novel light is shed on the intellectual history of a period crucial in the development of both linguistics and philosophy

The diachronic evolution of directional constructions in Mandarin

This thesis investigates the diachronic evolution of directional constructions found in Mandarin and other modern varieties of Chinese. What I call directional constructions are usually called 'directional complements' in most work on Chinese grammar. They consist of a series of particles and their associated syntactic constructions. The particles follow after verbs and typically indicate a direction of motion associated with the event expressed by a verb. For example, in the sentence 'ta zouchulai' 'He walks out hither', the verb 'zou' 'walk' expresses the action of walking and the directional particle 'chulai' indicates that the action is performed going from inside to outside and in the direction of the speaker. Directional particles can also have a variety of abstract senses that are derived from their basic directional senses through metaphor. I trace the diachronic evolution of the directional particles and their associated syntactic constructions from their origins as independent verbs in various syntactic constructions in pre-Qin varieties of Chinese up to their present state in Modern Mandarin. I identify the various formal and functional properties of the constructions at each stage in the history of the language and show how these properties change from one stage to another. I also investigate the factors that condition these changes. My research is based on a corpus of vernacular texts that cover each period in the development of the constructions from pre-Qin times up to the present. I present my analysis of each stage in the development of the constructions within the Construction Grammar framework

Ferdinand de Saussure

This chapter is one of a series of interviews with leading scholars on individual figures and movements in the history of linguistics. Ferdinand de Saussure was the founder of the field in its modern form, and the chapter considers the nature of his work and its relationship to that which preceded and followed it. It maintains that there is an economy of originality in academic work which regulates the balance between originality and continuity, and that Saussure's work is extraordinary in how it operates that economy

Alternating sounds and the formal franchise in phonology

A matter of some controversy in the intersecting worlds of late nineteenth-century linguistics and anthropology was the nature of “alternating sounds”. This phe- nomenon is the apparent tendency, long assumed to be characteristic of “primitive” languages, to freely vary the pronunciation of words, without any discernible sys- tem. Franz Boas (1858–1942), rebutting received opinion in the American anthro- pological establishment, denied the existence of this phenomenon, arguing that it was an artefact of observation. Georg von der Gabelentz (1840–1893), on the other hand, embraced the phenomenon and fashioned it into a critique of the compara- tive method as it was practised in Germany. Both Boas and Gabelentz – and indeed also their opponents – were well versed in the Humboldtian tradition of language scholarship, in particular as developed and transmitted by H. Steinthal (1823–1899). Although the late nineteenth-century debates surrounding alternating sounds were informed by a number of sources, this chapter argues that Steinthal’s writings served as a key point of reference and offered several motifs that were taken up by his scholarly successors. In addition, and most crucially, the chapter demonstrates that the positions at which the partic- ipants in these debates arrived were determined not so much by any simple tech- nical disagreements but by underlying philosophical differences and sociological factors. This episode in the joint history of linguistics and anthropology is telling for what it reveals about the dominant mindset and temperament of these disci- plines in relation to the formal analysis of the world’s languages