From 'scientific revolution' to 'unscientific revolution': an analysis of approaches to the history of generative linguistics

This paper is devoted to the challenge that generative linguistics poses for linguistic historiography. As a first step, it presents a systematic overview of 19 approaches to the history of generative linguistics. Second, it analyzes the approaches overviewed by asking and answering the following questions: (a) To what extent and how are the views at issue biased? (b) What central topics do the approaches discuss, how successfully do they tackle them, and how do the various standpoints converge and diverge? (c) How do the approaches relate to general trends in the philosophy and history of science? The concluding step summarizes our findings with respect to Chomsky’s impact on linguistic historiography

Linguistic Structures and Economic Outcomes

Linguistic structures have recently started to attract attention from economists as determinants of economic phenomena. This paper provides the first comprehensive review of this nascent literature and its achievements so far. First, we explore the complex connections between language, culture, thought and behaviour. Then, we summarize the empirical evidence on the relationship between linguistic structures and economic and social outcomes. We follow up with a discussion of data, empirical design and identification. The paper concludes by discussing implications for future research and policy

Hume on education

Hume claims that education is ‘disclaimed by philosophy, as a fallacious ground of assent to any opinion’ (T 1.3.10.1) and that it is ‘never . . . recogniz’d by philosophers’ (T 1.3.9.19). He is usually taken to be referring here to indoctrination. I argue, however, that his main concern is with association and those philosophers who emphasize the epistemic dangers of the imagination. These include Locke, Hutcheson and Descartes, but not Hume himself. Hume praises education, highlighting its role in the formation of general rules, and in fostering social conditions that encourage the growth of knowledge and moral virtue

Supplementary Bibliography of Recent Studiesrelating to the XVIIIth century, including Leibniz

Aarsleff Hans. Supplementary Bibliography of Recent Studiesrelating to the XVIIIth century, including Leibniz. In: Histoire Épistémologie Langage, tome 1, fascicule 2, 1979. Ellipse et grammaire. pp. 41-73

Supplementary Bibliography of Recent Studiesrelating to the XVIIIth century, including Leibniz

Aarsleff Hans. Supplementary Bibliography of Recent Studiesrelating to the XVIIIth century, including Leibniz. In: Histoire Épistémologie Langage, tome 1, fascicule 2, 1979. Ellipse et grammaire. pp. 41-73

Bréal, la sémantique et Saussure

Hans AARSLEFF: Bréal, la sémantique et Saussure. This essay presents an extension of arguments 1 have advanced in essays on «Bréal vs. Schleicher» and «Taine and Saussure». It is devoted to Bréal's linguistic thought, based both on the late Essai de sémantique and on his earlier essays, dating from the late 1860' s, on the same subject. The essay argues that Bréal's ' sémantique' is a ' linguistique générale', and that it was directed against Schleicher's organicism and its consequences. Bréal shifted the emphasis to the mindbound nature of language and linguistic processes, and in this context he developed concepts that recur in Saussure's linguistic thought as presented in the Cours. Thus we find in Bréal a conceptualization that includes such Saussurean concepts as diachrony, synchrony, valeur, structure, binary opposition, and syntagmatics. The essay argues that Saussure owed a substantial debt to Bréal. It is further argued that Bréal's thought is an expression of the late 19th-century reaction against the residue of romantic thought in scholarship. This turn of mind is best known under the term already then used: le réalisme.Aarsleff Hans. Bréal, la sémantique et Saussure. In: Histoire Épistémologie Langage, tome 3, fascicule 2, 1981. De la grammaire à la linguistique. pp. 115-133

Taine : son importance pour Saussure et le structuralisme

Aarsleff Hans. Taine : son importance pour Saussure et le structuralisme. In: Romantisme, 1979, n°25-26. Conscience de la langue. pp. 35-48