Some Misconceptions in Linguistic Studies - Softcover

Mahulkar, D.D.

9788185425986: Some Misconceptions in Linguistic Studies

Softcover

ISBN 10: 8185425981 ISBN 13: 9788185425986

Publisher: South Asia Books, 1992

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Linguistics in our country has been a post-Second World War phenomenon. It was not a very auspicious time when it was introduced in our academic courses of studies, for our country was then passing through very tense, bitter, and at times much misdirected linguistic conflicts in the political field. Secondly, the subject was exported to our shores by the then mostcivilized nation of the world which in terms of culture was much different from Europe where linguistics had first learnt to walk. I happened to be one of the teachers deputed by my university to attend the courses of studies in 'the subject during the year 1955-56 when the Deccan College of Poona in collaboration with the Linguistic Society of India organized Surnmer /Winter / Autumn Schools of Linguistics at various centres in India with monetary aid from the Ford and the Rockefeller Foundations of America. A majority of the teachers at these Schools were from America and the kind of linguistics taught to us was predominantly of the American School, of the Bloomfieldian and the post Bloomfieldian era 1930-1950.Not that Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949) was the only great linguist of modern America. The great Sanskrit scholar W.D. Whitney (1827-1894) had preceded him and Edward Sapir (1884-1939) was his contemporary. But we rarely heard of them at these linguistics schools. If this was the story about the linguists of America what to talk of the linguists of Europe and of the Centres where they Leipzig, Paris, Prague, Geneva, Copenhagen, Kazan, London, etc.? What had happened most probably was that the academic link which bound America to Europe in the earlier days Whitney, Boas, Sapir and Bloomfield got their training in Europe--was snapped after 1939 and a new group of American scholars had come to dominate the scene. Some of these were Christian missionaries and the others were from among those who had registered themselves as teachers of languages to military officers as defence personnel. Both these groups of linguists were practically-oriented, the one for translation and preaching of the Bible in local languages of the tribals, the other for language-learning and teaching in very specific circumscribed circumstances. There was no more the vast horizon of language studies over them as it was over the European scholars of the 19th century which extended from the Volga to the Ganga. As a result a new linguistics sprang up in America which ignored and sometimes downgraded the traditional European linguistics which had come from the days of Rask, Bopp and Grimm (1816) and even earlier. These European linguists had poured over dusty volumes in the dingy libraries of universities established in Europe during the medieval period. The new linguists of America walked through the posh academic corridors of their modern streamlined universities with their noses up in the air. No less a person than Einar Haugen, who as the President of the Linguistic Society of Chicago in 1950, talked of the 'scientific isolation' of American linguists from the mainstream European linguistics and the 'arrogance' it had generated in the new generation of American scholars.

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