Linguistics: Reconstructing the Discipline through Universals Research

This project is a historical investigation of modern linguistics, embracing anthropological and cognitive traditions in the discipline. Linguistics is strikingly heterogeneous, consisting of sub-fields that touch on almost every aspect of human life—from the study of human genealogy to the development of twentieth-century computer science. Accordingly, there are few comprehensive accounts of the discipline, a gap that this project will help to fill.

As contemporary society is grappling with questions about who should have the authority to research and manage human diversity, there is an urgent need to understand the tension between particular and general approaches at the heart of linguistics, rather than focusing exclusively on one or the other. Funding will support archival visits, conference participation, and translation services, and it will lead to the production of a book, scholarly papers, teaching materials, and community development initiatives that will shed light on the stakes and scope of linguistics as a discipline.

Correspondingly, the project will give practicing linguists historical insights that may inform policies around the preservation of linguistic diversity.

Two prominent, yet mutually isolated, research programs dedicated to language universals emerged during the 1960s. One was empirical, and associated with Joseph Greenberg; the other was logical, with Noam Chomsky at the fore. Drawing on archival materials at Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this project will characterize these two programs in full.

It will use them to reconstruct a maximally inclusive history of modern linguistics via patterns of citation, collaboration, and subsequent engagement. Through the prism of language universals, it will survey major schools and developments in the history of modern linguistics including structuralism, machine translation, typology, and Transformational-Generative Grammar.

Informed by recent work in science and technology studies concerned with the nature and historicity of data, research praxis, scientific communication, and the organization of knowledge, the project will promote understanding of the processes by which modern disciplines have taken shape and defended their societal relevance over time.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.