Historiographia Linguistica | International Journal for the History of the Language Sciences

Main information
Executive Editors
Jean-Michel Fortis | Université Paris Cité & Sorbonne Nouvelle / CNRS
ORCID logoOtto Zwartjes | Université Paris Cité & Sorbonne Nouvelle / CNRS
Associate Editor
James McElvenny | Universität Siegen
Review Editor
Klaas Willems | Ghent University
Founding Editor

Historiographia Linguistica (HL) serves the ever growing community of scholars interested in the history of the sciences concerned with language such as linguistics, philology, anthropology, sociology, pedagogy, psychology, neurology, and other disciplines. Central objectives of HL are the critical presentation of the origin and development of particular ideas, concepts, methods, schools of thought or trends, and the discussion of the methodological and philosophical foundations of a historiography of the language sciences, including its relationship with the history and philosophy of science. HL is published in 3 issues per year of about 450 pages altogether. Each volume contains a dozen articles or more, at least one review article or a bibliography devoted to a particular topic, a great number of reviews and review notes as well as information on important recent or forthcoming activities and events in the field.

HL publishes its articles Online First.

Proposals for thematic issues are welcomed; please consult these guidelines for special issue proposals.
ISSN: 0302-5160 | E-ISSN: 1569-9781
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hl
Latest articles

29 March 2024

  • Jacques van Ginneken and Significs
    Els Elffers
  • 18 March 2024

  • John Walker . 2022. Wilhelm von Humboldt and Transcultural Communication in a Multicultural World: Translating Humanity
    Rezensiert von Cord-Friedrich Berghahn
  • 4 March 2024

  • Anachronistic bias in the study of Arabic grammatical tradition : The case of the term ḥarf in Sībawayhi’s al-Kitāb
    Almog Kasher
  • 12 February 2024

  • Adelung’s English-German dictionary (1783, 1796) : Its achievements and its relationship to the dictionaries of Samuel Johnson and Johannes Ebers
    Nicola McLelland | HL 50:1 (2023) pp. 62–93
  • 1 February 2024

  • James McElvenny . 2023. The Limits of Structuralism. Forgotten Texts in the History of Modern Linguistics
    Rezensiert von Clemens Knobloch
  • 18 January 2024

  • Jan Ignacy Necisław Baudouin de Courtenay (1845–1929) : Sur son parcours biographique et son évolution théorique
    Roger Comtet | HL 50:1 (2023) pp. 35–61
  • 12 January 2024

  • Christopher Rundle . 2022. The Routledge Handbook of Translation History
    Reviewed by Wei Chen Yue Liu
  • 9 January 2024

  • Missionary linguistics in the East Indies in the seventeenth century
    Christopher Joby | HL 50:1 (2023) pp. 1–34
  • Strukturalismus und kein Ende?
    Jörn Albrecht
  • 12 December 2023

  • Fred W. Householder Sol Saporta . 2022. Problems in Lexicography
    Reviewed by John Considine | HL 50:1 (2023) pp. 134–143
  • 11 December 2023

  • Christophe Rey . 2023. Léonard de Vinci, génie des langues
    Compte rendu par Claudia Schweitzer | HL 50:1 (2023) pp. 117–123
  • 9 November 2023

  • Editors’ notes
    HL 49:2-3 (2022) pp. 163–165
  • 23 October 2023

  • Marina De Palo Stefano Gensini . 2022. With Saussure, beyond Saussure. Between linguistics and philosophy of language
    Reviewed by Estanislao Sofía | HL 50:1 (2023) pp. 124–129
  • 17 October 2023

  • L’architecture des études de linguistique romane au XVIe siècle : Le regard d’Eugenio Coseriu
    Pierre Swiggers | HL 50:1 (2023) p. 94
  • 4 September 2023

  • The Linguistic Situation in the Parish of Aaby, Aarhus County
    Anker Jensen , Carsten Levisen , Kristoffer Friis Bøegh , Peter Bakker Inger Schoonderbeek Hansen | HL 49:2-3 (2022) pp. 355–371
  • 25 August 2023

  • Ludwig Jäger Andreas Kablitz . 2023. Saussure et l’épistémè structuraliste. / Saussure und die strukturalistische Episteme
    Rezensiert von Bohumil Vykypěl | HL 50:1 (2023) pp. 130–133
  • 18 August 2023

  • The Beginning of Quantitative Sociolinguistics in the Nineteenth Century : The Dane Anker Jensen (1878–1937) and his pioneering study “The Linguistic Situation in the Parish of Aaby, Aarhus County” (1898)
    Kristoffer Friis Bøegh , Peter Bakker , Inger Schoonderbeek Hansen Carsten Levisen | HL 49:2-3 (2022) pp. 336–354
  • 25 July 2023

  • From Mandarin to Cantonese Lexicography : A genealogical study of Robert Morrison’s Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect (1828)
    Rui Li | HL 49:2-3 (2022) pp. 235–266
  • 11 July 2023

  • The Pronunciation of German ch as Velar or Palatal from 1784 to 1841
    Tracy Alan Hall | HL 49:2-3 (2022) pp. 198–234
  • 15 June 2023

  • Raf Van Rooy , Pierre Van Hecke Toon Van Hal . 2022. Trilingual Learning: The Study of Greek and Hebrew in a Latin World (1000–1700)
    Reviewed by Eleanor Dickey | HL 49:2-3 (2022) pp. 380–384
  • Marcin Kilarski . 2021. A History of the Study of the Indigenous Languages of North America
    Reviewed by John E. Joseph | HL 49:2-3 (2022) pp. 405–411
  • 21 April 2023

  • L’arabe algérien parmi les pères blancs : Études et publications depuis la fondation de leur société en 1868 jusqu’aux années 1980
    Francisco Moscoso García | HL 49:2-3 (2022) pp. 302–335
  • 10 March 2023

  • Pierre Larcher . 2021. L’invention de la luġa al-fuṣḥā: une histoire de l’arabe par les textes
    Compte rendu par Julien Sibileau | HL 49:2-3 (2022) pp. 372–379
  • 9 February 2023

  • Who Copied Whom? Alonso de Molina and the vocabulary appended to Andrés de Olmos’ Arte (1547) of Nahuatl
    Casper Jacobsen | HL 49:2-3 (2022) pp. 166–197
  • 7 February 2023

  • John Considine . 2022. Sixteenth-Century English Dictionaries
    Reviewed by Angela Andreani | HL 49:2-3 (2022) pp. 385–390
  • 30 January 2023

  • Three Cases of Plagiarism? A study of four nineteenth-century Egyptian-Arabic textbooks
    Liesbeth Zack | HL 49:2-3 (2022) pp. 267–301
  • 17 January 2023

  • The Adaptation of Western and Chinese Categories to the Description of Manchu
    Mariarosaria Gianninoto | HL 49:1 (2022) pp. 102–132
  • 10 January 2023

  • Tim Denecker , Piet Desmet , Lieve Jooken , Peter Lauwers , Toon van Hal Raf van Rooy (dir.). 2022. The Architecture of Grammar. Studies in Linguistic Historiography in Honor of Pierre Swiggers
    Compte rendu par Wolf Dietrich | HL 49:2-3 (2022) pp. 391–404
  • 29 November 2022

  • Nick Riemer . 2021. L’emprise de la grammaire. Propositions épistémologiques pour une linguistique mineure
    Compte rendu par Sémir Badir | HL 49:2-3 (2022) pp. 419–426
  • 17 November 2022

  • Julia Hübner Horst J. Simon . 2021. Fremdsprachenlehrwerke in der Frühen Neuzeit. Perspektiven – Potentiale – Herausforderungen
    Rezensiert von Friederike Klippel | HL 49:1 (2022) pp. 148–153
  • 7 November 2022

  • Roger Schöntag . 2022. Das Verständnis von Vulgärlatein in der Frühen Neuzeit vor dem Hintergrund der questione della lingua. Eine Untersuchung zur Begriffsgeschichte im Rahmen der sozio- und varietätenlinguistischen Verortung: Die sprachtheoretische Debatte zur Antike von Leonardo Bruni und Flavio Biondo bis Celso Cittadini (1436–1601), unter Berücksichtigung von Dante Alighieri und der mittelalterlichen Sprachphilosophie
    Reviewed by Kees Versteegh | HL 49:1 (2022) pp. 141–147
  • 4 November 2022

  • Ken Hirschkop . 2019. Linguistic Turns, 1890–1950: Writing on language as social theory
    Reviewed by Lorenzo Cigana | HL 49:2-3 (2022) pp. 412–418
  • 1 November 2022

  • Les études basques comme sujet d’enquête : Les traditions locale et externe et la production de connaissances
    Aitor Anduaga | HL 49:1 (2022) pp. 39–70
  • Lapsus et apposition de rectification de l’arabe : Contribution à une histoire comparée des traditions grammaticales
    Manuel Sartori | HL 49:1 (2022) pp. 1–38
  • Volumes and issuesOnline-first articles

    Volume 50 (2023)

    Volume 49 (2022)

    Volume 48 (2021)

    Volume 47 (2020)

    Volume 46 (2019)

    Volume 45 (2018)

    Volume 44 (2017)

    Volume 43 (2016)

    Volume 42 (2015)

    Volume 41 (2014)

    Volume 40 (2013)

    Volume 39 (2012)

    Volume 38 (2011)

    Volume 37 (2010)

    Volume 36 (2009)

    Volume 35 (2008)

    Volume 34 (2007)

    Volume 33 (2006)

    Volume 32 (2005)

    Volume 31 (2004)

    Volume 30 (2003)

    Volume 29 (2002)

    Volume 28 (2001)

    Volume 27 (2000)

    Volume 26 (1999)

    Volume 25 (1998)

    Volume 24 (1997)

    Volume 23 (1996)

    Volume 22 (1995)

    Volume 21 (1994)

    Volume 20 (1993)

    Volume 19 (1992)

    Volume 18 (1991)

    Volume 17 (1990)

    Volume 16 (1989)

    Volume 15 (1988)

    Volume 14 (1987)

    Volume 13 (1986)

    Volume 12 (1985)

    Volume 11 (1984)

    Volume 10 (1983)

    Volume 9 (1982)

    Volume 8 (1981)

    Volume 7 (1980)

    Volume 6 (1979)

    Volume 5 (1978)

    Volume 4 (1977)

    Volume 3 (1976)

    Volume 2 (1975)

    Volume 1 (1974)

    Board
    Editorial Board
    Mark E. Amsler | Auckland
    Eleanor Dickey | Reading
    Andreas Gardt | Kassel
    John E. Joseph | Edinburgh
    ORCID logoPierre Larcher | Aix-en-Provence
    ORCID logoAnneli Luhtala | Helsinki
    ORCID logoNicola McLelland | Nottingham
    ORCID logoCarol Percy | Toronto
    Subscription Info
    Current issue: 50:1, available as of March 2024

    General information about our electronic journals.

    Subscription rates

    All prices for print + online include postage/handling.

    Online-only Print + online
    Volume 52 (2025): 2 issues; ca. 350 pp. EUR 317.00 EUR 427.00
    Volume 51 (2024): 3 issues; ca. 450 pp. EUR 400.00 EUR 504.00
    Volume 50 (2023): 3 issues; ca. 450 pp. EUR 388.00 EUR 458.00

    Individuals may apply for a special online-only subscription rate of EUR 80.00 per volume.
    Private subscriptions are for personal use only, and must be pre-paid and ordered directly from the publisher.

    Available back-volumes

    Online-only Print + online
    Complete backset
    (Vols. 1‒49; 1974‒2022)
    147 issues;
    22,050 pp.
    EUR 17,275.00 EUR 18,134.00
    Volumes 47‒49 (2020‒2022) 3 issues; avg. 450 pp. EUR 388.00 per volume EUR 449.00 per volume
    Volume 46 (2019) 3 issues; 450 pp. EUR 380.00 EUR 440.00
    Volume 45 (2018) 3 issues; 450 pp. EUR 369.00 EUR 427.00
    Volume 44 (2017) 3 issues; 450 pp. EUR 358.00 EUR 415.00
    Volume 43 (2016) 3 issues; 450 pp. EUR 358.00 EUR 403.00
    Volume 42 (2015) 3 issues; 450 pp. EUR 358.00 EUR 391.00
    Volume 41 (2014) 3 issues; 450 pp. EUR 358.00 EUR 380.00
    Volume 40 (2013) 3 issues; 450 pp. EUR 358.00 EUR 369.00
    Volumes 1‒39 (1974‒2012) 3 issues; avg. 450 pp. EUR 348.00 per volume EUR 358.00 per volume
    Guidelines

    1. Historiographia Linguistica welcomes submissions on all aspects of the history of the language sciences. Central objectives of HL are the critical presentation of the origin, development, and transmission of particular ideas, concepts, methods, schools of thought or trends, and the discussion of the methodological, epistemological, and philosophical foundations of a historiography of the language sciences, including its relationship with the history, sociology, and philosophy of science as well as with intellectual history generally.

    2. Manuscripts submitted for publication in Historiographia Linguistica should be in English, French, or German; occasionally, contributions in other languages using Latin script may also be considered. Prior to formal submission, authors are encouraged to send the editors an inquiry together with a summary of their paper, preferably by electronic mail (as regular text). The availability of such a summary in electronic form may also help in the search for suitable referees.

    3. If manuscript submission in paper form is considered, three copies should be sent. However, electronic submissions at various stages of the evaluation process are preferred. The texts could be in RTF, MS Word or similar, or in PDF. (Authors may remove their names and affiliations from a submission in order to permit blind refereeing.)

    4. Before sending a manuscript, contributors should familiarize themselves with the style adopted in HL and outlined below, as manuscripts deviating significantly from its conventionsmay be returned without being evaluated for their contents. Particular attention should be paid to the conventions employed in the presentation of data and the citation of sources. Contributors who write in a language other than their native tongue are kindly requested to have their manuscript carefully checked by a native speaker. Please note that for articles to appear in HL, summaries in English, French, and German of no more than 100 words each will also be required. Summaries, résumés and Zusammenfassungen produced by DeepL, Google Translate or any other automatic translator, will not be accepted. The corresponding author is kindly invited to have the translations checked by native speakers before submitting the manuscript.

    5. Once a manuscript is accepted for publication, contributors will be asked to submit revised versions in both hard copy and electronically. In addition to a file in the word processing program in which the paper was written, contributors should also supply a copy saved in Rich Text Format (RTF). The first sheet of the hard copy should provide the name(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s), as well as full address(es), indicating -- in case there is more than one author -- who will be responsible for proofreading.

    6. Please use 1.5 spacing throughout, also for Notes and References.

    7. Please number all pages.

    8. Tables and illustrations should appear on separate sheets which bear the author's name; the place where they are to appear in the text should be clearly marked in the manuscript. The text should refer to the tables and illustrations by number; please do not use expressions like "the following table". Please keep the captions short.

    9. Transliteration of foreign scripts:

    Please make sure that all special characters are presented correctly in the hard copy of your manuscript. If you cannot produce them on the computer, please insert them by hand using red ink.

    10. Citations from secondary sources. Quotations form the critical literature, if not exceeding three lines, should be inserted in the regular text, marked by double quotation marks and with the source reference supplied. Quotations longer than three lines should be indented and set off from the regular text, with the source of quotation added at the end. Those quotations require no quotation marks.

    11. Linguistic data and glosses. Citation forms in the body of the text should be italicized and followed (without a comma) by the gloss ("meaning"), which is to be enclosed in double quotation marks.

    12. For cited data in numbered examples the following conventions should be observed:

    13. Notes may be submitted as footnotes, using the footnote/endnote functionality of your word processing software. They will be typeset as footnotes. Please keep notes to a minimum and at a reasonable length. Notes should not be used to supply bibliographical references: these should be placed in the References section.

    14. References in the body of the text. For references to a publication, use author's last name plus year (plus page numbers if required). Either all of that, or all minus the author's name should be put in parentheses, as the context may demand. For example:
    According to Jakobson (1944:188), Boas later "regretted never having attended" Steinthal's Lectures (see also Harrington 1945:98)
    On Gerber's theory of figurative meaning, cf. Nerlich & Clarke (1996).

    Full references should be placed in the Reference section. The following conventions apply:

    Book, monograph or collective volume
    Baratin, Marc & Françoise Desbordes (avec la participation de Phillipe Hoffmann & Alain Pierrot). 1981. L'Analyse linguistique dans l'Antiquité classique. Vol. I: Les théories. Paris: Éditions Klincksieck.
    Budagov, R[uben] A. 1988. Portrety jazykovedov XIX-XX vv. [Portraits of linguists of the 19th and 20th centuries]. Moskva: Izd. "Nauka".
    Robins, R[obert] H[enry]. 1967. A Short History of Linguistics. London: Longman; Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1968. (2nd ed., London: Longman, 1979; 3rd ed., 1993; 4th ed., 1997)
    Versteegh, Cornelis H. M. [= Kees], E. F. Konrad Koerner & Hans-Josef Niederehe, eds. 1983. The History of Linguistics in the Near East. (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 28.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

    Articles in a periodical or collective volume
    (Acronyms of well-known journals should follow the conventions of the Linguistic Bibliography / Bibliographie Linguistique. Whenever in doubt, please supply the full name.)
    Auroux, Sylvain. 1986. "Actes de pensée et actes linguistiques dans la Grammaire générale". HEL 8:2.105-120.
    Salmon, Vivian G. 1974. "John Wilkins' Essay (1668): Critics and continuators". HL 1.147-163. (Repr. in The Study of Language in 17th-Century England by V. Salmon, 191-206. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1979; 2nd ed., 1988.)
    Sarmiento, Ramón. 1983. "La gramática académica del siglo de las Luces". Serta Philologica F. Lázaro Carreter natalem diem sexagesimum celebranti dedicata, vol. I: Estudios de lingüística e lengua literaria ed. by Emilio Alarcos [et al.], 571-585. Madrid: Cátedra.

    Reviews
    Boyadjiev, Jivco. Forthcoming. Review of Budagov (1988). HL 17.3.
    Michael, Ian. 1980. Review of Salmon (1979). IF 85.304-306.

    Provided that the full reference to the book reviewed is supplied in the bibliography; otherwise:

    Cowan, William. 1983. Review of Arab Linguistics: An introductory classical text with translation and notes by Michael G. Carter (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1981). HL 10.120-124.

    If other than the original edition is quoted from, this should be made clear in the entry, possibly by a statement added in parentheses at the end (after the publisher's name), or by simply referring to the most recent date of publication of the source (adding the date of the original publication in square brackets right after the new date, e.g., Robins, R. H. 1993[1967]). If a translation is being used, this fact must be stated, with the name(s) of the translator(s) supplied. The date of the original edition should be added in square brackets, right after the date of the translation.

    All correspondence concerning editorial matters (submission of manuscripts, discussions, and reports) should be directed to the editors:

    Jean-Michel Fortis  
    Otto Zwartjes
    Editor, HL  
    Editor, HL
    CNRS, Université Paris Diderot
    Université Paris Diderot
    fortis.jean-michel at neuf.fr  
    Otto.Zwartjes at univ-paris-diderot.fr

    Books for reviewing and correspondence concerning book reviews should be directed to the Reviews Editor:

    Klaas Willems
    Reviews Editor, HL
    Ghent University
    Department of German
    Blandijnberg 2
    B-9000 GHENT, Belgium
    klaas.willems at ugent.be


    Submission

    Historiographia Linguistica welcomes submissions on all aspects of the history of the language sciences. Central objectives of HL are the critical presentation of the origin, development, and transmission of particular ideas, concepts, methods, schools of thought or trends, and the discussion of the methodological, epistemological, and philosophical foundations of a historiography of the language sciences, including its relationship with the history, sociology, and philosophy of science as well as with intellectual history generally.

    Prior to formal submission, authors are encouraged to send the editors an inquiry together with a summary of their paper, preferably by e-mail.

    Before sending a manuscript, contributors should familiarize themselves with the style adopted in HL and outlined in the journal's guidelines , as manuscripts deviating significantly from its conventions may be returned without being evaluated for their contents. Particular attention should be paid to the conventions employed in the presentation of data and the citation of sources.

    Manuscripts submitted for publication in Historiographia Linguistica should be in English, French, or German; occasionally, contributions in other languages using Latin script may also be considered. Contributors who write in a language other than their native tongue are kindly requested to have their manuscript carefully checked by a native speaker.

    HL invites proposals for Special Issues; for more information, see these Guidelines for Special Issue Proposals .

    All correspondence concerning editorial matters (submission of manuscripts, discussions, and reports) should be directed to the editors:

    Jean-Michel Fortis   Otto Zwartjes
    Editor, HL   Editor, HL
    CNRS, Université Paris Diderot
    Université Paris Diderot
    fortis.jean-michel at neuf.fr   Otto.Zwartjes at univ-paris-diderot.fr


    Books for reviewing and correspondence concerning book reviews should be directed to the Reviews Editor:

    Klaas Willems
    Reviews Editor, HL
    Ghent University, Department of German
    Blandijnberg 2, B-9000 GHENT, Belgium
    klaas.willems at ugent.be


    Ethics

    John Benjamins journals are committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics and to supporting ethical research practices.

    Authors and reviewers are kindly requested to read this Ethics Statement .

    Please also note the guidance on the use of (generative) AI in the statement.

    Rights and Permissions

    Authors must ensure that they have permission to use any third-party material in their contribution; the permission should include perpetual (not time-limited) world-wide distribution in print and electronic format.

    For information on authors' rights, please consult the rights information page.

    Open Access

    Articles accepted for this journal can be made Open Access through payment of an Article Publication Charge (APC) of EUR 1800 (excl. tax); more information can be found on the publisher's Open Access Policy page. There is no fee if the article is not to be made Open Access and thus available only for subscribers.

    Corresponding authors from institutions with which John Benjamins has a Read & Publish arrangement can publish Open Access without paying a fee; information on the institutions and which articles qualify, can be found on this page.

    For information about permission to post a version of your article online or in an institutional repository ('green' open access or self-archiving), please consult the rights information page.

    Archiving

    John Benjamins Publishing Company has an agreement in place with Portico for the archiving of all its online journals and e-books.

    Subjects

    Main BIC Subject

    CBX: Language: history & general works

    Main BISAC Subject

    LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General