Xxv. Linguistics Academic and Research Staff

There have been two main traditions in the study of language in modern times. The first is the tradition of "universal" or "philosophical grammar," which flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in intimate connection with philosophy and speculative psychology. The second is the tradition of modern linguistics, a nineteenth and twentieth century phenomenon that was also closely interwoven with the philosophy, psychology, and anthropology of its day. Philosophical grammar was concerned with general, universal principles of language structure; it attempted to ground these principles in a theory of mental processes, and to illustrate them with detailed study of particular languages. By modern standards, the work lacked care and attention to detail, and the conclusions that were reached, though often highly insightful, were deficient in empirical support and sharpness of formulation. In comparison, modern nineteenth and twentieth century linguistics has achieved a much higher standard of rigor, and has accumulated linguistic data of an incomparably greater scope and variety. It has been limited, however, by a much narrower interpretation of the purposes and goals of linguistic science. It has eschewed theory construction in favor of elaboration of methods of analysis, and it has not been concerned with linguistic universals often, in fact, it has denied that there are, in any significant sense, genuine and deep universal principles that constrain the form and use of human language.