McElvenny J. A History of Modern Linguistics - From the Beginnings to World War II

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024. — X, 206 p.The book offers a concise history of the main currents in linguistic theory from the beginnings of the modern field around the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century up to the end of World War II. We focus on academic linguistics, and look at how scholars – working in their specific social, cultural and political contexts – came to their ideas and methods. The emphasis of our account lies on the debates, controversies and unresolved problems that have shaped the outlook of linguistics as a discipline.