This article presents a historical overview of linguistic ideas in relation to the Sapir‐Whorf Hypothesis. The source of the hypothesis is found in the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt, and further development is found in the writings of Heymann Steinthal, Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Carl Voegelin, and Dell Hymes, among others. Humboldtian ideas have had a long‐standing impact on American ethnolinguistics.
If we are to believe Panconcelli-Calzia (1941), the history of phonetics goes back three millenia, and probably as far back as the study of language in general. However, while the history of linguistics has in recent decades become a widely practised field of scholarly endeavour, with a specialist journal and several associated monograph series available since 1973, nothing comparable has occurred with regard to the history of phonetics. There is no indication that a concerted effort is under way to remedy the situation and to establish the history of phonetics as an integral part of the study of phonetics as has been done with regard to the history of linguistics for well over fifteen years. The present paper offers a critical survey of previous scholarship in the historiography of phonetics and presents a few ideas that may strengthen the interest in the historiography of (linguistic) phonetics and encourage someone to undertake a major, comprehensive work in this field.
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