Language as a Specimen

Abstract

Language was never studied by linguists (or philologists) alone. The greater part of the languages of the world was first known in the West through the reports of missionaries, explorers, and colonial administrators, and what they documented reflected their specific interests. Missionaries wrote catechisms, primers, dictionaries, and Bible translations (especially Lord's Prayers); for explorers and administrators, language was one aspect among many to cover in their accounts of faraway regions. Peoples were identified by their language; toponyms served for geographic description; names of plants and animals were gathered together with specimens and images of plants and animals. In this context, linguistic materials were equally described as “specimens.” This article investigates the various ways in which language material was used and conceived of as a specimen, and the global trajectories of these “specimens.” Especially the role of naturalist explorers deserves closer attention in this regard. What they did, throughout the late 18th and 19th century, was gathering language material as one kind of specimen among others, Forster in the Pacific, Humboldt, Martius, and d'Orbigny in South America, and Peters in Mozambique. Two large‐scale expeditions from the mid‐19th century stand out as examples: the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838–1842), whose collections later filled the Smithsonian Institution, and the Austrian‐Hungarian Novara expedition (1857–1859).