Language as a Test of Mental Capacity

Abstract

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The Reception of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Linguistic Writings in the Anglosphere, 1820 to the Present

“…Horatio Hale (1817-1896), considerably older than Brinton or Powell but without their institutional stature, argued steadfastly that the complex classificatory systems of American Indian languages revealed a high intellectual capacity. Hale (1892) drew at length on Duponceau (1838) to argue for the richness and regularity of the American languages, and repeated Duponceau's regret that "a learned member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences", whom Hale identifies in a footnote as Humboldt, "assigns to them an inferior rank in the scale of languages, considered in the point of view of their capacity to aid the development of ideas" (Hale 1892: 449). Hale neglects to note how, in later writings, Humboldt modified his position -as indeed did Duponceau, who, like Pickering, came finally to a view of American Indian languages less imbued with the Romantic idealizing of Chateaubriand's René (1802), and more analytical than judgmental.…”