The "genius" of language in sixteenth century linguistics

Stankiewicz, Edward

doi:10.1515/9783110863727-017

Cited by 19 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Similarly, in López Madera's description, the Spanish language had its own timeless, inimitable substance, the kind of "genius" for which Romantic nationalism is known (Stankiewicz 1981). For example, in López Madera's words, the style of the firstcentury poet Martial showed him to be Spanish, revealing "a genius (ingenio) that is very particular (propio) to Spain and its natural poetry" (1999:178).…”

Section: The Link To Nationalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is the Past a Foreign Country?: Time, Language Origins, and the Nation in Early Modern Spain

Woolard

2004

J Linguistic Anthropol

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Theorists such as Benedict Anderson have associated the development of a historicized sense of time, in contrast to an atemporal messianic time, with epochal social changes, in particular the emergence of the nation. This article discovers the two contrasting senses of time in a 17th-century controversy over the origin of the Spanish language. The competing views of the past in the Spanish debate underpinned different visions not only of language but of humanity, progress, and nation. Anderson's claims about historicism and the origin of the nation construct are reconsidered in light of this case. It is argued that, pace Anderson, national consciousness was present in early modern Spain, and it rested on messianic as much as historicized time.The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.-L. P. Hartley, The Go-BetweenThe past is never dead. It's not even past.-William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun T he two epigraphs that introduce this article reflect two contrasting conceptualizations of the past in relation to the present, and thus of history and of time itself. Such a dichotomy between distinct notions of time has repeatedly been invoked by scholars to characterize modernity in contrast to the premodern or nonmodern, and specifically to capture epochal changes in European art and literature, historiography, and social and political life. Benedict Anderson's influential book Imagined Communities (1991) provides an evocative summary of the recurrent contrast between these two conceptualizations of time. To explain the historical emergence of the idea of the nation, Anderson blended concepts from the work of Eric Auerbach (1952,1953) on the history of art and literature with the cryptic categories of time used by Walter Benjamin in his impassioned critical essay on the philosophy of history (1968). Anderson brought the two authors' contrast sets together in a brilliant sweeping gesture and cast a historicized sense of "homogeneous empty time" as a foundational condition whose emergence in the modern period made it possible to "think the nation" (1991:22).This article brings these concepts of history and the past to bear in the study of linguistic ideologies. It identifies two such contrasting views of the past specifically in relation to conceptualizations of language, in a conflict of linguistic ideologies in late 16th-and early 17th-century Spain that had far-reaching social and political

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Section: The Link To Nationalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is the Past a Foreign Country?: Time, Language Origins, and the Nation in Early Modern Spain

Woolard

2004

J Linguistic Anthropol

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“…Υ amsenov (top) < Pol Mszczonow; Υ ekcin < Brought to you by | University of Michigan Authenticated Download Date | 6/21/15 2:14 AM Pol Kcynia, esterdin < Pol Sterdyn. CeY vlojn < Pol Wielun; 289 CeY p(o)rence 'railing' < Pol porgcze; 290 (any geographical limitations?) 288 On the other hand, Yiddish can create new distributions for clusters that are grammatical in the Slavic donor languages, e.g.…”

Section: Consonant Clusters In the Hebrew And Slavic Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Yiddish — the fifteenth Slavic language. A study of partial language shift from Judeo-Sorbian to German

Wexler¹

1991

Ijsl

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“…Pero, en este contexto preciso, no es el momento aún de la aparición del término genio atribuido a las lenguas: se emplea para hacer referencia a la idiosincrasia de los pueblos (manifestada en los proverbios) 4 y a la singular capacidad creativa de los escritores 5 . Stankiewicz (1981) proporciona numerosos testimonios de la toma de conciencia en el siglo XVI de la existencia de rasgos peculiares e inherentes, de una particular fisonomía, en las lenguas particulares 6 , idea que los humanistas de la época formulan a través de expresiones como je ne sai quoi 7 , certi propri tesori, fondamento, forza maravigliosa 8 para hacer referencia a las cualidades sutiles e inimitables de cada idioma que se manifiestan no solo en sus capacidades estilísticas sino también en determinadas unidades gramaticales (como los diminutivos, por ejemplo), idiotismos y proverbios, a propósito de las cuales se plantean el problema de las dificultades de su traslación a otras lenguas. En un contexto similar, y en la línea de los autores italianos del cinquecento, nuestros tratadistas emplean términos como fuerza, naturaleza, gracia, gentileza a propósito de los rasgos específicos o singulares de la lengua española, como ilustran las siguientes citas de Juan de Valdés (1969Valdés ( [c. 1535): "la mayor parte de la gracia y gentileza de la lengua castellana consiste en hablar por metáforas" (p. 167); "la gentileza de la lengua castellana, entre las otras cosas, consiste en que los vocablos sean llenos y enteros, y por esto siempre me veréis escrivir los vocablos con las más letras que puedo" (p. 90), de ahí que, a propósito de la inserción de una e-epentética en los cultismos latinos, afirme: "tengo por mejor, para conservar la gentileza de mi lengua, hazer desta manera" (p. 79).…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

De la proprietas linguae al genio de la lengua: introducción y desarrollo de estas nociones en la lingüística española (siglos XVI-XVIII)

Martínez Gavilán

2024

ELiEs

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El objetivo de este trabajo es proporcionar una visión panorámica que dé cuenta de las fases en la denominación, conceptualización y aplicación de la idea de ‘carácter particular o genuino de las lenguas’ en la reflexión lingüística española. Fundamentalmente a partir de textos de carácter apologético, se hace un recorrido cuyo terminus a quo es la noción de propiedad lingüística y que tiene como terminus ad quem la expresión genio de la lengua. Del primero, empleado en los siglos XVI y XVII, se incide en la aportación de Correas, que se relaciona con la doctrina de López Madera. Del segundo, importado de Francia, se señala su evolución en la tradición española del siglo XVIII.

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The "genius" of language in sixteenth century linguistics

Cited by 19 publications

References 0 publications

Is the Past a Foreign Country?: Time, Language Origins, and the Nation in Early Modern Spain

Is the Past a Foreign Country?: Time, Language Origins, and the Nation in Early Modern Spain

Yiddish — the fifteenth Slavic language. A study of partial language shift from Judeo-Sorbian to German

De la proprietas linguae al genio de la lengua: introducción y desarrollo de estas nociones en la lingüística española (siglos XVI-XVIII)

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