Lectures on the Science of Language, Volume 1Born in Germany and trained in Greek, Latin and Sanskrit, Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900) settled at Oxford, where he would become the university's first professor of comparative philology. Best known for his work on the Rig Veda, he brought the comparative study of language, mythology and religion to a wider audience in Victorian Britain. His lectures at the Royal Institution, published in two volumes between 1861 and 1864, were reprinted fifteen times before the end of the century. Volume 1 contains the nine 1861 lectures, in which Max Müller aligns the science of language with the physical sciences, breaking his subject down into the three stages that he argues mark the history of any branch of human knowledge: the empirical, the classificatory and the theoretical. Hugely successful at the time - George Eliot was particularly enthused - the lectures remain instructive reading in the history of linguistics. |
Contents
LECTURE | 1 |
LECTURE II | 28 |
LECTURE III | 77 |
LECTURE IV | 106 |
LECTURE V | 158 |
LECTURE VI | 201 |
THE CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE | 237 |
LECTURE VIII | 262 |
THE THEORETICAL STAGE IN THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE ORIGIN | 329 |
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ancient animals applied Aryan became become beginning belongs branch brutes called century Chinese classification common comparative derived dialects discover distinct distinguished doubt elements empire English Europe existence express fact find first follow formation French genitive German give given Gothic grammar Greek growth guage Hebrew human idea important impossible independent India instance Italian Italy known Latin laws Lectures likewise literary literature living look means mind nature never object observe once origin Persian person philosophers phonetic possible predicative present preserved primitive problem produced proved race reason remains river Roman Rome root Sanskrit scholars science of language Semitic sense sound speak speech spoken stage stands supposed terminations Teutonic things third thought tion traced translated tribes Turanian Turkish verb whole words