Historicizing Linguistics and Language Learning in the Early Modern Period

Historicizing Linguistics and Language Learning in the Early Modern Period examines the study, description and teaching of languages between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, a period marked by intense linguistic contact, missionary expansion, vernacularisation and the circulation of pedagogical materials across Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Bringing together the History of Linguistics, Missionary Linguistics and the History of Language Learning and Teaching, this volume explores how grammars, dictionaries, vocabularies, catechisms and manuals shaped early modern understandings of language, knowledge and education.

This book offers a wide‑ranging set of case studies on linguistic description and language learning in missionary, colonial, educational and multilingual settings. Its chapters address Jesuit and Capuchin linguistic work in Brazil, Kongo, India and Japan; early lexicographical traditions in Kikongo and Tamil; Portuguese and Malayalam grammatical description; non‑verbal communication in missionary accounts; Renaissance German language manuals; English‑Algonquian encounters in seventeenth‑century Massachusetts; and language instruction in Enlightenment Bohemia. Collectively, this volume shows how European grammatical models were transmitted, adapted, challenged and reconfigured when applied to diverse linguistic realities.

This volume will be essential reading for scholars and students of the history of linguistics, missionary linguistics, anthropological linguistics, early modern studies, historical sociolinguistics, language pedagogy, colonial and postcolonial studies, translation history and the history of education. It will also interest researchers working on language contact, linguistic documentation, multilingualism, intercultural communication and the global circulation of linguistic knowledge.