Editing Wilhelm von Humboldt (section)

== Linguist ==
[[File:Wilhelm von Humboldt Denkmal - Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.jpg|thumb|[[Statue of Wilhelm von Humboldt]] outside [[Humboldt University]], Unter den Linden, Berlin]]
Wilhelm von Humboldt was an adept [[linguistics|linguist]] and studied the [[Basque language]]. He translated [[Pindar]] and [[Aeschylus]] into German.

Humboldt's work as a [[philology|philologist]] in [[Basque language|Basque]] has had more extensive impact than his other work. His two visits to the [[Basque Country (historical territory)|Basque country]] resulted in ''Researches into the Early Inhabitants of Spain by the help of the Basque language'' (1821).<ref>{{cite book |last=Daum |first=Andreas|authorlink=Andreas Daum |editor-last=Fahrmeir |editor-first=Andreas | title=Deutschland. Globalgeschichte einer Nation |publisher=C. H. Beck |date=2020 |pages=303‒307 |chapter=Alexander und Wilhelm von Humboldt: Vom Orinoco nach Java}}</ref> In this work, Humboldt endeavored to show by examining geographical placenames that at one time a race or races speaking dialects allied to modern [[Basque language|Basque]] extended throughout Spain, southern France and the [[Balearic Islands]]; he identified these people with the ''[[Iberians]]'' of classical writers, and further surmised that they had been allied with the [[Berber people|Berbers]] of northern Africa. Humboldt's pioneering work has been superseded in its details by modern [[linguistics]] and [[archaeology]], but is sometimes still uncritically followed even today. He was elected a member of the [[American Antiquarian Society]] in 1820,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.americanantiquarian.org/memberlisth |title=American Antiquarian Society Members Directory}} Elected 23 October 1816, Residence Paris, France.</ref> and a Foreign Honorary Member of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] in 1822.<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter H|url= http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterH.pdf |publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=7 August 2014}}</ref>

Humboldt died while preparing his greatest work, on the ancient [[Kawi language]] of [[Java (island)|Java]], but its introduction was published in 1836 as ''The Heterogeneity of Language and its Influence on the Intellectual Development of Mankind''.<ref>{{cite journal|date=1999|title=Wilhelm von Humboldt's Study of the Kawi Language: The Proof of the Existence of the Malayan-Polynesian Language Culture|url=http://www.schillerinstitute.org/fid_97-01/991_humboldt_kawi.html|url-status=dead|journal=[[Fidelio Magazine]]|volume=VIII|author1=Muriel Mirak Weissbach|number=1|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140712080831/http://www.schillerinstitute.org/fid_97-01/991_humboldt_kawi.html|archive-date=12 July 2014}}</ref> His 1836 book on the philosophy of speech introduces the concept of "the inner form of language" (according to Encyclopædia Britannica 1911):

<blockquote>[F]irst clearly laid down that the character and structure of a language expresses the inner life and knowledge of its speakers, and that languages must differ from one another in the same way and to the same degree as those who use them. Sounds do not become words until a meaning has been put into them, and this meaning embodies the thought of a community. What Humboldt terms the inner form of a language is just that mode of denoting the relations between the parts of a sentence which reflects the manner in which a particular body of men regards the world about them. It is the task of the morphology of speech to distinguish the various ways in which languages differ from each other as regards their inner form, and to classify and arrange them accordingly.<ref>[[:s:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm von|1911 Encyclopædia Britannica]]</ref></blockquote>

[[Noam Chomsky]] frequently quotes Humboldt's description of language as a rule-governed system which "[[Recursion|makes infinite use of finite means]]", meaning that an infinite number of sentences can be created using a finite number of grammatical rules. However, Humboldt scholar Tilman Borsche cautions that profound differences remain between von Humboldt's view of language, and Chomsky's.<ref>see Tilman Borsche: ''Sprachansichten. Der Begriff der menschlichen Rede in der Sprachphilosophie Wilhelm von Humboldts'', Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981.</ref>

More recently, Humboldt has also been credited as an originator of the [[linguistic relativity]] hypothesis (more commonly known as the [[Sapir–Whorf hypothesis]]), developed by linguists [[Edward Sapir]] or [[Benjamin Whorf]] a century later.<ref>Deutscher, Guy (2010) ''Through the Language Glass''. New York: Picador, ch. 6 {{ISBN?}}</ref>

The reception of Humboldt's work remains problematic in English-speaking countries, despite the work of Langham Brown, Manchester and James W. Underhill (''Humboldt, Worldview and Language'', 2009), due to his concept of (what he termed) ''Weltansicht'', the "linguistic worldview", while ''Weltanschauung'' is translated simply as 'worldview'—a term associated with ideologies and cultural mindsets in both German and English. The centrality of this distinction in understanding Humboldt's work was set out by one of the leading contemporary German Humboldt scholars, Jürgen Trabant, in his works in both German and French. Polish linguists at the Lublin School (see [[Jerzy Bartmiński]]), in their research of Humboldt, also stress this distinction between the worldviews of a personal or political kind, and the worldview that is implicit in language as a conceptual system.

However, there has been, in English, a comparative dearth of rigorous research that explores the relationship between the linguistic worldview and the transformation and maintenance of this worldview by individual speakers. One notable exception is the work of Underhill, who explores comparative linguistic studies in both ''Creating Worldviews: Language'', ''Ideology & Metaphor'' (2011) and in ''Ethnolinguistics and Cultural Concepts: Truth, Love, Hate & War'' (2012). In Underhill's work, a distinction is made between five forms of worldview—world-perceiving, world-conceiving, cultural mindset, personal world, and perspective—in order to convey the distinctions Humboldt was concerned with preserving in his ethnolinguistics. Probably the best-known linguist working with a truly Humboldtian perspective writing in English today is [[Anna Wierzbicka]], who has published a number of comparative works on semantic universals and conceptual distinctions in language.

The Rouen Ethnolinguistics Project, in France, published online a 7-hour series of lectures on Humboldt's thought on language, with the Berlin specialist Professor Trabant.<ref>[https://webtv.univ-rouen.fr/permalink/c1253a18f7e5ecnge8dp/ The Jurgen Trabant Wilhelm von Humboldt Lectures], launched by the Rouen University Ethnolinguistics Project.</ref>

In [[Charles Taylor (philosopher)|Charles Taylor]]'s important summative work, ''The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity'' (2016),<ref>Taylor, Charles (2016) ''The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity''. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.</ref> von Humboldt is given credit, along with [[Johann Georg Hamann]] and [[Johann Gottfried Herder]], for inspiring Taylor's "HHH" approach to the philosophy of language, emphasizing the creative power and cultural specificity of language.