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In:History of Linguistics 2017: Selected papers from the 14th International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences, (ICHoLS 14), Paris, 28 August – 1 September
Edited by Émilie Aussant and Jean-Michel Fortis
[Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 127] 2020
► pp. 81–100

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Klaproth, Balbi and the language atlas

 | KU Leuven
Published online: 20 May 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1075/sihols.127.06sol
Abstract
Julius Klaproth’s Asia Polyglotta (1823) and Adriano Balbi’s Atlas ethnographique du Globe (1826a, 1826b) were the first examples of so-called ‘language atlases’. This article investigates how these atlases presented language as an object of study, and how the study of language intersected with history, geography, ethnography, and other learned pursuits in Klaproth’s and Balbi’s research programmes. This gives us a new perspective on the shaping of linguistics as a discipline and the role of non-Indo-European languages in it.
Article outline
  • 1.The birth of the language atlas
  • 2.Klaproth’s Asia Polyglotta
  • 3.Balbi’s Atlas ethnographique
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (64)
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