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Towards a History of Americanist Linguistics

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Towards a History of Americanist Linguistics Towards a History of Americanist Linguistics KONRAD KOERNER University of Ottawa 0.0 Introductory Observations The past 15 or more years have witnessed the recognition of the history of linguistics as a bona fide academic subject; indeed, given the existence of several journals and monograph series exclusively devoted to the subject, one may well speak of a professionalization of this subfield of linguistics. It is therefore not surprising that the study of American Indian languages, which has a 400-year old history, should become an area of interest to the historian — and historiographer — of linguistics (cf. Auroux and Queixalos 1984). The present paper is a modest attempt at a brief survey of the work that has already been done, together with a few observations of my own. As far as I can see, many of the earlier historical accounts — for instance of Sapir (1911), Goddard (1914), and Kroeber (1939) — were progress reports done on special occasions and for particular purposes, but not genuine histories; those by Wissler (1942), Edgerton (1943), and Stevens (1956, 1957) may be somewhat closer to our endeavours, and more recent accounts (e.g., Miner 1974, Haas 1978, Smith 1979) are definitely closest as they become more specific and detailed. It occurred to me that I could offer a paper at this Conference by referring in particular to the study of Algonquian languages, which were the languages most of the earlier missionaries, travelers, and amateur linguists encountered when they set foot on North American soil, as languages of this stock were widely spread along the East Coast and the North-Central parts of the continent. Indeed, up to the mid-19th century, the Algonquian languages were the most widely studied, with the result that earlier scholars tended to believe that their features were representative of all American Indian languages. 179 180 KONRAD KOERNER 1.0 Phases in the Study of North American Indian Languages In his brief sketch of the study of Mesoamerican Indian languages of 1983, the late Jorge Alberto Suarez (1927-1985) distinguished three phases in the history of Americanist linguistics; the first beginning with the arrival of missionaries in New Spain in 1524 and lasting roughly to the end of the 17th century. (Perhaps I should point out that I regard Mexico as a part of North America; it was from there, and with Cortes's conquest during the early 16th century, that European study of Amerindian languages began.) This first phase is properly called the period of missionary linguistics. The second phase, according to Suarez (1983:5) began in the 19th century, the 18th century witnessing a considerable decline in the work on American Indian languages, probably as a result of the Enlightenment's preoccupation with philosophical and universal grammar, not to mention its concern for the development of logical systems of communication (cf. Rowe 1974:367). The third phase covers the present century. No doubt, this classification is much too schematic, especially with regard to the last two periods, and probably requires revision and refinement. Indeed, other scholars, e.g., Cowan (1974), distinguish three main traditions according to the place of origin of the missionaries, French, English, and Spanish, as they arrived at different times, in different places, and frequently with different attitudes. 1.1 I will not say much about the missionary period here (for some details, see Suarez 1983:1-5), except to say that it was characterized by the activ­ ities of the Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian friars (listing them in chronological order of their arrival in Mexico), whose objective it was to learn enough of the languages of the natives so that they could carry out their missionary work. In order to familiarize themselves with the in­ digenous languages, these missionaries as well as some Jesuits (who, at least in Central and South America, usually concerned themselves with the education of the upper classes only) compiled word lists and developed grammars. Although these Indian languages were quite different from the European languages, the structure of Latin was employed in their analysis (cf. Diimmler-Cote 1987), and Antonio de Nebrija's (1444-1532) grammar of Spanish, first published in 1492, though the first vernacular grammar in Europe not devoted to either Latin and Greek, served many of them as a model. Nebrija's Gramdiica castellana was however not much different from these traditional grammars, and this fact may have reinforced the missionaries' belief in the adequacy of the categories of the structure of Latin for the description of American Indian languages. (For an account of 17th-century missionary work in the British colonies in North America, see Guice 1987; cf. also Wonderly and Nida 1963, Wolfart 1967, and others.) The missionary period, although in a sense still going on today — wit- AMERICANIST LINGUISTICS 181 ness the work of the Summer Institute of Linguistics — could be said to cover the period from the 16th century down to the beginning of the 19th century. An exact demarcation appears impossible for several reasons: First, a number of 17th- and 18th-century works were reissued (most of them by John Pickering) during the early decades of the 19th century, thus establishing at least a clear link, rather than a break with past achievements in the field, i.e., suggesting continuity rather than discontinuity. Second, a number of these earlier accounts were in fact not written by missionaries but by people of a rather different kind — I am thinking of the word lists, grammatical sketches, and phrase books provided by travelers, merchants, and adventurers, such as the Englishman William Wood (c. 1608-1639), in the early 17th century, the impoverished French baron Louis Armand de Lahontan (1666-C.1715) at the beginning of the 18th century, and the German geologist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) in the early 19th century. Of course we will notice the important differences between the land-prospecting Wood and the scientific endeavours of Humboldt, who appears to have collected linguistic data largely at the request of his elder brother Wilhelm, and much less because of a personal interest in exotic languages. In short, reference to these men should dispell the idea that all linguistic interest in Amerindian languages before the 19th century came from missionaries. However, it remains true that what these travelers have in common is that their preoccupation with these languages was a side inter­ est only. Wood's (1634:[99]-[103]) word list takes up only five printed pages, and Lahontan's "petit dictionnaire" of "the Algonkine language, which is generally spoken in North America" with its about 300 entries is not much longer, although, as Wolfart (1989) has recently shown, his Algonquian lex­ icon of 1703 was subsequently used by a variety of missionaries and linguists for more than 150 years thereafter. It is a fact however that most grammars and lexicons of American Indian languages produced by missionaries — and there were many — remained unpublished. It seems that only toward the end of the 19th century did major works on Amerindian languages, espe­ cially Algonquian, appear in print (e.g., Cuoq 1886) — with few famous exceptions, notably Roger Williams's (1603-1683) Key of 1643 and John Eliot's grammar of Natick of 1666 (on which below). With regard to the English in North America (on which see Hallowell 1960:23-34) — I am excluding here the missionary work in New France (on which see Hanzeli 1969) — mention should at least be made of the in fact pioneering work of missionaries, besides the two just mentioned, Thomas Mayhew (1592-1682), Experience Mayhew (1673-1758), and Cot­ ton Mather (1663-1728), who produced translations of biblical and other devotional texts into half a dozen different Indian languages, frequently compiling dictionaries or writing grammars of these languages on the way, 182 KONRAD KOERNER though most of these works remained in manuscript. But the most impor­ tant and influential work was no doubt John Eliot's The Indian Grammar Begun of 1666, basically a grammar of the Massachusett language or Nat­ ick modeled after the structure of Latin, though produced on the basis of a thorough acquaintance with the native language and with the help of informants (cf. Miner 1974 for details). This probably first American In­ dian grammar written in North America was republished by Pickering in 1822 and received critical attention by later Algonquianists, beginning with James Hammond Trumbull (1821-1897), who was to criticize Eliot's efforts to "cast [Natick] into a classical mould" and, as a result, for not recog­ nizing important grammatical features properly (Trumbull 1871:60; Cowan 1984:294-295). Interestingly enough, Wolfart, writing about 100 years after Trumbull, argued that Eliot had attempted to describe the language in its own terms (1967:154; see also Smith 1979:31). The other influential missionary linguist of 17th-century New England was Roger Williams, a close contemporary of Eliot, who had arrived from England about the same time in the Massachusetts colony. However, while Williams was soon banished from the Colony for his unorthodox views — he and a few other clergymen became founders of Providence, Rhode Is­ land — Eliot moved from Boston to Roxbury, where he remained until his death, learning the language of the Indians among whom he worked. While Eliot's work appeared in Boston, Williams's Key into the Language of America of 1643 (reissued by Pickering in 1827), actually a phrase book of Narragansett, was published in London. The book has received due at­ tention by 20th-century Algonquianists (e.g., Haas 1967), and has recently been characterized as a roughly 200-page long phrase book and description of Indian culture which contains respectably large number of words, phrases, and sentences of Narra­ gansett, another extinct Algonquian language [like Massachusett], formerly spoken in Rhode Island and only dialectically different from Massachusett.
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