ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 addresses a 400-year interval from around the beginning of the fourteenth century until the end of the seventeenth, that is, from the early Renaissance through the first years of the Enlightenment. This interval has been assessed variously by linguistic historiographers. Law (1990c: 807-808) spotlights its beginning by dividing western linguistics into two eras, pre-versus postRenaissance, going on to claim that since 1500 language science has alternated in 150-year cycles between a ‘particular’ approach that focuses on substantive differences between languages, and a ‘universal’ approach that attends to general underlying principles. Robins (1973; 1984) shares Law’s sense that a pendulum has oscillated between two such poles. However, he represents the pendulum as having started swinging much earlier, in the ancient Greeks’ debate about whether grammar is a téckne or an empeiria.
