Abstract

“The appropriation of foreign tongues and eighteenth and nineteenth centuries linguistics”. ‐ Until well into the nineteenth century the documentation of hitherto unknown languages was but a by‐product of other activities: samples of languages were gathered on expeditions as anthropological specimen, and missionaries did their best to come to grips with the alien tongues they encountered. Although a large number of languages was known by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the number of printed grammars was very small and their reception by the European scientific community was ambiguous. Most of these grammars were composed by missionaries to facilitate the acquisition of the respective language. Most of them show serious deficiencies. From a historiographic perspective the exclusively practical purpose of these grammars highlights two characteristics of the science of language of the time. The actual process of composing a grammar was not a part of investigations into language or languages. There was nothing close to what might be called “empirical research” with respect to the investigation of languages. It was only in the nineteenth century that the importance of language data was advocated by American scholars and the investigation of non‐literate languages was subsequently introduced into linguistic research.