Language--the unknown: an initiation into linguistics

by Kristeva, Julia

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Title Statements

Full title :Language--the unknown : an initiation into linguistics / Julia Kristeva ; translated by Anne M. Menke.

Summary

The book is an introduction to linguistics which presents the reader with an incredible amount of information, ranging from Egyptian hieroglyphs to the communication of dolphins, from the anatomy of the vocal apparatus to the basic mechanisms of the unconscious in dreamwork. The bulk of the book is devoted to a review of the different systems used by various societies to think about their languages (primitive societies, the Egyptians, the Sumerians and the Akkadians, China, India, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews) and then continues with a description of linguistic theories in the West through the ages (Greece, Rome, Arab Grammar, Medieval theories, Renaissance theories, the seventeenth century and the grammar of Port Royal, the eighteenth century and the Encyclopédie, the nineteenth century, structural linguistics in the twentieth century). Throughout this survey Kristeva's main purpose is to show the different ways in which different societies, or different ages, thought of the relation between the concept, the sound, and the thing (Saussure's signified, signifier, and referent). -- from www.jstor.org (Feb. 5, 2014).

Edition Statements

Publication Date:©1989.

Publication Statements

Publisher(s):Columbia University Press
Place of Publication:New York
Language:eng
Publication Date:©1989.

The Physical Object

Description:vi, 366 pages : : illustrations ; : 24 cm.

Edition Identifiers

ISBN:0231061064, 9780231061063, 0745006299, 9780745006291, 0231061072, 9780231061070
oclc:ocm18747991
LC Classification:P121
Dewey Decimal:410

Language, la langue, speech, and discourse -- The linguistic sign -- The materiality of language -- Anthropology and linguistics: the knowledge of language in so-called primitive societies -- The Egyptians: their writing -- Mesopotamian civilization: the Sumerians and Akkadians -- China: writing as science -- Indian linguistics -- The Phoenician alphabet -- The Hebrews: the Bible and the Cabala -- Logical Greece -- Rome: the transmission of Greek grammar -- Arab grammar -- Medieval speculations -- Humanists and grammarians of the Renaissance -- The grammar of Port-Royal -- The Encyclopedie: la langue and nature -- Language as history -- Structural linguistics -- Psychoanalysis and language -- The practice of language -- Semiotics.