Department Seminar on Current Directions in Linguistics (Concept Paper)

“Even within our generation a vast expansion of linguistic study has taken place”

Einar Haugen,1951, Directions in Modern Linguistics

( Language,27:3)

Since its inception in the late eighteen century modern linguistics has developed and diversified into many spheres – the very successful field of historical comparative linguistics, the rise of structural and descriptive linguistics, introduction of dialectology, establishment of International Phonetic Association, development of phonology and other areas of language study under the Prague School, development of Glossematics under the Copenhangen School – only  to name a few. Needless to say expansion of linguistic study has shown no sign of slowing down after the above-mentioned paper was published in 1951.  Since then we have witnessed the birth of generative linguistics which is referred to as nothing short of a revolution in linguistics. We have seen the development of Systemic Functional Grammar, Sociolinguistics (‘an oddly redundant term’ to quote Willam Labov), Cognitive Linguistics, development of Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis. Besides linguistics have become progressively involved in allied areas through the development of computational linguistics, language teaching methodologies, neurolinguistics, language policy and planning, anthropolinguistics including issues of language endangerment etc.

Kolkata has always been a part of the development of modern linguistics. William Jones’s 1786 speech at the Asiatic Society, Kolkata (then Calcutta) started a course of study which broke away from the established traditions and methods and successfully established genetic groupings of languages spoken all over the world. Though even before 1786 many ancient linguistic tradition including India and Greece excelled in the field of rhetorics, grammar, linguistic philosophy and literary analysis, this speech is almost universally earmarked as the start of linguistics as we know it. The department of comparative philology (now department of Linguistics), Calcutta University was established in 1904, making it the oldest post graduate department of  Linguistics in India. Linguistic Society of India, founded in 1928 in Lahore, operated from Kolkata from 1937 to 1955 before it shifted to Pune where it merged with the Indian Philological Association. Even now, in terms of student strength, this department remains one of the largest Linguistics departments of the country. This department, however, is not the only establishment in Kolkata devoted to linguistic studies. The linguistics department in Sanskrit College is the only department in the country that offers under graduate degree in Linguistics. Jadavpur University has a newly established and flourishing department linguistics, Indian Statistical Institute have two units – the Linguistic Research Unit and the Computer Pattern and Vision Recognition – that have a number of research projects in Linguistics, Anthropological Society of India and the Asiatic Society have long tradition of linguistic researches in diverse fields, language studies are being conducted in Kolkata under language division. There are undoubtedly many other departments, institutes and individuals all over Kolkata devoting time towards the study of language. The purpose of this seminar to assess the directions and trends in current studies in linguistics, to enable an opportunity for mutual exchange of ideas and results and to discuss future directions of linguistic study in our present context.