The Challenge of Polysynthesis: Wilhelm von Humboldt and Early Comparative Americanist Linguistics

Abstract

For Kurt Mueller-VollmerThe aim of this paper is to revisit the early history of the Americanist tradition in linguistic anthropology from the vantage point of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s studies of North American Indian languages. The paper challenges the received opinion that Humboldt, along with his North American fellow scholars, believed that American languages form a distinct ‘polysynthetic’ (or ‘incorporating’) typological class. In the first section, the genesis of the concept of polysynthesis is traced back to P. S. Duponceau’s work based on missionary linguistic records. The second section demonstrates how Humboldt’s position differed, due firstly to his interest in the individual structure of languages and secondly to his upholding of universal grammar.

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