Linguistics in Britain: Personal Histories

This landmark volume provides a fascinating overview of the evolution of the discipline of linguistics in Britain since the end of the Second World War. It consists of a series of linguistic autobiographies′ by 23 British linguists who played a major role in the development of the subject during the second half of the twentieth century.

Commissioned by the Council of the Philological Society, contributors look back over the achievements of British linguistics in the previous 50 years. They reflect on how and why they went into linguistics, what branches of the subject attracted them, what formative influences they were exposed to, and how they reacted to them. They also consider the role they personally played in the intellectual and institutional development of the subject.

Preface.

Jean Aitchison.

W. Sidney Allen.

R. E. Asher.

John Bendor–Samuel.

Gillian Brown.

N. E. Collinge.

Joseph Cremona.

David Crystal.

Gerald Gazdar.

M. A. K. Halliday.

Richard Hudson.

John Laver.

Geoffrey Leech.

John Lyons.

Peter Matthews.

Anna Morpungo Davies.

Frank Palmer.

Randolph Quirk.

R. H. Robins.

Neil Smith.

J. L. M. Trim.

Peter Trudgill.

John Wells.

General Index.

Keith Brown is a member of the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. He is the co–editor of the Blackwell Publishing journal, Transactions of the Philological Society.

Vivien Law was lately Reader in the History of Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. She was the author or editor of numerous publications, including Grammar and Grammarians in the Early Middle Ages (1997).