Authoritative and wide-ranging, this book examines the history of western linguistics over a 2000-year timespan, from its origins in ancient Greece up to the crucial moment of change in the Renaissance that laid the foundations of modern linguistics. Some of today's burning questions about language date back a long way: in 1400 BC Plato was asking how words relate to reality. Other questions go back just a few generations, such as our interest in the mechanisms of language change, or in the social factors that shape the way we speak. Vivien Law explores how ideas about language over the centuries have changed to reflect changing modes of thinking. A survey chapter brings the coverage of the book up to the present day. Classified bibliographies and chapters on research resources and the qualities the historian of linguistics needs to develop, provide the reader with the tools to go further.

In this outstanding book leading scholars from around the world examine the history of linguistics from ancient origins to the present. They consider every aspect of the field from language origins to neurolinguistics, explore linguistic traditions in east and west, chronicle centuries of explanations for language structures, meanings, and usage, and look at how it has been practically applied. The book is organized in six parts. The first looks at the origins of language, the invention of writing, the nature of gesture, and sign languages. Part II examines the history of the analysis and description of sound systems. Part III considers the history of linguistics in China, Korea, Japan, India, and the Middle East, as well as the history of the study of Semitic and Afro-Asiatic. Part IV examines the history of grammar and morphology in the west from the classical world to the present. Part V surveys the history of lexicography semantics, pragmatics, and text and discourse studies. Part VI looks at the history the application of linguistics in fields that include the language classification; social and cultural theory; psychology and the brain sciences; education and translation; computational science; and the development of linguistic corpora. The book ends with a history of the philosophy of linguistics. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics makes a significant contribution to the historiography of linguistics. It will also be a valuable reference for scholars and students in linguists and related fields, including philosophy and cognitive science.

《十九世纪欧洲语言学史》详尽地介绍了西方比较语言学的兴起和发展，对于近代欧洲语言科学的发展、方法和成果做了综合的叙述介绍了欧洲古典时代、中世纪以及16，17，18世纪的语言学的演进，叙述了印欧语系各个语支以及世界各个语系的研究情形，并从碑铭与考古的发现情况对文字史进行了探讨，最后还讨论了比较语言学的方法论及其演进过程。作者严谨的科学态度，受到学界的赞许，文笔流畅生动，被中国语言学家朱德熙先生誉为“最好的一本介绍历史比较方法的书”。

威廉·汤姆逊（Ludvig Peter Vilhelm Thomsen.1842—1927）的《十九世纪末以前的语言学史》堪称西方第一部语言学通史，它连贯而系统地评述了十九世纪末以前的欧洲学者研究语言学的发展阶段和历史，并且对欧洲早期的那些语言学家和他们的著作作了学术评述。书后附录了俄译者拉?绍尔的文章“从文艺复兴时期到十九世纪末的语言学说史梗概”，对中世纪以后各种语言学说的哲学基础和方法论作了充分的评介。该书是一部极具参考价值的语言学史著作。

《欧美语言学简史》(修订本)是根据近几年来作者在复旦大学中文系汉语专业和现代汉语助教班讲授欧美语言学史的讲稿整理而成的。“欧美语言学史”实际上是一门学习语言学的入门课程，主要介绍欧美语言学的发展历程，对在历史上有重大影响的语言学派和语言学家的理论和研究方法进行述评，目的在于使学生在进行深入研究之前，能在理论和背景知识方面有所准备。

博杜恩•德•库尔德内本人及其创立的喀山学派的成员对普通语言学有着卓越贡献。他提出了普通语言学研究的重要原则和方法，许多思想在后起的语言学者的著作中得到了进一步的继承和发扬，直接促进了现代语言学的发展，产生了巨大的国际影响力。
本书从现代语言学视角探讨其语言学思想、个人魅力与学识，及其与语言学代表人物的学术交流，可使读者对库尔德内的生平和学术思想有更好的认识。

《十九世纪欧洲语言学史》详尽地介绍了西方比较语言学的兴起和发展，对于近代欧洲语言科学的发展、方法和成果做了综合的叙述。介绍了欧洲古典时代、中世纪以及16，17，18世纪的语言学的演进，叙述了印欧语系各个语支以及世界各个语系的研究情形，并从碑铭与考古的发现情况对文字史进行了探讨，最后还讨论了比较语言学的方法论及其演进过程。
著名语言学家朱德熙先生称《十九世纪欧洲语言学史》为“最好的一本介绍历史比较方法的书”。

How do we manage to speak and understand language? How do children acquire these skills and how does the brain support them? These psycholinguistic issues have been studied for more than two centuries. Though many Psycholinguists tend to consider their history as beginning with the Chomskyan "cognitive revolution" of the late 1950s/1960s, the history of empirical psycholinguistics actually goes back to the end of the 18th century. This is the first book to comprehensively treat this "pre-Chomskyan" history. It tells the fascinating history of the doctors, pedagogues, linguists and psychologists who created this discipline, looking at how they made their important discoveries about the language regions in the brain, about the high-speed accessing of words in speaking and listening, on the child's invention of syntax, on the disruption of language in aphasic patients and so much more. The book is both a history of ideas as well of the men and women whose intelligence, brilliant insights, fads, fallacies, cooperations, and rivalries created this discipline. Psycholinguistics has four historical roots, which, by the end of the 19th century, had merged. By then, the discipline, usually called the psychology of language, was established. The first root was comparative linguistics, which raised the issue of the psychological origins of language. The second root was the study of language in the brain, with Franz Gall as the pioneer and the Broca and Wernicke discoveries as major landmarks. The third root was the diary approach to child development, which emerged from Rousseau's Emile. The fourth root was the experimental laboratory approach to speech and language processing, which originated from Franciscus Donders' mental chronometry. Wilhelm Wundt unified these four approaches in his monumental Die Sprache of 1900. These four perspectives of psycholinguistics continued into the 20th century but in quite divergent frameworks. There was German consciousness and thought psychology, Swiss/French and Prague/Viennese structuralism, Russian and American behaviorism, and almost aggressive holism in aphasiology. As well as reviewing all these perspectives, the book looks at the deep disruption of the field during the Third Reich and its optimistic, multidisciplinary re-emergence during the 1950s with the mathematical theory of communication as a major impetus. A tour de force from one of the seminal figures in the field, this book will be essential reading for all linguists, psycholinguists, neuroscientists, and psychologists with an interest in language.

《语言理论与语言学方法论》在把语言学的历史、理论、方法有机结合起来的基础上，从总体上阐述了不同语言学流派的语言观特色和方法论贡献。内容涉及历史比较语言学，洪堡特语言学说，索绪尔语言学说，法兰西社会心理学派，结构主义语言学的布拉格学派、哥本哈根学派、美国描写语言学派，生成语言学，社会语言学，系统功能语言学，认知语言学等领域。