Thomas Harriot (1560-1621) and the English origins of Algonkian linguistics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3955031 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Vivian Salmon (Oxford, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1992 |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 25-56 |
| Publication date | 1992-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Historiographia Linguistica (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0302-5160 • E-ISSN: 1569-9781 |
| Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.1075/hl.19.1.03sal |
| OpenAlex | W2053302816 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 12 |
Thomas Harriot (1560-1621) was an outstanding mathematician and astronomer whose scientific writings - had they not been allowed to remain in manuscript - would long ago have earned for him an international esteem comparable with that of Galileo and Kepler. Only in recent decades has his status been recognised by scientists, but not, so far, by linguists. Yet he was the first English traveller to North America known to have recorded an indigenous language, for which he devised a dictionary and a phonetic alphabet. He also recorded a large number of Algonkin words during his stay in North Carolina in 1585-86, some of which are found in the account of his travels which he published in 1588, more than fifty years before Roger Williams's (1603?-1683) Key into the Language of America (1643), which has often been regarded as the first such work. The manuscripts of the dictionary and the phonetic alphabet were thought to be lost, until a few years ago a sketch of the phonetic alphabet was found; and in 1988 a detailed holograph copy came to light. The present paper, while describing this recent discovery, provides a brief survey of linguistic relationships between speakers of North Carolina Algonkin and English colonists between 1586 and the arrival of the Mayflower pilgrims in 1621, and traces Harriot's influence on later 17th-century linguists
Alphabet · Art · Art history · Astronomer · Biology · Galileo (satellite navigation · Geography · Indigenous · Linguistics · Literature · Sketch · Classics · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · History · Lexicography and Language Studies · Linguistics and language evolution · Mathematics · Philosophy
'An Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language' (1668)
John Hart's Works on English Orthography and Pronunciation (1551, 1569, 1570).
England and the discovery of America, 1481–1620
Instructions to a Colonial Surveyor in 1582
The Jamestown Voyages Under the First Charter, 1606-1609
Soul Savers, Grammarians, and the Red Man
Another Algonquian Contribution to Historical Linguistics
The Study of Thomas Harriot's Manuscripts
The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (1580-1631)
Studies in Southeastern Indian Languages
| Citations per year | 0.1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1996 - 2007 (12) |
| Highly cited | No |