L’insinuarsi della filosofia nelle pagine dell’ARCHIVIO GLOTTOLOGICO ITALIANO

A thorough inter-reading through the 150 years of AGI’s lifetime allows firstly a systematic overview of the programmatic texts which open and guide its development: from glottology, philology, dialectology to begin with (1873), along the two-fold articulation in romance studies and IE inquiries, and secondly to the signpost to literary language and culture (1910). The language issue and the newly established Italian political culture hint at the observation that scientific work is a sort of civil obligation. Neogrammarians and Neolinguists are the main terms of comparison up to WW2. Focus is then placed on American and general linguistics, but the main topic remains historical linguistics, which does not only mean the history of comparative grammar. Contemporary theories, with their own principles and methods, are welcome to be tested or applied to language facts. Where, then, is philosophy? In the epistemological contributions, in semantics, terminological investigations regarding key words in philosophy and language sciences, in their own philosophy of science. Theory of language, rather than philosophy, is present and readily recognisable. We do not simply confront an overturning of positivism, idealism, realism or cognitivism, as fashionable trends, but provide a serious treatment with broad, remote areas of linguistic expressions, which resists oversimplification and is now eager to host relevant sources of inspiration. A highly estimable mutual exchange.