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Positivism and ‘Hocus-pocus’ in Germanic and English Linguistics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Herbert Penzl
Herbert Penzl
Affiliation:
University of California at BerkeleyBerkeley, California 94720
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Abstract

The modern history of Germanic and English (synchronic and diachronic) linguistics reveals two main types of scholarly approach to language data: positivism (labelled ‘God's truth’) and theoreticism (labelled ‘hocus-pocus’ by American structuralists). The latter seems to have been dominant in the last decade.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Germanic Linguistics , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , January 1989 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Germanic Linguistics 1989

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