Antiquarianism and abduction: charles vallancey as harbinger of indo-european linguistics

Abstract

Scholars generally dismiss the ideas of the eighteenth-century founder of the Royal Irish Academy, Charles Vallancey, who argued for links between ancient Irish, Phoenician, and Scythian languages and cultures. Vallancey's antiquarian writings were widely known at the time and impacted upon thinkers such as William Jones, who first correctly articulated the links between Indo-European languages. Earlier, Vallancey had hypothesized similar links and a “common source” of world languages, relying on Irish origin legends and supposed similarities between Ireland and the “Orient.” Though inaccurate, his ideas spurred fuller investigations, prompting philologers in new directions. The father of semiotics, Charles Sanders Peirce, argued for the value of speculative reasoning, outlining the logic of discovery. For Peirce “abduction” is the beginning of the scientific method, the formation of a hypothesis. Reading Vallancey's speculations as abductive suggestions accounts for his prominence at the time and asserts his influence in the history of philology and linguistics.