Linguistics as a University Subject: Early History, in Europe

Abstract

The situation at European universities changed drastically after Wilhelm von Humboldt's establishment of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-University in Berlin in the early 19th century. With the new ideals of a combination of teaching and research, and specialization in one field, universities changed and also started to grow. This was the time when modern languages started to be taught at universities and the comparison of languages became an important means of explaining the history of languages, and therefore chairs came to be established in comparative linguistics. The teaching of modern languages was also an important reason for the increased interest in language sounds and hence the creation of the subject of phonetics and establishment of chairs in the same. Still, it was not until the 20th century that chairs exclusively in general linguistics were established, and in fact most of them were only established in the second half of the century. General linguistics became part of students' education by various means, through mother tongue studies, foreign language studies, through phonetics, or through historical comparative linguistics. Until finally lectureships, chairs and departments of linguistics were created.