THE BEGINNINGS OF LINGUISTICS AT PRINCETON

The Program in Linguistics was inaugurated in the fall of 1962. However, it built upon a long tradition of linguistic and philological studies at Princeton--a tradition associated with such names as Robert K. Root and Harold H. Bender.

After World War II, as the field of linguistics continued to expand, it became clear that Princeton's efforts in this area would need to be expanded correspondingly. During the late 1950's this need was met in two ways. In successive years, outstanding linguists were invited to Princeton as visiting professors: W. Freeman Twaddell (Brown) and Henry M. Hoenigswald (U of Pennsylvania). At the same time, a number of younger scholars with training in linguistics were added to the Faculty: In 1958, Majed F. Sa'id (Arabic Linguistics); in 1959, Clarence F. Brown, Jr. (Russian Literature and Linguistics), Joseph Schraibman (Romance Literature and Linguistics, especially Spanish), and Karl D. Vitti (Romance Literature and Linguistics, especially French); and in 1960, Arash Bormanshinov (Slavic Linguistics).

Through these and more established scholars such as S.D. Atkins (Classics), J.J. Campbell (English), and R.S. Willis (Romance Languages), the way was prepared for the development of a full program of graduate studies in Linguistics. In 1960, W.G. Moulton, then Professor of Linguistics at Cornell, was brought to Princeton charged with the organization of such as program, working through an interdepartmental committee under the sponsorship of the Council of the Humanities.

The first year, five students enrolled in the graduate program, all holders of the National Defense Graduate Fellowships, now renamed the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowships and no longer offered for study in the Humanities.

The original proposal called for a small core of six course: Introduction to Linguistics, Phonetics and Phonemics, Morphology and Syntax, Dialect Geography, Field Methods, and Selected Problems in Linguistics. To these were later added two additional courses: Linguistics and Literary Criticism and Comparative Linguistics of the Indo-European Languages.

From the beginning, the Program in Linguistics was a cooperative, interdepartmental enterprise. Its interdepartmental committee not only guided the work of students in the Program, but also recommended them for admission and fellowships, approved their programs of study and research, determined the nature of their General Examination and Final Examination, and recommended them for the doctoral degree. Each student was required to do one-third of his (the Graduate School did not admit women until 1968) work in general linguistics, one-third in a specific language or language family, and one-third in related studies (other languages, or such fields as literature, philosophy, or anthropology).

Today's chiefly undergraduate program is still under the auspices of the Council of the Humanities and the direction of the following Interdepartmental Committee:  Leonard H. Babby, Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Director of the Program; Marguerite A. Browning, Council of the Humanities; Robert P. Ebert, Germanic Languages and Literatures; Robert A. Freidin, Council of the Humanities; Gilbert H. Harman, Philosophy; Joshua T. Katz, Classics; Anthony Grafton, Council of the Humanities; Scott Soames, Philosophy; Edwin S. Williams III, Council of the Humanities; Mirjam Fried, Slavic Languages and Literatures.

Graduate students in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures are able to include the study of theoretical linguistics as a component of their work towards a joint Ph.D. with the Program in Linguistics.

Language resources in the library:

The Princeton University Library owns excellent collections in many areas of language study, epecially in the classical languages of Latin and Greek; in Indo-Aryan languages, especially Sanskrit; in Near Eastern Languages, especially Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish; in Slavic Languages, especially Russian and Czech; in Germanic languages, especially German; in the Romance Languages, especially French, Spanish, and Italian; in Far Eastern languages, especially Chinese and Japanese.

The collections in theoretical linguistics are less strong due to the the fact that, for most of its history, the linguistics program has been offered exclusively on the undergraduate level.

Superior collections in linguistics at other institutions include those at Harvard, MIT, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, Berkeley.

This history of linguistics at Princeton is derived from documents from Box 3 (Academic Departments and Programs: Linguistics) housed at the University Archives, Mudd Manuscript Library. Gabriella Eggers, Program Manager in the Program in Linguistics, supplied some of the more recent facts.