Voyage into Language: Space and the Linguistic Encounter, 1500-1800

In this study, author David Paxman demonstrates that ordinary spatial concepts, together with the changing sense of the earth's space brought about by exploration, navigation, and mapping exerted a strong influence on linguistic thought. Paxman illuminates how our thinking about language as a whole, as well as our exploration of languages, developed in ways parallel to our thinking about and exploration of the space we live in, our planet. To the factors to which scholars have generally attribute language thought in the early modern period-the refinement of tools in phonetics, grammar and linguistic history, and the increasing exposure to diverse languages as the world was explored and colonized-Paxman here adds another: spatial exploration and the novel application of spatial concepts. He suggests that language was an unfamiliar space that Europe entered and navigated, facing challenges similar to those posed by terrestrial navigation.