The open-access, not-for-profit 3rd ed of ‘A Short History of the Philosophies Underpinning Corpus Linguistics: From Aristotle to AI’ (Alan Partington, Bologna University) is available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19732222 This Essay traces the intertwined histories of linguistic and philosophical thought that shaped—and sometimes resisted—the emergence of corpus linguistics. From Aristotle’s conception of language as a tool for persuasion, through the different scepticisms of Plato and the Scholastics, to Humboldt’s insight that language is a ‘formative organ of thought’, it follows how successive thinkers imagined the relationship between words, meaning and knowledge. It explores the empirical turn of the Enlightenment, the structural revolutions of the nineteenth century, and the language-conscious philosophy of the twentieth, before concluding with reflections on Large Language Models and their future coexistence with Corpus Linguistics. Written for linguists, philosophers of all stripes and digital humanities alike, the Essay argues that corpus linguistics represents a continuation of a long humanist project: using authentic language data to uncover ‘non-obvious meanings’ and to refine our understanding of mind, society and communication.
Alan Scott Partington,
Prof di Linguistica inglese