School
Leiden school
Overview
The Leiden school is a school of thought in linguistics that models languages as memes or benign neurological parasites, and tries to use rigorous mathematical tools borrowed by analogy from biological evolution to model the origin and spread of language in general and specific languages in particular.
It is based at the University of Leiden, and its chief proponents are George van Driem, Frederik Kortlandt, and Jeroen Wiedenhof. The Leiden school has a significant overlap in personnel with the Himalayan Languages Project.
The Leiden school of linguistics should not be confused with the current research institute of linguistics at Leiden University, the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) or the methodology employed in the Indo-European Etymological Dictionary currently worked on at this institute.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Under the old _régime_ it was unquestionably a most serious problem to give the children a full and free use of language. The reason was obvious. The natural motive for language was seldom offered. In the pedagogical text-books language is defined as the medium of expressing thought. It becomes that, more or less, to adults with trained minds, but it hardly needs to be said that language is primarily a social thing…
John Dewey, The School and Society Being three lectures
States what Leiden school is.
In a mechanistic civilization, there is grave danger of a crude utilitarianism, which sacrifices the whole æsthetic side of life to what is called “efficiency”. Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I must confess that I view with alarm the theory that language is merely a means of communication, and not also a vehicle of beauty.
Bertrand Russell, Education and the good life
States what Leiden school is.
These languages consist of monosyllabic words which follow one another in direct succession without any intermediate inflectional elements to modify their meaning. Philologists usually call such languages 'root-languages,' because a sound complex that carries the essential meaning of a word, apart from all modifying elements, is called by their science a verbal root.
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
States what Leiden school is.
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Symbiosism.