TY - JOUR
T1 - William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) and the "Interim Period" in the history of English etymology
AU - Liberman, Anatoly
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© John Benjamins Publishing Company.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Henry Fox Talbot, the father of photography, was a polymath, and among his many publications we find works on mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, archeology, ancient history, mythology, and Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions. He was also at home in botany. In 1847 he brought out a thick book titled English Etymologies. His archive at Cambridge allows one to trace the preparatory stages for this work. Talbot's book is instructive as an example of how some talented, brilliantly educated, and industrious Englishmen in the forties of the nineteenth century went about discovering the origin of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English words. Talbot was aware of sound correspondences but did not feel bound by them. A list of his sources gives a good idea of the state of the art in England. Talbot's etymologies are interesting only from this point of view. They should be studied as we study the efforts of much earlier researchers, that is, as part of the history of science.
AB - Henry Fox Talbot, the father of photography, was a polymath, and among his many publications we find works on mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, archeology, ancient history, mythology, and Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions. He was also at home in botany. In 1847 he brought out a thick book titled English Etymologies. His archive at Cambridge allows one to trace the preparatory stages for this work. Talbot's book is instructive as an example of how some talented, brilliantly educated, and industrious Englishmen in the forties of the nineteenth century went about discovering the origin of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English words. Talbot was aware of sound correspondences but did not feel bound by them. A list of his sources gives a good idea of the state of the art in England. Talbot's etymologies are interesting only from this point of view. They should be studied as we study the efforts of much earlier researchers, that is, as part of the history of science.
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U2 - 10.1075/nowele.69.1.03lib
DO - 10.1075/nowele.69.1.03lib
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:84960395528
SN - 0108-8416
VL - 69
SP - 95
EP - 112
JO - NOWELE
JF - NOWELE
IS - 1
ER -