•J.G. Herder:
believed that language and thought are inseparable. His teachings serve as a strong precedent to the teachings
of Benjamin Whorf and
Noam Chomsky (generative grammar).
•James Harris:
held an Aristotelian view of grammar (i.e. he believed in language universals); he was also aware of the
differences between the world's
languages.
•James Burnett
(Monboddo): looked for evidence of a
proto-language by studying
the languages of 'primitive' peoples.
•Sir William Jones: a judge in the British Royal Court in India; in 1786, he wrote a paper to the Royal Asiatic Society in
Calcutta about the
historical connection between Sanskrit and Western European languages such as Greek, the Romance Languages, and the
Germanic Languages.