Wilhelm von Humboldt
• Wrote The variety of human language structure, which was later hailed by Leonard Bloomfield as 'the first great book on general
linguistics.' The book promotes
the idea that language is the product of the creativity of the human mind, and so language shouldn't be evaluated according
to antiquated ideas about
grammatical structure. "One may also see how Kantian theory was itself influential in Humboldt's thinking. Kant's theory of
perception involved sensations
produced by the external world being ordered by categories or 'intuitions' (Anschauungen) imposed by the mind, notably those of space, time, and causality. This was a universal philosophical
theory; Humboldt adapted it relativistically
and linguistically by making the innere
Sprachform of each language responsible for the ordering and categorizing
of the data of experience,
so that speakers of different languages live partly in different worlds and have different systems of thinking. One notes
the use by Humboldt of the three
verbal nouns Anschauen, Denken, and Fühlen (perception, thinking,
and feeling) in connection with the operation of language" (Robins 1997:166).