Rechte Spalte

Background

The inspiration for a Europe-wide perspective in linguistics stems from the conviction of a handful of researchers that the national-philologies are inadequate to encompass European languages in an overall European framework. The over-theoretical orientation in general linguistics had become too abstract for a modernisation and Europeanisation of linguistics in the mid-1990s. Thus the term Eurolinguistics was created and a Europe-wide scope began to gain ground. Through Balkan studies, the Sprachbund-research and, last but not least, the rise of modern contact linguistics, it was but a short step to Eurolinguistics.