The Laboratory for the History of Linguistic Theories (HTL) is launching a new research seminar in collaboration with the inIdEx EFL project. Entitled “Paradigms: History and Epistemology” this seminar is part of EFL’s Work Package 5, “Linguistic Diversity as a Testing Ground for Theories of Language.”
Schedule
Opening session: January 30, 2026
Duration: 2025-2027
Scientific direction
Lionel Dumarty and Margherita Farina, both EFL members and CNRS Research Fellows at the HTL laboratory.
The scientific coordinators
Lionel Dumarty specializes in Ancient Greek grammar. He published the critical edition of Apollonius Dyscolus’s Treatise on Adverbs (Vrin, 2021) and edited the collective volume Ideal Language, Real Language (Brepols, 2024) on the standardization of classical languages from Antiquity to the Middle Ages.
Margherita Farina, recipient of the 2021 CNRS Bronze Medal, works on the Syriac grammatical tradition and its interactions with Greek and Arabic traditions. She edited the volume Syriac Authors and Their Language (Geuthner, 2018).
The two researchers recently co-edited a special issue of Histoire Épistémologie Langage on “The Abbasid Connection: Circulation of Linguistic Theories among Greek, Syriac, and Arabic Scholars from the 8th to the 10th Century” (2024).
Core themes
The concept of paradigm—central in linguistics to designate inflectional models, theoretical frameworks, or more broadly grammatical classification systems—will be examined from both historical and epistemological perspectives. The seminar will explore how different grammatical traditions (Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic) have constructed and used the notion of paradigm to organize and transmit their knowledge about languages.
This approach builds on previous HTL seminars conducted in collaboration with EFL, which have focused on “the rule in grammar” (2020-2022) and “annotation between the Middle Ages and Modernity” (2022-2024).
Further information
Full program and participation details: https://htl.cnrs.fr/seminaire-htl-inidex-efl-2025-2027/