Abstract

Karl Buhler was a professor of psychology at the University of Vienna when, in 1933, he published "The Axiomatization of the Language Sciences." This book is a translation of that essay, together with an opening, expository and critical essay by Innis of about equal length which deals with Buhler's total language theory. Buhler's work is not well known among English speaking philosophers and psychologists of language, and this exposition and translation provides a proper introduction to him. It is an appropriate project both because his work had a marked influence with some well known German philosophers of language, particularly Ernst Cassirer, and because his own views on language and its characteristic structure are consonant with many aspects of recent semiological and phenomenological views of language. Thus, at the very least this volume provides a missing historical link designed to remind some linguistic researchers of a past they might not know they possess.