Linguistics from India: new ideas for modern linguistics from ancient India (LINGUINDIC)

The LINGUINDIC project is supported by a five-year ERC Starting Grant (2020-2025). The project aims to synthesize expertise and insights from the fields of ancient Indian and modern Western linguistics, to enable deeper understanding and innovation in linguistic theory.

An extensive and highly sophisticated linguistic tradition flourished in ancient India between c. 500 BC and 1700 AD. Yet modern Western linguistics has very little knowledge of the millennia of linguistic insights and analyses developed in India. The aims of this project are:

  1. To systematically explore and analyse the neglected riches of ancient Indian linguistic thought;
  2. To uncover lost linguistic insights and analyses;
  3. To build on these insights to create innovative approaches to contemporary issues in modern Western linguistics.

LINGUINDIC will bring together expertise in modern linguistics and the ancient Indian linguistic tradition, enabling innovative interactions between traditions. The project aims to be paradigm changing, redefining modern linguistics as a field which can and does draw and build on three thousand years of academic insights, rather than drawing merely on two hundred years of linguistic work in the West.

Main project website link: www.linguindic.com.