History of Linguistics 2021

This article reconstruct the history and development of the methodology known as “of general meanings”, widely adopted in 20th century structural linguistics and grammatical semantics starting from the Thirties onwards, tracking its roots in the framework of German Allgemeine Sprachlehre and discussing the debate that it engendered within the structural paradigm, where the notions of “general” vs. “fundamental meanings” ( Gesamt - vs. Grundbedeutung ) were defined and gained currency, often mark