University of Calcutta

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History

Year of Establishment : 1904

History of the department : The Department of Linguistics is a heritage department in the University of Calcutta with its magnificent legacy continuing more than a century. This Department, formerly known as the Department of Comparative Philology, was established by Sir Asutosh Mookerjee in 1904. Initially, the thrust area was Comparative and Historical Linguistics. Thereafter, various domains like Descriptive Linguistics, Generative Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Psycholinguistics and several areas of Applied Linguistics were also included in the syllabus in addition to the traditional orientation of Comparative and Historical Linguistics. Mr. Harinath De, the genius and a polyglot was appointed the first lecturer of the department in 1907. The first M.A. in Comparative Philology was Prof. Muhammad Shahidullaha in 1912. The Department experienced its flavour of academic brilliance by the glorious presence of outstanding personalities like Harinath De, Otto Strauss, Prof. I.J.S. Taraporewala, Suniti Kumar Chatterji, Sukumar Sen and so on. The Department, in the year 2015, organised an International Seminar to commemorate the 125th Birth centenary of Prof. Suniti Kumar Chatterji, doyen of Indian Linguistics.

At present, the department has set up a strong interdisciplinary network with a number of fields such as literature, social sciences and technology. The teachers of the department regularly contribute their valuable research articles to national and international journals and edited books. Some of the faculty members regularly take part in national and international seminars and conferences. They are also engaged in writing consolidated reports of various mother tongues under the language survey initiatives of the Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt. of India. Some of the teachers of the department are also engaged in language documentation projects sponsored by the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore. Some of the faculty members have taken up major projects funded by UGC and are working in collaboration with faculty members of University of Malaya, Malyasia and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Most of the faculty members teach in various departments in this and other institutes as extension teaching.