anomalistn.
/əˈnɒml̩ɪst/, U.S. /əˈnɑmələst/ Linguistics and Philosophy.
An adherent of the view (particularly associated with certain Greek grammarians supposed to have lived between the 2nd cent. b.c. and 1st cent. a.d.) that language operates in an arbitrary and anomalous manner, rather than according to a strict logic and structure. Opposed to analogist n.1 2b.It has been asserted by some that the controversy between analogists and anomalists was fabricated by the Roman scholar Varro (see D. J. Taylor in Historiographia Linguistica 13 (1986) 175–190).
ΘΚΠ
the mind > language > [noun] > origin of language > theories of > adherent of
pooh-pooher1841
anomalist1854
nativist1924
1854 C. C. J. Bunsen Outl. Philos. Universal Hist. I. 40 According to one [school], language existed by nature (objectively); according to the other, by a positive, arbitrary act of man (subjectively). The first were, according to another term, analogists; the others, anomalists.
1893 Expositor 7 285 The Hebrews attached a mystic importance even to the physiological qualities of sound. In their view of the nature of language they were analogists not anomalists.
1927 PMLA Mar. 226 The ‘Anomalists’ opposed the ‘Analogists’ by denying that there was any necessary connection between the word and the idea and they insisted that there could be no grammatical rules of any kind except in so far as they were consecrated by custom.
1998 Word 49 90 Indo-Europeanists should note that there are many remarkable similarities between the philosophies and theoretical views of these two schools and the analogists and anomalists in the Greek grammatical tradition.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2022).
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n.1854