Most cited papers in Historical Linguistics and Language Studies
What are the most cited papers in Historical Linguistics and Language Studies?
The most cited paper in Historical Linguistics and Language Studies is "Language, Context, and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective" (Charles F. Meyer, Μ. Α. Κ. Halliday, Ruqaiya Hasan, 1987), with 4,157 citations. Next come "The meaning of ‘meaning’" (3,774) and "Rethinking Linguistic Relativity" (2,758).
Showing 50 of 100 papers. Every paper with more than 295 citations is listed.
| # | Paper | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Language, Context, and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective Charles F. Meyer, Μ. Α. Κ. Halliday, Ruqaiya Hasan · TESOL Quarterly | Jun 1987 | 4,157 |
| 2 | The meaning of ‘meaning’ Hilary Putnam · Cambridge University Press eBooks | 12 Jan 2010 | 3,774 |
| 3 | Rethinking Linguistic Relativity Celia Roberts · International Journal of Bilingualism | Sep 1997 | 2,758 |
| 4 | Discourse, Consciousness, and Time: The Flow and Displacement of Conscious Experience in Speaking and Writing Wallace Chafe | 1994 | 2,114 |
| 5 | The Sounds of the World's Languages Paul Foulkes · International Journal of Bilingualism | Mar 1997 | 1,967 |
| 6 | Impersonal Passives and the Unaccusative Hypothesis David M. Perlmutter · Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society | 25 Sep 1978 | 1,806 |
| 7 | Constructions: a new theoretical approach to language Adele Eva Goldberg · Trends in Cognitive Sciences | May 2003 | 1,795 |
| 8 | The social life of cultural value Asif Agha · Language & Communication | 23 Apr 2003 | 1,442 |
| 9 | The relation of bilingualism to intelligence. Elizabeth Peal, Wallace E. Lambert · The Psychological Monographs | 1962 | 1,377 |
| 10 | Language and communication George Armitage Miller · David Fulton Publishers eBooks | 15 Apr 2013 | 1,373 |
| 11 | Metapragmatic discourse and metapragmatic function Michael C. Silverstein · Cambridge University Press eBooks | 4 Mar 1993 | 1,347 |
| 12 | Vagueness and grammar: the semantics of relative and absolute gradable adjectives Christopher B. Kennedy · Linguistics and Philosophy | 19 Mar 2007 | 1,321 |
| 13 | Pragmatics, Modularity and Mind‐reading Dan Sperber, Deirdre Wilson · Mind & Language | 2002 | 1,305 |
| 14 | From Utterance to Text: The Bias of Language in Speech and Writing David R. Olson · Harvard Educational Review | Sep 1977 | 1,068 |
| 15 | A Cross-Linguistic Survey of the Grammaticization of Evidentiality Thomas L. Willett · Studies in Language | 1988 | 1,044 |
| 16 | Movement and Control Norbert Hornstein · Linguistic Inquiry | 1999 | 1,028 |
| 17 | Deriving Greenberg's Universal 20 and Its Exceptions Guglielmo Cinque · Linguistic Inquiry | Jul 2005 | 1,022 |
| 18 | New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind Gilbert H. Harman, Noam Chomsky · The Journal of Philosophy | May 2001 | 1,018 |
| 19 | What is the logical problem of foreign language learning? Robert Bley‐Vroman · Cambridge University Press eBooks | 29 Sep 1989 | 1,011 |
| 20 | Nominal and temporal anaphora Barbara Hall Partee · Linguistics and Philosophy | Aug 1984 | 862 |
| 21 | Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought. Gilbert H. Harman, Noam Chomsky · The Philosophical Review | Apr 1968 | 827 |
| 22 | Dialect, Language, Nation 1 Eînar Haugen · American Anthropologist | Aug 1966 | 772 |
| 23 | Incidental Vocabulary Learning by Advanced Foreign Language Students: The Influence of Marginal Glosses, Dictionary Use, and Reoccurrence of Unknown Words Jan H. Hulstijn, Merel Hollander, Tine Greidanus · Modern Language Journal | Sep 1996 | 747 |
| 24 | The Grammaticization of Passive Morphology Martín Haspelmath · Studies in Language | 1990 | 745 |
| 25 | Lexical categories verbs, nouns, and adjectives Mark C. Baker | 2003 | 743 |
| 26 | THE SEMANTICS OF DEGREE Maxwell J. Cresswell · Elsevier eBooks | 1976 | 723 |
| 27 | Universal grammar Richard Montague · Theoria | Dec 1970 | 700 |
| 28 | The Languages of Native North America M. Dale Kinkade · Journal of Linguistic Anthropology | Dec 2000 | 696 |
| 29 | Towards a theory of communicative competence Jürgen Habermas · Inquiry | 1970 | 674 |
| 30 | Historical Ontology Ian Hacking | 2002 | 666 |
| 31 | Syntactic change a minimalist approach to grammaticalization Ian Roberts, Anna Roussou | 2003 | 663 |
| 32 | Further Notes on Logic and Conversation H. P. Grice · Cambridge University Press eBooks | 5 May 2008 | 662 |
| 33 | On contact-induced grammaticalization Bernd Heine, Tania Kuteva · Studies in Language | 27 Nov 2003 | 655 |
| 34 | Exclamative clauses: At the syntax-semantics interface Raffaella Zanuttini, Paul Pörtner · Language | Mar 2003 | 649 |
| 35 | Science and Linguistics Gabriel Altmann | 1993 | 647 |
| 36 | The mirative and evidentiality Scott DeLancey · Journal of Pragmatics | Mar 2001 | 627 |
| 37 | There Is No Best Method-Why? Nayana Prabhu · TESOL Quarterly | 1990 | 608 |
| 38 | The indeterminacy of word segmentation and the nature of morphology and syntax Martín Haspelmath · Folia Linguistica | 2011 | 597 |
| 39 | Frequency vs. iconicity in explaining grammatical asymmetries Martín Haspelmath · Cognitive Linguistics | 2008 | 587 |
| 40 | The Pragmatics of What is Said François Récanati · Mind & Language | Dec 1989 | 576 |
| 41 | The Founder Principle in Creole Genesis Salikoko S. Mufwene · Diachronica | 1996 | 572 |
| 42 | Transfers of Meaning Geoffrey Nunberg · Journal of Semantics | 1995 | 536 |
| 43 | Canonical typology, suppletion, and possible words Greville G. Corbett · Language | Mar 2007 | 530 |
| 44 | The Concept of Method, Interested Knowledge, and the Politics of Language Teaching Alastair Pennycook · TESOL Quarterly | Dec 1989 | 526 |
| 45 | Number Marking and (in)Definiteness in Kind Terms Veneeta Srivastav Dayal · Linguistics and Philosophy | 20 Apr 2004 | 525 |
| 46 | On some gestures' relation to talk Emanuel A. Schegloff · Cambridge University Press eBooks | 4 Apr 1985 | 490 |
| 47 | ON CARTESIAN LINGUISTICS John J. Sullivan · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences | Apr 1977 | 462 |
| 48 | Decomposing Pronouns Rose‐Marie Déchaine, Martina E. Wiltschko · Linguistic Inquiry | Jul 2002 | 457 |
| 49 | The Macro-Sudan belt: towards identifying a linguistic area in northern sub-Saharan Africa Tom Güldemann · Cambridge University Press eBooks | 13 Dec 2007 | 457 |
| 50 | Gesture-Speech Mismatch and Mechanisms of Learning: What the Hands Reveal about a Child′s State of Mind Martha Wagner Alibali, Susan Goldin‐Meadow · Cognitive Psychology | Oct 1993 | 454 |
Citations are OpenAlex's own counts, from its 2026-09-23 snapshot, so the ranking can differ from Google Scholar or Web of Science. A paper is listed for a field when OpenAlex files it under one of the field's topics; retracted papers and papers whose citation count cannot be traced to citing works are left out, and a preprint and the article it became are shown once. Release dates are OpenAlex's: where a source gave only a month or a year, that is what is shown. How the lists are chosen.