This paper explores the significant – albeit little-known – impact that physicist Albert Einstein's theory of relativity had on the development of the science of linguistics. Both Max Talmey, a physician who played a key role in the development of early twentieth-century constructed-language movements, and Benjamin Lee Whorf, who is closely associated with the notion of ‘linguistic relativity’, drew on their understanding of relativity to develop their ideas (and, in Talmey's case, also on his personal relationship with Einstein). Linguistic relativity, which posits that humans’ linguistic categories shape their perceptions of nature, has often been tied to ‘relativism’ in the social sciences and humanities. In contrast, Talmey's commitment to reformulating the language of Einsteinian relativity – especially through a constructed language he built in the 1920s and 1930s – emphasized the significance of ‘invariance’ simultaneously in the scientific doctrine and in the language in which it was discussed. The semiotic flexibility of Einstein's ‘relativity theory’ as it was widely (and wildly) appropriated outside the small community of theoretical physicists enabled the two opposing moves, while obscuring the historical linkage between physics and linguistics for both.

本文探讨了物理学家阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦的相对论对语言学发展的重大影响——尽管鲜为人知——的影响。在 20 世纪早期建构语言运动的发展中发挥关键作用的医生 Max Talmey 和与“语言相对论”概念密切相关的 Benjamin Lee Whorf 都利用他们对相对论的理解来发展他们的想法（在塔尔梅的案例中，还有他与爱因斯坦的个人关系）。语言相对论假设人类的语言类别塑造了他们对自然的看法，通常与社会科学和人文科学中的“相对主义”联系在一起。相比之下，Talmey' 他致力于重新表述爱因斯坦相对论的语言——尤其是通过他在 1920 年代和 1930 年代建立的一种建构语言——同时强调了“不变性”在科学学说和讨论它的语言中的重要性。爱因斯坦的“相对论”在符号学上的灵活性，因为它在理论物理学家的小团体之外被广泛（和疯狂地）采用，使得这两种相反的运动成为可能，同时掩盖了物理学和语言学之间的历史联系。