Cover not available

Article published In: Historiographia Linguistica: Online-First Articles

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB

Addendum to “The distributed invention of enunciation theory”

 | University of Edinburgh
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Edinburgh.

Published online: 9 July 2026
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.00195.jos
Abstract
A significant appearance of the term enunciation in work by Vilém Mathesius (1882–1946), a founding member of the Prague Linguistic Circle, is not mentioned in Joseph, John E. 2025. “The Distributed Invention of Enunciation Theory”. Historiographia Linguistica 52:1. 1–40. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, which aims to widen the received history of enunciation theory. ‘Enunciation’ is the counterpart to ‘theme’ in . 1929. “On Linguistic Characterology with Illustrations from Modern English”. Actes du Premier Congrès International de Linguistes, du 10–15 avril 1928 à la Haye, 56–63. Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff. Repr. in A Prague School Reader in Linguistics, ed. by Josef Vachek, 59–67. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar functional sentence perspective. His equating of enunciation (replaced in the 1930s by ‘rheme’) with ‘psychological predicate’ links his use of the term to the aim in later enunciation theory of bringing speakers and speech events directly into linguistic analysis.
References (19)
References
Ammann, Hermann. 1925–1928. Die menschliche Rede: Sprachphilosophische Untersuchungen. 21 parts. Lahr im Breisgau: Moritz Schauenburg.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bally, Charles. 1932. Linguistique générale et linguistique française. Paris: Ernest Leroux.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Benveniste, Émile. 1970. “L’appareil formel de l’énonciation”. Langages 171.12–18. Repr. in Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale 21. 79–88. Paris: Gallimard, 1974. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Daneš, František. 1994. “Prague School Functionalism as a Precursor of Text Linguistics”. Cahiers de l’ILSL, no 5, L’École de Prague: L’apport épistémologique, ed. by Patrick Sériot & Mortéza Mahmoudian, 117–126. Lausanne: L’Institut de Linguistique et des Sciences du Langage de l’Université de Lausanne.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dubois, Jean. 1969. “Énoncé et énonciation”. Langages 131. 100–110. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Firbas, Jan. 1992. “The Why’s and the How’s in my Research into Functional Sentence Perspective”. Thirty Years of Linguistic Evolution: Studies in honour of René Dirven on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, ed. by Martin Pütz, 335–358. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Graffi, Giorgio. 2001. 200 Years of Syntax: A critical survey. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hajičová, Eva, Barbara Hall Partee & Petr Sgall. 1998. Topic-Focus Articulation, Tripartite Structures, and Semantic Content. Dordrecht: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Joseph, John E. 2025. “The Distributed Invention of Enunciation Theory”. Historiographia Linguistica 52:1. 1–40. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krásová, Eva. 2023. “The General Meaning as a Potential”. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 55:1. 37–54. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mathesius, Vilém. 1927. “Lingvistická charakteristika a její místo v moderním jazykozpytu” [‘Linguistic characterology and its place within modern linguistics’]. Časopis pro moderní filologii 131. 35–40.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1929. “On Linguistic Characterology with Illustrations from Modern English”. Actes du Premier Congrès International de Linguistes, du 10–15 avril 1928 à la Haye, 56–63. Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff. Repr. in A Prague School Reader in Linguistics, ed. by Josef Vachek, 59–67. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1930. “O tak zvaném aktuálním členění větném” [‘On the so-called Functional Sentence Perspective’]. Slovo a Slovesnost 51. 171–174.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Noreen, Adolf. 1923. Einführung in die wissenschaftliche Betrachtung der Sprache. Halle: Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Skalička, Vladimír. 1937. “Promluva jako lingvistický pojem (L’enunciation [sic] comme notion de la linguistique)”. Slovo a Slovestnost 31. 163–166.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Trnka, Bohumil. 1946. “Vilém Mathesius”. Časopis pro moderní filologii 391. 3–13. English trans. by Vladimir Honsa in Portraits of Linguists: A biographical source book for the history of Western linguistics, 1746–1963, vol. 21, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 474–489. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vachek, Josef. 1980. “Vilém Mathesius as Forerunner of Contrastive Linguistic Studies”. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 111, ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 5–15. Poznan: Adam Mickiewicz University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weil, Henri. 1844. De l’ordre des mots dans les langues anciennes comparées aux langues modernes: Question de grammaire générale. Paris: Joubert.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue