Publications received / Ouvrages reçus eingegangene schriften

ed. 2003 . Language Contacts in Prehistory: Studies in stratigraphy . (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 239 .) Amsterdam & Philadelphia : John Benjamins , 2003 , viii, 292 pp. [The volume derives from papers presented in the workshop on ‘Linguistic Stratigraphy and Prehistory’ which took place at the 15th International Conference on Historical Linguistics in Melbourne in August 2001. As the editor explains at the outset of his Introduction (p. 1), “Linguistic stratigraphy is the systematic investigation of the layering of grammatical and lexical material in a language or dialect which reflects its historical development and past contacts between its speakers and bearers of other linguistic and cultural traditions.” It includes contributions dealing with Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia, Oceania, Japan and Meso-America as well as Indo-European. Contributors include Christopher Ehret, Derek Nurse, Anthony Diller, Hans Schmidt, J. Marshall Unger, among others. It begins with Bernard Mees’ “Stratum and Shadow: A genealogy of stratigraphy theories from the Indo-European West”, and ends with Karin Dakin’s “Uto-Aztecan in the linguistic stratigraphy of Mesoamerican prehistory”. The back matter consists of a “Language Index” only (288–292).]

(ed.) History of Linguistics 1999: Selected Papers from the Eighth International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences, 14–19 September 1999, Fontenay-St.Cloud . (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 99 .) Amsterdam & Philadelphia : John Benjamins , 2003 , xii, 397 pp. [This volume of papers from ICHoLS VIII, held in September 1999 in Fontenay-aux-Roses at the outskirts of Paris, has finally become available. Nowhere in his Foreword (ix-xii) does the editor give any explanation for this considerable delay. Instead, he celebrates the meeting as having been “marked by the coming to the fore of a new generation of historians of the language sciences” which is [l]ess fascinated by the historiographic myths of the 1970s [no example is provided]” so that “the future will probably show that this [meeting] marks the colloquium’s most important scientific event for the future of the discipline” (p. x). Out of the close to 100 papers presented at ICHoLS VIII altogether 25 have been selected, 16 written in French, the remaining ones are in English. Very few authors represent the ‘new generation’; Didier Samain’s “La construction du metalangage dans le premier tiers du XXe siècle” (349–362) is a notable exception. The papers are presented in chronological order, beginning with such contributions as “A Priscian commentary attributed to [Johannes Scotus (c.810–877), who called himself] Eriugena” by Anneli Luhtala (19–30) and “Les figures dans le Doctrinale d’Alexandre de Villedieu et le Graecismus d’Évrard de Béthune” by Anne Grondeux (31–46), and ending with such papers as “La médecine au chevet du langage: Phonation, aphasie et délire (1850–1910)” by Gabriel Bergounioux (333–347) and “Interceptions et interférences: La notion de ‘code’ entre cryptologie, télécommunications et les sciences du langage” (363–372) by Johannes Fehr. Among the other contributors we find ‘household names’ in linguistic historiography such as (to give them in alphabetical order) Manuel Breva-Claramonte, Bernard Colombat, David Cram, Beatriz Garza Cuarón, Gerda Haßler, Werner Hüllen, Pierre Larcher, and Hans-J. Niederehe. From the younger cohorts we find contributions from Tinatin Bolkvadze, Bethaia Mariani, Irina Vilkou-Pustovaïa, Andrew Robert Linn, Claudia Stancati, among others. There is an “Index of Names” (389–393) with life-dates of most historical figures supplied – those of William Bullokar (c.1531–1609), Jacques Cartier (1494–c.1556), Comenius (i.e., Jan Amos Komenský, 1592–1670), Claude Duret (1565–1611), Rudolf Eucken (1846–1929), Georg Friedrich Grotefend (1775–1853), Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro (1735–1809), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), Émile Littré (1801–1881), and others ought to have been added – followed by an “Index of Terms” (394–397). – A first critical review, by Stijn Verleyen, appeared in LINGUIST List:, Vol. 14–2290, 1 Sept. 2003.]

eds. 2002 . “Arier” und “Draviden”: Konstruktionen der Vergangenheit als Grundlage für Selbstund Fremdwahrnehmungen Südasiens . (= Neue Hallesche Berichte: Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte und Gegenwart Südindiens. Im Auftrag der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, herausgegeben von Michael Bergunder und Helmut Obst, 2 .) Halle/Saale : Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle [ address: Franckeplatz 1, Haus 37, D-06110 Halle (Saale), Germany ], 250 pp. ISBN 3-931479-34-X ; € 11 ( PB ). [The book brings together revised versions of papers presented jointly at an interdisciplinary meeting on the subject signaled in the book’s title held at the institutes of Indian and South Asian studies and of ecumenical and religious sciences of Martin Luther University in Halle in October 1999. From the contents: “Die Entdeckung von ‘arisch’ und ‘dravidisch’ in Britisch-Indien” (translated from the English by the first editor) by Thomas R[oger] Trautmann, author of the ground-breaking book Aryans and British India (Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press, 1997); “Bild, Abbild, Mythos – die Arier in den Arbeiten deutscher Indologen” – essentially on the rather diverse work of three German Indologists: Heinrich Zimmer (1851–1910 [not 1902!]), Leopold von Schroeder (1851–1920), and Johannes Hertel (1872–1955) and their particular view of India, its culture, and archaeological and linguistic history – by Maria Schetelich; “Populär-versionen des ‘Ariertums’ in Indien um die Wende zum 20. Jahrhundert” by Hans Harder, which shows that the ‘invasion debate’ or, rather, its denial has a considerable, popular ancestry; “Umkämpfte Vergangenheit: Anti-brahmanische und hindu-nationalistische Rekonstruktionen der frühen indischen Religionsgeschichte” by Michael Bergunder, which also addresses various ideological and political issues in present-day India (which the present writer has recently written about as well), a subject flanked by two other papers in the same volume, but taking different positions: “Disput um die Vergangenheit: Indoarische Ursprünge und moderner nationalistischer Diskurs” (translated from the English by Robert Siegfried) by Edwin Bryant and “Wem gehört die Vergangenheit? Früh-und Vorgeschichte und indische Selbstwahrnehmung” by Hans Henrich Hock, which is also available in an earlier English version, “Whose Past Is It? Prehistory, early history and self-identification in modern South Asia”, Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 30:2.51–75. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois, 2000. Most of the contributions are well researched and scholarly, but one regrets the frequent reduction of first names of authors to initials, the omission of names of publishers, the absence of life-dates of historical persons from the 18th and 19th centuries whose work is discussed. At this time and age no academic book should be allowed to be devoid of any index.]

Bibliographie Linguistique de l’année 1998 et compléments des années précédentes / Linguistic Bibliography for the Year 1998 and supplements for previous years Edited by Mark Janse & Sijmen Tol with the assistance of Kuniko Forrer & Theo Horstman [ and a number of international contributors – see pp. v-vii , for their listing ]. Dordrecht – Boston – London : Kluwer Academic Publishers , 2002 , c , 1,466 pp. [This is another fat BL volume that we have come used to see on library shelves. The present one carries a total of 20,743 entries, which makes it about the regular size since the mid-1980s. Considering this number of publications in linguistics within one year, one cannot but be amazed that so much is actually being produced despite the fact that the field has changed direction toward more empirical accountability and the number of participants has certainly not increased over the years. The long-standing regret remains that BL appears so many years late. Indeed, one wishes the staff size at the BL office located in the Royal Library of the Netherlands be increased so that the delay could be halved. BL remains by far the most sizable and still the most important bibliographical sourcebook in the field and – what is also important – it is portable and can be perused at candle light. The full “Index of names” (1299–1466) also includes references to book reviews, a useful feature introduced a number years ago; it also recognizes the important service to the profession that reviews can be. (The page references to these reviews are given in italics.) Given the breadth of the subjects, areas, and periods covered by historiographers, users of the BL interested in linguistic historiography will appreciate that the History of Linguistics (HoL) section continues to be subdivided into a variety of subsections from “Western traditions” more generally via “Antiquity”, “Middle Ages”, etc. down to “Non-Western traditions”, “Indian tradition” as well as “Arab tradition”, areas in which scholarship has continued to be sizable. The day that the History of Linguistics in China will require an extra subsection rather than be listed under “Non-Western traditions” may not be too far off. However, the presence of a History of Linguistics (HoL) section should not prevent historians of linguistics from consulting other sections in BL, such as the one inscribed “Festschriften/Mélanges in honorem” and those listing congress reports as well as the general subsections in sections devoted to specific language fields or preceding (or sometimes even dispersed within) those devoted to general linguistic theory and philosophy of language, not to mention the “Biographical data” section (pp. 102–119) counting 442 entries altogether), which carries accounts of the life and work of scholars in the language sciences, bibliographies, obituaries, testimonials, Grußadressen, and the like. Another more recent – and welcome – feature maintained in the HoL section is the regular addition of life-dates of authors in entries on individual authors wherever available. We must remain grateful for the existence of such a valuable reference tool, especially those who are editors and otherwise bibliographically minded.]

. 2002 . Uvod v romanskoto ezikoznanie [ Introduction to Romance linguistics ]. 2nd rev. and enlarged ed. Sofia : “Paradigma” , 143 pp. + 8 unnumbered pp.; ISBN 954-9536-34-3 . [Like the earlier textbook, the present version includes a ‘Brief survey of the history of Romance linguistics’ (101–123), a select, classified bib. (125–143), but no index. Sandwiched between the historical overview and the bib. are 8 pages reproducing portraits of the main figures in Romance linguistics from Friedrich Diez (1794–1876) to Iorgu Iordan (1888–1986) as well as two maps (taken from Rebecca Posner’s 1996 The Romance Languages) illustrating the spread of these languages and the title page of the 1998 volume of Revue de Linguistique Romane.]

eds. 2003 . Word: A cross-linguistic typology . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , xiii, 290 pp. ISBN 0-521-81899-0 ( HB ), $60.00 . [The volume brings together revised versions of ten out of sixteen presentations given at the International Workshop organized at the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology directed by the two editors, and held at La Trobe University at the periphery of Melbourne during 7–12 August 2000. To this, the editors have added a substantive introduction, “Word: A typological framework” (1–41), in which the concept of ‘word’, which in European linguistic tradition appears to have largely been taken as a conceptual term requiring hardly a definition, does not account for the diversity actually found in the languages of the world. In nine individual chapters authors liked tike the editors themselves, John Henderson, Ulrike Zeshan, Knut J Olawski, Alice C. Harris, and Brian Joseph analyze the understanding of ‘word’ (if it actually exists in the languages concerned) Tariana, an Amazonian language; Cup’ik (or Yup’ik), a Central Alaskan language; Jarawara, a dialect of Madi in Southern Amazonia (spoken by some 150 native speakers); Dagbbani, a Gur language of Northern Ghana (spoken by some 500,000 people); Georgian, a South Caucasian language, and Modern Greek. The final chapter/contribution is by Peter H. Matthews which offers a discussion of “What can we conclude [from the various presentations]? (266–281). Index of authors (282–284), of languages and language families (285–287), and of subject and terms (288–290).]

. 2003 . Nomaden, Indogermanen, Invasionen: Zur Entstehung eines Mythos . (= Orientwissenschaftliche Hefte 5/2003 = Mitteilungen des Sonderforschungsbereichs “Differenz und Integration”, 3 .) Halle/Saale : Orientwissenschaftliches Zentrum der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg , v , 1301 pp. , 20 pp. of illustrations. ISSN 1617-2469 . [In this book, the author, an archaeologist, has brought together his main arguments – expressed in many papers and book reviews for more than a dozen years (his actual publishing record goes back to at least 1966), his reasons for rejecting the popular and widely accepted view according to which the Indo-European people had migrated from the Pontic region north of the Caucasus to Europe, a view first advanced by Otto Schrader (1855–1919) in 1883 and promoted (without acknowledgment) by Marija Gimbutas (1921–1994) one hundred years later, and which has become fairly widely accepted among Indo-Europeanists in Europe and the United States, in particular by Winfred P. Lehmann (b.1916) and the late Edgar C. Polomé (1920–2000) and many of their students. Actually, H. only refers to Ernst Wahle (1889–1981), Hermann Güntert (1886–1948), and a certain C. Schuchhardt in his 1918 book Alteuropa (5th ed., Berlin 1944). (Regrettably, H. still adheres to the deplorable German custom of initializing first names and omitting names of publishers.) The study consist of two main parts, a survey of what the author regards as the traditional views which could be traced back to the Romantics (3–48) and a discussion of what he entitles “Zum gegenwärtigen Forschungsstand” (49–75). There follow a concluding section III, “Auswertung und Bedeutung der Ergebnisse für Fragen der Ethnogenese der Völker Europas” (77–82) and five short supplements (83–98), in which individual hypotheses are discussed. Rich bib. (99–130) and 34 illustrations [133-[152], mostly archaeological in nature.]

. 2002 . Slavjanitei slavjanskata filologija: Ocˇerk po istorija na slavistikata i bălgaristikata ot vtorata polovina na XIX do nacˇaloto na XXI vek [ The Slavs and Slavic philology: An outline of the history of Slavic and Bulgarian studies from the 2nd half of the 19th until the beginning of the 21st century ]. Plovdiv : Plovdivsko universitetsko izdadelstvo “Paisij Xilendarski” , 847 pp. [Already in 1980, Kucarov had published a 176-page monograph on the subject under the title of Uvod v slavjanskata filologija: Ezikovedska slavistika [An introduction to Slavic philology: Linguistic Slavistics] (Sofia: Sofijski universitet ‘Kliment Ohridski”), which included a brief history of Slavic studies until the 1920s. The present, much more voluminous work covers subjects such as Slavdom today (population size, territorial distribution, historical development. administrative and cultural centres), Slavic studies in Bulgaria as well as in the all the other Slavic lands of the East, West, and South of Europe. It also surveys international congresses devoted to Slavic studies, first published in Săpostavitelno Ezikoznanie / Contrastive Linguistics 1999, No.1. 112–157. The volume is rounded out by a detailed ‘index nominum’ (807–846). There are bibliographical footnotes and also individual bibliographies appended to each chapter. – Jivco Boyadjiev (Sofia).]

. 2003 . Linguistics: A very short introduction . Oxford & New York : Oxford University Press , [ ix, 134 pp. in-16º; illustr. ISBN 0-19-280148-1 ; £6.77; $9.95 ( PB ). [Part of a recently launched OUP series of introductory texts with the educated public in mind, the present booklet is attractively produced and inexpensive. It carries endorsements from Martin Maiden (Oxford), Mark Aronoff (Stony Brook, N. Y.), and Andrew Linn (Sheffield). The (Indo-European) historical(-comparative) portions (30–41, 45–59) – no doubt Anna Morpurgo Davies had a hand in the latter – are particularly satisfying, given that they are given short shrift in almost all books listed under “Further reading” (127–129), with the exception of Robert S. K. Beekes’ Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1995). (M’s use of BP, meaning “before the present” [p. 49 and elsewhere], strikes the present writer as odd; at least in the Western tradition, B. C. and A.D are known terms, irrespective of personal belief.) Apart from a number of illustrations (scripts, maps, etc.), the booklet also carries full-page photographs of Henry Sweet, Daniel Jones, Saussure, Chomsky, and, incidentally (p. 17), of the author himself illustrating “Come on! Hurry up!” in sign language.]

ed. 2002 . Language in South Africa . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , xvii, 485 pp. ISBN (HB) 0-521-79105-7 ; $75.00 . [The volume is a revised and updated version of a book first published in 1995 (Cape Town: David Philip) under the more descriptive title Language and Social History: Studies in South African sociolinguistics (cf. Introduction, p. 7). The 24 contributions/chapters (of which there are three by the editor, a ‘sociolinguistic overview’ of South Africa and two dealing with Indian languages, their decline and shift) are organized under 3 major main headings: I, “The Main Language Groupings” (8 articles), II, “Language Contact” (13 articles), dealing with such subjects as piginization, lexical borrowing, code-switching, language shift, gender, and sociolinguistic codes, and III, “Language Planning, Policy and Education” (3 contributions), devoted to language policies concerning linguistic education and multilingualism. Contributors include Paul T. Roberge, Roger Lass, Robert K. Herbert, Gerald L. Stone, J. Keith Chick as well as Vivian de Klerk, David Gough, Sarah Murray, Kathleen Heugh, and others, including a certain Dumisani Krushchev Ntshangase, who discusses language practices in Soweto (407–415). Index of names (476–479), languages (479–481), and subjects (482–485).]

. 2003 . Anthroplogie im Sprachdenken des 18. Jahrhunderts: Die Berliner Preisfrage nach dem Ursprung der Sprache (1771) . (= Studia Linguistica Germanica, 67 .) Berlin & New York : Walter de Gruyter , xiii, 656 pp. ISBN 3-11-017518-5 ( HB ), € 138 . [This massive doctoral dissertation submitted at the University of Potsdam in 2001 (thesis supervisor: Gerda Haßler; external examiners: Lia Formigari, Rome, and Hans-Josef Niederehe, Trier) covers largely familiar ground (cf. the work of the late Hans Helmut Christmann, Ulrich Ricken, and others of the 1970s and 1980s, but provides additional (including primary) materials, for instance in Section 2.2 “Präsentation des archivalischen Fundus” (100–167), which also reproduces selections from the original submissions (123–167), which are housed in the archives of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. According to the author, Allan Dickson Meggill’s 1974 Columbia University dissertation The Enlightenment Debate on the Origin of Language is of particular interest for her own work as it points, like Hans Aarsleff’s article of the same year, to the importance of Condillac’s sensualist conception of language to Herder’s argument. Before the author arrives at a critical analysis of Herder’s Ursprung der Sprache (1771), namely, in the last main section of the final chapter, “Zu herausragenden Exponenten der Berliner Sprachursprungsdiskussion”, which incudes in particular the work of the Spaniard Francesco Soave (1743–1806) and the writings of Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791) – Neis offers in Chapter 1, “Zum aktuellen Forschungsstand und zur Entwicklung der Sprachursprungsfrage bis 1769” (9–69) a tour d’horizon of the subject that begins with the Tower of Babel story and Plato’s Cratylus. Chapter 2, “Institutionelle Grundlagen – die Frage nach dem Ursprung der Sprache im Kontext der Berliner Akademie” (70–182), traces the reasons why the Academy attached so much importance to this question. Central to the book is Chapter 3, “Topoi und charakteristische Argumentationsstrukturen [i]n den Berliner Preisbewerbungsschriften” (183–429!), which deals with questions such as animal language, language acquisition theories, feral children, and the like as well as with the discussion of Rousseau’s Discours […] de l’inégalité parmi les hommes (1756) – the author has the irritating habit to frequently refer to modern editions without indicating the original year of publication (not to mention the original place of publication and the name of the publisher) – and its impact on especially the social aspect of the debate. There is an index of biographical names (649–656), but no subject index, so that the fairly detailed table of contents (ix-xiii) must serve as a guide. In the bibliography of primary sources (614–648) one misses, among others, Paul B. Salmon’s important article “Also Ran: Some rivals of Herder in the Berlin Academy’s 1770 essay competition on the Origin of Language”, HL 16:1/2.25–48 (1989), and also Robin N. Campbell & Robert Grieve’s “Royal Investigations of the Origin of Language”, HL 9:1/2.43–74 (1982). One looks in vain for Georgia Veldre’s (1999) study referred to on page 13, too.]

. 2003 . Historiographie und Narration: Metahistoriographische Aspekte der Wissenschaftsgeschichtsschreibung der Linguistik . Seoul : Sowadalmedia ; Tübingen : Gunter Narr (in Kommission) , 187 pp. ISBN 3-8233-6004-3 . [Ever since his 1981 Habilitationsschrift, published in 1982 as Untersuchungen zur Historiographie der Linguistik: Struktur – Methodik – theoretische Fundierung (Tübingen: Gunter Narr), the author (b.1943) has paid particular attention to philosophical-theoretical and methodological questions in linguistic historiography. The present volume brings together papers that had been published in at times less than easily accessible places, wrought together into a book that has the following two major parts: I, “Grundzüge einer narrativen Konzeption von Sprachwissenschafts-geschichtsschreibung” (4 chapters); and II, “Modelle zur Bildung analog-narrativer Verknüp-fungsrelationen in der Diskussion” (two chapters, one devoted to the issue of ‘progress’, the other to the subject of ‘research program’). The back matter consists of a bib. (153–185), which includes a representative list of Schmitter’s writings (178–180) but also lists, strangely enough, the following individual volumes of the Bibliographie linguistique for the years 1939–1947, 1948, 1952, 1957, 1962, 1967, 1972, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, and 1997 (156–157), which have been consulted for the statistics concerning the increase in historio-graphical publications (15–17). There is no index whatsoever. The final page 187 merely lists the location of the 13 tables found throughout the book.]

. 2003 . Mithridates im Paradies: Kleine Geschichte des Sprachdenkens . München : H. C. Beck , 356 pp. ISBN 3-406-502008 . [This provocative and erudite book would very much like to revive the idea of polyglossia so much associated with the King of Pontus, Mithradates, and which the Swiss Protestant Conrad Gesner (1516–1565) revived in 1555 with his work Mithridates sive de differentiis linguarum. Indeed, it is a plea for the strengthening of the use of cultural languages other than English and the diversity so desirable for the retention of literature and knowledge in general of ‘Old Europe’. The book has the following major chapters, each subdivided into many sections and subsections: 1, “Paradies: Vom ersten Wort zur Sprache des Herzens”; 2, “Florenz: Poetische Welt-Sprache und neue Grammatik des Paradises”; 3, “Bologna: Paradise Lost. Welche Sprache für Europa?”; 4, “London – Paris: Neue Paradise oder Reinigung des Wissens und der Sprache”; 5, “London – Paris – Neapel: Das Reich des Menschen und die Sprache”; 6, “Riga – Tegel – Cambridge, Mass.: Der beste Spiegel des menschlichen Geistes”, and the concluding one, 7, “Cambridge – Schwarzwald: Arbeiten, Spiele und Feiern der Sprache”. The back matter consists of – happily a small number of (altogether 85 and few of them necessitate flipping between narrative and notes) – endnotes (329–333); a bib. (334–351), and an index of biographical names, not a general one as the term ‘Register’ may have suggested (352–356); however, the fine-grained table of contents (7–8) may serve as a subject index. – For a first review, see Wolfgang Frühwald, “Scheidungswaise Goethe. Muntermacher für abtörnende Literaturwissenschaften: Jürgen Trabant rettet die Dichter”, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, S. L17.]

. 2003 . Sarmatia Europiana oder Sarmatia Asiana? Polen in den deutschsprachigen Druckwerken des 17. Jahrhunderts . 2nd ed. Toruń : Wydawnisctwo Uniwersitetu Mikołaja Kopernika , 271 pp.; many illustrations . [This dense (heavily footnoted) study, the author’s Habilitationsschrift, analyzes a considerable amount of print material (books as well as much smaller texts that were widely distributed or sold at the Leipzig and Fankfurt book fairs) usually published in (mainly) German-speaking cities, including Danzig, Elbing and Toruń (German name: Thorn), but also Cologne, Frank-furt/Main, Leipzig and other places; cf. the detailed list of “Zeitgenössische Druckwerke” (203–223). It is the author’s goal to distill from the often political literature providing information on Poland and Polish manners to travelers, merchants as well as agents a picture of how the country was seen by outsiders, a number of which had been residing in Poland for a variety of reasons, personal, commercial or political. The book has the following main chapters, each of which has between six and nine subsections: 1, “Die Darstellung der polnischen Gesellschaft des 17. Jahrhunderts in der zeitgenössischen deutschsprachigen Reiseliteratur” (7–81); 2, “Presseprototypen und Flugschriften in der Kommunikation des 17. Jhs. in Polen” (83–129), and 3, “Die historischen und rechtshistorischen Werke” (131–171). An appendix carries selections from primary sources and political pamphlets, including reproductions of handwritten material. The German summary (191–196) is followed by a Polish version (197–200). Bib. of secondary sources (225–250); index of personal names and place names (251–267), but not of subjects.]