Publications received / Ouvrages reçus / Eingegangene Schriften

. 2001 . The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan migration debate . Oxford & New York : Oxford University Press , xi, 387 pp. ISBN 0-19-51-513777-9 , £39.50 ( HB ). [As Michael Witzel of Harvard states in his “Advance Praise” printed on the back cover of the book, the author presents “[a] balanced description and evaluation of the two century old debate dealing with the origins of the Indo-Aryan speaking peoples of South Asia”, and that he “presents both sides of the issue, that is the traditional western, linguistic, and the philological consensus of immigration from Central Asia, and the more recent Indian position that denies any immigration and that asserts an indigenous South Asian origin.” The book has the following chapters: 1, “Myths of Origin: Europe and the Aryan Homeland Quest”; 2, “Early Indian [Nationalist] Responses”; 3, “Vedic Philology”; 4, “Indo-European Comparative Linguistics: The dethronement of Sanskrit”; 5, “Linguistic Substrata in Sanskrit Texts”; 6, “Linguistic Paleontology”; 7, “Linguistic Evidence from outside of India”; 8, “The Validity of a South Asian Homeland”; 9, “The Indus Valley Civilization”; 10, “Aryans in the Archaeological Record: The evidence outside the Subcontinent”; 11, “Aryans in the Archaeological Record: The evidence inside the Subcontinent”; 12, “The Date of the Veda”, and 13, “Aryan Origins and Modern Nationalist Discourse”. General conclusion (298–310). The book obviously has its origin in a Harvard dissertation (the “Acknowledgments”, which thanks p. [vii] a number of distinguished Indo-Europeanists and/or Sanskritists like Hans Henrich Hock, Helmut [not Hermut] Scharfe, and Jay Jasanoff and a variety of other scholars like Thomas R. Trautmann and Peter Rahul Das, does not supply any specifics); it would explain at least in part the thoroughness with which the author tries to treat the various sides of the argument in each separate chapter. One wished that the altogether 224 endnotes (311–347) had been footnotes. (There is really no technical excuse for endnotes.) “Works Cited” (349–379) constitutes a rich bibliography of some 900 titles; a general index (381–387) rounds out this important study. A review of the book has appeared in Religious Studies Review 28:2 (April 2002).]

eds. 2002 . Dictionarvs familiaris et compendiosvs / Dictionnaire latin-français de Guillaume Le Talleur . (= Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis series in-4º; Lexica Latina Medii Aevi / Nouveau Recueil des Lexiques latin-français du Moyen Age, III .) Turnhout : Brepols Publishers , xxvii, 426 pp. [Back in 1994 – see HL 21.492–493 (1994) for the respective entry – these two scholars (in reverse order) had already brought out Firmini Verris Dictionarius: Dictionnaire latinfrançais de Firmin Le Ver of 1440 as the first volume in the same series. (This journal has not received a Tome II of the series, which I gather from page viii. note 1, of the present volume, was the 1998 edition by Brian Merrilees and the late Jacques Monfrin (1924–1998) of Charles du Fresne, Sieur Du Cange’s (1610–1688) famous Glossarium gallicolatinum.) The present tome constitutes an edition of a portion of MS Paris, BnF, Réserve X.15, which has long been attributed to the Rouen printer Guillaume Le Ta(i)lleur (d. ante 1494, possibly in 1491 or 1492). This carefully edited Latin-French dictionary (which Du Cange in 1678 had mentioned as one of his sources) is preceded by a detailed introduction by Brian Merrilees (vii–xxvii), which not only places the text into historical context but also the production history, the various available early printed editions, the sources used by Le Talleur, the neologisms contained in the work, the phonological, morphological and other characteristics of the text, and the specific scholarship.]

. 2003 . Philologie vs. Sprachwissenschaft: Historiographie einer Begriffsbestimmung im Rahmen der Wissenschaftsgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts . Münster : Nodus Publikationen , 180 pp. [The book – a revised version of the author’s doctoral dissertation defended on 20 December 1999 at Georgetown University, Washington, D. C. (thesis director: Kurt R. Jankowsky) – is addressed to a topic which since the emergence of (comparative-historical) linguistics as a separate discipline during the early 19th century has been the subject of debate and controversy, especially during the 1850s and 1860s, when August Schleicher (1821–1868) demanded a strict separation between philology, a Geisteswissenschaft, and linguistics or Glottik, a Naturwissenschaft. The book has five major chapters, and it appears that the author left no stone unturned in order present what he regards to be the whole story: 1, “Mehrdeutigkeit und Vagheit des Terminus Philologie: Kritik der Definition von Philologie in heutigen Standardwörterbüchern”; 2, “Idee der Philologie im historischen Überblick: Ursprung und Überlieferung der philologischen Betrachtung des Abendlandes vom klassischen Altertum bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts”; 3, “Zur genauen Bestimmung von Begriff und Aufgabe der Philologie als autonomer Einzelwissenschaft: Eine exegetische Untersuchung über die Idee der Philologie von August Friedrich Wolf [(1759–1824)] und August Boeckh [(1785–1867)]”; 4, “Philologie – Geschichte – Literatur – Sprache: Interpretation der Philologie als einer nationalen Einzelwissenschaft und ihr Beziehungsverhältniss zur Geschichts-, Literaturund Sprachwissenschaft”, and 5, “Kooperative Beziehungen zwischen Philologie und Sprachwissenschaft”, followed by “Schlussbetrachtungen: Die ‘allgemeine’ Philologie als eine Wissenschaft des Deutschen: Wissenschaftsgeschichtlicher Hintergrund der Entstehung von den ‘philologischen’ Betrachtungen der ‘deutschen’ Periode”. As the chapter headings suggest already, the author’s focus is the development of ‘Philologie’, not on the evolution of ‘Sprachwissenschaft’ and its progressive distancing from ‘Philologie’. This would explain why Schleicher, for instance, receives much less attention (3 pages) than the much more conciliatory Georg Curtius (1820–1885) who, like his one-time student Brugmann, made his early career as a specialist of Classical Greek, not as a comparative linguist (close to 7 pages altogether). This focus on ‘Philologie’ may explain why one looks in vain for a reference in the bibliography (168–176) to Anna Morpurgo Davies’ 1998 434-page book Nineteenth-Century Linguistics (London: Longman) – the Italian original appeared in 1992 already – or any of her papers in which the subject of the present book was treated. Apparently, the present writer has not published anything relevant to this topic. In lieu of a much more important subject index, the reader is left with an “Index nominum” (177–180), which yields information such as that R. R. K. Hartmann (b.1938) ‘flourished’ in 1972, Reiner Hildebrandt (b.1933) in 1975, and Fritz or Friedrich Stroh (1898–1969) in 1952. By the way, Alfred Gudemann (b.1862) perished in Theresienstadt in 1942; Father Frederick Copleston lived 1907–1977; Helmut Gipper was born in 1919, to mention one of the living.]

eds. 2003 . Linguas Gerais: Politica linguistica e catequese na America do Sul no periodo colonial . Rio de Janeiro : EdUERJ , 209 pp. ISBN 85-7511-036-5 . [As we may gather from the editors’ “Aprentação” (p. 7), the papers here included derive from a conference on the subject given in the title of the book in Rio de Janeiro, 29–30 August 2000. Apart from contributions from various institutions in Brazil, it also includes papers by scholars from Munich and Cologne. From the contents: Yonne Leite, “A Arte de gramatica da lingua mais usada na costa do Brasil e as linguas indigenas brasileiras”; Luciana Gimenes, “Fontes para a historiografia linguistica do Brasil quinhentista; Consuelo Alfaro Lagorio, “Elementos de politica linguistica colonial hispanica: o Terceiro Concilio Limense; Cristina Altman, “As linguas gerais sul-americanas e a empresa missionaria: Linguagem e representacao nos seculos XVI e XVII”; Maria Candida Barros, “Notas sobre a politica jesuitica da lingua geral na Amazonia (seculos XVII–XVIII)”; Luiz C. Borges, “A lingua geral: revendo margens em sua deriva”; Maria Carlota Rosa, “A lingua mais geral do Brasil nos seculos XVI e XVII”; Roland Schmidt-Riese, “Condicoes de mudanca em nheengatu: Pragmatica e contactos linguisticos”; Uli Reich, “Mudanca sintatica e pragmatica na Lingua Geral Amazonica (LGA): marcacao de caso e sistema pronominal”; Ruth Monserrat, “O tupi do seculo XVIII”; and Jose Ribamar Bessa Freire, “Lingua Geral Amazonica: A historia de um esquecimento”. This is a valuable collection of papers devoted to the history – and politics – of the study of Amerindian language during the 16th through 18th centuries in Brazil. Each article has its own bibliographical references. (In certain instances – cf. p. 194 – one misses the original dates of production or publication, at times even any date.) One deplores the absence of any index.]

. 2004 . History of Roget’s Thesaurus: Origins, development, and design . Oxford : Oxford University Press , ix, 410 pp. ISBN 0-19-925472-9 , £75.00 ( HB ). [This beautifully produced book with generously large printface has, apart from a brief Introduction, the following chapters, 2, “Peter Mark Roget [(1779–1869), brief life and work]”; 3, “Words, words, words [dealing concepts of semantics]”; 4, “Synonymy: Early statements and practices [before Roget, from Isidore de Seville (c.560–636) to Richard Chevenix Trench (1807–1886)]”; 5, “The Beginnings of Practical Synonymy [from the 15th-century debate of ‘inkhorn terms’ to Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary]”; 6. “The Emergence of the English Synonym Dictionary [the legacy of Gabriel Girard (1677–1748) on the Continent (208–212) and in Britain from the mid-18th to the mid-19th century (213–276)]”; 7, “The Topical Tradition in English Lexicography” and 8, “Roget’s Thesaurus: A topical dictionary of synonyms”, are both devoted to onomasiological issues. There is no Conclusion. The back matter consists of an appendix reproducing Roget’s “Plan of Classification’ and ‘Tabular Synopsis’ from his Thesaurus (377–390), a bib. of primary (391–395) and secondary sources (395–404), and a brief general index (405–410). – For the present reader some (life) dates are questionable or missing: according the summary of a paper in HSS Bulletin 41 (Nov. 2003), p. 71, Gregor (von?) Feinaigle lived 1760–1819; David Booth lived 1766–1845. for Jean (p. 313) read probably Joseph de Maimieux (1753–1820). Roget’s letters are said to have been “lost in a fire in 1816 [sic] or an air raid during World War II” (p. 11); it is unlikely that Roget (b.1779) “dined [!] with Dr Johnson (1709–1784)” (p. 12).]

eds. 2004 . Norden und Süden: Festschrift für Kjell-Åke Forsgren zum 65. Geburtstag . (= Skrifter från moderna språk, 12. ) Umeå : Institutionen för moderna språk, Umeå universitet , 282 pp. ISBN 91–7305–607–3 . SEK 200 ( PB ). [As Forsgren has been a Germanist all his academic life, it is only appropriate that the bulk of the 24 contributions is devoted to themes concerning German and Scandinavian language and literature, but also broader subjects, like Gudrun Brundin’s “Vom Süden her bis zum Norden: Spuren des Sprachgeistes” (41–50), and more specific topics, like Mareike Jendis, “Kommunikative Strategien in der Lernersprache am Beispiel von zwei schwedischen Gemanistikstudentinnen” (86–99), are covered. In fact, the volume contains even papers like Anita Malmqvist’s “Mit vollen Händen schenken: Semiotik als Interpretationsraster einiger Somatismen” (160–172). Of particular interest to historians of linguistics may be Ingrid Margareta Tornqvist’s “Ethosaufbau und Verteidigung in Luthers Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen [(Nürnberg: Wenzeslaus Linck, 1530)]” (249–258) and Norbert Richard Wolf ’s “Johann Andreas Schmeller [(1785–1852)] und die bayerische Dialektforschung” (271–282). There is no index. On the personal side, I regret that the ‘conspirators’ (their term) did not manage to secure a portrait of the honoree for their Festschrift.]

. 2003 . Fascinated by Languages . Amsterdam & Philadelphia : John Benjamins , vi, 157 pp. ISBN 90-272-2601-6 . € 65 ( HB ). [Those who have read Eugene Nida’s (b.1914) autobiographical sketch in First Person Singular II: Autobiographies by North American scholars in the language sciences ed. by Konrad Koerner (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 61), Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1991, pp. 227–238 (“My Linguistic Odyssey”), may be surprised to read of his other personal and scholarly side, namely, his long-time association with the American Bible Society and his contribution to the theory and practice of translation. (As Nida [p. 135] points out – contrary to widespread opinion – he “never translated a chapter of the Bible for publication”.) This may explain that the book with which Nida made linguistic history – Morphology: The descriptive analysis of words (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 1946; 2nd rev. ed., 1949 – in which we find one of the first uses of the term ‘sociolinguistic’; 3rd ed., 1957) – is barely mentioned (pp. 52 and 109, not 108). The introductory sections are devoted to his involvement with various bible societies during his long career; the central parts deal with Nida’s encounters with speakers of languages other than English in 96 countries (as we gather from the write-up on the back of the book’s cover) and his involvement concerning various aspects of translation, notably of the Bible. The beautifully produced book concludes with a “Selective Bibliography” of the author (145–151) and a general index (153–157).]

ed. 2000 . Ideology, Politics, and Language Policies . (= Impact: Studies in Language and Society, 6 .) Amsterdam & Philadelphia : John Benjamins , ix, 197 pp. ISBN 90-272-1836-9 . [Although altogether eight different authors are involved, the individual contributions have been conceived as chapters, and the bibliographical references have been combined into a single set (173–193). Following two chapters by the editor on language policy and planning and their ideological underpinnings, there are chapters on language policies in Australia as ‘virtual realities’ (by Helen Moore), on ‘Lessons from colonial language policies’ (by Alastair Pennycook), “English in the New World Order: Variations on a theme of linguistic imperialism and ‘world’ English” (by Robert Phillipson), “Ideology and Policy in the Politics of the English Language in North India” (by Selma K. Sonntag), and “Mixed Motives: Ideological elements in the support for English in South Africa” (by Stanley G. M. Ridge), and several others. The volume is rounded out by a general index (195–197). – One question addressed to the series editors: Why do you accept endnotes instead of footnotes and the initialization of first names in the bibliographical references, unless you conceive of your (scholarly, so I thought) monographs as trade books?]

ed. 2003 . Le discours sur la langue en URSS à l’époque stalinienne (épistémologie, philosophie, idéologie) . (= Cahiers de l’ILSL, 14 .) Lausanne : Imprimé aux Presses Centrales de Lausanne (for the Institut de Linguistique et des Sciencces du Langage, Université de Lausanne) [to order copies, write to: ILSL, Faculté des Lettres, BFSH2, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland] , [iv]. 355 pp. ISSN 1019–9446 . [As the editor points out in his “Présentation” (p. 1) what he found astounding in these papers first presented at a conference held in Crêt-Bérard overlooking Lake Geneva, 3–5 July 2002, by scholars from Russia, White Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Georgia, Czechia, France, Israel, and Switzerland, is that in this world of the Soviet Union during the inter-bellum period “où la science [de linguistique] est intimement liée à l’idéologie, non pas au sens de système explicite d’idées, comme das « idéologie marxiste-léniniste », ni de pure conscience fausse, comme dans L’idéologie allemande de Marx, mais au sens de faisceaux de représentationss, de doxa plus ou moins implicite, de fonds de connaissances qui font sens immédiatement « là-bas », mais pas forcément « ici ».” Among the 19 contributions, which in most instances were translated from the Russian into French (several of them by the editor himself), we find articles such as the following: “La linguistique marxiste en URSS dans les années 1920–1930” by Vladimir M. Alpatov (5–22); “Arnold Čikobava sur l’historicisme dans les théories linguistiques” by Tinatin Bolkvadze (45–57); “Le réalisme socialiste en linguistique” by Konstantin A. Dolinin (85–100); “Le marxisme et les projets de langue univesxelle du communisme” by Aleksandr D. Duličenko (101–120); “Le lexique du linguiste: la langue des cours de R. Jakobson sur le formalisme russe (1935)” by Tomáš Glanc 9121–132), where one can read inter alia: “Il ne faut pas […] se faire trop d’illusions sur le mythe d’une communauté intellectuelle ouverte et accueillante, multiculturelle et internationaliste de la Tchécoslovaquie dans l’entre-deux-guerres” (p. 122). Names that appear frequently throughout the volume are Mixail Mixajlovič Baxtin (1895–1975) in various guises and the notorious Nikolaj Jakovlevič Marr (in Georgian: Marr, Nik’o, 1865–1934), but there are also frequent references to Baudouin de Courtenay, Evgenij Dmitri’evič Polivanov (1891–1938), and Valentin Nikola’evič Vološinov (1895–1936). Where the latter is concerned, one would like to see him (and not Baxtin), once for all and consequently (unlike in the present book), credited with the authorship of the 1929 Marxisme et philosophie du langage (French transl., Paris: Seuil, 1977): a careful textual analysis and a comparison with Baxtin’s writings would show that he could not have written this book. Another historical fact that one would have like to see mentioned in one or the other paper is that the famous May 1950 article in the Pravda debunking Marrism was written by fellow-Georgian Arnol’d Čikobava (1898–1985), and not by Stalin. One cannot but deplore the absence of any index.]

eds. 2003 . Grammatical Metaphor: Views from Systemic Functional Linguistics . (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 236 .) Amsterdam & Philadelphia : John Benjamins , 2003 , vi, 453 pp. ISBN 90 272 4748 X ( HB ). [This volume brings together 15 articles under the following headings: I, “Grammatical Metaphor: Clarification and application”; II. “Development of Metaphor in Children”; III, “Interpersonal Metaphor: Enactment and positioning”; IV, “‘ Metaphor’ in Grammar and in Other Modes of Meaning”, and V. “Metaphor in Metalinguistic Perspectives”. These are preceded by an introductory article by Miriam Taverniers, “Grammatical Metaphor in SFL: A historiography of the introduction and initial concept” (5–33), a concept which is to have been introduced by Michael Halliday (b.1925) in his 1985 Introduction to Functional Grammar (London: Edward Arnold), and concluded by a detailed “Subject Index” (442–453).]

( in collaboration with Josef Dubský ). 2003 . Dictionary of the Prague School of Linguistics . Translated from the French, German and Czech original sources by Aleš Klégr, Pavlína Šaldová, Markéta Malá, Jan Čermák & Libuše Dušková . Edited by Libuše Dušková . (= Studies in Functional and Structural Linguistics [formerly: Linguistic & Literary Studies in Eastern Europe], 50 .) Amsterdam & Philadelphia : John Benjamins , [ix], 213 pp. ; 1 portr1 . ISBN 90-272-1559-6 . € 85 ( HB ). [This book constitutes the first English translation of Vachek’s (1906–1997) 104-page Dictionnaire de linguistique de l’École de Prague (Utrecht & Antwerp: Spectrum, 1960), to which has been added a portrait of Vachek, an “Introduction: Prague School of Linguistics in its classical time and today” (1–20, with an index to the introduction, 21–23) by František Čermák & Eva Hajičová, and indexes of French, German, and Czech equivalents of headwords (167–213). The result is a first-rate reference tool which honours the memory of the great Josef Vachek, also as a result of František Čermák & Eva Hajičová’s positive interest in the history (of Prague) linguistics, which was so dear to Vachek; cf. his 1964 Prague School Reader in Linguistics and 1966 The Linguistic School of Prague (both published by Indiana University Press, Blommington & London). It should also be mentioned that it was František Čermák who in 1989 brought out the first Czech translation of Saussure’s Cours, significantly in the year that the Berlin Wall fell.]

. 2003 . Manuel de phonologie anglaise . (= CAPES – Agrégation, unnumbered .) Paris : Armand Colin , vi, 138 pp. ISBN 2-200-26559-X . [This advanced textbook consists of the following chapters: 1, “L’épreuve de phonologie à l’agrégation”; 2, “Notions de phonétique articulatoire”; 3, “La transcription phonétique”; 4, “La phonologie segmentale: de l’orthographe à la prononciation ou de la prononciation à l’orthographe?”; 5, “L’accent du mot”; 6, “La phonologie de la phrase” et 7, “Phraséolgie de l’analyse phonologique”. The back matter consists of “Trois sujets de devoir corrigés” (116–136) and “Bibliographie” (137–138), which includes references to 3 publications by the author produced jointly with Richard Lilly.]