Publications received published In:
Historiographia Linguistica
Vol. 32:3 (2005) ► pp.425441
References

Note: This listing acknowledges the receipt of recent writings in the study of language, with particular attention being given to those dealing with the history – and historiography – of the language sciences. Only in exceptional instances will a separate acknowledgement of receipt be issued; no book can be returned to the publisher after it has been analyzed in this section. It should be pointed out, moreover, that by accepting a book, no promise is implied that it will be reviewed in any detail in HL. Reviews are printed as circumstances permit, and offprints will be sent to the publishers of the works reviewed, including those items briefly commented upon in the present section.

ed. 2003 . Ferdinand de Saussure . (= Cahier L’Herne, 76. ) Paris : Éditions L’Herne , 525 pp. in-small 4º1 ; illustr . ISBN : 2-85197-089-5 ( PB ). € 51,00 . [Address: 22 rue Mazarine, F-75006 Paris. Published in conjunction with the “Centre National du Livre” and with the collaboration of the “Institut Ferdinand de Saussure” of Geneva (cf. also the long list of the editor’s acknowledgments [p. 15]), this most interesting volume appears to have taken considerable time and effort to prepare. The result is a “Polyphonie”, as the late Rudolf Engler entitled his opening piece (16–19). The volume consists of four major sections: “Une philosophie sémiotique” (contributors: François Rastier, Jonathan Culler, Herman Parret, Françoise Atlani-Voisin, Jean-Paul Bronchardt, Sémir Badir, Patrice Maniglier, i.e., philosophers of language or teachers of literature); “L’épstémologie d’une science du langage” (contributors: Antoine Culioli [actually: an interview held by Bouquet], Marie-José Béguelin, Gabriel Bergounioux & Bernard Laks, Jacques Cousil, Jean-Blaise Grize, Ludwig Jäger, Jacques Geninasca, Roy Harris, Marie-Claude Capt-Artaud, Marina De Palo, most of them linguists); “Linguistique(s) de la parole” (contributors: Yves Bonnefoy, André Green, Alain Manier, François Rastier, Jean Starobinski, Béatrice Turpin, philosophers, psychologists, or philologists) and “Textes de Saussure” organized by Sémir Badir and containing a variety of previously unpublished materials, such as notes on what appears to have been a plan on Saussure’s part to write a book on Lithuanian from ca. 1894, examples from his research on the Nibelungen conducted during 1903–1905, letters to his friends from Geneva during his studies in Leipzig 1876–1880, most of them addressed to Amé-Jules Pictet (1857–1937) and Édouard Favre (1855–1942). It concludes with a reproductions of a humorous story (drawings and text) of “Les aventures de Polytychos” by the 17-year-old Saussure. The back matter “Repères” consists of a chronology of the main points of Saussure’s life and career (502–504) and a “Biobliographie […] organisée” by Mareike Buss, Lorella Ghiotti & Ludwig Jäger, which lists “Œuvres de Saussure” (506–509), followed by “Éditions posthumes” from the Cours of 1916 to the Écrits de linguistique générale (Paris: Gallimard) of 2000 (509–511) and published letters by and concerning Saussure (511–512). The secondary sources are divided into “La réception du CLG jusqu’en 1954 [the year in which Robert Godel (1902–1984) published the first manuscript notes]” (513), “La réception du CLG après 1954” (514–516), and “La réception des notes de cours et écrits autographes” (516–524). Finally, there is a list of “Instruments bibliographiques” (figuring items by Engler, Johannes Fehr, Koerner, and others [522–523]). There, mention should perhaps be made to Anders Ahlqvist’s “Notes on Saussure’s Old Irish Copybook” in The Emergence of the Modern Language Sciences: Studies on the transition from historical-comparative to structural linguistics in honour of E. F. K. Koerner ed. by Sheila Embleton, John E. Joseph & Hans-Josef Niederehe (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1999), vol. I, pp. 169–186, where several pages’ worth of ms. material are published for the first time. The contributions to this massive volume are such that everyone interested in particular aspects of Saussure’s work will find something. For instance, the phonologist will be intrigued by “Portrait de Saussure en phonologue contemporain” by Gabriel Bergounioux & Bernard Laks (165–177), which is based on unpublished materials first edited by Maria Pia Marchese in 1995; the historical linguist will be instructed by Marie-José [Reichler-]Béguelin’s “La méthode comparative et l’enseignement du Mémoire” (150–164); the semiologist/semiotician may find something in “L’écriture: pierre d’achoppement pour la sémiologie saussurienne” by Roy Harris (228–233); for the historian of (Saussurean) linguistics the bulk of the volume may be relevant, but he may have to look for it, separating the wheat from the chaff: for instance, Jean Starobinski’s autobiographical observations (294–296) contain intriguing details about the intellectual atmosphere in Geneva and elsewhere during the 1940s and 1950s. Those who look for pictures of Saussure from 1863 to his last years won’t be disappointed; they are interlaced between pages 272 and 273, in a contribution by André Green on “Linguistique de la parole et psychisme non conscient”. Unfortunately, there is no index.]
. 2004 . Leitfäden in der Missionarslinguistik . (= Europäische Hochschulschriften; Reihe XXVII: Asiatische und Afrikanische Studien, 93. ) Frankfurt am Main : Peter Lang , 176 pp. ISBN : 3-631-33705-1 . € 39 ( PB ). [This former dissertation submitted at the University of Göttingen in 1996 (supervisor: Erhard Rosner) consists of three parts: The actual narrative from the introduction (27–29), a survey of previous research (30–41), two central chapters, and a brief summary (82–83); an appendix (“Anhang”) of 16 chapters devoted to the illustration of specific features of Chinese grammar and discourse (85–124), and a massive “Literaturverzeichnis” (125–176) subdivided into primary sources of ‘linguistic and religious writings of the originator’ (“Sprachwissenschaftliche und religiöse Schriften des Urhebers”), listed in chronological order of actual or presumed production 1661–1692, “Frühe Grammatiken und allgemein sprachwissenschaftliche Texte”, arranged alphabetically by author (128–137), and “Andere Missionarsschriften und theoretische Traktate”, arranged in the same fashion (138–141), and, finally, secondary sources (141–176) of at times doubtful value in the context of the study, e.g., five titles by Chomsky, from Syntactic Structures to Manufacturing Consent (1994) or De Mauro’s edition of the Cours. What the book title disguises is that we have to do with a history of missionary work in China in the 17th century, with the Arte de la lengua Mandarina of the Dominican Francisco Varo (1627–1687) as its center piece. An extremely useful summary in English of the author’s painstaking research can be found in her “Introduction: The biographical, historical, and grammatical context of Francisco Varo’s Arte de lengua Mandarina (Canton, 1703)” (xix-liii) in the reproduction of the original text with an English translation on the facing page prepared by W. South Coblin (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2000.)]
Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure: Revue suisse de linguistique générale . Volume 571 ( 2005 for 2004 ). Geneva : Librairie Droz , 254 pp. ISBN : 2-600-01003-3 . CHF 61,40 ( PB ). [Like previous numbers, the present one contains a good number of items of interest to the historian of linguistics. This includes several of the articles devoted to the history of socalled ‘artificial languages’ (the preferred term has been for quite a while “constructed languages” in English): In Sébastien Moret’s contribution (7–24), one misses the name of Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, who strongly opposed Brugmann & Leskien’s argument against such creations (treated on pp. 12–13). See Baudouin’s Zur Kritik der künstlichen Weltsprachen, veranlasst durch die gleichnamige Broschüre von K. Brugmann und A. Leskien (Leipzig: Veit & Co., 1908), 51 pp. Two other papers in this area of interest should be mentioned: “Le rainsonnement énergétique dans la conception des langues artificielles chez Otto Jespersen” by Elena Simonato-Kokochkina (45–55) and “Le langage ‘artificiel’ ches Ch[arles] Bally: Évolution ou révolution?” by Ekaterina Velmezova (57–72). Worth mentioning is Federica Vecillio’s paper on the Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano’s (1858–1932) active involvement during 1903 and 1930 (73–85). One misses an article on Saussure’s youngest brother René (1868–1943) who, a mathematician like Peano, proposed schemes himself opposing both Ido and Esperanto (cf. Koerner, Ferdinand de Saussure [Braunschweig: F. Vieweg, 1973], p.33). The “Documents” section carries snippets from unpublished papers of Ferdinand’s references to ‘artificial languages’ (213–218), but there’s no hint of René’s work. Another article of interest to students of F. de Saussure is “Les voyelles colorées: Saussure et la synesthésie” by Marco Mazzeo (129–143), involving his collaboration with the Genevan psychologist Théodore Flournoy (1854–1920). Last but not least mention should be made of Claudia Stancati’s article “Saussure à l’ombre des philosophes: Quelle philosophie pour la linguistique générale?” (185–207). The volume concludes with conference reports on two meetings held in Salerno (June 2004) and Palermo (Nov. 2004) touching on Sausurean matters, but not central to his legacy.]
eds. 2004 . Nuevas aportaciones a la historiografía lingüística: Actas del IV Congreso Internacional de la SEHL, La Laguna (Tenerife), 22 al 25 de octubre de 2003 . 21 vols. [= 1,670 pp. in all ]. Madrid : Arco/Libros . ISBN : 84-7635-596-3 . € 124,80 ( HB ). [This year, the Sociedad Española de Historiografía Lingüística (SEHL) celebrates the tenth anniversary of its founding. It is amazing that within this short period so many scholars of this country should have contributed to the History of Linguistics as evidenced by the present two volumes of papers deriving from its fourth biennial meeting. This would not have been possible had there not been a long-standing tradition in Spain to combine linguistic (and philological) research with due attention to earlier work in the field. Indeed, still today there are few scholars on the Iberian peninsula who devote their full time to linguistic historiography; the subject appears to fully integrated in the curriculum. This fact may also explain that the lines between the history of the discipline and historical linguistics are not always clearly drawn; in fact, the Actas contain a number of contributions that, while not of historical interest, do not exactly belong to the field, e.g., “La subordinación sustantiva en The Syntax of Castilian Prose: The sixteenth century de H[ayward] Keniston [(1883–1970) of 1937]”. Such misunderstanding should be avoided in the future: no one would mix up the history of an illness (anamnesis) with the history of medicine. Another misunderstanding appears to be that a discussion of an old text is automatically historiography, where in fact it may just be a description of a document (synchrony ), e.g., “El verbo en la Nouvelle Grammaire Espagnolle (1708) del abad Jean de Vayrac (1664–1734)” by María Elena Jiménez Domingo, unless it is compared with the treatment of the verb in subsequent treatises. From the otherwise rich contents, let me offer a selection with apologies to those I have left out): “Eduardo de la Barra (1839–1900) y el ‘embrujamiento alemán’ de la lingüística chilena” by Barry L. Velleman; “La aspiración al ‘Diccionario total: Un fragmento del Diccionario General de la Lengua Española de Toro y Gisbert” by Pedro Álvarez de Miranda; “Nociones gramaticales de la lengua árabe de Rafael Jimeno (1864) y su contexto historiográfico” by Maria Arcas Campoy; “Una propuesta de metodología historiográfica a partir del estudio de John R. Firth y la Escuela de Londres (1945–1970)” by Elena Battaner Moro; “Las ideas de Aldrete sobre política lingüística en el mundo romano en el Del origen i principio de la lengua castellana ò español” by Lucia Binotti & José María García Martín; “El ‘catecismo’ y la ‘cartilla’ de Fray Dionisio Sanctis en el marco de la lingüística misionera colombiana” by Micaela Carrera de la Red; “El Vocabulario Marítimo de Sevilla (1696, 1722) como autoridad lexicográfica” by Yolanda Congosto Martín; “Contribución a la Historia de la Lexicografía luso-española: el Diccionario castellano y portuguez de Raphael Bluteau” by Dolores Corbella; “De antiguos y modernos: «gramática tradicional», tradición gramatical y análisis gramaticográfico” by Miguel Ángel Esparza Torres; “La ideología y su influencia en la investigación de los arabismos del español” by Alejandro Fajardo Aguirre & Dolores Serrano Niza; “Visión de la Lengua Española en la Historiografía Lingüística de Australia” by Ana Fernández Marrero; “El primer Vocabulario (1555) de Alonso de Molina, primer Nebrija de las Indias” by Manuel Galeote; “La gramática hebrea en Europa en el siglo xvi. Balance de una investigación” by Santiago García-Jalón de la Lama; “Una gramática rara: la de don Agustín Muñoz Álvarez (1793 y 1799)” by José J. Gómez Asencio; “Novedad y tradición en las ideas ortográficas que Rasmus K. Rask propone para el español” by Beatriz Hernández Díaz; “El artículo y el pronombre personal en la Gramática de Juan Villar (1651): Una anticipación de la doctrina de Bello” by M.ª Dolores Martínez Gavilán; “Reacción y tradición en la Gramática Latina de Juan de Iriarte” by Francisca del Mar Plaza Picón; “Contra el Brocense. En torno a la teoría sintáctica de Juan García de Vargas (S.I.)” by Rogelio Ponce de León Romeo; “Aportaciones de O. Jespersen al estudio del lenguaje infantil” by M.ª Elena Prado Ibán; “Mentalismo y conductismo: una revisión de la teoría lingüística de Edward Sapir (1884–1939)” by María Xosé Fernández Casas; “Proyección lexicográfica (s. xviii–xxi) de las voces jurídicas del Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana de Vicente Salvá” by Isabel Santamaría Pérez & Herminia Provencio Garrigós; “La gramática general en España. La Lexilogía en el Curso Elemental de la Lengua Española (1854) de I. Fernández Monje” by Alfonso Zamorano Aguilar. One regrets very much that in a volume of proceedings of some 1,600 pages there is no index at all; at least an index of biographical names should be supplied in any future Actas, although an index of grammatical terms and concepts might be preferred by others.]
ed. 2004 . Fortuna e vicissitudini di concetti grammaticali . Padova : Unipress , 177 pp. ISBN : 88-8009-192-7 . € 22 ( PB ). [Publisher’s address: Via C. Battisti, I-35121 Padova. The volume derives from presentations, it appears (cf. the editor’s Introduction, p. 5, n. 5) from a meeting held at Verona on 22 November 2002, and sees itself in a way connected to similar recent meetings, including the one edited by Celestina Milani and others and briefly reviewed in the present section (see below). There are the following articles organized in chronological order of the subject matter treated: “Il septimus e l’octavus casus nel pensiero dei grammatici latini [Varro, Charisius, Consentius, Donat, Priscian, and lesser known authors]” by Celestina Milani (9–43), consisting of more quotations of primary sources than discussion (one wonders how enlightening the references to modern ‘classics’ like Fillmore in Bach & Harms 1968 really are); “La sintassi nel Cinquecento italiana tra grammatica e retorica [Rinaldo Corso, Lodovico Dolce, Giambullari, Salviati, Benedetto Varchi, Cavalcanti, Castelveltro et alii]” by Simone Fornara (45–60); “Il concetto di ‘subordinazione’ prima della nascita del termine corrispondente nelle grammatiche della lingua tedesca fra XVI e XVIII secolo [notably in the works of Clajus, Stieler, Bödiker, Aichinger]” by Alessandra Tomaselli (61–96); “L’influsso delle grammatiche del latino e del greco sulla formazione del concetto di frase dipendente tra Settecento e Ottocento in Germania [from Wolfgang Ratke (1612) to J.C.A. Heyse (1827) via Aichinger, Meiner, Adelung, Grotefend, and others]” by Paola Cotticelli Kurras (97–135), followed by reproductions of book titles and tables of contents of late16th to early 19th century books (136–147) and a bibliography (148–151). The book ends with a contribution by Kjell-Åke Forsgren, “On the Introduction of the Theory of Functional Clauses into German Grammar and its Impact on Traditional Syntax Theory” (153–173), in which the grammars of Karl Ferdinand Backer, S.H.A. Herling, August Grotefend and Heinrich Bauer figure prominently. There is no index. Life-dates of authors in the texts are never and names of publishers in the bibliographies are hardly ever supplied throughout the volume.]
. 2005 . Kleine Geschichte des Fremdsprachenlernens . Berlin : Erich Schmidt , 184 pp. ISBN : 3-503-07946-7 . € 19,95 ( PB ). [In times of radical globalisation, the significance of the learning of foreign languages cannot be overestimated, particularly in a European context. This book, the author of which is one of the doyens in the field of teaching English as a foreign language (‘Didaktik des Englischen’) as well as in the history of linguistic ideas (with particular emphasis on an English context), attempts to outline some characteristic tendencies and methodologies within the history of the learning and teaching of foreign languages, starting in Roman antiquity. In his preface (pp. 7–8) Hüllen emphasises the importance of the awareness of the historical dimension of foreign language instruction: it is crucial to know the past of one’s discipline in order to critically rethink established principles and methods and to avoid reinventing the wheel. The volume is grouped into three parts: a short introduction to the methodological approach of the book (pp. 9–17), part two on the European tradition of foreign language learning until the end of the 18th century (pp. 19–72) and part three on foreign language learning in Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries (pp. 73–156). It becomes obvious already from this rough division that the title of the book is somewhat misleading: at least by way of a subtitle, it should have been indicated that the focus is on Europe and in particular on Germany (part three comprises almost half of the entire book). One area that would have deserved some attention is, for example, the Arabic tradition with eminent scholars like Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126–1198), who, among other things, produced commentaries on many of Aristotle’s works and on Plato’s Politeia. A number of ancient Greek texts, notably some of Galen’s treatises, have been preserved by way of Arabic translations. Given the impossibility of covering everything that is related to the topic of the book, it would perhaps have been more advisable to focus on foreign language learning in Germany. – It is impossible here to provide an in-depth discussion of Hüllen’s wide-ranging and insightful panorama of the significance of learning and teaching foreign languages. May it suffice to briefly indicate the contents of each part: The second part begins with Roman antiquity and the learning of Greek as the language of a neighbour that was perceived to be culturally (if not morally) superior (pp. 21–28). Here, it would have been appropriate to refer to Jorma Kaimio’s insightful study The Romans and the Greek Language (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1979), which contains a plethora of fascinating material. It is no surprise that in the chapters on the Middle Ages and Humanism (pp. 28–46) the discussion of the acquisition of Latin occupies a prominent position, but other (so-called vernacular) languages such as English and French are also taken into account (pp. 37–40). The fact that the learning of foreign languages in the 16th and 17th centuries was often motivated by commercial and political reasons is pointed out in the subsequent chapter (pp. 47–62): increased mobility and the trading business opened up new markets and spheres of interest where in particular those who were conversant not just in their mother tongue were at an advantage. In the same period, some universities in Germany started to offer courses in French and, later on, in English, as far as can be judged from the sources. Instruction in languages other than Latin was oriented towards their practical use in everyday life and administered, for example, with the aid of conversation manuals (‘Gesprächsbücher’) which contained samples of dialogues occurring in more or less familiar situations. The serious study of vernacular languages, including the production of grammars, had already made considerable progress, as manuals such as the so-called Grammatichetta del Vaticano, almost unanimously ascribed to the famous architect and Humanist Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), or the Gramática de la lengua castellana (1492) by Antonio de Nebrija (c. 1444–1522) attest. Despite the existence of numerous grammars and collections, including contrastively organized treatises, it is difficult to get an idea of how the instruction of foreign languages actually worked (e.g., p. 61; see also p. 92). Here as well as elsewhere in Hüllen’s study it becomes clear that the available documents may not be taken to reflect reality – a phenomenon which is no less familiar today. The following chapter is concerned with the 18th century (pp. 63–72), termed the ‘silent period’, in which no revolutionary changes concerning the methods of learning foreign languages can be discerned. English gained some popularity, although French still had a much stronger position, given its long-standing status as the ‘most important foreign language in Europe’ (p. 65). It is interesting to note that there were attempts to use concrete objects and pictures for foreign language instruction (pp. 68–69), as promoted earlier on by Johann Amos Comenius (1592–1670) in his Orbis sensualium pictus (1658). The third part of the book, entitled ‘Modern (= ‘neuzeitlich’) foreign language instruction as a national tradition in Germany’, provides a much more detailed picture than the second part. It is also structured chronologically and takes the ‘innovative 19th century’ as its starting-point (pp. 75–91). For a better understanding of the context, a useful sketch of the German school system since its institutionalisation in the late 18th century is provided. This differentiation is important, as the range of foreign languages that were taught differed from one school-type to another; even gender-specific criteria came into play: girls, whose intellectual capabilities were often thought to be limited, were frequently denied the possibility of learning Latin (p. 97). Hüllen demonstrates how in the 19th century the basis was laid for an elaborate foreign language pedagogy and delineates the various controversies about the “right” method. The emancipation of modern language instruction from that of Latin went hand in hand with a stronger emphasis on communicative teaching methods, i.e., the active use of the foreign language in the classroom, and on cultural studies (‘Kulturkunde’). A rather sad, but nonetheless very informative picture is presented in the chapter on foreign language teaching in the Nazi era (pp. 122–130). The acquisition of foreign languages was instrumentalised as part of ‘racial education’ and was intended to alert the learners to the characteristic features of their own (superior) culture as opposed to others (‘Folientheorie’); a proper knowledge of the languages themselves was not the primary goal. In this chapter it might have been useful to have a closer look at Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which contains a number of passages on foreign languages, and, following the monograph by Hubert Steinhaus (Hitlers pädagogische Maximen: “Mein Kampf “ und die Destruktion der Erziehung im Nationalsozialismus [Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1981]), to assess to what extent this pamphlet influenced didactic conceptions and teaching manuals of that time. The final two chapters of the third part treat the period after 1945 (pp. 131–139) and offer some concluding remarks on the present tasks of foreign language teaching, in particular within a European context (pp. 140–156). – Since the author admits that the introductory character of his book compelled him to concentrate on the most important aspects of his subject matter and to single out representative cases, it might seem unfair to expect more than could be dealt with in a relatively concise monograph. One could nonetheless imagine a number of topics that would warrant inclusion. For example, it would have been interesting to have a section on the knowledge of foreign languages among Indo-Europeanists in the 19th century. As one remarkable case one could mention August Schleicher (1821–1868), who took some pains to learn Lithuanian, a basic prerequisite for his later handbook in two volumes consisting of a grammar and a reader with a glossary (Handbuch der litauischen Sprache [Prag: Calve, 1856–1857]), as well as Czech, as one can gather, e.g., from Alois Vaníček’s (1825–1883) “Erinnerungen an Prof. Dr. August Schleicher” (published in: Karl Glaser, A. Vaníček: Biographische Skizze [Wien: Konegen, 1885], 55–66; repr. in: Theodor Syllaba, August Schleicher und Böhmen [Praha: Karolinum, 1995], 92–99). – The bibliography (157–168) is restricted to the most important primary as well as secondary works and does not claim to be exhaustive. The book concludes with a chronological list of events pertaining to the history of learning foreign languages (pp. 169–174). There is an index rerum (175–179) and an index of names (179–184). Despite the generally diligent editing of the volume, some misprints occur here and there: Read, e.g., “Herennium” instead of “Herrennium” (p. 26), “Middelburg” instead of “Middleburg” (p. 57), “Präsenz” instead of “Präsens” (p. 61, 141, 142; not the tense, but the ‘presence’), “Fremdsprachenunterricht” instead of “Femdsprachenunterricht” (p. 70), “pepaideumenoi” instead of “pepaidenmenoi” (p. 100; for Greek πεπαιδευμένοι), “Didaktik” instead of “Didakik” (p. 115 n. 10), “Wilhelminismus” instead of “Wilhelminimus” (p. 122), “Leipzig” instead of “Leibniz” (p. 127), “Andererseits” instead of “Andererseit” (p. 146), “Manfred Fuhrmann” (one of the most renowned German classicists, who died in January 2005 at the age of 79 years) instead of “Martin Fuhrmann” (p. 155 n. 18), “Versteegh” instead of “Verstegh” (p. 157), “Nodus” instead of “Dutz” (p. 162 in the entry Hüllen 2002a), “Kelly” instead of “Kelley” (p. 163), “Glyn” instead of “Glynn” (p. 164 in the entry Lewis 1974), the volume of the journal Der altsprachliche Unterricht referred to in the bibliographical entry Raith 1983 (p. 165) is not “26.6” but “26.5”, “Iudicium” instead of “Iudizium” (p. 166 in the entry Schreiner 1992). – Thorsten Fögen (Humboldt-Universität Berlin).]
Jazyk i Rečevaja Dejatel’nost’ / Language & Language Behavior . Vol. 51 . St. Petersburg : Faculty of Philology, St. Petersburg University , 2002 , 240 pp. ISSN : 1560 – 2974 . [This publication of the Linguistic Society of St. Petersburg, the first number of which appeared in 1998, is essentially intended to serve the Russian linguistic community, while at the same time opening a window to Western linguistics. This goal and the wide range of subjects can already be gathered from the contributions in languages other than Russian, e.g., Gilbert Lazard, “La linguistique peut-elle être une science?” (8–21) and Gabriel Bergounioux, “Le langage des enfants dans la pensée française du XIXe siècle” (158–170) as well as reviews of books published abroad. Most articles have an English summary attached; they all are preceded by an abstract in the language of the contribution. The present volume carries sections devoted to ‘Linguistic Theory and Synchronic Analysis’ (7 papers); ‘Historical Linguistics” (3 papers); ‘Schools and Trends in Linguistics, History of Linguistics’ (2 papers); ‘Reviews’, ‘Conference Reports’, ‘The Seminars of the Linguistic Society of St. Petersburg’, and an obituary.]
ed. 2003 . Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950 . Bearbeitet von Birgit Wägenbaur zusammen mit Andrea Frindt, Hanne Knickmann, Volker Michel, Angela Reinthal und Karla Rommel . 31 vols. Berlin & New York : Walter de Gruyter , lxxxv, 2,200 pp. in all . ISBN 3-11-0172588-6 . € 578,00 ( HB ). [Also available as a CD-ROM containing 114 additional entries. This publication of the ‘Arbeitsstelle für die Erforschung der Germanistik in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach’ established in 1955 (it had begun in 1903 as the Schiller-Nationalmuseum, which is still housed there too) constitutes a major achievement, and will serve for many years to come researchers in the history of the study of German language and literature from the late 18th – I am thinking for instance of the entry (pp. 4–6) on Johann Christoph Adelung (1732–1806) – to the mid–20th century and beyond: it includes scholars who only died during the last decade of the 20th century (e.g., Vladimir Admoni in 1993; Max Wehrli in 1998) as well as living ones (e.g., Helmut Gipper, b.1919[–2004]; Peter Wapnewski, b.1922; Walter Jens, b.1923). Individual entries are organized according to the following scheme: After brief biographical data, which typically includes names of parents, names of spouses (thus we learn that Friedrich Kluge was married three times), and ‘life circumstance’ (“Lebensumstände”) – on which further below – sections on education (school, college, etc.), professional career, membership in (learned or other) societies, publications, co-operation on projects, secondary sources and archival material (wherever available). In short, information supplied in many instances is very rich indeed. In his Introduction (ix-xxviii) the editor tells us, among other things, that the work took seven years to put together with the help of 737 co-workers (listed pp. lix-lxvi), and that altogether 1514 entries had been produced of ‘Germanists’ from 44 countries (though my guess is that 90% are from German-speaking lands). König also explains the general guidelines of inclusion. For instance that a scholar should have published his first book by 1950, and he puts forward (p. xvi) why psychologist Karl Bühler (1879–1964), by no stretch of the term a student of German, was included, though he fails to indicate – as Clemens Knobloch has pointed out in his commentary in Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 32.89–99 (2004) – why for instance authors of important and influential school grammars of German like Friedrich Blatz (1858–1907) or Simon Heinrich Adolf Herling (1780–1849), who has an entry in Harro Stammerjohann’s Lexicon Grammaticorum of 1996, have not been included. But then he tells us (p. xxii) that originally 12,000 names had been considered, and so a number of arguable important candidates like Walter Porzig (1895–1961), Franz Thierfelder (1896–1922), or Heinz Kloss (1904–1987) have been excluded, though a number of lesser persons – apparently because someone was willing to supply the biographical data – were included. (In order to avoid polemics, I prefer not to mention names, but only indicate that I noticed people in these volumes who have been college teachers of German at rather modest places. Strangely enough, a doctor of medicine and musicologist made it into this Lexikon [s. pp. 756–757].) The general usefulness of this Germanistenlexikon aside, the historian (not only) of linguistics may have problems with the entries where the ‘Third Reich’ period 1933–1945 is concerned. Personally, I was intrigued by the information that no lesser scholar than Wolfgang Kayser (1906–1960), whose Das sprachliche Kunstwerk I bought soon after my enrollment at the University of Göttingen in 1962, had been a member of the SA 1933–1938 and had joined the Nazi party (NSDAP) in 1937. I had always believed that he spent his years at the University of Lisbon 1941–1950 because he had stood on the other side of the fence. What the entry does not say – there is no apparent room for such historical information – that Portugal served as a outpost for German counter-espionage under Admiral Wilhelm Canaris (1887–1945), and that no doubt only politically reliable and useful persons were sent there. As a result, the 1950 classification of a ‘fellow-traveler’ (Mitläufer) supplied in the entry (p. 904) comes rather close to a whitewash. That this is not a single such instance has been pointed out by Knobloch, who mentions several much more egregious cases involving famous Germanists such as Jost Trier, Hennig Brinkmann and others (op. cit., pp. 96–98). Those who have seriously studied the 1933–1945 period know that membership in the Nazi party may mean many different things; there were times where few were admitted and others had their application for admission refused (and at times more than once). Where matters get even more complicated is where biographees were still alive and had been given the opportunity not only to control their entry (e.g., Gipper) or where at least given the opportunity to exculpate themselves (e.g., Wapnewski). It appears that it would have been wiser to exclude living persons in order to avoid the impression of partiality. A special case appears to have been Leo Weisgeber (1899–1984) where his son Bernhard (b. 1929) provided the entry and where it was pointed out expressly that he had not been a member of the NSDAP (p. 2003), but where the rest of the ‘Lebensumstände’ suggest (and as Christopher M. Hutton in his Linguistics and the Third Reich [London & New York: Routledge, 1999] has it amply illustrated [pp. 106–143]) served Nazi interests very well, probably also because he was not a party member. The back matter consists of the following four indexes: 1) Chronological order of higher university degrees granted (usually, but not always, doctorates) 1768–1972 [sic] (2125–2141); 2) ‘Habilitations’ (with or without the submission of an extra study), 1800–1975 (2142–2151); 3) lists of places of work or employment (“Wirkungsorte”) as librarian, archivist, publisher, journalist, etc. (2152–2189); we thus learn that the well-known Dutch dialectologist Gesinus (Gerardus) Kloeke (1887–1963) taught German at the ‘Kadettenanstalt’ in Alkmaar for a number of years, but not that he changed places with Thedor Frings early in the 1920s, when the latter was a professor at Bonn. (It’s from Frings that Kloeke got the ‘expansie’ idea with which he is generally credited.) Last but not least there is a listing of a particular area of specialization (“Forschungsschwerpunkt”) of a given scholar (2190–2200) so that the user of this International Dictionary may learn who worked on Goethe (possibly hundreds), Jacob Grimm, Kafka, Thomas Mann, even Shakespeare or Oscar Wilde.]
eds. 2004 . Per una storia della grammatica in Europa: Atti del Convegno, 11–12 settembre 2003, Milano, Università Cattolica . Milano : I.S.U. Università Cattolica , 367 pp. ISBN : 88-8311-300-4 ( PB ). [As the editors inform us in the foreword and also as Claudio Marazzini underlines in his “Presentazione” (7–11), this volume contains the proceedings of a conference held at the concluding stage of a research project in which scholars of four Italian universities were engaged. Twenty-one papers by linguists and philologists outline here a survey of many aspects of the European grammatical tradition. These papers make the book a good contribution towards the historiography of grammar, notably of the “processus de grammatisation et ses enjeux”, as Sylvain Auroux has called it (“Introduction: Le processus de grammatisation et ses enjeux”, Histoire des idées linguistiques ed. by Sylvain Auroux, Tome II: Le développement de la grammaire occidentale, 11–64. Liège: Mardaga, 1992). The first of the articles in this volume is the meeting’s opening paper by Giulio Lepschy “L’ordine delle parole” (13–33), which deals with some opinions on the relationship between word order and meaning in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance. At the end of his paper, the 19th-century De l’ordre des mots by Henri Weil (1818–1909) is also considered: the closing remark about Weil’s interest in the relationship between word order and intonation (“accent oratoire”) is a suggestive one. As it is the case with Lepschy’s article, other papers take up some questions of language theory by presenting various moments in the history of linguistic thought. Sara Cigada writes on “L’interiezione: classe del lessico e funzione pragmatica nella tradizione latina” (109–120): this subject is in tune with the renewed search for the features of the language of emotions. Maria Cristina Gatti paints a lucid picture of the debate on negation from ancient grammarians to Port-Royal (143–163): universal grammar is also considered in her paper. Paola Pontani’s “La dottrina dei composti in Giuliano da Toledo” (51–65) deals with the definition and the classification of compounds, which is a matter of theoretical relevance as far as the question of defining language and/or metalanguage units is concerned: with the author’s remarks about the ‘incoherence’ of segmentations in the Ars Iuliani (63–65), we come up against the well-known Saussurean question of the relationship between the concrete items of language and the “artifices du grammairien”, and the relationship between “l’analyse subjective de la langue vivante” and “l’analyse objective” of linguists, if we follow the CLG text (Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale ed. by Charles Bally & Albert Sechehaye [Paris: Payot, 21922], p. 253). The following papers are devoted to metalinguistic terminology: Giorgio Graffi’s theory-oriented discussion about oratio and propositio as words for ‘sentence’ (255–286), the detailed paper by Giovanni Gobber on German and Russian words for ‘particle’ (327–347), and Paola Tornaghi’s full analysis of terminological features in Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion (67–93); in the article of Rosa Bianca Finazzi (95–108), the notion of ‘barbarism’ is also looked into with reference to this Old English manual. On the whole, these papers give evidence for the role of terminological studies in order to describe continuities or breaks in the development of linguistic thought. In the article entitled “La grammatica pedagogica tra norma e uso della lingua” (321–326), Bona Cambiaghi characterizes what in 1972 James S. Noblitt called ‘pedagogical grammar’: her study brings a glance at the history of language teaching theory into this volume. Several papers deal with chronologically and culturally differentiated cases of the above-mentioned “processus de grammatisation”. Romano Sgarbi discusses some questions about the Téchnē attributed to Dionysius Thrax (35–41), the work of Nonius Marcellus is considered by Guido Milanese (43–50), Mario Iodice’s article introduces the Latin grammar of the Jesuit Manuel Alvarez (237–244), Anna Slerca compares the 16th-century Deffence et Illustration de la langue françoyse by Joachim Du Bellay with Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia (165–181), and Simone Fornara’s “Varietà e struttura nelle prime grammatiche delle lingue volgari” (183–203), too, is a contrastive analysis. Celestina Milani presents a manuscript by the humanist Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, which contains many interesting comparative remarks about Greek and Latin (219–235). A series of studies is devoted to the Italian grammatical tradition: Michele Colombo investigates the sources of Benedetto Buonmattei’s Della lingua toscana (205–217). Dario Corno’s article about the Elementi di rettorica by Giuseppe Rigutini (287–306), the paper by Vincenzo Orioles about ‘language education’ from Ascoli to Lombardo Radice (245–253), and Claudio Marazzini’s study in the role of ‘grammar’ according to Bruno Migliorini (349–367) are contributions to the history of the 19th- and 20th-century tradition. Sergio Airoldi writes on The Philosophy of Grammar of 1924 by Otto Jespersen (307–320). Many of these studies in the history of European grammar are founded on a philological basis. The paper by Violetta de Angelis “Ansie ortografiche d’autore e censure umanistiche: Papia e Bonino Mombricio” (121–142), an excellent philology-oriented article on humanistic interpolations and interventions in the orthography of a medieval text, deserves particular consideration: this study provokes us to think about the great usefulness of philological research for the historiography of linguistic thought. Undoubtedly, the various topics of the articles of this collection make it a heterogeneous volume, but of course this is not a fault. One is grateful to the editors Celestina Milani and Rosa Bianca Finazzi for providing us with a rich and stimulating book. – Maria Patrizia Bologna (University of Milan).]
. 2005 . Een kwestie van tijd. Vakhistorische studies . Münster : Nodus , 191 pp. ISBN : 3-89323-291-5 ( PB ). € 35.50 . [The book (‘A Question of Time: Studies in disciplinary history’) consists of a collection of 11 articles (average length: about 15 pages) and an Index nominum. Most articles were published earlier, in the same or a slighty different form. All except one are in Dutch; the only article in English (about Jacob or Jacques van Ginneken) was published originally in HL 19.145–163 (2002). The book contains four portraits: two of Lambert ten Kate, one of A. N. E. Changuion and one of van Ginneken (in disguise, during WW II), and two reproductions of title pages (ten Kate and Changuion). Apart from the first introductory text and the final miscellany of four very short anecdotical texts, all articles offer thorough and lively discussions of selected history-of-linguistics topics. Anyone with some acquaintance with Jan Noordegraaf’s work will not be surprised to find that most chapters are about 18th- to 20th-century linguistics, with a special focus on Dutch scholarship. Attention to intellectual context in its broadest sense is another well-known feature, which makes Noordegraaf’s texts valuable as specimens of general intellectual historiography. His manner of contextualization keeps a nice balance between, on the one hand, attention to general and international currents in linguistics and other disciplines (e.g., theology, philosophy) and, on the other hand, attention to specific data belonging to biography, local, political and social circumstances etc. – The book deals with a wide range of subjects, presented in a more or less chronological order. After the first introductory text, the next three articles deal with some lesser-known aspects of the work of Lambert ten Kate (1674–1731): his religious anti-cartesianism, his ideas about the origin of language, and his relationship to the painter Le Blon (1667–1741), known for his portrait of Ten Kate. What is not generally known, however, is that Le Blon also wrote an interesting necrology of his friend, which is presented here. The next article is about the history of “colonial linguistics”, according to Noordegraaf a still underdeveloped branch of Dutch linguistic historiography. He illustrates this by discussing the contributions of the (originally Dutch) linguist A.N.E. Changuion (1803–1881) to the description of and the discussion about Afrikaans, which was called ‘Cape-Dutch’ at the time and which was regarded as an undesirable corruption of standard Dutch. Although Changuion published a book titled (in translation) ‘The Dutch Language Restored in South Africa’ (1844), its preface bears witness of his (relatively early) insight that the disappearance of standard Dutch from South Africa could not be avoided, but only, at best, delayed. The following two articles deal with the Dutch varieties of two general developments in 19th-century European linguistics: the rise of historical linguistics and, somewhat later, the rise of dialect geography. As to the first of these developments, the focus is on the laborious creation and the unhappy fate of the first Middle Dutch Syntax, published in 1867 by Eelco Verwijs (1830–1880). The latter development is represented by an article about the first nation-wide dialect inquiry in the Netherlands (1879). The next three articles reach into the twentieth century. In one article, attention is paid to a remarkable exchange of letters between the founder of the philosophical-linguistic ‘Significa’ movement, Lady Victoria Welby (1837–1912), and the eccentric Dutch Hegelian philosopher Bolland (1854–1922). After describing the role of the psychiatrist, writer and social utopian Frederik van Eeden (1860–1932), another “significian”, as mediator (he brought them in contact with each other), the article presents the full text of the letters. There could not be a greater contrast than that between Welby’s polite and crystal-clear argumentation and Bolland’s obscure verbosities, full of negative prejudice about women and about the alleged ‘semi-barbarous’ character of the English language. The next theme, ‘monosemy’, is explored through a thorough piece of conceptual and terminological historiography. Dutch linguists often refer to the principle of monosemy as ‘the Humboldtian principle’; Noordegraaf convincingly shows that this term is – at least – somewhat misleading. The last of these three articles discusses Saussure’s reception in the Netherlands. Its main focus is on the exuberant Dutch linguist Jacques van Ginneken (1877–1945), famous for his bold pioneer work in, successively, psychology, sociology and biology of language. As mentioned above, the book nicely concludes with a couple of “lighter” anecdotal texts. – Els Elffers (Universiteit van Amsterdam).]
eds. 2003 . Studium declamatorium: Untersuchungen zu Schulübungen und Prunkreden von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit . (= Beiträge zur Altertumskunde, 176. ) München & Leipzig : K. G. Saur , ix + 400 pp. ISBN : 3-598-77725-6 . € 88 ( HB ). [The genre of Festschriften is typically associated with collections of articles which have no thematic connection whatsoever or, worse, which would not have been published elsewhere. Even in more traditional disciplines like classical philology, it has now been recognised by some scholars that it is advisable to organize Festschriften along the lines of a coherent topic. The editors of the reviewed volume, presented to Professor Joachim Dingel of the University of Hamburg on the occasion of his 65th birthday, have attempted to follow this concept by concentrating on “declamations”, ranging from Graeco-Roman antiquity to the 19th century (Nietzsche), and it is a felicitous coincidence that this focus reflects the research interests of the honoured scholar. Dingel’s doctoral dissertation dealt with stage properties in Greek tragedy (Das Requisit in der griechischen Tragödie, submitted Tübingen, 1967). His ‘Habilitationsschrift’ (1972) was published in the form of two separate books: one on Seneca and poetry (Seneca und die Dichtung, Heidelberg: Winter, 1974) and the other, much later, on Roman declamation and the rhetorician Quintilian (Scholastica materia: Untersuchungen zu den Declamationes minores und der Institutio oratoria Quintilians, Berlin & New York: W. de Gruyter, 1988). It should perhaps also be mentioned that Dingel wrote a commentary on the Ninth Book of Virgil’s Aeneid (Kommentar zum 9. Buch der Aeneis Vergils, Heidelberg: Winter, 1997). The present volume is introduced by a rather awkward laudatio by Walter Jens (1–4), for whom Dingel had given a speech when his former Tübingen professor was awarded the “Bruno-Snell-Plakette” in Hamburg in December 1997. This short introduction is followed by 15 articles of varying length (11 in German, two in English and two in Italian), the titles of which are given here: Wilfried Stroh: “Declamatio” (5–34), Claudia Klodt: “Prozessparteien und politische Gegner als dramatis personae. Charakterstilisierung in Ciceros Reden” (35–106), Dorothee Gall: “Römische Rhetorik am Wendepunkt. Untersuchungen zu Seneca pater und Dionysios von Halikarnassos” (107–126), Christine Walde: “Le partisan du mauvais goût oder: Anti-Kritisches zur Lucan-Forschung” (127–152), Thomas Zinsmaier: “Quintilian als Deklamator. Die Topik des parens superstes im Proömium zu Buch VI der Institutio oratoria” (153–167), Mark Beck: “Plutarch’s Declamations and the Progymnasmata” (169–192), Jessica Wißmann: “Enkomion, Hymnos und Prooimion. Zu den Prosahymnen des Ailios Aristeides und Dion Chrysostomos, or. 53” (193–211), Antonio Stramaglia: “Amori impossibili. PKöln 250, le raccolte proginnasmatiche e la tradizione retorica dell’›amante di un ritratto‹” (213–239), Massimo Lolli: “Usurpatori e Panegyrici Latini: la fuga quale turpitudinum nota” (241–250), Bianca-Jeanette Schröder: “Charakteristika der Dictiones Ethicae und der Controversiae des Ennodius” (251–274), Michael Winterbottom: “Ennodius, Dictio 21” (275–287), Gernot Krapinger: “Vives’ Antwort auf Ps.Quintilians Paries palmatus: Die Deklamation Pro Noverca. Text, Übersetzung und Erläuterungen” (289–333), Walther Ludwig: “Deklamationen und Schuldramen im 17. Jahrhundert. Das Beispiel des Gymnasium [sic] der Reichsstadt Schwäbisch Hall” (335–372), Hubert Cancik & Hildegard Cancik-Lindemaier: “Von Masken, Schauspielern und Selbstinszenierung. Zu Friedrich Nietzsches Rezeption des antiken Theaters” (373–394), and Manfred G. Schmidt: “Ein Convivium divitum in Thamugadi” (395–400). For a useful summary of each article, one may consult the internet review by Stefanie A. H. Kennell which appeared in Bryn Mawr Classical Review (http://ccat.sas. upenn.edu/bmcr/2003/2003-10-11.html). On the whole, the editors have done a good job, although there are articles in this collection which are only rather loosely related to declamations like the one on Nietzsche’s view of the ancient theatre. Among those contributions which are most useful are Wilfried Stroh’s seminal analysis of the origin and use of the term declamatio (perhaps coined as an equivalent to ϕωνασκἰα) in Roman antiquity to designate rhetorical exercises about fictitious topics or causae as part of the education of the future orator, and Christine Walde’s defense of the poet Lucan, who, among other representatives of “Silver Latin poetry” (the term as such being pejorative), has often been blamed for his extreme rhetorization of verse and baroque mannerisms. The book has been produced rather elegantly, but purists may find it annoying that no effort has been made to implement a uniform system throughout the entire volume for quotations of both primary and secondary literature. Unfortunately, there is no index, which would have been indispensable for a volume like this. – Thorsten Fögen (Humboldt-Universität Berlin).]
. 2005 . Van onze taalkundige medewerker. Kronieken 1954–1962 . Edited by Cecile A. Portielje and Jan Noordegraaf . (= Cahiers voor Taalkunde, 22. ) Amsterdam : Stichting Neerlandistiek VU ; Münster : Nodus Publikationen , 214 pp. ISBN : 3-89323-528-0 ( Nodus ), 90-72365-86-0 ( Stichting Neerlandistiek VU ). € 15 ( PB ). [This is a collection of 73 newspaper articles that the linguist “Henk” Schultink (b. 1924) – the author prefers to go by initial only – wrote for the leading Dutch newspaper N.R.C. In 1951, after his study of Dutch language and literature in Leiden under a.o. the dialectologist G. G. Kloeke (1887–1963), Schultink became a lecturer of Dutch in Copenhague. In 1953, N.R.C. asked him to become a correspondent for general news from Denmark. In 1954, he also started to write contributions on new publications in Dutch and general linguistics. After his return to Holland, where he became assistant professor to the chair of general linguistics in Leiden (occupied by E. M. Uhlenbeck), the contributions developed into a two-weekly column, entitled “Van onze taalkundige medewerker [From our linguistic contributor]”. After four years, the work load of his new job did not allow Schultink to continue his column on a regularly basis, which was then put to an end in November 1960. In 1962, he wrote a last contribution for N.R.C., devoted to Prof. Coenraad Bernardus van Haeringen (1892–1983), on the occasion of his retirement as professor for Dutch linguistics at the University of Utrecht. In that same year, Schultink got the chair for general linguistics in Utrecht, which had been occupied till then by A. W. de Groot (1892–1963). Schultink retired in 1986, after which he continued with writing on morphology and the history of Dutch linguistics. – The genre of newspaper column is rather rare for linguists, although it is stressed again and again how important it is that we communicate news from our field to the general public. The present edition of Schultink’s columns reminds us of this task and shows how it can be done. In most of his columns, Schultink took a recent publication as a point of departure. He gave a short summary and wherever possible, he pointed out the relevance of it for practical purposes, like language teaching, language policy, the spelling debate, etc. At the same time, he tried to show the general public that the field of linguistics was not dull and static and that new and relevant developments were taking place. In particular synchronic structuralism was gaining a foothold in Dutch linguistics in those years, by the work of, among others, A. W. de Groot, E. M. Uhlenbeck, and Petrus Cornelis “Piet” Paardekooper (b. 1920). These names figure frequently in Schultink’s columns. But he also paid attention to authors such as Roman Jakobson and Louis Hjelmslev, whose works he considered relevant for the development of general linguistic theory. The column of 22 September 1956 was devoted to the Cercle linguistique de Copenhague on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. Schultink wrote enthusiastically about the open and lively discussions that took place in the meetings of the Cercle. The column of 20 July 1957, entitled ‘The boundary between the possible and impossible’, was devoted to Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures, months before Robert B. Lees’ well-known review appeared in Language. Schultinks review was positive, in line with his general sympathy for the structuralist approach. The popularization of linguistics is a dimension of the field that deserves historiographic attention. The present volume provides access to a piece of popularizing work in the second half of the 1950s, which at the same time mirrors the development in Dutch linguistics during those years. The book closes with an afterword by the editors and a name index. – Ad Foolen (Radboud University Nijmegen).]
Voortgang. Jaarboek voor de Neerlandistiek . Nr. XXII1 , 2004 . Amsterdam : Stichting Neerlandistiek VU ; Münster : Nodus . 321 pp. ISSN : 0922-7865 . ISBN : 3-89323-722-4 ( Nodus ), 90-72365-85-2 ( Stichting Neerlandistiek VU ). € 38,50 ( PB ). [Voortgang is a yearbook, dedicated to Dutch language and literature. It is based at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Jan Noordegraaf is one of the editors), with co-editors in other Dutch universities. The issue of 2004 contains 13 papers, 11 written in Dutch, one in German and one in English, all with an abstract in English. The 7 linguistically relevant contributions all have a historiographic orientation, dealing with topics ranging from the 17th to the 20th century. Minne de Boer writes on Pieter C. Hooft (1581–1647), a Dutch poet and historian who lived in a period when Dutch was in a process of standardization. At that time, poets were very conscious of the linguistic choices they made in their writing. In one of his publications, Hooft reflected explicitly on his choices with regard to orthography, morphology and word choice. De Boer shows that avoidance of ambiguity was for Hooft a guiding principle in his linguistic decisions. Boris Djubo’s paper (in German) deals with the translation of a Dutch 18th century grammar into Russian. The Nederduytsche Spraakkonst (“Dutch Grammar”) was written by William Sewel (1654–1720) and first published in 1708. It was the second edition (1712) that was translated into Russian in 1717 by Jakov Bruce, by order of Czar Peter I. Djubo analyzes the grammatical terminology used by the translator and in particular the way he treats Dutch gender and case in relation to Russian. Igor van de Bilt goes into an 18th century plan for a comprehensive Dutch dictionary. The plan was conceived by the Society of Dutch Literature (“Maatschappij voor Nederlandsche Letterkunde”), who approved of the plan in its annual meeting of 1769. The historian and linguist Adriaan Kluit (1735–807), a member of the Society, became strongly engaged in the conception of the dictionary and he started collecting material. But the project turned out to be too ambitious to succeed. Van de Bilt describes the history of the project and analyzes the lexicographic principles on which Kluit based his work. Henk de Groot writes (in English) on two Dutch-Japanese dictionaries that appeared in early 19th century in Japan. The importance of these dictionaries (the Edo haruma and the Duufu/Nagasaki haruma) must be seen against the background that for centuries the Dutch were the only westerners who were allowed to hold a trading post in Japan. For the Japanese, Dutch thus was an important medium to get access to western knowledge. De Groot analyzes how the two dictionary projects went along and what their influence was. Els Elffers contributes a long paper (28 pages) on antipsychologism, which came up in logic, and even more in linguistics, around 1900. She shows that linguists were not always consistent in their antipsychologism and demonstrates this in more detail in the work of the Dutch linguist Jacques van Ginneken (1877–1945) and the German linguist John Ries (1857–1933). The first one adopts 19th-century psychologism in his theoretical work, but in his descriptive practice, he tends to antipsychologism, whereas Ries shows the reverse pattern. Elffers ends her paper with a metahistoriographical reflection on how historiographers should deal with such ‘paradoxes’. In a 30-page paper, Cecile Portielje looks back at the life and work of the Dutch linguist E. M. Uhlenbeck (1913–2003), who was professor for Javanese and later for General Linguistics at the university of Leiden. Besides his research publications, Uhlenbeck was active as a journal editor (Lingua, among others) and he took many responsibilities in organizations. He was, for example, a member of CIPL between 1977 and 1992. In his theoretical orientation, Uhlenbeck was a structuralist, stressing that the simultaneous presence of sound and meaning is essential for linguistic structure. After the mid-sixties, he got involved in discussions and controversies regarding generative grammar. He was strongly opposed to this approach which quickly became the main theoretical framework in Dutch linguistics in those years. Saskia Daalder goes into the background of the first International Congress of Linguists, The Hague 1928. The congress has always been considered as a Dutch initiative: Chair of the conference was C(hristiaan) C(ornelis) Uhlenbeck (1866–1951) from the University of Leiden and the secretary was Josef Schrijnen (1869–1938) from the recently founded (1923) Catholic University of Nijmegen. In the yearbook 1936–1937 of the Dutch Royal Academy of Sciences, Schrijnen devoted an obituary on Antoine Meillet (1866–1936), who had been an honorary member of the Academy. Schrijnen wrote that he had visited Meillet in the spring of 1927 and that he [Meillet] had suggested that the organization of an international congress would be a good idea and he therefore calls Meillet the ‘father’ of the congresses. Daalder concludes that further research on the prehistory of the 1928 congress seems worthwhile. The 7 papers in this issue of Voortgang show that the historiography of Dutch linguistics is alive and lively, despite the fact that it plays a modest role in the Dutch academic curricula and politics. – Ad Foolen, Radboud University Nijmegen.]