Publications Received / Ouvrages reçus / Eingegangene Schriften

. 2000 . Europäischer Strukturalismus: Ein forschungsgeschichtlicher Überblick . (= UTB für Wissenschaft: Uni-Taschenbücher, 1487 .) 2nd revised and enlarged ed. Tübingen & Basel : A. Francke Verlag , ix, 321 pp. ISBN 3-8252-1487 ( UTB ); 3-7720-1748-7 ( Francke ). € 17.90 ( PB ). [ This textbook, which first appeared in 1988, was inspired by Giulio Lepschy’s successful Linguistica strutturale (Turin, 1966), which had translations into German (1969) and English (1970; 2nd ed., 1982), and by the teachings of Eugenio Coseriu, Albrecht’s former teacher at Tübingen University, has been updated and enlarged (between 1 and 13 pages in its 11 chapters). Unlike Lepschy’s book, which has chapters on American structuralism and Chomsky’s transformationalism, Albrecht’s book is almost exclusively devoted to European trends and traditions, however. Beginning with a short Introduction, the next chapter is devoted to the ‘prehistory’ of ‘structural linguistics’, holding on to the fable convenue of Georg von der Gabelentz as an ‘immediate precursor’ of Saussure (24–25). Chap. 3 treats Saussure’s well-known dichotomies, followed by a chapter on the ‘schools’ of Prague, Geneva, Copenhagen, Russia (essentially Baudouin de Courtenay and his Russian pupils and the revival of interest in Western linguistics in the Soviet Union in the 1970s), and English (Sweet, Firth, Daniel Jones, Halliday); it also touches upon the work of ‘individualists’ who are supposed not to have formed schools like Guillaume, Tesnière, Martinet, Coseriu, and others, though some may argue that they indeed have, such as Martinet and – certainly in Germany – Coseriu. Significant revisions can be found in Chap. 5, ‘Demarcations of European structuralism “toward external [positions]”’, and a considerable expansion of Chap. 8 dealing with structuralism outside of linguistics in anthropology and semiotics. Chap. 6, ‘Language and language description under the sign of structuralism’, contains an interesting section of Charles Ernest Bazell’s (1909–1984) ‘nominalist’ approach to the parts of speech (163–166). Chap. 7 confronts structuralism with questions of language change, in which phonology and typology receive particular attention. Chap. 9, discussing the concept of ‘structure’, might have been placed earlier, but it is a good thing that the subject is ventilated at all. Prior to the author’s conclusions (“Ausblick”), which argues that no serious scholar can ignore the existence of structuralism, there is a full chapter on ‘Critique of structuralism’ from various angles. The bibliography has been enlarged, notably by five more entries by the author himself, and eight authored by Coseriu. There is an index of names (316–321), but in a book like this an index of subjects and terms will be sorely missed. – Cf. also the reviews by Franz Lebsanft in Romanische Forschungen 115:4.522–523 (2003) and Gerhard Helbig in Deutsch als Fremdsprache 21.121–123 (2003). Peter Ernst too, in his “Nachwort” to the third printing of the German translation of Saussure’s Cours (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), makes frequent references to this book .]

. 2001 . Die Sprache . Translated into German by Peter Ernst and Hans Christian Luschützky , with the collaboration of Thomas Herok . Vienna : Edition Praesens (Verlag für Literaturund Sprachwissenschaft) [ address: Umlauftgasse 3, A-1170 Wien, Austria ], 747 pp. ISBN 3-7069-1001-2 ( HB ). 62.70 Euro ( Germany ), 64.50 Euro ( Austria ). [ While translations into Japanese (1962), Spanish (1964), French and Italian (both in 1970) and into Chinese (1988) have been published a long time ago, this is the first translation of Bloomfield’s opus magnum into German. As the late Charles Hockett (1916–2000) noted in his foreword to the 1984 reprinting (also translated in the present volume [15–19]), Bloomfield’s Language represents one of the most important books ever written in the field. The translators and editors are to be commended for this no doubt challenging task. They added, for the benefit of the modern reader not familiar with the background to the original work and various of its references, altogether 686 (!) notes of commentary (677–747). The German translation is based on the corrected edition of 1984, also taking into account the 1935 British edition (London: Allen & Unwin). As in the original text, the notes follow (603–619). The bibliography has been significantly updated and enriched, both by references to a number of more recent publications and by including references only found in the original notes (620–660). The index of concepts, persons, and languages (664–675) subjects follows the original; it does not cover the endnotes, something which is to be regretted since the user may be unaware that Bloomfield made references to Arnauld & Lancelot’s Grammaire générale et raisonnée of 1660 for instance (p. 604), to Baudouin de Courtenay (p. 607), Jespersen (p. 609), and many other authors, something which is not rectified in Ernst et al.’s Registerband of the same year (see there, for details) .]

eds. 2004 . The Bakhtin Circle: In the master’s absence . Manchester : Manchester University Press ( distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave ), x, 286 pp. ISBN 07190-6409-0 ( PB ). £16.99 ; ISBN 0-7190-6408-2 ( HB ) £47.50 . [ “This volume arises from a conference held at the University of Sheffield’s Bakhtin Centre in October 1999 and entitled ‘In the Master’s Absence: The Unknown Bakhtin Circle’” (p. 2). The Russian philsopher and cultural theorist Mixail Mixajlovič Baxtin (1895–1975), whose posthumous influence on literary studies has arguably been out of proportion of his positive work, has traditionally been seen as the leading figure in the group of intellectuals known as the ‘Baxtin Circle’. It appears that we have to do with a case of what the late sociologist of science Robert K. Merton (1910–2003) had termed ‘The Matthew Effect’, when we notice that the writings of other members of the Circle, when not attributed to Baxtin himself, are usually considered to be much less important than his work. However, as the present collection of articles tries to illustrate, Baxtin’s achievement has been exaggerated in proportion to the downgrading of the thinkers with whom he associated in the 1920s. This volume, which includes new translations and studies of the work of the most important members of the Circle, sets out to correct the distortions in the established representations of its activity. The original contributions to literary and linguistic theory made by Valentin Nikola’evič Vološinov (1895–1936) and Pavel Nikola’evič Medvedev (1891–1938) – but frequently credited to Baxtin – are assessed, and the distinctiveness of their approaches is highlighted. The works and careers of less well-known members of the Circle, such as the philosophers Lev Vasil’evič Pumpianskij (1891–1940) and Matvej Isa’evič Kagan (1889–1937), the natural scientist Ivan Ivanovič Kanaev (1893–1984), and the musicologist Ivan Ivanovič Sollertinskij (1902–1944), are also introduced. The Baxtin Circle emerges from this reconsideration not as a set of followers or disciples of one central figure, but as a dynamic confederation of independent thinkers. The volume also makes available, for the first time, translations of key works by Vološinov, Medvedev, Kagan, and Pumpianskij. Following theintroductory article “Re-introducing the Baxtin Circle” by David Shepherd (1–21), the volume has the following parts: I, “About the Baxtin Circle”, containing inter alia “The scholarly legacy of Pavel Medvedev in the light of his dialogue with Baxtin” by Iurij Medvedev and Dar’ia Medvedeva; “Seeking a ‘third way’ for Soviet aesthetics: Eurasianism, Marxism, Formalism” by Galin Tihanov; “The Baxtin Circle and problems in linguistics”, whose author, Vladimir Alpatov, still skirts around the issue of the contested authorship of books such as Marxism and the Philosophy of Language of 1929 (pp. 79–81); “Voloshinov’s dilemma: On the philosophical roots of the dialogic theory of the utterance” by Craig Brandist; “Lev Pumpianskii and the Nevel School of philosophy” by Nikolai Nikolaev; II, “Selected works by members of the Baxtin Circle” carrying “Tolstoi’s Diary” by P. N. Medvedev; “Hermann Cohen (4 July 1842–4 April 1918)” by M. I. Kagan; “[On Marxism]” by L. V. Pumpianskij, followed by archival materials (I. “The problem of the transmission of alien discourse: An essay in sociolinguistic research”; II. “Report on work as a postgraduate student, 1927/28: Plan and some guiding thoughts for the work Marxism and the Philosophy of Language”) by V. N. Vološinov. The appendix “The Baxtin Circle: A timeline” (251–275) is particularly useful as it provides bioand bibliographical information not easily found anywhere in the volume, whose general index does not cover the often very detailed and informative footnotes. One regrets the absence of a general bibliography of primary and secondary sources and the editors’ decision to initialize all first names of authors .]

eds. 2005 . Bio-bibliographisches Handbuch zur Sprachwissenschaft des 18. Jahrhunderts: Die Grammatiker, Lexikographen und Sprachtheoretiker des deutschsprachigen Raums mit Beschreibungen ihrer Werke, Vol. 8: Schu-Z . Tübingen : Max Niemeyer , xvii, 445 pp. in 4º . ISBN : 3-484-730285 ( volume 81 ); ISBN : 3-484-73020-x ( entire set ). [ This volume concludes the ‘projet de longue haleine’, first announced by Brekle & Höller in HL 8.171–190 (1981) and whose first instalment appeared in 1993. Like all previous volumes, the present one offers very detailed (as much as the available sources permit) biobibliographical information on 18th-century authors of grammars, dictionaries, and other linguistic writings from German-speaking lands. – Notices on earlier volumes of this Bio-bibliographisches Handbuch have been printed in HL 20:2/3.528 (1993) on volume I, 21.239 and 21.479 (1994) on vols. II and III, respectively, 23:1/2. 256–257 (1996) on vol. IV, 25:3.444–445 (1998) on vol. V, 26:1/2.239–240 (1999) on vol. VI, and 29:3.466–467 (2002) on vol. VII, to which may be added (from page viii of the present volume reviews and review notices in other periodicals such as Germanistik, Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert (by Clemens Knobloch), Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft (unsigned). Much more thorough appraisals, though from the perspective of a Romanist, have been produced by Jürgen Storost in Romanistisches Jahrbuch 45.205–212 (1994), 48.218–222 (1996), 50.237–242 (1998), and 53.225–229 (2001). The present volume carries a brief “Nachwort” (p. vii) by the chief editor and lists altogether 46 contributors (p. ix), two of which (Dürr and Lukesch) without a first name. Pages xvii–xxii lists the names of all authors who have entries in the present volume, including those relegated to the appendix (407–439), on whom information had been collected, but who were eventually characterized is ‘irrelevant’ in the present context, for instance the one on the Jesuit missionary Jakob Sedlmayr (1703–1779), who worked on Pima in Northern Mexico; Christian Friedrich Seidelmann (on whom see Julie T. Andresen in HL 13.111–116 [1986]); the Swiss dialectologist Franz Joseph Stalder (1757–1833), the famous traveler Philip Johan von Strahlenberg alias Tabbert (1676–1747) or the lexicographer Michał Abraham Troc (alias Michael Abraham Trotz; c.1689–1769). (By contrast, one wonders why a certain Pierre Surleau, about whom so little information is available, has been listed in the main section, p.191, for instance. Likewise, users of the reference work may wonder why a certain Johann Christoph Vollbeding (1757-post 1827 – according to Stammerjohann’s Lexicon Grammaticorum [Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1996], pp. 980–982) has received so much space [300–310!].) In the main body of the volume one finds detailed entries on some better known scholars in the history of linguistics such as the missionary Benjamin Schulze (1689–1760), pastor Johann Peter Süßmilch (1707–1767), philosopher-mathematician Johan(n) Nikolaus Tetens (1736–1807), Dietrich Tiedemann (1748–1803), pioneer of child language; philologist Johann Georg Trendelenburg (1757–1825), theologian Thomas Christian Tychsen (1758–1834), general linguist Johann Severin Vater (1771–1826), the philosopher Christian (since 1745: Reichsfreiherr von) Wolff (1679–1754), and the ‘applied linguist’ Christian Heinrich Wolke (1741–1825), who, among other pedagogical works, also contributed to research on the deaf and dumb (391–393). Now that this project has been completed, what would be most useful to have access to is an electronic version that would allow all kinds of searches to be conducted .]

. 2003 . Geschichte der Sprachphilosophie: Von den Anfagen bis Rousseau . Neu bearbeitet und erweitert von Jörn Albrecht , mit einer Vor-Bemerkung von Jürgen Trabant . Tübingen & Basel : A. Francke , xxii, 410 pp. ISBN 3-8252-2266-7 . € 24.90 ( PB ). [ Eugenio Coseriu (1921–2002) professed two courses on the history of linguistics at Tübingen in 1969/70 and 1970/71 that acquired legendary status, and Trabant’s introduction gives a good account of their impact. They were published in two mimeographed volumes that were very hard to find; I remember eagerly devouring one in the stacks of the Library of Congress in the mid–1980s – and, frankly, being disappointed to find it not much advanced intellectually from the work of Benfey and Steinthal a century before. Indeed, in many respects it is impoverished compared to them. That said, Jörn Albrecht has done an impressive job of making them widely accessible in a clear and attractive format. Two brief opening chapters deal with general philosophical problems; then follow chapters on Indian language philosophy, Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Augustine, the Middle Ages, Vives, Descartes, Locke and Leibniz. After an interlude on continuity and discontinuity in the history of the philosophy of language, chapters follow on the 18th century in Britain, Germany and France, with a separate chapter on Vico. The bibliography has been updated somewhat, and the index of names is particularly useful for guiding one to the post 18th-century figures who crop up in the discussion – though most of them get only a passing mention, and Wittgenstein, arguably the single most important philosopher of language of modern times, does not appear at all. – John E. Joseph (Edinburgh) .]

. 2004 . Der Physei-Thesei-Streit: Sechs Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachphilosophie . Herausgegeben von Reinhard Meisterfeld . Tübingen : Gunter Narr Verlag , x, 211 pp. ISBN 3-8233-6041-8 . € 39 ( HB ). [ Apart from “Die sprachphilosophische Thematik bei Platon”, a previously unpublished study from 1970, this book reprints articles that specialists may already know, as will surely be the case with “L’arbitraire du signe: Zur Spätgeschichte eines aristotelischen Begriffes” (1968). The other four are variations on and extensions of themes already laid out there: “to hen sêmainein: Bedeutung und Bezeichnung bei Aristoteles” (1979), “Naturbild und Sprache” (1982), “Die Sprache zwischen physei und thesei” (1988), and the 1996 paper from which the main title of the volume is drawn. The last 49 pages are all indices, with the subject index taking up 39 of those, the index of ancient text passages four, the index of names six. – John E. Joseph (Edinburgh) .]

. 2003 . Sprache und Logik bei Platon. Erster Teil: Logos, Name und Sache im Kratylos . Würzburg : Königshausen & Neumann , 254 pp. ISBN 3-82602577-6 . € 44 ( HB ). [ This study of Plato’s Cratylus was Eckl’s Habilitationsschrift at the University of Bonn, where he is a Privatdozent in philosophy. After a brief exposition of the problems posed in the dialogue comes a section on naming and truth, with excurses on the treatment of subjectivism in the Theaetetus and Euthydemus. The next section evaluates how the ‘hypothesis’ of a truth standard based on individual name-formation stands up in Socrates’s actual etymological practice. The final section examines how linguistic coinage is subordinated to the logical regulation of existing things. Since the Habilitationsschrift functions largely as a performance of erudition, one might expect this book to be weighted down with the accumulated centuries of scholarship on the dialogue, but – happily, on the whole – it is not. It concentrates on the best and most original interpretations of the last 30 years, about evenly divided between those written in German and those in English. The focus is on the dialogue itself rather than how it relates to broader philosophical concerns, ancient or modern. The second part of Eckl’s study of language and logic in Plato, dealing with the Sophist, is expected to appear in 2007. – John E. Joseph (Edinburgh) .]

eds. 2002 . Leonard Bloomfield: Leben und Werk . Vienna : Edition Praesens ( Verlag für Literaturund Sprachwissenschaft ), 217 pp. ISBN 3-7069-0019-X ( PB ). 28.70 Euro ( Germany ), 29.50 Euro ( Austria ). [ For those familiar with Robert A. Hall, Jr. (with the assistance of yours truly), ed., Leonard Bloomfield: Essays on his life & work (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1987) and Hall, A Life for Language: A biographical memoir of Leonard Bloomfield (ibid., 1990), this book contains a number of surprises. While Werner Drossard’s “Leonard Bloomfield als Austronesianist, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner ‘Tagalog Texts with Grammatical Analysis’ von 1917” (99–124) does not much more than substantiate John U. Wolff ’s 1987 judgment through careful illustration, and while Johannes Helmbrecht’s “Bloomfield und die nordamerikanischen Algonkin-Sprachen” (125–154) largely covers familiar ground, we cannot but congratulate the first editor’s “Neue Aspekte zu Leben und Werk von Leonard Bloomfield” (19–58), which to my knowledge could not be found elsewhere in the available sources. It appears that Peter Ernst left no stone unturned to discover biographical details about Bloomfield’s Austrian ancestry that have hitherto been unknown, including altogether 11 photographs of which only two have have thus far been available in the literature, namely, the one of Maurice Bloomfield (1855–1928) and his nephew Leonard (the latter originally belonging to the late Robert A. Hall, Jr., not Charles F. Hockett); three photographs from the 1983 reprint of Leonard Bloomfield’s 1914 Introduction to the Study of Language (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins) could be added. Of particular intellectual interest is Ernst’s section on Bloomfield’s connection with Otto Neurath and his circle, including Charles William Morris (1901–1979) and others, offering a particular background to his authorship of the 1939 essay Linguistic Aspects of Science (23–26). I found it interesting too that Ernst points to Hermann Paul’s Prinzipien as an important source of Bloomfield’s linguistic thinking (28–29). Luschützky penned a ‘Problemgeschichte in sechzig Miniaturen’ in conjunction with “Bloomfield und die Phonetik” (59–98), which requires a certain congeniality on the reader’s part. Another interesting contribution – albeit fraught with too many theoretical discourses on matters of ‘traductology’ to the tastes of the present writer – is Ursula Klingenböck’s study, “Leonard Bloomfield und die Literatur” (155–216), which appraises Bloomfield’s achievement in his translation of Gerhart Hauptmann’s first stage play, “Vor Sonnenaufgang” as “Before Dawn: A social drama”, Poet Lore 20.241–315 (1909), which was also published separately (Boston: Gorham Press), and which turned out to be the first published translation of Hauptmann’s drama into English. In a book like this one regrets in particular the absence of any index .]

comps. 2001 . Leonard Bloomfield: Die Sprache. Registerband . Vienna : Edition Praesens ( Verlag für Literaturund Sprachwissenschaft ), 83 pp. ISBN 3-7069-1002-0 ( PB ). 15.60 Euro ( Germany ), 16.00 Euro ( Austria ). [ This booklet is intended to supplement the index to the German translation of Bloomfield’s Language (664–675) – see entry under ‘Bloomfield’ in the present section. It also contains a list of corrigenda (9–11). The booklet carries separate indexes of subjects (15–53), which is not only more detailed but also much more useful to the modern reader and also covers the commentary, of languages, dialects, and language families (55–77), and of names of authors, which also includes those mentioned in the commentary to the German translation, but not those referred to in Bloomfield’s endnotes (79–83) .]

( with the collaboration of Sabine Doff ) eds. 2005 . Sprachen der Bildung – Bildung durch Sprachen im Deutschland des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts . (= Wolfenbütteler Forschungen, 107 .) Wiesbaden : Harrassowitz Verlag in Kommission ( for Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel ), 316 pp. ISBN 3-447-05264-3 . € 64 (HB) . [ Since its early beginnings, European culture has been marked by multilingualism. During the Middle Ages, Latin was widely accepted as the dominating language of intellectual life. In Renaissance and Humanism, the European vernaculars came into their own as media of academic life, of religion, administration and, of course, daily communication. In the later centuries, foreign language teaching infiltrated slowly the work of private and state maintained schools. These facts are well known, but the editors have long felt that they have attracted so far too little historiographical interest on the part of those who could use them as an underpinning of present-day deliberations on foreign language teaching. In order to remedy this neglect, the editors organized a series of panel discussions and conferences between 1999 and 2004. The present volume contains the edited versions of papers presented at the last one, held at the University of Giessen. From the contents: Konrad Schröder (“Die modernen Fremdsprachen im frühen 18. Jahrhundert”, 11–28) offers many examples of the teaching of French, Italian, English, German, Russian, Yiddish, and other languages. He argues that there were theoretical reflections guiding this teaching which set up goals like accuracy, fluency, pragmatic and cultural adequacy. Marie-Louise Spieckermann (“Zur Verbreitung des Englischen im 18. Jahrhundert in Spiegel von Buchmarkt und Bibliotheken”, 29–46) turns her attention to the book trade of the time and shows by referring to reprints, translations, imported books, and English books re-issued in Germany how popular English literature and culture became in the second half of the 18th century and how fast the command of the language must have been growing for this market to find its clients. All this happened in competition to the popularity of French at the time. Werner Hüllen (“Fremdsprachen in Weimar: Anregungen und Beispiele zu einer These”, 47–60) illustrates how much authors who are famous for their contribution to German culture took it for granted that foreign languages were learnt in the German-speaking intellectual world. Among them are Grimmelshausen and Stieler, Herder, Wieland and Goethe. The two contributions by Andreas Fritsch (“Zweck und Methode des Lateinlernens”, 63–90) and Stefan Kipf (“Griechischlernen mit Homer und Herodot”, 91–104) attest to the conviction of the editors that so-called dead languages have their legitimate place in education. The first deals with the pedagogue Friedrich Gedike (1754–1803), who favoured learning Latin with the help of a reader rather than with a grammar; the other deals with learning the Attic dialect as a prerequisite for reading original texts in Old Greek. Kathrin Gut-Sembill (“Anweisung zur Erlernung der französischen Sprache, oder: Wie und warum Französisch 1773 auf den Lehrplan der Zürcher Kunstschule kam”, 105–126) discusses the various stages of introducing foreign languages into Swiss schools because of practical reasons, but later also because learning a foreign language was regarded as particularly advantageous for the development of the human mind. Herbert Christ (“Rekonstruktion von Fremdsprachenlehrmethoden”, 127–152) compares methodological deliberations on foreign-language teaching by Johann Friedrich Hezel (1754–1829), Johann Valentin Meidinger (1756–1822), and Jean-Baptiste Daulnoye (1765–post 1820) with regard to biographical, political and pedagogical circumstances. Fritz Abel (“Quia nominor leo. Je suis un example de grammaire”, 153–183) deals with the problem of how grammarians presented their rule-governed exercises in order to facilitate the teaching of living, i.e., spontaneously spoken, language. Friedrike Klippel (“Englische Literatur im Englischunterricht des 19. Jahrhunderts”, 185–209) undertakes an empirical investigation in order to find out which literary texts were read – and why this was so – in the course of the century in the various kinds of German schools. Jan Franz (“Emigrating to America! Travel books, Dolmetscher und Sprachführer für deutsche Auswanderer nach Amerika im 19. Jahrhundert”, 211–228) deals with a book genre which has never attracted any investigative attention, although it was of great practical importance for German immigrants during the period. Michael Riedl (“Hermann Wilhelm Breymann [1843–1910] – Ein bayerischer Neuphilologe und Hochschulreformer”, 229–246) portrays the work of this philologist and his reforming influence on teaching of foreign languages in schools and universities. Barbara Kaltz (“Der Fall [Jeanne-Marie Leprince de] Beaumont [(1771–1780)] oder: Wie lernten Mädchen im 18. Jahrhundert Französisch als Fremdsprache”, 247–260) discusses this topic whose interest lies especially in the fact that the approach taken by Beaumont in the teaching of a foreign language foreshadowed in many respects the principles which were agreed upon much later under the label of ‘new’ goals of communication. The topic is also treated in the paper by Sabine Doff (“Der Beitrag der neueren Fremdsprachen zur Konstituierung der deutschen höheren Mädchenschule”, 261–287). Finally, Renate Haas (“Töchter des Imperialismus: die Auslandslehrerinnen Thekla Trinks [(1831–1900)] und Anna Harriette Leonowens [(1831–1915)]”, 289–310) portrays the life stories of two lady-teachers whose work was revolutionary at their time. The book closes with an index of personal names (311–316), which could have been made more useful if life dates of the historical figures had been added. (For “Gedike, Frierich 144, 147” [p. 322] read “Gedike, Friedrich 63–86 passim, 144, 147”.) A final remark: why have first names of authors in the bibliographies to be reduced to initials? ]

. 2003 . Die Aporie Wilhelm von Humboldts: Sein Studienund Sprachprojekt zwischen Empirie und Reflexion . (= Germanistische Linguistik; Monographien, 10 .) Hildesheim-Zürich-New York : Georg Olms , xi, 402 pp. ISBN 3-487-11733-9 . € 34.80 ( PB ). [ This is a revised version of the author’s 2001 University of Heidelberg dissertation. Following in the footsteps of Kurt Müller-Vollmer, Jecht attempts to recontextualise Humboldt’s linguistic thought within the full range of his writings, including those on nature, aesthetics and history as well as those focused on languages per se. Given the vastness of Humboldt’s published output and Nachlass, the book inevitably becomes, as much as anything, a guide to those writings, which is a jolly useful thing to have. Taking up the issue of Humboldt’s own much reviled writing style, she performs a careful textual examination of it, concluding that the style is directly connected to the philosophy of language Humboldt was developing, and that the stylistic difficulties document the unfolding crisis of the shift from a speculative-idealistic approach to language toward a culture of positivistic research. A very full and well-organised bibliography of both primary and secondary literature is included, though unfortunately no index. – John E. Joseph (Edinburgh) .]

eds. 2004 . Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles, November 7–8, 2003 . (= Journal of Indo-European Monograph Series, 49 .) Washington, D.C. : Institute for the Study of Man , x, 307 pp. [ Like the journal to which the monograph series is attached, the volume carries sections on issues of mythology and archaeology as well as historical Indo-European linguistics; at times the contributions intersect. This is particular true of E[lena] E. Kuzmina’s survey article, “The Genesis of the Indo-Aryans in the Light of Data from Historical Tradition and Archaeology” (96–137) and of Marc Vander Linden’s “The Roots of the Indo-European Diaspora: New perspectives on the North Pontic Hypothesis” (138–154). Others are in line with fairly traditional philological investigations (albeit with ingredients of more recent linguistic subjects), such as “Null Objects in Latin and Greek and the Relevance of Linguistic Typology for Language Reconstruction” by Silvia Luragi (234–256) and “From Discourse to Syntax: The case of compound interrogatives in Indo-European and beyond” by Olav Hackstein(257–298). The volume is rounded out by a general index (299–307) .].

eds. 2005 . Medieval English Language Scholarship: Autobiographies by representative scholars in our discipline . Hildesheim-Zürich-New York : Georg Olms , xxxi, 215 pp. ISBN 3-487-12949-3 . [ Price not supplied .] [ This attractively produced book contains autobiographical sketches and photographs with signatures below – the editors obviously (cf. their “Foreword”, p. ix) took the First Person Singular volumes published by John Benjamins of Amsterdam between 1980 and 1998 as a model) by 13 scholars in the field announced in the main title from a number of countries: Australia, France, Germany, South Africa, Great Britain, Japan, Poland, and the United States, namely, Janet M[argaret] Bately (b. 1932), André (Pierre René Louis) Crépin (b. 1928), Ralph W[arren] V[ictor] Elliott (b. 1921 in Berlin and baptized Rudolf Ehrenberg, a descendant of a family of distinguished scholars and scientists, including the naturalist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795–1876)), Jacek Fisiak (b. 1936), Manfred Görlach (b. 1937), Roger (George) Lass (b. 1937), Robert E. Lewis (b. 1934), (Raymond) Bruce Mitchell (b. 1920), Shigeru Ono (b. 1930), R[aymond] I[an] Page (b. 1924[–2006]), Jane A[nnett] Roberts (b. 1936), Fred C[olson] Robinson (b. 1930), and Manfred Scheler (b. 1926). The book is dedicated to the memory of Angus Fraser Cameron (1941–1983), Sherman McAllister Kuhn (1907–1991), and Kikuo Miyabe (1915–1981), of whom a separate page carrying his picture has been added. (The front matter also reproduces a photograph taken in Kyoto in May 1980 showing the first editor standing next to Angus Cameron, then the director of the Toronto-based research institute on the Dictionary of Old English.) As in the ‘models’, the book provides select bibliographies of each author and is rounded out by an “Index of Biographical Names” (209–215). Having left ‘Anglistik’ in spring 1968 in order to become a linguist, I cannot judge whether the selection made by the editors is truly representative of the field, including in Japan, where one might have expected Matsuji Tajima (b.1942) of Kyushu University, author of a number of studies and vast bibliographies in Old and Middle English, to have at least been invited. No doubt the present book contains autobiographical sketches of scholars of world-wide renown. If Count Buffon was correct in saying that the style of writing represents the person, then autobiographies may tell us a lot of the character behind the work. Some (like Ralph Elliott) come off as very personable scholars, others (like Manfred Scheler) tell very little about themselves and the motives that took them into English philology. Of course, some have more to tell than others, but I’m sure that everyone in the field would be interested in hearing what some of their own teachers and contemporaries were like: Tolkien (see pp. 8–9, 108) and Dorothy Whitelock (pp. 8, 12, 151), among them. In several instances, political developments, especially in Germany, played a distinct part in the lives and careers of several them: Nazi Germany in the case of Elliott, Communist Eastern Germany in the case of Görlach, and the effects of the partition of Germany after 1945 in the case of Scheler. In several instances, one wished a stronger hand on the editors’ part: since they provide a select list of each contributor’s “major publications” as well as references to the various Festschriften each of them received in which most likely their full bibliographies are made available (xv–xxvii), important cuts could be made especially in the autobiographies of Fisiak, Görlach, and Ono. The editors themselves, Akio Oizumi (b. 1935) and Tadao Kubouchi (b. 1939), made sure that no one was in doubt of their academic standing (xxix–xxxi). To the very informative and carefully executed name index I could add only a small number of corrections and completions of information: Charles Hockett had died by 2000; Jerzy Kuryłowicz died in 1978, not 1979; instead of “McCawley, Jim (1939–1999)” write “McCawley, James David (“Jim”, 1938–1999)”; Herbert Penzl died in 1995, not 2002; the entry Smirnitzky, A. I. could be completed into Smirnitskij, Aleksandr Ivanovič (1903–1954); Paul Thieme lived 1905–2001; “Betsy” Uldall’s first name was Elizabeth; according to my files, she was born in 1913, not 1914. The book makes for pleasant bedside reading .]

ed. 2005 . Un paradigme perdu: La linguistique marriste . Lausanne : Institut de linguistique et des sciences du langage , 392 pp; illustr . ISBN 2-9700468-6-5 ( PB ). 20 CHF . [ Purchasing address: ILSL p/a Faculté des Lettres, Université de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. This collection of papers, which go back to a colloquium held at Crêt-Bérard on 3 July 2004, are led by the belief that Nikolaj Jakovlevič Marr (in Georgian: Nik’o Marr, 1865–1934) is far more interesting than has ordinarily been thought. From the contents: Kamal Abdulaev, “Marr et l’Azerbaidjan” (5–9); Vladimir Alpatov, “Que peut apporter l’héritage de Marr?” (11–23); Craig Brandist, “Le marrisme et l’héritage de la Völkerpsychologie dans la linguistique soviétique” (39–55); Emmanuel Choisnel, “Le parcours de N. Marr, de l’archéologie arménienne à la linguistique ‘japhétique’” (57–76); Jeannette Friedrich, “Les traces de N. Marr dans le livre de K[onstantin] R[omanovič] Megrelidze [(1900–1944)] Osnovnye problemy sociologii myšlenija (1937)” (109–126); Sergej Kuznecov, “La langue internationale et la révolution mondiale” (143–159); Mika Lähteenmäki, “Sur l’idée du caractère de classe de la langue: Marr et Vološinov” (161–176); Sébastien Moret, “Marr, Staline et les espérantistes” (199–214); E. Simonato, “Marr et [Nikolaj Feofanovič] Jakovlev [(1892–1974)]: Deux projets d’alphabet abkhaz” (255–269); Monique Slodzian, “Actualité de Marr, ou permanence de l’utopie” (271–293); Sergui Tchougounnikov, “Les paléontologues du langage avant et après Marr” (295–310); Robet Triomphe, “La mythologie japhétique: Marr entre la Grèce, le Caucase et la Bible” (311–341); Mixail Zelikov, “L’hypothèse basco-caucasienne dans les travaux de N. Marr” (363–381). The back matter consists of a translation of a short paper by Marr of 1925 on the ‘origin of language’ (383–387) and of Roman Jakobson’s 1935 obituary of Marr, first published in Slavische Rundschau No. 7, 135–136 (389–390). The editor, who also translated several papers from the Russian (and Jakobson’s piece from the German), is to be congratulated for having brought together a most interesting volume. One must regret, however, the absence of any index .]

eds. 2006 . Wolfgang Steinitz: Ich hatte unwahrscheinliches Glück. Ein Leben zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik . Berlin : Karl Dietz Verlag , 383 pp.; illustr . ISBN 3-320-02905-3 . 19.90 Euro ( HB ). [ The volume goes back to several colloquia held in Berlin 2005 on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Wolfgang Steinitz (1905–1967) on whose distinguished scholarly – and political – career readers of HL 32:1/2 (2005) could obtain a fair idea from Ewald Lang’s article “Biographische Kohärenz in der Wechselwirkung von Philologie und (R-)Emigration” (pp. 149–180), which has been reprinted in the present volume (pp, 63–92). The contributions are organized under the following headings: ‘Versuche eines Gesamtbildes’, ‘Umstrukturierung der Slawistik’, ‘Neuorientierung der deutschen Volkskunde’, ‘Ostjakologie’, ‘Das Wirken an der Akademie’ [i.e., as it was organized during the time of the Communist regime in former East Germany, at which Steinitz was Vice-President, 1953–1963]. The volume contains a considerable amount of biographical information on Steinitz based on public as well as private archives and reminiscences from people who had been close to him, including family members, notably his daughter Renate Steinitz (born in Leningrad in 1936); see her contribution “Eine deutsche jüdische Familie wird zerstreut” (266–311). The back matter includes the following annexes pertaining to Wolfgang Steinitz: 1) “Erste Veröffentlichung – Lindenhof 1920”; 2) “Zwei Briefe eines Achtzehnjährigen”; 3) “Wolfgang Steinitz: Rede vor dem ZK der SED am 2. Juni 1955”; 4) “Wolfgang Steinitz: Rede vor dem ZK der SED am 28. Juli 1956”; 5) “Brief an das Politbüro des ZK der SED vom 23. Juni 1958”, and 6) an extract of his “Dankesrede zum 60. Geburtstag [in 1965]”. The volume closes with a list of the main stages of Steinitz’s life and career (377–378), an index of names (379–381), and brief information on the contributors (382–382) .]

. 2005 . Sulla linguistica dell’Ottocento . Foreword by Giulio Lepschy . Bologna : Il Mulino , 326 pp. ISBN 88-15-10775-4 . 25 Euro ( HB ). [ This volume brings together five major studies by this great Italian scholar (1923–2000) of 19th-century linguistics and philology, among which the first two, “Friedrich Schlegel e gli inizi della linguistica indeuropea in Germania” of 1972 and “Il contrasto tra i fratelli Schlegel e Franz Bopp sulla struttura e le genesi delle lingue indeuropee” of 1973, are particularly insightful. The first article, translated into English by J. Peter Maher of Chicago as “Friedrich Schlegel and the Beginnings of Indo-European Linguistics in Germany”, appeared in the 1977 reprint of Schlegel’s 1808 Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (Amsterdam: John Benjamins), pp. xi–lvii. Needless to add that the second would still today merit an English translation. Index of names (317–326) .]