Review notices / Notes critiques / Kurzrezensionen

, eds . 2006 . August Friedrich Pott: Bei­ träge der Halleschen Tagung anlässlich des zweihundertsten Geburtstages von August Friedrich Pott (1802–1887) . (= Hallesche Sprach­ und Textforschung, 9 .) Frankfurt/Main-Berlin-Bern [etc.] : Peter Lang , 173 pp. ; 1 portr . ISBN 3-631-50530-2 . € 34,80 ( PB ). [ When, back in 1973 (Amsterdam: John Benjamins), I put together Pott’s 300- page “Einleitung in die Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft” (reproduced from installments originally published in Friedrich Techmer’s Internationale Zeitschrift für Allge­ meine Sprachwissenschaft, Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1884–1890) and his monograph Zur Litteratur der Sprachenkunde Europas (ibid., 1887), I added not only a foreword of my own (vii–xvi) but also – and importantly – reprinted his former student Paul Horn’s (1863–1908) 1888 obituary of Pott, which also included his bibliography (xxvii–xli). (The 1973 edition is noted by Gertrud Bense and Gerhard Meiser in their “Einleitung”, p. 14, but without a reference to place and publisher.) The present booklet complements the picture of this great scholar of whom Saussure noted in 1908 that he was no longer read, wrongly so, as he had said important things (cf. Engler’s édition cri­ tique of the Cours, p. 7). This is particularly true of the various contributions, including the Introduction (11–16), that make use of archival material still available today in the university library in Halle, where Pott was a professor of general linguistics since 1833: Gertrud Bense, “August Friedrich Pott und Peter von Bohlen [(1796–1841)]: Zu einigen Besonderheiten ihres wissenschaftlichen Umfelds” (17–33); Stefan Pfänder, “Sprache: Variation und Wandel. Die philologische Korrespondenz Rufino José Cuervo [(1844–1911)] – August Friedrich Pott” (35–49); Bogdan Kovtyk, “Über den Ursprung der Sprachen: Der Briefwechsel zwischen August Friedrich Pott und Chajim Heymann Steinthal [(1823–1899)] als sprachwissenschaftlicher Diskurs des 19. Jahrhunderts” (51–64). Marie-Christina Henning’s contribution offers a concise description of Pott’s Nachlass (69–73), but neither she nor Gertrud Bense, who has published a number of papers on Pott throughout her career, seem to know that it was the Library of the University of Pennsylvania which acquired his all-important personal library (cf. Bense, p. 17, who simply mentions that it was sold “nach Amerika”). Most of the remaining papers in this volume have little to do with Pott’s life and work, with the exception of Dietmar Schneider’s “August Friedrich Potts Studien zu Personennamen” (125–137), though passing references can be found in the contributions of Edeltraud Werner (on Romance languages) and Regina Mügge (on methods of counting) . There is an index of names (171–173), but none of subjects. ]

Bibliographie Linguistique de l’année 2000 et compléments des années précédentes / Linguistic Bibliography for the Year 2000 and supplements for previous years . Published by the Permanent International Committee of Linguists under the auspices of the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies . Edited by Sijmen Tol, Hella Olbertz & Mark Janse , with the assistance of Peter van Best, Theo Horstman, Frans Klück, Sonja Rink & Veronica van Verschuer . Dordrecht-Boston-London : Kluwer Academic Publishers , 2004 , civ , 1,561 pp. ISBN 1-4020-3008-8 ; EUR 501,83 ( HB ). [ With the contribution of specialist materials from some thirty-five scholars from locations as far away as China and Japan (see pp. v–vi, for their listing this work, although since March 2003 also accessible on the internet (under <www.blonline.nl>) BL will remain an essential tool for researchers who still do much of their work in libraries rather than spend time more or less exclusively in front of their computer screen. Indeed, having access to a printed volume will still remain a special treat as it allows to see adjacent items at one go and access related subjects more conveniently. The electronic version will provide an additional tool, and maybe it will respond to the long-standing complaint that the “traditional” BL appears many years late. For some time now, this time 75-page (!) “Index of names” (1387–1561) also includes references to book reviews (the page references to these are given in italics); thus the important service to the profession reviewers often perform is properly being recognized, which at times prove to be more interesting than many articles that appear in at times poorly refereed journals. Given the breadth of the subjects, areas, and periods covered by historiographers, users of the BL interested in linguistic historiography will continue to appreciate that the History of Linguistics (HoL) is subdivided into a variety of subsections from “Western traditions” more generally via “Antiquity”, “Middle Ages”, etc. down to “Non-Western traditions”, “Indian tradition” as well as “Arab tradition”, areas in which scholarship has continued to be sizable. The day that the History of Linguistics in China will require an extra subsection rather than be listed under “Non-Western traditions” may not be too far off. However, the presence of a HoL section should not prevent historians of linguistics from consulting other sections in BL, such as the one inscribed “Festschriften/Mélanges in honorem” and those listing congress reports as well as the general subsections in sections devoted to specific language fields or preceding (though sometimes also dispersed within) those devoted to general linguistic theory and the philosophy of language. In other words, old-fashioned browsing may yield unexpected discoveries. The “Biographical data/Données biographiques” section (pp. 112–129) is hardly less important; it counts 399 entries altogether, carrying accounts of the life and work of scholars in the language sciences, bibliographies, obituaries, testimonials, Gruß­adressen, and the like. Another more recent – and welcome – feature maintained in the HoL section is the regular addition of life-dates of authors in entries on individual authors wherever the editors were able to ascertain these. I trust that not only editors like myself remain grateful for the existence of such a valuable reference tool, especially those who prefer to take a volume from the shelf in order to check a bibliographical detail instead of starting up the personal computer .]

Bibliographie Linguistique de l’année 2001 et compléments des années précédentes / Linguistic Bibliography for the Year 2001 and supplements for previous years . Published by the Permanent International Committee of Linguists under the auspices of the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies . Edited by Sijmen Tol & Hella Olbertz , with the assistance of Peter van Best, Sonja van den Broek, Theo Horstman, Vera Hubers , the late Frans Klück, Sonja Rink & Veronica van Verschuer – not to mention the help of some international contributors in areas of their specialist knowledge ( which now includes the long-time chief editor of BL , Mark Janse , who provides items dealing with Ancient Greece ). Dordrecht : Springer , 2005 , civ , 1,596 pp. ISBN 1-4020-4291-4 ; EUR 489 ( HB ). [ Despite the change of ownership – the postal address of the Review Department of Springer Verlag is D-69121 Heidelberg, Tiergartenstr. 17 – it appears that no change in terms of format has occurred. The organization of the bibliographical entries is therefore the same as in the preceding entry. Whether my regular complaint about the tardiness of BL’s appearance will be addressed, only time will tell. Since the essential points concerning the in the Bibliographie Linguistique have already been made in the preceding entry, I can be brief on the contents of the present volume with its massive “Index of names” (1419–1596) which covers “all authors, editors, reviewers, etc., represented in the main part” (p. 1419); in other words, it also includes references to book reviews (with the page references to these are given in italics). With the ever shrinking budgets for printed books in libraries world-wide, these references render an important service to the profession, also because libraries tend to continue journal subscriptions which they currently hold (and if they are in electronic format, researchers can access these reviews from their home computer). Given the breadth of the subjects, areas, and periods covered in BL, the attention of historiographers of linguistics will be drawn to many previously overlooked publications. (Of course, the same holds true for any other subject.) Given this splendid product, it appears important to me that – apart from the support of UNESCO from the very beginning of this enterprise during the late 1940s – the tremendous financial and logistic support of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science of The Netherlands must be mentioned without which, I believe, this project could not have been sustained. Assistance from the Philological Society of London, the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, the Linguistic Society of America, and the Tokyo Institute for Advanced Studies of Language must remain, by comparison, I suspect modest .]

Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics . Second Edition . Keith Brown as editor-in-chief , with Anne Anderson, Laurie Bauer, Margie Berns, Graeme Hirst & Jim Miller as co-ordinating editors . 141 vols. of altogether some 10,000 pp. in-4º . Oxford-Amsterdam-New York [and various other subsidiaries] : Elsevier , 2006 . ISBN 0-08-044299-4 . US$ 5,600 ; ca. € 5,000 ( set ). [ It doesn’t require much insight to predict that this massive work will represent the reference tool par excellence for a very long time. It required both the financial power of a company like Elsevier and, perhaps more importantly, the dedicated involvement of many hundreds of scholars from around the world to produce an encyclopedic work of this magnitude carrying some 3,000 articles, close to 40,000 references to the most pertinent literature, and about 3,500 glossary definitions. To ensure that all aspects of linguistic science and adjacent areas are covered, more than 40 ‘section editors’ had been selected, from Keith Allan of Monash University in Melbourne for ‘Semantics’ to Bencie Woll from University College London for ‘Sign Language’. In between, one has had as persons in charge – to mention just a few widely recognized authorities in their particular domain – Laurie Bauer for ‘Morphology’, Östen Dahl for “semantax” (to use the late Jim McCawley’s felicitous coinage), Marcel Danesi for ‘Semiotics’, Bernd Heine for ‘Typology & Language Universals’, Raj Mesthrie for ‘Society & Language’, Jacob Mey for ‘Pragmatics’, Michael Silverstein for ‘Linguistic Anthropology’, and Harry Whitaker for ‘Brain & Language’. With this list, the coverage is by no means adequately represented. One has to look up particular entries in order to obtain at least an inkling of what these ca. 10,000 pages of texts and illustrations in Tomes I to XIII have to offer. To take just one subject that may not be in the minds of everyone in terms of individual research: Speech. In Tome XII, one finds “Speech Recognition: Statistical methods” (1–18); “Speech Synthesis” (19–31); “Speech Synthesis, Perception and comprehension of ” (31–49); “Speech Synthesis: Prosody” (49–55); “Speech Technologies: Language variation” (56–61), and “Speech: Biological basis” (61–68). To be sure, each linguist will find useful and up-to-date information on his particular area of specialization in this impressive reference work, which is now available also on the internet through www.elsevier. com/locate/ell2. Readers of HL will be particularly interested in two subjects, the History of Linguistics (directed by Andrew Linn of Sheffield University) and the approximately 650 biographical entries (taken care of by Kurt R. Jankowsky of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.). The History of Linguistics has been classified under two major headings, “Fields of Study” (to be found in 27 different articles) and “Schools and Tradition” (48 articles). Among the traditional subjects we expect to find entries like “Plato’s Cratylus and its Legacy”, “Aristotle and the Stoics on Language”, “Copenhagen School”, “Neogrammarians”, “Post-Bloomfieldians” or “Prague School”. More interesting – because they don’t follow trodden paths – are articles such as “Dialects: Early European Studies”, “Machine Translation: History”, “Language Disorders: 19th Century Studies”, “Sign Language: History of Research”, “American Linguistics before Whitney”, “Babylonian Grammatical Texts”, “Christianity and Language in the Middle Ages”, “Japan: History of Linguistics”, and “History of Linguistics in Central and South America”. Theorists will find “Integrational Linguistics” (see Tome V, 704–713) a particularly welcome entry, given that the term has been misleadingly used in other quarters outside the circle created by Hans-Heinrich Lieb at the Free University of Berlin during the 1970s. “Missionary Linguistics” has become a growing field of interest not just to historians of linguistics, but also there are previously neglected subjects like “Poland: History of Linguistics” (we just need to think of Baudouin de Courtenay and Kruszewski who alone were of great importance in the development of linguistic science), “Medicine and Language” or “Tamil Linguistics”. Another area of special interest to historians of linguistics has to do with biographical entries on a great number of personages in the language sciences. ‘ELL2’ has innovated over its predecessor of 1994 – though at times one may wonder why an entry on this or that person has been produced, and not on a worthier one – is the inclusion of a number of living linguists. This may be welcome, especially for those thus honoured, but it is not clear what criteria have been used to make the selection. There are entries on scholars who have become ‘household names’ in their particular field like Ray Jackendoff in Syntax, Morris Halle in Phonology, or Charles Fillmore in Semantics, but there are also others whose life-time achievement is still to come (if it does). One person (b.1950), who may remain nameless, is however listed in the Index volume under the following specialties among at times very selected few: Sociolinguistics (out of 37), Pragmatics (out of 8), Language & Politics (ditto), Spoken Discourse (out of 5), and Medicine and Language (out of 3, alongside Hermann von Helmholtz [d.1894] and Peter Simon Pallas [d.1811]). Almost a dozen women scholars are ‘coy’ about their year of birth, although at least in various cases these are public knowledge as they can be found in other reference works, e.g., Gillian Brown (b.1937), the chief editor’s wife, and Elizabeth Traugott (b.1939). Still, one wished to see many more women linguists included; everybody in the field could easily name a dozen or more that ought to have been represented; but then only those who ever did comparable editorial chores can appreciate how difficult it can be to find suitable writers of entries for biographees one has chosen. The headings in a number of biographical entries are either incomplete, although the narrative itself supplies the information, e.g., Christian Stang (d.1977), or nowhere supplied by the author although a reference to a biography is included (e.g., Marshall McLuhan died in 1980), or are just strange: for Vološinov, Valentin Nikola’evič (1895–1936) we regularly find “(1884/5)” in all references. One may also wonder why the first names of Emil Nestor Setälä (1864–1935) are not supplied, although the author of the entry hails from the same place as the linguist in question. Here, it appears that either too much pressure was exercised (probably also on the editors) to bring ELL2 onto the market or underpaid personnel employed that did not know what they were doing. However, for someone like the present writer who has a list of about 15,000 names and life-dates on file, it is easy to criticize, but we must be grateful to the section editor for having brought together so many valuable entries done by wellchosen authors. Given the years it takes to put together a reference work of this magnitude, it is not surprising that a number of biographees, like Chino Eiichi (d.2002),Vladimir Nikolaevič Toporov (d.2005), and Erica Reiner (d.2006), are no longer with us. The Index volume of 1147 pages is of particular interest, notably because a decision was made to offer not just a 140-page glossary of terms and list of languages, but actually to reprint, with the permission of the Summer Institute of Linguistics headquarters in Dallas, Texas, the 14th edition of Ethnologue Languages of the World (2004), which supplies useful information on each, such as geographic location, genetic relationship, and number of speakers (143–487), followed by coloured language maps reproduced from the same source ([489]-[[665]). The remaining back matter is of the sort that it could well form a reference book to those who want to know what useful information they could get before starting up their personal computer and go for a search of the right place or go to their library and consult the printed volumes. It carries the following sections: “List of abbreviations” (667–674), always useful to have because the conventions employed are by no means universal; “List of logical symbols used” (p. 675); “Examples, Transcriptional Conventions, and the IPA Alphabet” (677–680), always good to have nearby, whether preparing a scholarly article or editing one; “Subject Classification” (681–723), where at least historians of linguistics might have preferred to find a straightforward alphabetical list of a linguists, past and present, on whom one could find a longer entry rather than have some listed many times under different areas of specialization” (see pp. 685–698); “[List of] Contributors” together with their current affiliations plus the entries for which they signed as authors. (Personally, I would have liked to see at least in this section the first names of authors restored in the manner they use them themselves, e.g., ‘Aikhenvald, Alexandra’ instead of ‘Aikhenvald, A Y’, though of course ‘Collinge, N. E.’ since he never signed his publications with anything but his initials.) The “Subject Index” (761–1147) is the most detailed imaginable. It could by itself form a ‘vademecum’ for many linguists in the world if offered as a reasonably-priced paperback. The list of items below the name of ‘Chomsky, Noam’ may look a bit like overkill, when one finds under the subsection of ‘fields of work’ almost anything imaginable from ‘adequacy’ (a concept borrowed from Hjelmslev’s Prolegomena) down to ‘vowel notation’ (where nobody would expect a significant contribution from his genius) and many of the 65 items in between. Still, it is certainly better to offer too many subjects, concepts and terms than miss out on what could be a very significant point of reference. Sapienti sat .]

. 2005 . Institutiones linguae Illyricae / Osnove hravatskoga jezyka. Editionem alteram curavit, vernacula interpretatione prologomenisque instruxit / Drugo izdanja priredio, na hravatski jezyk preveo i komentarima popratio Zvonko Pandžić . (= Vrela za hratsku kulturnu povijest / Quellen zur kroatischen Kulturgeschichte / Sources for Croa­ tian Intellectual History, 11 .) Zagreb & Mostar : Naklada Tusculum / Tusculanae Editiones , 568 pp. [ Readers of HL will already be familiar with the article “Tense, Mood and Aspect in the First Grammar of Croatian (Kašić 1604)”, which appeared in 2004 (XXI:1.7–32). Indeed, this study on the Croatian Jesuit’s (1575–1650) Institutiones lin­ guae Illyricae libri duo was first published under his Latin name Bartholomaeus Cassius (Rome: Aloys Zanetti, 1604). The present beautifully produced bilingual Latin-Croatian edition is preceded by a much longer article, “The Semantics of Traditional Grammar: A linguistic-philosophical prolegomena to Bartul Kašić’s Institutiones”, with a Croatian version on facing page, in fact of monograph length (14–188), with a rich bibliography of primary and secondary sources. The remainder is taken up by a critical edition of the Latin original with a Croatian translation on opposite page (191–525). This work of love in the best sense of the word is rounded out by an “Index croaticus” (527–538), an “Index latinus” (539–555), and an “Index grammaticus” supplying concepts and terms in Latin, Greek, and Croatian (557–562) .]

, eds. 2005 . Firthian Phonology: Prospect and retrospect . (= York Papers in Linguistics Series 2 , No. 4 [ December 2005 ].) Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York , [ v1 ], 258 pp. [ This theme volume deals with the legacy of John Rupert Firth’s (1890–1960) ‘prosodic phonology’. As the introducers, John Local & Bill Wells, note (p.1), “This special issue represents the first single-volume collection of work by various authors in the Firthian phonological tradition for 35 years (Palmer 1970); and the first such collection of original work, as opposed to reprints, since Studies in linguistic analysis (SLA) in 1957 – almost 50 years ago. At first glance it may therefore seem to be an exercise in linguistic historiography or even an anachronistic homage to a golden age of British phonology. In this introduction to the volume, we propose that in fact the papers taken as a whole both renew our connection with that past and bear witness to the continued relevance of the Firthian tradition for contemporary students of spoken language. This relevance has been sustained in the 50 years since SLA through the subsequent work of the originators of Firthian prosodic analysis (FPA), their students, and their students’ students, in the context of an intellectual climate which has in most respects been at odds with the Firthian approach. The volume itself embodies this lineage, with contributions from Keith Sprigg, one of the leading original exponents of FPA; John Kelly, who was taught by Sprigg and other FPA founders at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and since then has consistently adhered to that approach even when generative phonology was at its most dominant; through to students of his, Adrian Simpson and Richard Ogden.” (More should have been made of John Goldsmith’s ‘rediscovery’ of Firthian prosodic analysis, for instance.) The book carries the following individual contributions: “J. R. Firth: Life, work and legacy” by Leendert Plug; “‘From a Grammatical Angle’: Congruence in Eileen Whitley’s phonology of English” by Adrian P. Simpson; “‘Saying Different Things’: E. M. Whitley’s Early Phonology of Irish” by John Kelly (b.1936); “Types of R Prosodic Piece in a Firthian Phonology of English, and their Vowel and Consonant Systems” and “The Short-Quantity Piece in English Lexical Items, and its Vowel Systems” by R. K. Sprigg; “The Phonetics of Agreement and Disagreement by Richard Ogden”, and “J. R. Firth and the London School: A historical and theoretical approach to Firthian prosodic phonology” by Elena Battaner (221–258). One regrets the absence of any index and the habit of reducing first names of authors to initials in all bibliographies. All enquiries should be addressed to <[email protected].> .]

. 2006 . Studies in Humanist and Rational Grammar . With the 1752 edition of Joannes Daniel van Lennep Oratio inauguralis, de linguarum analogia, ex analogicis mentis actionibus probata . Edited by Jan Noordegraaf and Frank Vonk . (= Cahiers voor Taalkunde, 23 .) Amsterdam : Stichting Neerlandistiek VU ; Münster : Nodus Publikationen , xi, 100 + [56] pp. ISBN 90-73265-87-9 / 3-89323-529-9 . € 30,25 ( PB ). [ This is a collection of five essays by the late Dutch linguistic historiographer Hans Luhrman (1934–2004), edited by Jan Noordegraaf and Frank Vonk. A student of French and general linguistics at the University of Leiden, Luhrman spent his entire academic career at the University of Groningen’s linguistics department, where he specialized in the history of the humanist and rationalist grammar tradition. His voluminous 1984 dissertation on the theory of the verb in Pasius, Linacre and Scaliger (C. L. Pasius, T. Linacer, J. C. Scaliger en hun beschrijving van het werkwoord. Een kritisch-vergelijkende studie omtrent XVIde eeuwse taalkundige theorievorming) was regrettably written in Dutch, leaving much of Luhrman’s erudition relatively inaccessible to the field of linguistic historiography. This is now to some extent remedied by this fine collection of papers, which includes an English summary of the dissertation (79–81). The other articles are: “Julius Caesar Scaliger as the Metternich of sixteenthcentury grammar” (1–14), “Augustinus Saturnius Laza and his place in the grammatical tradition” (15–28), “Erasmus and foreign language acquisition” (29–41), and “Joannes Daniel van Lennep on the principles of language” (43–78). The latter paper, found in typescript among the author’s Nachlass, is a ground-breaking study on a prominent representative of the Dutch “Schola Hemsterhusiana”, to which the editors have added two sections on the relation between Wilhelm von Humboldt and the Schola Hemsterhusiana. Luhrman’s study includes an analysis of Van Lennep’s 1752 University of Groningen inaugural address De linguarum analogia, ex analogicis mentis actionibus probata, which is reprinted in full as an appendix to this volume. Index of names, general bibliography, 5 illustrations. – Jan-Wouter Zwart, Groningen .]

, eds. 2005 . Manipulation and Ideologies in the Twentieth Century: Discourse, language mind . With a foreword by Frans van Eemeren . (= Dis­ course Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 17 .) Amsterdam & Philadelphia : John Benjamins , xvi, 312 pp. ISBN 90 272 2707 1 . € 64 ( HB ). [ This volume derives from a symposium by the same title held in Ascona, Italy, in 2002. It aims at bringing together researchers in the field of ideology reproduction in order to better understand the underlying mechanisms of speaker-favorable belief inculcation through language use. The resulting collection consists of 12 papers dealing with manipulation and ideology in the 20th century, mostly with reference to political speeches by the leaders of major totalitarian regimes (in Nazi Germany, Stalinism, Fascism, the Ceausescu regime, Chile under Pinochet, and right-wing populism in Western European countries). In his foreword van Eemeren concedes that ‘manipulation’ is not a well-defined term and different authors treat the subject differently. Among the better-known contributors are Paul Chilton (“Manipulation, meme and metaphors: The case of Mein Kampf” [15–43]) and Eddo Rigotti (“Towards a typology of manipulative processes” [61–83]). The book covers a wide range of theoretical perspectives, from psychosocial approaches and discourse analysis to semantics and cognitive linguistics and pragmatics. Its central concern is to provide not only a reference work with up-to-date information on the analysis of manipulation in discourse but also a number of tools for scholars interested in the subject, some of them being developed within theories originally not designed to address belief-change through language interpretation. General index (305–312) .]

. 2006 . Constant en variabel in de morfologie. Historiografische stud­ ies [ Constant and variable in morphology. Historiographic studies ]. Edited by Lo van Driel & Jan Noordegraaf . Münster : Nodus , 219 pp. ISBN 3-89323-293-1 . € 38.50 . [ This volume brings together 12 previously published articles, plus an interview with the author, Henk Schultink (b. 1924), a portrait, a cumulative bibliography, and an index of names, but not of subjects. Three articles are in English, nine articles and the interview are in Dutch. Except for one article, which appeared in 1968, all articles were written during the 1980s and 1990s. Most texts are about 19th and 20th century morphology, with a special focus on Dutch scholarship. The only 18th-century morphologist whose work is amply discussed is the well-known Dutch linguist Lambert ten Kate (1674–1731). Seven articles can be characterized as dealing with the history of ideas. They discuss the development of a morphological concept or theoretical issue through time: ‘regularity vs. irregularity’, ‘inflection’ (in general and, more specifically, in constructions of the type ‘opera virorum omnium bonorum veterum’). ‘productivity’ (in general and in the work of the late Dutch linguist E. M. Uhlenbeck), morphology and meaning, morphology and syntax. In four articles, the morphological content is more heterogeneous: several subjects are discussed as illustrations of a larger theme. In the initial article, the theme is simply continuity in morphological research. The other articles address more specific issues such as questions about the value of the 40-volume dictionary Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal (1864–1998) for the morphologist, similarities between ideas of Lambert ten Kate and recent morphological insights, and developments in the morphological description of the Dutch language. The concluding article offers an encyclopaedic overview of Dutch morphological scholarship during 1890–1990. In their foreword, the editors characterize the volume as a partial compensation for the (relative) neglect of morphology in the historiography of linguistics attempt to fill a gap in the historiography of linguistics and the role that morphology has played. All articles present their subjects in a thorough, detailed and well-documented way. As promised by the title, and emphasized in the preface, the interview and many of the articles, constant elements in morphology become visible against the background of variation through time. As we read on p. 14: ‘Similar research questions turn out to be answered time and again in a remarkably stereotypical diversity, irrespective of their theoretical embeddedness’. To give just one example, questions about the distinction between inflection and derivation are still today asked in the same way they were in the 19th century (p. 67). Schultink regards these continuities as remarkable “constants in linguistic thought” (p. 39), rather than as arguments for the more cynical view that “linguistics is richly blessed with re-discoveries” (p. 67). The book is most innovative in its discussions of recent morphological research. These are not only quantitatively prominent (four articles exclusively deal with 20th-century morphology and all texts discuss the most recent developments, including the situation at the moment of writing), but they also concern morphological work which, as far as I know, has never before been discussed from a historiographer’s perspective. In contrast, Lambert ten Kate, as well as Schultink’s 19th and earlier 20th century sources are mainly “classics”, i.e., the Schlegel brothers, Grimm, Humboldt, Saussure, Bloomfield, Hjelmslev, and Zellig Harris. This is also true, but on a more modest scale, of his selection of Dutch linguists whose work is discussed: De Groot, Reichling, Kruisinga. In all these cases, the importance of Schultink’s analyses consists in his precise reconstruction of morphological developments which are embedded in established lines. For the most recent decades of the 20th century linguistics, however, such agreement does not yet exist. Reconstructing general trends for such a recent periods requires a more encyclopaedic knowledge of the work and a more detached look than most historiographers seem to possess. After decades of teaching and research as a general linguist and as a descriptive morphologist, in both roles with a keen eye for larger historical developments, Schultink was in an excellent position to do such pioneering work. With respect to the issue ‘morphology and syntax’ (division or unification?), for instance, a line of development is established, within generative grammar, of the thesis-antithesis-synthesis type; a development that, moreover, can be related to earlier 20th century ideas (p. 14 and p. 123, cf. also p. 135). In the interview with the editors of July 2005, which is printed at the end of the volume, Schultink characterizes his involvement in the history of linguistics as a ‘late vocation’. During his career as a professor at the University of Utrecht his main research theme was morphology tout court. Only after his retirement in 1986 did he find the time to devote himself to the history of linguistics in a more than incidental fashion. The volume bears witness of this development: the only two articles published before Schultink’s retirement are actually half-way between morphology and historiography: chronological developments are discussed and morphological conclusions are drawn. The post-retirement articles have a more dedicated historiographic character. When asked about the motives and aims of his involvement, Schultink emphasizes the wholesome relativizing of the present that results from a broad perspective on various linguistic schools and currents. He furthermore stresses the ‘descriptive’ orientation of his historiographic work, which he distinguishes from the orientation on broader philosophical issues present in many historiographic works. As a descriptive morphologist he became more and more interested in earlier solutions of problems, concepts and terminology, and this line of approach has been retained throughout. Indeed, the articles here collected are rather down-to-earth; they describe in minute detail the development of (tools for) morphological research – concepts, methods, working hypotheses, and assumptions – but to a much lesser degree the development of philosophical considerations, even when the work of philosopher-linguists such as Humboldt, Chomsky or Reichling is discussed. Schultink shows us how morphology really works and has worked in the past – Els Elffers (Amsterdam) .]