Book reviewForm and formalism in linguistics.. (). Berlin: Language Science Press, 2019. viii, 270 pp. ISBN 978-3-96110-183-2 35 € http://langsci-press.org
Table of contents
As the editor of Form and Formalism in Linguistics, James McElvenny, points out in the preface, the concept of ‘form’ is elusive and difficult: “The fecundity of ‘form’ is visible not only in its polysemy, but also in the family of derivatives it has brought into the world, including such terms as ‘formal’, ‘formalized’ and ‘formalist/formalism’” (p. iv). These labels “generally imply concentration on internal systematicity to the exclusion of external explanatory factors alongside an inclination to abstraction and axiomatization”, though ‘formalism’ can also refer to the representational notation used in the analysis of linguistic phenomena (iv). To this one might add that the question of what constitutes linguistic form will vary with the theoretical model, so in this sense it is not possible to give a theory-neutral definition of the term. The volume does not in any case pretend to be a comprehensive treatment of the notion of linguistic form. The authors share a concern with intellectual history, and for some contributors, though not all, this is a springboard for an intervention in the contemporary discipline.
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