1.Introduction

The three volumes reviewed here11.For reviews of previously published volumes, see the list compiled by E. F. Konrad Koerner, for the 1978 to 2011 BL/LB volumes, in HL 43 (2016), 413–414. For a review of the 2012, 2013 and 2014 volumes, see HL 43 (2016), 412–421; a review of the 2015 volume appeared in HL 45 (2018), 403–413, and of the 2016 volume in HL 47 (2020), 115–131. constitute the annually published volumes for 2017–2019 of the only comprehensive bibliography for linguistic publications worldwide, the Bibliographie Linguistique/Linguistic Bibliography [= BL/LB henceforth], which started publication in 1949.22.The first (double) volume, covering the years 1939–1947 appeared in 1949 (first part, 237 pages), and 1950 (second part, p. 238–549). The second volume – the (first) annual volume for 1948 publications – appeared in 1951 (242 p.).

The BL/LB is published by a core team of expert bibliographers – for the period 2017–2019, the team consisted of Anne Aarssen, René Genis and Eline van der Veken –, aided by a local team of assistant bibliographers and by several international scholars who contribute bibliographical items on specific languages, on national publications, and/or on well determined areas.

A publication emanating from the International Committee of Linguists (C.I.P.L. with its French abbreviation),33.C.I.P.L. = Comité international permanent de linguistes. The BL/LB is financially and logistically supported by a number of international linguistic societies, and by the “Stichting [‘Foundation’] Bibliographie Linguistique”. the BL/LB is a unique bibliographical tool, covering the entire field of the language sciences, including all the branches of applied linguistics and ‘para-linguistics’, such as neurolinguistics, studies on language comprehension and on the psychology of reading and writing. The enormous expansion, in the past fifty years, of studies on first and second language acquisition, and the success of quantitative linguistics and corpus linguistics, with the recent addition of artificial intelligence, are all factors that explain the considerable increase in volume of the annual bibliography. The expansion of the field of linguistics, as reflected in the BL/LB volumes, can be seen in the following table [Figure 1].

Important efforts have been invested over the past few decades in making the BL/LB a timely published, and increasingly comprehensive and user-friendly tool. Since a number of years the printed version of the BL/LB is flanked by the cumulative Linguistic Bibliography Online (= LBO),44.See www​.linguisticbibliography​.com. The BL/LB and LBO are to some extent complementary. a database of by now more than half a million entries that contains the bibliographical records of the annual volumes published since 1992, and much additional material. The LBO is updated every month.

2. Overall structure of BL/LB 2017–2019

The bibliographical part is structured in the following way:55.For brevity’s sake titles are quoted only in English. General works / General linguistics and related disciplines / Interrelationships between language families / Indo-European languages / Asianic and Mediterranean languages / Basque and the ancient languages of the Iberian peninsula / Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) languages / Caucasian languages / Eurasiatic languages / Burushaski / Dravidian languages / Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia / Austronesian, Papuan and Australian languages / Languages of Sub-Saharan Africa / Indigenous languages of the Americas / Pidgins and Creoles / Sign languages / Planned languages.66.“Planned languages” include (i) auxiliary languages (such as Esperanto, Volapük, langue bleue, etc.), and (ii) invented (‘fantasy’) languages (such as Lavinian). The bibliography concerning the various language families shows a large preponderance of publications on Indo-European.77.If we take the BL/LB 2019 as an example, we note the following numbers: Indo-European 11,490 items, Sino-Tibetan 1350, Altaic 1283, Afro-Asiatic (= Hamito-Semitic) 908, Uralic 559, Niger-Congo 322, Austronesian 217, Caucasian 198. All the language families of South-America taken together represent 189 items, those of Meso-America 104, and those of North-America 82. The language families of Australia totalize 64 items, the Papuan languages 37 and the Dravidian languages 28. Two caveats are in order: (i) on the one hand, one has to reckon with a much more limited accessibility of non-Western publishing outlets; (ii) on the other hand, in the large majority of the publications listed in the section “General linguistics and related disciplines”, the data discussed are also taken from those language families that figure prominently in the language sections that follow.

As an aid for those who consult the BL/LB for the first time, there is a two-page schematic overview of the “Structure of references”,88.See pp. xxiv–xxv in all three volumes under review. which explains how to access the information provided on (a) monographs, (b) edited volumes, (c) books listed with the mention of a review/various reviews, (d) journal articles, (e) chapters in a book.

3.BL/LB 2017–2019 in numbers

The three BL/LB volumes reviewed here impress by their size, and users will appreciate the high quality typography and layout.

We will first take a quantitative look at the volumes, focusing on (a) their macro-organization, and (b) the linguistic production covered in its relation to the number of authors, and we will raise (c) a geopolitical-linguistic issue, viz. the preponderant weight of specific languages.

a.The main divisions of the bibliography

Apart from the prefatory material (preface;99.The preface is signed by the president of C.I.P.L. (David Bradley), and the secretary-general (Piet Van Sterkenburg in BL/LB 2017, Frieda Steurs, in BL/LB 2018–2019). table of contents; brief user’s guide; abbreviations), the BL/LB volumes consist in a bibliographical repertory followed by three indices: of names, languages, and subjects. The name index (the most extensive of the three) contains the names of authors of publications or authors mentioned in the title of publications. The index of languages contains the names of languages, of language families, and of linguistic varieties (dialects or regiolects). The index of subjects1010.This index also includes names of regions or countries. contains general terms (such as “age”, “cognition”, “degree”, “interaction”), broad linguistic terms (such as “comparative linguistics”, “contrastive analysis”, “dialectology”, “historical linguistics”, “loanwords”, “phraseology”) – terms like these are followed by hundreds of references to items–, and more specific linguistic terms (e.g., “garden path theory”, “iterative”, “multiple exponent”, “serial verb”). For more general concepts, the index of subjects has a hierarchical subdivision (not typographically indicated, though).

As shown by the following table [Figure 2] (covering the years 2012–2019), which indicates the number of pages of the four principal components (viz. the bibliography properly speaking, the index of names [IN], the index of languages [IL], and the index of subjects [IS]), and if we take into account the fact that the typography and layout of the BL/LB has not changed in the past decade, there has been a steady increase in volume of the bibliography, especially since 2016 (growing from approximately 1050 pages to more than 1200 pages), and this is reflected in the number of authors involved, as can be seen from the number of pages occupied by the name index.

Figure 2.Overview BL/LB 2012–2019: extension of the various parts of the bibliography

	Bibl.	IN	IL	IS
BL/LB 2012	970	253	30	66
BL/LB 2013	989	156	30	76
BL/LB 2014	979	159	28	73
BL/LB 2015	1003	171	33	81
BL/LB 2016	1065	170	31	90
BL/LB 2017	1197	188	37	103
BL/LB 2018	1219	193	38	110
BL/LB 2019	1229	237	38	108

b.The ratio between the number of publications and the number of practitioners

It is interesting to set the number of publications against the number of authors listed in the index of names. A rough approximation1111.A few hundreds were subtracted from the absolute count, considering (i) that some author’s names listed are names of scholars mentioned in titles of publications, (ii) that variants of names (especially of non-Western scholars) also figure as entries in the name index, and (iii) that in the case of a work mentioned for the sake of a review published in the year covered by the BL/LB volume, the name index lists the name of the author(s) and the name of the reviewer(s). yields the following numbers for authors: 22,700 (BL/LB 2017), 23,000 (BL/LB 2018) and 24,500 (BL/LB 2019). Calculating then the ratio between the number of publications and the number of authors, we arrive at, respectively, 0.97 (BL/LB 2017: 22,122: 22,700), 0.96 (BL/LB 2018: 22,195: 23,000) and 0.90 (BL/LB 2019: 22,089: 24,500), an average of 0.94 p(ublication)/a(uthor) for the years 2017–2019. A control study carried out on the index of names confirmed that a very large majority of authors are listed with a reference to one single item after their name. The fact that a not insignificant number of authors is listed with two or more publications is counterbalanced by the observation that many of the items referred to constitute a publication by two or several co-authors.1212.Instances of publications by a large number of authors are rare, but do occur: to take BL/LB 2019 as an example, I have found a publication with 15 authors (# 2546), one with 30 authors (# 1568), and one with 34 authors (# 1171), another with 35 authors (# 3211), and even one with 59 authors (# 2160).

A globally valid conclusion is that, for the years 2017–2019, an average yearly corpus of some 22,1001313.Viz. the sum of 22,122 + 22,195 + 22,089 divided by three (yielding exactly 22,135). publications is produced by a more or less equal number of scholars.

c.The ‘weight’ of specific languages

Linguistics is practiced worldwide as an academic discipline, or as an otherwise institutionalized endeavor (e.g., for language planning and language revitalization), not to speak of leisure investment. The various (sub)disciplines within the language sciences have, in principle, an equal status of legitimization and relevance. The same holds, again in principle, for the primary object of study, viz. languages. As sufficiently known, however, some languages or language varieties figure quite prominently (and dominantly) as objects of analysis, learning, normalization and cultivation. The considerable differences in geopolitical status between languages are reflected in bibliographical instruments such as the BL/LB, a situation which is worsened by the difficult, or even impossible, access to (local) publications on languages enjoying little or no institutional support, and lacking socio-economic status.

A quantitative look at the number of BL/LB items linked to particular languages shows, or confirms (i) the overall preponderance of (major) Western languages, and more particularly of English, German, Spanish, with French being on the retreat; (iii) the strong interest taken in a number of Slavic languages – Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian –, which are the object of well-established national research traditions; (ii) the prominent position, among non-Western languages, of Chinese, Japanese and Korean. In the table presented here [Figure 3] for the publications analysed in BL/LB 2017–2019, only those languages for which the total sum1414.Totals are as follows: English 6464, German 2421, Spanish 2359, Polish 2351, Chinese 2208, French 2070, Russian 1857, Japanese 1693, Serbo-Croatian 1565, Greek 1354, Portuguese & Galician 1125, Arabic 1122, Korean 1120, Bulgarian 1037. of publications exceeds 1000 have been included.1515.To put the numbers in a broader perspective, it may be pointed out that in average the total (yearly) number of items for language groups or language families such as Nilo-Saharan, Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien, Austro-Asiatic, Australian, Eskimo-Aleut, Na-Dene, Algonquian-Ritwan varies between a few tens and hundred.

Figure 3. BL/LB 2017–2019: The weight of specific languages

	2017	2018	2019
English	2246	2037	2181
German	735	868	818
Spanish	551	977	831
Polish	1152	548	651
Chinese	608	493	1107
French	754	665	651
Russian	663	546	648
Japanese	604	672	417
Serbo-Croatian	547	593	425
Greek	583	347	424
Portuguese & Galician	233	507	385
Arabic	374	344	404
Korean	513	305	302
Bulgarian	332	320	385

4.‘Figures of the past’

Before we take a look at the place of linguistic historiography within the BL/LB, and to the position of linguistic-historiographical publications within the field of the language sciences, we can raise a question of direct relevance for the historiographer of linguistics: do the major figures of the past of our discipline still have some ‘visibility’ in present-day linguistic research? Taking as our yardstick the occurrence of their name in the title1616.Admittedly, this is an important (and unfortunate) restriction, since it may happen that a specific 19th- or 20th-century linguist figures prominently in a publication without being mentioned in the title. of contemporary publications – and their appearance in the index of names of the BL/LB – one has to conclude that, with a few exceptions, the “great figures”1717.Occasionally, ‘minor figures’ (at least from an ‘internationalist’ point of view) may receive considerable attention. For example, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birthday, the Catalan engineer, grammarian, lexicographer and language activist Pompeu Fabra (i Poch) (1868–1948) was the subject of several publications (the BL/LB 2018 volume lists 28 publications). of the (linguistic) past are no longer key references. As can be gathered from the following table [Figure 4] (listing the occurrences of the names of major 19th- and 20th-century figures in the BL/LB 2017–2019), only two scholars appear regularly in titles of current research, viz. Wilhelm von Humboldt and Ferdinand de Saussure.1818.A reprint of the original 1916 edition of the Cours de linguistique générale was published, with a preface by Jean-Didier Urbain, in 2016 (Paris, Payot & Rivages); see the review by Trabant (2017)Trabant, Jürgen 2017 Review of [reprint of] F. de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale (Paris, 2016). Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 70.265–267.. If in addition one takes into account that the listing also (and primarily) includes historiographical publications, one may ask a legitimate question: how many contemporary practitioners in the field of linguistics are acquainted with the (foundational) writings of the key figures in the history of (modern) linguistics?1919.One is reminded (!) here of Harald Weinrich’s reflections on the art of forgetting (Weinrich 1997Weinrich, Harald 1997 Lethe: Kunst und Kritik des Vergessens. München: Beck. [English transl., Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2004]; Engl. transl. 2004).

Figure 4. BL/LB 2017–2019: Number of references to major 19th- and 20th-century linguists in the items listed in the bibliography

	2017	2018	2019
Baudouin de Courtenay	1	3	3
Bloomfield	Ø	1	1
Bopp	3	Ø	Ø
Firth	2	1	1
Hjelmslev	1	Ø	1*
Humboldt	7	11	2
Jakobson	3	3	3
Martinet	3**	Ø	Ø
Mathesius	1	1	1
Paul	1	1	1
Sapir	1***	2	2
Saussure	31	14	15
Trubetzkoy	1	Ø	1

*In the index of names of BL/LB 2019, one looks in vain for Hjelmslev. This is clearly an omission (in the pre-indexing phase), since Hjelmslev figures prominently in the study of Caputo (2019Caputo, Cosimo 2019 La scienza doppia del linguaggio; dopo Chomsky, Saussure e Hjelmslev. Roma: Carocci., listed as item 1710).

**The three items in question were published in 2014 and 2015 in the journal La Linguistique; two of them, viz. Feuillard (2014)Feuillard, Colette 2014 “André Martinet et le Cercle linguistique de Prague. II: Principes théoriques et méthodologiques”. La Linguistique 50.35–74. and Pešek (2014)Pešek, Ondřej 2014 “André Martinet et le Cercle linguistique de Prague. I: Rapports personnels et interactions bibliographiques”. La Linguistique 50.7–33. , concern Martinet’s relation to the Prague circle.

***This concerns the Romanian translation of Sapir’s Language (originally published New York, Harcourt & Brace, 1921); Romanian title: Despre limbă: o introducere în studiul vorbirii (Iaşi, Casa Editorială Demiurg, 2016).

5.Place and structure of the historiography of linguistics within BL/LB

Starting with BL/LB 2018 the (sub)section “History of linguistics, biographical data, organizations” is structured as follows:2020.The subdivision 0.2.2.3. was introduced in BL/LB 2018.

0.2. History of linguistics, biographical data, organizations

[unnumbered subsection with titles of general interest]

0.2.1. Western traditions

0.2.1.1. Antiquity

0.2.1.2. Middle Ages

0.2.1.3. Renaissance

0.2.1.4. Seventeenth century

0.2.1.5. Eighteenth century

0.2.1.6. Nineteenth century

0.2.1.7. Twentieth century

0.2.1.8. Twenty-first century

0.2.2. Non-Western traditions

0.2.2.1. Indian tradition

0.2.2.2. Arab tradition

0.2.2.3. East-Asian tradition

0.2.3. Biographical data

0.2.4. Organizations

Readers of this journal will be particularly interested in obtaining information concerning the absolute and relative weight of the historiographical entries in the BL/LB. The following table [Figure 5], for the period 2012–2019, comparing the total number of bibliographical items and the number of items belonging under “History of linguistics” (HoL), offers an overview.

In the three BL/LB volumes for 2017–2019 the historiographical items2121.Excluding the items under the (separate) subsection “Biographical data”. are distributed as follows [Figure 6]:

These numbers show us that

1. when we take into account the inclusion in the BL/LB of the various ‘para-linguistic’ disciplines,2222.Involving thus the input of philosophers (of language), of psychologists, of neurologists, (language) educators, language planners, etc. the historiography of linguistics is a respectable discipline, with a representation of approximately 2.5% of the total linguistic production;

2. within linguistic-historiographical work, the “Western traditions” figure prominently, but the Indian and Arabic traditions, although attracting less attention, display a strong stability of scholarly interest; also, the East-Asian tradition seems to establish itself as a well-defined field of study;

3. within the research field of the history of Western linguistics, the Modern period, and especially the 19th and 20th century, is privileged.2323.This conclusion has to be nuanced in view of the fact that some aspects relating to ancient and medieval ‘linguistics’ (or, more generally: ‘interest in language(s)’) are at times dealt with in philosophical, theological or literary publications not (necessarily) included in the BL/LB.

6. BL/LB as a source book for biographical data

Historiographers of linguistics will find highly relevant information in the well-furnished (sub)section 0.2.3. “Biographical data – Données biographiques” (BL/LB 2017, p. 62–72; nrs. 979 to 1224; BL/LB 2018, p. 68–82; nrs. 1020 to 1383; BL/LB 2019, p. 58–70; nrs. 855 to 1192): this (sub)section lists obituaries, life-sketches, autobiographical accounts, (full or selective) bibliographies of scholars or appraisals of their scientific contribution, interviews with linguists, and edition of linguists’ correspondence. Apart from their purely prosopographical interest publications like these contribute to a more comprehensive view of the history of our discipline, which, in Hugo Schuchardt’s words,2424.Schuchardt (1917Schuchardt, Hugo 1917 Review of F. de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale (Lausanne & Paris, 1916). Literaturblatt für germanische und romanische Philologie 38:1/2. (col.) 1–9.: col. 1): “Wie der Doktorand verpflichtet ist, seiner Abhandlung einen ‘Lebenslauf’ beizulegen, so sollte der Forscher in der Reife seiner Kraft zwischen seine Fachschriften ein Blatt einlegen auf dem in grossen, glatten Zügen sein Glaubensbekenntnis stünde. Ich meine natürlich das wissenschaftliche […] Auf jeden Fall würden die Vertreter der Wissenschaft in lebendigerer Beleuchtung vor uns erscheinen und ihre Geschichte ist doch die der Wissenschaft selbst.” is (to a large extent) the history of its practitioners.

Several biographical items listed in BL/LB 2017–2019 remind us of the fundamental contribution to general linguistics of scholars who passed away in the period 2015–2019, such as Derek Bickerton (1926–2018), Wallace Chafe (1927–2019), Antoine Culioli (1924–2018), Joshua Fishman (1926–2015), Eric Hamp (1920–2019), Morris Halle (1923–2018), Michael A. K. Halliday (1925–2018),2525.See the obituaries by Davidse (2018)Davidse, Kristin 2018 “A Tribute to M.A.K. Halliday (1925–2018)”. Functions of Language 25.205–228. and Steiner (2018)Steiner, Erich 2018 “A Tribute to M.A.K. Halliday (1925–2018)”. Lingua 216.1–9. . Vjačeslav V. Ivanov (1929–2017),2626.See the obituaries by Blažek (2018)Blažek, Václav 2018 “In memoriam Vjačeslav Vsevolodovič Ivanov”. Journal of Indo-European Studies 46.371–463. and by Gamkrelidze (2018)Gamkrelidze, Thomas V. 2018 “Dr. Vyacheslav V. Ivanov: an eminent linguist and semiotician of our time (*21.08.1929-†07.10.2017)”. Kratylos 63.203–207. , Ivanov’s co-author in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European. Braj Kachru (1932–2016),2727.The contribution of Braj B. Kachru to the study of the diffusion of English is highlighted in various articles published in volume 38:1–2 of the journal World Englishes, which he founded (see BL/LB 2019, items 994 to 999 and 1001 to 1012). Gilbert Lazard (1920–2018), Hansjakob Seiler (1920–2018), and Herbert Ernst Wiegand (1936–2018).2828.The historiography of linguistics has also suffered important losses. See, e.g., the obituaries of Anders Ahlqvist (BL/LB 2018, nrs. 1024–1025), Michel Arrivé (BL/LB 2017, nr. 987), Jean-Claude Chevalier (BL/LB 2019, nrs. 905–906), Tullio De Mauro (BL/LB 2017, nrs. 1013–1014; 2018, nrs. 1097–1098; 2019, nr. 913), Kjell-Ake Forsgren (BL/LB 2019, nr. 936), Even Hovdhaugen (BL/LB 2019, nr. 977), Anthony Klijnsmit (BL/LB 2018, nr. 1181), Jens Lüdtke (BL/LB 2019, nrs. 1048–1051), Max Pfister (BL/LB 2018, nrs. 1267–1271), Rebecca Posner (BL/LB 2018, nr. 1275; 2019, nrs. 1096–1097), Bernard Quemada (BL/LB 2018, nrs. 1281–1282; 2019, nrs. 1102–103), Marius Sala (BL/LB 2018, nrs. 1302–1303; 2019, nrs. 1120–1124), Marc Wilmet (BL/LB 2018, nrs. 1364–1366), and Peter Wunderli (BL/LB 2019, nr. 1182). An obituary of Valérie Raby (1967–2019) is listed in BL/LB 2020.

7.A cursory look at the present stage

Since the present stage of linguistics will be the past for historiographers in the future, it may be worthwhile to briefly examine the contemporary production. I will single out a few notable features, starting from the quantitatively grounded ones.

1. There is, first, the prominent place occupied by psycholinguistics and eco-linguistics (the former subsuming psycholinguistics properly speaking, neurolinguistics, and language acquisition; the latter subsuming language planning and revitalization, language obsolescence and endangerment, and multilingualism). In order to facilitate quantification, I have looked at two subfields for each, viz. (a) studies on first and second language acquisition, and (b) studies on multilingualism and language contacts. Both subfields receive a separate, albeit subordinate place within the first part (“General linguistics and related disciplines”) of the BL/LB, but they also occur, at least for a number of languages,2929.These include the languages best represented (such as English, German, Spanish, Polish, etc.; cf. Figure 3 in Section 3), but also languages such as Italian, Dutch, Albanian, Slovak, Hungarian, or Modern Hebrew). as a subsection in the language-centered parts. Limiting the control study to the 2018 and 2019 volumes of the BL/LB, I arrived at the following count: for language acquisition, approximately 1180 items (260 items in the first, general part, and some 920 distributed over the subsections dealing with particular languages) in BL/LB 2018, and approximately 1520 items (282 + some 1240) in BL/LB 2019; and for multilingualism and language contacts, approximately 290 items (100 + some 190) in BL/LB 2018, and approximately 360 items (150 + some 210) in BL/LB 2019.

2. A second (persistent)3030.See my remarks in HL 47 (2020), pp. 117–118. feature is the massive presence of collective volumes in contemporary linguistic production: conference proceedings, readers, collective endeavors (such as encyclopedia and handbooks – on which see below), and Festschriften, not to speak of comprehensive lexicographical and grammaticographical works. Just taking the two subsections “Conferences, workshops, meetings” and “Festschriften”, we find here hundreds of titles, as can be seen from the following table [Figure 7].

   Figure 7. BL/LB 2017–2019: Number of proceedings volumes and Festschriften

   	Proceedings	Festschriften	Total
   BL/LB 2017	241	99	340
   BL/LB 2018	246	104	350
   BL/LB 2019	188	98	286

3. A third, also persistent, feature is the multiplication of handbooks, encyclopedia, research guides, in the various subdomains of linguistics. The following is a list of the handbooks published in 20183131.I have left out handbooks published in previous years but signaled in BL/LB 2018. with reference to the item numbers in the BL/LB 2018, where they can be easily retrieved (or through the LBO).

   The Routledge Handbook of Phonological Theory (BL/LB 2018, nr. 1979); The Routledge Handbook of Ecolinguistics (BL/LB 2018, nr. 3693); The Oxford Handbook of Language Policy and Planning (BL/LB 2018, nr. 3833); The Routledge Handbook of Lexicography (BL/LB 2018, nr. 2374); The Oxford Handbook of Evidentiality (BL/LB 2018, nr. 2645); Handbook of Pragmatics: 21st annual installment (BL/LB 2018, nr. 2738); The Handbook of Psycholinguistics (BL/LB 2018, nr. 3007); The Handbook of Advanced Proficiency in Second Language Acquisition (BL/LB 2018, nr. 3355); Handbook of Communication Disorders: theoretical, empirical and applied linguistic perspectives (BL/LB 2018, nr. 3469); The Routledge Handbook of Ecolinguistics (BL/LB 2018, nr. 3693); The Oxford Handbook of Language Policy and Planning (BL/LB 2018, nr. 3833); Languages for special purposes: an international handbook (BL/LB 2018, nr. 3867); The Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages (BL/LB 2018, nr. 3908); The Handbook of Dialectology (BL/LB 2018, nr. 4003); The Oxford Handbook of Persian Linguistics (BL/LB 2018, nr. 4711); Manual of Romance Sociolinguistics (BL/LB 2018, nr. 5928); The Cambridge Handbook of Spanish Linguistics (BL/LB 2018, nr. 5961); The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary English Pronunciation (BL/LB 2018, nr. 10836); The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics (BL/LB 2018, nr. 16783); The Cambridge Handbook of Japanese Linguistics (BL/LB 2018, nr. 19261); Handbook of Japanese Contrastive Linguistics (BL/LB 2018, nr. 19807); The Languages and Linguistics of Africa (BL/LB 2018, nr. 20937); The Routledge Handbook of African Linguistics (BL/LB 2018, nr. 20946).3232.The following (probably not exhaustive) list of handbooks that appeared in 2017 confirms the booming market of handbooks: The Routledge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics; The Routledge Handbook of Metaphor and Language; The Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics; The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness; The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor; The Routledge Handbook of Pragmatics; The Routledge Handbook of Language and Dialogue; The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Typology; Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language, vol. 2; Handbook of Linguistic Annotation; Handbuch der Iranistik; The Routledge Companion to Iberian Studies; The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A comprehensive guide.

4. A fourth, qualitatively salient feature is the interest taken in the discourse of some of our political leaders. Glancing through the BL/LB volumes, I came across studies on the verbal performances of Barack Obama, on Donald Trump’s language use, and on the (linguistic) ideology of Vladimir Putin.3333.See, e.g., Alim & Smitherman (2019)Alim, Samy H. & Geneva Smitherman 2019 “Amazing Grace: An analysis of Barack Obama’s raciolinguistic performances”. Complexity Applications in Language and Communication Sciences, ed. by Àngels Massip-Bonet et al., 227–258. Cham: Springer. , Sclafani (2018)Sclafani, Jennifer 2018 Talking Donald Trump: a sociolinguistic study of style, metadiscourse, and political identity. London & New York: Routledge. and Dudek-Waligóra (2018)Dudek-Waligóra, Gabriela 2018 “Taktiki priznanija i rešenija problemy kak glavnye pokazeteli liderstva V.V. Putina”. Folia Linguistica Rossica acta Universitatis Lodziensis 16.41–49. , to mention only a few [the studies I have found on Putin’s speech are by Polish authors]. Unfortunately these studies have to be retrieved by searching the items, since the names of political leaders do not figure in the name index nor in the index of subjects. Clearly, the combination of discourse analysis and the study of ideological assumptions and claims yields a great potential, especially in view of contemporary societies’ increased political and moral sensitivity.

To continue on this subjective note, let me recommend two sets of readings, both controversial, but also stimulating. The first is constituted by Mufwene’s (2017a)Mufwene, Salikoko 2017a “Language Vitality: the weak theoretical underpinnings of what can be an exciting research area”. Language 93:4. e202–e223. position paper on language endangerment and language loss, and the comments it aroused.3434.Mufwene’s paper is commented upon (in the same issue of Language) by Marlyse Baptista, Claire Bowern, Lyle Campbell, Pierpaolo Di Carlo & Jeff Good, Colleen Fitzgerald, Nala Huiying Lee, Friederike Lüpke, Fiona Willans & Anthony Jukes; see BL/LB 2017, items 3826, 3827, 3829, 3831, 3837, 3843, 3844 and 3855. There is a reply to all the comments by Mufwene (2017b)Mufwene, Salikoko 2017b “It’s still worth theorizing on LEL, despite the heterogeneity and complexity of the processes”. Language 93:4. e306–e316. . While I am very sympathetic to Mufwene’s statement that work on language endangerment and language loss (= LEL) needs more theoretical grounding, as well as an articulated evolutionary and comparative perspective, I disagree with his reduction (Mufwene 2017aMufwene, Salikoko 2017a “Language Vitality: the weak theoretical underpinnings of what can be an exciting research area”. Language 93:4. e202–e223. : e202) of ‘theorizing’ to the formulation of hypotheses: theorizing is, primarily, a matter of conceptualizing a problem area, of developing adequate concepts and operational techniques. In addition,3535.I will not enter in a discussion of other points of detail (e.g., his statements about the survival of Classical Latin, about the linguistic evolution of the Iberian peninsula; or the omission of the Daco-Romance varieties) in Mufwene’s (2017a)Mufwene, Salikoko 2017a “Language Vitality: the weak theoretical underpinnings of what can be an exciting research area”. Language 93:4. e202–e223. article on which I disagree or which I find lacking. it seems to me that Mufwene’s call for something paralleling “macroecology” in the domain of LEL studies, is itself in need of theoretical refinement: one does not resolve the problem of insufficient theorizing by appealing to a macrostructural integration. What is needed is a clear delineation, or layering of (i) ‘logistic’ issues (i.e. technical, administrative and institutional conditions), (ii) descriptive problems, (iii) identifiable causes and mechanisms, and (iv) (possibly) remediating interventions. However, the important merit of Mufwene’s thought-provoking paper is that it forces the reader to reflect upon major themes of linguistics: language evolution and language change, the mechanisms of language contact and ‘language mixture’, the socio-economic function of language, our personal and collective link with language – themes approached by the “great figures of the past” (Humboldt, Whitney, Saussure, Meillet, Sapir, …).

The second recommended reading is the volume on “linguistic realism” (Behme & Neef, eds. 2018Behme, Christina & Martin Neef eds. 2018 Essays on Linguistic Realism. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ).3636.The book contains contributions by Christina Behme, Armin Burkhardt, D. Terence Langendoen, Robert Levine, Hans-Heinrich Lieb, Martin Neef, Ryan Nefdt, Andreas Nolda, David Pitt, Paul M. Postal, and Scott Soames. The editors (cf. their introduction) and contributors waver between “linguistic realism”, “realist linguistics” and “realism in linguistics”: for me, these are three different things. Again, there is much to say (and to disagree) about in the book,3737.The application of the threefold distinction (which in origin was a typology of trends in ancient, and, especially, medieval philosophy) to linguistics has been proposed by Katz (1981Katz, Jerrold J. 1981 Language and Other Abstract Objects. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield., 1985Katz, Jerrold J. 1985 “An Outline of Platonist Grammar”. Philosophy of Linguistics, ed. by Jerrold J. Katz, 172–203. Oxford: Oxford University Press.); see also Katz & Postal (1991)Katz, Jerrold J. & Paul M. Postal 1991 “Realism vs. Conceptualism in Linguistics”. Linguistics and Philosophy 14.515–554. . It is hard to imagine that there are linguists who hold a strictly nominalist view (this would involve exclusive concentration on tokens/occurrences); on the other hand, a consequent Platonic-realist conception in linguistics would involve the admission of a ‘third world’ of abstractions. and, for one thing, I consider that the starting-point, viz. the threefold opposition3838.I will limit myself to mentioning that in Postal’s short contribution (Postal 2018Postal, Paul M. 2018 “The Ontology of Natural Language”. Behme & Neef, eds. 2018.1–6. ) we find an outright rejection of Chomsky’s ‘biolinguistics’, and some pertinent remarks on contemporary (theoretical) linguistics. I do not agree, however, with Postal’s overall attribution of a ‘naturalistic imperative’ to ‘nominalist and conceptualist’ views in linguistics. Also, while I agree with the view of linguistic concepts, such as ‘sentence’ (this is Postal’s example, but one could easily add ‘phoneme’, ‘morpheme’, ‘word’, …), as being abstractions, I would not consider them as Platonic-world objects devoid of ‘temporal and spatial’ properties. Pitt’s contribution (Pitt 2018Pitt, David 2018 “What Kind of Science is Linguistics?”. Behme & Neef, eds. 2018.7–20. ) raises the issue of the status of linguistics. He considers the issue of the status of a science as being determined by its methodology (I would rather say: by the interplay between ‘object’ [as technically defined] and by ‘methodological approaches’ [of which I do not imply that they should be uniform]). Pitt’s conclusion is, in my view, ambiguous: on the one hand, he writes that linguistics is a ‘mixed science’ (Pitt 2018Pitt, David 2018 “What Kind of Science is Linguistics?”. Behme & Neef, eds. 2018.7–20. : 19), with an ‘empirical department’ (his examples are: phonetics and orthography) and a ‘psychological department’ (his example: semantics), while leaving an indeterminate status for syntax (either ‘physical’, ‘psychological’ or ‘formal’), but he also concludes that linguistics is ‘more than one kind of science’ (Pitt 2018Pitt, David 2018 “What Kind of Science is Linguistics?”. Behme & Neef, eds. 2018.7–20. : 20). In my opinion this would lead to a not easily controllable multiplication of sciences (in the humanities, in the life sciences, in mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in the applied sciences). I would adopt the view that within a single science distinct aspects of identical or similar phenomena can be studied from different points of view and with different techniques ad methods. between a “nominalist”, a “conceptualist” and a “realist” position in linguistics is not felicitous. Linguistics is, basically, a constructivist scientific enterprise: we construct, on the basis of empirical work (sustained or not by techniques or principles stemming from outside linguistics), concepts and theories in order to obtain a systematic (and verifiable) description of data, and to account for their status, function, and evolution (retrospective and prospective).

8.Corrections

Comprehensive, multilingual and typographically complex bibliographies such as the BL/LB are, inevitably, liable to misprints and misplacing of titles. In addition, the 2017 and 2018 volumes contain a rather poor French translation of the prefatory materials. The corrections that follow are grouped into separate sets, for each of the three volumes; references are to the pages (“p.”, followed by the line, in the case of the prefatory materials) and to the numbered items (preceded by #).

BL/LB 2017: p. viii, l. 13: hébreu; l. 37: de ‘Leiden University’ [or: de l’université de Leyde]; l. 46: lui souhaitent; p. xx, l. 18: bantou; p. xxi, l. 21: Brésil de l’est [or: Brésil oriental]; p. xxii, l. 6: caractères romains; l. 7: les comptes rendus de livres; l. 13–14: å est classé sous a, č sous c, ö sous o, ś sous s; l. 25: la version complète se trouve; l. 32: peuvent être repérées grâce aux index; l. 33: traducteurs, recenseurs; l. 38: correspondante (to be followed by a dot); p. xxviii, l. 28: Lingvistică; p. lvii, l. 7: sont celles de l’auteur/des auteurs. In the bibliography, correct: p. 2 # 16, l. 6: 29 November 2014; p. 5 # 60: Social development; p. 9 # 107: latín vulgar y tardío; p. 20 # 238: interdépendances; p. 33 # 421: Agroecius; p. 34 # 447: Colombat, Bernard; p. 38 # 518: Amazónia; # 520: Consideraţii .. şi … şi; p. 39 # 542: passo; p. 49 # 714: in Georgian linguistics; # 721: langage; p. 51 # 757: Hockett’s; p. 204 # 3988: François Pic; p. 207 # 4040: world’s languages; p. 224 # 4395: Old European hydronymy; p. 267 # 5204: Manifestations; p. 268 # 5225: arithmétique … Homère; p. 289 # 5603: el latín; p. 296 # 5749: d’adresse; p. 330 # 6320: México; p. 357 # 6752: phonèmes; p. 359 # 6787: pronom; 6788: Old ‘Franc-Comtois’ [not: ‘Frainc-Comtou’]; p. 383 # 7193: the name of the reviewer should not be in bold; p. 402: it is better to write ‘Francoprovençal’ in one word (in French and in English); p. 403 # 7527: réflexion; p. 741 # 13815: orthography; p. 801 # 14815: children; p. 901 # 16411: African; # 16418: identity;3939.The Hebrew word (dām) is misprinted in # 16411 (the qāmeṣ should be under the dāleth), and in # 16418 the Hebrew words are misprinted and are also in the wrong order. p. 931 # 17034 and # 17035 are identical; p. 1164 # 21500: contexto. I have also noted a number of cases where the items should have been placed in a different (sub)section: # 396 should be under “Arabic tradition” (and not under “Western traditions”); # 679, # 680 and # 841 are descriptive studies of African languages and belong in the section on “Languages of Sub-Saharan Africa” (and not in the section on “History of linguistics”); # 995 concerns the history of 19th-century linguistics (and should be removed from “Biographical data”); # 3688 should not be under “Language attitudes”, but in the subsection on history of [ancient and medieval] (Western) linguistics; # 3963 should not be under “Comparative linguistics” but under lexicography or under language didactics; # 6219 should be under “History of linguistics”.

BL/LB 2018: p. viii, l. 8–9: replace ‘guides académiques’ with ‘manuels universitaires’; l. 9: replace ‘mémoires’ with ‘dissertations inédites’; l. 11: replace ‘annuaire papier’ with ‘la version papier de la bibliographique annuelle’; l. 21: replace ‘toujours plus croissant’ with ‘qui va s’accroissant constamment’; l. 25: replace ‘notre plus grande gratitude’ with ‘notre plus profonde gratitude’; p. xxii, l. 7: caractères romains; l. 7–8: barre verticale; l. 27: au début de ce volume; l. 34: recenseurs; l. 38: nouvelles recensions (instead of ‘nouvelles revues’). In the bibliography, correct: p. 5 # 43: Bréal (twice); p. 10 # 108: función – variación; p. 15 # 162: siècle; p. 33 # 395: the English translation should be ‘Romance’ (not: ‘Romanesque’); p. 36 # 447: the translation should be: “the category ‘noun’”; p. 37 # 459: hispano-amerindia; p. 42 # 546: replace ‘Ravio’s Grammer’ with ‘Ravius’ Grammer’;4040.This concerns the Generall Grammer for the Ebrew, Samaritan, Calde, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic Tongue (London, 1650) of Christian Ravius (= Raue) (1613–1677). p. 50 # 675: intellectual; p. 51 # 706, replace ‘Favrian syntactic proposal’ with ‘syntactic proposals of (Pompeu) Fabra’; p. 74 # 1163: Los Angeles; p. 93 # 1609: linguistic studies; p. 96 # 1662: structure; p. 100 # 1749 and # 1751: replace ‘centenarian anniversary’ with ‘centenary’; p. 265 # 5110: arménien; p. 279 # 5357: Vol. V. B; p. 310 # 5922: géopolitique; p. 383 # 7159: informelles; p. 415 # 7639: Universitätsverlag; p. 419 # 7705: replace ‘Romand hydronyms’ with ‘Francoprovençal hydronyms’ (or: ‘hydronyms in the Suisse romande’); p. 457 # 8356: méthodologies d’enquête(s); p. 458 # 8376: et variation; p. 505 # 9209: des Gaulois; p. 629 # 11383: une dérive. There is also an infelicitous duplication of several items: # 10429 is repeated under # 10464, # 10430 is repeated under # 10465; # 10431 is repeated under # 10466; # 10434 is repeated under # 10467; # 10446 is repeated under # 10468; # 10450 is repeated under # 10469; # 10453 is repeated under # 10470; # 10454 is repeated under # 10471; # 10455 is repeated under # 10472; # 10459 is repeated under # 10463. It would also have been better to unify # 1604, # 1605 and # 1606 (three subsequent editions of the same work, all discussed in a single review) under one item; the same holds for # 11542 and # 11543.

BL/LB 2019: p. xxii, l. 8: barre verticale; p. xxii, l. 34: recenseurs. In the bibliography, correct: p. 1 # 15: the names of the editors should not be in italics; p. 23 # 265: on the occasion; p. 25 # 295: mélanges offerts; p. 31 # 380: grammaire générale; p. 61 # 932: the stars (in bold print) should be replaced with °; p. 92 # 1682: Meschonnic’s theory; p. 120 # 2282: conceptualisations; p. 215 # 4181: considérations … intercompréhension; p. 217 # 4226: the translation of “laienhafte Reflexion” should be ‘laymen’s reflection’, not ‘amateur reflection’; p. 224 # 4376: Fachtexte-in-Vernetzung; p. 237 # 4617: correct the translation: ‘concerning the origins of Indo-European rivers’; p. 260 # 5044: ‘synonymity’ sounds rather weird (but seems to have been taken over from the English abstract); p 276 # 5323: Sprachbund; p. 291 # 5593: obsceno en Retorio; p. 314 # 5988: predicados; p. 315 # 6007: à participe dominant … emplois prépositionnels; p. 322 # 6132: the translation should rather be ‘Language variety of the Ribagorza region’; # 6299: the translation should rather be ‘initial yod’; p. 348 # 6562: negación; p. 353 # 6639: conexión argumentativa; p. 377 # 7035: péruviens; p. 402 # 7395: correct the translation: ‘Variationist research’; p. 417 # 7615: des galloromanischen [Sprachschatzes]; p. 419 # 7644: diachronique; p. 429 # 7820: équivalent; p. 430 # 7838: éléments; p. 434 # 7899: système … psychomécanique; p. 453 # 8229: franco-anglaises; p. 457 # 8293: des Pouilles; p. 460 # 8341: descrizione; p. 483 # 8762: relatives; p. 485 # 8784: noms des Gaulois; p. 677 # 12433: grammaire gotique; p. 685 # 12553: making of; p. 688 # 12599: across; p. 689 # 12619: in Slavic; p. 696 # 12731: prohibitive subjunctive; # 12739: Old Bulgarian adverbial; p. 708 items 12919–12927: the various installments “Leksikologični etjudi” of B. Paraškevov have been translated either as ‘Lexicological notes’, as ‘Lexicological essays’ or ‘Lexicological etudes’ [sic], and this should have been uniformized as ‘Lexicological notes’; p. 720 # 13123: Signal words; p. 731 # 13300: ellipsis … beep; p. 734 # 13361: Österreich; p. 738 # 13422: the relative; p. 740 # 13469: complex sentence; p. 745 # 13542: conjunction; p. 787 # 14245: constructions … self-presentation; # 14254: conjunction; p. 853 # 15305: the Russian initial word should be “Pragmatonim” (to be translated as ‘Pragmatonym’); p. 859 # 15384: the function ‘MAGN’ (I suppose this stands for ‘Magnifying’); # 15390: Linguistic; # 15394: expressiveness; p. 865 # 15491: grammaticalization; p. 867 # 15522: Tactics; p. 869 # 15547: addresser’s; p. 885 # 15799: Ethnolinguistic; p. 886 # 15808: Ukrainian; p. 901 # 16031: constructions; p. 926 # 16452: syriaque; # 16456: the final vocalization signs in the two Aramaic forms quoted should be moved under the penultimate consonantal sign; p. 962 # 17168: Concerning; p. 963 # 17172: characteristics; # 17183: Linguoculturological; p. 966 # 17227 and # 17228 are completely identical; p. 967 # 17246: aspect; p. 969 # 17279: basis; p. 1021 # 18205: Crimean Tatar; p. 1179 # 21163: à double objet; # 21171: édition préparée; p. 1205 # 21677: in counterfactuals [sic] sentences; p. 1226 # 22048: communication. Items 2467 and 2468 could have been unified. Item 3767 should have been placed in the subsection on ancient Western linguistics; # 4210 belongs in the section on “History of linguistics” (and not “Historical linguistics”); # 4608 deals with historical sociolinguistics, and should not have been placed under “Indo-European languages”; # 6159, # 6160 and # 6170 belong under Portuguese dialectology; # 7458 belongs under Spanish, not under Catalan; #16103 belongs under Sardinian (or: Mediterranean languages); # 17246 belongs under Catalan; # 17286 belongs under Albanian.

9.Concluding remarks

Reviewing the weighty volumes of the BL/LB puts a strain on one’s arm muscles and is a torture for the eyes, but it also widens one’s view on the continuously expanding field of linguistics, and it triggers a reflection on some implications of the development of the linguistics-‘market’.

A first (candid) question one could ask is: how much time would it take for a ‘pan-encyclopedic reader of linguistics’ to read all the publications of a single year? As a thought experiment one can make an approximate calculation of the total number of pages to read: taking as an average 20,000 publications,4141.Admittedly, this is an overestimation, since several hundreds of publications listed in the annual volumes of the BL/LB are not publications belonging to the year covered by the respective volumes. But this overestimation is balanced by the underestimation indicated in the following footnote. and multiplying this with an average length of 30 pages,4242.This is probably an underestimation: several items are monographs of more than hundred pages; on the other hand, there are also journal articles or contributions in collective volumes that have an average length of ten pages. this yields 600,000 pages in total. Adopting (an admittedly too high) reading investment of sixty hours a week and a ‘digestive’ capacity of some twenty pages per hour, one obtains a workload of 500 weeks of reading. It would thus require approximately ten years to read all the publications of one year.

Such a thought experiment in turn raises the question of what the actual average reading ratio is of the approximately 22,000 titles listed annually, distributed over the entire population of scholars interested in one or more of the linguistic domains covered by the BL/LB. This question can be coupled with another one: how many linguists read, or consult, publications outside their area of specialization?

For historiographers of linguistics (and also for sociologists of science) another question is even more relevant: how many of the publications that are listed on a yearly basis are still read or consulted five, ten or twenty years later? In other words, what is their average ‘lifetime’?

Another important question is one that is highly relevant for the acquisition and maintenance capacity (and policy) of university and public4343.For convenience’s sake, I associate the two, since in a number of countries university libraries are merged with public (regional/national) libraries. libraries. In view of the continuously expanding linguistic production, the rise of printing, production and shipping costs, and the increasing popularity of comprehensive encyclopedias, handbooks, readers, honorary volumes,4444.As honorary volumes, the BL/LB 2017 lists 99 items, the BL/LB 2018 104, and the BL/LB 2019 98 items; see Figure 7, supra. one must ask the question whether libraries will be in a (financial and logistic) position to ensure the acquisition and conservation of the production in the various fields of the language sciences.