Benjamin martin the linguist

Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade
Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden
Summary

Benjamin Martin (1704–82) was a versatile character whose interests and abilities were varied and wide-spread; moreover, he was reasonably successful in practically everything he undertook. However, in a biography by John R. Millburn, Benjamin Martin: Author, Instrument-maker, and ‘Country Showman’ (Leyden, 1976), his linguistic career is not treated as fully as it might have been. In a period of almost 20 years (1748–66) Martin published one dictionary and two works on English grammar, all of which were later reprinted. Towards the end of his linguistic career he was still regarded as an authority on matters of lexicography, and his three works on language are discussed in several modern works on the history of linguistics. This paper, therefore, aims at completing the picture drawn by Millburn as far as Martin’s linguistic work is concerned but it also accounts for certain aspects about his workson language that have so far remained unexplained.

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