Browse Books

These acts of the 1974 Congresso Internazionale di Linguistica e Filologia Romanza (Naples) were co-published by John Benjamins Publishing Company and Gaetano Macchiaroli. The five volumes are subdivided into sections by linguistic sub-fields. Vol. 1 contains the plenary papers and papers from the round tables. Volume 2 contains sections on I. General problems II. Geographical linguistics and sociolinguistics and III. Languages in contact. Volume 3 contains section IV. Grammar subdivided into Phonology and phonetics Morphology and Syntax. Volume 4 contains sections V. Lexicology VI. Semantics and VII. Texts and languages. Volume 5 continues section VII. Texts and languages and further includes sections VIII. Problems of philology and IX. History of Romance Philology. The papers are written in Italian French and Spanish.

New edition of a pioneering work on word order which originally appeared in French in 1844 (3rd ed. 1879) with an index.

In this book the author analyses the nature of the science of grammar. After presenting some methodological and historical background he sets forth a theory of language and of grammar showing that the science of grammar is not an empirical but a normative science comparable to logic and philosophy characterized by the use of the method of explication.

The present bibliography suggests that there has been a constant flow of publications which survey the discipline of linguistics in its various stages of development. It attempts to offer a comprehensive coverage of general accounts of the history of linguistic thought in the western world over the last 150 years.

Versprechen und Verlesen (1895) is distinguished more by observational accuracy than by theoretical sophistication; but it is exactly this characteristic which has proved its lasting value. It is a scrupulously collected usefully organized and very large corpus of errors providing material on which hypotheses can be tested and generalisations made. Others before Meringer had speculated about what speech errors might demonstrate; he was the first to attempt to find out. In this Meringer made a worthy and lasting contribution to linguistic and psychological study.This fac simile edition is preceded by an Introductory article by Anne Cutler and David Fay.

How characteristic were the elements used in Theodor Storm’s (1817–1888) fiction? What were the rich fund of symbols and myths that he used? Few Storm interpreters have addressed themselves seriously to these questions. This study tries to fill this gap.

This book serves as a welcome addition to the better known English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson 1604-1755 by Starnes & Noyes (new edition published by Benjamins 1991). Whereas Starnes & Noyes describe the history of English lexicography as an evolutionary progress-by-accumulation process Professor Hayashi focuses on issues of method and theory starting with John Palsgrave’s Lesclarissement de la langue francoyse (1530) to John Walker’s A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (1791). This book also includes a detailed discussion of Dr. Johnson’s influential Dictionary of the English Language (1755).

The essays reproduced in this volume represent the major and characteristic documents in that flood of literature that was produced during the neogrammarian controversy. At that time the entire community of linguists came face to face with the most profound problems of its theory and practice; it was a true crisis of empirical interpretation. Therefore these essays are of much more than ‘mere’ historical interest: each one of them plunges directly into the central issues of the science of historical linguistics.

Curtius’ Zur Kritik der neuesten Sprachforschung (January 1885) was the initial polemic. Delbrück’s reply Die neueste Sprachforschung Betrachtungen über George Curtius’Schrift ‘Zur Kritik der neuesten Sprachforschung’ and Brugmann’s retort Zum heutigen Stand der Sprachwissenschaft appeared soon thereafter. Later that year appeared Schuchardt’s attack Über die Lautgesetze: Gegen die Junggrammatiker. Collitz’article Die neueste Sprachforschung und die Erklärung des indogermanischen Ablautes did not appear until 1886 followed soon by Osthoff’s reply Die neueste Sprachforschung und die Erklärung des indogermanischen Ablautes: Antwort auf die gleichnamige Schrift von Dr. Hermann Collitz. Jespersen’s criticism of the neogrammarians appeared in German translation as Zur Lautgesetzfrage in1887.

The volume provides an Introduction and Select Bibliography.

Paulinus a S. Bartholomaeo’s Dissertatio historico-critica in linguam Samscrdamicam (1790) serves as an introduction to his Sidharubam the first Sanskrit grammar published in Europe. The Dissertatio is also important for another reason: it is concerned with speculations about the nature and origin of Sanskrit and the other Indian Languages. It raises questions about their relation to each other and to languages outside India. It bears witness to the fact that Paulinus was on of those few who heralded the era of comparative philology long before its official consecration. In addition it offers an opportunity to study the range of working instruments available to Indic scholarship at the end of the 18th century.

This volume contains a fac simile edition of the Latin original an English translation an introductory article and an index of sources.

There are indications that interest in the study of adverbs has been growing steadily in recent years largely due to the so-called Chomskyan revolution in linguistics which put much emphasis on the study of syntax but probably also because of the position these adverbs and other particles take within a syntactic string has proved to be much more difficult to determine than had previously been thought. Still another reason for the increase of interest in this topic may be found in the recent trend in linguistics which focusses on communicative competence and actual language use in daily discourse. Although this bibliography has no claim to exhaustiveness it should nonetheless be useful to researchers working on adverbs and comparatives. The titles selected relate in one way or another to the problems the linguist faces with respect to the adverb.

The writings of Siger of Courtrai were first edited by Gaston Wallerand in 1913. This new edition on the basis of Wallerand's editio prima with additions critical notes and an introduction by Jan Pinborg reprints the two works from that edition that have an immediate relevance for the study of medieval grammar i.e. the Summa modorum significandi and the Sophismata. To this have been added some critical notes correcting the text of Wallerand where his readings were faulty and supplying references of the sources. Finally three more Sophismata which have recently been recovered are here edited for the first time.

The Summa is a compendium which closely follows Priscian’s Institutiones but puts the doctrinal elements from Priscian into the frame of reference characteristic of Modistic literature. The importance of Siger’s Sophismata in the context of this volume is that they offer a more thorough discussion of the fundamental logico-epistemological tenets presupposed in his linguistic theory.

This basic bibliography of analogy aims to be a useful tool for linguistic research. The compilers have emphasized the years from 1868 onwards starting with Scherer’s statement but a few important premonitory works have been included as well.

This volume investigates Heinrich Wittenwiler’s famous poem Ring. Main focus is the relation of the narrative to the traditional topoi of marriage folly and play.

Über den Umlaut (1843) and Über den Ablaut (1844) grew out of a review of Grimm’s Deutsche Grammatik by Holtzmann in which he also made an excursus into Bopp’s theory of vowel gradation in Sanskrit. Holtzmann was the first to observe the correlation of guṇa and accent. At the same time he noted that loss (or absence) of the accent could mean loss or shortening of a vowel. Observations which be it in a different form eventually found their way into a unified theory of Indo-European vowel gradation.

The two German texts are presented here in fac simile format together with an introductory article.

Der Stricker war ein deutscher Fabeldichter der in der ersten Hälfte des 13. Jahrhunderts lebte. In dieser Publikation wird versucht der harrenden Frage “welche Stellenwert der Stricker in der nachklassischen Romantradition genau eingenommen hat” eine Lösung zu liefern; besonders wird Strickers Daniel von dem Blühenden Tal behandelt.

The first 'Kolloquium zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Romanistik' (Trier 1975) was held to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the death of Friedrich Diez the founder of Romance philology. The colloquium offered Romanists and historians of linguistics the opportunity for intense discussion which is continued in the papers in this volume.

This volume contains a reprint of the English translation (1843) by Sir George Webbe Dasent of Rask’s Anvising till Isländskan eller Nordiska Fornspråket (1818). This re-edition with an added bio-bibliography of Rask should enable the linguist of today to obtain a fairly rounded picture of this important 19th-century scholar who together with Bopp and Grimm has justly been ranked among the founding fathers of the comparative-historical study of Indo-European languages.

Rasmus Kristian Rask (1787–1832) did not occupy himself with historical linguistics alone as a comparativist but also with language as a system based on a notion of structure comprised of three key ideas: the idea of wholeness the idea of transformation (derivation and composition) and the idea of self-regulation. He formulated theoretical and practical premises for the composition of grammars and in this he was far ahead of his time and in closer proximity to the linguistic concerns and problems of our era. From both theoretical and pedagogical points of view Rask’s grammar of Icelandic remains a most remarkable work.

When criticized about the lack of architecture in Anna Karenina connecting the themes of Levin and Anna Karenina Tolstoj disagreed: “The arches of the vault are brought together in such a way that it is even impossible to notice where the keystone is.” This book explores the architecture attempting to trace the pattern of the invisible pillars that support the ‘arches’ on both side of the ‘vault’ leading to the discovery of the ‘keystone’ which Tolstoj tried so hard to keep invisible.

This book is a collection of readings in phonological theory with special reference to English. The essays it contains are all concerned to a significant extent with discussion and criticism of the theory of phonology developed by Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle in their monograph The Sound Pattern of English. The aim in compiling this collection has been to bring together new papers and papers that were previously only available in informal duplicated form or in comparatively inaccessible publications. This collection is of value to anyone teaching or studying English or general linguistics who wishes to make a serious study of current phonological theory and serves as a reference anthology of permanent value to the specialist.

This volume reflects the fact that the possibilities in theory construction allow for a much wider spectrum than students of linguistics have perhaps been led to believe. It consists of articles by scholars of differing generations and widely varying academic persuasions: some have received their initiation to the trade within the framework of transformational-generative grammar some in one or the other structuralist mould yet others in the philology and linguistics of particular languages and language families. They all share however some doubts concerning characteristic attitudes and procedures of present-day ‘mainstream linguistics’. All want not a uniformity of ideological stance but a union of individualists working towards the advancement of theory and empirical accountability.

This volume contains a fac simile edition of the 1882 English translation of Delbrück’s Einleitung in das Sprachstudium. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Methodik der vergleichenden Sprachforschung (Leipzig 1880) together with a Foreword and a Selected Bibliography.

In the 19th century research on the Indo-European languages was to a large degree coterminus with the development of linguistics itself. The most notable accomplishments as related in every history of linguistics took place in the area of phonology. The present study examines one aspect of phonological investigation of the Indo-European languages: vocalism from the early 1800’s to around 1870 the threshold of the neogrammarian era. It attempts to go beyond a mere chronological presentation of research on vocalism in the 19th century to examine other questions such as the origin of the concepts which linguists employed and the methodology they advanced. Moreover it attempts to illustrate anew that the history of any science cannot be reduced to a simple linear arrangement of discoveries.

This volume contains August Friedrich Pott's Einleitung in de Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft which appeared between 1884 and 1890 in F. Techmer's Internationale Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (Leipzig). In addition the volume contains Pott's Zur Literatur der Sprachenkunde Europas (Leipzig 1887) the obituary by Paul Horn (Göttingen 1888) and a preface to this new edition by E.F.K. Koerner.

Ulrich Weisstein’s collection of 21 essays offers a comparative study of Expressionism as a Modernist movement whose dynamic core lay in Germany and Austria-Hungary but which transformed artistic practices in other European countries. The focus Weisstein argues “must be strictly and sharply aimed at a specific body of works and opinions—a relatively dense core surrounded by a less clearly defined fringe zone—indigenous to the German speaking countries.” The volume spans an “Expressionist” period extending from roughly 1910 to 1925. Weisstein himself contributes two introductory chapters on problems of definition and a thoughtful analysis of English Vorticism. An ample context is set by comparative essays concerned with international movements such as Futurism that had an impact on German Expressionist drama prose and poetry together with essays on the adaptation of Expressionist forms in countries such as Poland Russia Hungary South Slavic nations and the United States. These essays call attention to representative authors and artists as well as to periodicals and artistic circles. Reviewers have praised not only the presentation of “literary links and interaction” among national cultures but especially the “most rewarding” interdisciplinary essays on Dada and on Expressionist painting music and film.