Historiographia Linguistica - Volume 34, Issue 1, 2007

This article provides a detailed study of the annotations in the two Winchester College copies of Robert Lowth’s (1710–1787) Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) which R. C. Alston used for his facsimile edition (1968). Alston believed that one of the copies belonged to Lowth and that the other copy was used for the second edition of the grammar in 1763. My article, however, demonstrates that this was not the case. It present arguments that serve to identify the owner of the second copy, and it demonstrates that there is one feature in his language the historical development of which was very likely due to influence from Lowth’s grammar. From a wider perspective, this article will highlight the extent to which contemporary readers responded to books they owned by including annotations in them.

The Tecnefón is a speaking machine developed in Spain in the 1860s by Severino Pérez y Vázquez. Pérez’s main book on the Tecnefón was published in 1868. Within the context of speaking machines designed from the 18th century onwards, the Tecnefón is built on an acoustical basis; hence it is different from W. von Kempelen’s device, which tried to ‘replicate’ the phonatory system. The Tecnefón has three main parts: a drum that generates sound (the source), an air chamber to hold such sound, and a set of tubes, chambers, and other artefacts propelled by a keyboard. Pérez created a prototype of a speaking machine that performed five vowels and six consonants, so it could ‘speak’ many sentences in Spanish. To this he added accent and intonation with a lever. However, the Tecnefón was never finished due to institutional circumstances that prevented Pérez from pursuing his research.

Herodotus recounts the attempt of the pharaoh Psammetichus I to determine which among the peoples of the earth was the oldest. He isolated two children at birth, assuming that their spontaneous speech would reveal the identity of a primordial human language. Although Psammetichus’ inquiry was not explicitly designed to address linguistic issues, it has long been passed down in western reflection on language. This article reviews some of the most significant roles that the story of Psammetichus has played. The story was abundantly cited in 16th-century literature that conceptualized a first human language. It has also contributed to debate about the origin of language, especially during the mid–19th century. Moreover, the story of Psammetichus’ inquiry has been retold in discussion of language acquisition as has taken place since the 1970s. In this context, it is represented as the “ultimate language-learning experiment” (Gleitman & Newport 1995), which constitutes “an incisive bit of scientific prescience” (Rymer 1993). Enlarging on the third, most recent, context for re-telling the story, this article shows how some scholars assimilate it into modern linguistic research, while conceding that it is flawed on ethical grounds. In doing so, they often seem to make the past both inappropriately familiar (therefore less threatening), and inappropriately strange (therefore less valuable). As a result, contemporary citations of this anecdote from the distant past have the paradoxical effect of contributing to fashionable ahistoricity.

The interest in ancient rhetoric has increased noticeably over the past few decades and manifests itself in an ever growing number of publications. Three works published in the U.S.A. in 2005 approach the topic in quite different ways. Habinek’s relatively slim book is neither meant to be a comprehensive account of nor a condensed introduction to ancient rhetoric. Rather, it is made up of five chapters (“Rhetoric and the State”; “The Figure of the Orator”; “The Craft of Rhetoric”; “Rhetoric as Acculturation”; “The Afterlife of Rhetoric”) that shed light on selected aspects of ancient rhetoric from a sociological perspective; Habinek focuses on the function and role of rhetoric in the societies and states of the Greek and Roman world. On the whole, this is a useful and profitable book, despite of some weaknesses. It will, however, not replace con­ventional handbooks on ancient rhetoric, and it was not meant to, as is stressed by the author himself in the introduction: “Instead, the inspiration for this book is the ancient genre of protreptic […], which aimed to give the reader just enough information about a subject to whet the appetite for more” (p. vii). Without a doubt, Habinek has achieved this aim. In contrast to this, the book by Laurent Pernot, translated into English “with a certain number of changes to the French text” (p. xii), offers a comprehensive, historically organized introduction to the theory and practice of ancient rhetoric. Its development is outlined in six chapters, ranging from archaic times to the third century A.D. Throughout his work, Pernot has managed not to concern himself with too many minor details in order to treat the main aspects with exemplary clarity, keeping the text brief or detailed in accordance with the exigencies of the respective topics, always making transparent to his readers why ancient rhetoric came into being, developed and transformed in both theory and practice. For this reason, Pernot’s book is an excellent introduction for beginners, yet it has also much to offer to more advanced readers. One would wish that the author had chosen to include the fourth century A.D., a prolific period in the development of ancient rhetoric. It is impossible, however, to welcome the third book under review with similar enthusiasm. Under the title of “Classical Rhetorics and Rhetoricians”, Michelle Ballif and Michael G. Moran present the public with a bulky volume containing in alphabetical order 61 articles, written by 45 collaborators and Moran himself. Most often these articles deal with persons, sometimes with works (e.g., ‘Dissoi Logoi’, ‘Rhetorica ad Herennium’) or groups of authors (e.g., ‘Attic Orators’). Considering the title of the book, one finds a number of unexpected lemmata in the table of contents, like Aspasia, Augustine, Boethius, Cornelia, Diogenes of Sinope, Diotima, Pythagorean Women, Sappho, etc. The supposed relevance of these personalities for the topic of ‘rhetoric’ is, however, not substantiated anywhere in the book. Moreover, the length of various articles appears disproportionate when one considers such factors as the state of our sources, thematic relevance, or later influence (e.g., 3.5 pages for Aspasia, 4.5 pages for the Attic Orators, 10 pages for Cicero, 12 for Augustine). This creates a totally distorted picture of what we know from the sources about the representatives of ancient rhetoric and their respective importance. Numerous mistakes, sometimes even of an elementary nature, seriously impair the overall reliability of this volume. For sound information, potential users should rather turn elsewhere.