Historiographia Linguistica - Volume 38, Issue 3, 2011

This paper offers new insights into the 18th-century normative tradition, with special reference to the stigmatisation of preposition stranding. It brings to light the role of Scottish codifiers in contrast to English codifiers: works written by Scots contain more critical comments on the use of end-placed prepositions both quantitatively (in terms of frequency) and qualitatively (more semantic nuances and more condemnatory epithets). The semantic analysis of the data rules out the hypothesis that Scottish authors might have been particularly sensible towards this construction because of its nature as ‘provincial English’ or as a ‘Scotticism’. Rather, the author suggests that it was the ‘New Rhetoric’ movement (1748–1793) in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment that played a vital role in its stigmatisation. The importance of rhetoric as a facet of 18th-century prescriptivism, complementary to grammar, is thus put under the spotlight.

Our knowledge of the Cree dialect continuum has benefited from nearly four centuries of lexicography, the earliest of which saw manuscripts produced by Christian missionaries as tools for evangelization. As esteemed as the extant dictionaries may be, very few indepth studies have been undertaken to assess their value relative to one another and to the historical and modern dialects of the continuum. This study represents one such attempt — a thorough examination of Jesuit Jean-Baptiste de la Brosse’s (1724–1782) Radicum Montanarum Silva (1766–1772), a bilingual Latin manuscript dictionary of the dialects termed Nêhirawêwin by their speakers and Montagnais by the lexicographer. By comparing this dictionary with the three sources used by La Brosse, this paper examines the practice of Jesuit lexicography and reminds us of the pitfalls that arise from an uninformed use of such manuscripts.

Our goal in this article has been to assess, from the viewpoint of the grammatical doctrine, the Principios de Gramática General (1841 [1835]) de José Mamerto Gómez Hermosilla (1771–1837), as well as to gauge the influence of its French sources (Beauzée, Condillac y Destutt de Tracy) and to describe the way such sources have been used. The method used has been to contrast the macroorganization and the substantive theory of the French works cited before with the Principios de Gramática General. Our aim was to acquire a better understanding of the reception and adaptation in Spain of what could be termed as General grammar. This study has enabled us to prove that Gómez Hermosilla is one of the grammarians that has used French sources in a more original way.