bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Survival of the Subjunctive
Authors: Peters Pam
Published: November 2010

The status of the subjunctive is examined in this Australian study of its manifestations in subordinate clauses: in mandative constructions as well as those expressing purpose, condition, concession and the counterfactual. Data from the Australian ACE corpus (1986) is compared with (a) those from the American Brown corpus and the British LOB corpus (both 1961); and with (b) findings from an Australian elicitation survey of 1993. Both the diachronic corpus comparisons and the sociolinguistic profiles associated with the survey indicate declining use of the subjunctive in adverbial clauses, most notably the counterfactual type, but also those expressing purpose, concession and ordinary conditions. However the use of mandative subjunctives is stable, written into a range of corpus materials (fiction and non-fiction), and endorsed by Australians across the age range. The resilience of the mandative subjunctive in Australian (and American) usage contrasts with the prevailing view of British usage commentators, that the subjunctive, if not obsolescent, should not be preserved.
Nigerian English In Political Telemarketing
Authors: Awonusi V.O.
Published: November 2010

Societal multilingualism helps Nigeria to retain English, an exoglossic language, as her lingua franca. English performs both instrumental and integrative functions in Nigeria. The use of English as a language of political campaigns exemplifies one of the important functions given the country's level of economic development and slow-evolving, military-authored democracy. The paper examines the exploitation of English in television advertising in Nigeria. It is done as a follow-up to an earlier work on the use of English in political ads in the print media. The present paper examines English, within a context of media multilingualism, in the marketing (advertisement) of political programmes in the recent Abacha democratic experiment in Nigeria.
Word-Formation In Pakistani English
Authors: Baumgardner Robert J.
Published: November 2010

The article discusses patterns of word-formation which are specifically characteristic of Pakistani English, providing ample documentation from a variety of indigenous sources. In particular, attention is paid to compounding, affixation, conversion, back-formation, clipping, abbreviation/acronyms, and blends. Also, results of an acceptability test of select word-formations are reported.
What do We Really Know About Kenyan English?
Authors: Skandera Paul
Published: November 2010

Despite the growing interest in the New Englishes, systematic research into the features of many of these varieties is still lacking. This paper looks at the work that has been done on the features of Kenyan English. It attempts to show that only a combination of corpus analyses, elicitation tests, and the introspection of target language speakers yields reliable results that come up to the expectations of modern linguistics. A re-examination of some of the features listed in the relevant studies by means of these three methods suggests that part of what has been written about Kenyan English may be a misrepresentation of the linguistic reality.
Theory-Orientation Versus Data-Orientation
Authors: Robins R. H.
Published: November 2010

Two contrasting attitudes towards the scientific study of language have been apparent from the earliest period of linguistic studies in Europe. The forms that the contrast has taken have varied from one era to another. In Greece the debate was between the claims of grammar to be a science (téchnè) and the opinion that its was no more than practical knowledge (empeiría). In the Middle Ages the scholastic speculative grammarians maintained that their theory of grammar embodied a superior level of adequacy over against the mere accurate record of observed fact provided by Priscian and the didactic grammarians. A similar opposition was seen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries between rationalist linguists, with their emphasis on linguistic universals and on the importance of ‘general grammar’, and the empiricists, who paid most attention to the individual differences of each language, to be accurately observed and independently classified. These continuing attitudes are still a matter of controversy today, and each has an essential place in the progress of linguistic science.
John Wallis (1616–1703)
Authors: Constantinescu Ilinca
Published: November 2010

Three centuries after its publication, John Wallis’ Grammatica Linguae An-glicanae (1653) is still worth the attention of the readers interested in the study of English. Considered within the context of its day, it appears as a significant contribution to the field, and indeed a work which constitutes a landmark in the history of the study of English. Its author, a remarkable mathematician looked upon as one of the most important precursors of Newton, succeeded in handling facts of the English language (both phonetics and grammar) better than any of his predecessors. His work, which illustrates the empirical approach, is important through the degree of independence attained in it from the Latin model which, at that time, still exerted a strong influence on attempts at describing the European vernaculars. In the advent of comparative linguistics in the 19th century Wallis’ grammar fell into disgrace. Even in our time scholars often repeat, with little justification, earlier criticisms of Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae – thus suggesting that Wallis’ contribution to the study of English has not always been examined in terms of the advances it represented when it was first published more than three centuries ago. When mapping out the development of linguistics in a historiography of our discipline there are two aspects in which Wallis’ grammar of English deserves special mention: when tracing the evolution of articulatory phonetics and when examining the roots of modern structural descriptivism.
Carlo Denina linguiste
Authors: Marazzini Claudio
Published: November 2010

Le piémontais Carlo Denina (1731–1813) est à présent bien connu comme historien, auteur deLe Rivoluzioni d’Italia [Les Révolutions d’Italie].Au contraire, on n’a donné aucune importance à son travail de linguiste, mené à l’Académie de Berlin, dont il était devenu membre après son éloignement du Piémont. L’Académie de Berlin était un centre de culture linguistique, à la suite des centres d’intérêt hérités de Leibniz, lui-même auteur de plusieurs écrits d’étymologie. Denina, qui avait commencé à faire des observations sur le parler piémontais, continua ses études sur l’origine des langues pendant à peu près trente ans, et publia ses travaux dans les Mémoires de l’Académie de Berlin en 1804. C’est une oeuvre très importante par sa richesse et par les perspectives qu’elle ouvre: on y trouve en effet une théorie généalogique à l’origine des noms de lieu. Tous ces travaux furent rassemblés dans une oeuvre de longue haleine en trois tomes,La Clef des langues, qui fut publiée à Berlin en 1804. C’est une oeuvre très importante par sa richesse et par les perspectives qu’elle ouvre: on y trouve en effet une théorie généalogique à laquelle l’auteur arrive à travers une analyse comparée des différentes langues d’Europe. Surtout on y trouve l’intuition de l’importance de l’étude du sanscrit pour la connaissance de l’évolution de l’histoire des langues. Denina pense à un centre d’irradiation autour du fleuve Don, à partir duquel un peuple ancien aurait répandu sa langue vers l’orient (le persan et le sanscrit) et vers l’occident (l’Europe). Je crois que l’importance d’une affirmation de ce genre est évidente, et que surtout, la méthode qu’emploie Denina, en comparant les racines des mots, est importante, spécialement si l’on fait attention aux dates, et si l’on n’oublie pas que l’oeuvre de Denina paraît en 1804, avant le livre de F. Schlegel et avant Bopp. Il faut donc insérer Denina dans le mouvement d’idées qui a amené, au XVIIIe siècle, aux débuts de la linguistique historique, sur une ligne qui passe par Leibniz et par l’article “Etymologie” de Turgot pour l’Encyclopédie. Je ne veux pas dire que Denina est seul, c’est évident, mais que son nom a été inexplicablement oublié dans le domaine de l’histoire de la linguistique.
Edward Sapir et la recherche anthropologique au Musée National du Canada 1910–1925
Authors: Bernier Hélène
Published: November 2010

In 1910, a Division of Anthropology was created within the Geological Survey of Canada; it was the beginning of the Canadian National Museum. Its first chief was Edward Sapir, who had been strongly recommended by his former teacher Franz Boas. Sapir soon established two major objectives of his new post, namely, to introduce a professionalism into the hitherto amateurish manner anthropology had previously been practiced in Canada, and to engage in an extensive collection of linguistic and ethnographic data among the different indigenous peoples of Canada whose cultural heritage was threatened by Western civilization.

In order to attain the first goal Sapir sought the employment of university trained researchers, mainly coming from Britain and the United States. He engaged himself in fostering contacts with the scientific community, both nationally and internationally, encouraging at the same time the establishment of departments of anthropology at Canadian universities.

His second objective was probably his greatest success. In order to realize the broad and systematic collection of cultural material among the American Indians and the Inuits of Canada, he hired a number of researchers, several of which became subsequently leading figures in North-American anthropology, Marius Barbeau, Harlan I. Smith, James A. Teit, and later Thomas F. McIlwraith collected data on West-Coast Indians. The Athabaskans of the North-West were visited by Diamond Jenness and J. Alden Mason, the Sioux and the Cris of the Prairies by Wilson D. Wallis and Leonard Bloomfield. Paul Radin and Albert B. Reagan were doing research on the Ojibwa of Ontario whereas Barbeau, Alexander Goldenweiser and Frederic Waugh concentrated their attention on the Hurons of Ontario and Quebec. Groups of the Eastern Provinces were studied by William H. Mechling and Cyrus MacMillan. Jenness, Christian Leden, and E. W. Hawkes took a particular interest in the customs of the Inuit.

In 1925 Sapir relinquishes his post as chief of the Anthropological Division, but not before having firmly established the basis of what was to become the National Museum of Man in Ottawa, Canada.
Missionary linguistics in seventeenth century Ireland and a North American Analogy
Authors: Salmon Vivian
Published: November 2010

Accounts of Christian missionary linguists in the 16th and 17th centuries are usually devoted to their achievements in the Americas and the Far East, and it is seldom remarked that, at the time when English Protestant missionaries were attempting to meet the challenge of unknown languages on the Eastern seaboard of North America, their fellow missionary-linguists were confronted with similar problems much nearer home – in Ireland, where the native language was quite as difficult as the Amerindian speech with which John Eliot and Roger Williams were engaged. Outside Ireland, few historians of linguistics have noted the extraordinarily interesting socio-linguistic situation in this period, when English Protestants and native-born Jesuits and Franciscans, revisiting their homeland covertly from abroad, did battle for the hearts and minds of the Irish-speaking population – nominally Catholic, but often so remote from contacts with their Mother Church that they seemed, to contemporary missionaries, to be hardly more Christian than the Amerindians. The linguistic problems of 16th-and 17th-century Ireland have often been discussed by historians dealing with attempts by Henry VIII and his successors to incorporate Ireland into a Protestant English state in respect of language, religion and forms of government, and during the 16th century various official initiatives were taken to convert the Irish to the beliefs of an English-speaking church. But it was in the 17th century that consistent and determined efforts were made by individual Englishmen, holding high ecclesiastical office in Ireland, to convert their nominal parishioners, not by forcing them to seek salvation via the English language, but to bring it to them by means of Irish-speaking ministers preaching the Gospel and reciting the Liturgy in their own vernacular. This paper describes the many parallels between the problems confronting Protestant missionaries in North America and these 17th-century Englishmen in Ireland, and – since the work of the American missions is relatively well-known – discusses in greater detail the achievements of missionary linguists in Ireland.
La Herencia De La Retorica Classica En La “Minerva” De Francisco Sanchez De Las Brozas
Authors: Terrés José Miguel Hernández
Published: November 2010

The aim of the present article is to clarify certain aspects pertaining to the interpretation of the grammatical theory of Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas. In particular, an attempt is made to explain the occurrence in his syntactic theory of certain elements of classical rhetoric: those referring to what is known as figured syntax. In the Minerva, the presence of constructional figures (ellipsis, zeugma, pleonasm, syllepsis and hyperbaton) signifies a drastic and rational reduction in respect to what was commonly to be found in the grammatical tradition de las Brozas inherited. The reduction is justified given his predominantly syntactic conception of grammar, one which leads him to consider only grammatical alterations of a propositional nature, viewed as deviations which must be explained by grammar. On the other hand, the very inclusion of such rhetorical figures in the sphere of grammar is justified for de las Brozas because, it is claimed, they are normal speech phenomena, not just confined to the art of rhetoric.
Fick and Kleuker on Jones – Riga 1795
Authors: Lehmann Winfred P.
Published: November 2010

Avenues of the impact of Sir William Jones’s Discourses, especially his Third, on the continent are of great interest, in view of the development of Indo-European historical linguistics there rather than in England. Translations may account for that impact, such as those carried out by Johann Christian Fick (1763–1821) and Johann Friedrich Kleuker (1749–1827). Published in 1795 in Riga, these translations with their notes indicate the information on India at the time, as well as the steps which were necessary to establish the new linguistic and philological disciplines. The notes also indicate the expectations for information from the newly discovered materials regarding clarification of social and cultural arrangements of the day. A part of their interest lies in the inaccurate and erroneous information available on Asia at the time. Yet by making readily available Jones’s discourses, Fick and Kleuker laid some of the groundwork for the 19th-century concern with India and Asia.
Genera verborum quot sunt?
Authors: Hovdhaugen Even
Published: November 2010

This article is a study of how Roman grammarians treated a specific grammatical problem, viz., the description and classification of verbal gender in Latin. The results show that various theories were put forward and various possibilities for systematizing and explaining the data were proposed in the works of the grammarians of the 3rd and 4th centuries. Out of the discussion of these grammarians there emerged in the works of the grammarians of the 5th and 6th centuries (notably Phocas, Pompeius, and Priscian) a rather adequate description. While morphological and semantic criteria were intermingled in the earlier period, later grammarians kept them apart. We also find a tendency towards a more theoretical and less data-oriented linguistics. The picture emerging from this in scope rather limited study deviates to some extent from the theories proposed by Bar-wick (1922) concerning the history of Roman linguistics.
The Tekhnē Grammatikē of dionysius thrax
Authors: Kemp Alan
Published: November 2010

The major part of the text consists of a new translation of the Tekhnē Grammatikē of Dionysius Thrax, with explanatory notes. In the introduction to the translation a brief account is given of the background to the work, including reference to the disputed question of its date and authenticity, and in general to Stoic and Alexandrian grammar.
The small mythologies of leonard bloomfield
Authors: Sayers Frances Clarke
Published: November 2010

The author describes her contacts with Leonard Bloomfield and his family, especially his sister Marie, his wife Alice, and their sons Roger and James. She cites examples of his wit and his kindness, and of the imagination which he used in creating “small mythologies” about himself and his family.
The whimsical bloomfield
Authors: Cowan J. Milton
Published: November 2010

The author describes and gives excerpts from his correspondence with Leonard Bloomfield, principally between 1942 and 1945, dealing with the problems of preparing material for language-teaching in connection with the war-effort. In these post-cards and letters, in addition to dealing with serious matters, Bloomfield often included humorous remarks, or even invented entire episodes. The correspondence not only illustrates both the serious and the whimsical side of Bloomfield’s nature, but also throws light on various neglected aspects of the rôle played by linguistics in the American war-effort.
Letters from bloomfield to Michelson and Sapir
Authors: Hockett C. F.
Published: November 2010

Between 1919 and 1930, Leonard Bloomfield corresponded with the anthropologist Truman Michelson (1879–1938) concerning Algonquian linguistics, and between 1924 and 1925 with Edward Sapir (1884–1939), with regard to American Indian languages, linguistic theory, and Bloomfield’s appointment as field-worker for the Canadian Bureau of Mines. The surviving letters are enumerated and discussed, and non-technical portions of them are reproduced, for the light which they shed on three of Bloomfield’s professional concerns: his work in Algonquian; his move from Illinois to Ohio State in 1921 ; and the planning and founding of the Linguistic Society of America in 1924–25. They also afford a few glimpses of his (in general little known) personal life and attitudes.
Bloomfield the Man
Authors: Hall Robert A.
Published: November 2010

The wide-spread conception of Bloomfield as a cold, unfeeling person, devoted only to a naïve scientism, is discussed and refuted. The very intensity of his feelings led him to repress them and to give vent to them only indirectly, often which quiet but bitter wit and sarcasm. He consequently distanced himself from many of the normal concerns of every-day life and of university politics. This had unfortunate results in the failure of the University of Chicago’s administration to recognize his merits; his move to Yale in 1940; his wife’s resultant mental break-down on separation from her Chicago environment; and his ensuing stroke in 1946. His contribution to linguistics during the war-years (1941–45) was thus outweighed by the loss of further influence he might have had on the development of American “structuralism” after 1946.
Bloomfield as an Indo-Europeanist
Authors: Lehmann Winfred P.
Published: November 2010

In Bloomfield’s day, Indo-European studies had become ingrown and isolated from general linguistics. Bloomfield was one of those who contributed to restoring Indo-European linguistics to its proper place. His training, especially at Leipzig, gave him control of the data and the theory by which the achievements of the “Neo-Grammarians” had been effected. His mastery of these doctrines is evident in his 1933 Language, whose chapters 17–27 embody an admirable demonstration of the findings of classical Indo-European linguistics. To these, he added considerations of geographical and social variation, leading to the distinction between alterations due to phonetic change and those due to borrowing, both internal (analogical) and external (social). Confirmation of his view of the regularity of sound-change, and hence of the validity of comparative method, was furnished by his well-known reconstruction of Proto-Central Algonquian [çk]. In this way, Bloomfield contributed majorly to the re-incorporation of Indo-European studies into general linguistics.
Leonard Bloomfield’s descriptive and comparative studies of Algonquian
Authors: Goddard Ives
Published: November 2010

Bloomfield’s Algonquian studies comprise a large body of descriptive and comparative work on Fox, Cree, Menominee, and Ojibwa. The materials he used were derived from his own fieldwork, for the most part, and especially in the case of Fox from the published work of others. His major achievement was to bring explicitness and orderliness to the description of Algonquian inflectional and derivational morphology. An examination of the development of his solution to certain phonological problems in Menominee and of his practices in editing his Menominee texts shows his struggle to reconcile the conflicting goals, formulated in his general statements (in his 1933Languageand elsewhere), of describing a language by determining the norm of the speech community and documenting a language in exhaustive objective detail. In his diachronic studies Bloomfield reconstructed the phonology of Proto-Algonquian and worked out the historical phonology of the languages he was concerned with; his work on morphology was largely confined to the comparison and reconstruction of directly corresponding features. A normative approach to variation is evident in these diachronic studies as well.
Petrus Montanus as a Phonetician and a Theoretician
Authors: Hulsker Jos L. M.
Published: November 2010

Petrus Montanus’ (1594/95–1638) book on phonetics, De Spreeckonst (1635), which was intended to apply to all languages, could have been an epoch-making standardwork on phonetics, if it had been read and studied more widely. Although he characterized Spreeckonst as a difficult theory he intended it to be an easy textbook. However, Montanus’ terminology made the book almost unreadable.

In the first section special attention is paid to Montanus’ idea that all aspects of his object of inquiry (i.e. the spoken language) had to be characterized as aptly and precisely as possible, after having examined the object (a). Next, (in section 2), an attempt is made to clarify Montanus’ opinion that the precise determination of objects (actually, the result of his scientifc inquiry) should function as a perfect didactic tool for his readers (b). Through names’ the reader could learn to produce speech sounds even better than by simply practising their production. Indeed, Spreeckonst was meant to be both a theory and a practical handbook. This can be explained by pointing out the two functions names had: they were instruments of knowledge (a) and instruments of learning (b). As shown in section 3 Montanus was directly influenced by Simon Stevin (1548–1620) with regard to (b).

In section 4 it is shown that, in essence, the first idea (a) can be traced back to Socrates’ ideas on names, as Plato had Socrates defend them in his Cratylus. The other idea (b) can be traced back to Cratylos’ ideas on names, which were unfolded and discussed in the same work.

Section 5 analyses the sorts of names Montanus actually used. A complete survey of the names of Montanus’ distinctions of speech sounds is presented in this section.

In the concluding section (6) an indication is made of the astonishing results of Montanus’ analyses of spoken language.
A. J. Ellis As Dialectologist
Authors: Shorrocks Graham
Published: November 2010

Alexander John Ellis (1814–1890) occupies an important position within the history of phonetics and that of the spelling reform movement. In this article, it is argued that Ellis’s standing as a dialectologist might profitably be reassessed. All too often in the past, Ellis’s work in the field of dialectology has been adversely criticized, underestimated or even completely ignored. Yet Ellis’s dialectological work was pioneering in many ways: he produced the first large-scale survey of English dialects, rejecting printed sources and using the direct method in part; invented an intricate system of phonetic notation (thepalaeotype); produced a detailed classification of the English dialects; and illustrated his classification by means of two summary maps complete with isoglosses. A number of scholars have reported in recent years that the results of their investigations accord well with Ellis’s findings. These facts are sufficient to warrant a reassessment of Ellis’s position in the history of English dialectology, and, more generally, within the history of linguistic geography as a whole.
Theorie Et Histoire De La Linguistique
Authors: Simone Raffaela
Published: November 2010

The history of linguistics is presented as a crucial part of linguistics as a whole, in view of its contribution to the understanding of the logical and cognitive structure and evolution of the linguistic discipline itself. The basis for this view is to be found in Saussure’s distinction between the ‘matter’ and ‘object’ of linguistic science: what changes through time is not merely the object of study, namely, the complex system we call ‘language’, but also its matter, since the evidence we put forward is not simply givenper se, but is selected by the investigator in accordance with certain determinants both internal and external to the discipline. Furthermore, this change affects the way in which evidence and theory are linked, i.e., the cognitive procedures leading from the former to the latter, which in turn are influenced by internal and external factors. This thesis is illustrated in a discussion of three crucial chapters in the history of linguistic thinking: Renaissance philosophy of language, Port-Royal linguistic theory, and Saussure.
The roots of franz boas’ view of linguistic categories as a window to the human mind
Authors: Mackert Michael
Published: November 2010

Historiographers of linguistics have frequently pointed out the presence of the Humboldtian term ‘inner form’ in Franz Boas’ (1858–1942) work on linguistic categorization and have suggested a link to Heymann Steinthal’s (1823–1899)Völkerpsychologieand psycholinguistics. This essay demonstrates, however, that Boas’ discourse on the inner form of language, grammatical categories, and the human mind did not develop in a unilinear fashion from the work of Steinthal. Although Boas adhered to a Steinthalian notion of inner form of language and linguistic relativism and his research on Native American languages was initially guided by Steinthal’s criteria ‘form’ and ‘material,’ Boas’ texts also exhibit some disontinuities with Steinthal’s work, and they carry traces linking his linguistics to the work of Adolf Bastian (1826–1905), Theodor Waitz (1826–1864), Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), and Daniel Garrison Brinton (1837–1899). Boas strategically distanced his discourse from the hierarchical thinking underlying the work of Steinthal, Spencer, and Wundt. As part of this distancing strategy, Boas shifted from Herbartian psychology, informing his early phonetic theory, to an associationist framework, and he postulated a universal mental faculty of abstraction as a necessary condition for human language to arise. Boas also introduced the concept of ‘coordinate elements’ in morphology, and he assumed the existence of universal relational functions in the languages of the world.
Remarks on Dionysios Thrax’s concept of ‘Diáthesis’
Authors: Andersen Paul Kent
Published: November 2010

The purpose of this paper is to present a new interpretation of Dionysios Thrax’s original definition of diáthesis. Diáthesis was regarded as one of seven morphological categories of the (finite) verb of which there were two and only two formal variants, i.e., enérgeia “performance” and páthos “experience” (generally referred to as the active and middle sets of personal endings respectively). Diáthesis was manifested in the personal ending of the verb, whose function was to represent various properties of the ‘subject’, i.e., its person and number as well as its diáthesis “disposition” – or general thematic relation – to the verb. The morpheme for the diáthesis enérgeia “performance” exhibited the active set of personal endings as its ‘form’ and expressed the person and number of the subject as well as the fact that it ‘performed’ the predication as its ‘schematic’ meaning; the morpheme for the diáthesis páthos “experience” exhibited the middle set of personal endings as its ‘form’ and expressed the person and number of the subject as well as the fact that it ‘experienced’ the predication as its ‘schematic’ meaning. Moreover, just as the other Greek (and Roman) grammarians, so too was Dionysios Thrax well aware of instances in which there was a discrepancy between ‘form’ and ‘meaning’. Accordingly, he incorporated such ‘anomalies’ into his definition by mentioning four concrete examples and labeling them with his technical term mesótēs “middle”: the first two examples were active forms which exhibited the meaning of páthos, whereas the second two examples were middle forms which exhibited the meaning of enérgeia.
La grammatica proverbiandi y La nova ratio nebrissensis
Authors: Esparza Torres Miguel Ángel , Fernández Vicente Calvo
Published: November 2010

Antonio de Nebrija (1444?–1522) published his Gramática Castellana in 1492, at a time when humanist appreciation of Castilian as a cultural language had not yet advanced to a discussion of its possibilities to become an established norm. However, an analysis of Nebrija’s linguistic and grammatical theories does shed some light on this question. For instance, it becomes clear that the new method which he proposes for the teaching of Latin (nova ratio Nebrissensis) presupposed a recognition of the presence of universal grammatical concepts in the pupil’s mother tongue. Such a conception is possible because Nebrija accepts an essential starting point of the medieval speculative tradition: language composition may be reduced to two basic concepts: materia (lexical element submitted to ‘corruption’) and forma (other elements – ‘accidents’ – which are stable). This composition is common to all languages. Therefore, Nebrija holds that by making use of the constrastive method it is possible to study two languages such as Latin and Castilian (which also happen to be closely related). Therefore, we must not consider the Gramática Castellana as separate from the rest of Nebrija’s scholarly production. He himself had coined the notion of ‘unity in diversity’ concerning his grammatical work. In order to teach the Castilian language and, starting from Castilian, Latin, Nebrija writes grammatical and lexicographical works which have an underlying unity. His general approach was exclusive to Nebrija; however, although nobody before him had worked out such an ambitious project, there is no doubt that he was continuing on the way in which grammatical tradition had been heading for some time. An example of this tradition is the so-called Grarnmatica proverbiandi. In this paper, the main features of this kind of medieyal grammar are analyzed. It is argued that they constitute the immediate precursor of the Nebrija’s undertaking, since we find in them didactic postulates which he developed further. These postulates led Nebrija to a contrastive grammar of Latin and Castilian and the creation of a grammatical terminology for the vernacular.
The Saleski family and the founding of the LSA linguistic institutes
Authors: Falk Julia S. , Joseph John E.
Published: November 2010

The Linguistic Institutes (LIs) of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) were first envisaged by R. E. Saleski (1890–1971), an obscure scholar who for a time played a prominent role within the LSA (including the administration of the early LIs), but was inexplicably marginalized around 1931–32. E. H. Sturtevant’s 1940 history of the LI does not even mention Saleski’s name. Saleski proposed a course on “The Sociological Study of Language” for the 1929 LI – an extremely early date for such a course – and we consider the sources of his interest in this and related subjects. In addition to sketching Saleski’s life and career, we examine the careers of his sisters Else and Mary Agnes, like him minor academics, but steadfast members of LSA in its fledgling years.
Nebrija y las gramáticas del español en el siglo de oro
Authors: Alconchel José Luis Girón
Published: November 2010

This article is intended as a contribution to the history of Spanish grammar of the 16th and 17th centures. It has two parts. In the first the author places grammar studies within the framework of Spanish linguistics of the Renaissance; in the second, he delineates their evolution with reference to Latin grammar and the teaching Spanish as a foreign language. It is well known that nationalism and the intention to establish the literary foundations of the language are the most important agents of grammatical studies during the Renaissance; yet, attention must also be paid to the rupture of medieval Latin-Romance bilingualism, to the new intellectual paradigm in which rhetorics substitutes for syllogism, and to the influence of Erasmus. The grammar of the troubadours and Latin grammar – medieval and humanist – evoke an interest in developing grammars of Romance languages; it made the appearance of Nebrija possible. In his grammar of Spanish we may stress its capacity to be a grammar for foreigners and the value of this document for the history of Spanish. Spanish grammar writing of the 16th century is dominated by Nebrija; is strong presence is evident with the critical reception Villalon and Valdes give to his work. In the 17th century the work of Sanctius initiates a rationalism which favours pedagogical methodology and linguistic nationalism. Jimenez Paton, Correas and Caramuel are the most important authors of that period. With an exemplary linguistic realism Correas applies Sanctius’ theory of the elipsis to Spanish, and he recognizes the singularity of Spanish grammar in contrast to that of Latin. The grammars written for foreigners in the 17th century are at the height of inductive methodology.
Langage et expressivité chez august friedrich pott
Authors: Bologna Maria Patrizia
Published: November 2010

Cet article traite de la manière dont August Friedrich Pott (1802–1887), l’un des représentants de la linguistique générale allemande au XIXe siècle, s’occupe de certains faits linguistiques que l’on peut compter parmi les manifestations de l’expressivité dans le langage, à savoir les interjections, les mots onomatopéiques, les procédés phonétiques revenant au phonosymbolisme et le redoublement. On note que l’intérêt porté par Pott à ce sujet s’inscrit dans l’intérêt plus général pour l’analyse de 1’ ‘aspect intérieur’ de la langue, en d’autres termes, dans le cadre d’une ébauche de théorie sémantique soutenant – selon une orientation humboldtienne – le rôle médiateur de la langue dans l’expérience. Il s’agit essentiellement d’un intérêt pour les formes linguistiques dans lesquelles on observe une réduction de l’écart entre le caractère ‘subjectif et le caractère ‘objectif propres à tous les faits de langue, c’est-à-dire pour les formes linguistiques dont la nature paraît motiver dans une certaine mesure le lien entre 1’ ‘aspect intérieur’ et 1’ ‘aspect extérieur’ et où un certain degré d’immédiateté des traits phonétiques obscurcit le rôle médiateur de la langue dans l’intuition du monde. L’article soutient que ce ne sont pas des considérations d’ordre pragmatique sur la fonction expressive des faits linguistiques en question, mais des considérations d’ordre sémiotique rapportant l’expressivité à l’iconicité.
Los Origenes del término diglosia
Authors: Fernández Mauro
Published: November 2010

This article reviews the history of the term ‘diglossia’, particularly from its first documented use by Rhoidis in 1885 to refer to the Greek linguistic situation, to Ferguson’s 1959 landmark article, in order to reveal its origin and process of circulation. The few authors who have dealt with the pre-Ferguson history of the term ‘diglossia’ depict it as a small series of isolated, sparsely scattered, barely connected occurrences. Contrary to this commonly accepted view, in this article it is argued that there existed a continuous use of the term in several languages between 1885 and 1959. It is suggested that this continuous use could have been inferred even from the scarce number of pre-Ferguson references which had been located previously. Some interpretations about the coinage of the term and the diffusion paths of these interpretations are discussed; it is shown why these accounts are inaccurate or highly implausible. Finally, focus is placed on the first documented usages of Greek διγλωσσία and French diglossie in 1885 to mean ‘two forms of the same language’. Contrary to the common opinion that διγλωσσία used to mean simply ‘bilingualism’, it is argued that this development is recent and follows the coinage of bilinguisme in French, bilingualism in English, bilinguismo in Italian, etc. Furthermore, any linguistic sense of the Greek term διγλωσσία is argued to be relatively recent; thus, Rhoidis’ pioneering use must be seen as a creative neologism based on the traditional sense of Greek διγλωσσία as “falsehood”, “hypocrisy”, “deceitfulness” or “double-tonguedness”.
El funcionalismo de rodolfo lenz
Authors: Martínez José A.
Published: November 2010

This paper deals with the contributions to Hispanic Linguistics by the German-Chilean linguist Rodolfo Lenz (1863–1935), some of whose proposals – often attributed to other scholars – may be seen as an alternative to the ideas of the prestigious Andrés Bello (1781–1865). The paper first reviews those aspects of his work which anticipate some of the basic tenets of Functional Grammar, such as the notion of ‘transposition’ (function shifting), his views on sentential structure, and his treatment of passives as attributive constructions. The paper also explores Lenz’s contributions to Indo-European linguistics and his theoretical affinities with, if not anticipations of, the work of other well-known linguists like Búhler, Tesnière, Hjelmslev, and Benveniste. In sum, the author seeks to vindicate Rodolfo Lenz and his insightful views in both general linguistic theory and Spanish grammar.
Mikołaj Kruszewski and 20th-century linguistics
Authors: Berezin Fedor Mixajlovič
Published: November 2010

The article deals with important issues in general linguistic theory discussed by Mikołaj Habdank Kruszewski alias Nikolaj Vjačeslavovič Kruševskij (1851–1887), in the author’s view an unjustly forgotten linguist of genius of the late 19th century, who could be seen as standing at the roots of the 20th-century structuralism, long before the appearance of F. de Saussure’s lectures on general linguistics. In his major book O čerk nauki o jazyke (An outline of the science of language) of 1883, Kruszewski conceived of language as a system of signs, laying stress on the semiotic function of language. His understanding of sound alternation is in many ways close to modern principles of phonology and morphonology. His hypothesis of the universal character of the sound laws too anticipated the discovery of language universals. As a result, the author agrees with Radwańska-Williams’ (1993) characterization of Kruszewski’s theory as ‘a lost paradigm’ in the history of linguistics. Well-known linguists of the 20th century such as Roman Jakobson (1896–1982), Jerzy Kuryłowicz (1895–1978) , and others rightly argued that Kruszewski was one of the founders of modern linguistic theory.
Dialectology in Poland 1873–1997
Authors: Gogolewski Stanisław
Published: November 2010

The advent and the first stage of development of the Polish dialectology is connected with the Neogrammarian trend. In 1873, Lucjan Malinowski (1839–1898) published in Leipzig the first scientific description of a Polish dialect. His student, Kazimierz Nitsch (1874–1958), included in his research the entire territory of the Polish language, and in 1915 published the first synthesis Dialekty języka polskiego (Dialects of the Polish language).In the inter-war period and later, there appeared a number of descriptions of dialects of individual villages and larger regions. A new, synthesizing discussion of the subject, in Karol Dejna’s (b.1911) Dialekty polskie (Polish dialects), was published in 1973. Geolinguistic atlases of particular dialects were produced, as well as Mały atlas gwar polskich (A little atlas of Polish dialects) comprising the whole country. A number of dialectal dictionaries were issued; work on the voluminous Słownik gwar polskich (A dictionary of Polish dialects) is in progress. A new area of research is developing – historical dialectology which is concerned with the problems of participation of particular dialects in the formation of literary Polish.
The discovery of Old Welsh
Authors: Roberts Brynley F.
Published: November 2010

Edward Lhuyd’s (1660–1709)Archaeologia Britannica(Oxford 1707), was intended to be a study of early British history together with copies of some of the original source material The only volume to appear, entitledGlossography, printed glossaries and grammars of the Celtic languages and lists of Irish and Welsh manuscripts, and it set out the principles of phonetic changes and correspondences so that linguistic and written evidence for the relationships of the first (Celtic) inhabitants of the British Isles could be evaluated. The antiquity of the evidence was of prime importance. Lhuyd sought the ‘very ancient’ written sources which would bridge the gap between the post-Roman inscriptions and the medieval Welsh manuscripts which he had seen. Humphrey Wanley (1672–1726), the Old English scholar, drew his attention to the Lichfield gospel book and two Latin manuscripts at the Bodleian Library which contained Welsh glosses and Lhuyd himself discovered the Cambridge Juvencus manuscript. These were the oldest forms of Welsh which he had seen. He analysed the palaeography, the orthography and vocabulary of these witnesses, and although he was not able fully to comprehend these records, he was able to begin to describe the characteristics of the British insular hand and to define some of the features which distinguished Old Welsh from Middle Welsh.
The dispute among vilnius humanists regarding Latin, Lithuanian, and Ruthenian
Authors: Dini Pietro U.
Published: November 2010

Even before the Lublin Union (1569) between Poland and Lithuania there was an important linguistic controversy among Lithuanian Humanists. In the wider context of a general ‘Latinization’ of the culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the so-called ‘Latinizers’ (Agrippa, Rotundus, Michalo Lituanus) harked back to a classic language such as Latin, thedignitasof which was considered to be undisputed. The Latin language could compete with other languages of culture used inside the Grand Duchy, primarily with Ruski. According to the Latinizers the identity of Latin and Lithuanian was the principal evidence to support the derivation of the Lithuanians as a people from the Romans. Promoting Latin was equivalent to promoting vulgar Lithuanian from the point of view of the Latinizers. In this paper I discuss the textual aspects of the debate about theliterae(Latin vs. Muscovite or Ruthenian) exposed in the works of Michalo Lituanus (Tractatus de moribus Tartarorwn, Lithuanorum et Moschorum, 1615[1550]) and Augustinus Rotundus (Preface to the second Lithuanian Statute, 1576). Possible implications of the dispute for the question of the Ruthenian language are investigated, too.
A matter of consequenz
Authors: Joseph John E.
Published: November 2010

Accusations of ‘racialism’ against Wilhelm von Humboldt’s (1767–1835) theory of language have been based in large measure on remarks in Humboldt (1836) concerning the inferiority of Chinese as an organ of thought. His other comments asserting its excellence are either marginalised or used to suggest that his account of the language is incoherent and irrational. However, when read in the context of the work in which they were originally formulated, Humboldt’s 1826 letter to the Sinologist J.-P. Abel-Rémusat (1788–1832), their coherence becomes apparent. Reacting to a polarisation between Sinologists and Sanskritists in the Société Asiatique of Paris, he rises to the challenge put to him by Rémusat to solve the paradox of how, if synthetic, inflecting languages are to be credited with the development of higher thought, Chinese, the ultimate analytic language, could have produced one of the world’s great civilisations. Humboldt conducts his enquiry in the classical form of a thesis, largely corresponding to Rémusat’s views of the superiority of Chinese; an antithesis, corresponding in part to the strong view of the inferiority of Chinese put forward by Rémusat’s student Eugène Burnouf (1801–1852); and a synthesis, which locates the excellence of Chinese in the realm of ideas and that of the inflecting languages in the realm of thought, then explains how it is that Chinese acquired a structural defect and subsequently turned it into an advantage.
The ‘Brazilian Connection’ in the History of American Linguistics
Authors: Altman Cristina
Published: November 2010

When mention is made of Brazil in connection with American linguistics, it usually amounts to a reference to the Linguistic Circle of New York, where Roman Jakobson (1896–1982) and Claude Lévi-Strauss (b.1908), who had come from Brazil where he had done ethnological work, met and exchanged ideas. This singular event has cast a shadow on other contacts between Brazil and American linguistics, of which, the one between Jakobson and the Brazilian linguist Joaquim Mattoso Câmara (1904–1970) was much more consequential, at least as far as the implementation of structural linguistics in Brazil and in South America generally during the 1950s and the 1960s is concerned. Mattoso Câmara came to the United States and spent most of his time in New York City (September 1943 till April 1944), where he got exposure to Praguean type structuralism, notably through Jakobson’s lectures he attended at Columbia University and at the École Libre of New York, which had been established by European refugees at the time. He also participated in the first meetings of the Linguistic Circle of New York in 1943 as one of its co-founders. Following his return to Rio de Janeiro, Mattoso Câmara proposed, in 1949, as his doctoral thesis a phonemic description of Brazilian Portuguese. The work was published a few years later, in 1953. His most influential work, Princípios de Lingüística Gerai, first published in 1954, had two more revised and updated editions (1958, 1967) and served to introduce several generations of Brazilian as well as other South American students to structural linguistics during the 1950s and 1960s.
The Semantic Theory of James Harris
Authors: Subbiondo Joseph L.
Published: November 2010

Although the semantic theory proposed by Harris in Hermes (1751) was not well received in 18th-century England and has been generally neglected by scholars ever since, it is certainly deserving of our attention because it is a perceptive analysis of the logico-semantic structure of language. In the tradition of philosophical or universal grammar, Harris argued that the subject matter of the linguist should be the conceptual level or the deep structure of language rather than the utterance or the surface structure. Therefore, Harris reasoned that an adequate explanation of meaning required a description of the relationship of language and thought. Furthermore, since he recognized that the study of language was necessary for the advancement of learning, which he considered to be the essence of science, he regarded the limits of 18th-century science too narrow in that they excluded semantics. Harris’ theory advanced that an analysis of the sentence, the basis of the synthesis of the mind and language, was crucial to a semantic theory. Since the number of utterances is infinite, Harris attempted to discover a finite and universal set of psychological principles which he believed generated sentences. Although he concluded that a notion of general and particular ideas would ultimately explain verbal communication, he hoped that identifying the source of these ideas would be the work of future scholars.