Vivian Salmon (1921–2010) as I remember her* Michael K. C. MacMahon University of Glasgow
I came to know of Vivian’s work in the history of linguistics about 40 years ago, in the early 1970s. Reading her famous critique of Chomsky’s Cartesian Linguistics, I suddenly saw the style, quality and extent of her scholarship. Then, after she and her husband Paul moved to Edinburgh, I got to know them personally. They were two of a relatively small band of people in linguistics who had a specialist interest in the history of the subject. They recognised that an understanding of earlier approaches to questions about the nature of language, its structure, and the way speakers and writers use it, could throw some comparative light on more modern ways of looking at the same questions. Those of us working in linguistic historiography agreed that a society was needed which would act as a hub and draw people into the subject. The idea of an international society had been suggested in the 1970s, in particular by the organizer of the First International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences, held in Ottawa in 1978, but no specific decisions had been taken. Then in August 1983, Vivian had the idea of inviting Konrad Koerner, who was visiting Oxford, and was the person who had first mooted the idea of an international society, to a gathering of like-minded individuals.1 Vivian organised it; she provided the hospitality; and she even chose what she later described as a ‘blazing hot summer’s day’ for it! The result was the agreement by the ten people present to set up the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas. The ten included Leslie Seiffert * A shorter version was given as part of the tribute to Vivian Salmon which I presented as President of the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas at her funeral ceremony on 17 November 2010 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. 1. For details, see E.F.K. Koerner, “Wie es eigentlich gewesen … or, Notes concerning the prehistory of the Henry Sweet Society”. Bulletin of the Henry Sweet Society 30.14–18 (May 1998); and Vivian Salmon’s commentary, “A Note on the Origins of the Henry Sweet Society”, ibid., 19–20. Historiographia Linguistica XXXVIII:1/2 (2011), 1–4. doi 10.1075/hl.38.1.00mcm issn 0302–5160 / e-issn 1569–9781 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
Informal meeting in the garden of Vivian and Paul Salmon’s home at 5 Rotha Field Road, Oxford, on 18 August 1983 to discuss Koerner’s suggestion of the creation of a British society for the history of linguistics. Seated are from left to right (apart from the hostess; standing behind her: Paul Salmon): John C. Marshall, Konrad Koerner, Terence F. Hoad, Ian Michael, Dominik Wujastyk, Leslie Seiffert, Edwina Burness, and Christopher J. Wells. (Photograph by Koerner using a tripod and a delayed-action release.)
2 Michael K. C. MacMahon
Vivian Salmon (1921–2010) as I remember her
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(1934–1990) and Ian Michael (b.1915). It has the name ‘Henry Sweet’ in its title deliberately in recognition of Sweet’s work in linguistics in Oxford and elsewhere in the second half of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th. In Vivian’s words, it was a “small tribute to a scholar who did not meet with the appreciation which he deserved in his own lifetime” (“Meeting Konrad Koerner: Regensburg 1974 — Edinburgh 1977 — Oxford 1983” E. F. Konrad Koerner Bibliography ed. by William Cowan & Michael K. Foster, 75–76 [Bloomington: Eurolingua,1989], at p. 76.) Vivian used to happily refer to the Society as simply ‘Henry’: she would buttonhole you and ask if you would be attending the next meeting of ‘Henry’. The Society came formally into existence in February 1984, and continues to prosper; Vivian was its General Secretary for several years. Her husband Paul (1921–1997) served as editor of the Society’s “Newsletter”, which later mutated into a “Bulletin”, and latterly became the journal Language & History. Another has been the annual meetings which have attracted colleagues world-wide. Vivian’s key research area was the 16th and 17th centuries, and this led to a series of major publications including The Works of Francis Lodwick: A study of his writings in the intellectual context of the seventeenth century (London: Longmans, 1972), The Study of Language in 17th-century England (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1979), the edition, together with Edwina Burness (d.1996), of A Reader in the Language of Shakespearean Drama (ibid., 1987), “Thomas Harriot and the English Origins of Algonkian Linguistics” (HL 19:1.25–56 [1992]), and Language and Society in Early Modern England: Selected essays 1981–1994 (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1996). Her first paper from an historiographical perspective concerned the obscure English grammarian-cum-phonetician Thomas Hayward (1561–??) in Neophilologus 43.64–74 [1959]); her last a set of biographical entries on 17th-century English scholars appeared in Lexicon Grammaticorum (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1996; 2nd ed., 2009).2 In between, as it were, were dozens of other publications on a variety of subjects, including Old and Middle English, Old Norse, the teaching of language and languages in earlier centuries, spelling reform, translation, lexicography, and word-structure in Shakespeare. There were also reviews of books on language and linguistics for the Times Literary Supplement, and biographical vignettes for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The hallmark of Vivian’s published work was thorough research. One should compare the standards she applied to her own work with those that resulted in the often incomplete and superficial awareness of medieval and postmedieval texts that Chomsky displays in Cartesian Linguistics — something she rightly and firmly criticised (Journal of Linguistics 5.165–186 [1969]). 2. For a fairly complete bibliography, see “Vivian Salmon: Writings 1957–1996” in HL 33:1/2 (1996), in a double issue dedicated to her on the occasion of her 75th birthday.
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Vivian was born Vivian Gladys Sowman in 1921 in London. She studied English at University College London, and in 1945 she married a fellow-student, Paul Salmon, later Reader in German in the University of London and, from 1970–1981 Professor of German in the University of Edinburgh. She herself taught English and Linguistics at Bedford College, University of London, where she played a key role in establishing Linguistics as part of the English syllabus. From 1970 to 1981 she taught at the University of Edinburgh, eventually being promoted to the rank of Reader, before moving with Paul to Oxford after his retirement in 1981. There she taught English and Linguistics at Keble College for a number of years. All of us are very conscious of the debt we owe to Vivian. She was a delightful colleague. She was helpful. She shared her knowledge. She provided practical support. She was firm. We shall all miss her. Author’s address: Michael K.C. MacMahon Department of English Language School of Critical Studies University of Glasgow Glasgow, Scotland U. K. G12 8QQ
Heritage and Innovation in the Grammatical Analysis of Latin The Ars Ambrosiana commentary (6th/7th century) on Donatus (ca. 350 A.D.)* Louise J. Visser
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
1. Introduction Early medieval Latin grammar depended, as is well known, for a large part on the grammars written in Rome by Aelius Donatus around 350 A.D. Donatus’ two grammars are known as the Ars minor and the Ars maior. In this study, I will examine a 6th/7th-century commentary on the Ars maior of Donatus: the Commentum anonymum in Donati partes maiores. This commentary is commonly referred to as Ars Ambrosiana, after the Ambrosian Library in Milan which holds the only manuscript copy of the text, the 9th-century ms. L 22 sup. The Ars Ambrosiana was edited by Bengt Löfstedt (1931–2005) in 1982, in volume 133C of Corpus Christianorum Series Latina. In fact, it was the editor of the text who was responsible for the designation Ars Ambrosiana. Grammatical texts from this transition period in Western European history (4th–8th century A.D.) are exceedingly interesting for the history of linguistics and for the history of ideas: they reflect the changing circumstances of education, science, and culture as a whole when the Roman Empire disintegrated, when Christianity spread, and when peoples migrated.1 This is not to say that these * This article is a thoroughly revised version of a paper presented at the IV Congresso Europeo di Studi Medievali “Coesistenza e Cooperazione nel Medioevo” in Palermo (Italy) on 24 June 2009. Research for this article has been conducted as part of the project ‘History of the Participle in Early Medieval Latin Grammaticography’, subsidized by the Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek — Vlaanderen (G.0545.07). I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Alfons Wouters and Pierre Swiggers for commenting on drafts of my text and to three anonymous reviewers of HL for their very useful suggestions. I would like to thank Emily Snow for correcting my English. 1. For an overview, see Law (2003). For an annotated anthology of important medieval texts on language, see Copeland & Sluiter (2009). Historiographia Linguistica XXXVIII:1/2 (2011), 5–36. doi 10.1075/hl.38.1.01vis issn 0302–5160 / e-issn 1569–9781 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
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grammatical texts are a monolithic bloc. Apart from shared features, they each exhibit a number of particularities. Therefore it is also worthwhile to study one grammatical text on its own. This is especially true for the Ars Ambrosiana because it presents a number of interesting aspects both on the level of grammatical conceptions and on that of terminology. I would like to discuss a number of these peculiarities here. But first I will say a few words about Latin grammar at the end of Late Antiquity and the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and about the background of the Ars Ambrosiana. In order to teach Latin in early medieval Western Europe, teachers used grammars from Late Antiquity. In the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D., several grammarians had written a grammar text in the traditional way of the ars grammatica, in which the description of the partes orationis “parts of speech” or word classes, was the main part (cf., e.g., Holtz 1981, Baratin & Desbordes 1981, Schmidt 1989, Lepschy, ed. 1994, and Law 2003). At the turn of the 5th century A.D., a new genre was inaugurated by Marius Servius Honoratus: the grammatical commentary. Servius wrote a commentary on both grammars of Donatus, who had by that time acquired great authority (cf. Beck 1996: 10).2 In Late Antiquity, it was very common to write a commentary on authoritative texts rather than an entirely ‘new’ text, and Servius applied this method to Latin grammar. As shown by Plezia (1949: 45–46, 68–69), Greek commentaries on (Greek) grammatical texts had existed already for some time (see also Mariotti 1967: 100–122). Servius was soon followed by other Latin grammarians. From the 5th to the 9th century, many Donatus commentaries were produced.3 Not only did the commentators elaborate on what Donatus had written very concisely, but they also adapted over time the perspective on language and on language teaching to changing world views and to the changing needs on the part of their readers. 2. The Ars Ambrosiana in its historical context The Ars Ambrosiana constitutes an important testimony of the genre of Donatus commentaries. The text we find in the 9th-century manuscript (see Section 1) is in fact a copy of the original Ars Ambrosiana that is lost. As to the dating of the original text, the use of Priscian by the author provides, according to Law 2. Holtz (1981: 224) thinks it was Servius who contributed much to the spreading of Donatus’ fame. Irvine (1994: 58) credits above all Jerome for making Donatus famous: Jerome was a student of Donatus (e.g., Jerome, Chronicon 2370 (P.L. 27). 3. The early commentaries of the 5th century show strong features of interdependence, most recently investigated by Christian Stock in his 2005 edition of the grammar by Sergius (formerly referred to in modern literature as Pseudo-Cassiodorus).
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(1982: 94), a terminus post quem of 526 A.D. (the date commonly accepted for Priscian’s Institutiones Grammaticae).4 The integration in the text of an Irish gloss, which can be dated to around 700 A.D. would suggest that the text dates from before 700 (Law 1982: 94–97). If the gloss was not included in the original Ars Ambrosiana but copied by the author from a source, the date of the manuscript is the only terminus ante quem we have (Law 1982: 94n.73). Holtz (1983: 175–176) dates the grammar to the second half of the 7th century. It has been suggested that the author of the Ars Ambrosiana was Irish on the basis of the mentioned Irish gloss (Sabbadini 1903: 168; Löfstedt 1965: 21; 1980: 301; and Holtz 1983: 175–176; 1992: 49), but Law (1982: 94–97, 1984: 80–83) convincingly argues that he probably came from a Mediterranean milieu. On the other hand, one cannot deny that there are similarities between the Ars Ambrosiana and a few 7th-century ‘Irish’ grammars, as we will see further on. Whether the author was Irish or not, various scholars have accepted the hypothesis that he worked in Bobbio, a monastery in the province of Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna in Northern Italy which was founded by the Irish monk Columbanus in 612 A.D. (Sabbadini 1903: 168; Manitius 1911: 519; Löfstedt 1982: vii; Law 1982: 96–97, 1984: 82; Holtz 1983: 175–176). Remigio Sabbadini (1850–1934) was convinced that the author was an Irish monk residing in Ireland or at Bobbio; Löfstedt, Holtz, and Law consider the Bobbio environment highly probable. It has recently been shown that apart from the Irish founder there were hardly any Irishmen present at Bobbio until after the beginning of the 8th century (Zironi 2004: 23–46; 64–65; 68–70):5 monks were recruited from the local inhabitants, and the first abbots came from Gaul. This makes it more probable still that the author of the Ars Ambrosiana was someone from the Mediterranean. It is also noteworthy that both Amsler (1989: 212) and Law (1982: 96, 4. Hofman (2000: 273, 275, 286–287) argues that the authors of the Ars Ambrosiana and Anonymus ad Cuimnanum in Bobbio indeed did not have access to Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae, but that the Institutio de nomine et pronomine et uerbo was available to them. He suggests that after Italy and Spain, the Institutiones grammaticae was first available in Southern Ireland, then in Northern Ireland (the region from which Columbanus came, who later founded the monastery of Bobbio), and finally only sometime in the 8th century arrived in Bobbio. Holtz (2009: 39–41) states that there is no citation or even reminiscence of Priscian in any 6th- or 7thcentury grammarian. Everything that makes one think of Priscian, he says, in fact originates from older sources common to several grammarians and Priscian. Holtz dates the start of the use of the more elementary Institutio de nomine to the beginning of the 8th century, and that of the Institutiones grammaticae to Aldhelm (c.639–709 A.D.) and Alcuinus later in the 8th century. 5. This goes against Lowe’s influential hypothesis that there had been an Irish scriptorium in the monastery from the very beginning (Lowe [1934–1971], CLA IV: xxiii).
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1984: 81–82) have drawn attention to the absence of ‘monastic’ features in the grammar.6 In my view, the grammar may have been written at the monastery of Bobbio, but the author may just as well have been a Christian from a Northern Italian intellectual environment in Verona, Pavia, Milan, or Ravenna (cf. also Law 1984: 82); the text was then later acquired by the Bobbio library. If it was written at Bobbio, it has to be dated in or after 612 A.D. (the year of the foundation of the monastery) — most likely later, since the energies of the first occupants of the monastery went towards building and organizing it, not to writing or copying books or even accumulating profane books to be used as sources (Holtz 1983: 175; Zironi 2004: 48). If the commentary was written in a secular environment, it is more likely to be of an earlier date, somewhere in the 6th century (after 526). Law (1982: 95, 1984: 81) has also remarked upon the conspicuous absence of citations or borrowings from Isidore of Seville (c.560–636), whose Etymologies (or Origins) appeared in Spain in the 630s A.D.7 Isidore’s encyclopedic work started to be copied in Northern Italy before the end of the 7th century (cf. Zironi 2004: 53–56; Von Büren 2007: 43),8 which suggests a date for the Ars Ambrosiana before roughly 680 A.D. However, Holtz (1983: 175–177) postulates a lost Donatus commentary as a common source to the Ars Ambrosiana as well as Virgilius Maro Grammaticus (late 6th–early 7th cent.), a commentary that had drawn from Isidore. He does this on the basis of the etymologies of corpus “body” given in the three texts. Virgilius seems to echo both Isidore and our author: Virgilius (Epitoma 11, 230.79 ed. Löfstedt) rejects the etymology “corpus a corruptibilitate naturae” (cf. Isid. Orig. XI,1.14: “corpus dictum eo quod corruptum perit”) and accepts the etymology pus = custodia, cor = corona. The author of the Ars Ambrosiana, for his part, rejects “corpus dicitur quidquid tangitur et uidetur” and accepts corpus = cordis pus (6.26). Holtz concludes that cor + pus must have figured in a source common to the Ars Ambrosiana and Virgilius (even though cor “heart” is explained differently by either) and that the common source in turn had rejected the etymol6. Examples of early medieval ‘monastic’ (or ‘vocational’ in the terms of Amsler) grammars are the Ars Asporii (6th century) and the Ars grammatica of Tatwine (first quarter of the 8th century) — see Amsler (1989: 177–179, 189–190). 7. In his edition, Löfstedt refers to Isidore sometimes among the parallels to the text, but nearly always preceded by a ‘cf.’ and most often with respect to simple etymologies which the author could have found in the same sources in which Isidore found them. 8. Zironi discusses a number of palimpsests, in which the upper layer texts are copies of works of Isidore, written in Verona and at Bobbio at the end of the 7th century and in the 8th century. Von Büren gives a new stemma codicum of the Etymologies of Isidore in which a group of Northern-Italian manuscripts from before 750 A.D. figures.
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ogy found in Isidore.9 The issue can only be settled once we have a fuller picture of Donatus commentaries and other grammatical texts of the 7th century which draw on Isidore. This discussion brings us to the issue of the sources of the Ars Ambrosiana. The grammatical sources were dealt with by Sabbadini (1903), Löfstedt (1980), and also Law (1982). It appears that the author used more grammatical sources than most other early medieval grammarians did. The sources drawn on most frequently in the Ars Ambrosiana are the grammars of Sergius (mid-5th cent.) and Pompeius (late 5th–early 6th cent.): both are Donatus commentaries of the 5th century. Löfstedt (1982: vii) believes that in the 7th century, no other library than the one at Bobbio could have contained an array of source texts rich enough to account for the variegated contents of the Ars Ambrosiana. However, the cathedral library in Verona (now Biblioteca Capitolare) also was a very rich library, and it was a century or more older than the Bobbio library.10 Obviously, this library, like Bobbio, focused on the copying and collecting of ecclesiastical writings (Piazzi & Zivelonghi 1984: 27; cf. also Holtz 1992: 47). But since the cathedral school had the important task of educating the new clergymen, who had to be able to read and, preferably, understand what they read, attention was paid to secular disciplines as well (Piazzi 1994: 13, 18; cf. also Piazzi & Zivelonghi 1984: 12). Therefore, the wealth and antiquity of the sources used in the Ars Ambrosiana would not exclude a Northern Italian location outside Bobbio such as Verona. Interestingly, there have been close ties between Verona and Bobbio throughout the Early Middle Ages (Thompson 31967: 148). The Latin of the author, when he does not quote any source, is not classical, as we shall see below. Nor does it betray an Irish background, but as it is preserved in
9. Holtz (1992: 49) repeats the hypothesis of the common source and his view is reiterated and corroborated by Grondeux-Jeudy (2001: 151–152), albeit on the basis of exactly the same etymology. 10. The first recorded date of activity in the cathedral library and scriptorium in Verona (then within the schola sacerdotum s. veronensis ecclesiae) is 1 August 517 A.D. The library holds a few manuscripts dating even from the 5th century, which makes scholars working for this library believe that it existed already by that time or even from the time of bishop Zeno (ca.300–371/380) on (Piazzi & Zivelonghi 1984: 12, 16, 25; Piazzi 1994: 16–19). Thompson (31967: 147, 151) tells us that the origins of the library are unknown, but he suggests that it may even go back to a Roman public library. Berschin (1991: 227) cautions that it is not indisputably proven that the 5th-century mss. have their origin in Verona. This leads to the question when did they arrive there, if they were not written locally. Scholarly activity in Verona at the end of the 5th century is in any case highly probable.
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the 9th-century manuscript, it shows some traces of Irish influence.11 At the same time, the author’s way of expressing himself is at times rather uncomfortable and his syntax seems strange now and then. In general, the Latin of the Ars Ambrosiana seems of a ‘vulgar’ or spoken nature compatible with the way Stotz (2002, I § 33: 93–97) describes the Latin of early medieval Italy; a thorough study of the grammar’s language remains to be carried out, however. The ‘best’ Latin written in 7th-century Italy is generally considered to be that of Jonas of Susa in his Vita Columbani (written ca. 643 A.D.) (e.g., Tosi 1965: xxii; xxxiv–xxxv; De Vogüé 1988: 33–34. Cf. also Stotz 2002, I § 33.1: p. 94). The Latin of our grammarian does not attain the level of Jonas’s Vita Columbani, but displays a comparable mixture of classic, patristic, and spoken language. Jonas, in turn, could not compete with the Latin we find in the writings of Gregory the Great half a century before (ca.540–604 A.D.), according to Stotz (ibid., p. 93). This would suggest that the Ars Ambrosiana was not written before 600 and maybe not even before 650, leaving us a date roughly between 650 and 680. But, of course, it may be the case that the author simply was a less accomplished writer than Gregory the Great and Jonas were. All elements taken together, we can conclude that the original Ars Ambrosiana was written in Northern Italy, – either between roughly 530 and 640 A.D. in a secular Christian intellectual environment, probably attached to the Cathedral of Verona, – or between roughly 640 and 680 A.D. in the library and scriptorium of the Bobbio monastery or of the Cathedral of Verona. I will now survey the methodology and approach to grammar of the Ars Ambrosiana, chiefly in the chapters on the verb and the participle.12 Subsequently I will examine aspects of the (idiosyncratic) terminology of the author, again in the verb and participle chapters. 3. The Ars Ambrosiana: Methodology and approach to grammar Besides paragraphs or even entire sections taken from earlier grammars, we find in the Ars Ambrosiana many paragraphs that are not attributable to any known source. We suppose that these are parts that the author wrote himself. The style of these passages differs notably from that of the borrowed passages, featuring foremost non-classical syntax and novel terminology. In the contents of the 11. See also Löfstedt (1982: vii), who believes that there is enough Irish orthography present in the text to suppose Irish authorship. Law (1982: 93–94) denies this. We must bear in mind that the ms. is a copy and not the original. Cf. also Taeger (1991: 15). 12. Cf. my acknowledgment note * for the context in which the research for this study was carried out.
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‘original’ passages, we find additions to extant grammatical theory. While it is true that the ideas behind these additions can often also be found in other, roughly contemporary or slightly later early medieval grammar texts, they hardly occur in the same wording. The Ars Ambrosiana stands out for its use of technical vocabulary (cf. Holtz 1981: 289, 294n.63), a large part of which seems to be of logical (dialectical) origin. The author provides, as Amsler (1989: 210, 212) affirms, quite a number of dialectical analyses and abstract grammatical explanations, deploying the strategies of etymology and appealing to the language-reality relationship commonly found in Christian exegesis and hermeneutics, making metatheoretical use of grammatical technical language, and offering a grammatical analysis of philosophical categories. Many passages are difficult to understand, let alone to translate, not only because of the peculiar terminology, but also as a result of the poor quality of the transmitted text (Sabbadini 1903: 167; Holtz 1981: 289n.41; Law 1982: 94). Having said that the author of our grammatical commentary seems to borrow from logic, I briefly have to clarify the relation between logic (dialectic) and grammar in the period before the Ars Ambrosiana was written. Logical notions of Aristotelian and Stoic origin were implicitly present in the older grammatical tradition, especially in the way definitions and categories of word classes were presented (cf. Giannini 1997: 153–154). As a matter of fact, by the Hellenistic period logic had pervaded grammatical and other handbooks in such a way that the definitions and the ordering of the contents of these handbooks conformed at least implicitly to logical definitions and ordering principles, whether or not the writers of such handbooks were conscious of it. By then, this was the usual way of presenting a technical subject (Fuhrmann 1960: 31–32, 154–162).13 Within this approach inside the technical subject of grammar, the noun and the verb were considered, in an ontological-semantic perspective, to be the most important word classes (Giannini 1997: 154). More specifically, grammatical definitions of word classes consisted of indicating the status of the word class with “x est pars orationis” (“x is a word class”) first — in the way in which logical definitions indicate the genus
13. Fuhrmann makes his case on the basis of all available types of handbooks. For the period B.C., he cites the Greek Τέχνη γραμματική ascribed to Dionysius Thrax as grammatical example, since no other strictly grammatical handbooks from this period have survived. The fact that there is debate on the authenticity of this Τέχνη does not, in my view, weaken Fuhrmann’s analysis. Firstly, Fuhrmann’s analysis has a much wider scope than grammar alone and, secondly, the first five sections of the Τέχνη agree with Fuhrmann’s theory. These five sections have a much greater chance of being, if not authentic than at least more or less of the period under discussion (cf. summary of the debate in Swiggers & Wouters 1998: xv–xxxi and Law 2003: 56–57).
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“sort”, “family” of a thing.14 Subsequently, the proper status of the word class was indicated by means of morphological and/or semantic features. These correspond to some extent to the differentiae “distinctive features” and the proprium “specific property” in logical definitions. The definition of the verb in Donatus’ Ars maior can illustrate this way of defining a word class:
(1) “Verbum est pars orationis cum tempore et persona sine casu aut agere aliquid aut pati aut neutrum significans” (Donatus 632.5–6 ed. Holtz) “The verb is a word class with tense and person, without inflection for cases, meaning either doing something or experiencing something or neither of these.”
The term used for the grammatical categories that belong to the word classes, is the logical term accidens “non-specific property”. This term is used in the artes grammaticae without being defined. The presence in ancient grammars of notions and terms from logic prompted later grammarians, from the 5th century onwards, to explicitly pay attention to these ‘logical’ elements and remark, for example, “when one defines a word class, the definition must separate it from the other word classes and at the same time indicate a specific property of it” (Servius, GL IV, 406.23–29).15 The Ars Ambrosiana clearly belongs to a further stage as regards elaborating upon the logic present in Latin grammars, just as the grammar of the so-called Anonymus ad Cuimnanum and the anonymous Congregatio Salcani filii de uerbo, both of the 7th century.16 Let us now take a look at how the author of the
14. Luhtala (2002) calls this type of definition ‘substantial definition’, which has the dialectical notion of ‘indicating substance’. It is a simplified version of the definitio substantiae that goes back to Aristotle and the Stoics (Fuhrmann 1960: 31–32, 154, 156, 160–162). 15. “[I]n omnibus partibus orationis definitiones ita esse debent, ut et segregent ab aliis partibus et ipsius partis quam definiunt aliquam proprietatem dicant.” 16. The author of the Ars Ambrosiana even mentions the fact that there are fifteen types of definitions (De nomine 8.65–66). The first application to grammar of material from logic, to which these types of definitions belong, is habitually ascribed to Carolingian grammars, but it has as yet to be established firmly enough that due to a ‘Christian-exegetic mindset’ (my term: LV) a use of works on definitions such as Marius Victorinus’ De definitionibus started already in the 6th–7th centuries (see, e.g., Amsler 1989: 158–159 et passim; Irvine 1994: 162–243, esp. p. 223; Toom 2002: 147–155; Munzi forthcoming, and also Section 4 below). The author’s mention of fifteen types of definitions only confirms that he drew on works on logic (or inspired by logic) for his understanding of language, in particular Victorinus’ De definitionibus in which indeed fifteen types of definitions are listed (16.18–17.5 ed. Pronay).
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Ars Ambrosiana applies logic, or a line of dialectic reasoning, to grammar, and see whether we can (further) determine a possible source or influence for it.17 3.1 Philosophical sources First of all, our author states that sources of a different nature may be used to acquire knowledge of language (cf. Amsler [1989: 158–159]: “methods of rhetoric and dialectic come to serve the explanations of words and terms”):18 (2) “Modi sunt, vt mvlti existimant, vii. […] “Multi” autem dicuntur, id est Grecorum seu Latinorum philosophorum grammaticorumque.” (Ars Ambrosiana, De uerbo 95.104; 95.110–113) “There are, as many reckon, 7 moods. […] “Now, ‘many’ is said, meaning many Greek or Latin philosophers and grammarians.”
With multi, Donatus meant fellow-grammarians. The author of the Ars Ambrosiana assumed that he meant various types of scholars working on language. In addition to grammarians, the verb has been treated by philosophers, for example in Aristotle’s Peri Hermeneias 3 (16b6–25), but I have not found any Latin philosopher who discusses the moods of the verb, except for the encyclopedic writer Martianus Capella (5th cent. A.D.). Even if we cannot find an exact parallel to this discussion of the moods of the verb in the work of a philosopher, it is clear that the author of our grammar did not confine himself to grammarians as sources but judged philosophers — no particular philosopher is mentioned — equally valuable. The question is whether he actually had logical writings in hand, or derived his dialectical knowledge from Christian exegetical and hermeneutical texts, in which case works of Augustine would probably be prominent. In Augustine’s hermeneutical system, semiotics and consequently language is the most important part (see Amsler 1989: 44–54, 100–108; Irvine 1994: 169–189; Toom 2002). When the accidents of the verb are introduced, we notice the difference between Donatus (text (3)) and the Ars Ambrosiana (text (4)) and we can see how the latter was inspired by “philosophers”, or simply by the dialectical training he had received: 17. Amsler’s (1989) and Irvine’s (1994) outline of language study in Church Fathers and in late-antique and early medieval grammars and literary commentaries, within a broader epistemological and hermeneutical context, has been very helpful in interpreting the text passages. 18. Capitals within the quotations indicate the lemma taken from Donatus.
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(3) “Verbo accidunt septem, qualitas, coniugatio, genus, numerus, figura, tempus, persona.” (Donatus 632.6–7 ed. Holtz) “To the verb belong seven accidents, quality (i.e. moods and derivational forms), conjugation, voice, number, (compositional) form, tense, person.” (4) “Verbo accidvnt septem. Hoc est septem substantiis uerbum consistit, ut inseparabiliter uerbum et sui accidentia essent. Aliter: animo nostro accidunt per uerbum. Siue ‘uerbo septem accidere’ dicuntur, quia in se accidentium umbram habet, et discretionis ponendique ordinem causa dicuntur.” (Ars Ambrosiana, De uerbo 94.79–83) “To the verb belong seven (accidents). This means that the verb consists of seven substances, so that the verb and its accidents form an inseparable unity. Or alternatively: they (= the accidents) occur to our mind through the verb. Or “to the verb belong seven (accidents)” is said so, because it (the verb) has in itself the shadow of the accidents, and they are mentioned for discernment and for putting order (sc. to the description of the verb).”
We see here that the author of the Ars Ambrosiana tries to explain Donatus’ words “uerbo accidunt septem” within the logical framework known to him in which the terms accidere and accidentia had their place (in logic: ‘non-specific properties’; in grammar: ‘grammatical categories’). He gives three possible interpretations — as he often does — separated by aliter “alternatively” and siue “or”. These three ways of paraphrasing “uerbo accidunt septem” are not necessarily incompatible but represent the contents of the lemma from different angles. It is true that the accidents of any word class are inseparable from that word class and that the main body of the description of that word class (in this case, the verb) is ordered according to its accidents. But it appears that the author separated the logical way of dealing with language and the (traditional) grammatical way to a lesser extent than the grammarians before him had done. It is also clear from the above passage that the author’s view of substances and accidents differs from the standard view, in which a verb is not said to ‘consist of substances’. There is one passage at the beginning of the noun chapter of the grammatical commentary that gives us some idea of the author’s views and his understanding of the logical terminology he employs. In De nomine 9.89–10.127, the author discusses the accidents or grammatical categories of the noun. Firstly, the accidents and their meanings are said to be inseparable from the noun and its meaning.19 19. “Nam dicunt uocem inseparabilem ab umbris VI accidentium sibi sensuum. Quod alii renuunt.” (9.91–92)
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Secondly, the ‘things’ represented by the accidents (!) not only ‘belong (as accidents) to the noun, that is to its realization in speech’ (“accidunt nomini, id est uoci”) on the basis of their qualitas “quality”, but also “reach our (rational) soul by means of their realization in speech” (“accidunt animo nostro per uoces”).20 The same idea of the accidents becoming clear to the mind through the word forms is expressed in the chapter on the verb as we saw in text (4). The author then goes on to elucidate each of the accidents of the noun in turn and comments upon the order in which they are mentioned by Donatus. The introductory sentence of this explanation may give us a clue as to his understanding of the concept of (grammatical) accidentia, were it not that the Latin of the phrase is not so clear (9.95–96): “Sequuntur nomina accidentium, quae sui specialis substantiae ostensione et discretione ac positione ordinis ostendit.” (“The names of the accidents follow, which the specific property of their substance indicates [?] by means of their manifestation and their separation [from the others] and their position in the series”). Is specialis the subject of ostendit? We do get the impression that the author mixes up levels of logical reasoning and treats the accidentia as entities to be indicated, distinguished and ordered in the same way as the independent entities species “species” and genera “sorts / families (of substances or species)”, even though he himself asserted that the accidentia are inseparable from the entity to which they belong. To be sure, later in the same passage he calls the accidents species: “Harum autem specierum ordo […]” (9.112), and asserts that “their names refer to incorporeal things, and when they refer to the written letters by which they are represented, also to corporeal things” (“Haec tota nomina incorporalium sunt rerum, et corporalium esse possunt, cum scripturas significant.” [9.110–111]). What is more, he seems to think that some other authors see something substantial in each of the accidents: “Alii autem dicunt sui substantialitate accepisse ordinem” “Others say, however, that they have received their order from their quality of being substantial” (10.122). The idea in text (4) of the verb consisting of seven substances may have followed from this strand of thinking. As has been alluded to, one should stress the possibility of influence exerted upon the author of the Ars Ambrosiana by Augustinian semiotics — whatever his level of understanding of the material. One can not exclude the possibility that our author knew Augustine’s writings well enough to be capable of extracting basic elements of logic (in the first place predicables and categories) from them and using these in his grammatical argument.21 As regards strictly ‘logical’ sources, if the 20. “Nam accidunt hae res nomini, id est uoci, a qualitate rerum, etsi hoc altius intellegatur: non tam nomini quam nostro animo per uoces accidunt.” (9.92–94) 21. Portions of elementary logic can be found (principally) in Augustine’s Contra Iulianum and De Trinitate; his De dialectica does not treat the basics of predicables and categories as such.
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author were living in a secular centre of learning in Northern Italy between 530 and 680, he would have been able to find a copy of (some of) Boethius’ translations of, and commentaries on Aristotle, on Cicero, and on Porphyry, as well as the Opuscula sacra of the same author — which display a use of logical techniques (Marenbon 2008: 7) — since Boethius lived the last part of his life in Ravenna. Maybe our author even found logical works of Marius Victorinus from the middle of the 4th century, given that he did use a few times the grammatical work of Victorinus (Löfstedt 1980: 304–305), and as it seems that Cassiodorus (c.485–c.580) also had access to Victorinus’ logical works.22 Victorinus explained the essence of Aristotelian logic in his Aduersus Arium, a text that would have been of importance in Northern Italy after 568, when the Germanic Longobards invaded the territory. In addition, the reference to the existence of fifteen types of definitions in the Ars Ambrosiana, De nomine 8.65–66 (see note 16 above) can confirm the use of Victorinus’ De definitionibus, since Victorinus enumerates exactly fifteen types of definitions (16.18–17.5 ed. Pronay). Use of Victorinus’ or Boethius’ works or another, now lost treatise on log23 ic could explain the use of logic in the Ars Ambrosiana without the presence of Isidore, who in later years often was the source of grammarians’ elementary knowledge of logic (Law 2003: 149; cf. also Amsler 1989: 211–212). If, however, our author lived at Bobbio around 640–680 A.D., he would have found in the monastery library hardly any works of Boethius (see Zironi 2004, in particular appendix IV: 159–165), but instead mainly volumes with works of Augustine, and also of Jerome and Ambrose, and, in addition, the works of a number of grammarians. This ties in with repeated assertions in modern literature that for the study of logic as such, there was hardly any activity in the 7th and 8th centuries (e.g., Marenbon 21988: 45; Vineis 1994: 200–201). In whichever way he achieved it, the author of the Ars Ambrosiana seems to have assimilated basic logical material, without having always understood exactly how to correctly work with it. 3.2 Commenting on the composition of Donatus’ Ars maior A striking characteristic of the methodology of the author of the Ars Ambrosiana is the fact that he comments not only on the contents of Donatus’ Ars maior, but also on its composition. He questions the order of categories listed by Donatus, 22. According to Minio-Paluello (1966: xxxvi n.4) it is not certain that Victorinus’ Isagogetranslation was held in the library at Vivarium. D’Onofrio (21986: 13–14), however, asserts that manuscripts containing (some of) Victorinus’ works were present at Vivarium, including his translation of Porphyry’s Isagoge. 23. Marenbon (2008: 20) cautions that before the 10th century A.D., other accounts of logic circulated and were influential besides the Boethian tradition.
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explains that Donatus moves on to describing the next (sub)category in given instances, elucidates words which indicate which aspect of a word class is now going to be dealt with by Donatus, and so on. This type of ‘compositional’ commentary, as it were, can also be found in biblical exegesis of the late-antique and early medieval periods, and in Boethius’ philosophical commentaries. Other early medieval grammarians also make use of this technique, but not so markedly as the author of the Ars Ambrosiana (Law 1982: 96, 2000: 22).24 In this ‘compositional’ commentary, our author at times also draws on rhetorical terminology as in the following example, where he discusses part of Donatus’ definition of the participle: (5) “Quod partem capiat nominis reliqua. Participium autem aliquid “capere” non proprie, sed translatiue peculiari intentione metaforice dicitur; capere enim animalium est.” (Ars Ambrosiana, De participio 144.10–12) “Because it takes a part from the noun etcetera. The participle is not said to ‘take’ something literally, but figuratively, metaphorically, with a proper intention to it; for to take is a quality of animate beings.”
Compare this with Donatus’ full definition of the participle:
(6) “Participium est pars orationis, dicta quod partem capiat nominis partemque uerbi. Recipit enim a nomine genera et casus, a uerbo tempora et significationes, ab utroque numerum et figuram.” (Donatus 644.2–4 ed. Holtz) “The participle is a word class, so called because it takes a part from the noun and a part from the verb. For it receives genders and cases from the noun, tenses and voices from the verb, and number and form from both.”
This tendency towards commenting on Donatus’ compositional techniques has already been discussed by Law (2000: 21–23). She explains the tendency, first, as a result of the fact that the structure of Donatus’ grammar was ever more accepted as an intrinsic part of grammar itself, and, second, as a result of the apprehension on the part of the early medieval grammarians that Donatus’ organization and expression were, after all, not always perfect. This meant that the commentators could question the text and modify it as they saw necessary (cf. also Amsler 1989: 214).
24. Amsler has called this type of commentary ‘metacommentary’, although this term suggests ‘commentary on commentary’ (Amsler 1989: 213; cf. also Amsler 1990: 178–179).
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4. Linking language to reality Passage (5) cited above also shows another feature of our grammatical commentary, viz. the frequent references to the relation between language and ‘the real world’, the extralinguistic reality (see Amsler 1989: 214; Law 2003: 115–124). Animate beings can capere “take” something, participles (being abstract things) cannot do so in a literal way. The author apparently felt the need to explain this to his readers. Similarly, in the following passage (7) we are told that ‘time’ refers to the age of the world. When we talk about ‘time’ in verbs, for which Latin uses the same term tempus, it is said to be divided into three ‘times’ (i.e., verbal tenses). This cannot be taken literally according to the author of the Ars Ambrosiana, because ‘time’ is a continuum that cannot be divided. What happens is that we assign our actions to portions of time and call each of these portions a ‘time’. (7) “Tempora verbis accidvnt tria. ‘Tempus’ nomen totius mundi aetatis ab initio usque ad finem. Quod temperando dicitur; tempus enim uariis temperatur naturis, hoc est aestas frigore et frigus aestate. Licet autem ‘uerbis tria tempora accidere’ dicuntur, non temporis natura diuisiones habet, ut apud Probum lectum sit: Tempus nullum per se direptum omnino est, cum per se in se reuoluatur et sit perpetuo unitum. Verum quoniam differt noster actus nec semper idem est (aut enim facimus aut fecimus aut facturi sumus), hac ex re indiuiduo tempori partes inponimus temporis, tempus non diuidentes sed actum nostrum diuersum significantes.” (Ars Ambrosiana, De uerbo 115.781–792) “Three tenses belong to the verb. ‘Time’ is the name for the age of the entire world,25 from its beginning to its end. And it is called so after temperare (to regulate); for time is regulated by various natural dispositions, that is heat by cold and cold by heat [a hot period by a cold period / hot hours by cold hours … ?]. But even if ‘three tenses (times)’ are said ‘to be accidents of the verb’, the nature of time does not have divisions, as can be read in Probus:26 In no way is time by itself ever split, because it rolls back by itself on itself and is perpetually united. But 25. For the expression totius mundi aetatis, compare Fulgentius Mythographus De aetatibus mundi et hominis (5th cent. A.D.), chap. 2. Taeger (1991: 46–47) refers to parallels with the unedited Compotus Sancti Augustini et ceterorum in ms. München clm 14456. 26. The most widely known grammar ascribed to Probus is the Instituta artium (G.L. IV, 47– 192). This work was not written by the famous Marcus Valerius Probus (see Schmidt 1989 V, 116–119). However, the only parallel I found for this passage, is not ‘Probus’, but Diomedes (see G.L. I, 335.21–22). The first book of Diomedes’ grammar had been ascribed to Probus already in Late Antiquity, according to Schmidt (1989 V, p. 135). On the relations between ‘Probus’, Diomedes, and 7th-century grammars (especially Anonymus ad Cuimnanum), see Taeger (1991: 39–54).
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because our acting presents differences and is not always the same (for either we do or we have done or we are about to do), for this reason we impose partitions on the indivisible time, thereby not dividing time, but referring to our divided acting.”
We find almost the same piece of commentary in the 7th-century grammar of the Anonymus ad Cuimnanum (chapter XVIII, 119.29–34). The authors of these passages — or their source27 — drew their inspiration, apart from the ‘Probus’ grammar they refer to, from Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae (G.L. II, 405.8–406.14 “De uerbo”),28 but they put more emphasis on the difference between reality and linguistic terminology than Priscian had done:
(8) “ […] tempus accidit uerbo praesens, praeteritum et futurum. quamuis enim naturaliter instabili uoluitur motu et pars eius iam praeteriit, pars sequitur, tamen ad ordinationem nostrorum diuersa gestorum tempora quoque diuidimus. […] et indicatiuus quidem modus omnia habet tempora, quippe eo modo omnia, quae egimus uel agimus uel acturi sumus, absque ullo impedimento indicamus. (Priscianus, Institutiones grammaticae, G.L. II, 405.21–24, 406.12–14) “[…] to the verb belong present tense, past tense, and future tense. For although by its nature time rolls with an unstable movement and a part of it has already gone by and a part still follows, we nevertheless also divide different times in order to order our actions. […] And the indicative mood has all tenses, since by this mood we indicate everything that we have done or do or are about to do, without any difficulty.”29
27. For the hypothesis of a common source on which the Ars Ambrosiana and the Anonymus ad Cuimnanum drew, see Holtz (1981: 291). Taeger (1991: 16–25; 53–54; 66 et passim) sees this source as common to ‘Malsachanus’ (to which the Congregatio Salcani filii has been ascribed by Löfstedt 1965), the Anonymus ad Cuimnanum and the treatise ‘de uerbo’ in Paris BNF Lat. 7491. According to him, the relation between these texts, the common source, and the Ars Ambrosiana is not very clear. For Paris BNF Lat. 7491, see Löfstedt (1998). 28. Cf. also De participio 549.21–550.3: “hoc interest inter participia et nomina temporalia, quod nomina illa nihil aliud significant nisi ipsum tempus per se, ut annus, mensis, dies, meridies, hodiernus, hesternus, crastinus, nec in propriis sunt transfigurationibus, participia uero actionem uel passionem aliquam in diuerso fieri tempore demonstrant, non tempus ipsum per se […]”. (“This is the difference between participles and ‘temporal nouns’, that the latter nouns do not mean anything else than time itself by itself, like ‘year’, ‘month’, ‘day’, ‘midday’, ‘of today’, ‘of yesterday’, ‘of tomorrow’, nor do they have any inflection of their own (i.e., for tense); participles, however, designate that an action or an undergoing happens in a separate period of time, (they do) not (designate) time itself by itself.”) 29. For clarification of this passage I am indebted to one of the anonymous HL reviewers.
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Interestingly, this could be one of the examples of an early use of Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae. The start of the use of the Institutiones grammaticae is usually put after 700 A.D. (see note 4 above), but there are some indications that they were already used — albeit sporadically — before. It remains to be clarified whether or not such instances could be explained by a common source to both Priscian and the 6th-/7th-century grammarians (Law 1982: 48–51, 68–71; Hofman 2000: 262– 273, 275, 286–287; Law 2003: 112; Holtz 2009: 39–41). The passages in the Ars Ambrosiana and Anonymus ad Cuimnanum could also be an example of the use of a relevant passage in Boethius:
(9) “Nomina enim significant tempus, verbum autem cum principaliter actus passionesque significet, cum ipsis actibus et passionibus temporis quoque vim trahit, ut in eo quod dico lego. Actionem quidem quandam principaliter monstrat hoc verbum, sed cum ea ipsa agendi significatione praesens quoque tempus adducit.” (Boethius, Commentarii in librum Aristotelis Peri Hermeneias II,1,3 [66.12–17 ed. Meiser]) “For nouns signify (periods of) time, but since a verb chiefly signifies actions and endurings, it takes on with these same actions and endurings also the notion of time, e.g., in the example lego (“I read”). This verb indeed chiefly shows a certain action, but with that same meaning of acting it also brings along the present tense/time.”
Another possibility might be that Boethian material had seeped into a treatise on the verb no longer known to us, which served as a source for the Ars Ambrosiana and the Anonymus ad Cuimnanum. For the authors of these two grammatical treatises (or their source), Priscian or Boethius (or an intermediate source) offered valuable additions to the Latin grammatical tradition. They had learned from Augustine and other Christian exegetes (the Anonymus ad Cuimnanum also from Isidore), that language is an essential instrument for achieving knowledge and for attaining a higher truth.30 As Christians, they had been educated in this way of thinking, which led to the infiltration into grammar of several kinds of non-linguistic criteria and comments. They looked at grammar and language from both a linguistic (‘technical’) and a philosophical (‘realistic’) point of view. The result is that they felt obliged to explain to their readers how a word like tempus did not only refer to something in the real world (its primary function), but could also be used in the specific context of grammar. They explained such things even though Augustine in his De magistro 30. Augustine’s and Isidore’s way of looking at language, their profound influence, and the influences they had undergone themselves have extensively been dealt with by Amsler (1989) and Irvine (1994); to a lesser extent by Law (2003).
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had pointed out that “grammarians should not confuse an account of homo the noun with that of homo the animal”, and should indicate the ‘communicative context’ in which they were working (Amsler 1989: 108, with reference to De Mag. 8.24). 5. Terminological innovations in the Ars Ambrosiana The author of the Ars Ambrosiana gives the impression of having created a detailed framework for the description of Latin, in which he uses both traditional terminology from grammar, logic, and rhetoric and innovative terminology. This framework is more comprehensive than those of other early medieval grammars. Our author tried to fit several linguistic phenomena into his system for which no terminology existed in the traditional framework and which had consequently been left unmentioned or hardly mentioned up until then. He is not always completely consistent, nor is it always clear what exactly he means, but his achievements are nevertheless remarkable. In the following subsections I intend to give an idea of how the author uses terminology in creating his own descriptive framework. Not every term is in itself particularly remarkable; it is the use the author makes of them that matters. As we have seen, more than the grammarians before him the author of the Ars Ambrosiana applied logical analysis to Donatus’ grammar text when commenting upon its contents. Of course, in doing so, he used logical terminology. To begin with, he draws on the core terminology introduced and defined in writings on logic. For instance, in text (4) cited above, he uses the terms substantia and accidens, and refers to accidens inseparabile (an “non-specific property” that cannot be removed from the individual or the species of which it is predicated: ‘black’ is an ‘accident’ of crows, and it cannot be removed from them [Aug., De Trinitate V,4,2; Boethius, In Isagogen Porphyrii commenta II,5,1 (288.13–21 ed. Brandt)]). The following passage is another example of ‘re-use’ of originally logical terminology: (10) “Quod partem capiat nominis reliqua. […] Denique participium “a nomine genera et casus, a uerbo tempora et significationes” recipere dicitur, quoniam nomen et uerbum principales sunt partes et quod speciale est principum subiecti
. Recipere non dicuntur nisi a principibus, tamquam ab ipsis donatum sit. Et rectum est, quoniam si ipsae partes, quae subiectae <sunt>, non starent nisi per principes, hoc est per nomen et uerbum, quanto magis nullam substantiam habuissent, nisi ab ipsis reciperent; tolle enim nomen et uerbum: quid erit participium?” (Ars Ambrosiana, De participio 144.10; 144.30–145.38) “Because it takes a part from the noun etcetera. […]
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Finally, the participle is said to receive ‘genders and case-inflection from the noun, and tenses and verbal voices from the verb’, because the noun and the verb are the principal word classes and (because) subordinate things receive what is a specific feature of the principal things. They can only be said to receive (something), if they do so from principal things, in the way it has been given by just those (sc. principal things). And it is correct, because if those parts, which are subordinate, can exist only by means of the principal things, that is by means of the noun and the verb, all the more they would not have had any substance, if they would not receive it from them; for take away the noun and the verb: what will the participle be?”
Here, our grammarian also uses several other terms, which are used in Latin logical, hermeneutical, and exegetical texts (and probably in other ‘technical’ texts): principales partes “principals parts” — here “principal word classes”, speciale “specific feature”, principes “principal things”, subiectum “subordinate entity”. Looking at the interpretation of the lemma from Donatus in this fragment, we see that capere “to take” is interpreted correctly as recipere “to receive”, the figurative meaning alluded to already in text (5) above. The author justifies Donatus’ use of a verb meaning “to receive” in the context of the features of the participle. He does this by placing the relation between noun + verb on the one hand and participle on the other, in the framework of genera and species in which things higher in the hierarchy (genera, principales partes) ‘lend’ their features to things lower in the hierarchy (species, subiecti).31 This treatment may also be indicative of the always somewhat weaker position of the participle as a separate word class (see Visser 2011, for further discussion). Apart from using (existing) logical terminology, the author of the Ars Ambrosiana also seems to have invented his own terms for certain linguistic phenomena — or at least applied his own interpretation or systematic use of certain terms in creating his descriptive framework for the Latin language (cf. also Amsler 1989: 214–215). One of these is agnitio, together with the combination agnitio specialis. Another is nuntiatio in the combinations nuntiatio tota and nuntiatio specialis, and in the compound connuntiatio. I will now discuss the author’s use of these two groups of terms in turn and any additional term that turns up in the text passages.
31. Cf. also De participio 146.68; 70–72: “Casus totidem sunt participiorum quot et nominum. […] Quamuis pars subiecta sit, coaequalem hanc substantiam principali cum parte habet.” (“There are just as many cases of the participles as there are of nouns. […]. Although it (sc. the participle) is a subordinated class, it shares this (in both) equivalent substance with a principal class.”)
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5.1 Agnitio The word agnitio was already in use in our author’s time, primarily in Christian contexts and with the meaning of “understanding of ”, “insight in”, as in agnitio ueritatis “understanding of the (divine) Truth” in the Vulgate, Augustine, and Ambrose, e.g., Augustine, Contra Iulianum IV [759.22 P.L. 44]. See also ThLL s.v. agnitio II ‘= cognitio’ [1351.30–38]), or agnitio Dei (e.g., Marius Victorinus, In Epistulam Pauli ad Ephesios libri duo I,1,17 and I,3,10). Boethius uses it once or twice with the meaning “insight in”, “real knowledge of ” a thing, a use we find also in Augustine (cf. text (12), (13), and (14) below). In the Ars Ambrosiana the word is used much more frequently than it is by any other author, and, so it seems, has a specific place in the descriptive framework created by the author. The following instance of the term concerning the definition of the noun gives us an idea of the meaning of agnitio for our author: (11) “Significans ‘signum faciens’. Non solum enim per nomen cognitam rem consideramus, sed etiam in extraneae rei agnitionem animum ducit.” (Ars Ambrosiana, De nomine 7.35–37) “Meaning means ‘creating a sign’. For not only do we contemplate the known thing by means of its name, but it (the name) also guides the mind to the agnitio of an unfamiliar thing.”
It seems that agnitio combines knowledge or recognition of concrete objects and their names with a full mental image of ‘things’ that allows us to also identify concrete objects not previously known. The author of the Ars Ambrosiana may have been inspired to give this interpretation to agnitio by the occurrence of the verb agnosci and the substantive agnitio with a similar meaning in logical and/or exegetical works as described above, which can be illustrated by the following passages from Marius Victorinus (12), Augustine (13), and Boethius (14): (12) “Omnis res, si modo iam res est, quemadmodum diximus, certa est; cum vero certa est, et qualitates suas habet: quibus cum facile comprehenditur, facile quid sit agnoscitur; numquam enim quid sit intellegi potest, nisi quale sit fuerit comprehensum.” (Marius Victorinus, De definitionibus 3 [53.15–19 ed. Pronay]) “Every thing, as we said, is fixed, to the extent that it is a thing (in the proper sense); to be sure, because it is fixed, it also has its own qualities: because by means of these it is easily perceived, one recognizes easily what it is; for it is never possible to understand what it (a thing) is, unless it has been perceived of what kind it is.” (Translation based on the German translation by Pronay 1997: 98)
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(13) “[…] quia ergo etiam lingua, id est membro corporis, quod mouemus in ore, cum loquimur, signa utique rerum dantur, non res ipsae proeruntur, propterea translato uerbo linguam appellauit quamlibet signorum prolationem, priusquam intellegantur: quo cum intellectus accesserit, qui mentis est proprius, fit reuelatio uel agnitio uel prophetia uel doctrina. (Augustine, De genesi ad litteram 12.8.19) “[…] so then, it is because when we speak with the tongue, that is, with the bit of the body we move around in the mouth, we are of course presenting signs or signals of things, not the things themselves, that by a transferred application of the word he (sc. Paul, in I Cor. 14:14) called any presentation of signs before they are understood a tongue. When understanding dawns, which is the specialty of the mind, revelation is achieved, or recognition or prophecy or teaching.” (Translation taken from Hill 2002: 473) (14) “[…] nam qui sphaeram uiderit, eius similitudinem in animo perpendit et cogitat atque eius in animo quandam passus imaginem id cuius imaginem patitur agnoscit. (Boethius, Commentarii in librum Aristotelis Peri Hermeneias II,1,1 [35.3–6 ed. Meiser]) “[…] for he who sees a globe, carefully examines its similarity in his mind and thinks about it and, when he has experienced whatever image of it in his mind, recognizes the thing of which he experiences the image.”
It is on the basis of all features and the specific property or proprium of a thing that the agnitio of that thing takes place. In the Ars Ambrosiana, sometimes agnitio is the mental process moving from the thing with its features and specific property to the mental image with the knowledge of what the thing is in its essence; sometimes agnitio is the result of this process, that is, the mental image itself with the knowledge of what the thing is in its essence. The author of the Ars Ambrosiana also deploys the term agnitio on the level of specific linguistic descriptions. What is more, on this level he frequently adds the adjective specialis to agnitio. We have to find out what he intends to say in such instances. Here are some examples from the verb and participle chapters, e.g., concerning genera uerborum “verbal voices”: (15) “Ostensis autem specialibus generum nominibus uniuscuiusque specialis agnitio supponitur (non enim plene per omnia supradicta ostensa sunt, quia ista aliquantis communia sunt rebus, nec ex integro generum indicant agnitionem), dicens: activa sunt, quae o littera terminantvr. (Ars Ambrosiana, De uerbo 109.578–582) “But after the specific names of the (verbal) voices have been shown, the specialis agnitio of each of them is added (for they are not shown fully by means of all that was written above, because those features [sc. the names
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of the voices] are common to quite a number of things, and do not fully indicate the agnitio of the genders), saying: those verbs are active, which end in the letter -o.”
Further concerning persons in verbs: (16) Haec est agnitio: prima est, quae dicit lego. (Ars Ambrosiana, De uerbo 117.850) “This is their agnitio: the first (person) is the one, which says ‘lego’ [“I read”].”
Concerning the definition of the participle: (17) “Item in hoc quod dicit, quod ‘partem capiat nominis partemque uerbi’, huius partis discretio a ceteris ostenditur et agnitio specialis nominationisque lex. (Ars Ambrosiana, De participio 144.18–20) “Likewise, in that he says that it (sc. the participle) ‘takes a part from the noun and a part from the verb’, he shows the separation of this word class from the other ones and its agnitio specialis and its name-giving principle.”
In the first example, text (15), agnitio seems to mean “the (in every detail) complete formal template (/ image / picture) of the verbal voices”. So it comprises both what logicians call the differentiae “distinctive features” and what they call the proprium “specific property” of the thing, in this case of each verbal voice. The name of a verbal voice, ‘active’, for example, is not enough for a complete understanding of what that voice is. Agnitio specialis refers in this passage to the ending of the first person singular of verbs (behind which an entire paradigm unfolds), determining which paradigm belongs to which voice within the verbal system. In logical terms, it seems to coincide with what is commonly called the proprium of a thing (of each verbal voice). In text (16), agnitio refers to the outward appearance or again formal template of verb forms, which allows us to recognize the person of all verb forms corresponding to the said formal template. In text (17), discretio “separation” must stand for the characteristic property in the definition of the participle of depending for its existence on taking part in the two other word classes. It is this property that sets the participle apart from the other word classes and makes it a word class of its own (which would be the differentia specifica in a logical definition). Nominationis lex stands for the etymology of the participle (partem capere — see text (6) for the definition of the participle in Donatus’ Ars maior). What then, one may ask, is indicated by agnitio specialis in this passage? In my opinion, it refers to the mix of formal features from nouns and verbs, which is typical for participles. This means that the author unravels several layers in the definition of the participle: an existential layer (depending for its
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existence on noun and verb), an etymological layer (partem capere), and a formal layer (displaying a mix of formal features from nouns and verbs). This formal layer is essential for leading the mind to the total agnitio of the participle (cf. text (11)): the latter could not come about without the typical formal features that constitute the agnitio specialis of the participle. We can conclude that with regard to linguistic phenomena or categories, agnitio can sometimes also be translated as ‘template’ or maybe ‘mould’, into which all instances or verbal manifestations of the phenomenon or category fit. One has to know every detail of the template in order to be able to apply it. Agnitio specialis apparently has a function on the level of ‘added formal characteristics’ of word forms, such as endings (or their mental image), which are essential for bringing about the entire agnitio, the recognition of these word forms or their templates and full knowledge of what they are. ‘Specialis’ means that we are dealing with the individual formal features of one particular linguistic entity. 5.2 Nuntiatio tota and nuntiatio specialis in the description of verbal features Amsler has called attention to another common feature of the Ars Ambrosiana, the Anonymus ad Cuimnanum, and the Congregatio Salcani filii de uerbo, namely, their drawing a distinction between form and meaning of words in a dialectical manner by means of sonus “sound” or uox “voice” (both terms are translated as “surface feature” by Amsler) and sensus “sense” (or intellectus or substantia, both also translated as “sense” by Amsler) respectively (Amsler 1989: 211, 214–215). The early Donatus commentaries had started opposing enuntiatio “utterance” and intellectus / significatio “sense”, especially Pompeius (e.g., G.L. V, 154.37. Cf. ThLL s.v. enuntiatio I B (621.7) ad Serv. G.L. IV, 407.31 et passim), whose grammar has been heavily used by the author of the Ars Ambrosiana. It is continued in other, mainly insular grammars of the 7th through the 9th centuries. The interest in the distinction between form and meaning in itself is not new, but what matters here is that the distinction was drawn more explicitly than before and that the abovementioned terminology is added. This quest of the grammarians is motivated by the changed perspective on language: it has to be established what belongs strictly within the linguistic system and what has relations with the extra-linguistic world (cf. Section 4 above). Whether apart from the context of language as an instrument to achieve higher knowledge, other circumstances, developments or exigencies also induced these grammarians to pay attention to the distinction between form and meaning cannot be established with certainty. Law (1997: 250–251, 256) indicates the Ars Ambrosiana as starting point for the slow development from a primarily aural representation of language to a more visual one. In grammars after the Ars Ambrosiana, such terms as litteratura “spelling” and superficies “surface” appear instead of or alongside uox
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“voice”, sonus “sound”, (e)nuntiatio “utterance”, “linguistic form” and the like. For Law the reason for this development remains unclear (cf. also Law 2003: 131–136). It seems that the extensive use of the term nuntiatio in the Ars Ambrosiana fits into this separation of the formal and semantic layers of words. In a footnote in his Donatus edition Holtz (1981: 294n.63) has indicated that nuntiatio is probably the form of enuntiatio “utterance” used by Irish authors, and this is corroborated by at least one gloss in the Old Irish and Latin glosses to Priscian in the ms. St Gall 904, where ad Prisc. G.L. II, 55.7 appellatio “common noun” the glossator replaces Diomedes’ enuntiatio with nuntiatio for “linguistic form” when citing Diomedes G.L. I, 320.17–19.32 Even so, in the Ars Ambrosiana the term appears much more frequently than is common in a grammar text. In itself, nuntiatio in our grammar is a broad term used for linguistic units on the level of words and paradigms.33 It is when the author adds the adjectives tota “entire”, “whole” and specialis “special” that we get the impression that he is again applying his own particular system for language description. Nuntiatio tota and nuntiatio specialis have a function in the author’s description of verbal features, more specifically in his description of the grammatical category qualitas “quality”. The qualitas uerborum or “quality of verbs” consists of the modi and the formae. The modi of verbs are their moods: indicative, subjunctive, etc. The formae of verbs comprise derivational categories like inchoative, frequentative, and so on. According to Law (1997: 265) the formae of the verbs “denote the four aspects expressed by means of derivational suffixes”. Texts (18) and (19) illustrate the use of nuntiatio and its combined and derived forms as well as a variant of the term in the description of moods and formae in the Ars Ambrosiana. (18) “Qualitas verborvm in modis et in formis est. […] Donatus quidem praepostere posuit, ut prius de ‘modis’ diceret et post de ‘formis’; modi enim in superficie, formae in sensu plus ualent. Modi autem 32. The Latin gloss by an Irish glossator in St Gall 904 can be found in Hofman (1996, vol.I, p. 180). In his commentary (in vol. II, p. 121) Hofman does not comment on the term ‘nuntiatio’. Cf. also Law (1997: 251). Maybe the origin of the word form nuntiatio has to be sought in the context of the simplicia pro conpositis (“simple forms used in stead of compounds”) which Löfstedt (1965: 135–142) describes as a feature of early medieval insular Latin and which is abundantly present in the grammar of Malsachanus and the Congregatio Salcani filii de uerbo. Early medieval writers might also just have liked the sound of nuntiatio for its reminiscence of the bona nuntiatio “The Good Tidings”, synonym for the gospel (euangelium); cf. Augustine, De ciuitate Dei 18,35.56 and Sedulius Scottus, In euangelium Matthaei I, 14.55. 33. In Late Latin, enuntiatio can simply be the equivalent of uocabulum “designation”, “substantive noun” (ThLL s.v. enuntiatio II B [621.46–50]).
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sunt speciales connuntiationes, per indicatur siue nuntiatur uel imperatur et reliqua.” (Ars Ambrosiana, De uerbo 94.85; 90–93) “The quality of verbs lies in the moods and the forms. […] Donatus, for his part, placed them the other way around, so that he speaks first about the ‘moods’ and then about the ‘forms’; for the moods have more value in the surface [i.e., the morphology of the verbs], the forms have more value in sense. But the moods are speciales connuntiationes, by means of which we indicate or announce or order, and so on.” (19) “Qualitas verborvm etiam in formis constitvta est. ‘Formae’ sunt nuntiationes totae, quibus uerba formantur; ‘modi’ uero speciales similitudines in uerbis; […]”. (Ars Ambrosiana, De uerbo 101.304– 306) “The quality of verbs is also constituted in the forms. ‘Forms’ are nuntiationes totae, by means of which verbs are formed; ‘moods’, however, are speciales similitudines within the verbs; […].”
First, the author is sensitive to the distinction between the formal and semantic layers in words. The grammatical category qualitas “quality” is described as composed of two elements within the verb forms.34 The author then struggles to determine the exact position of these two elements (modi and formae) in his system. Initially it seems clear: for the author of the Ars Ambrosiana, the modi have their main function on the formal level and the formae on the semantic level.35 That the modi are not to be considered independent linguistic units is emphasized both by the compound connuntiatio “a linguistic unit added to another one” and by the adjective specialis “individual, specific, indicating one thing only (here: one mood)”. Although the primary feature of the moods is their morphology, they also add something to the semantics of the verb form (indicatur “indicate” for
34. Cf. Ars Ambr. 94.85–89. The author stresses that qualitas “quality” is an inseparable accidens (“non-specific property” / “grammatical category”) and that therefore modi and formae cannot be separated from one another. However, in describing them, they have to be treated one by one. 35. Cf. also Congregatio Salcani filii de uerbo, 196.14–16; 199.15–16 ed. Löfstedt: “Qualitas uerborum in modis et in formis constituta est, sed modi declinationes uel casus uerborum, formae uero intellectus uel sensus intelleguntur. Inde ab aliis prius ponuntur formae […]. … Modus est conuersio scilicet et transfiguratio eius syllabae, quae ultima est in uerbo.” (“The quality of verbs is constituted in the moods and the forms, but the moods are understood as the declensions or case forms of the verbs, the forms however as their meaning or sense. For this reason the forms are put first by others […]. … Mood is evidently the alteration and transformation of that syllable, which is the final one in the verb form.”).
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the indicative, nuntiatur “give an [added] message” for the subjunctive, imperatur “order” for the imperative). Then in text (19), the moods are referred to by the term similitudines “similarities”, which denotes the paradigmatic templates of verb-endings. Now we have to examine what is meant by nuntiationes totae and by “quibus uerba formantur”, both used for the formae. The combination nuntiatio tota is only used in the chapters on the verb and participle of the Ars Ambrosiana. Another instance of it seems to imply that it is a full, independent linguistic entity: (20) “Tempora participiis accidvnt iii. “Tempora” dicuntur speciales nuntiationes, per quas tempora intellegimus, participia totae nuntiationes. (Ars Ambrosiana, De participio 146.93–95) “To the participles belong three tenses. Those speciales nuntiationes by means of which we grasp their tenses, are called ‘tenses’, the totae nuntiationes (sc. in which we find the tempora) (are called) participles.”
Here again, the speciales nuntiationes are specific, individual, formal components which are a part of the entire word form and which add to the semantics of that same word form. Tota nuntiatio seems in this passage clearly to mean “entire word form”. In the verb chapter, the verbs themselves are even called totae nuntiationes (Ars Ambr. 104.430 and 114.753). Would the verbal formae from text (19) also be considered entire word forms, then? That the answer is negative, is shown by text (21): (21) “Item [sc. Participium] modos uerborum non habet, quamuis formas habeat.” (Ars Ambrosiana, De participio 155.358–359) “Likewise, it [i.e., the participle] does not have the verbal moods, even though it does have the ‘forms’.”
The verbs and participles are totae nuntiationes and so are the formae uerborum, but each of the first two contains the third. At the same time, moods do add something to the semantics of the verb form, but the semantic part played by the ‘forms’ is far more important. The semantic value of the moods is present only in the additional formal features, viz. in the endings of verb forms, whereas the semantic value of the ‘forms’ also determines the lexical value of the verb and the participle. Analogously, the semantic value of the tenses is present only in the additional formal features of the participle, viz. the endings, and the semantic value of the participles themselves is also located in what we now call their stem, a notion absent from grammatical writings in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (see Law 1990: 63–64, 2000a: 79–82), including any possible derivational elements.
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If endings are thus not essential to the word form in the view of the author of the Ars Ambrosiana, then nuntiatio tota refers to “a word form regardless what ending it has”, the always recognizable, unchanging part of a word form, or the word on itself. The relative clause from text (19), “quibus uerba formantur”, can therefore be interpreted as “by means of which the verbs are made what they are”, i.e., what we would call the ‘lexemes’ of the verbs. These are complete, when they contain their respective formae. (At the same time, with “quibus uerba formantur” our author offers a neat etymology of formae uerborum). But some problems remain. A nuntiatio tota, for example, sometimes coincides with a pars orationis (participium), sometimes not (forma uerbi). Within his intricate characterization of the verb, the author apparently wanted to highlight the peculiar nature of the formae uerborum and came up with this use of nuntiatio tota. The formae uerborum create new lexemes, namely iteratives, frequentatives, and so on. In the traditional system based on the word classes, there was no way of indicating this, since the word forms in question are all verbs. It appears that the author of the Ars Ambrosiana saw this, and incorporated it into his descriptive framework of the Latin verb, which is a remarkable achievement. 6. Conclusions Our analysis of the anonymous Donatus commentary Ars Ambrosiana can be summarized as follows. The Ars Ambrosiana is likely to have been composed in Northern Italy somewhere between 530 and 680 A.D. The two important intellectual centres in Northern Italy that are the most likely places of origin of the grammar are Verona (possible location for the whole period of 530–680 A.D.) and Bobbio (possible location for 640–680 A.D.). Secular texts of learning would have been available in Verona at an earlier date than in Bobbio, but it is not clear whether or not our author used any secular texts. Overall, the author of the Ars Ambrosiana seems to have been a scholar who had studied quite a number of texts dealing with language: grammatical treatises, rhetorical works, and logical works. But the way in which he intertwined these three genres in his commentary on Donatus suggests that for him language-based science had become a fusion of these disciplines: he does not separate them, but integrates them to a higher degree than had been done before, thereby showing signs of abstract thinking and intellectual independence. An important reason for the author’s approach is the fact that his mind seems to have been impregnated by Christian-exegetic views on language and the role of language in understanding the world and thus leading towards ‘real’ (spiritual) knowledge. The author apparently saw in the basics of logic and rhetoric very useful tools for commenting on Latin grammar as presented by Donatus. It is highly probable that he had learned such techniques from Christian-exegetic texts, with
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Marius Victorinus and Augustine as the most likely sources. It may also be that he had read secular textbooks on logic, possibly by the same Marius Victorinus, or some unknown text, or perhaps (some of) Boethius’ works, but we cannot determine this with certainty. Regardless, it is clear that his knowledge of logic enabled him to put it to use in a creative way, even though he does not always seem to have fully understood the basics of logic. It is important to realize that the study of logic never entirely disappeared during the Early Middle Ages and that its ‘return’ in and after the Carolingian period is not as big a surprise as is sometimes believed. At the same time we see how Christian-exegetic thinking initially was rather profound in grammatical argument, while later, from the 8th century onwards, grammarians gained more balance between their ‘technical’ subject and their ‘Christian-exegetic’ thinking. The author’s grasp of the way in which the Latin language functioned seems to have been rather firm, allowing him to formulate a system in which he distinguished several layers both in the morphology of words and on the theoretical level, in the grammatical description of words. Working with this self-created system, he invented his own terminology or made a personal use of established terms, using these, together with existing grammatical, logical, and rhetorical terminology, as consistently as he was able to. The author of the Ars Ambrosiana shared a number of the ideas underlying his system with the grammar of the Anonymus ad Cuimnanum and with the grammar Congregatio Salcani filii de uerbo (and at least one yet unedited grammar, viz. Paris BNF Lat. 7491), but they, conversely, do not share his peculiar style, method, and terminology, which implies that similarities between them are due to the use of a common source and not to one drawing from the other(s). Both of the other texts had more success from the end of the 7th century onwards than the Ars Ambrosiana, but the latter can rightly be said to occupy its own special niche in the history of Western linguistics.
References A. Text editions, text edition series, and reference works
Anonymus. Ars Ambrosiana. Commentum Anonymum in Donati Partes Maiores. Ed. by Bengt M. Löfstedt. (= CCSL 133C.) Turnhout: Brepols, 1982. Anonymus. Ars Bernensis. Ed. by Heinrich Hagen. (= G.L. VIII), 62–142. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1870. Anonymus. Congregatio Salcani filii de uerbo. Ed. by Bengt M. Löfstedt. Der hibernolateinische Grammatiker Malsachanus, 194–260. Uppsala: Ubsalensis S. Academia, 1965. Anonymus ad Cuimnanum. Expossitio Latinitatis. Ed by Bernhard Bischoff & Bengt M. Löfstedt. (= CCSL 133D.) Turnhout: Brepols, 1992.
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Augustinus, Aurelius. De Civitate Dei. 2 vols. Ed. by Bernhard Dombart & Alfons Kalb. (= CCSL 47–48.) Turnhout: Brepols, 1955. Augustinus, Aurelius. De genesi ad litteram. Ed. by Iosephus Zycha. Sancti Aureli Augustini De genesi ad litteram libri duodecim, eiusdem libri capitula, de genesi ad litteram imperfectus liber, locutionum in heptateuchum libri septem. (= CSEL 28.1.) Wien: Tempsky, 1894. Augustinus, Aurelius. De magistro. Ed. by William M. Green. (= CCSL 29.) Turnhout: Brepols, 1970. Augustinus, Aurelius. De trinitate. Ed. by William J. Mountain & F. Glorie. 2 vols. (= CCSL 50–50A.) Turnhout: Brepols, 1968. Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus, In Isagogen Porphyrii commenta. Ed. by Georg Schepss & Samuel Brandt. Anicii Manlii Severini Boetii in Isagogen Porphyrii commenta. (= CSEL 48.1.) Wien: Tempsky. Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. Commentarii in librum Aristotelis Peri Hermēneias. Ed. by Karl Meiser. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1877–1880. CCSL: Corpus Christianorum Series Latina. Turnhout: Brepols, 1953–. CSEL: Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. Wien: Tempsky & Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1866–. Diomedes, Artis grammaticae libri III. Ed. by Heinrich Keil. (= G.L. I), 297–529. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1857. Donatus, Aelius. Ars maior. Ed. by Louis Holtz. Donat et la tradition de l’enseignement grammatical, 603–674. Paris: CNRS, 1981. Donatus, Aelius. Ars minor. Ed. by Louis Holtz. Donat et la tradition de l’enseignement grammatical, 585–602. Paris: CNRS, 1981. G.L.: Keil, Heinrich, ed. 1855–1870. Grammatici Latini. 8 vols. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner. Isidorus Hispalensis, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX. Ed. by Wallace Martin Lindsay. Oxford: Clarendon 1986[1911]. P.L.: Migne, Jacques-Paul, ed. 1844–1864. Patrologia Latina: Patrologiae cursus completus sive bibliotheca universalis, integra, uniformis, commoda, oeconomia, omnium ss. Patrum, doctorum scriptorumque ecclesiasticorum qui ab aevo apostolico ad usque Innocentii III tempora floruerunt. 221 vols. Paris: J.-P. Migne. Priscianus Caesariensis. Institutionum grammaticarum libri XVIII. 2 vols. Ed. by Martin Hertz. (= G.L. II–III.) Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1855. Priscianus Caesariensis. Institutio de nomine et pronomine et uerbo. Ed. by Marina Passalacqua. Prisciani Caesariensis Opuscula, vol. II, 3–41. Roma: Storia e letteratura, 1999. Sedulius Scottus, In Evangelium Matthaei. Ed. by Bengt M. Löfstedt. Sedulius Scottus: Kommentar zum Evangelium nach Matthäus 1,1–11,1. (= Vetus Latina: Die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel. Aus der Geschichte der lateinischen Bibel, 14.) Freiburg im Bresgau: Herder, 1989. ThLL: Vollmer, Friedrich et al., eds. 1900–. Thesaurus linguae Latinae. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner; München: K. G. Saur. Victorinus, Marius. In Epistulam Pauli ad Ephesios libri duo. Ed. by Franco Gori. Marii Victorini Opera Pars II: Opera exegetica. (= CSEL 83.2), 1–94. Wien: Hoelder–Pichler–Tempsky, 1986. Victorinus, Marius. Liber de definitionibus. Ed. by Andreas Pronay. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997. Virgilius Maro Grammaticus. Epistolae & Epitomae. Ed. by Bengt M. Löfstedt. Virgilius Maro Grammaticus: Opera omnia. Leipzig & München: K. G. Saur, 2003.
B. Secondary sources
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Amsler, Mark. 1989. Etymology and Grammatical Discourse in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 44.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Amsler, Mark. 1990. “Commentary and Metalanguage in Early Medieval Latin Grammar”. History and Historiography of Linguistics: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS IV), Trier, 24–28 August 1987 ed. by HansJosef Niederehe & Konrad Koerner (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 51), 175–187. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Baratin, Marc & Françoise Desbordes (avec la participation de Philippe Hoffmann & Alain Pierrot). 1981. L’analyse linguistique dans l’Antiquité classique. Vol. I: Les théories. Paris: Klincksieck. Beck, Jan-Wilhelm. 1996. Zur Zuverlässigkeit der bedeutendsten lateinischen Grammatik: Die ‘Ars’ des Aelius Donatus. Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur; Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Berschin, Walter. 1991. “Griechisches in der Domschule von Verona”. Scritture, libri e testi nelle aree provinciali di Bisanzio. Vol. I, ed. by Guglielmo Cavallo, Giuseppe De Gregorio & Marilena Maniaci, 221–234. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo. Büren, Veronika von. 2007. “La place du manuscrit Ambr. L 99 sup. dans la transmission des Étymologies d’Isidore de Séville”. Nuove ricerche su codici in scrittura latina dell’Ambrosiana. Atti del convegno Milano, 6–7 ottobre 2005 ed. by Mirella Ferrari & Marco Navoni, 25–44. Milano: Vita e Pensiero. Copeland, Rita & Ineke Sluiter, eds. 2009. Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language arts and literary theory, AD 300–1475. Oxford: Oxford University Press. D’Onofrio, Giulio. 1986. Fons scientiae: La dialettica nell’Occidente tardo-antico. Napoli: Liguori. De Vogüé, Adalbert. 1988. Jonas de Bobbio, Vie de saint Colomban et de ses disciples. Bégrollesen-Mauge: Abbaye de Bellefontaine. Fontaine, Jacques. 1959. Isidore de Séville et la culture classique dans l’Espagne wisigothique. Paris: Études augustiniennes. Fuhrmann, Manfred. 1960. Das systematische Lehrbuch: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Wissenschaften in der Antike. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Giannini, Stefania. 1997. “Sensus ed elocutio: Sintassi e semantica nell’analisi delle partes orationis”. Grammatica e ideologia nella storia della Linguistica ed. by Pierangelo Berrettoni & Franco Lorenzi, 153–170. Margiacchi: Galeno. Grondeux, Anne & Colette Jeudy. 2001. “À propos de pus: Sens médiéval d’un mot antique”. Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Bulletin Du Cange) 59.139–160. Hill, Edmund, transl. 2002. “Saint Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis”. The Works of Saint Augustine: A translation for the 21st century, vol. I.13, ed. by the Augustinian Heritage Institute, 153–506. New York: New City Press. Hofman, Rijcklof. 1996. The Sankt Gall Priscian Commentary. Part I. 2 vols. Münster: Nodus. Holtz, Louis. 1981. Donat et la tradition de l’enseignement grammatical: Étude sur l’Ars Donati et sa diffusion (IVe-IXe siècle) et édition critique. Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique. Holtz, Louis. 1983. “Les grammairiens Hiberno-Latins étaient-ils des Anglo-Saxons?”. Peritia 2.170–184.
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Holtz, Louis. 1992. “Continuité et discontinuité de la tradition grammaticale au VIIe siècle”. Le septième siècle: Changements et continuités ed. by Jacques Fontaine & Jocelyn N. Hillgarth, 41–57. London: The Warburg Institute & University of London. Irvine, Martin. 1994. The Making of Textual Culture: ‘grammatica’ and literary theory, 350–1100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Law, Vivien. 1982. The Insular Latin Grammarians. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. Law, Vivien. 1984. “Irish Symptoms and the Provenance of Sixth- and Seventh-Century Latin Grammars”. Matériaux pour une histoire des théories linguistiques ed. by Sylvain Auroux, Michel Glatigny & André Joly, 77–85. Lille: Université de Lille III. Law, Vivien. 1990. “The History of Morphology: Expression of a change in consciousness”. Understanding the Historiography of Linguistics: Problems and projects ed. by Werner Hüllen, 61–74. Münster: Nodus. Law, Vivien. 1997. “From Aural to Visual: Medieval representations of the word”. Grammar and Grammarians in the early Middle Ages ed. by Vivien Law, 250–259. London & New York: Longman. Law, Vivien. 2000. “Memory and the Structure of Grammars in Antiquity and the Middle Ages”. Manuscripts and Tradition of Grammatical Texts from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Vol. 1, ed. by Mario De Nonno, Paolo De Paolis & Louis Holtz, 9–58. Cassino: Edizioni dell’ Università degli Studi di Cassino. Law, Vivien. 2000a. “The Middle Ages”. Morphologie — Morphology: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Flexion und Wortbildung / An International Handbook on Inflection and Word-Formation ed. by Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann & Joachim Mugdan (= Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft / Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science, 17), 76–90. Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter. Law, Vivien. 2003. The History of Linguistics in Europe: From Plato to 1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lepschy, Giulio, ed. 1994. History of Linguistics II: Classical and Medieval Linguistics. London & New York: Longman. Löfstedt, Bengt M. 1965. Der hibernolateinische Grammatiker Malsachanus. Uppsala: Ubsalensis S. Academia. Löfstedt, Bengt M. 1980. “Zu den Quellen des hibernolateinischen Donatkommentars im cod. Ambrosianus L 22 sup.”. Studi medievali ser. 3, 21:1.301–320. Löfstedt, Bengt M. 1998. “Zur Grammatik in Paris Bibl. Nat. ms. Lat. 7491”. Peritia 12.95–97. Lowe, Elias Avery. 1934–1971. Codices Latini antiquiores: A palaeographical guide to Latin manuscripts prior to the ninth century. 11 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Luhtala, Anneli. 2002. “On Definitions in Ancient Grammar”. Grammatical Theory and Philosophy of Language in Antiquity ed. by Pierre Swiggers & Alfons Wouters, 257–285. Leuven: Peeters. Manitius, Max. 1911. Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters. Vol. I. München: H. C. Beck. Marenbon, John. 1988[1983]. Early Medieval Philosophy (480–1150): An introduction. London & New York.: Routledge. (2nd rev. ed., 1988.) Marenbon, John. 2008. “Logic before 1100: The Latin tradition”. Handbook of the History of Logic. Vol. II: Mediaeval and Renaissance Logic ed. by Dov M. Gabbay & John Woods, 1–63. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
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Mariotti, Italo. 1967. Marii Victorini Ars grammatica: Introduzione, testo critico e commento. Firenze: Felice Le Monnier. Minio-Paluello, Laurentius, ed. 1966. Categoriarum supplementa: Porphyrii Isagoge, translatio Boethii et anonymi fragmentum vulgo vocatum “Liber sex principiorum”; accedunt Isagoges fragmenta M. Victorino interprete. (= Aristoteles Latinus 1.6–7.) Brugge: Desclée de Brouwer. Munzi, Luigi. Forthcoming. “Exégèse biblique et commentaire grammatical dans le Haut Moyen-Âge”. Ancient Grammar and its Posterior Tradition ed. by Nikolai N. Kazansky, Vladimir I. Mazhuga, L. G. Medvedev, Pierre Swiggers & Alfons Wouters. Leuven: Peeters. Piazzi, Alberto. 1994. Biblioteca capitolare Verona. Fiesole: Nardini. Piazzi, Alberto & Giuseppe Zivelonghi. 1984. La tradizione veronese nelle miniature dei codici capitolari. Verona: Biblioteca Capitolare. Plezia, Marian. 1949. De commentariis isagogicis. Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności. Sabbadini, Remigio. 1903. “Spogli Ambrosiani latini”. Studi latini di filologia classica 11.165–388. Schmidt, Peter Lebrecht. 1989. “Grammatik und Rhetorik”. Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike. Vol. V: Restauration und Erneuerung: Die lateinische Literatur von 284 bis 374 n. Chr. ed. by Reinhart Herzog, 101–158. München: H. C. Beck. Schoepflin, Maurizio. 1994. Il “De magistro” di Sant’Agostino e il tema dell’educazione nel cristianesimo antico. Torino: Paravia. Stock, Christian. 2005. Commentarium de oratione et de octo partibus orationis artis secundae Donati: Überlieferung, Text und Kommentar. München: K. G. Saur. Stotz, Peter. 1996–2004. Handbuch zur lateinischen Sprache des Mittelalters. 5 vols. München: H. C. Beck. Swiggers, Pierre & Alfons Wouters. 1998. De Tékhne Grammatike van Dionysius Thrax: De oudste spraakkunst in het Westen. Leuven: Peeters. Taeger, Burkhard. 1991. “ ‘Multiplex enim ut lex Dei etiam Latinitas’: Zu den Quellen des Anonymus ad Cuimnanum”. Studi medievali ser. 3, 32:1.1–91. Thompson, James Westfall. 1967 [1939]. The Medieval Library. 3rd reprinting with a supplement by B. B. Boyer. New York: Hafner. Toom, Tarmo. 2002. Thought Clothed with Sound: Augustine’s christological hermeneutics in ‘De doctrina Christiana’. Bern & Frankurt/M.: Peter Lang. Tosi, Michele. 1965. Jonas: Vita Columbani et discipulorum eius. Piacenza: Emiliana Grafica. Vineis, Edoardo. 1994. “Medieval Linguistics”. History of Linguistics ed. by Giulio Lepschy, vol. II: Classical and Medieval Linguistics, 134–271. Harlow: Longman. [Transl. into English by Emma Sansone.] Visser, Louise J. 2011. “Latin Grammatical Manuals in the Early Middle Ages: Tradition and adaptation in the participle chapter”. Ancient Scholarship and Grammar ed. by Franco Montanari & Antonios Rengakos, 375–404. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Zironi, Alessandro. 2004. Il monastero longobardo di Bobbio: Crocevia di uomini, manoscritti e culture. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo.
Summary The Ars Ambrosiana is an early medieval Latin grammatical commentary on Donatus’ Ars maior, written in Northern Italy in the 6th or 7th century A.D. In comparison with preceding grammatical commentaries, the Ars Ambrosiana displays a much more profound
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Christian-exegetical way of thinking. This study opens with an overview of the historicalcultural context of the grammatical commentary and of the general way of thinking of its anonymous author. The remainder of the article consists in an analysis of the, to some extent highly original, framework which the author uses for describing the Latin language, illustrated by a brief study of the terms agnitio (“recognition”) and nuntiatio (“[linguistic] form”), and their combinations with the adjectives specialis (“special”) and tota (“entire/ whole”).
Résumé L’Ars Ambrosiana est un commentaire grammatical latin du haut moyen âge sur l’Ars maior de Donat ; le texte a été rédigé en Italie du Nord, au VIe ou VIIe siècle. En comparaison avec les commentaires grammaticaux antérieurs, l’Ars Ambrosiana fait preuve d’une approche exégétique chrétienne nettement plus prononcée. La présente étude fournit d’abord un aperçu du contexte historico-culturel du commentaire grammatical analysé ici et des conceptions générales de son auteur anonyme. La suite de l’article consiste en une analyse du dispositif, très original à certains égards, que l’auteur applique à la langue latine, illustrée par une brève étude des termes agnitio (“compréhension”) et nuntiatio (“forme [linguistique]”), et leur combinaison avec les adjectifs specialis (“spécial”) et tota (“entier/tout”).
Zusammenfassung Die Ars Ambrosiana ist ein lateinischer grammatischer Kommentar zur Ars maior des Donatus, der im 6. oder 7. Jahrhundert in Nord-Italien verfasst wurde. Im Vergleich zu früheren grammatischen Kommentaren weist die Ars Ambrosiana eine tiefer gehende christlich-exegetische Denkweise auf. Der vorliegende Beitrag bietet zuerst einen Überblick über den historischen-kulturellen Kontext dieser grammatischen Abhandlung und einen Einblick in die Denkweise des anonymen Autors. Danach wird die Vorgehensweise des Autors bei der, zeitweilig sehr originellen, Beschreibung der lateinischen Sprache hervorgehoben, welche durch eine kurze Untersuchung der Termini agnitio (“Verstehen”) und nuntiatio (“[sprachliche] Form”) und ihre Verbindung mit den Adjektiven specialis (“speziell”) und tota (“ganz/vollständig”) illustriert wird.
Author’s address: Louise J. Visser Faculteit Letteren Blijde-Inkomststraat 21 postbus 3318 B-3000 Leuven Be l g i u m [email protected]
John Bulwer and the Quest for a Universal Language, 1641–1644* Jeffrey Wollock New York
1. Introduction The English physician John Bulwer (1606–1656) was a pioneer in many fields related to “the human body as a means of communication” (Richards 2004: 670a), and the first to take a scientific approach, in the spirit of Francis Bacon, to many psychophysiological issues of human communication that are of great interest today. Yet for two centuries after his death, he was completely ignored in the history of science. It was not until the mid-20th century that he began to attract sustained interest from intellectual historians. Bulwer’s place within the history of English science is still not well defined. His publications date from between 1644 and 1653, the beginning of the English scientific revolution.1 This movement, at first centered in Bulwer’s own city, London, and known for open communication, took a great interest in his subject area, universal language and semiotics. Moreover, its program for scientific reform was closely derived from the ideas of Francis Bacon, of whom Bulwer was a professed follower. Yet Bulwer appears strangely isolated, with no clear connection to the scientific networks that preceded the Royal Society. Lewis (2007: 45–46) cites the only known connections between Bulwer and the Hartlib circle.2 In 1648, Theodore Haak (1605–1690), a close associate of Hartlib * I’d like to thank the three anonymous referees for their very useful critical comments on earlier versions of this paper, and the editors for their help with its form and presentation. Regular disclaimers apply. — I dedicate this study to the memory of Vivian Salmon; in Oxford in 1985, she was the person who first encouraged me to do biographical research on Bulwer. 1. The term is used because it is familiar, though it begs the question of what science is. It would be more accurate to say that within the various approaches to ‘natural philosophy’ (a more historically appropriate term), some tendencies of the time bore closer, and some more distant, resemblance to what is today called “science”. 2. The Hartlib circle was a loosely-associated, international group of correspondents and Historiographia Linguistica XXXVIII:1/2 (2011), 37–84. doi 10.1075/hl.38.1/2.02wol issn 0302–5160 / e-issn 1569–9781 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
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and the Moravian philosopher Jan Amos Comenius (1592–1670), was favourably impressed with Bulwer’s new book Philocophus; in fact he sent a copy to Marin Mersenne (1588–1648). And Rev. John Beale (c.1608–1683), in a letter of 23 February 1657 (HP 62/22/2B) to Samuel Hartlib (1600–1662), states: “Mr I Bulwer hath done excellently in this & also in another called the Muscles of the Mind which is in my hand. A most acute persone.” The phrase “hath done excellently in this” evidently refers to something Hartlib had said in his previous letter. Unfortunately, one cannot tell which of Bulwer’s works is referred to because the sentence is devoid of context, and Hartlib’s letter is not extant. The second phrase, however — “and also in another […] which is in my hand” — designates Bulwer’s Pathomyotomia (1649), which Hartlib had evidently not mentioned. The nature of Beale’s comment seems to indicate that this was the first time Bulwer’s name had come up; and there is no sign that either of them knew Bulwer had died about four months earlier. Thus, of two key members of the original Comenian circle, Haak and Hartlib, the first was favourably impressed with Bulwer’s work, the second at least aware of it; while Beale, who joined the group later, also admired him and was familiar with two of his books. Yet, remarkably, Beale’s reference to Bulwer is the only one in all the extant Hartlib Papers. This raises two problems: 1) If Hartlib, Haak and Beale knew and liked Bulwer’s work, then, given their own interest in universal language, shared by the circle or circles we may call “precursors of the Royal Society”, why are these the only known references to Bulwer by any members of these circles? 2) Did at least some of them know of Bulwer’s work on universal language from the outset? Did he know of theirs? I reserve for a future contribution a fuller investigation of the references cited by Lewis. For the present, I should like to explore the hypothesis that, even in its origin, Bulwer’s research on gesture and universal language had points of contact with the ideas of Comenius, and also of John Wilkins (1614–1672), on these topics. Bearing in mind the scarcity of direct documentation, it does not appear that Bulwer was close to the Hartlib circle. But conversely, this very paucity of documentation suggests that it does not reflect the whole story, and that we must seek other kinds of evidence. collaborators around Samuel Hartlib (1600–1662), an expatriate Prussian who settled in England in 1628. From the late 1620s through the early 1660s, a core group of individuals living in or near London met with Hartlib, or with each other, fairly often, to discuss topics in theology, natural philosophy, educational theory, as well as schemes for practical improvement. In the wider sense, however, the Hartlib circle was a much larger, international group of correspondents; and Hartlib was constantly seeking new contacts and informants, often through intermediaries. — The term ‘Hartlib papers’ refers to a large cache of Hartlib’s correspondence and diaries, preserved by chance and discovered only in 1933. As vast a resource as it is, the collection is by no means complete (see Greengrass, Leslie & Raylor 1994: 8–14).
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1.1 Wilkins, Comenius and Bulwer on universal language Scholars agree that the universal language movement in mid-17th-century England took its hint largely from Francis Bacon’s (1611–1685), De Augmentis Scientiarum (hereafter: DA) VI.1 (Lewis 2007: 6).3 The attempts of John Pell (1611– 1685) and Champagnolla (Monsieur de la Champagnolle, first name unknown, d.1643?) before 1641 were neither completed nor published; and although the Irish Protestant John Johnson (d.1641) developed a true ‘real character’ around 1641, his work was largely lost when the nearly-completed plates were destroyed in the Irish rebellion and Johnson himself was killed.4 These earlier efforts remained little known. The first “work of interest”, as Formigari (1988: 15) puts it, to show the influence of Bacon’s DA VI.1 was Wilkins’ Mercury (1641), in the introduction where he speaks of Verulam as well as in Chapters 12–14. Wilkins may have been acquainted with Hartlib by 1641 (Turnbull 1953: 108, also cf. 107), but this is by no means certain; in any case he was not yet a member of Hartlib’s circle (Slaughter 1982: 107–108). The next such example was the Via Lucis of Comenius, on which the Moravian philosopher, then in London, was at work by November 1641; it was finished by 8 April 1642 (Turnbull 1947: 367), and Comenius left a manuscript copy with Hartlib when he departed England in June. The third example is represented by Bulwer’s two books of 1644, the first fruits of his Baconian research project on the body as a means of communication, suggested by DA VI.1 as well as IV.1, as outlined in the dedication to Chirologia (Wollock 2002: 230–236; 241ff). Although Bulwer mentions neither Comenius nor Wilkins, the chronology, subject matter, and common debt to Bacon all raise the question of their possible relation. Going by the date of his first publications, Bulwer either conceived his project during or not long after Comenius’s 8-month stay in London; or if before that, would in any case have been working on it while Comenius was there. It is this close proximity of time and place of writing that calls for a comparison. Wilkins’s Mercury was published in 1641;5 and though the Via Lucis was not printed until much later (1668), Comenius wrote it expressly to promote the enterprise for which he had come to England; so that, although little direct documentation 3. Mersenne may have had some influence: Salmon (1966) and Aarsleff (1992 [1967]: 15) see him as an important influence on Wilkins; Lewis (2007: 44) does not. 4. In a review of the earliest English attempts, Lewis (2007: 23–49) takes us from Pell and Champagnolla through Johnson and Wilkins’ Mercury and up to Sir Cheney Culpeper (1616–1654). 5. Salmon (1966: 372, 378) assumes that Wilkins’s Mercury appeared shortly before Comenius’s arrival in England (September 1641), but it may have appeared shortly thereafter — for according to the calendar then in use in England, 1641 would not have ended until 24 March of what we would now call 1642 (the day before Lady Day).
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has survived, it is a warranted assumption that the Comenians were motivated to discuss its ideas with others. Only in the last 15 years has any appreciable biographical information about Bulwer’s life been available, even the years of his birth and death (Wollock 1996: 1–2), and much is still unclear. The main purpose of this paper is to try to establish the proximate motivation and terminus post quem of Bulwer’s Chirologia and Chironomia, and thus of his larger project. There is no internal necessity to postulate either Wilkins or Comenius as influences on Bulwer; Bacon is the unquestionable and sufficient source, as I have discussed elsewhere (Wollock 2002). However, to test the consequences of the hypothesis about the external circumstances that may have engendered that project and made it of such great interest to Bulwer’s intellectual circle, it makes sense to compare Bulwer’s ideas on universal language with those of Wilkins and Comenius. Chapter 14 of Wilkins’s Mercury shows some parallels to Bulwer’s project. They are more matters of detail than general principles, although some of these details are important. While a few of Bulwer’s key ideas may have been suggested by Wilkins, the latter gives them no more than passing mention, whereas Bulwer develops them at great length. The features Bulwer shares with Comenius’s VL, Chapter 19, on the other hand, are more matters of general principle than specific details. It is remarkable that while scholars have found little resemblance between the VL and the projects of the later language projectors, it bears more resemblance — despite ample differences — to Bulwer’s work. Bacon (1857–1870, vol. I, 651–653) describes hieroglyphic as a form of writing ex congruo (based on natural resemblance to the things it designates), and thus similar to gesture, except that gesture is transitory whereas hieroglyphic is permanent. He further suggests that a form of writing (which he calls a ‘real character’) could be developed that would refer directly to things, but without any actual resemblance — ad placitum tantum efficti, consuetudine autem tanquam pacto tacito recepti. Such characters would be veluti numismata rerum intellectualium; as it were, an instrument allowing the more perfect exchange of ideas. While a desideratum, Bacon fears the real character would be far less practical than spoken language or alphabetical writing. Immediately following, he advocates a scientific study of grammar. Although for Bacon this idea was distinct from the real character, the two would be frequently conflated (Lewis 2007: 14–16). Bacon presents this in a religious framework: the scientific study of grammar could serve as an antidote against the confusion of tongues — that is, improve all human communication — just as the development of the other arts has restored those blessings of which man was deprived by his expulsion from the earthly paradise. Wilkins (1984: 58) paraphrases this: “The perfecting of such an invention were the only way to unite the seventy-two languages of the first confusion; and
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therefore may very well deserve their endeavours who have both abilities and leisure for such kind of enquiries.” Wilkins’s book is mainly about writing, especially secret writing, and he is clearly most interested in the written real character. At the time there was great interest in shorthand systems and cryptography, to both of which the real character bears some resemblance. (It could express a whole idea in a single character, and though its ostensible purpose was to reveal knowledge, this knowledge would not be accessible to the uninitiated.)6 Indeed, although Wilkins adapted Bacon’s account of writing to his theme, a more important source was Hermanus Hugo (1588–1629), De prima scribendi origine (Antwerp, 1617 and many subsequent editions), especially Chapters 15–18 on secret writing. Where Wilkins (following Bacon’s ratio agendi) comes to discuss gestures (Mercury, chap. 14), he distinguishes them, like non-alphabetic writing, into ex congruo (by resemblance) and ex placito (by arbitrary imposition). Bacon had not done this, treating gesture generically as ex congruo, parallel to hieroglyphic — nor did Comenius or Bulwer. Wilkins discusses the gesture ex congruo because he logically has to, but he is more interested in the gesture ex placito — precisely because, by not resembling its object, this gestural equivalent of the real character could be a more secret mode of communication. But having made the distinction, Wilkins also has to illustrate what he means by natural gesture: he identifies expression of the emotions and gesture in religious worship as natural. Thus Wilkins’s idea of natural gesture may have served Bulwer as a hint to unite the study of gesture and the expression of the emotions under one rubric. To do this, Bulwer brings in Bacon’s DA IV.1 (1857–1870, vol. I, 583, 584), on the expression of the emotions, a felicitous connection that no other writer made (Wollock 2002: 241–242). As we shall see, Bulwer also gives much attention to gesture in religious rites. Wilkins, on the other hand, following his division, portrays the gestures of the deaf and for commerce as ex placito. Bulwer does not want to consider such gestures as artificial in origin any more than he wants to pursue the artificial real character. For Bulwer, expressive gestures arise “by instinct of nature”, not by “statute of art” (1644a: 1). ‘Arbitrary’ and ‘conventional’ are not equivalent concepts, however. For Bulwer, convention and nature are compatible.7 Gestures are not everywhere the same, 6. This aspect of gesture did not entirely elude Bulwer. See Potter (1989: 44–45), who also has much discussion of Wilkins’s Mercury. 7. A similar position was taken by the influential Portuguese Dominican John Poinsot (1589– 1644; cf. Murphy 1983). Likewise, Diego Mas (d.1608). Dialectica Commentaria […] in Duos Libros Aristotelis De Interpretatione, Qu. II tom. 2, p. 10, col. a, cites Sotus (Domingo de Soto, 1494–1560), Summulae, to the effect that signa ex consuetudine come under natural signs,
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but this is natural, because social groups naturally vary in their environmental and historical circumstances, as well as their national character and customs.8 Conversely, natural gesture, in being adopted by a society, becomes ipso facto conventional, a point brought out by St. Augustine: All desire a certain resemblance in signifying in order that the signs themselves should to the extent possible resemble what they signify. But because there are many ways in which one thing may resemble something else, such do not qualify as signs unless agreement occurs among people. (De Doctr. Chr. II.25; transl. mine: J.W.)
Thus for Augustine even semiotic consensus depends upon two underlying natural principles: (a) the natural human desire to see in signs a resemblance to what they signify; (b) the indefinite variety of ways in which one thing may resemble another. (The former reminds one of Aristotle’s dictum in Poet. 4 [1448b6] that “imitation is natural to man from childhood […] man is the most imitative of animals and learns first by imitation”.) Although Bulwer does not quote this passage of Augustine, it seems to represent his view, and he does paraphrase at least two other key semiotic doctrines from the same section of the same work: In an analogy derived from Doct. Chr. II.2–4, Bulwer (1644a: 2–3) calls gesture as direct a consequence of “each motion of the Minde”, as smoke is of fire, a sweet smell is of incense, or the light of dawn is of the sunrise. These correspond to Peirce’s indexical signs or indices (cf. Bragg 1997: 9), having a necessary connection with what they represent (here, effects signifying causes), as symptoms signify particular diseases in medical semiotics. But as ‘transient hieroglyphics’, gestures also resemble what they represent, or something connected with what they represent — in Peirce’s terminology, they are also iconic signs or icons; thus they exemplify the hybrid sign that Anttila & Embleton (1995) call an iconic index.
because they are “all but” (ferè) natural, as when, seeing napkins placed on the table, we know it is dinner time. Thus in dividing signs into naturalia and ex beneplacito or ex hominum impositione vel institutione, the signa ex consuetudine are included under the naturalia. This is not to suggest that Bulwer read these texts, but clearly the idea was ‘in the air’. 8. Bulwer mentions ethnic differences in the dedication to Chirologia (“Chirethnicalogia, or the Nationall expression of the Hand.”) and at the end of Chironomia (1644b: 145): “… there is a Nationall decorum imposed upon men by time and place; for according to the Genius of that climate, wherein we converse, moderation, may admit of a divers construction”, etc. These are distinct from the national peculiarities he refers to in Anthropometamorphosis as unnatural, i.e., pathological (“I lay them to the charge of man, discharging Nature from having any hand, or the least intention therein” [Bulwer 1653, third unnumbered page of the epistle dedicatory]).
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Bulwer paraphrases another passage from Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana to show that gesture, like any true language, has an intellectual component. Speaking of the gesture of consecration, (1644a: 144), Bulwer observes that all gestures of the Hand being known to be of their very nature signs of imitation; the mystique property & close intention of this gesture is not alone to represent it self, but to conduct and insinuate something else into the thought, which being (as it must ever be) an intelligible notion, as it is a signe or token it falls short and abates of the perfection of the thing that is implied by its outward signification.
The first part of this is Augustine’s classic definition of the sign (Doctr. Chr. II.1): “anything which, beyond the appearance it engenders in the sense faculty, brings something else to our knowledge” (transl. mine: J.W.; cf. also Maclean 2002: 148– 149). It also recalls Aristotle’s observation (Poet. 9, 1451a36–b1) that every imitation represents a universal idea, which accounts for the kinship of the imitative arts to philosophy: because philosophy deals with universal truths. The second part (“which being …”) is central to the semiotic theory of sacraments touched on later (see below at note 45). Thus gesture is the “universal character of Reason” — not only a natural, but a universal language. [The hand] speaks all languages, and as universal character of Reason is generally understood and known by all Nations, among the formal differences of their Tongue. And being the only speech that is natural to Man, it may well be called the Tongue and General language of Human Nature, which, without teaching, men in all regions of the habitable world doe at the first sight most easily understand. (Bulwer 1644a: 3).9
One of Bulwer’s fundamental assumptions about universal language is also found in Comenius: that a universal language should have a natural, physiological-psychological, iconic basis; in Bulwer, through iconic gesture, in Comenius, through iconicity of sound. For Bulwer, gesture is a natural language that can be improved by art. For Comenius, a spoken language is never truly natural (as Bulwer agrees), but it is possible to construct a language that is natural in a certain way, namely through iconicity of sound and structure.10 Thus neither Bulwer nor Comenius was attracted to Bacon’s more abstract idea of an artificial real character. 9. In calling gesture a ‘universal character of reason’ in this context, Bulwer seems to connect the concept of universal language in philosophical anthropology and semiotics with that of universals in logic and metaphysics. For general background on the history of ideas on gesture as a universal language, see Knowlson (1965), Knox (1990). 10. Cf. Comenius, Novissima Lingvarum Methodus iii.32 (1989: 126): “Sed quamvis lingua naturalis nulla sit, constitui tamen posse naturali aliquo modo, similem non diffitemur: nempe quae
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Bulwer, thinking like a physician, privileges the physiologically and psychologically natural over the artificial (Wollock 2002: 240–249; cf. also Maclean 2002, especially 148–149); Comenius wants iconicity of sound to offset the artificiality of spoken language. While all the language researchers of the time believed in a natural relation between the human mind and the universe, Bulwer and Comenius included man’s body in this relationship (Wollock 2002: 239–240). For Comenius (1938: 179–194), the universal language should be a spoken language, requiring for its development fundamental research on everything we would today call iconicity of sound and meaning. This idea does not come from Bacon, but it is found in Marin Mersenne’s Harmonie Universelle (1629); it is mentioned in a letter from Mersenne to Comenius of 22 November 1640, and Comenius refers to Mersenne on this question in VL cap. 19, sect. 21 (Comenius 1938: 191 = Comenius 1974b: 356 and notes, 382b-383a; cf. also Asbach-Schnitker in Wilkins 1984: xvi; Knowlson 1975: 67–68). Iconicity is fundamental for Bulwer, but he does not deal with sound symbolism, since he considers gesture the original and natural language of mankind, the most suitable basis for universal communication, and (being visual) the best bearer of iconicity. Comenius fully appreciates the iconic nature of gesture,11 as one would expect from an author who, like Bacon, emphasized the priority of knowledge of things over knowledge of words. In VL cap.19, sect.16, Comenius acknowledges in passing that gesture could form the basis of a universal language: It is beautiful what has become known to our world about the real characters of the Chinese; that they are of benefit because they also help men of different languages to understand one another; as those for whose commerce the tongue is of no use may communicate by means of the hand. But if this is pleasing and expeditious, why should we not rather strive to discover a Real Language (which all people — whether this would be done with the tongue or with the hand — would equally understand, understanding not only the language, but the concepts, and what is more, the things themselves, all at the same time)? And this would call
ipsa soni qualitate, partiumque structura, rerum naturae quodammodo exprimat”; ibid. ii.2 (= 1989: 111): “VERBA […] ex mutuo consensu jam significantia”. 11. Comenius deals with gesture at greater length in his Novissima Lingvarum Methodus. In a passage (ii.22–34 =1989: 114–117) that also derives from Bacon, De Augmentis VI.1, he describes gesture as a rudimentary form of speech (sermonis rudimentum quoddam), and sees the silent communication of the deaf as a legitimate language “quos gesticulatione colloqui, ut gestuum varietate animi sensa tàm amplè representare posse, ut supra fidem esset, nisi experientia constaret, palam est.” (p. 114)
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for far less labour than those monstrous six thousand characters of the Chinese, and would also yield infinitely more fruit. (Transl. mine, emphasis added: J.W. )12
Wilkins, like Bacon, sees the Chinese characters as a prototype for an artificial real character; but for Comenius, the Chinese characters and gestures of men of different tongues are merely examples pointing to the possibility of a universal “Real Language”, i.e. an artificial spoken language that can be written alphabetically. Whereas Bacon had confined himself to the observation that traders of different tongues use various iconic gestures as occasion requires, Comenius suggests that iconic hand gesture can form the basis of a universal language. Still, Comenius prefers the advantages of the tongue over the hand. (Bulwer himself is highly interested in gesture as an adjunct or precursor to vocal speech [1644b, 1648].) A religious motivation in Bacon and Wilkins is seen in their reference to the double curse of mankind: expulsion from Eden and the confusion of tongues at Babel (cf. Lewis 2007: 16–20; Matthews 2008: 71–74; Poole 2003). Comenius gives much more emphasis to this religious theme, which is central to the VL. The development of the tools of the arts and sciences is important, but he understands ‘confusion of tongues’ not merely as the difficulty of international communication due to difference of language, but more fundamentally, as the indeterminacy of words, even within one language, which is the cause of misunderstanding and interminable disputes, especially in religion.13 This is of course one of Bacon’s major themes, the idola fori (“idols of the marketplace”, cf. Stillman 1995: 94–97). Although Bulwer’s theoretical investigation, based on the physiology, psychology, anthropology and philology of his time, has knowledge value in itself, he never claims that the primary goal of the universal language is the advancement of natural philosophy per se, but rather something wider — the restoration of human perception and communication through the recovery of mankind’s natural, 12. 16. Pulchrum est quod de realibus Chinensium characteribus orbi nostro innotuit: eos id habere commodi, quòd et diversarum linguarum hominibus ad se mutuò intelligendum serviant: ut quorum commercio lingua est inutilis, manu colloqui possint. Quod si placet compendiumque aliquod videtur, quidnî potiùs inveniendo REALI SERMONI (quem omnes ex aequo, seu lingua seu manu agendum fuerit, intelligent: nec sermonem solùm, sed conceptus, et quod magis est, res ipsas simul) studium impendimus? Quod longè minus laboris (quàm monstrosi illi ultra sex mille Chinensium characteres) requirat, infinito autem plus fructûs refundat (Comenius 1974b: 354). For the German translation, see Comenius (1997: 158–159, with notes 340–341). 13. In an influential paper, Salmon (1966: 375, see whole discussion on pp. 374–377) seems to assume that the conception of universal language as a remedy for religious disharmony weakens its claim to scientific status. She finds Wilkins the only one of the language reformers to raise the issue of religious harmony, and only very briefly in the Essay of 1668 where he refers to “modern differences in religion”. This interpretation of religious influence is now correctly seen as anachronistic (see Teich 1968; Popkin’s [1992] concept of a ‘Third Force’ in 17th-century thought).
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primordial language. It is here that he differs most from Bacon and Wilkins, who believed not in the possibility of recovering man’s primordial language, but rather, of constructing a replacement for it (Wollock 2002: 239–240; cf. also 233 [para. 1], 235–236). Nevertheless, Bulwer seems to conceive gesture as potentially commensurate with Baconian science: as true to nature in its expression (including — and in this respect far superior to the real character — man’s physical nature and psychology), as the conceptual knowledge sought by Bacon would be true to the world ‘out there’. Wilkins’s treatment of religious gesture as natural agrees with what was then the official interpretation of the Anglican church, of which he was a minister.14 This is not discussed by either Bacon or Comenius; but in Bulwer, although implicit, it is extremely important. Like all the reformers of the time, Bulwer believes a universal language would aid in the restoration of religious harmony and the regeneration of mankind. But Bulwer appears to be the only one who followed a model that had developed in the English church from Lancelot Andrewes (1555– 1626) to Archbishop William Laud (1573–1645) — the idea that ritual, ceremony, the sacraments, are more important than dogma. Words are divisive, communal ritual performance generates a sense of community. This is implicit in Chirologia/Chironomia and is not far from Bacon’s own view (Matthews 2008: 24, 28–32, 126–128). Bulwer’s privileging of gesture is exactly in accord with this Anglican idea of religious harmony. While Bulwer laid strong emphasis on the radical naturalness of his universal language project, it does have an important element of artifice, but of a different kind. Chironomia details the technical application of iconic gesture to rhetorical delivery, precisely to make spoken language into a more natural vehicle of expression. (For Bulwer’s understanding of the relation of art to nature, see the introduction to Chironomia [1644b: 20–22].) In a sense, this parallels Comenius’s idea of iconicity of sound as a principle of universal spoken language. 1.2 Bulwer and the London Comenians In addition to the similarities just noted, Bulwer, like Comenius, was interested in developmental psychology (Wollock, forthcoming; cf. Piaget 1967); a resemblance between his attitude toward deaf education and Comenius’s ideas 14. “Of this kind likewise are many religious actions, and circumstances of divine worship, not only amongst the ancient heathen, but some that were particularly enjoined the priests and levites of the old law; and some too that are now in use in these times of the gospel. For by such bodily gestures and signs, we may as well speak unto God as unto men” (Wilkins 1985: 59). As a moderate Calvinist like his grandfather John Dod, Wilkins gave priority to church unity and did not oppose ceremony except in certain details (Shapiro 1969: 16–18).
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on special education has also been noted (Wollock 1996: 27–29). While all these resemblances taken together do not prove actual influence, they do indicate an affinity of viewpoint. But affinities attract; and evidence of links with the Hartlib group would make it more plausible that Bulwer had access to the pansophical discussions. Of course, the Comenian movement is known to history largely as “puritan”, while Bulwer’s allegiances were decidedly un-puritan. But for the period in question, this “obstacle” is more apparent than real. That the Comenians were essentially puritan was for a long time almost axiomatic (see, e.g., Trevor-Roper 1968, Hill 1997: 85–117, Webster 1976: 32–47; cf. also Hall 1965). But the question has been increasingly recognized as more complicated (cf. Webster ibid., 495–520; Henry 1992). Comenius himself, as a leader of the ecumenical Unitas Fratrum, can hardly be called a puritan (despite the great influence of Calvinism in his education); and the Hartlib circle, its largely puritan leadership notwithstanding, was not completely identified with the puritan movement until later, once the civil war had begun. In light of subsequent developments, especially the war, which put the Hartlib group unambiguously on the parliamentary side, their story falls under the puritan rubric; but what must not be overlooked is that around the Hartlib-Dury-Comenius group was an aura of Protestant irenicism which, though fatally compromised by the war, was theoretically central to their aims. If they saw as a goal the union of all the Reformed and Lutheran churches of Europe — an effort led by John Dury (1596–1680) — the Comenians were certainly committed to unity among all tendencies in the Church of England itself. And at a time when the more radical puritans were working to weaken or destroy the episcopacy (Hill 1975: 77–117) and in some cases even the House of Lords, one of Comenius’s most important sponsors in 1641–1642, John Williams, was himself a bishop — indeed by then the most powerful bishop — in the Church of England; and by virtue of that, a peer of the House of Lords. Moreover, until the Commons’ direct moves against the episcopacy in 1641 and 1642, which destroyed the Laudian church, the great majority of puritans were still communicants of that church and, amidst many shades of gray, so-called moderate puritans and moderate Calvinists did not oppose most elements of the Laudian approach to ceremony (Shapiro 1969: 16–18). As recent scholarship (e.g., Prior 2005, Jue 2006) clearly shows, Calvinism per se was not antithetical to ceremonialism or even to Laudianism. Furthermore, no matter how strongly their support for Parliament, all still supported the king. This opens the possibility that Bulwer could have initially seen his decidedly non-puritan religious ideas as fitting within the Comenian quest for unity; and the same is true from the Comenian end (including Hartlib and Dury) — as long as we are talking about the period before the war.
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2. Comenius’s wide support In England throughout the 1630s, the anti-court party — “the country party”, as Trevor-Roper calls it (1968: 253, 267–268)15 — influenced by the writings of Francis Bacon (1561–1626), had developed ideas of political, social and economic reform as the remedy for problems epitomized in the personal rule of Charles I. Their champions came to be what Trevor-Roper called the “three foreigners”, namely, Samuel Hartlib, John Dury, and Jan Amos Comenius (see also Polišenský 1978: 168, last para., 172). Comenius was a member of the Unitas Fratrum church and unofficial leader of the exiled Moravian religious community in Leszno, Poland. On the Continent the Thirty Years War, the cause of his exile, still raged. Samuel Hartlib (1600–1662), ‘the great intelligencer’, had persuaded him to come to England, in the millenarian belief that England offered the best possibilities to begin the universal reformation of the world. The immediate goal of the reformers was to establish a ‘pansophic college’ to develop a program of universal learning based on Comenius’s principle of universal education — omnes omnia omnino, “everyone, everything, in every way.” The quest for a universal language was part of this pansophic enterprise. Comenius arrived in September of 1641, believing (and apparently led to believe) that he had an official invitation from Parliament. In reality, while Hartlib had been trying for over two years to get official sponsorship, the invitation was a private one supported by a small number of patrons, among whom were some members of parliament. Comenius arrived at a moment when, with parliament reestablished (the ‘Long Parliament’), and with all factions of English Protestantism still within the established church, a harmonious future seemed possible. But extreme tensions threatened the realm. As Trevor-Roper (1992: 221) writes, the Baconian social reforms advocated by the ‘country party’ “challenged the very different social ideals of the Caroline court and the Laudian Church”. The same writer notes elsewhere that “if we make a list of all those men who were acknowledged leaders of the country party in 1640, clergy and lay, and then ask what common intellectual influence they acknowledged, the answer is clear. Whatever other interests may have divided them, they were all united in the patronage of our three philosophers, Hartlib, Dury and Comenius” (Trevor-Roper 1968: 255). Again, “Not a single ‘Laudian’ bishop appears among the patrons of Hartlib, Dury and Comenius: such patronage was a badge of the country party in the Church.” And further (256–257): Only when we go out of politics, below the level of politics, do we discover an occasional ‘royalist’ among the patrons of these three men, and even then they are 15. The term is an old one: it is already used in this context by William Clark Russell (1741– 1793) in his History of Modern Europe.
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‘country’ royalists, not courtiers: Sir Justinian Isham of Lamport, Sir Christopher Hatton of Holmby […]. These men were interested not in politics but in practical improvements and their estates. They planted trees or were concerned about village schools, and they clutched at the three philosophers as possible re-creators of rural society.
But is this an adequate picture? Kumpera (1979: 37) does not think so: It seems to me that the ambitions of Comenius and his friends were somewhat higher, Because of his universality Comenius could speak far beyond these confines to all who were inclined towards educational and religious reforms, were willing to support the development of scholarship, and were dissatisfied with the present state of affairs, even though the degree of their involvement and their conceptions about the method of reform might vary with their individual political stance. The Comenians’ supporters included not only Pym and other leaders of the puritan revolution, but also representatives of the moderate opposition led by Archbishop Williams and many others who were later royalists. The Comenian program was not framed in an exclusively political sense; its realization did not depend upon a particular political system or ideology. […] The Comenians received support because they expressed a definite systematic support for reforming the sad state of education, scholarship, and the Church. Their plans were sympathetic to many of the opponents of Stuart absolutism, who of course held a variety of political viewpoints — from convinced monarchism to radical republicanism. Therefore the Comenians were in no position, even had they wished, to give this opposition any sort of philosophical platform, which would qualify Comenius and his friends as the philosophers of the English revolution. Moreover, the Comenian group itself was by no means politically or ideologically united […].16
That there was not a single Laudian bishop among the patrons of the three foreigners is significant, but among the ranks of the church — even if not bishops — and in the universities (Tyacke 2001 [1978]) and such professional societies as the Royal College of Physicians, there could certainly be found adherents of the Laudian church (soon to become known as the ‘High Church party’) who were also Baconians — and of a high intellectual caliber. If they were interested in implementing any aspects of the Baconian reforms, they were likely to have some interest in Comenius, and not to see this in narrow partisan terms.17 Hartlib had many contacts at Oxford (Feingold 1984). 16. Kearney (1970: 101) also disagrees with Trevor-Roper about Isham and Hatton, suggesting that “perhaps Comenius’s own link with the puritans have been exaggerated”. 17. An example would be Gilbert Watts (1590?–1657) of Lincoln College, Oxford, the translator of Bacon’s De Augmentis into English (1640) and a close friend of Joachim Hübner (1610– 1666), a member of the Comenian circle and one of Hartlib’s correspondents (Webster 1976: 49; Green 1979: 184; Kumpera 1979: 50n.14; Tyacke 2001 [1978]: 256); Feingold 1984: 74). Similarly,
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Trevor-Roper (1968: 240) characterizes Hartlib, Dury and Comenius as “three philosophers […] who together may perhaps be called […] the real philosophers, the only philosophers, of the English Revolution” — because their work provided the theoretical basis for the efforts of the Country party, “to decentralize and secularize public life.” To Trevor-Roper this is “vulgar” Baconianism — adapted to contemporary needs and accentuating pragmatic features of Bacon with a mixture of mysticism, prophecy and chiliasm (Kumpera 1979: 33). Certainly such a thing existed (cf. Webster 1976: 499); but is it correct to assume that a given Baconian was “vulgar” simply because he lived in “the country”? We must ask, with Kumpera (ibid.), “To what extent were the Comenians directly linked with the political opposition, and how far did they serve as its political ideologues?” It is understandable that much of 20th-century British historiography tended to see Trevor-Roper’s ‘three foreigners’ as a unit centered on the puritan revolution, thus politicizing Comenius in accord with enduring battlelines. Comenius himself, certainly a visionary reformer, could pass for a revolutionary ex post facto (the puritans in the civil war, the genesis of the Royal Society). However, Comenius’s connection with England, while important, was only one chapter, indeed a frustrating one, in his life. Unlike Hartlib, who would live most of his life in England, Comenius spent less than eight months there. There were, then, certainly ‘Broad-Church’ and even a few ‘High-Church’ figures near the center of the Comenian movement, and it is to two of these, Sir Justinian Isham and Bishop Williams, an old friend of the Isham family, that we now turn. These wealthy and influential individuals had been among the earliest cultivators of the legacy of Francis Bacon — as it was then understood — and both contributed considerable funds to Comenius’s support. 2.1 Justinian Isham Justinian Isham (1610–1675), second baronet of Lamport (Northants), was the son of Sir John Isham (1582–1651), who had become friendly with the future Bishop Williams when the latter was a young curate at Walgrave, a village just 3½ miles from Lamport. In a celebrated instance in 1618 Williams, with the support of the elder Isham, refused to be cowed by a local puritan zealot trying to prevent the sale of beer and the playing of music on the Sabbath (Isham 1951; Fincham 1993: 100–103).
Dewhurst (1976: 441) notes that while, at this period, “medicine was dominated by such Anglican Royalists as Harvey, Scarburgh, Wren, Willis, Ent, Bathurst, Power and Charleton”, nevertheless “Royalists too benefited from anti-scholastic trends, from the application of Baconianism and the general encouragement of science during the interregnum.”
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Sir John’s sister, Susanna, was the wife of Sir Martin Stuteville (c.1569–1631) of Dalham, Suffolk, who had sailed to America with Sir Francis Drake.18 Stuteville was the good friend and regular correspondent of Joseph Mede (1586–1638), a celebrated theologian and biblical scholar at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Stuteville may have helped Mede in his election as fellow at Christ’s in 1613; even more significant was the backing Mede received from the great Arminian19 bishop Lancelot Andrewes.20 Stuteville so admired Mede that he sent his two sons to Christ’s, as well as four other relatives — one of whom was his wife’s brother’s son, Justinian Isham (Jue 2006: 11).21 As his tutor, Mede became close not only to Justinian but to the whole Isham family. He and Justinian continued their intellectual discussions for years through letters, and Mede was a frequent guest at the manor in Lamport until his unexpected death on 1 October 1638 (Stephens 2008: 104). Isham attended Christ’s as a fellow commoner (an undergraduate with the privilege of dining at the fellows’ table). Like many young men intending to go into the law, Isham did not complete the university degree, but following the usual custom of fellow commoners, stayed only a year (1627–1628). He was admitted to the Middle Temple on 11 October 1628. For the next several years he resided in (or just outside of) London, journeying to the Netherlands in 1633; he married in November 1634, shortly after his return to England (Isham 1955: xxxiv–xxxvi). Mede was also a friend of Samuel Hartlib; they had become acquainted not long after Hartlib’s arrival in England in 1628. Popkin (1992: 96) suggests Dr. William Twisse (1578–1646), the puritan theologian, as the person who probably
18. Presumably on Drake’s last voyage in 1595, jointly with John Hawkins, to the West Indies. 19. Strictly speaking, the Arminians were followers of the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius (Harmenssen, 1560–1609), who broke with many of the more rigid doctrines of Calvinism. In England, however, the term Arminianism, while it involved similar doctrinal controversies, had more to do with specifically Anglican issues of church politics and style of worship. It designated those whom the puritans most strongly opposed, the followers of Archbishop William Laud, adherents of what would later be called the High-Church party. Because the church was not so polarized during the life of Andrewes as it was during the period of the present study, it has been questioned whether the term Arminian (even in the English sense) really applies to him; as the forerunner of the later Arminians, he has sometimes been called “proto-Arminian.” However, he was in many ways the forerunner of the Broad-Church party as well. 20. Andrewes was the founder of the “Beauty in Holiness” movement that later came to be identified with Laud. Mede’s youthful tract De Sanctitate Relativa was addressed to Andrewes, who was so impressed with it that he offered Mede a position as his household chaplain. (Jue 2006: 11, 13). 21. Sir Martin Stuteville of Dalham Suffolk, d. 13 Jun 1631 aet. 62; married 16 Feb. 1607 Susanna Isham (sister of Sir John Isham; she was born 19 March 1580, buried 18 January 1653).
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introduced them. (All three were avid students of the acopalypse.)22 It was almost certainly Mede who later introduced Isham to Hartlib. A native of Elbing, a city in East Prussia southeast of Danzig, Hartlib, whose mother was English, had previously studied at Cambridge (1625–1626). He came back to England in 1628, where he would spend the rest of his life. From almost the moment of his return, Hartlib was Comenius’s champion in England. After reading the latter’s Janua Linguarum Reserata (“The Gateway of Languages Unlocked”, 1638), he began a correspondence with Comenius, over the course of which he supplied the Moravian philosopher with works by Francis Bacon, whom Comenius greatly admired. In turn, Comenius sent Hartlib his own manuscript writings, which the latter circulated throughout England. Today, Mede is usually thought of as a puritan, but that has more to do with the influence of his apocalyptic writings than his real position (Hutton 2001). As Popkin shows (1992: 91–92, 99–100), “the intellectual cross-fertilization between Mede and Twisse has remained a crucial part of the interpretative apparatus of Millennial thinkers up to the present time” (cf. Webster 1976: 32–34, also 9–11), but this was a revisionist interpretation of Mede’s work. In truth Mede was a very moderate Calvinist; indeed it used to be said that he sought the “Median” way in all religious questions (Isham 1954: xxxiv). Had Mede actually been a puritan, it is difficult to understand why at the end of his life (1638) he would have written a short discourse, “Churches, That Is Appropriate Places for Christian Worship, both in and ever since the Apostles’ Times”, in which he “deduced from the early Fathers that ceremonious forms of worship were practiced from apostolic times, and [that] ornaments [were] allowed to aid devotion” (Parry 2008: 28); or why he should have addressed this treatise to Archbishop Laud (Jue 2006: 16n.47); or why Laud in return should have offered him a position as his household chaplain.23 Isham’s first letter to Hartlib is dated 20 January I639 (Turnbull 1947: 111), only a few months after Mede’s death. Thus it is no surprise to find that shortly after their correspondence began, Hartlib lent Isham a Comenius manuscript, as seen in Hartlib’s letter of 30 June 1639: “bee pleased to lend mee the Comenius MS Pansophiae Christianae Liber M. which you had from mee some monthes
22. Hartlib, in his earliest surviving letter to Mede (6 March 1634), mentions that someone in Leyden liked Mede’s book Clavis Apocalyptica, probably referring to the much-enlarged second edition of 1632. (Jue 2006: 77). 23. Mede declined the honour: “May I have revealed myself not to be desirous of any preferment, which would transplant me from the University” (14 March 1638; see G. Isham 1954: xxxvii).
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agoe I haue special use for it” (Isham Manuscripts, IC 227).24 By this time Hartlib was already aiming to bring Comenius to England, for further along in the same letter he told Isham (30 June 1639), “I see now plainly that if the good and worthy man (I meane still Comenius) were prouided with a competency of his subsistence but for one yeare, he should need no further assistance upon the same grounds from any Mortal man whatsoeuer” (Isham Manuscripts, IC 227; see also Isham 1954: xxxvii). On 5 August 1639, replying to Hartlib’s query of 31 July about “a most learned MS concerning the discouery of the Mysterie of the number of the Beast [that] Mr. Mede of worthy memorie did highly recommend […] unto mee” (Isham Manuscripts, IC 230), Isham told him, “I haue not yet seene that MS, concerning the number 666, which you mention”,25 immediately adding: “concerning the Pansophicall designe my Affections can no way abate.” But he went on to sound a note of caution: “I am much afraid these Tymes of distraction (like troubled waters) will hardly receive the Image of it [i.e. pansophia] now so well as they otherwise might” (Hartlib Papers, 44/2/3A; cf. Turnbull 1947: 347). Isham was already so a keen a Baconian that he had prepared an ‘Epitome’ or summary of Bacon’s entire Instauratio Magna and sent a copy to William Rawley, Bacon’s former chaplain and personal secretary. (The work does not appear to have survived.) Replying to Isham in July 1639, Rawley wrote: I haue perused deligently your observations, or rather abridgement, of the Lord St. Albans greatest work, his Instauratio Magna. You haue not onely saluted, some of the extreame coasts, but haue made an exact and Industrious perambulation through all the parts of that work.
And he urged Isham for the benefit of our age and the honour of the deceased, to undertake some titles of the Natural History; wherein I would recommend unto you that designed title, in his L[ordshi]p’s Historia Ventorum of the Sympathy and Antipathy of things for an Assay, in the compiling thereof to follow his Lp’s way in those 200 titles 24. As the manuscript had belonged to Hartlib in the first place, his use of the word ‘lend’ probably means that he needed it back temporarily, not that he had bestowed it on Isham. — I have nowhere found a discussion of Mede’s knowledge of Comenius; Webster (1976: 32) suggests that Hartlib had first acquainted Mede with Comenius’s writings as well as those of his teacher at Herborn, Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588–1638) — cf. the interesting note in Jue (2006: 225n.87, and references in Hotson 2000: 183, 206, 208). Whatever the extent of his actual acquaintance with the ideas of Comenius, Mede would surely have found wide areas of agreement. Among the books purchased by Justinian Isham under Mede’s tutelage at Cambridge were the works of Alsted (Isham 1954: xxxiv). 25. The manuscript in question was Francis Potter’s An Interpretation of the Number 666 (Jue 2006: 79, cf. Webster 1976: 32–34).
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extant in Latin which would be a work worthy of your judgement and embracement.26 (G. Isham 1954: xxxvi)
Another member of the local gentry, of similar religious views to Isham and a patron of learning, was Sir Christopher Hatton,27 who was already acquainted with Hartlib by early 1637 (Turnbull 1953: 110). Isham soon recruited him in aid of Comenius. Writing to Hartlib on 2 September 1639, Isham reports, I was not long since with Sir Christopher Hatton when wee had speeches of the Pansophicall designe; hee doth seeme very highly to approove of it, & would willingly (he saith) give an annual pension towards it were Comenius here in England […]. when wee come to London next terme wee shall speake with you of it farther. (J. Isham, Osborn Papers 1639; see also Turnbull 1947: 361)
Once Comenius arrived, Isham followed through. In a letter of 22 November 1641, he told Hartlib: This terme I was resolued not to delay Mr Comenius […]. I haue desired to lay downe ten pounds […] which I give unto Mr Comenius for the present: not doubting of Sir Christopher Hatton’s doing the like. (Hartlib Papers, HP 44/2/13A)
Comenius wrote Isham the following week (1 December 1641) to thank him: So it is that I have built upon the foundations laid by Bacon, but as those seemed to me too narrow and incapable of sustaining so great a structure as the onward march of time is now building — THE UNIVERSAL REFORM OF ALL THINGS — mine are broader and more deeply laid […]. Now nothing but thanks once again for the contribution you have sent. (Ten pounds sterling were counted out for me in your name by Mr. Hartlib, that best of friends whom we share.) Your generosity will serve me as an encouragement … (Isham Manuscripts, IC 241; the Latin text is in Hitchens 1997: 202; translation mine: J.W.)
From the time he arrived in London in October 1641 until his departure via Holland for Sweden in June 1642, Comenius lived with Samuel Hartlib in his house 26. The Historia Ventorum was published in November 1622 as the first of six histories in Bacon’s fragmentary Historia Naturalis et Experimentalis, dedicated to Prince Charles, which was to be the third division of the Instauratio Magna. For the History of the Sympathy and Antipathy of Things, intended as another part of the HN, Bacon wrote only a brief introduction. Rawley here recommends that Isham undertake the writing of this and other fragmentary histories, or mere titles. The Historia Naturalis begins with a list of 130 titles suggested for investigation. Why Rawley speaks of “200 titles” is not clear; perhaps he simply misremembered the number. 27. Hatton, like Isham’s uncle Sir Martin Stuteville, had a connection with Sir Francis Drake, though less direct. His father, also named Sir Christopher Hatton (d.1619), was the heir (though not direct descendent) of the Sir Christopher Hatton who was Drake’s friend and principal investor in his voyage round the world (1577–1580).
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in Duke’s Place near Aldgate in the east end of the City of London. Shortly after his arrival, Hartlib brought him to dine at Bishop Williams’ residence in Westminster.28 John Dury was also present. At dinner, the bishop asked Comenius whether he had brought his family with him; Comenius answered no, he had not intended to, nor would it have been easy, and Williams seemed surprised and urged him to send for them. After dinner, the bishop spoke with Hartlib and Dury in his private chamber to enquire why they had not suggested that Comenius bring his family. If it was a matter of expense, Williams personally committed himself, until such time as an official stipend could be secured through parliament, to grant Comenius an annual salary of £120 sterling, in addition to the contribution of other supporters. “after dinner, proffering me his right hand, he placed ten Jacobus pieces into mine, a bounty so large that I greatly marvelled at it.”29 Isham was not yet aware of Williams’s key role in the patronage of Comenius; for in a letter of 9 October 1641 he told Hartlib: This next [law term] … I doubt not but wee shall all meete & conclude of a way for the advanceing of Mr Comenius his endeavors: & that in the meane tyme it may appeare to you I haue not bin unmindfull of him, hearing that the Bishop of Lincolne [Williams] was in these parts I repaired purposely to him in the behalfe of Mr. Comenius, who told me hee had already bin with him, & what he both did, & intended for him (if he thought good to continue heere) hereafter. (Hartlib Papers, HP 44/2/1lA.)
2.2 Bishop John Williams John Williams (1582–1650),30 from a noble family of Aberconwy, Wales, had been one of the most influential men in England under James I, who appointed him his personal chaplain in 1617, Dean of Westminster in 1620, Bishop of Lincoln in 1621, and in the same year, successor to Sir Francis Bacon as Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. But after Charles I came to the throne in 1625, Williams fell out of favour. He was immediately replaced as Lord Keeper, and in 1633 Charles 28. The best accounts of Isham’s support of Comenius are in Hitchens (1997) and Stephens (2008: 99–164, esp. 104–114); on Comenius dining with Bishop Williams, see Young (1932: 64– 67). 29. The source of all the above is Comenius’s autobiographical fragment Continuatio Admonitionis Fraternae De Temperando Charitate Zelo ad S. Maresium (published in 1669 but only rediscovered in 1913; see Young 1932; for English transl., see Comenius 1975). Comenius there calls Williams “Pansophiae fautor munificus”. 30. The earliest biography of Williams is Hacket (1693); Philips (1700) is its abridgement. Another is by Campbell (1846, chaps. 57–60] 2, 434–509). The most recent are by Roberts (1938) and Blethen (1972).
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promoted his rival William Laud to the see of Canterbury; but Williams tacked toward the puritan side and remained influential. Laud began using the Star Chamber to hound Williams as early as 1628. His aim was to remove Williams as Dean of Westminster, or failing that, to fine him heavily to keep that powerful position. In all this Laud had Charles’s full backing. It was no great difference in religious views that lay behind Laud’s rivalry with Williams, but rather the fact that the politically astute Williams recognized in the archbishop a lack of political sense that made it difficult to continue managing the religious differences within the church in the Jacobean manner (cf. Patterson 1997) and would prove dangerous to church and kingdom.31 As one of the small group of anti-Laudian bishops, Williams became politically allied with the puritans in the 1630s. Like so many leading English churchmen, he was a moderate Calvinist — “no puritan, but sympathetic to puritan scruples” (Guibbory 1998: 47). He believed in “the Jacobean compromise” — cleaving to the middle line between the extremes of radical puritanism and Romanism. Williams was by no means opposed to splendour and ceremony in any aspect of church worship (Guibbory 1998: 46–47; Parry 2008: 23, 65–66; cf. Barbour 2002: 27, 107); in this he was a follower of Lancelot Andrewes and his views did not differ greatly from Laud’s; he was simply more flexible in their application. There was nothing Laud disliked more than the public airing of rancorous theological disputes. Williams’s The Holy Table, published in November 1636, a sharp polemic against Laud’s policy of a fixed altar rather than a moveable table, led to his trial in the Star Chamber on trumped-up charges, where he was eventually convicted on a side-issue and sent to the Tower in August 1637. Forced by the desperate state of his finances to reconvene parliament on 3 November 1640 (the ‘Long Parliament’), Charles saw the benefit of having Williams in the House of Lords; he was released from the Tower and took his seat in parliament on 16 November 1640, less than a year before Comenius’s arrival (Hitchens 1997: 201). A few weeks later Laud, the man chiefly responsible for Williams’s imprisonment, was impeached by the Long Parliament on false charges of treason and himself sent to the Tower, where he would remain until his execution on 10 January 1645. The king also restored Williams to his former dignity as Dean of Westminster, to which he had been appointed by King James in 1621. Thus at the time of 31. As Ambrose Philips (1700: 204) aptly phrased it, “Laud was fit to govern Saints, the other [Williams] to deal with men, the difficulter task by far.” (Quoted in a discussion by Roberts 1938: 118–119). Not so much Laud’s policies, but his autocratic and inflexible way of implementing them, would cost Charles his kingdom, Laud his church, and both of them their lives.
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Comenius’s arrival, Williams was the most influential prelate in the church, and his support was crucial. Then in the early part of December, the king unexpectedly elevated Williams to Archbishop of York, making him de facto head of the Church of England. As Isham wrote Hartlib on the 13 December 1641: “My Lord Archbishop of York being now preferred to higher dignitie will be the more capable of conferring some good thing upon Mr. Comenius” (Hartlib Papers, HP 44/2/15A; Hitchens 1997: 201). Yet everything stood on tottering foundations, as opposition to episcopal representation in parliament, and against the entire institution of the episcopacy, was reaching a climax. As seen from the closing section of a long letter dated 8/18 October, 1641 to his friends in Leszno, Comenius (1974a: 115–116), after less than a month in England, already had forebodings about the factors that could (and did) prevent the accomplishment of his mission there. Towards the end of the letter, Comenius speaks approvingly of the piety of the English parliament and briefly describes their willingness to sponsor a project toward that favourite goal, the conversion of the Jews. Such apocalyptic disposition seemed to hold out promise for his pansophic college, but he closes on a darker note: “May God grace them with His presence, lest they wander off in a way damaging to their salvific purview. But here, be aware that some do fear, and anxiously expect, something to come from them, which I shall add.” For the bitter controversy over the status of bishops in the church and in parliament was most troubling. Comenius notes the puritan agitation to eliminate the very existence of bishops, or at least to “retain the name and pastoral office, but to be divested of worldly pomp, and such revenues and the luxury derived from them, and the dealing with political affairs”. The key role of Archbishop Williams in Comenius’s support made this a matter of direct concern. That the leader of the anti-episcopal agitation in parliament, John Pym (1584–1643), was also one of Comenius’s strongest backers was more perplexing than reassuring to a man whose desire for Christian unity transcended narrow political advantage. In his letter home, Comenius continued: Our Bishop of Lincoln himself — inter episcopos doctissimus, politissimus et politicissimus — stripped of his episcopate three years ago and packed into prison, but freed last year by Parliament — begins to hear bad things in his name, and there are those who predict badly for him: not only scil. loss of degree along with the others, but perhaps even new imprisonments. Certain hidden efforts, and in part open enough, have indeed been employed against parliament.32 Nevertheless I 32. I translate this sentence literally; its meaning is somewhat obscure, but most likely Comenius refers to moves by the episcopal side against the parliamentary (anti-episcopal) side. Cf. Kumpera (1979: 42): “There is some evidence of his partly secret, partly entirely open, activity against parliament.” Of course Williams was himself a leading member of parliament.
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wish better for that best of men, and I hold out hope. When he invited me to dinner and conversation recently with messrs Dury and Hartlib, there were no more than modest references to such things. He said only that he was not entirely sure whether he would now be counted with the living or the dead brethren, promising some promotion for us and our [project] if things were to turn out more mildly. This must also be added: practically every day there flies out some new treatise about reforming the church and eliminating the bishops, based on both sacred and political rationales. Archbishop Laud is still in prison with no hope of liberation. Meanwhile, during the time when parliament has not been in session,33 committees were appointed to better enquire into its acts and to get to know its quarrels and various grievances (which the parliament had not been able to clear). Which has been done. And they say that such things are coming to pass, that they despair of its health.34 The decree of Parliament made before its dismissal, about removing from the church the ceremonies, altars, crosses, etc., introduced by the Archbishop [Laud], has already almost everywhere in these days been ordered into execution. In a certain church here in London was a window in which, they say, there was a religious and artistic picture that had cost 4,000 pounds, that is, 16,000 imperials. The ambassador of the king of Spain living here was promising to make wholly good on that amount. But I know not what superabundant zeal of the populace spurned the money offered and smashed that window, adjudging that profit should not be sought from idolatrous things (Comenius 1974a: 115–116; translation mine: J.W.).
And in a letter of 3 March 1645 to the Calvinist Zbigniew Gorajski (c.1590–1655), who was then castellan of the city of Chelm, Poland, Comenius recalled that while in England, he had expressed his displeasure at the acts of violence, but to no avail: “Etiam cum ibi essem, violentias mihi displicere ad aliquos illorum contestatus sum, sed frustra” (Comenius 1892: 95 [letter LXXXII]). 3. Comenius’s support fragments Opposition to Laud, to Strafford, to the Star Chamber, had up to this point united the reformers. But now, major differences over church affairs began to emerge. As early as 11 December 1640, a mass rally had been staged outside Westminster Hall, the home of Parliament, to present the famous “Root and Branch Petition” for the complete abolition of bishops from the church. By summer of 33. The Long Parliament had recessed on 9 September and would not reconvene until 20 October, twelve days after Comenius wrote this. 34. The end result, under Pym’s leadership, was the Grand Remonstrance, a summary in 204 points of all parliament’s objections to the king’s policies, which called, among other things, for the ejection of all bishops from Parliament. It was passed after lengthy debate on 22 November, but evidently Comenius already had a good idea of what was in store.
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1641, changes had brought a development which would have “fateful consequences for the plans of the Comenians” — the formation of three parties, High-Church, Broad-Church, and Low-Church (Root-and-Branch or Presbyterian). The HighChurch party remained committed to the ideals of the Laudian Church, but was open to reform at least insofar as it recognized the failure of the king’s Personal Rule and the politics of Laud and Strafford. It was led by Bishop Hall and supported by most bishops and by the universities, especially Oxford (see Kumpera 1979: 40–41). The Broad-Church party, which “in spite of its respect for the traditional Anglican rites was far more inclined towards substantial changes in the administration of the Church, and was in fact convinced of their necessity” (Kumpera 1979: 40), had adherents in both houses, and in the beginning phase of the revolution held the majority. Led by Bishops Ussher and Williams, it still had the support of John Pym, one of Comenius’s most powerful sponsors. But in the summer of 1641, Pym and his followers went over to the anti-episcopal Root-and-Branch party, greatly strengthening it. At the same time this represented a political split among the supporters of Comenius, since it directly threatened Bishops Williams and Ussher in the Lords (Kumpera 1979: 41) — Comenians of the Broad-Church party. For about a week after the reconvening of parliament in October, things still looked hopeful for the Comenians, who were expecting to put their educational reforms into action. But at the beginning of November came a shock — news of Catholic rebellion in Ireland (Kumpera 1979: 44–45). Amidst widespread rumours of a Laudian ‘popish plot’ to take over England, the puritans regarded the High-Church Party as fifth-columnists for Rome (Milton 1994: 111–112). Meanwhile, under Pym’s leadership, the Grand Remonstrance was prepared, a summary in 204 points of all of parliament’s objections to the king’s policies, which called, among other things, for the ejection of all bishops from Parliament. The Remonstrance would be passed after lengthy debate on 22 November, but Comenius already had a good idea of what was in store. As leader of the Root-andBranch party, Pym now directly opposed Bishop Williams. This signalled the end of Comenius’s hopes for England and, as Polišenský (1978: 170) suggests, “must have confirmed Comenius in the conviction that a general improvement in human affairs would only be realizable through education” rather than through politics. Williams, whom the king, in releasing him from the Tower (November 1640), had made an intermediary between himself and opposition peers, was at first a major player in the Long Parliament and helped bring about the fall of Strafford. Indeed with Laud in prison, he had become the most powerful man in the church. But now Williams drew the wrath the anti-episcopal puritans had formerly reserved for Laud (cf. Roberts 1938: 175; 182–183.) Thus, despite the long enmity between Laud and Williams, by the time of Comenius’s arrival their respective
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followers were in similar straits. As the Long Parliament was from the start a rejection of the king’s policies and applied intense opposition to the Laudian church in general and to the bishops in particular, Williams “became more and more disillusioned with his role” (Polišenský 1978: 170). On 26 December 1641, a crowd of apprentices led by Sir Richard Wiseman, with jeers and cries of “no bishop, no king”, prevented 12 of the bishops from entering the House of Lords. Williams, now Archbishop of York, had his robes torn from his back (Mortimer 1776, vol. III, 242). Later the mob attacked Westminster Abbey, intending to wreck the organ and various church ornaments, but were driven off by the students and staff under the direction of Archbishop Williams, who was also Dean of Westminster (Campbell 2: 487). Wiseman was killed by a tile hurled from the battlements by one of the defenders (Spraggon 2003: 69). As leader of the bishops in Parliament, Williams organized and delivered a formal protest to the Commons, widely believed to have the king’s approval. Although the bishops were within their rights, the Lords refused to admit them. On 27 December 1641, ten bishops, including Williams, were sent to the Tower; they would not emerge until 5 May 1642, at which point Williams jumped bail and followed the king to York. While the arrested bishops sat in prison, Pym on 25 January 1641/42 denounced them in a powerful speech; the Commons, under his leadership, impeached them for treason. On 14 February an act was passed depriving them of their seats in parliament. Shortly thereafter their incomes were cut off. It would be twenty years before they were readmitted to the Lords. 4. Bulwer’s links to the Comenians I have focused on Isham and Williams because they are the figures close to Comenius who connect, at one remove, with John Bulwer. To demonstrate these connections a targeted prosopographic approach will be taken, the primary goal being not to discover a documentary ‘smoking gun’ but to corroborate, through various sources in various ways, the existence of a network of relevant social relationships and interests. Prosopography has been described by historian Lawrence Stone as the investigation of the common background characteristics of a group of actors in history by means of a collective study of their lives. The method employed is to establish a universe to be studied, and then to ask a set of uniform questions […]. The various types of information about the individuals in the universe are then juxtaposed and combined, and are examined for significant variables. They are tested both for internal correlations and for correlations with other forms of behaviour. According to the exponents of prosopography, [among] its purpose[s] is to make sense of political action, to help explain ideological or cultural change … (Stone 1987: 45).
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A recent overview attests that “The use and development of prosopography […] is closely connected to the problem of scarcity of historical data” (Verboven et al. 2007: 36). Moreover, “Intellectual history […] is highly suited for a prosopographic approach”, because ideas — philosophic, scientific, ideological or other […] need to be reformulated and communicated generation after generation. The personal history of the people doing this determines to a large extent which ideas will ‘live’ and which will ‘die’ […]. Prosopography makes it possible to assess the impact of ideas and the factors in people’s lives determining this impact (ibid., 49–50).
A sort of prosopographical approach lies behind the well-known “Merton hypothesis” on the role of “the puritans” in the English scientific revolution. Hopefully the scale applied here is sufficiently fine-grained to avoid the objections noted by Henry (1992: 179, 190–191, 202). 4.1 Edward Goldsmith In the dedication of Bulwer’s first book, Chirologia (1644) to Edward Goldsmith of Gray’s Inn, Bulwer proposes a plan for research on the human body as a means of communication, of which Chirologia and its companion, Chironomia, are the first fruits. Bulwer recalls that when he drew up this plan, the first person to whom he showed it was his “Intellectual Friende” Goldsmith; and that the latter not only gave Bulwer strong encouragement but also promoted the project among his friends. Edward’s nephew Francis Goldsmith, who is known to have resided at Gray’s Inn between 1635 and at least 164235 himself wrote a laudatory poem for Chirologia. We need to know more about Edward Goldmith. How and when did Bulwer become acquainted with him? And when, and in what context, did he show him the outline of his project on expression and gesture? Though he is nearly lost to history, a few basic facts about Edward Goldsmith can be established. He was the son of Sir Francis Goldsmith (1550–1605) of Crayford, Kent, knighted 23 July 1603, and Catherine Oundley Goldsmith; he was born at Crayford in the mid-1590s, the younger brother of Francis Goldsmith, gent. (1587–1634) of Coldharbour (London) and St. Giles in the Fields. A child named Edward Goldsmith, of the same parents, was baptized at Crayford on 16 June 1592. Though this child died the following day, the same name was evidently given to another son born not long thereafter. The “Edoardus Goldsmith, equitis fil.” who contributed a Latin poem 35. From the records of Gill vs. Hale, a case in the Court of Chivalry (February–April 1640), in which Francis Goldsmith was a witness. http://arts-itsee.bham.ac.uk/AnaServer?chivalry+0 + start.anv+case=247 (consulted 26 Dec. 2010).
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(with chronogram) to a collection of poems on the death of their fellow-collegian Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales (1594–1612), by members of Magdalen College, Oxford in 1612,36 is certainly our Edward Goldsmith. There is no record of his having matriculated, but attending a college as an unmatriculated commoner was a frequent practice for gentlemen’s sons in those days; and his older brother Francis had matriculated from Magdalen on 13 March, 1606/7, aged 19.37 Edward was admitted to Gray’s 18 February 1620/21,38 and was called to the bar on 27 May 1636. Edward’s father had a sister, Anne Goldsmith, who around 1576 married the jurist William Lewin (d.1598). Gabriel Harvey, in the dedication of his Ciceronianus to Lewin, praised her for her beauty and virtue. Their youngest child, Judith Lewin (1590–1625), married Sir John Isham of Lamport on 31 October 1607, and their first child, born 20 January 1610/11, was Justinian Isham. Thus, Edward Goldsmith, the ‘intellectual friende’ and patron of John Bulwer, was first cousin to Justinian Isham’s mother, and Justinian was second cousin to Edward’s nephew Francis Goldsmith, who was only four years younger and, like Justinian a student, at the Inns of Court.39 Bulwer does not say when it was that he first shared his plan with Edward Goldsmith. But Chirologia and Chironomia are works of assiduous research and could not have been completed in a short time. Assuming Bulwer first showed his idea to Goldsmith at least a few years before the books were published, Bulwer’s plan most probably originated either during or immediately after Comenius’s time in London (September 1641–June 1642). Even had it originated earlier, Bulwer would have been working on it while Comenius was in London, and most likely (as was the normal practice in those days) parts of the manuscript were circulated to Goldsmith and his friends before its appearance in print. 4.2 John Harmar Another admirer of Bulwer, the Greek scholar, schoolmaster, and physician John Harmar (1595–1670), wrote dedicatory poems to all of Bulwer’s books but 36. Luctus Posthumus, sive Erga Defunctum Illustrussimum Henricum Wallis Principem, Collegii Beatae Mariae Magdalenae. Henry was a former student of Magdalen, having entered in 1605. 37. Francis was admitted to Gray’s Inn on 1 March 1598/99, when he was only about 12 (Foster 1889: 96). This was done to establish seniority, and was not very unusual at the time (see Pearce 1848: 384). 38. The same Edward Goldsmith is entered again under the date 15 May 1622. A different Edward Goldsmith, eldest son of Clement Gouldsmith, Esq., “formerly reader of this Inn, deceased”, was admitted 6 March 1624 (see Foster 1889: 163, 166, 175). 39. Middle Temple is a straight walk south of Gray’s Inn, mostly down Chancery Lane. He was admitted to Gray’s Inn on 25 April 1634, readmitted 27 Feb. 1639/40 (Foster 1889: 204, 225).
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the last. (His absence from the Anthropometamorphosis, first published in 1650, is almost certainly a consequence of his having accepted the post of Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford that year, after all surviving royalists had been ousted by the parliamentary visitors in 1648.) Although Harmar was known to have enjoyed writing erudite dedications in Latin, Greek, and even English and had a reputation for fairly harmless venality, his enthusiasm for Bulwer appears genuine. But there is no obvious clue as to how their paths would have crossed. Bulwer would most probably have met Harmar through his father, the prominent apothecary Thomas Bulwer (c.1580–1649). When the elder Bulwer moved to St Albans in 1631 or 1632 (Wollock 1996: 2–3), he took over an apothecary shop (probably his father-in-law’s) situated just north of the abbey.40 The St Albans Free School, where John Harmar was headmaster from 1626, was (and in part still is) located in the abbey gateway. That the headmaster of the town’s grammar school would be acquainted with a neighbouring apothecary-physician who had recently moved up from London, is hardly a rash assumption, even less so when we consider that Harmar, already an ordained clergyman and M.A., had himself studied medicine at Oxford and supplicated for a bachelor of medicine degree at exactly this time (1632). Bulwer would likely have met Harmar on a visit to his parents some time between ca.1632 and 1635 (when Harmar left St Albans to become undermaster at the Westminster [St. Peter’s] College near London, where he not only taught but ministered to the boys’ health. Harmar’s good friend Robert Herrick (1591–1674) addresses one of his poems in Hesperides (1648) to “Jo. Harmar, physician to the College of Westminster”. Harmar could very well have introduced Bulwer to Edward Goldsmith. He must have known him: they were the same age and had been fellow-students at Magdalen College, Oxford. In the same book on the death of Prince Henry for which Goldsmith wrote a Latin poem, Harmar wrote one in Greek. Harmar must 40. The property, consisting of three tenements, was located in the Abbey Parish, probably on Church Street (now High Street or its continuation, George Street). It was quite near the Prior’s House where Thomas Cowley the Younger resided, and not far from the Fleur de Lys Inn on French Row, owned by John Sympson (mayor in 1648). — This information is gleaned from the Poor Rate Assessments, Borough of St. Albans, 1655–1672 (MS., St. Albans Central Library, Archive Collection of the District Council, Item 311). The approximate location of the property has been determined from the order of ratepayers on the rate collector’s itinerary, checked against the known locations of some of the ratepayers’ properties. As of 15 July 1656, as noted in John Bulwer’s will of that date (Wollock 1996: 32), the Bulwer properties were under lease to James Rainbridge, Edwarde Thomas, and Charles Tirrell (apothecary). In the earliest extant rates report, that of 16 May 1655, their names appear 24th, 25th, and 26th, respectively, on the rate-collector’s list, an order maintained, mutatis mutandis, for all the assessments in the book. For further background, see Smith & North (2003).
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have been particularly well known at Magdalen, having entered the previous year (1611) as demy.41 This would imply that Bulwer had already known Edward Goldsmith for some five to nine years before he conceived his project.42 Furthermore, Harmar would surely have been interested in Comenius. For one thing, as Salmon (1966: 375) says of Comenius’s Janua Linguarum Reserata (1631), “Every schoolmaster in England must have known the work, which went into edition after edition.” But Harmar was no average schoolmaster. He had himself edited the sixth (1626) and seventh (1631) editions of the original Janua Linguarum of the Irish Jesuit William Bathe (1564–1614) — the forerunner and prototype of Comenius’s book (Corcoran 1911: 97–99; on Comenius, see ibid.). In addition, Harmar was close to Bishop Williams; he was one of those alluded to by Izaak Walton in his Life of George Herbert (one of many poets and intellectuals who had enjoyed the bishop’s patronage) where he wrote of Williams that “Whatever discrepancy of opinion there may be, in justly appreciating the character of this Prelate, it must be owned that he was a munificent patron of learning and learned men” (Walton 1807 [1670]: 304, note t). Williams had been a close friend of Sir Francis Bacon, and after the latter’s death in 1626, Williams’s secretary William Boswell (d.1650) became one of Bacon’s literary executors. Williams had long been interested in educational reform: as early as 1632, he had sponsored Hartlib’s plan for an academy of young noblemen and offered space in his episcopal palace at Buckden, Huntingdonshire for that purpose (Smoluk 2009: 224). Thus it is not surprising to find Williams as the leading ecclesiastical supporter of Baconian reform, and eventually, of the visit of Comenius in 1641. As Dean of Westminster, Williams would have seen Harmar very frequently. WIllams took a special interest in the College of St. Peter, located practically next door to Westminster Abbey, where Harmar was undermaster from 1636 to 1650 (Young 1932: 83–84). Wood tells us in Fasti Oxonienses: There is extant a Latin apology for this Dr. Williams […] written in good Latin by Joh. Harmar M.A. […] to Lambert Osbaldeston a great creature of the said archb. […] [T]he said Harmar, who sometimes taught in the college school at Westminster, had often participated of the generosity of archb. Williams; and when 41. Demi-socius, or half fellow, holder of a special scholarship at Magdalen. 42. If the manuscript Vultispex Criticus, now in the British Library (MS. Addit. 805), dates (as I think) earlier than any of the printed works, it suggests the sort of thing Bulwer was doing earlier. By no means as original as Bulwer’s published writings, it is a work of straight physiognomics — a subject of interest not only to physicians, but also to lawyers and other gentlemen at the Inns of Court, as shown by several such titles among books known to have belonged to residents at that period (Prest 1972: 161). The fact that it remained unfinished may also indicate Bulwer’s change of interest from (as Bacon put it) the factures, to the gestures, of the human body.
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afterwards he became Greek professor of the univ. of Oxford, he was esteemed a parasite, and one that would do any thing below him to gain a little money or a meals-meat. (Wood 1813–1820 II, p. 1612)
4.3 The Via Lucis: influence or motivation? It would be strange if Bulwer did not pick up something of the atmosphere around the Comenian project through his friends Goldsmith and Harmar. True, the influence of the Via Lucis on language planning is controversial, largely thanks to Vivian Salmon. Noting that only Chapter 18 of the VL (the plan for a universal college) was found among the Hartlib papers, she argued (Salmon 1966: 379): It is known that the manuscript of Via Lucis was left in England for transcription (perhaps of a fair copy) when Comenius went abroad in 1642, and it was returned to Hartlib by the copyist in August of that year. [JW: cf. Turnbull 1947: 367.] In the following September Comenius writes to a friend that he has recently shown someone the Via Lucis, so that Hartlib must have sent at least one manuscript on to him from England. (Citing Comenius 1892: 77 [letter LXVII], Elbing, 8 October 1643)
The friend to whom Comenius wrote was Baron Johann Ludwig von Wolzogen (1599–1661), and the person to whom he showed the Via Lucis was Dr. Johannes Kozak, a physician of Bremen (b.1607, Horaždovice, Bohemia; d. Bremen, 30 January 1685). It is hardly surprising that Comenius possessed a copy of his own work. Yet Salmon sees in this (1966: 374, 379) a suggestion that Hartlib may not have kept one. (Why would he not? — by August 1642 he had two, the original and the fair copy.) But even if he did keep a copy, the argument continues, there is no proof that the chapter on language (Chapter 19 in the printed edition of 1668) was included. This is completely hypothetical, however. There is no reason to think that Comenius altered anything for the printed edition; on the contrary, his aim in finally publishing the VL seems to have been retrospective, i.e., to put on record what he had originally proposed, and, by implication, to show how the Royal Society had measured up to those intentions (Teich 1968). That only Chapter 18 was found among the Hartlib Papers is hardly conclusive, as they are by no means complete (Greengrass, Leslie & Raylor 1994: 8–14). Salmon did not mention that, while still in London, in a letter to his friend Godeffroy (Bohumir) Hotton in Amsterdam dated 8/18 April 1642, Comenius had promised to communicate the text of the VL to him in installments: “liber hic conscriptus, cujus Tibi interea vel capitum seriem communico” (1892: 52 [letter XLI]). For that matter, Comenius had sent another copy from Danzig to Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna (1583–1654) in Stockholm on 20/30 June 1643 (Comenius 1892: 72 [letter LXIV]; cf. Keatinge 1896: 54–55). What this shows is that Comenius was
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making efforts to circulate the VL; surely he would also have wanted it to be available in England.43 On the other hand, Salmon is correct that neither Wilkins nor Ward belonged to the early Comenian circle. That the later language planners did not follow Comenius’s guidelines in their systems also seems to be true; in 1658 Comenius even sent a summary of these guidelines to Dalgarno, to no avail (Lewis, 2007: 93n.,128–129). The only person we know of that was working on this topic around the time Comenius was in London was John Bulwer, and he has never been considered in this debate. But whatever influence Comenius may or may not have had on Bulwer, the central issue for the present is not influence, but motivation. What initially motivated Bulwer to conceive his project and spend more than a decade writing books, during which time he even gave up his medical practice? (Wollock 1996: 31–32). The VL was not composed in solitude, but was “influenced by the debates and discussions of his circle of friends”, reflected by a relatively large literary output from the Comenian group in 1641. It was “based on drafts completed in October [1641] intended for his patrons and supporters, as Comenius wrote, and was intended to “serve as a theoretical basis for the further activity of the Comenians” (Kumpera 1979: 45). And in fact there is evidence that the discussion on universal language in VL was known to Hartlib and to others. Years later, in a letter from Amsterdam, 11 January 1658, Comenius, stimulated by news of Dalgarno’s project, reminds Hartlib of “the conditions of a new language, what sort it ought to be; which — from the Via Lucis — you are not unaware of.”44 Furthermore, Cheney Culpeper (1601–1663), already one of Hartlib’s close associates while Comenius was in England, was also familiar with the language section of the VL (Lewis 2007: 46–47, 131). The section on language, in accord with the programmatic purpose of the VL, lays down broad general principles, the “conditiones Novae L[inguae], qualem esse oporteat ex intentione mea.” I would suggest that, aside from any direct deriva43. Voigt (1996: 38) notes, “The fact that precisely from 1641/42, treatises in the philosophy and theology of history also emerge, which speak of a ‘gradual development’ towards the Millennium, as well as the search for an agent in the field of science that would further this development, suggests that the energetic Samuel Hartlib, according to his custom, propagated ideas of the Via Lucis. Indisputable in any case is a massive influence on English thought of the Comenian philosophy of nature, education and language at that time” (transl. mine: J.W.). Voigt cites Rattansi (1971), Webster (1978n.41, 25ff.; and Knafla (1988). 44. “D. Dalgarno inventiones pro miraculosis haberi poterunt, si perstabunt. Misi ante octiduum — per Hartmannum — conditiones Novae L[inguae], qualem esse oporteat ex intentione mea, quam — ex Via Lucis — non ignoras. Expectabo responsum” (Comenius 1976: 81 [letter XXII]). (See Lewis 2007: 93n.128).
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tions, its main influence, along with that of Wilkins’ Mercury, would have been to stimulate interest in the subject; and that this influence would have been strongest at the time Comenius actually wrote it and shortly thereafter; after he left England, it was less likely to be influential there simply because its program was unrealizable under the conditions of civil war. This is why it was not printed until many years later (Teich 1968). Thus Comenius’s visit to London, the roughly contemporaneous publication of Wilkins’s Mercury and the mounting religious-political crisis, are very likely the occasional causes of Bulwer’s own project. And the collapse of Comenius’s mission in the face of growing puritan attacks on the High-church party, rather than the discouragement it was for those more closely associated with Comenius, could well have stimulated Bulwer to develop an alternative vision of linguistic universality related to his now-embattled religious views. We may never know the degree of Bulwer’s actual knowledge of Comenius’s ideas on universal language; but with all the obvious differences, I know of no English writer on universal language that shows more affinity with the principles laid down by Comenius, than Bulwer in the Chirologia and Chironomia. Justinian Isham was one of the first to know of the plan to bring Comenius to England; he contributed to Comenius’s financial support and “evangelized” for him among his friends. As we have seen, Isham was one of the people with whom Hartlib shared Comenian manuscripts. That Edward Goldsmith was Justinian Isham’s mother’s first cousin, and that he was, as evidenced by his patronage of Bulwer, a keen Baconian himself, suggests a plausible path by which Bulwer could have had access to Comenian discussions about universal language. Even short of the actual text, or relevant excerpts thereof, Goldsmith, a keen Baconian, and Harmar, a teacher of the classical languages, are highly likely to have transmitted discussions about universal language within the Comenian circle through Isham and Williams. The dedication to Chirologia reveals another important fact: that Edward Goldsmith championed Bulwer’s ideas among his friends. This strong reflection of your conceits on my early undertakings, you have by the vivacity of a mastering phansie, oftentimes endeavoured to propagate in the opinions of your most generous Acquaintances, which as they were the friendly efforts of a subtle perspicacity of your Iudgement (which I have heard a Great Critique to acknowledge to be the genuine felicity of your intellect, whereby you are able to dissect the least atome of a Philosophicall projection:) I have (though the raising of expectation proves many times an injurious courtesie) took as a good omen to advance upon (Bulwer 1644a: A2v-A3r).
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Several of those who wrote dedicatory pieces to Bulwer’s books were lawyers or students at the Inns of Court, and it seems likely that some if not all had become acquainted with his work through Edward Goldsmith. One of these, William Diconson, a lawyer about ten years Goldsmith’s senior, also of Gray’s Inn, received the dedication of Bulwer’s simultaneously published Chirologia. Diconson was another Oxford man — from St. John’s (matriculated 1605, aged 16; see Foster 1892, vol. I, 402a). His son Thomas Diconson became Bulwer’s lifelong friend, being named in the latter’s last will and testament, written shortly before his death in 1656, as one of two overseers of his daughter’s marriage, should it come to pass (Wollock 1996: 32–34). Edward Goldsmith was made an ‘ancient’ of Gray’s Inn on 20 May 1650 (Fletcher 1901: 376), but was probably no longer alive by 1652, as he did not contribute anything to his nephew’s translation of Grotius’s Sophompaneas, published that year, although Bulwer did (Wollock 1996: 37n.55). Assuming he was married, it is possible that the “Mrs. Goldsmith” mentioned in 1654 in the Gray’s Inn Pensioners Book (Fletcher 1901: 410) was his widow. 5. Bulwer’s religious motivations Internal evidence also resonates with the idea that events of 1641–1642 inspired the research plan that Bulwer first showed to Edward Goldsmith. Chirologia/Chironomia can be read, in part, as a response to the destruction of the Laudian church in 1640–1642. Bulwer evidently agreed with the Laudian view of ceremonial worship and the particular ideal of religious unity associated with it.45 During the period 1642–1660 it would not have been advisable to argue for religious harmony from that point of view, as it had just been purged from the church, and not 45. “The source of Laud’s antipathy to public disputation was his conviction that it led society away from unity and order and that the way back was through ceremonies” (McGee 1984: 326). On disputing with sectarians, Laud wrote that “I cannot persuade myself that such a fiery spirit will be quenched by any answer, and then we shall have reply upon reply, till at last moderate men themselves will be overheated and all hopes lost” (quoted in McGee 1984: 336). “Ceremonies”, wrote Laud, “are the hedge that fence the substance of religion from all the indignities which profaneness and sacrilege too commonly put upon it.” Laud believed, according to McGee, that “the people would not respect the inward part of religion, the greater part, if the ‘outward face’ were neglected” (p. 327). “While defending himself against the charge of [the Roman] belief in transubstantiation, he stated that ‘the altar is […] greater than the pulpit; For there ‘tis Hoc est corpus meum, This is my body; but in the other it is but Hoc est verbum meum, This is my word: and a greater reverence is due to the body, than the word of the Lord.’ ” (p. 328) Laud believed in liberty of conscience, but uniformity of ceremony. (p. 329) Here is not the place to go into the reasons why many Calvinists were passionately opposed to ceremony, vestments, images. The point is that many (like Mede or Williams) were not opposed, because they considered them adiaphora (neutral with respect to salvation). (See also Guibbory 1998: 20–26).
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without violence. But while Bulwer’s books of 1644 are philosophical, expository, and free of overt theological argument, they are full of theological content. That Bulwer was an Anglican who supported King Charles and his church is clear from many kinds of evidence. Bulwer, the Goldsmiths and their circle were among those who came to be known, around 1641, as the High-Church party, conformists who supported the Book of Common Prayer, the traditional episcopate, elaborate church furnishings and ceremonial worship. As Prest (1972: 216) notes, they were well represented in the Inns of Court. The Laudians sought reconciliation with the continental Lutherans, and at least in theory, did not exclude the possibility of eventual reconciliation with Rome — because they regarded both the Anglican Church and Rome as organic and unseparated parts of ‘the body of Christ’. Despite their many misgivings about the Roman church, they rejected the identification of the Pope as antichrist. Thus they could not abide John Dury’s style of irenicism, which by 1642 counted belief that the Pope was the antichrist not as a hypothesis (as it had long been treated by many Calvinists), but as one of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity (Milton 1994: 107, 114–115; cf. Jue 2006: 68). The Laudians looked instead toward that other great Protestant irenicist of the time, Hugo Grotius, an admirer of the Jacobean and Laudian church, to keep the door to Rome open (Jue 2006: 151–163; on Grotius as an irenicist, see Bots & Leroy 1983, Posthumus Meyjes 1984, Milton 1994, Tighe 1987, van den Berg 1999). Bulwer’s own strong conformist sympathies emerge clearly in many passages of Chirologia and Chironomia. That they are found chiefly in these two books rather than the later ones46 again suggests the probable circumstances under which the books originated. Though not theological works, they draw on a great deal of theological material for illustrations of gesture. In light of the controversy over church ceremony, which by this time had been decisively won by the anti-ceremonialists (for details see Morrill 1985), the mere description of religious gesture and selection of sources functioned as a defense, especially as it was framed and supported by Baconian natural philosophy. Setting religiously controversial material, recognizable as such to anyone at the time, within the wider framework of history, anthropology, and Baconian natural philosophy, Bulwer proves himself a master of the art of exposition-as-argument. This kind of argumentation had been developing among conformist writers (including theologians) for some time, as there was among them the view (quite in the spirit of Bacon) that purely theological disputes
46. Philocophus (1648) contains passages signalling Bulwer’s loyalty to the king and was printed by a royalist printer, Humphrey Moseley. I would no longer suggest that the book’s distribution was “discretely limited” (Wollock 1996: 8, at notes 9 and 10), since the title is included in the publisher’s catalogue bound in at the back of many other of Moseley’s books.
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over texts were fruitless, and that recourse should be had to natural principles and cultural-historical circumstances.47 Anglican conformists believed that verbal dogmatic disputes were the enemy of unity and that uniform order of worship and participation in the sacraments nurtured a sense of community. This led them to undertake “a rich and complex inquiry into the wide cultural circumstances of religious experience itself ” (Barbour 2002: 1; cf. p. 26). They were less interested in doctrine than in “the very conditions in which their faith was imagined, situated, and lived […] the historical, imaginative, ritualistic, social, epistemological, and natural conditions in which English Protestantism tends to lapse, struggle, and thrive. […] In so many ways, the conditions of human knowledge, sense perception, imagination and discourse are under review in religious writing of the 1620s, 30s and 40s”, among these, “in the Baconian review of philosophical method and pneumatology” as well as “in the curious relationship between ceremony and ‘fancy’ ” (Barbour 2002: 13; see also 108–117), both of which are entailed in Bulwer’s thorough review of the role of the imagination in voluntary motion and the instinctive connection between imagination and gesture (Wollock, forthcoming). Thus, Bulwer’s project was from the start related to the greater Baconian scientific enterprise in England, but it was an alternative approach. Just as religious goals, one of which was the development of a universal language, inspired puritan interest in Baconian science, so alternative religious goals inspired Bulwer’s no less Baconian universal language project. 5.1 Bulwer’s religious views and their relevance to his idea of universal language In Chirologia (1644a: 23), Bulwer paraphrases St. Augustine, De cura pro mortuis gerenda (“Care for the Dead”), sect. 5:48 47. This was an extension of the ‘doctrinal minimalism’ that had long characterized Anglican theology itself, including the Laudian approach (cf. above, n.45). Henry (1992: 190–197; note the important qualification at the top of 191) explains with admirable clarity why “a theology of compromise (opposed to dogmatism, particularly when chains of disputatious reasoning have to be recurred to, and embracing instead a position of doctrinal minimalism) [should] affect contemporary natural philosophy” (p. 194); see also Matthews (2008). 48. Augustine: Nam et orantes de membris sui corporis faciunt quod supplicantibus congruit, cum genua figunt, cum extendunt manus, vel etiam prosternuntur solo, et si quid aliud visibiliter faciunt; quamvis eorum invisibilis voluntas et cordis intentio Deo nota sit, nec ille indigeat his indiciis, ut humanus ei pandatur animus: sed hinc magis se ipsum excitat homo ad orandum gemendumque humilius atque ferventius. Et nescio quomodo, cum hi motus corporis fieri nisi motu animi praecedente non possint, eisdem rursus exterius visibiliter factis, ille interior invisibilis qui eos fecit augetur: ac per hoc cordis affectus, qui ut fierent ista praecessit, quia facta sunt crescit.
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When men in prayer STRETCHT OUT THEIR HANDS, or use any visible expressions, they doe that which is agreeable to the case of a suppliant, although their invisible will & intention of their heart be known to God; neither doth hee stand in need of such declarations that the minde of man should bee laid open before him: but by this gesture man doth more rouze up himselfe to pray and groane more humbly and fervently: And I know not how, whereas these motions of the body cannot be done, unlesse the inward motions of the mind precede, the same thing againe being made externally visible, that interiour invisible which caused them is increased, and by this the affection of the heart, which preceded as the cause before the effect, for so much as they are done, doth encrease.49
This same passage of Augustine had been quoted by William Page (1590–1663) in A Treatise or Iustification of Bowing at the Name of Jesus (1631: 121–122), specifically to refute the militant puritan polemicist William Prynne (1600–1669), who had argued in the Appendix to his Anti-Arminianism (1630: 84–86) that gestures such as bowing at the name of Jesus are a disturbance to praying, reading, and hearing. Page demonstrates that Prynne’s argument runs counter to what natural philosophy and medicine teach about the coordination of the senses and bodily motions — the latter a topic that would be discussed in detail by Bulwer in both Philocophus and Pathomyotomia (Wollock, forthcoming). Scoffs Page: “As though no two actions could be done together, as though the tongue could not talke, and the hand be lifted vp at the same time; as though the eare could not heare and the knee bow both together, who would euer speake so against common-sense and experience?” (Page 1631: 120). Another good example of Bulwer’s Laudian sympathies is found in Chironomia (1644b: 68): There is a Colossus at Rome, which in times past stood in the Baines of Anthony, the left hand whereof leaneth upon a club; but the two first Fingers of the Right Hand extended out with the Thumbe, such as of old time was the gesture of Oratours speaking […] which most authenticall copie of speech they seem to have followed, whose Hand the golden History of the Crosse in Cheap was, for there were to be seene two statues of mitred Prelates having their Hands figured in this manner, as if they were speaking to the people.
The Cheapside Cross, a monument in the middle of The Cheap opposite the entrance to Wood Street, was a powder keg amidst the ongoing friction between conformists and puritans over images (Spraggon 2003). The original, erected shortly after Queen Eleanor’s death (November 1290), was about 36 feet high and richly adorned with statues, including the virgin and child, and surmounted by a cross. 49. Targoff (2001: 9–11), discussing its background in 16th and 17th-century England, also quotes Bulwer on this issue.
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Under growing puritan sentiment in the reign of Elizabeth it was denounced as a remnant of popery and superstition, and on the night of 21 June 1581, puritan fanatics destroyed the lower tier of images, mutilated and partially dislodged the virgin and removed the child. In 1595, virgin and child were restored, but the rest remained in damaged condition. Later the surmounting cross was substituted by a pyramid, and the virgin by the goddess Diana; but Elizabeth ordered the replacement of a plain golden cross atop the monument. Again virgin and child were restored, but two weeks later vandals mutilated the former and removed the latter. The monument of Bulwer’s day had been entirely rebuilt in 1600, in a style half classical and half Gothic. It had statues of apostles, kings, and prelates, but no virgin and child, and was surrounded by a strong iron railing; of the earlier monument only the crucifix survived. For many years it remained undisturbed, but on the night of 24 January 1641 was again vandalized by zealots, after which the Long Parliament ordered it pulled down. Attended by a troop of horse and two companies of foot soldiers, Sir Robert Harlow directed the demolition on 2 May 1643 (the feast of the Invention of the Cross, according to the traditional church calendar). The official report recounts that “At the fall of the top cross, drums beat, trumpets blew, and multitudes of caps were thrown in the air, and a great shout of the people with joy” (Andrews 1891: 140–145). The prelates mentioned by Bulwer, made of cast lead, were melted down at the site. This was an example from Bulwer’s own experience. The Cheapside Cross had been a fixture of his daily life, as it stood opposite the southern limit of the tiny parish of St. Michael Wood Street in which he was born and raised, and its final destruction came while he was writing Chirologia and Chironomia.50 6. Comenius’s dislike of revolution; royalist estrangement from Hartlib That Edward Goldsmith supported Bulwer’s work with such enthusiasm suggests that he too was a Laudian as well as a Baconian. Certainly this is true of his nephew Francis Goldsmith — as evidenced by his having published a popular English translation of Hugo Grotius’s (1583–1645) catechism, Bapizatorum Puerorum Institutio, in 1647, surely in response to the Shorter Westminster Catechism, completed by the puritan Westminster Assembly and presented to the House of
50. Much more such evidence could be adduced. For example, 1) extending and then joining the hands, from Melchor de Huelamo (d.1621), Discursos predicables de ceremonias y misterios de la misa, a commentary on the ceremonies of the Catholic mass (1644a: 26; Wollock 1996: 11); or 2) making the sign of the cross with the thumb, index and middle finger, a gesture used “by the pope at this day” in “benedictions upon the people” (1644b: 61–62). Bulwer was not a ‘Romanist’ (i.e., Roman Catholic); but like many other Caroline conformist writers, he was interested in traditional rites still practiced in the Roman Church.
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Commons on 5 November of that year.51 We can presume that most, if not all, of the circle of friends that became interested in Bulwer through Edward Goldsmith’s advocacy, held similar views. The unsuccessful attempt of King Charles on 4 January 1642 to arrest the leaders of the opposition was taken by parliament as a virtual declaration of war. It was also the fatal blow to Comenius’s hopes — his support was now divided, and with it his dream of religious harmony. “The country party was split, hopelessly split. So were Comenius’s own patrons. In December Pym, the leader of the Commons, launched an open attack on Archbishop Williams, leader of the Lords” (TrevorRoper 1968: 252). Thus, “by the beginning of 1642 the original group of Comenius’ supporters had dissolved” (Polišenský 1978: 171). “By the new year Pym was preparing not now for social reformation but for military rebellion, and by the spring [1642] both sides were openly preparing for civil war” (Trevor-Roper 1968: 253). Though Comenius remained in England until June, by as early as February he had determined to leave (Kumpera 1979: 46–47). Hartlib, who had long been of the puritan persuasion, would happily continue his work with the backing of parliament. But as for Comenius, Kumpera (1979: 48), believes his sympathies lay with the moderate or Broad-church party represented by Bishop Williams. Thus, “After 1642, Comenius became estranged from the mainstream of the Revolution in England. This can be explained by the divided class [sic] loyalties52 of his supporters, which became apparent during the time of Comenius’s stay in England” (Polišenský 1978: 171). And further: “The conflict between Parliament and the King was foreign to Comenius” (171–172); “Comenius never identified himself with the ideology of the English Revolution, nor it seems, did he trust Cromwell completely” (p. 172). “At times, Comenius even fully lost contact with England, and even in times of temporary consolidation in the events of the civil war, Comenius showed himself to be distant from the violence of all parties” (Voigt 1996: 40; transl. mine: J.W.).53 51. Hugonis Grotii, Baptizatorum Puerorum Institutio. alternis Interrogationibus et Responsionibus : cui aecesserunt Graeca ejusdem Metaphrasis a Chr. Wase et Anglicana Versio a Fr. Goldsmith; una cum luculentis e SS. Testimoniis a N(icholas) G(rey), London, 1647; Quarta Editio et emendatior et Observatiunculis in Graecam Metaphrasin ad Calcem appensis auctior. Lond. 1655, Lond. 1668. 52. Divided political loyalties, anyway. Even many Marxists find it difficult to view the English civil war as in any real sense a class war. As R. H. Tawney was subsequently to remark: “Was it a bourgeois revolution? Of course it was a bourgeois revolution. The trouble is the bourgeoisie was on both sides” (Richardson 1977: 111). And so were all the other classes. 53. Voigt cites a letter to Zbigniew Gorajski of 3 March 1645: “Si iterato et jurato dicendum esset, processus istorum mihi non placent. Nihil moderati praeseferunt, extrema extremis opponunt,
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Kumpera (1979: 57) concludes: … it is not possible to consider [Comenius] as the ideologue of the English Revolution. His ideas for universal reform had a much broader reach, and they were supported by royalists as well as by radical puritans. Moreover his political and religious views were not very much in tune with the Revolution and are rather an expression of the Bohemian Brethren tradition of toleration.
There is no direct documentation of the reaction of the Bulwer-Goldsmith circle to Comenius’ departure and the associated split in his support. It is worth noting, however, that once Comenius had left England, the correspondence between Isham and Hartlib ceased (Stephens 2008: 110–111). That some royalist natural philosophers were in communication with like-minded republicans even before the first civil war had ended is well known. But many kept their distance until the Restoration and the founding of the Royal Society (both 1660). Obviously it was a personal choice. Of the several academically-qualified physicians who participated in the weekly meetings of the scientific club organized in London in 1645 by Comenius’s close associate Theodore Haak, Drs. George Ent (1604–1689) and Charles Scarburgh (1615–1694) were “particularly committed royalists”. However, a strict ban was upheld on discussions of religion and politics, for obvious reasons (Webster 1976: 54–55). Isham himself came back into contact with the larger natural philosophy network only in 1648 through fellow-royalist Seth Ward (1617–1689), with whom he began a correspondence and who shortly thereafter became Savilian professor of astronomy at Wadham College. Soon Ward became a leading member of Wilkins’s natural philosophy group there (Stephens 2008: 111–114), which also enforced a ban on religious and political topics, a policy that would later be adopted by the Royal Society itself (Feingold 2005: 179). Nevertheless, there is evidence that a number of separate royalist groups devoted to natural philosophy existed at various Oxford colleges during the same period as the Ward-Wilkins group (Dewhurst 1976: 441–442). John Bulwer was a “particularly committed royalist” who, as far as we know, did not reconcile with the other side; and it is worth noting that he died three and a half years before the Restoration. As for his response to the polarizing events of 1641–1646, in lieu of direct documentation (other than internal evidence from his writings), we can at least suggest a comparison between Goldsmith’s circle and sanguinem sanguine cumulant. Scripsit nuper amicus ex Anglia in Germaniam reversus, parlamentum a priori innocentia multum recessisse, moderata consilia non audire. […]. Orandum est, ne Deus illos deserat, quibus hostilitate potius in dissidentes a se, quam amore et tolerantia mutua, uti placet, nec enim talem viam docuit Christus. Etiam cum ibi essem, violentias mihi displicere ad aliquos illorum contestatus sum, sed frustra” (Comenius 1892: 95 [letter LXXXII]).
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that of the poet and scholar Thomas Stanley (1625–1678). In 1647, Stanley was approached to join a new academy proposed by Hartlib. As Stanley’s friend John Hall (1627–1656) explained in a letter to Hartlib, Stanley, as a member of the Order of the Black Riband, a secret society founded in sympathy for Charles I, now in captivity, did not want to work with Hartlib, because he “would not be a renegade” (McDowell 2010: 949). Indeed Stanley, who resided in the Middle Temple, was the actual founder of the Black Riband. The poet Robert Herrick — a good friend of John Harmar — was also associated with the Black Riband (McDowell 2010: 947). While Stanley’s circle was distinct from Goldsmith’s, both were typical of the ‘semi-private’ royalist groups that, in the aftermath of the parliamentary victory, were dominated by Inns of Court men (McDowell 2008: 137). Stanley was a good friend of Goldsmith’s cousin Justinian Isham (McDowell 2008: 55); and another link surfaces five years later, when the learned young David Whitford (1626–1674), B.A. Christ Church 1647, who had borne arms in the Oxford garrison (from ca.1646) and had been wounded in the battle of Worcester (1651), returned to London. The playwright James Shirley (1596–1666), unable to make a living after the puritans closed the theatres, had opened a school at Whitefriars in 1646 with the help of a friend and generous patron — Thomas Stanley. From 1651 to at least 1654 Whitford was Shirley’s assistant teacher (usher) at this school. In 1652, Whitford wrote dedicatory Latin verses for Francis Goldsmith’s translation of Grotius’s play Sophompaneas, published in London. Foster (1892 IV, p. 1621) mentions that Whitford himself may have been a student of the Inner Temple in 1658, at which time (ibid.) he gave his home address as Ashton, Northamptonshire — the village where his older brother John had been rector from 30 January 1640/41 until sequestered by the parliamentarians in 1645. John Whitford had married Judith Marriott, whose family had been lords of Ashton manor in the 16th and 17th centuries and still lived in the village. Francis Goldsmith became the lessee of Ashton manor about 1651 and died there in 1655 (Fisher 1954: 19ab, 20a, 26b-27a; Riden & Insley 2002, text circa n.63), survived by his wife Mary and daughter Katherine. Thus, if David Whitford was living at Ashton in 1658, he would have been among friends. But that is not all. Walter Whitford (d.1647), former Bishop of Brechin and the father of David and John, had been installed as rector of Walgrave, Northants on 10 February 1640/41, ten days before his son at Ashton. Just 3½ miles from the Isham estate at Lamport, Walgrave was the very village where John Williams, presented as a young curate in 1614, had first become friendly with Sir John Isham. Appointed Bishop of Lincoln in 1621, Williams retained the living; now, released from the Tower and restored to his bishopric only a few months earlier (16 November 1640), he presents it to the elder Whitford. In 1642 Whitford’s son David was elected King’s Scholar at Westminster College, where John Harmar was
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undermaster. But since no boy at Westminster was eligible for a King’s scholarship unless he had been an ordinary student (‘town boy’) for at least a year, the 15-year-old David would have been there on 26 December 1641 when Archbishop Williams, as Dean of Westminster, led the students in a successful defense of the Abbey against the attacking mob of apprentices intent on wrecking it. All of this hints at one reason why Bulwer would have held aloof from the Hartlib circle — like Stanley, he “would not be a renegade”. But there is perhaps another reason for his lack of influence. The reformers would later be occupied with what has been called ‘artificial language’ schemes. Bulwer believed that the best way to make up for the defects of spoken/alphabetic language was to adapt the primordial and most natural language (gesture and expression) already imprinted in the human frame. Although Bulwer’s writings are free of allusions to cabbala, alchemy, or arcana coelestia, he was, like many medical men of his time, inspired by the spiritual physiology and psychology of Robert Fludd (1574–1637; see Wollock 2002: 246–249); and the influential attack on John Webster (but ultimately on Fludd) by Wilkins and Ward in their Vindiciae Academiarum (1654) may have unjustifiably placed Bulwer under similar opprobrium (Wollock 2002: 237–238). How the times — and the Baconian movement itself — had changed! For in February 1640, when Marin Mersenne, in his correspondence with Theodore Haak, began trying to enlist the English group to join his attacks on Fludd, Haak and his associates had been quite unwilling to go along (Webster 1976: 53–54). In any case, Bulwer, starting from the same passage of Bacon as the other reformers, had struck off in such a different direction that they must have found it largely irrelevant to their concerns. And in a general sense, this may also explain why they did not follow Comenius either. As Braddick (2009: 33–34) shows, Bulwer’s ideas on language and gesture have to be understood in their full socio-political context. However, we also need more concrete historical information about the man himself. The present discussion has been an attempt to reconstruct the broad outlines of his social, political and religious allegiances through both external and internal evidence. Based on this, Braddick’s statement that “Bulwer spoke for himself, not for a culture …” (p. 34) seems to overshoot the mark. Of course Bulwer spoke for himself — who does not? — and to explain how any individual can speak for an entire culture, especially in the midst of civil war, is no simple task. Yet the activity of writing, the relationship between writer and reader, is fundamentally cultural. I hope I have shown here that, in its motivation and in the particular form it took, Bulwer’s ideas are indeed representative of his (highly conflicted) culture — albeit from a perspective less familiar to the history of the language sciences. In exploring linguistic ramifications of one of the central disputes of 17th-century English society, Bulwer illuminates a fundamental controversy uniquely characteristic of that society. Bulwer’s work
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was indeed, to use Braddick’s phrase (p. 34), “part of a wider crisis of cultural authority to which some responses were creative, rather than simply anxious.”
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impetuous motions of the mind. with the proposall of a new nomenclature of the muscles. London: Humphrey Moseley. Bulwer, John. 1650. Anthropometamorphosis: Man Transform’d, or the Artificial Changeling. Historically presented, in the mad and cruel gallantry, foolish bravery, ridiculous beauty, filthy fineness, and loathesome loveliness of most nations, fashioning & altering their bodies from the mould intended by nature. with a vindication of the regular beauty and honesty of nature, and an appendix of the pedigree of the English gallant. London: J. Hardesty. Bulwer, John. 1653. Anthropometamorphosis. Second, enlarged edition. London: William Hunt. Campbell, Baron John. 1846. The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great seal of England: from the earliest times till the reign of King George IV. 2 vols. London: J. Murray. Comenius, Jan Amos. 1976. Unbekannte Briefe des Comenius und seiner Freunde 1641–1661. Ed. by Milada Blekastad. Ratingen & Kastellaun: Henn. Comenius. Jan Amos. 1892. Jana Amosa Komenského korrespondence. Sebral a k tisku připravil A. Patera. Prague: Nákl. České akademie císaře Františka Josefa pro vědy, slovesnost a umění. Comenius, Jan Amos. 1974a. Ad Amicos Lesnae in Polonia Agentes. Ed. by Julie Nováková (= Dilo Jana Amose Komenského, 14), 111–116. Prague: Academia. Comenius, Jan Amos. 1974b. Via Lucis. Ed. by Jarmila Borská & Julie Nováková (= Dilo Jana Amose Komenského, 14), 281–385. Prague: Academia. Comenius, Jan Amos. 1975. Comenius’ Självbiografi: Comenius about himself. Uppsala: Föreningen för svensk undervisningshistoria. Comenius, Jan Amos. 1938. The Way of Light. Transl. into English by E. T. Campagnac. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Comenius, Jan Amos. 1997. Der Weg des Lichtes. Transl. into German by Uwe Voigt. Hamburg: Felix Meiner. Comenius, Jan Amos. 1989. Novissima lingvarum methodus. Ed. by Eva Kamínková, Martin Steiner & Marie Kyralová (= Dilo Jana Amose Komenského, 15:2), 91–475. Prague: Academia. Comenius, Jan Amos. 2005. Novissima Linguarum Methodus. Traduction française par Honoré Jean. Préface par Etienne Krotky. (= Langues et Cultures, 37.) Geneva & Paris: Droz. Corcoran, Timothy. 1911. Studies in the History of Classical Teaching: Irish and Continental, 1500–1700. London: Longmans, Green. Dewhurst, Kenneth. 1976. Review of Webster (1976). Medical History 20:4.440–442. Feingold, Mordechai. 1984. The Mathematicians’ Apprenticeship: Science, universities and society in England, 1560–1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Feingold, Mordechai. 2005. “The Origins of the Royal Society Revisited”. The Practice of Reform in Health, Medicine and Science, 1500–2000 ed. by Margaret Pelling & Scott Mandelbrote, 167–184. Aldershot: Ashgate. Fincham, Kenneth. 1993. The Early Stuart Church: 1603–1642. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press. Fisher, Margery, ed. 1954. A Scrapbook of Ashton 1953. Comp. by Ashton Women’s Institute. Ashton, Northants: Belmont Press. Fletcher, Reginald J., ed. 1901. The Pension Book of Gray’s Inn (Records of the Honourable Society 1569–[1800]). 2 vols. London: Chiswick Press. Formigari, Lia . 1988. Language and Experience in 17th-Century British Philosophy. (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 48.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
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Summary A pioneer of the language sciences, John Bulwer (1606–1656) published on universal language at the beginning of the English ‘scientific revolution’. The Comenians, centered in Bulwer’s own city of London and known for open communication, were interested in this subject area; yet Bulwer’s contact with them, if any, is unclear. This article argues that Bulwer’s Baconian research program on expression and gesture was the response of a non-puritan physician to the convergence of three factors: publication of John Wilkins’s Mercury (1641); ongoing discussions about universal language during Comenius’s stay in England (September 1641–June 1642); and the religious-political crisis of the time.
Résumé Un pionnier des sciences du langage, John Bulwer (1606–1656) a publié sur la langue universelle au début de la ‘révolution scientifique’ anglaise. Les Coméniens, centrés à Londres (la propre ville de Bulwer), étaient connus pour leur ouverture et intéressés à son domaine, mais ses relations avec eux, s‘il y en eut, ne sont pas claires. Cet article démontre que le programme de recherche ‘baconien’ de Bulwer sur l’expression et le geste était la réponse d’un médecin non puritain à la convergence de trois facteurs : la publication du Mercury (1641) de John Wilkins ; les échanges en cours sur la langue universelle durant le séjour de Comenius en Angleterre (Septembre 1641–Juin 1642) et la crise politique et religieuse du temps.
Zusammenfassung Zu Beginn der englischen ‘wissenschaftlichen Revolution’ hatte John Bulwer (1606– 1656), ein Pionier der Sprachforschung, Veröffentlichungen zur Universalsprache vorgelegt. Die Comenianer waren in London, Bulwers Heimatstadt, stark vertreten und bekannt für den freien Austausch von Ideen, darunter auch über die Frage einer Universalsprache. Es bleibt jedoch unklar, ob und inwiefern sie mit Bulwer Beziehungen unterhielten. Dieser
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Beitrag möchte den Nachweis erbringen, dass sich das ‘baconianische’ Programm Bulwers zu Ausdruck und Gestik als die Antwort eines Arztes auf die Konvergenz von drei Faktoren bezieht, die Publikation von John Wilkins’ Mercury (1641), die laufenden Diskussionen zur Universalsprache während Comenius’ Aufenthalt in England (September 1641–Juni 1642) und die politisch-religiöse Krise der Zeit.
Author’s address: Jeffrey Wollock 55 Payson Avenue, 5E New York, NY 10034 U.S.A. e-mail: [email protected]
On the Origins of the Term Phoneme* Joachim Mugdan
University of Münster
1. Background For over half a century, linguists have known that the term phoneme (or rather its French equivalent phonème) was used — supposedly for the first time in history — by the amateur phonetician A. Dufriche-Desgenettes in a paper on nasal consonants presented to the Société de Linguistique de Paris on 24 May 1873 (cf. Godel 1957: 160; Jakobson 1958: 49, 1960: 5 = 1971a: 396).1 The text has not been preserved and the published minutes of the meeting merely say:
(1) Il est donné lecture d’un travail de M. Dufriche-Desgenettes sur la nature des consonnes nasales. (Anon. 1873a: lxij)
Fortunately, a somewhat longer report — in all probability written by Louis Havet (1849–1925), the Society’s assistant secretary (cf. Koerner 1976: 225 = 1978a: 130, 1978b: 88 = 1978a: 183; Kohrt 1985: 77–79), whom Dufriche had asked to read out his paper (BnF NAF 24493(2) fol. 171r, 172r; cf. Joseph 1999: 61–62)2 — was published on 7 June 1873. It mentioned that Dufriche employed several grammatical * I am very grateful to the archivists and librarians who answered my queries or supplied me with materials, to the readers who suggested stylistic improvements and to my wife and children for accompanying me on two research trips to Paris. Sincere thanks are also due to the editor and three anonymous HL reviewers for taking the time and trouble to comment on earlier versions of the manuscript. Of course, I alone am responsible for the text in its present form. 1. It is generally believed that it was Robert Godel (1902–1984) who, in the thesis cited, first pointed out that the term phonème was introduced by Dufriche (Koerner 1976: 226 = 1978a: 131, 1978b: 87 = 1978a: 182; Kohrt 1985: 59–60; Joseph 1999: 55). However, Godel’s findings were announced by his thesis advisor seven years previously (Frei 1950: 175n.50), and over the decades, several scholars in Romance countries named Dufriche as the originator of the term (Millet 1933: 9n.1; Silva Neto 1938: 120) or at least referred to a note by Louis Havet in which he credits Dufriche with it (Havet 1874: 321n.2; see Leite de Vasconcelos 1886: 21n.1 = 1928: 37n.1; Mattoso Câmara 1953: 28). 2. Source references beginning with AIBL, AN and BnF are to archival materials; full details are given before the list of references at the end of the article. Historiographia Linguistica XXXVIII:1/2 (2011), 85–110. doi 10.1075/hl.38.1/2.03mug issn 0302–5160 / e-issn 1569–9781 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
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terms of his own invention, singling out phonème as a welcome cover term for vowels and consonants:
(2) La discussion sur l’anusvâra entre M. Whitney et M. Bergaigne ayant donné un intérêt particulier à la question des lettres nasales, M. Dufriche-Desgenettes présente un travail sur ce sujet: l’auteur a été en mesure d’observer la prononciation des syllabes nasales dans les différentes parties du globe, et il reproduit, sur la demande d’un membre de la Société, quelques-uns de ces sons. Nous remarquons dans le mémoire de M. Dufriche-Desgenettes l’emploi de plusieurs termes grammaticaux dont il est l’inventeur: entre autres, le mot phonème, qui est heureusement trouvé pour désigner d’une façon générale les voyelles et les consonnes. (Anon. 1873b: 368; cf. the definitions in Havet 1873: 170n.1, 1874: 321n.2)
The word was soon taken up by other linguists, who gave it a variety of different meanings until it finally became associated with the notion of a distinctive unit (one that is “capable of distinguishing meanings”, as we are wont to say rather inaccurately) around 1909 (for details of its history, which has frequently been misrepresented, see Mugdan 1985, 1996: 282–300, with further references). The purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate that Dufriche introduced the term phonème well before 1873 (§ 3). Moreover, I am inclined to believe that he did not “invent” it but was (indirectly) indebted to someone who had used it even earlier (§ 4). But before I can turn to my topic, there is a hurdle to overcome first (§ 2). To a large extent, the discoveries presented here were made possible by digital libraries on the Internet, which (despite some inevitable limitations and annoying shortcomings) open new vistas for historiographic research. 2. Prelude: The elusive A. D. D. The unusual exactitude with which we previously seemed to be able to pinpoint the “birthday” of the term phonème contrasted with a dearth of data about its “inventor”. The fact that not even Dufriche’s full first name was known appeared particularly noteworthy (Koerner 1976: 223 = 1978a: 128; Kohrt 1985: 61n.7; Anderson 1985: 38; Hockett 1995: 6 = 2001: 63); reportedly, the editor of this journal was reluctant to publish an article on Dufriche unless the author could determine his first name (Joseph 1999: 72). Now, at long last, the challenge has been met. Although Dufriche was a “minor figure” in linguistics (cf. Koerner 1976), it is remarkable how many minor figures can be found in biographical reference works. A bio-bibliographical dictionary of Normandy contains the following entry:
(3) DESGENETTES (Antony Dufriche), officier de marine, né à Alençon, a publié un recueil de chansons, sous le titre de Chansonnier du marin, 2e édit.; Paris,
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Pilout et Ce in-18 de 191 p. (Frère 1858: 345, capitals in the original; cf. also Oursel 1886: 265 and, as the likely source, La Sicotière 1841: 433)3
Despite the fact that the place of birth does not match, there can be no doubt that this man is none other than the phonetician cum poet and traveller (cf. Cochin 1879a-b). The Chansonnier was published anonymously (with authentic copies bearing a signature which closely resembles that in a letter to Havet, A. D. D. in an oval flourish, cf. Dufriche-Desgenettes 1840: [2]; BnF NAF 24493(2) fol. 187r), but national bibliographies, library catalogues and collections of digitized texts on the Internet
Figure 1. Sheet music with lyrics by Antoni Dufriche (Renaud 1855), by courtesy of Nederlands Muziek Instituut, The Hague, Netherlands
3. Both dictionaries have been included in Archives Biographiques Françaises (ABF), a large collection of entries from numerous biographical reference works. It was originally published on microfiche (series I 1988–1991 with Oursel 1886, cf. the printed index Dwyer & Dwyer 1993; series II 1996 with Frère 1858). Meanwhile, ABF is accessible online in the World Biographical Information System (WBIS) Online (http://db.saur.de/WBIS). An entry for “Desgenettes, Antony Dufriche” with references to these two dictionaries can also be found in Index BioBibliographicus Notorum Hominum (IBN), both in the print edition (Zeller & Zeller 1991: 838) and in the DVD edition (2004 with regular updates).
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reveal that a number of poems were printed under the name “Antoni Dufriche” (with -i rather than -y) in the Dutch monthly Astrea (Dufriche-Desgenettes 1854) and in the bulletin and the yearbook of the French Union des Poètes (DufricheDesgenettes 1858a-b, 1860b; cf. Sabatier 1977: 454); some were set to music by various composers in France and the Netherlands (e.g., Scard 1853; Renaud 1855, cf. Figure 1; Paesschen 1880, cf. Meulen 1884: 321, 899). Astrea also published a text which was introduced as the first draft of an “alphabet normal” (Dufriche-Desgenettes 1855: 76). Although the date is off by a year, this must be the contribution to a Dutch journal which Dufriche alluded to in the Tribune des Linguistes (Dufriche-Desgenettes 1859b: 64); as far as we know, it is his earliest publication on phonetic transcription. In addition, “Dufriche (Antoni)” is listed among those who attended the fourth congress of Dutch linguistic and literary studies, held at Utrecht in September 1854 (Anon. 1855: 3), and, as “professeur de langues”, in a commercial directory (Anon. 1862: 242). Finally, the name Antoni is confirmed by the entry in the death register; Dufriche died on 19 December 1878 (Cochin 1879b: 159; cf. Joseph 1999: 55–56) — not in Paris, but in Saint-Mandé (Département Val-de-Marne), an eastern sub-
Figure 2. Entry in the baptism register of parish Saint-Roch, Paris, France (27 Feb. 1804), reproduced by permission
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urb of the metropolis.4 He was born in Paris on 26 February 1804 (Anon. 1858: 305; the death register gives the correct day but the wrong year). The next day, he was baptized in the church of Saint-Roch — and the parish register (Figure 2) holds a surprise for us: It records his name as Antoine Marie Dufriche-Foulaines.5 (His father François Nicolas had changed his surname from Dufriche-Desgenettes to Dufriche-Foulaines, cf. La Sicotière 1877: 219–220.) Thus, Koerner’s conjecture that the initial A might stand for Antoine turns out to be correct in a sense (Koerner 2005: 419, 2008: 67). Nonetheless, the name which Dufriche used in later years is the one he should be known by: Antoni Dufriche-Desgenettes. 3. Happy unbirthday, phoneme! Over 25 years ago, the first entry in the published library catalogue of the Société de Linguistique de Paris as of June 1875 aroused my curiosity:
(4) A. D. D. Premières notes propres à élucider un alphabet proposé comme un instrument de notation exacte et uniforme, pour tous les phonèmes connus. In-8°, 4 p. (Anon. 1875: i; cf. Mugdan 1996: 283n.14)
I had no doubt that the author was A. Dufriche-Desgenettes and the title reminded me of his publications of 1859/60, but I was unable to obtain more information about this item.6 Modern technology finally allowed me to confirm my suspicion that the 24th of May 1873 was not the birthday, i.e., the first public use, of the term phoneme. Nonetheless, that date remains a memorable “unbirthday” (Lewis Carroll) in the history of linguistics since it was then that the success story of the term began.
4. Archives départementales du Val de Marne, État civil Saint-Mandé — décès — registre 1875– 1878, 1 MI 2606, fol. 345r, No. 236 (images at http://www.archives94.fr/consultation/eta/searchform.html). It is not clear when and why Dufriche moved to Saint-Mandé; he is not recorded in the Saint-Mandé voter lists for 1871–1880 and there is no tomb for him in the local cemeteries (Archives municipales of Saint-Mandé, e-mail communication of 28 Sep. 2009). 5. Paroisse Saint-Roch, Paris, baptism register for the year XII [according to the French revolutionary calendar, i.e., 1803/04], No. 129 (photocopy kindly supplied by the parish office in May 2009); cf. the reconstructed civil register: Archives de Paris, État civil reconstitué XVIe siècle — 1859 — Naissances — Dufresse-Dufrit, V3E/N 797 (images at http://canadparchivesenligne.paris.fr/archives_etat_civil/index.php). In the register of passport applications of 1820, the name is given as “Dufriche Fontaine [sic] Mrie Ant” (AN F7* 2555). 6. It is not listed in a later catalogue (Anon. 1883). The librarian of the Société de Linguistique de Paris has informed me that the Society no longer has a library and that it is not possible to find out what happened to donations made more than a century ago (e-mail communication of 10 Nov. 2009).
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3.1 Counting backwards In late 2007, I searched Google Books, a huge collection of digitized texts on the Internet, for instances of the term phonème as a designation of individual sounds prior to May 1873. Although I had to wade through many irrelevant “hits”,7 I succeeded in finding two. In an article on Mayan languages in the October 1872 issue of a French linguistic journal, we read about a particular consonant (generally transcribed [w] in modern works): “Ce phonème fait d’ailleurs complètement défaut en Français [this phoneme is, incidentally, entirely missing in French]” (Charencey 1872: 154). Even earlier, in 1869, a small book on the origin of language surmised that the cries of primitive man were based on a richer inventory of “phonèmes” than the words of modern languages: “Les cris qui succèdent brusquement à la première impression sont plus riches en phonèmes, que le mots qui les remplacent plus tard dans l’usage journalier [the cries that follow the first impression abruptly are richer in phonemes than the words which replace them later in daily usage]” (Rosny 1869a: 31–32). In both publications, the term phonème occurs only once, and it is striking that the authors neither define it nor give credit to its originator. It must have been so familiar a word to them that they saw no need for explanations, which implies that it had been in use for some time — at least in certain circles. The Americanist Count Hyacinthe de Charencey (1832–1916) and the Orientalist Léon de Rosny (1837–1914) worked together in the Société d’Ethnographie américaine et orientale, whose members “were largely linguists and specialists in Asian texts and preColumbian codices” (Staum 2004: 476), predominantly conservative in religious and political terms (Bergounioux 1996: 5–8, 2005: 361–362). De Rosny was one of its founders (in 1859) and served as “secrétaire perpétuel”; de Charencey was “membre du conseil” (Anon. 1861: 130–131). Among de Rosny’s numerous other works, there is one that deals specifically with the subject of phonetic transcription and contains a survey of earlier proposals for a universal alphabet. A footnote which names some of the many systems that were presented at a conference held in Paris in late 1854 provides a fascinating
7. Apart from problems of character recognition (for instance, épiphonème, phénomène and even l’homme are sometimes misidentified as phonème), there was a serious flaw in how Google Books catalogued multi-volume works such as encyclopaedias and periodicals. (The situation has improved since but is still not fully satisfactory.) All volumes were filed under the year of publication of the first one so that the limitation of the search to a certain time frame was ineffective. Moreover, the search results gave only a page number, which meant that a hit on page so-and-so of a venerable journal could be in any of over a hundred volumes.
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piece of information — a reference to an article by Dufriche in one of the journals of the Société d’Ethnographie:8
(5) Nous citerons seulement ici, pour mémoire, ceux de MM. Charles de Labarthe, Léon Potonié, Féline, Louis Erdan, et enfin l’Alphabet unitaire de M. DufricheDesgenettes, publié dans les Actes de la Société d’Ethnographie, 1re série, t. II, p. 47. (Rosny 1869b: 28n.2)
The minutes of the meetings show that Dufriche was elected as a regular member of the Société d’Ethnographie on 15 October 1860 (Rosny 1861a: 38, 1862a: 277).9 On 19 November 1860, the last item on the agenda was:
(6) M. Dufriche-Desgenettes commence l’exposition de son Système de transcription universelle des langues. (Rosny 1862b: 280, boldface in the original)
Although the meeting lasted until 11:30 p.m., Dufriche did not succeed in finishing the presentation of his transcription system and did so a month later, on 17 December 1860 (Rosny 1862c: 282).10 It is on this talk that the article cited in (5) is based (cf. Figure 3, heading). 3.2 A discovery and a problem Dufriche’s paper “Notes explicatives propres à élucider l’Alphabet unitaire linguistique” begins rather abruptly and apologetically with a disclaimer that he did not support a radical reform of French orthography and that his alphabet was only intended for the notation of pronunciation in dictionaries. These introductory remarks contain the first occurrence of the term phonème in this text — with a typographical error:
(7) […] une notation parfaitement exacte des phonènes [sic] qui constituent le français et l’anglais comme langues parlées, ne doit s’appliquer qu’à un bon dictionnaire de prononciation figurée, surtout à l’usage des provinciaux et des étrangers. (Dufriche-Desgenettes 1861: 47)
8. Almost 15 years ago, a French linguist listed Dufriche as one of the contributors to the first two volumes of the minutes of the Society’s meetings (Bergounioux 1996: 5), but the significance of this fact was not recognized. 9. A biographical note mentions Dufriche’s membership in the “Société ethnographique” [sic] (Cochin 1879a: 3; see also Clifton & Dufriche-Desgenettes 1863: i); since the assumption that the Société de Linguistique was meant (Koerner 1976: 224 = 1978a: 129) seemed perfectly reasonable, the clue was not followed up in subsequent research (including my own). 10. This meeting is missing in the version of the minutes in the Society’s Actes; instead of commence in (6), it has communique (Rosny 1861b: 42).
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Figure 3. Table of Dufriche’s Alphabet unitaire (Dufriche-Desgenettes 1861: before 47)
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In a similarly defensive tone, we are assured that the author has heard all the vowels and consonants in his system and can both pronounce them and explain how they are produced:
(8) Il a bien pu se tromper, en attribuant telle voyelle ou consonne à telle langue plus ou moins connue; mais il affirme qu’il l’a réellement entendu prononcer, durant ses nombreux et lointains voyages, qu’il peut à son tour la faire entendre distinctement, et même, si ce détail ne fatigue pas l’auditeur, lui expliquer par quel jeu des organes est produit le phonème en question […]. (Dufriche-Desgenettes 1861: 47–48).
Dufriche then offers a few comments on the lithographed table which accompanies the article (Figure 3) and ends with some statistics. In his analysis, pure French has “49 phonèmes, dont 6 ne sont qu’accidentels et ne s’écrivent pas [49 phonemes, of which 6 are only incidental and are not written]”. An additional 3 symbols are needed for French dialects, 10 for Hebrew, 5 for pure Arabic, etc., with indigenous dialects of Central America bringing the total to 120 (DufricheDesgenettes 1861: 51). Another cumulative count “Nombre des phonèmes” is given in the table, where we also find phonème in the notes on the right. As in his later publications, Dufriche never defines phonème nor does he give the slightest hint that the term is a new one, let alone a word of his own coinage. We would normally infer that the author could expect his audience to know the term already, which would force us to search for still earlier occurrences, but we must bear in mind that Dufriche generally paid little heed to the reader and did not present his ideas in a systematic step-by-step fashion. We may therefore assume, until proven otherwise, that this article contains the earliest instances of phonème (as a linguistic term) in print. It is, however, unexpectedly difficult to date these. The volume in which Dufriche’s article appeared was published in several undated fascicles which are entitled Actes de la Société d’Ethnographie (without américaine et orientale). No. 7 consists of pp. 1–40 and No. 8 of pp. 41–112, ending within Charles Schœbel’s “Etude sur le verbe être”. No. 7 includes a title page for the volume, identifying it as “tome second […] 1860” of Comptes-rendus des séances de la Société d’Ethnographie américaine et orientale. At some later point, a new title page was provided, Actes de la Société d’Ethnographie américaine et orientale with the year 1861,11 which fits better as the volume covers the meetings 11. The copies of the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut in Berlin (call no. 8° I ge 78, bound together with parts of other volumes) and the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (call no. 8° G 557(2), digitized by Gallica) consist of one fascicle each. The New York Public Library has a copy with the title “Comptes-rendus […] 1860” (digitized by Google Books), whereas the title “Actes
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through 16 December 1861. But this cannot be the correct year of publication either — the table of the Alphabet unitaire (Figure 3) is dated “Mars 1865” in the lower right-hand corner. There is no evidence that the volume was originally distributed without the plates in late 1861 (or early 1862) and that the latter were not supplied until 1865. Moreover, if an argumentum ex silentio is admissible, there is a certain indication that the article was completed after the table was prepared rather than before. In a letter to Joseph Guignaut of 31 March 1865, which accompanied a handwritten version of his Alphabet unitaire with copious notes, Dufriche wrote: “Quand mon alphabet aura passé sous le crayon du lithographe, je serai heureux de vous en envoyer un exemplaire ou deux [when my alphabet has come under the lithographer’s pen, I will be happy to send you a copy or two]” (AIBL 7 avril 1865, p. 3). Since he was very concerned about the inadequate form of his synopsis, he could have tried to make a better impression by offering to send a printed article as well — if it had already been submitted.
Figure 4. Earliest known occurrence of “phonème” in a dated manuscript by Dufriche, 31 March 1865 (AIBL 7 avril 1865, p. 2, phot. Piero d’Houin) […] 1861” is found in the copies of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (call no. Smith Lesouef R-5507) and the British Library in London (call no. Ac.6226, vol. 2).
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The letter furnishes another example of phonème dating from the same time as the table in Figure 3; Dufriche offered to demonstrate all the “phonèmes” that he had arranged in a scientific order:
(9) En attendant, je voudrais que l’on m’offrît l’occasion de prononcer, devant des juges compétents, tous les phonèmes que j’ai rangés dans un ordre scientifiques [sic]. Je puis donner à chacun d’eux un nom rationnel, expliquer par quel jeu des organes il se produit, et enfin les prononcer tous nettement […]. (AIBL 7 avril 1865, p. 2, underlining in the original, see Figure 4; cf. the similar wording in quotation (8))
The addressee was the permanent secretary of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, whom Dufriche asked to decide whether his phonetic alphabet could be considered for the Prix Volney (on which, see Leopold 1999). At the Academy’s meeting of 7 April 1865, the letter was summarized, and “après l’inspection de la pièce” the decision was taken to adjourn the matter (Anon. 1865: 110). We have no way of knowing whether the term phonème came to the attention of anyone other than the permanent secretary. Having established that the first occurrences of the term phonème in print postdate March 1865, our next task is to determine a terminus ante quem. I have not been able to find either the volume nor the fascicle with Dufriche’s article in the official Bibliographie de la France — surprisingly, it does not contain all the publications for which the Direction générale de l’Imprimerie et de la Librairie (which compiled the bibliography) received declarations and copies from the printers (cf. Bellos 1973: 67). In the archived registers, the dépôt légal (the submission of an obligatory copy) of fascicle 8 of Actes de la Société d’Ethnographie was recorded on 2 April 1868 (AN F18* IV 143 s.v. Actes …). This agrees with a published piece of evidence: One of the items listed in the April 1868 issue of Polybiblion: Revue bibliographique universelle (t. 1, p. 94) is the monthly “Revue et bibliothèque orientale” (a title I have not found anywhere else); the description of the contents corresponds precisely to fascicle 8, beginning with “Dufriche: l’Alphabet unitaire linguistique” and ending with “Schœbel: Etude sur le verbe être”. It seems, however, that the printing was completed several months earlier, as the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres acknowledged receipt of Charles Schœbel’s contributions in December 1867 (Anon. 1867: 353); it is not known whether offprints of Dufriche’s paper were circulated around that time, too. While the term phonème did not reach a wider audience until the spring of 1868, it is possible that the members of the Sociéte d’Ethnographie who attended the meetings of 19 November or 17 December 1860 heard it from Dufriche when he presented his alphabet (cf. quotation (6)). Be that as it may, phonème is conspicuously absent from Dufriche’s open letters to the Tribune des Linguistes of late
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1859, in spite of his announcement that he would employ all of his neologisms in the last instalment (Dufriche-Desgenettes 1859b: 62). In a number of places where phonème would have been perfectly fitting, we find son élémentaire and élément phonique simple (e.g., Dufriche-Desgenettes 1859a: 35, 1859b: 59, 1860a: 122).12 The English equivalents elementary sound and simple phonetic element still occur in a manual of French conversation of 1863 to which Dufriche contributed the transcriptions (Clifton & Dufriche-Desgenettes 1863: iv–v), but in view of the audience to which the book was aimed, this cannot be taken to imply that the word phonème was not yet part of his vocabulary. Thus, Dufriche could have “invented” it at any time between early 1860 and March 1865, although the lack of a definition of the term in all of his writings would be more understandable if its novelty had long worn off by the later date. In short, what we know about the earliest instances of the term phonème is as follows: First use
Previous assumption
Current state
in a letter
23 May 1873 (BnF NAF 24493(2) fol. 171v)
31 March 1865 (AIBL 7 avril 1865, see quotation (9) and Figure 4)
in a lecture
24 May 1873 possibly 19 Nov. 1860 (cf. Anon. 1873b: 368, see quotation (cf. Rosny 1862b: 280, see quotation (2)) (6))
in print
7 June 1873 (publication date) (Anon. 1873b: 368, see quotation (2))
2 April 1868 (legal deposit) (Dufriche-Desgenettes 1861; AN F18* IV 143)
4. Back to the sources 4.1 It’s all Greek to me: The word φώνημα Although Dufriche is often described as the inventor or creator of the term phonème (cf. quotation (2); Koerner 1976: 222 = 1978a: 127; German Schöpfer in Koerner 1978b: 87 = 1978a: 182; Kohrt 1985: 61), it was not an invention, i.e., a new derivation from the root √phon, but rather an adaptation of an attested Ancient Greek word, φώνημα (phōnēma). The Thesaurus Linguae Graeca (TLG), a corpus of over 100 million words covering the entire time span from Homer to the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, contains a mere 101 instances of 12. The fact that Dufriche used these expressions rather than son du langage constitutes a further argument against the untenable assertion that he “proposed” phonème as “a one-word equivalent for the German Sprachlaut instead of the cumbersome son du langage” (Jakobson 1971a: 396; cf. 1958: 49, 1960: 5; for counter-evidence and a different analysis of Dufriche’s motives, see Kohrt 1985: 63–77; Mugdan 1996: 284–286; cf. also Hasenkamp 2003).
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this lexeme.13 The number is further reduced if we exclude citations from earlier works, dictionary entries and the like as well as texts that were not yet known in Dufriche’s time. The examples that a student of Greek is most likely to encounter are those in Sophocles’ tragedies; they are presented here with a selection of English translations in which I have highlighted the equivalent of φώνημα: (10) [Odysseus, having heard the opening words of Athena:] ὦ φθέγμ’ Ἀθάνας, φιλτάτης ἐμοὶ θεῶν, / ὡς εὐμαθές σου, κἂν ἄποπτος ᾖς ὅμως, / φώνημ’ ἀκούω καὶ ξυναρπάζω φρενὶ […]. (Ajax 14–17) a. Voice [phthegma] of Athena, dearest to me of the Immortals, how clearly, though thou be unseen, do I hear thy call and seize it in my soul […]. (Jebb 1896: 13–15) b. O voice of Athena, dearest of gods to me, how easily I hear and recognise your utterance, invisible though you are, and grasp it in my mind […]. (Garvie 1998: 27) (11) [Tiresias to Oedipus:] ὁρῶ γὰρ οὐδὲ σοὶ τὸ σὸν φώνημ’ ἰὸν / πρὸς καιρόν· ὡς οὖν μηδ’ ἐγὼ ταὐτὸν πάθω — (Oedipus Tyrannus 324–325) a. Thy words, O king, are wide of the mark, and I / For fear lest I too trip like thee … (Storr 1912: 31) b. I see your voice issues from you with words not apt to the occasion. I don’t want mine to do the same. (Ahl 2008: 148) (12) [Philoctetes, when Neoptolemus declares “we are Greeks”:] ὦ φίλτατον φώνημα (Philoctetes 234) a. O dearest of sounds! (Lloyd-Jones 1994: 279) b. Oh, sweet, sweet voice! (Torrance 1966) (13) [Philoctetes, upon hearing someone speak:] τέκνον, τίνος φώνημα, μῶν Ὀδυσσέως, / ἐπῃσθόμην; (Philoctetes 1295–1296)14 a. My son, whose voice was that? Did I hear Odysseus? (Jebb 1890: 199) b. Who’s there? Is it Odysseus’ voice? (Dewhurst 2000: 41)
In quotations (12) and (13), φώνημα clearly refers to a voice or more specifically the sound of a voice. The same is true of (10), but the translators, having 13. The TLG is available on CD-ROM and online (http://www.tlg.uci.edu). It gives the titles of works in their Latin form, and I have followed this practice. 14. Other editors punctuate this as two questions: τίνος φώνημα; μῶν Ὀδυσσέως / ἐπῃσθόμην; (cf. Jebb 1890: 199 with note on line 1295). Most translators follow this interpretation, even if their Greek text has a single question mark (with μῶν Ὀδυσσέως as an apposition to φώνημα). Understanding the second clause as elliptical (for μῶν Ὀδυσσέως φώνημα ἐπῃσθόμην;), some use an equivalent of φώνημα there and render the first clause more freely for the sake of stylistic variation.
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chosen voice for φθέγμα, were forced to render φώνημα differently. Even in (11), where the focus appears to be on the content of the utterance, “your voice issues from you” in translation (11b) comes closer to the original. The distinction which a well-known dictionary makes between the meanings “sound made, utterance” and “thing spoken, speech, language”, grouping (10) and (13) under the former, (11) and (12) under the latter (Liddell, Scott & Jones 1940: 1968 s.v. [φων]-ημα), is not convincing. Prose writers of the first centuries of the Common Era typically chose φώνημα when they spoke about recognizing a voice as that of a particular person or characterized the quality of someone’s voice (e.g., as sweet, shrill, etc.). The word was also used in a similar range of contexts for animal sounds. In summary, we can conclude that φώνημα means “voice” (cf. Karavas 2005: 122–123). In some situations, sound may be an appropriate translation equivalent, but it is misleading to offer this highly polysemous word as the only gloss — especially in a passage about sound segments, which is what Roman Jakobson (1896–1982) did (1971a: 396; cf. Polish dźwięk in Jakobson 1958: 49, 1960: 5). Authors of phonology textbooks, histories of linguistics and encyclopaedia entries regularly repeat the inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims contained in this influential paper, ignoring both the relevant sources and more recent research (for corrections and further references, see Mugdan 1985: 139–141 = 2001: 6–8; 1996). In our case, the result was that the discrepancy in meaning between Greek φώνημα and Dufriche’s phonème went unnoticed. But is it not odd that Dufriche should have based his new cover term for vowels and consonants on a word that had so little semantic affinity with the notion of speech sound? A better candidate would have been φωνή (phōnē), because we do find it in reference to sound segments and sound sequences (e.g., in Aristotle’s definitions of linguistic units, Poetica 1456b, cf. Halliwell 1995: 99); in the 19th century, it was borrowed into English in both meanings: (14) a. I shall not use the term ‘word’ as a technical term at all, but instead of it when I mean words as sounded I shall use the term phone (like zone, φωνή, ζώνη), and when I mean words as thought I shall use the term noem (νόημα) like poem. (Grote 1872: 55) b. Every living language possesses a limited number of spoken sounds, out of which, in varied order, all its locutions are built up […]. These primary sounds are called its phones. (Lloyd 1899: 1)
The low frequency of φώνημα gives rise to a second question: Was Dufriche so proficient in Greek that he knew the word? It is true that classical languages were an important part of the curriculum in the Jesuit school he attended (La Sicotière 1841: 374, 398) and that he showed a certain interest in Greek; among other things,
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he gave a paper on the school pronunciation of Greek at one of the meetings of the fledgling Société de Linguistique de Paris (Charencey, Leger & Schœbel 1869: xxiii) and discussed Greek phonetics in his correspondence with Havet (BnF NAF 24493(2) fol. 173r, 174v, 175v, etc.; cf. Joseph 1999: 62–63). But he left the Collège d’Alençon at the age of 14 (La Sicotière 1841: 433), and later, his travels left him little time for reading (Dufriche-Desgenettes 1840: 156). Under these circumstances, is it likely that when Dufriche needed a new term, he recalled having come across φώνημα in his Greek lessons at school decades earlier? Or that he just happened to be reading Greek classics in the original and encountered the word there? If the supposition that Dufriche took phonème directly from the Greek has its weaknesses, perhaps it was someone else who introduced the word into French15 — someone who knew Greek very well and who did not depart so radically from the original meaning of φώνημα. 4.2 A possible missing link Phonème is one of the items in a long glossary of terms of Greek origin at the beginning of a work on natural philosophy published in Paris in 1858 — some time before Dufriche is known to have used the word: (15) PHONÈME, voix comme effet de l’organe vocal et celui-ci comme effet des esthèmes de l’ouïe et ensuite devenant la cause qui produit les esthèmes de l’ouïe ou les acousmes. (R. φώνημα.) ESTHÈME, sensation ou combiné du fluide répandu d’un objet cosmique avec le fluide électrique conduit par le nerf à l’organe de la sensation. ACOUSME, sensation obtenue par l’ouïe, et produite par l’organe vocal. (R. ἀκούω.) (Beron 1858: xii, vii, i in that order, boldface in the original)
The author was the Bulgarian educator, physician, merchant and philosopherscientist Petăr Beron, an important figure in the Bulgarian National Revival. Born in Kotel (eastern Bulgaria) around 1799, he studied philosophy and medicine at the universities of Heidelberg and Munich (Germany), practiced medicine in Craiova (Romania) for some time and then concentrated on his scientific and philosophical interests, living in Paris for many years. Before he could complete his Panépistème, an idiosyncratic multi-volume survey of all the sciences, he was murdered in his home in Craiova on 21 March 1871 (for further biographical details, see Gečev 1962a; Băčvarova & Băčvarov 1975: 21–38; Napetova-Džambazova 15. The now obsolete use of phonème (Latin phonemus) for a genus of cephalopod molluscs with the species phonème tranchant, Latin nautilus vortex, German Wirbelschiffer (Montfort 1808: 10–12) is obviously not relevant here (cf. also the dictionaries cited in Amacker 1987: 7n.*).
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1999: 15–79). The glossary cited in (15) is prefaced by a note from which we learn that Beron was someone “qui connaît à fond la langue grècque [who had a profound knowledge of the Greek language]” (Beron 1858: i). This was no exaggeration: He not only learned both the ancient and the modern language at school but also taught Greek as a private tutor and even lectured and published in Greek (cf. Văzvăzova-Karateodorova 1962: 195). Beron operates with the term phonème in a passage in which he maintains that language began with the characteristic “phonèmes” which are produced by certain objects in the world (e.g., meow by the cat) and that the method of representing objects by “phonèmes” was subsequently extended to mute objects: (16) Si tous les objets cosmiques prononçaient des voix propres, comme le chat, le coq, le coucou, etc., ces phonèmes et leurs acousmes auraient pu servir à présenter les objets mêmes; car alors personne n’aurait pu donner aux objets un nom différent de celui qu’ils eussent prononcé eux-mêmes. Mais le nombre des objets phonétiques est très-médiocre, et il n’a servi qu’à donner la première impulsion à la formation de la langue, qui a été premièrement composé des phonèmes pareils reçus des objets mêmes, et ensuite le mode de représenter les objets par des phonèmes a été étendu aux objets muets et aphones. (Beron 1858: 80)
It should be noted that phonème is associated with voix “voice” in the definition (15) as well as in the quotation (16) and that it covers both animal sounds and human utterances. Although it serves as a technical term in a particular variety of fluidum theory, its meaning thus remains fairly close to Greek φώνημα. Elsewhere, the author remarked that “les phonèmes ou les mots [the phonemes or words]” are mere noise for those who are not familiar with the language or with the object denoted (Beron 1858: 81), and in a book written in German a few years earlier, he described a word as, roughly speaking, a combination of phoneme and object (Beron 1855: 499; the form he chose was Phonema with the plural Phonemen). If his phonème referred primarily to a sound sequence as the expression side (signifiant) of a word, the limitation to individual sound segments in Dufriche’s usage would not be such a big step. If Dufriche’s source was Beron’s phonème, the infrequency and the meaning of φώνημα in Ancient Greek would no longer pose problems, but one might object that Dufriche was explicitly described as the inventor of the term in the report about the meeting of the Société de Linguistique de Paris of 24 May 1873 (cf. quotation (2)). This is easily answered. The author (whom we have presumed to be Louis Havet) may have merely deduced that Dufriche, having coined various other terms, also originated the word phonème. In his publications, Dufriche never claimed authorship of the term (he simply used it without saying anything
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about its origin or meaning), but he did call it his filleul “godchild” in a letter to Havet of 8 December 1874: (17) Sur mes notes écrites pour moi seul, au courant de la plume, je pourrais trouver phonologiste que je remplace le plus souvent par phonologue; j’ai même rendu le mot phonetician des Anglais par phonéticien, mais je ne l’ai jamais bien arrêté dans mon esprit, et j’ai employé aussi phonétiste: c’est le mot que vous semblez préférer, et puisque d’ailleurs il paraît aussi le meilleur, je l’adopte avec d’autant plus de résolution qu’il a votre sanction. Vous avez bien emprunté adopté mon filleul phonème, je veux bien adopter aussi le vôtre. (BnF NAF 24493(2) fol. 184r, underlining in the original; cf. Joseph 1999: 67)
However, just as Havet’s phonétiste was not his invention but only the term he favoured, the expression filleul need not imply that Dufriche invented the word phonème. A much more difficult question is how Dufriche could have learned of Beron’s phonème. Although both men lived in the same city at the same time, they had little in common (except perhaps for a certain interest in the origin-of-language question), and it would be rash to suggest that Dufriche was familiar with Beron’s eccentric writings. It seems more realistic that the term was transmitted orally in some way or other. While this is impossible to prove, the counter-hypothesis that it was by sheer coincidence that the two men borrowed the same rare Greek word within a few years of each other is even less attractive. 4.3 Roots and branches Beron’s phonème may be the solution to another problem as well: A number of authors applied the term not only to individual sounds but also to sound sequences of various kinds (cf. Amacker 1987). In some cases, this was clearly a modification of Dufriche’s usage. Thus, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) extended the use of phonème to reflexes of Indo-European syllabic consonants such as Latin en, em (Saussure 1879: 6–7, 19, 35n.1 = 1922: 8, 20, 34n.1; cf. Mugdan 1985: 139–140 = 2001: 6–8, 1996: 289–290), prompting Mikołaj Kruszewski (1851–1887) and, in his Kazan’ period, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845–1929) to define phoneme in terms of correlations (alternations) within a language and correspondences between languages (cf. Mugdan 1984: 63–68; 1985, 1996: 290–294); Saussure almost certainly took the term either from Dufriche (one of whose articles he is known to have read, see Godel 1957: 160), or from Havet (as many take for granted, e.g., Jakobson 1958: 49, 1960: 5 = 1971a: 397) or from both (Kohrt 1985: 87–92). In other publications, phonème denotes phonological words, meaningful sound sequences of any length or sound sequences devoid of meaning. Conceivably, these works belong to a single strand of tradition that began with a report about a notable phonetic
102 Joachim Mugdan
experiment (Rosapelly 1876; cf. Amacker 1987: 10–11, 15): At the request of the Société de Linguistique de Paris, the graphic method developed by Étienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904) for visualizing physiological and other movements (cf. Brain 1998; Teston 2004) was utilized to study the interplay of nasal pressure, laryngeal vibrations and lip movement. For this purpose, Charles-Léopold Rosapelly (1843– 1913), in cooperation with Havet, examined the articulation of sound sequences such as [appa], [affa], [apba], [ampa], [abma], [ambma], etc. — and these sequences were named phonèmes (Rosapelly 1876: 124–125). In a footnote, Rosapelly explained: (18) Le mot phonème a été introduit par M. Champion, pour désigner les groupes de sons qui constituent le langage parlé. (Rosapelly 1876: 109n.1)
René Amacker put forward, as a pure hypothesis, a scenario according to which phonème was created by Dufriche prior to 1859 and originally meant something like “produit de l’articulation” or simply “articulation” so that it was applicable to individual sounds as well as to syllables, words or phrases; only one of these meanings became known to Rosapelly (Amacker 1987: 14–15). However, the absence of phonème in Dufriche’s publications of 1859/60 strongly suggests that it did not yet belong to his “bagage de néologismes” (Dufriche-Desgenettes 1859b: 62) at that time — and when it first appeared in writing in 1865, it referred exclusively to elementary sounds (cf. § 3.2). Now that Beron has come into the picture, we can tentatively offer the alternative suggestion that the phonème of Rosapelly — and the mysterious Monsieur Champion, whoever he may have been16 — ultimately goes back to him. If so, Rosapelly remained fairly close to Beron’s definition, whereas Dufriche departed from it. On the other hand, when phonème was employed without any explanation, often just once or twice in a publication, it could easily happen that readers who were not yet acquainted with the term understood it in their own way and unintentionally introduced a semantic change when they adopted it. Hence, its meaning can have been broadened or narrowed (from sound segment to sound sequence or vice versa) several times independently of each other. The full details may never become known, but it still seems the most plausible assumption that all the uses of the word emanate from the same source — according to our present state of knowledge, Petăr Beron. Of course, this does not in any way detract from the role of Antoni Dufriche-Desgenettes and the many others thanks to whom phoneme eventually became one of the key terms of modern linguistics. 16. He has been cautiously identified with the publisher Honoré Champion (1846–1913), who knew the academic scene of Paris well and whose bookshop was a meeting place for scholars (Amacker 1987: 13) — but it was only in 1874 that he founded his publishing house, so that he is unlikely to have disseminated the term phonème prior to Dufriche’s paper of May 1873.
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Archival materials AIBL 7 avril 1865: Archives de l’Institut de France (Paris), Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, séance du 7 avril 1865 (unfoliated). No. 23: Letter from [Antoni] Dufriche[-Desgenettes] to [Joseph] Guigniaut [1794–1876, secrétaire perpétuel de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres], 31 March 1865, accompanied by a table “Alphabet unitaire, servant de base à un système complet de prononciation figurée et destiné à faciliter l’étude phonologique de toute langue, et même de tout idiome dépourvu de signes graphiques, &c., &c. par A. D. D.” with “Notes éparses” (verso).17 AN F7* 2555: Archives nationales (Paris), Fonds publics postérieurs à 1789, série F: Versements des ministères et des administrations qui en dépendent; sous-série 7: Police générale; cote 2555: Passeports, juillet–déc. 1820 (registre). Fol. 953: Enregistrement du 21 août 1820. AN F18* IV 143: Archives nationales (Paris), Fonds publics postérieurs à 1789, série F: Versements des ministères et des administrations qui en dépendent; sous-série 18: Imprimerie, librairie, presse censure; IV: Enregistrement du dépôt légal à Paris, ouvrages périodiques; cote 143: Année 1868, A-B (registre). BnF NAF 24493(2): Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris), Département des Manuscrits, Nouvelles acquisitions françaises, Correspondance et papiers de Louis Havet, cote 24493(2): X Drake-Duverd. Fol. 171–191: Letters from [Antoni] Dufriche[-Desgenettes], 23 May 1873–27 July 1875.
References18 Ahl, Frederick, transl. 2008. Two Faces of Oedipus: Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and Seneca’s Oedipus. Ithaca, N.Y. & London: Cornell University Press. Amacker, René. 1987. “Quand le phonème n’était pas le phonème (Contribution à l’histoire de la terminologie linguistique)”. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 41.7–20. Anderson, Stephen R. 1985. Phonology in the Twentieth Century. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. Anon. 1855. “Lijst der Leden”. Handelingen van het vierde nederlandsch taal- en letterkundig congres, gehouden te Utrecht op 20, 21 en 22 September 1854, 1–8. Utrecht: J. G. Broese. [Google BDgVAAAAQAAJ] Anon. 1858. “Dufriche” [biographical note]. Les Olympiades: Album de l’Union des Poètes [2].305.
17. I am most grateful to Jean Leclant, Secrétaire perpétuel de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, for granting me permission to use these materials and to Piero d’Houin for his generosity in locating the documents, providing me with photographs and allowing me to reproduce them. 18. At the end of an entry, “Gallica”, “Google” and “Internet Archive” followed by an identifier refer to the digitized versions at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/xxx, http://books.google.com/ books?id=xxx and http://www.archive.org/details/xxx, respectively, where xxx stands for the identifier. Due to poor cataloguing and indexing, such digitizations are not always easy to locate. All URLs were last accessed on 10 January 2011.
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106 Joachim Mugdan Studer. (Regular book ed., [= Société de publications romanes et françaises, 61.] Genève: E. Droz; Paris: Minard.) Grote, [John]. 1872. “On Glossology”. Journal of Philology 4.55–66. Halliwell, Stephen et al., eds. & transl. 1995. [Aristotle, XXIII:] Aristotle: Poetics / Longinus: On the Sublime / Demetrius: On Style. (= Loeb Classical Library, 199.) Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press. Hasenkamp, Wiltrud. 2003. “Sprachlaut — son du langage — phonème” [in French]. Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 119.377–392. Havet, L[ouis]. 1873. Review of De la nature et de la distinction des syllabes latines by L[ouis]C[harles] Clouet (Le Mans: Monnoyer, 1872). Revue critique d’histoire et de littérature 7:2.170–171. (No. 37 of 13 Sept. 1873.) [Gallica bpt6k928862] Havet, L. 1874. “Oi et ui en français”. Romania 3.321–338. [Internet Archive romania03pariuoft] Hockett, Charles F[rancis] 1995. “The Birth and Deaths of the Phoneme”. Idéologies dans le monde anglo-saxon 8.5–50. (Repr. in Kreidler, ed., 2001.62–98.) Jakobson, Roman. 1958. “Powstanie pojęcia fonemu w lingwistyce polskiej i światowej [The emergence of the notion of the phoneme in Polish and international linguistics]”. Polska Akademia Nauk, Sprawozdania z prac naukowych wydziału nauk społecznych 1:6.48–54. Jakobson, Roman. 1960. “Kazańska szkoła polskiej lingwistyki i jej miejsce w światowym rozwoju fonologii”. Biuletyn Polskiego Towarzystwa Językoznawczego 19.3–34. [English translation: Jakobson 1971a.] Jakobson, Roman. 1971a [1960]. “The Kazan’ School of Polish Linguistics and its Place in the International Development of Phonology”. Jakobson 1971b.394–428. Jakobson, Roman. 1971b. Selected Writings, II: Word and Language. The Hague & Paris: Mouton. Jebb, R[ichard] C[laverhouse], ed. & transl. 1890. Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, IV: The Philoctetes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2nd ed., 1898.) Jebb, R. C., ed. & transl. 1896. Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, VII: The Ajax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Joseph, John E. 1999. “Dufriche-Desgenettes and the Birth of the Phoneme”. The Emergence of the Modern Language Sciences: Studies on the transition from historical-comparative to structural linguistics in honour of E. F. K. Koerner, Vol. 1: Historiographical Perspectives ed. by Sheila Embleton, John E. Joseph & Hans-Josef Niederehe, 55–75. Philadelphia & Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Karavas, Orestis. 2005. Lucien et la tragédie. (= Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte, 76.) Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Koerner, E[rnst] F[rideryk] K[onrad]. 1976. “A Minor Figure in 19th-Century French Linguistics: A. Dufriche-Desgenettes”. Phonetica 33.222–231. (Repr. in Koerner 1978a.127–136.) Koerner, E.F.K. 1978a. Toward a Historiography of Linguistics: Selected Essays. (= Studies in the History of Linguistics, 19.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Koerner, E.F.K. 1978b. “Zu Ursprung und Entwicklung des Phonem-Begriffs: Eine historische Notiz”. Sprache in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Festschrift für Heinrich Matthias Heinrichs zum 65. Geburtstag ed. by Dietrich Hartmann, Hansjürgen Linke & Otto Ludwig, 82–93. Köln & Wien: Böhlau. (Repr. in Koerner 1978a.176–188.) Koerner, E.F.K. 2005. “Le Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris parmi les principales revues linguistiques de son temps”. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 100:1.405– 424.
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Koerner, E.F.K. 2008. Universal Index of Biographical Names in the Language Sciences. (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 113.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kohrt, Manfred. 1985. Problemgeschichte des Graphembegriffs und des frühen Phonembegriffs. (= Reihe Germanistische Linguistik, 61.) Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Kreidler, Charles W[illiam], ed. 2001. Phonology: Critical concepts. Vol. V: The Interface with Morphology and Syntax. London & New York: Routledge. La Sicotière, Léon de. 1841 (for 1842). “Histoire du collége [sic] d’Alençon”. Annuaire des cinq départements de l’ancienne Normandie 8.366–442. [Google ylQ2AAAAMAAJ] La Sicotière, L[éon] de. 1877. “F.-N. de Foulaines”. L’intermédiaire des chercheurs et curieux 10.219–220. [Gallica bpt6k61448j] Leite de Vasconcellos [= Vasconcelos], J[osé]. 1886. A evolução da linguagem: Ensaio anthropologico. Doctoral dissertation, Eschola Medica do Porto. Porto: Typographia Occidental. (Repr. in Leite de Vasconcelos 1928.1–150.) Leite de Vasconcellos, J. 1928. Opusculos. Vol. I: Filologia (Parte I). Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade. Leopold, Joan, ed. 1999. The Prix Volney: Its history and significance for the development of linguistic research. Vol. Ia-b. Dordrecht–Boston–London: Kluwer. Liddell, Henry George, Robert Scott & Henry Stuart Jones. 1940. A Greek-English Lexicon. New ed., vol. II: λ-ᾠώδης. London: Oxford University Press. Lloyd, Rich[ar]d J[ohn] 1899. Northern English: Phonetics, grammar, texts. (= Skizzen lebender Sprachen, 1.) Leipzig: B. G. Teubner. [Internet Archive northernenglishp00lloyuoft] Lloyd-Jones, Hugh, ed. & transl. 1994. Sophocles, II: Antigone, The Women of Trachis, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus. (= Loeb Classical Library, 21.) Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press. Mattoso Camara [= Câmara], J[oaquim], Jr. 1953. Para o estudo da fonêmica portuguêsa. Rio [de Janeiro]: Edição da “Organização Simões”. Meulen, R[immer] van der. 1884. Brinkman’s catalogus der boeken, plaat- en kaartwerken, die gedurende de jaren 1850–1882 in Nederland zijn uitgegeven of herdrukt. Amsterdam: C. L. Brinkman. (Repr., Leiden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1966.) Millet, Adrien. 1933. Les Grammairiens et la Phonétique ou L’enseignement des sons du français depuis le XVIe siècle jusqu’à nos jours. Paris: J. Monnier. Montfort, Denys de. 1808. Conchyliologie systématique et classification méthodique des coquilles. Tome 1er, Paris: F. Schœll. [Google MxMOAAAAQAAJ] Mugdan, Joachim. 1984. Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845–1922): Leben und Werk. München: Wilhelm Fink. Mugdan, Joachim. 1985 [1987]. “The Origin of the Phoneme: Farewell to a myth”. Lingua Posnansiensis 28.137–150. (Repr. in Kreidler, ed., 2001.4–20.) Mugdan, Joachim. 1996. “Die Anfänge der Phonologie”. Sprachtheorien der Neuzeit, II: Von der Grammaire de Port-Royal (1660) zur Konstitution moderner linguistischer Disziplinen ed. by Peter Schmitter (= Geschichte der Sprachtheorie, 5), 247–318. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Napetova, Nadežda & Rozalina Džambazova. 1999. D-r Petăr Beron: Po materiali ot arxiva na D-r Vasil Bakărdžiev [Dr. Petăr Beron: Based on materials from the archive of Dr Vasil Bakărdžiev]. Sofia: Universitetsko izdatelstvo Kliment Oxridski. Oursel, N[oémie] N[oire]. 1886. Nouvelle biographie normande. Tome 1er [A-K]. Paris: Alphonse Picard. [Internet Archive nouvellebiograp01oursgoog]
108 Joachim Mugdan Paesschen, P[ierre] Jean [= Pieter Jan] van. [1880]. Deux mélodies de chant pour voix de bariton ou mezzo-soprano, Nº 1: La fille du poète. Poésie d’Antoni Dufriche. Bois-le-Duc [’s-Hertogenbosch]: Henri Mosmans. Renaud, P[ierre] G[uillaume]. [1855]. Reste chez nous! Souvenir de la Zélande: Romance avec accompagnement de Piano. Paroles d’Antoni Dufriche. Amsterdam: Theune. Rosapelly, Ch[arles]-L[éopold]. 1876. “Inscription des mouvements phonétiques”. Physiologie experimentale: Travaux du laboratoire de M. Marey 2.109–131. [Medic@, http://www.bium. univ-paris5.fr/histmed/medica/cote?31093x02; Virtual Laboratory, http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/references?id=lit9492] Rosny, Léon de. 1861a. “Séance du 15 octobre 1860”. Actes de la Société d’Ethnographie américaine et orientale 2.38–39. (No. 7, alternative volume title Comptes-rendus des séances de la Société d’Ethnographie américaine et orientale.) [Gallica bpt6k54403359, Google y_wpAAAAYAAJ] Rosny, Léon de. 1861b [1868]. “Séance du 19 novembre 1860”. Actes de la Société d’Ethnographie américaine et orientale 2.41–42. (No. 8.) Rosny, Léon de. 1862a. “Séance du 15 octobre 1860”. Revue orientale et américaine 7.277–278. [Erroneously paginated 7–8, cf. note after title page.] [Google 2WUFAAAAMAAJ] Rosny, Léon de. 1862b. “Séance du 19 novembre 1860”. Revue orientale et américaine 7.279–280. [Errononeously paginated 9–10.] Rosny, Léon de. 1862c. “Séance du 17 décembre 1860”. Revue orientale et américaine 7.281–282. [Errononeously paginated 11–12.] Rosny, Léon de. 1869a. De l’origine du langage. Paris: Maisonneuve. [Internet Archive delorigi nedulan00rosngoog] Rosny, Léon de. 1869b. “Observations sur la transcription des sons étrangers et sur l’Alphabet international linguistique”. Archives paléographiques de l’Orient et de l’Amérique 1.19–60. [Google STAwAAAAYAAJ] Sabatier, Robert. 1977. Histoire de la Poésie française, 5: La Poésie du XIXe siècle, I: Les Romantismes. Paris: Albin Michel. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1879 [1878]. Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes. Leipsick [Leipzig]: B. G. Teubner. (Repr. in Saussure 1922.1–268.) [Gallica bpt6k729200] Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1922. Recueil des publications scientifiques. [Ed. by Charles Bally & Léopold Gautier.] Genève: Sonor. (Repr., Genève: Slatkine, 1970.) [Internet Archive recueildespublic00sausuoft] Scard, A[ntoine]. [1853?]. L’oraison dominicale. Paroles de Mr. Antoni Dufriche. Paris: RegnierCanaux. (Repr. as No. 5 in A. Scard, Les échos du temple: Six mélodies mystiques pour Ténor et Soprano. Paris: Régnier-Canaux, [1855?].) Silva Neto, Serafim [da]. 1938. Fontes do latim vulgar: O Appendix Probi (Edição comentada). Rio [de Janeiro]: Edição do Autor & Editora A. B. C. Staum, Martin. 2004. “Nature and Nurture in French Ethnography and Anthropology, 1859– 1914”. Journal of the History of Ideas 65.475–495. Storr, F[rancis], ed. & transl. 1912. Sophocles, I: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone. (= Loeb Classical Library, [20].) London: William Heinemann; New York: Macmillan. Teston, Bernard. 2004. “L’œuvre d’Étienne-Jules Marey et sa contribution à l’émergence de la phonétique dans les sciences du langage”. Travaux Interdisciplinaires du Laboratoire
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Parole et Langage 23.237–266. [Hyper articles en ligne, http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ docs/00/17/35/54/PDF/2098.pdf] Torrance, Robert, transl. 1966. Sophocles: The women of Trachis and Philoctetes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. [Cited according to online version, Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0219] Văzvăzova-Karateodorova, Kirila. 1962. “Bibliografija na trudovete na Petăr Beron [Bibliography of the works of Petăr Beron]”. Gečev, ed., 1962b.189–203. Zeller, Otto & Wolfram Zeller, eds. 1991. IBN Index bio-bibliographicus notorum hominum. [Pars C:] Corpus alphabeticum, I: Sectio generalis, Vol. 53: Demópoulos, ‘Erakles usque ad Désiree, A. Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag.
Summary Hitherto unknown works by Antoni Dufriche-Desgenettes (1804–1878) show that he used the term phonème earlier than assumed until now: the word is attested in manuscripts of March 1865 but the publication of the first article in which it occurs was apparently delayed until 1868. Possibly, Dufriche did not “invent” the expression himself but borrowed it, at least indirectly, from the Bulgarian philosopher Petăr Beron (c. 1799–1871), who had used it several years previously for the sound aspect of a word. This usage may also be the reason why some later authors applied the term phonème to sound sequences.
Résumé Des travaux jusque-là inconnus d’Antoni Dufriche-Desgenettes (1804–1878) démontrent qu’il a utilisé le terme phonème plus tôt qu’on ne le croyait jusqu’à présent: Le mot est attesté dans des manuscrits du mars 1865, mais apparemment la publication du premier article dans lequel il apparait fut retardée jusqu’à 1868. Il est possible que Dufriche n’ait pas “inventé” l’expression lui-même mais qu’il l’ait emprunté, au moins indirectement, du philosophe bulgare Petăr Beron (c. 1799–1871); Beron l’avait utilisé quelques années auparavant pour désigner le côté phonique d’un mot. Cet usage pourrait aussi être la raison pour laquelle quelques auteurs postérieurs ont employé le terme phonème pour des séquences de sons.
Zusammenfassung Bisher unbekannte Werke von Antoni Dufriche-Desgenettes (1804–1878) zeigen, dass er den Terminus phonème früher benutzt hat als bis jetzt angenommen: Das Wort ist in Manuskripten vom März 1865 belegt, aber die Veröffentlichung des ersten Artikels, in dem es vorkommt, hat sich offenbar bis 1868 verzögert. Möglicherweise hat Dufriche den Ausdruck nicht selbst “erfunden”, sondern zumindest indirekt von dem bulgarischen Philosophen Petăr Beron (c. 1799–1871) entlehnt, der damit einige Jahre zuvor die lautliche Seite eines Wortes bezeichnet hatte. Dieser Sprachgebrauch mag auch der Grund dafür sein, dass manche späteren Autoren den Terminus phonème für Lautfolgen verwendeten.
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Author’s address: Joachim Mugdan Institut für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Universität Münster Aegidiistr. 5 D-48143 Münster G e r many e-mail: [email protected]
Roman Jakobson’s Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze (1941) and Alf Sommerfelt* Ernst Håkon Jahr
University of Agder, Kristiansand
1. Introduction A number of books stand out as especially important for the development of linguistics in the 19th and 20th centuries. Roman Jakobson’s Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze (henceforth: Kindersprache), published in 1941 by Språkvetenskaplige Sällskapet [The Linguistic Society] in Uppsala, Sweden, belongs to this category of seminal classic contributions to the advancement of linguistic science. Kindersprache presents a comprehensive theory about children’s phonological development and, as the book claims, the opposite, phonological reduction. Jakobson develops this theory by linking observations about language acquisition and language attrition — in the form of aphasia — in one uniform framework. Jakobson formulated hypotheses about the order in which children acquire the phoneme inventory of their native language and about language dissolution caused by aphasia. Children acquire phonemes via a series of contrasts, where more widespread, universal contrasts are acquired first (consonants vs. vowels, oral vs. nasal consonants, labial vs. dental consonants and stops vs. fricatives). Finer contrasts, found in fewer languages, come later. Jakobson claims that the process is the opposite in the case of aphasia: finer contrasts are more likely to get lost earlier than broader contrasts, and, therefore, more universal contrasts are more lasting than non-universal contrasts. Roman Jakobson’s book, which comprises only 83 pages, is written in German, but starts, nevertheless, with a short dedication in Norwegian Bokmål. In italics, on page 1, we read: Til min venn Alf (“To my friend Alf ”) * I’d like to thank three anonymous HL reviewers and the editor himself for valuable comments on and suggestions about an earlier version of this article. Historiographia Linguistica XXXVIII:1/2 (2011), 111–125. doi 10.1075/hl.38.1/2.04jah issn 0302–5160 / e-issn 1569–9781 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
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The friend is Alf Sommerfelt, professor of general linguistics at the University of Oslo, and one of Jakobson’s Scandinavian colleagues who helped him escape Nazi Germany at the beginning of World War II. There were, however, several friends and colleagues who helped him in Scandinavia during the period 1939–1941, so why is Alf Sommerfelt the one among Jakobson’s friends and colleagues to whom this important book is dedicated? In this article, we will see that, as early as 1929, Alf Sommerfelt sketched out fundamental ideas about the phonological development of children based on observations of his own children in Oslo. Even though these ideas were formulated only in passing in a rather short book review, they can nevertheless be shown to have inspired Jakobson when he was developing the theory of children’s phonological development, which he later presented in Kindersprache. Early in the book there is an important reference to Sommerfelt’s 1929 review article, but this reference falls short in conveying to the reader the full impact of Sommerfelt’s ideas on Jakobson’s work. 2. Roman Jakobson in Scandinavia, 1939–1941 Roman Jakobson’s dramatic escape with his wife Svatova1 from Prague in 1939, following Nazi Germany’s expansion into Czechoslovakia, first to Scandinavia — Denmark, Norway, Sweden — then to the U.S., defines the context and conditions under which Kindersprache was written. It can only increase our admiration for Jakobson’s achievement in this book that, during such an obviously very difficult and uncertain period for himself and his wife, he was able to do research and write a book of this type. The main events surrounding Jakobson’s travel to and stay in Scandinavia from April 1939–May 1941, are detailed below (cf. Toman 1995: 244–245; Jangfeldt 1997, Fischer-Jørgensen 1998). Jakobson, born in Russia in 1896, moved to Czechoslovakia in 1920. He became a Czech citizen, and from 1934 was a professor at Masaryk University in Brno. Because of the politically very tense situation following the Anschluß of Austria (March 1938) and the annexation of the Sudetenland (October 1938), Jakobson moved to Prague early in 1939. He spent about a month in Prague trying to find a way to leave the country, during which time Nazi Germany completed its incorporation of Bohemia and Moravia into the German Reich. The Danish consulate in Prague helped arrange exit visas, and towards the end of April 1939, Jakobson and his wife arrived in Copenhagen. The justification for their visit to Denmark was that Jakobson had been invited to give lectures at Copenhagen University. 1. According to Fischer-Jørgensen (1998: 22), her full name was Svatova Prikova Jakobson, “by family and friends called Svatja”. She was Jakobson’s second wife.
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Jakobson stayed in Copenhagen over the summer of 1939, about four months, till the end of August, giving lectures at the university on the structure of the phoneme. While in Denmark, he prepared a paper for the Fifth International Congress of Linguists. This congress was scheduled to be held in Brussels in September 1939, but was cancelled due to the outbreak of World War II. In this paper, Jakobson presents the main idea which he elaborated fully in Kindersprache, about the course of phonological development in children. However, the paper, which was written in French, was not published until 1949, when it was appended to the French translation of Trubetzkoy’s Grundzüge (Principes de phonologie, Paris: Klincksieck, 1949). (Later this paper was reprinted in Jakobson 1962: 317–327.) After Copenhagen, the Jakobsons moved on to Norway, probably on Alf Sommerfelt’s invitation, where they arrived on 1 September 1939. Jakobson would stay more than seven months in Oslo, till April 1940. In Copenhagen, Viggo Brøndal (1887–1942) and Louis Hjelmslev (1899–1965) had been Jakobson’s hosts. In Oslo, it was primarily Sommerfelt who organized his stay. Jakobson and Sommerfelt had known each other since 1928, when they met at the First International Congress of Linguists in The Hague. Sommerfelt was one of the first scholars to acknowledge Jakobson’s ideas about distinctive features for the description of phonology, and he no doubt saw Jakobson’s stay in Oslo as a huge opportunity for Norwegian linguistics to engage with this newest development in linguistic theory. Jakobson was soon, probably on Sommerfelt’s initiative, granted Norwegian citizenship, and Sommerfelt was also behind Jakobson being elected as a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (from 1940). Roman Jakobson was very active during his seven months in Oslo, where he held a part-time position at the university. He lectured, carried out research at the Institute for Comparative Cultural Studies, and cooperated with, advised and guided Norwegian scholars. The Semitic specialist Harris Birkeland (1904–1961), who became a full professor in 1948, and who introduced structuralism into the study of Semitic languages in Norway, wrote in the preface of his book Akzent und Vokalismus im Althebräischen (1940) that Jakobson’s work and advice had been very important for his monograph. Birkeland’s book is referred to by Jakobson in a footnote on page 36 in Kindersprache. Several other references in Kindersprache to Norwegian, and to various contributions by Norwegian linguists and scholars, show that Jakobson worked on the book during his stay in Norway. This is confirmed by Jakobson himself, when he writes in 1962 that Kindersprache was written in Oslo and Stockholm from “Ende 1939 — Anfang 1941” (Jakobson 1962a: 396). In Oslo, Jakobson also embarked on an ambitious project to make a phonetic atlas of the world, but he never completed it (cf. Hovdhaugen et al. 2000: 334). Early in the morning of 9 April 1940, as soon as news about the German attack on Norway reached them, Jakobson and his wife, in fear of being captured by
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the approaching German soldiers, first fled north of the capital. In the following couple of weeks they were helped eastwards to Sweden and crossed the Norwegian-Swedish border on 23 April.2 Once in Sweden, Jakobson at first wanted to move on quickly and planned to travel to France. His parents lived in Paris, and he was invited to the Sorbonne. Soon, however, he changed plans. In late May 1941, he and his wife left from Gothenburg on a ship bound for the U.S. From April 1940 till May 1941, however, Jakobson remained in Uppsala and Stockholm and continued his work. He collaborated with colleagues at the University Clinic at Uppsala, and also at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm; both institutions proved important for Jakobson’s work on language and aphasia. When Jakobson left Sweden in May 1941, he had finished the manuscript of Kindersprache, and the book appeared later the same year. 3. The references in Kindersprache The list of publications at the end of Kindersprache is not a list of references by present day standards. Instead, the list (pp. 78–83) comprises the works consulted by Jakobson that deal specifically with child language development or language impairment: “Die benutzte Literatur über Kindersprache und Sprachstörungen”. This means that many of the references in the actual text of Kindersprache are only to be found — along with their publication details — in footnotes throughout the book, and are not listed at the end. This was, however, not unusual at the time. 2. In the spring semester 1976, the then retired Harvard professor Roman Jakobson gave a guest lecture at the University of Oslo, which the present writer attended — among many others. Sitting in the front row was Professor Hans Vogt (1903–1986), the then world authority on Caucasian languages. Vogt had undoubtedly spent a lot of time with Jakobson during his stay in Oslo 1939–1940. In 1942, Vogt was the first linguist to publish a comprehensive structuralist analysis of the Norwegian sound system (cf. Vogt 1942). Jakobson started his talk in 1976 by telling the story about how Vogt had helped save his life during those dramatic days in April 1940 when Jakobson and his wife were on the run and trying to escape to Sweden through the rugged land between the two countries. One day, Jakobson said, they had sought refuge at a farm in the mountainous border area. When Jakobson introduced himself to the local farmer, much to Jakobson’s astonishment he asked Jakobson if he happened to be the famous linguist. It turned out that Hans Vogt had written summaries for the Labour Party’s daily newspaper in Oslo of the lectures that Jakobson had given at the university, and this farmer high up in the mountains subscribed to that newspaper. When reading Vogt’s summaries of the lectures, the farmer told Jakobson, he could not help but notice the professor’s strange first name (Roman) combined with the quite “Norwegian” surname (Jakobson). When Jakobson confirmed that he was indeed the same professor Jakobson who had given the lectures in Oslo, the farmer took very good care of Jakobson and his wife. Jakobson said that by writing a summary in the daily newspaper about his lectures, Hans Vogt had helped save his life.
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There are altogether five references to Sommerfelt in Kindersprache. Three publications by Sommerfelt are listed at the end. These three publications are all found in two of the early volumes (1 and 3) of the by then highly esteemed Norwegian linguistic journal Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap (NTS). They are given in the “benutzte” references as follows (Jakobsen 1941: 83): (α) Loi phonétique. Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap I/1928. (β) Remarque sur la valeur expressive des voyelles. Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap I/1928. (γ) (Besprechung) C. u. W. Stern, Die Kindersprache. Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap III/1929.
Jakobson obviously had access to the NTS volumes shortly after they appeared, as witnessed by the fact that in a 1929 publication he referred to an article by Sommerfelt in volume 1 (Sommerfelt 1928b; cf. Jakobson 1962a: 111–115). As we shall see, however, only the third of the Sommerfelt publications in the list in Kindersprache (γ: Sommerfelt 1929) is referred to directly in the text. Jakobson takes a sentence from the first reference (α: Sommerfelt 1928a) for the second motto in the book (cf. below), while the second work (β: Sommerfelt 1928b) does not seem to be referred to at all in Kindersprache. In addition to these three publications, one more of Sommerfelt’s works (Sommerfelt 1938) is referred to twice, in footnotes on pp. 38 and 77. In conclusion, we can say that the list of references at the end of Jakobson’s book provides its intellectual context and suggests further readings, rather than being a list of works cited. We shall now take a closer look at the references to Alf Sommerfelt in Kindersprache in order to establish the relationship between his work and the fundamental idea behind Jakobson’s book. Through this we may also be able to understand why this book is dedicated to Alf Sommerfelt. First, we will have a look at the book’s two opening mottos. 4. The two mottos on page 1 of Kindersprache After the dedication to Alf (Sommerfelt) on page 1 (cf. above) come two quotations. The first is taken from the philosophy of science in a broad sense, while the second is specifically from linguistics. The first motto is a famous line from Edmund Husserl (1859–1938): Alles wahrhaft Einigende sind die Verhältnisse der Fundierung. HUSSERL. [What is truly unifying are the relationships of foundation.]
Jakobson does not give any specific reference details for this quote, only Husserl’s name. He obviously considered the quotation to be common knowledge at the
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time and may have intended it to be a signal of his inspiration from phenomenology. The citation as given by Jakobson is not completely accurate. In Logische Untersuchungen II, 1 (Husserl 1901: 286) the sentence reads: “Alles wahrhaft Einigende, so würden wir geradezu sagen, sind die Verhältnisse der Fundierung [Everything truly uniting, we would say explicitly, are the relationships of foundation].” The second motto in Kindersprache, the one taken specifically from linguistics, is from Sommerfelt: Il n’y a pas de différence de principe entre les systèmes phonétiques du monde quoiqu’il existe, naturellement, bien des phonèmes d’aire d’extension relativement limitée. SOMMERFELT (1928). [There is no principal difference in the phonetic systems of the world, although there are, naturally, many phonemes with relatively limited distribution.]
As with the Husserl motto, Jakobson gives only Sommerfelt’s surname — the opposite of the dedication, where he just used his first name, Alf. By using only the surnames for both authors, Jakobson assigns the same importance to both mottos. However, for the Sommerfelt quotation, he cannot assume it to be commonly known among enlightened readers, so he dates the Sommerfelt quotation to 1928. As we have seen above, however, Kindersprache lists two different entries for Sommerfelt 1928, and there is no indication which of the two works contains the motto. It is actually from the alpha entry, Loi phonétique (Sommerfelt 1928a: 14). Again, as with the Husserl motto, Jakobson has not quoted Sommerfelt completely accurately. He has added italics (de principe) and truncated the complete sentence found in Sommerfelt: “Phonétiquement, il n’y a pas de différence de principe entre les systèmes phonétiques du monde quoiqu’il existe, naturellement, bien des phonèmes d’aire d’extension relativement limitée, comme, par exemple, les clicks de certaines langues africaines.” The omissions both here and in the Husserl quotation above are motivated by the function of mottos: they have to be general. In the English translation (1968) of Kindersprache, the translator, Allan R. Keiler, has added Sommerfelt’s first name to the reference under the second motto, but not “Edmund” to Husserl, and in that way has not been sensitive to the parallel treatment of the two which was probably intended by Jakobson. It may be the case that Keiler felt in 1968 that although Husserl’s work was still generally known, Sommerfelt’s was no longer, perhaps even among most linguists. However, Sommerfelt was in his day one of the leading linguists of the western world. Section 5 is a brief account of his biography. 5. Alf Sommerfelt’s biography Alf Axelssøn Sommerfelt was born 1892 in the city of Trondheim in mid Norway and grew up there. He graduated from high school in 1911, the same year he
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began his university studies in Kristiania (Oslo). He was particularly influenced there by the professors of Old Norse, phonetics, Indo-European comparative linguistics and Celtic languages. In 1914, Sommerfelt travelled to Dublin, and in 1916 he moved to France to continue his studies. There he studied with, among others, Joseph Vendryes (Celtic studies), Jules Gilliéron (dialectology) and Maurice Grammont (phonetics). Between 1915 and 1920, he carried out extensive field work in different areas of Celtic-speaking Europe (Ireland, Wales, Brittany). He stayed in France six years, and in 1921 he earned the degree of docteur ès lettres in Paris. Sommerfelt returned to Oslo in 1922 to take up a position at the university. He was very soon engaged in an important debate over linguistic theory, his main opponent being Professor Hjalmar Falk (1859–1928), the leading advocate in Norway at the time for the Neogrammarian approach. This led to a lasting theoretical split among Norwegian linguists into those who continued to work within the Neogrammarian framework (basically those working within Scandinavian linguistics) and those who more readily accepted new approaches, such as structuralism and, later, transformational grammar during the 1960s and early 1970s. This split lasted until around the mid 1970s (cf. Jahr 1996, 2004). Sommerfelt was appointed associate professor in 1926 and full professor of general linguistics in 1931. His chair was the first in general linguistics in Scandinavia, and also one of the first such chairs in the entire world. Alf Sommerfelt was regarded as the leading Norwegian linguist of his generation, and his international standing was higher than any other Norwegian linguist has ever enjoyed. He is credited with being one of the forefathers of modern sociolinguistics (cf. Sommerfelt 1954), and he was the founder of Celtic dialectology (cf., e.g., Sommerfelt 1921, 1922, 1925). Structuralism (the Prague School) was introduced into Norway by Sommerfelt. His most important papers and articles were collected in a volume entitled Diachronic and Synchronic Aspects of Language (1962). During the German occupation of Norway in World War II, Sommerfelt worked for the exiled Norwegian government in London (1940–1945), and after the war he was instrumental in the establishment and development of UNESCO. From 1946 until his death he was secretary-general of the Comité international permanent des linguistes (CIPL). He served as Dean of his faculty at Oslo University 1953–1957, and as Vice Rector of the university 1957–1960. Sommerfelt received honorary degrees from four foreign universities and was elected to several academies and learned societies in Norway and abroad. He served as President of the Eighth International Congress of Linguists in Oslo in 1957.3 3. Roman Jakobson was a prominent participant at the Eighth International Congress of Linguists, 5–9 August 1957, in Oslo. He used his Norwegian passport to travel to the congress (cf.
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Sommerfelt retired at the age of 70, in 1962. He died in a car accident in 1965. 6. The main reference to Sommerfelt in Kindersprache Returning now to Kindersprache, we find, as mentioned above, a total of five references to publications by Alf Sommerfelt in the book. The first one appears, as we saw, as the second motto on page 1. The most important one, however, is found on page 3 and refers to Sommerfelt (1929). Even though this reference appears in a section rendered in a smaller typeface than the main text of the book, a closer look reveals that it is very significant: it is in this work that Sommerfelt suggested, albeit very briefly in a short book review, that phonological development in all children goes from the broad and general to the more specific. Sommerfelt had observed his own children, two daughters and a younger son, and wrote as follows: Mes petites filles […] remplaçaient l’u norvégien très particulier par un u (ou) du type général, celui que nous appellons l’u européen (chez mon fils le cas est moins prononcé, probablement parce qu’il a commencé à développer son langage plus tard et fait des progrès plus rapides), chose qui semble assez générale chez les enfants norvégiens. Mes enfants avaient aussi des occlusives sourdes non-aspirées — on sait que les occlusives sourdes fortement aspirées du germanique sont un phénomène relativement rare dans le monde des langues — sans que j’aie pu savoir si l’état de la glotte était différent de celui qui caractérise nos occlusives. Mon petit fils [he was then 2 years and 4 months old : EHJ] prononce maintenant ses occlusives sourdes sans aspiration et l’impression acoustique en rappelle très nettement celle des occlusives françaises. Il va de soi que ces faits sont d’une grande importance pour la question de l’hérédité des tendances évolutives ; je me propose d’y revenir autre part. (Sommerfelt 1929: 273) [My daughters […] substitute the very unusual Norwegian u by a general kind of u (ou), the kind we call European u (in the case of my son, it is less pronounced, probably because he began to develop his language later and made faster progress), something which seems to be rather general for Norwegian children. My children also had voiceless non-aspirated stop consonants — we know that voiceless strongly aspirated stops as in Germanic languages are a rather rare phenomenon in the languages of the world — without knowing whether the state of the glottis is different from that which characterizes our stop consonants. My son [he was then 2 years and 4 months old. EHJ] now pronounces voiceless stops without Hovdhaugen et al. 2000: 335.) When he gave his plenary session report on “Typological studies and their contribution to historical comparative linguistics”, he started with the first part of the quotation from Sommerfelt which he had used as the second motto in Kindersprache — as a tribute to the host and president of the congress: “Alf Sommerfelt’s early statement which headed my monograph on general sound laws is still vital: ‘Il n’y a pas de différence de principe entre les systèmes phonétiques du monde,’ or to put it more generally — entre les systèmes linguistiques” (Jakobson 1958: 17). In 1961, Jakobson received an honorary degree from the University of Oslo.
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aspiration and the acoustic impression is definitely that of French stops. It is clear that these facts are of great importance for the question of the heritability of evolutionary tendencies; I plan to return to this question elsewhere.]
Thus, one of the main ideas that Jakobson develops in Kindersprache can be said to have been formulated by Sommerfelt in a book review more than ten years earlier. Sommerfelt states that he intends to return to this topic later (“je me propose d’y revenir autre part”). That never happened, however, since Jakobson so brilliantly developed the idea into a full-fledged theory of children’s phonological development combined with the opposite, loss of phonological oppositions in connection with aphasia. It may seem that what we can observe in this reference to Sommerfelt is a case of “under-referencing”. Jakobson makes use of Sommerfelt’s observation concerning his children’s use of unaspirated stops before they develop the aspirated ones, but fails to mention that — in addition — Sommerfelt explains this primary use of unaspirated stops by his children as being related to the fact that aspirated stops are far less common in the languages of the world: “les occlusives sourdes fortement aspirées du germanique sont un phénomène relativement rare dans le monde des langues”.4 Such an interpretation is, however, quite difficult to substantiate, and there is no indication at all that Sommerfelt himself ever thought of this as an “underreferencing” of his 1929 idea. On the contrary, by dedicating the monograph to “Min venn Alf ”, and by using a Sommerfelt quotation as the book’s second motto, Jakobson may have wanted to indicate, although very indirectly, Sommerfelt’s considerable contribution to the conception of the whole book. Jakobson and Sommerfelt remained friends their entire lives, and Sommerfelt’s 1962 seminal volume of collected articles is dedicated to Jakobson (cf. below). The entire context in Kindersprache for the reference to Sommerfelt (1929) is:5 Solange die Verschlusslaute beim Kinde nach dem Verhalten des Kehlkopfs ungespaltet bleiben, werden sie gewöhnlich stimmlos und ohne Aspiration vollbracht: das Kind verallgemeinert diese Spielart unabhängig davon, ob das landläufige Vorbild (wie z. B. die slavischen und romanischen Sprachen) neben ihr ein stimmhaftes unaspiriertes oder ein stimmloses aspiriertes Gegenstück enthält (wie es im Dänischen der Fall ist); ja auch dort, wo die Muttersprache einen zu4. We can perhaps see an echo of Sommerfelt’s words in Jakobson (1962b [1939/1949]: 321): “Les oppositions relativement rares dans les langues du monde”, and “phonème excessivement rare dans les langues du monde”. 5. In the English translation of Kindersprache (Jakobson 1968: 14), there is an unfortunate error concerning this important reference. Instead of the correct page number 273 in the Sommerfelt (1929) review, it is given as “Sommerfelt (γ 213)”.
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gespitzen Gegensatz “stimmhaft unaspiriert — stimmlos aspiriert” aufweist und somit keinen stimmlosen unaspirierten Verschlusslaut kennt, taucht anfänglich gerade und einzeln diese Prägung in der Kindersprache auf, wie es bei den norwegischen Kindern Sommerfelt beobachtete (γ 273) und wie uns Prof. Knut Knutsson auch betreffend der swedischen bestätigte. (Jakobsen 1941: 3) [So long as stops in child language are not split according to the behavior of the glottis, they are generally pronounced as voiceless and unaspirated. The child thus generalizes this articulation independently of whether the particular prototype opposes the voiceless unaspirated stop to a voiced unaspirated stop (as in the Slavic and Romance languages), or to a voiceless aspirated stop (as in Danish). The same characteristic articulation occurs in child language for a limited time even when the mother tongue contains a marked opposition, voiced unaspirated — voiceless aspirated, and therefore no voiceless unaspirated stop. This has been observed in Norwegian children by Sommerfelt (γ 273) and confirmed by Professor Knut Knutsson from his observations of Swedish children.] [Translation by Allan R. Keiler (from Jakobson 1968: 14). Reference to Sommerfelt corrected, cf. note 5.]
7. Other references to Sommerfelt in Kindersprache We find the third reference to Sommerfelt in a footnote on p. 7. It cites the same review article and the very same page as the previous reference, but concerns a different matter: Wir verdanken zwar den Psychologen und Pädologen mehrere geduldige und ausführliche Monographien über die erste Kindheit und ihre Sprachentwicklung, aber leider fehlen gewöhnlich den Verfassern die unentbehrlichen linguistischen, besonders phonetischen Kenntnisse, und der Wert ihrer Angaben für den Sprachforscher wird dadurch wesentlich beeinträchtigt. (Jakobsen 1941: 7) [Even though we owe to psychologists and pedagogues a number of patient and detailed monographs about early childhood and children’s language development, their authors regrettably lack in most instances the necessary linguistic, in particular phonetic knowledge, and as a result the value of their findings is essentially limited to the linguistic investigator.]
Jakobson then refers to Sommerfelt in a footnote: “Vgl. dazu Sommerfelt γ 273”, since the same point was also made by Sommerfelt in his review of Clara (1877– 1948) and William Stern’s (1871–1938) monograph Die Kindersprache. The passage in Sommerfelt (1929: 273) that Jakobson had in mind, is the following:6 “Les auteurs ne sont pas linguistes — ils insistent là-dessus — et cela se voit surtout 6. Here, the reference to page 273 in Sommerfelt (1929) is correct in the English translation (Jakobson 1968: 19), cf. note 5.
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dans la troisième partie de leur livre. […] Comme il était à attendre, la discussion des questions phonétiques laisse le plus à désirer […].” The fourth and fifth references to Sommerfelt in Kindersprache appear in footnotes on pages 38 and 77. Both references are to the same page of Sommerfelt’s 1938 monograph Langue et société. Both references concern the claim in Kindersprache that the acquisition of fricatives presupposes the acquisition of stops in child language. Therefore, according to this hypothesis, we will find no languages in the world without stops, while there will be languages without fricatives. To substantiate this, Jakobson offers two references to Sommerfelt. In the first one, Sommerfelt writes: Ces phonèmes [i.e., fricatives. EHJ] sont inconnus à tous les Australiens et l’étaient aussi aux Tasmaniens. L’s ne se rencontre qu’à la pointe nord-est du cap York. Dans certaines langues mélanésiennes l’s fait également défaut, et il en est de même des langues des îles Andaman. Les dernières ignorent aussi les spirantes, […]. (Sommerfelt 1938: 51) [These phonemes [i.e., fricatives: EHJ] are unknown to all Australians as was also the case for Tasmanians. S is only found in the north-east point of cape York. In certain Melanesian languages, s is also absent, as is also the case in languages on the Andaman islands. The latter also lack spirants, […].]
The second one appears in a footnote in the concluding chapter (“Schlussbemerkungen”, pp. 76–77). Jakobson mentions here that some findings concerning the historical development of languages in general — e.g., that some consonants seem to have developed before others — may support his claims for child language development. Jakobson first refers here to Alfredo Trombetti’s (1866–1929) view that stops arose before fricatives in language. Jakobson may have seen the reference to Trombetti in Sommerfelt, where he writes: D’après Trombetti, les langues les plus archaïques ne connaîtraient que les consonnes p (b), t (d), k (g), m et n. Quoi qu’il en soit, cette hypothèse cadre assez bien avec les données de la langue enfantine où p/b, m et t/d, n sont généralement les premières consonnes. (Sommerfelt 1938: 51) [According to Trombetti the most archaic languages know only the consonants p (b), t (d), k (g), m and n. However this may be, this hypothesis agrees very well with child language where p/b, m and t/d, n are generally the first consonants.]
Sommerfelt refers in a footnote to Trombetti’s two-volume book Elementi di glottologia (1922–1923: 608), which is then repeated by Jakobson in Kindersprache
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(1941: 77).7 After Jakobson’s reference to Trombetti, he adds that the same claim had already been made by Sommerfelt, in connection with his data on child language: “Diese Meinung [i.e., Trombetti’s. EHJ] wird schon bei Sommerfelt (Langue et société, 51) mit den Angaben der Kindersprache in Beziehung gebracht.” 8. Conclusion As early as 1929, Alf Sommerfelt published a general idea concerning the development of children’s phonology. We find this idea fully developed into a theory by Roman Jakobson in Kindersprache (1941). Kindersprache represents a major contribution to linguistic theory, in particular to phonology. Since Sommerfelt mentioned his idea only in passing in a short review in 1929, nobody seems to have paid any attention to it, except, obviously, Roman Jakobson. The reference to Sommerfelt (1929) on page 3 in Kindersprache, however, fails to acknowledge the full importance of Sommerfelt’s idea. In his conclusion, though, Jakobson refers to Sommerfelt (1938: 51), where Sommerfelt in a somewhat different and even briefer way repeated his idea of 1929. When we consider the connection between Sommerfelt (1929) and Kindersprache, the fact that Roman Jakobson dedicated the entire book to “Min venn Alf ” should now be much easier to understand. In addition, the two remained friends. Sommerfelt’s important 1962 volume is dedicated to “Roman Jakobson, friend, collaborator and inspirer”. In 1964, Jakobson’s Essais de linguistique générale (1963) and Sommerfelt’s Diachronic and Synchronic Aspects of Language: Selected articles (1962) were reviewed together by Ernst Pulgram (1915–2005). He wrote that in the period between their first encounter in the Hague 1928 — at the First International Congress of Linguists — and 1962, the year of the ninth international congress held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “it would be difficult to overestimate the influence which these two men have exerted during the intervening years in both the scientific and the organizational life and progress of Linguistics” (Pulgram 1964: 84). That their collective volumes were reviewed together was thus quite appropriate, and not just a symbolic expression of the relationship we have established above between Alf Sommerfelt, Roman Jakobson and Kindersprache.
References Birkeland, Harris. 1940. Akzent und Vokalismus im Althebräischen. Mit Beiträgen zur vergleichenden semitischen Sprachwissenschaft. (= Skrifter utgitt av Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo II. Hist.-Filos. Kl. 1940, no. 3.) Oslo: Jacob Dybwad. 7. Sommerfelt’s bibliography gives “Bologna 1922” for Trombetti’s book, Jakobson writes “Bologna 1923”; both are partially correct, the book’s two volumes appeared 1922–1923.
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Fischer-Jørgensen, Eli. 1998. “Roman Jakobson and Denmark”. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 29.13–28. Hovdhaugen, Even, Fred Karlsson, Carol Henriksen & Bengt Sigurd. 2000. The History of Linguistics in the Nordic Countries. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica. Husserl, Edmund. 1901. Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. Halle/Saale: Max Niemeyer. Jahr, Ernst Håkon. 1996. “Nynorsk språkforskning — en historisk oversikt [Nynorsk linguistics — a historical overview]”. Studies in the Development of Linguistics in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Papers from the conference on the history of linguistics in the Nordic countries, Oslo, November 20–22, 1994 ed. by Carol Henriksen, Even Hovdhaugen, Fred Karlsson & Bengt Sigurd, 84–101. Oslo: Novus. Jahr, Ernst Håkon. 2004. “Alf Axelssøn Sommerfelt”. Norsk Biografisk Leksikon, vol. VIII ed. by Jon Gunnar Arntzen, 347–348. Oslo: Kunnskapsforlaget. Jakobson, Roman. 1941. Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze (= Språkvetenskaplige Sällskapets i Uppsala Förhandlingar 1940–1942.) Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell. (Repr. in Jakobson 1962a.328–401. English transl., 1968.) Jakobson, Roman 1958. “Typological studies and their contribution to historical comparative linguistics”. Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Linguists ed. by Eva Sivertsen, 17–25. Oslo: Oslo University Press. (Repr. in Jakobson 1962a.523–531.) Jakobson, Roman. 1962a. Selected Writings I: Phonological Studies. The Hague: Mouton. (2nd, expanded ed., 1971.) Jakobson, Roman. 1962b [1939/1949]. “Les lois phoniques du langage enfantin et leur place dans la phonologie générale”. Jakobson 1962a.317–327. Jakobson, Roman. 1963. Essais de linguistique générale. Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Jakobson, Roman. 1968 [1941]. Child Language, Aphasia and Phonological Universals. English transl. by Allan R. Keiler. The Hague: Mouton. (2nd printing, 1972; 3rd printing, Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1980.) Jangfeldt, Bengt. 1997. “Roman Jakobson in Sweden 1940–41”. Cahiers de l’Institut de Langues et des Sciences du Langage (Université de Lausanne) 9.141–149. Pulgram, Ernst. 1964. Review of Roman Jakobson (1963) and Alf Sommerfelt (1962). Linguistics 2.84–88. Sommerfelt, Alf. 1921. Le breton parlé a Saint-Pol-de-Leon : Phonétique et morphologie. Paris: Édouard Champion. Sommerfelt, Alf. 1922. The Dialect of Torr, Co. Donegal (= Videnskapsselskapets skrifter, Hist.Filos. Kl. 1921, no. 2). Kristiania [Oslo]: Jacob Dybwad. Sommerfelt, Alf. 1925. Studies in Cyfeiliog Welsh: A contribution to Welsh dialectology (= Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi, Avhandlinger, Hist.-Filos. Kl. 1925, no. 3). Oslo: Jacob Dybwad. Sommerfelt, Alf. 1928a. “Loi phonétique”. Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap 1.10–21. Sommerfelt, Alf. 1928b. “Sur la nature du phonème”. Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap 1.22– 26. Sommerfelt, Alf. 1928c. “Remarque sur la valeur expressive des voyelles”. Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap 1.30–31. Sommerfelt, Alf. 1929. Review of Die Kindersprache. Eine psychologische und sprachtheoretische Untersuchung by Clara and William Stern (Leipzig: Barth, 4th ed. 1928). Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap 3.271–273.
124 Ernst Håkon Jahr Sommerfelt, Alf. 1938. La langue et la société : Caractères sociaux d’une langue de type archaïque (= Institutt for sammenlignende kulturforskning; serie A: Forelesninger, XVIII.) Oslo: Aschehoug. Sommerfelt, Alf. 1954. “Language, Society and Culture”. Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap 17.5–81. Sommerfelt, Alf. 1962. Diachronic and Synchronic Aspects of Language: Selected articles. (= Janua Linguarum; Series major, 7). The Hague: Mouton. (2nd printing, 1971.) Stern, Clara & William Stern. 1928 [11907]. Die Kindersprache: Eine psychologische und sprachphonetische Untersuchung. 4th ed. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth. (Repr., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965; repr., 1981.) Toman, Jindrich. 1995. The Magic of a Common Language: Jakobson, Mathesius, Trubetzkoy, and the Prague Linguistic Circle. (= Current Studies in Linguistics, 26.) Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Trombetti, Alfredo. 1922–1923. Elementi di glottologia. 2 vols. Bologna: Zanichelli. Vogt, Hans. 1942. “The Structure of the Norwegian Monosyllables”. Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap 12.5–29.
Summary This article suggests a link between Roman Jakobson’s Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze (1941) and a short book review of C. & W. Stern’s Die Kindersprache (4th ed., 1928) by Alf Sommerfelt in Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap (1929). The fundamental idea of Kindersprache is that children’s phonological systems develop from initial broad contrasts to subsequent finer contrasts, so that unmarked phonological oppositions which are found in most languages develop first, with any language-specific contrasts developing later. In aphasia, according to Jakobson, the opposite development occurs: finer contrasts disappear first, broader contrasts later. It is shown in this article that Jakobson, in working out this theory, was probably inspired by an idea put forward in the 1929 book review by Sommerfelt. This may help to explain why Jakobson, on the first page of Kindersprache, dedicated his book ‘Til min venn Alf ’ (“To my friend Alf ”). Jakobson worked on and completed Kindersprache during his stay in Scandinavia 1939–1941, and details connected with his stay and work in this period are also commented on.
Résumé Dans cet article, nous suggérons qu’il existe un lien entre Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze de Roman Jakobson (1941) et un bref compte rendu du livre de C. & W. Stern Die Kindersprache (4e éd., 1928) d’Alf Sommerfelt dans Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap de 1929. Selon la thèse fondamentale de Kindersprache, les enfants acquièrent les phonèmes les plus contrastés d’abord avant d’acquérir plus tard les moins contrastés si bien que les oppositions phonologiques que l’on trouve dans la plupart des langues sont acquises en premier et celles plus caractéristiques des langues particulières, à un stade ultérieur. Selon Jakobson, dans les cas d’aphasie, on assiste au développement inverse : les contrastes les plus fins disparaissent d’abord et les plus marqués ensuite. Nous montrerons dans cet article que Jakobson, lorsqu’il a mis au point cette théorie, a probablement
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été inspiré par une idée exprimée en 1929 par Sommerfelt dans son compte rendu. Ceci pourrait expliquer pourquoi Jakobson, sur la première page de Kindersprache, dédie son livre “À mon ami Alf ” (‘Til min venn Alf ’). Jakobson a terminé Kindersprache pendant son séjour en Scandinavie de 1939 à 1941. Nous commenterons également ici les détails liés à ce séjour et à son travail pendant cette période.
Zusammenfassung In diesem Artikel wird untersucht, inwieweit ein Zusammenhang zwischen Roman Jakobsons Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze (1941) und einer kurzen Besprechung von C. & W. Sterns Die Kindersprache (4. Aufl., 1928) von Alf Sommerfelt in Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap (1929) hergestellt werden kann. Der Grundgedanke zu Jakobsons Kindersprache ist, dass im phonologischen System von Kindern zunächst die starken Kontraste und erst dann die schwächeren etabliert werden, so dass unmarkierte phonologische Oppositionen, die sich in den meisten Sprachen finden, als erste auftreten, während sprachspezifische Kontraste erst danach herausgebildet werden. Gemäß Jakobson verläuft die Entwicklung bei einer Aphasie umgekehrt. In diesem Artikel soll gezeigt werden, dass Jakobson bei der Ausarbeitung seiner Theorie wahrscheinlich von einer Idee inspiriert worden war, die Sommerfelt in seiner Buchbesprechung lancierte. Dies würde auch erklären, warum sich bei Jakobson die Widmung ‘Til min venn Alf ’ (“Meinem Freund Alf ”) findet. Die Arbeit an Kindersprache wurde von Jakobson zwischen 1939 und 1941 in Skandinavien geleistet und abgeschlossen; der Artikel beleuchtet auch Einzelheiten dieser Periode in Jakobsons Schaffen.
Author’s address: Ernst Håkon Jahr Department of Nordic and Media Studies University of Agder P. O. Box 422 N-4604 Kristiansand Nor w ay e-mail: [email protected]
Review Articles / Rapports critiques Forschungsberichte The Discipline of Writing and Speaking Correctly: Priscian and his Legacy* L. G. Kelly
Darwin College, Cambridge
1. Introduction Six centuries before Priscian (fl.500–530 A.D.), the poet Horace (65–8 B.C.), had paid tribute to the influence that Greece exercised over the cultural life of Rome: Graeca capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes intulit agresti Latio. (II Epistles 1.156– 157) [Greece, the captive, has taken its savage conqueror prisoner, and introduced the arts to rustic Latium.]
Nor did Priscian make any secret of his debt to the Greeks. But, as neither of them acted as slaves to their Greek masters, they created a comfortable balance between the Greek legacy, the Roman mos maiorum “the customs of our ancestors”, and the demands of the Latin language. The six chapters of this massive book record the exploration by the Colloque international de Lyon (10–14 October 2006) of the balance Priscian achieved between practice and theory, the transmission of his works, and the influence his grammar exerted during the Middle Ages, Renaissance and the classical age of France. Priscian was born in a city called Caesarea, hence his agnomen, Caesariensis. In an appendix to the introduction of the 1528 edition of Priscian’s complete works, Guarino Guarini points out that there were three Caesareas: one in Cappadocia, one in the West African province of Mauretania, and one in Palestine. His claim that Priscian came from this last Caesarea is plausible, and was still being put forward during the 19th century. In the introduction to his Corpus Poetarum Romanorum (1832) Wilhelm Ernst Weber (1780–1850), the Director of the Lyceum in Bremen, * On the occasion of: Marc Baratin, Bernard Colombat & Louis Holtz (eds.), Priscien: Transmission et refondation de la grammaire, de l’antiquité aux modernes. (= Studia Artistarum, 21.) Turnhout: Brepols, 2009, xxii, 770 pp. ISBN 978-2-503-53074-1. € 80 (PB). Historiographia Linguistica XXXVIII:1/2 (2011), 127–157. doi 10.1075/hl.38.1/2.05kel issn 0302–5160 / e-issn 1569–9781 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
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states bluntly that Priscian came from Caesarea in Syria. This provenance probably held water because in Cappadocia and Palestine the predominant language was Greek, and Latin merely the administrative language. In this case Priscian would probably been brought up bilingually. On the other hand, Greek had lost ground in the Western Empire and in many places was no longer taught, so that if he was born in Mauretania, Priscian probably would have been unilingual when he arrived in Constantinople. Yet one could argue for Mauretania on the grounds that on the way from western Africa to Constantinople Priscian had forged links with the intellectual circle of Boethius (c.476–524) in Italy. It might have been Boethius who brought Priscian to the attention of his father in law, Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, consul in 495, who commissioned three works from him. I would emphasise that Priscian sticks to the Latin of the Augustan age. He does not mention the great Christian writers like Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, (c.333–397 A.D.) and Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354–430 A.D.), who were both skilled rhetoricians in the classical mould, but followed the grammatical traditions established in the period beginning with the grammarian, Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 B.C.) and finishing at the time of Pliny the Younger (61–114 A.D.). Priscian mentions early in his grammar that his tutor in Constantinople was the rhetorician, Theoctistus. Would a Greek rhetorician have gladly taught elementary Greek? 2. Priscian’s historical position As a noted and versatile orator, Priscian held a high social position in Constantinople. His Panegyric to the emperor, Anastasius 1 (491–518 A.D.), probably delivered in 513, is a political message to the citizens of Constantinople emphasising the theme of Roma Perennis “Eternal Rome”, exemplified by the continuity between the great times of the emperor, Augustus (63 B.C.–14 A.D.), and the rule of Anastasius, and the God-given nature of Anastasius’s power at a time when his position was under threat. Priscian chose to deliver his Panegyric in hexameters, the usual epic metre, and prefaces it with a prologue made up of twentytwo iambic trimeters. After describing the two codices in which it is preserved, Guglielmo Balliara presents the poem as a solid piece of work based on a wide knowledge of classical Latin literature and draws attention to Priscian’s frequent imitation of classical poets and his borrowings from Virgil (39–65 B.C.), Ovid (43 B.C.–14 A.D.) and Lucan (39–65 A.D.) in particular. He underlines the potency of the classical cast of the Panegyric at a time when the eastern frontiers were under threat from the Persians, and there was religious tension in Constantinople itself: the emperor favoured the Monophysites, while the population in general followed the rulings of the Council of Chalcedon. Balliara takes the reader through the poem, devoting the first half of his article to the Isaurian war, in essence a civil war
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resulting from the rebellion by Vitalian and his troops. It gave Priscian the chance to praise Hypatius, Anastasius’s son, who had won some victories early in the campaign, but was defeated after the date of the Panegyric. Along the way Priscian refers to the tradition that Anastasius was descended from Pompey, at first colleague, then enemy, of Julius Caesar, praises the empress, Ariadne, for her virtue, and briefly mentions the successful campaign against the Persians in 503–507. Balliara makes much of Priscian’s insistence on the divine role of the emperor and his relationship with him. I have the impression that Priscian seems to be taking on the role of vates tuus “your inspired bard” to Anastasius, a close relationship parallelling that with Augustus that Horace had been privileged to claim centuries before (I Epist. 7, 11). Priscian was an enthusiastic and informed amateur geographer. As we see it in his translation of the Periegesis by the third-century author, Dionysius of Alexandria, Priscian’s geography falls into three parts. The first deals with place-names as elements of grammar. Guillaume Bonnet remarks that manner of treating them was not new among grammarians or, for that matter, teachers. Place-names were ideal material for the rhetorician’s enarratio (an exercise in detailed and persuasive narration), and Priscian trawled the standard authors for them. Bonnet lists place names from both the Ars Prisciani (alias Institutiones grammaticales) and De nomine pronomine et verbo, and draws attention to constructions like ad Troiam “near Troy” for iuxta Troiam. The second part of the article examines ‘Priscian’s personal geography’. Bonnet refers to Institutiones grammaticales 2.119.27 which mentions Caesarea as his birthplace, and notes that it has never been proved that Priscian’s Caesarea was the African province of Mauritania. He cites Joseph Geiger who takes Caesarea in Syria as Priscian’s birth-place, and Ballaira who points out that it was an 11th-century manuscript that placed Caesarea in North Africa. Priscian, a good classicist, updates some of his examples to fit the reality of his time: in a list of adjectives derived from the names of towns he lists Ravennas, from Ravenna, the new capital of the Roman Empire, before the Ciceronian Arpinas. Bonnet’s third section finally comes to Priscian’s translation of the Periegesis. He starts with Priscian’s reading of Stephen of Byzantium, a contemporary geographer, who, it seems, prompted Priscian’s enthusiasm for physical and economic geography, and perhaps stirred some nostalgia for his birthplace. Priscian translated Dionysius between writing the Institutiones Grammaticales and the Partitiones duodecim versuum Aeneidos principalium, a grammatical analysis of the first twelves lines of the Aeneid. Periegesis is a marvellously ambiguous word meaning the routine of guiding someone around a place, and a geographical description. Dionysius does indeed guide his readers around the rim of the Mediterranean, and makes incursions along the trade routes into Spain, Gaul, Germany, Persia, Arabia and India. He also makes special mention of the Nile and the prosperity its annual
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floods bring to the economy of the region. Priscian’s translation of Dionysius is a labour of love by a kindred spirit, who had a taste for useful information arranged in a strict order and exploited the added bonus of providing material for rhetorical exercises, while putting a distinctly Roman cast on his target text. 3. The transmission of Priscian’s works, codicological problems, editions, and the history of the text This chapter has to make do with the sparse evidence of Priscian’s influence from his heyday in Constantinople to his radical influence on Latin teaching under the Carolingians. There seems to be no borrowing from Priscian or reference to him between Cassiodorus (fl.514–550) and the Abbot of Malmesbury, Aldhelm (c.640–709). No-one knows how Aldhelm aquired his Priscian manuscript. Louis Holtz finds no echo whatsoever of Priscian in Bede (673–735). However, he does attempt to reconstruct the shape of the editions of Priscian copied in Constantinople under the direction of the Consul Julianus. At this stage his monumental grammar was called Ars Prisciani. Internal evidence would suggest his output was published in three groups: first, the Ars Prisciani, second, the three opuscula dedicated to Symmachus, together with his pamphlets on poetry and rhetoric, and the third the Institutio de nomine et pronomine et verbo and the Partitiones duodecim versuum Aeneidos principalium. We know that the route of transmission from Constantinople to the rest of Europe was through Ireland, even though there is no record of it. By the end of the seventh century the Irish had introduced the Institutio de nomine et pronomine et verbo into England. In their classroom use of this textbook the Englishman, Boniface, Bishop of Mainz (c.675–754), and Tatwine (d.734) rejected the traditional classification of declensions by the ablative in favour of the genitive. Late in the next century Alcuin (c.735–804) once established in the Court of Charlemagne, supplemented the standard classroom manuals based on Donatus with the Institutio de nomine and others of Priscian’s elementary works. Sedulius Scotus (9th century) may have designed his short In Priscianum as a gentle introduction to the Ars Prisciani. He begins with a short introduction which presents grammar as a division of philosophy. Philosophy includes physics, ethics and logic, that is natural, moral, and rational sciences. Logic covers three language disciplines, grammar, dialectic and rhetoric, which Sedulius attempts to relate to their Greek sources. The commentary itself begins with discussing Priscian’s characterisation of the vox as aer tenuissimus ictus “the thinnest of air struck”, which he glosses as vox est percussio aeris “a sound is a beating of the air”. Sedulius links this definition with a comment from St Augustine, that the contrary of sound is silence. He then deals with Priscian’s descriptions of letters and some parts of speech, taking special note of compound sounds: x=c+g; z=s+d.
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The oldest manuscripts of Priscian date from the Carolingian period: four from the late eighth century and fifty-one from the ninth century. There is an explosion of copying in the 10th and 11th centuries which gains pace until the first printed editions in the late 15th century. There are five types of manuscript:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Priscianus maior (books 1–16 on phonetics & morphology) Ars Prisciani (Institutiones grammaticales) (books 1–18); Institutiones grammaticales together with the Opuscula Priscianus minor (books 17–18 on syntax); the Opuscula on their own.
Louis Holtz surmises that the division of Priscian’s grammar into two books dates from Constantinople, and implies that Priscianus Maior was first introduced to the school classroom as an advanced supplement to Donatus. He ascribes the increasing importance of Priscianus Minor in the 11th and 12th centuries to the rise of the universities with their more sophisticated demands on both textbooks and students. This leads to an informative account of Humanist attempts to restore the original text following the discovery of Carolingian manuscripts. What texts will reveal and what they can hide is amply demonstrated by Anders Ahlqvist’s examination of the two Old Irish poems in the margins of St Gall Codex 904, which boasts 9400 Irish glosses. The manuscript, according to Pádraig Ó Neill, was copied between October 850 and August 851, probably copied in a monastery near Strangford Lough some distance east from Belfast. By the ninth century the Vikings had begun their raids on Ireland. The first of these poems describes a stormy night which will deter ‘the savage warriors of Lothlind’ from landing near the monastery. The meaning of ‘Lothlind’ has given rise to many debates. One hypothesis is that it is related to ‘Lochlann’, the Old Irish name for Scandinavia: loch is “lake” or “gulf ”, and lann, “country”. Another, the lectio difficilior (the more difficult reading, which is usually preferred to the others), would refer to the Irish bay at which the Vikings landed. Loth means “mud” and lind is probably a variant of linn, a pool or a harbour, as in ‘Dublin’. The second poem is in the margin of Priscian’s book on pronouns. As it is full of pronominal forms, including infixed pronouns, typical of Old Irish, Ahlqvist adopts Patrick Ford’s conjecture that the scribe had composed the poem to ease the lot of Irish students who were coming to grips with a pronominal system radically different from their own. He makes two points: first, the scribes combined skill in Latin with a good knowledge of Irish poetic techniques; and second that they were not ‘slaves of grammar’, but cultured men with well developed literary tastes. The final question is: were both these poems composed by the same scribe? St Gall Codex 904 is only one of the many Priscian manuscripts in France, Switzerland, Germany and Italy glossed in Irish. Olivier Szwerwiniack takes these
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manuscripts as conclusive evidence that Irish scribes and grammarians were working on the Continent. He remarks ruefully that, due to the depredations of the Vikings, only two manuscripts of the Ars Prisciani copied in Ireland remain. He gives a useful list of Irish manuscripts on the Continent. Though Priscian’s Institutio de nomine et verbo was the source of several Insular grammars, including Malsachanus (8th century) and the Ars ambrosiana, copied in the seventh century, and the Anonymus ad Cuimnanum and the Ars Bernensis (both eighth century) held at Bobbio, which had been founded by the Irishman, Columbanus (d.615 A.D.), Szwerwiniack finds no evidence that the English missionary educators who worked in Germany, Tatwine (d.734 A.D.) and Boniface (675–754), knew the Ars Prisciani at all well. However he has found evidence that Aldhelm used the Ars Prisciani in his De pedum regulis “On the rules governing feet”, and he suggests that Alcuin came across Priscian’s works in the library at York before he left for France. Whether Bede used Priscian or not is, in his opinion, still an open question. Ekaterina Antonets draws attention to the critical importance of the Priscian manuscripts in the Russian National Library, the Archive of the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg and the Library of the Moscow State University. Two of the manuscripts in the National Library belonged to Peter Dubrovsky (1812–1882). The first of them, containing parts of the Ars Prisciani was copied in Corbie in the ninth century, the other, written in England in Anglo-Saxon minuscule during the first half of the tenth century, contains the Institutio de nomine, pronomine et verbo. The third, a manuscript in Gothic minuscule, containing part of the Ars Prisciani, was written in France. There is also a complete copy of the Institutiones grammaticales, a 12th-century manuscript, probably of Italian origin, in the Library of the Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. There are fragments of Priscian in other libraries, including a previously unknown fragment in the library of Moscow University, which Antonets describes carefully. However she warns that these manuscripts cannot be taken as indicating that Priscian was widely studied in Russia, as most of them are fragments acquired from private collections, notably those of Peter Dubrovsky and Nikolai Petrovich Likhachev (1862–1936). 4. Ars Prisciani alias Institutiones Grammaticales: Sources and changes of direction This chapter, the most cohesive in the book, deals with Priscian’s sources. None of them are primary, and Priscian has very distant relationship with philosophers. Sten Ebbesen wonders whether he was aware of Plato’s division of the sentence into onoma and rhema in the Sophist, and takes noun and verb as just two of the parts of speech. Nor does he seem to be concerned with the notion of a mental proposition and Plato’s view of it. And whereas the Neo-Platonists placed great store by Plato’s discussion in the Cratylus of nature and convention in language,
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it does not appear at all in Priscian. I wonder whether as a practical grammarian Priscian considered the ideas in the Cratylus irrelevant. However, even though Plato himself did not have much influence on Priscian, Ebbesen sees the influence of Platonist philosophy in his principle that consonants were the soul of a word and vowels its body. Aristotle’s main contributions to linguistics come from the Categories, Peri Hermenias 1–4, Sophistici elenchi, and Poetics 20–21. Priscian uses the standard terms that appear in the Categories, but in a strictly grammatical manner. There is likewise no evidence that he had studied any of these books, although he uses terms drawn from them. In Ebbesen’s opinion, Priscian picked up Aristotleian ideas from Apollonius. Likewise Ebbesen sees no evidence that Priscian had read the Stoics. This leads to a section on the possible contacts between Priscian and the contemporary teachers of philosophy. I would suspect that they were complicated by the philosopher’s critical attitude towards grammar and by the philosopher’s conviction that the grammarian studied the outward shapes of words, rather than their form and semantic content, to my mind a somewhat unjust accusation, particularly in Priscian’s case. But Ebbesen points out that, as an avid reader of Cicero, Priscian would have had more than a passing awareness of philosophy. Because his confused discussion of the adjective mixes Stoic and Aristotelian norms, Ebbesen wonders whether Priscian really understood Aristotle’s categories and predicables. He also conjectures that Priscian took his distinction between conceptual and substantial definitions from Apollonius. However he finds this dichotomy in Marius Victorinus (late 4th cent. A.D.), De definitionibus, and in other authorities, including Cicero Partitiones 41. Where Ebbesen looks for Priscian’s philosophical sources, Anneli Luhtala and Alessando Garcea examine how he used them. Luhtala’s article stems from Priscian’s adoption of Apollonius’s order of the parts of speech. Because a noun and a verb can form a sentence on their own, Apollonius argued that the verb naturally follows the noun, reinforcing his stance by the Stoic principle that nouns signify bodies which are capable of action. Alongside Apollonius’s definition of the noun as a word expressing the proper or common quality of its referent which comes from Stoic philosophy, Priscian quoted another which is almost certainly Apollonian as well: ‘the distinctive property (proprium) of the noun is signifying substance and quality’. The Stoics regarded substance and quality as the two basic categories. But as these categories were inseparable, each of them presupposed the other, so that, even if their definition of the noun did not mention substance, it was considered adequate. Though Priscian at first quoted Apollonius’s position that the noun signified a primary quality and the adjective a secondary, he finally adopted Aristotle’s distinction between substance and quality and its repercussions. Was
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this inconsistency or a development of theory? As adjectives signify quality they are subject to comparison and must be supported by a noun to which they add a quality or an accident. Apollonius divided parts of speech into two groups: the ‘principal parts of speech’, noun, pronoun, verb and adverb, and preposition, conjunction and interjection, in the terms of some modern linguistic theorists, ‘content and form words’ (Luhtala 2005: 81). Priscian added the participle to his principal parts of speech. This leads to a short discussion of William of Conches’ complaint that Priscian gave obscure definitions and did not explain them. Both Luhtala and Ebbesen regard Priscian’s reference to the theory that ideas and forms originate in the divine mind before entering bodies as proof of Platonist influence. Accidens did not appear as a neuter noun before Seneca the Younger (c.4 B.C.– 65A.D.). Though Apollonius does not use the Aristotelian theory of substance and accidents, it is in full flower in Priscian who is well aware that accidens is the present participle of the verb, accidere “to happen, to happen to”. Alessandro Garcea implies that Priscian learnt much about accidens as a technical term from his studies of rhetoric and used the word to facilitate his analysis of construction. This is not unlikely. The rhetorician, Quintilian (c.35–95? A.D.), for instance, writes, causa, tempus, locus etc. sunt rerum accidentia “cause, time, place etc. are the accidents of things” (Institutiones Oratoriae 5.10.23). The term, accidens, is picked up by the fifth-century philosopher, Macrobius, who equated it with adiectivus (Saturnalia 1.4). Priscian introduced the contrast between substance and accidents into his own concerns by developing Apollonius’s observation that the noun-subject of a sentence is a substance to which the verb adds the verbal properties of actio and passio, which are accidental categories. This insight Priscian then developed by treating the head of a noun phrase as a substance to which adjectives add an accident or contingent property. Then, by envisaging the verb as substantia actus “the substance of an act”, he shows that the verb can have accidents signified by adverbs. Garcea sums up his article by crediting Priscian with using the dichotomy, substance/accidents to create a recursive linguistic model. To consolidate the image of Priscian as an innovative interpreter of his authorities, Marc Baratin examines his recasting of the Stoic classification of predicates and accidents. He began from the schema put forward by Ammonios (ante 445–517/526), a pupil of the Neoplatonist, Proclus (c.411–485):
1. 2. 3. 4.
Nominative+verb (predicate or accident), Oblique case+verb (quasi-predicate or accident), Nominative+verb+oblique case (less than predicate), Obl. case+verb+oblique case (less than quasi-accident).
Though Baratin remarks that Apollonius had used this model, he lays considerable emphasis on Priscian’s intellectual independence. In rejecting the philosophers’
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principle that the noun and the verb were the only true parts of speech, Priscian adopted Apollonius’s view that the subject is always understood in finite verbs, and that as first actant it is always in the nominative case. However he also allows for a second actant in an oblique case. In dealing with the second case he introduces the concept of transition between verb and object, so that when there are two objects to a single verb, as in the third and fourth cases, he has them both depend on it. And unlike Apollonius, Priscian allows for impersonal verbs. This results in a three-fold classification of grammatical sentence-shapes: 1. Nominative + verb (Apollonius ambulat) (congruity) 2. Nominative + verb + 1 oblique case (Cicero servat patriam) (less than a congruity) 3. Verb + 2 objects (placet mihi venire ad te) (incongruity) In explaining these strange contrasts Baratin advances two hypotheses and rejects them. Priscian was following a Stoic theory that we know nothing of, or perhaps he was mistaken. Baratin’s own solution to the conundrum of the third sentence which has no nominative is to follow Apollonius’s ideas on implicit nominative. On this evidence Baratin scotches the idea that Priscian did not fully understand the literature. On the contrary, he built his own solution on that of Apollonius because he understood his sources. The next group of articles examining the Apollonius model and its limits begins with a discussion of the Greek version of Priscian by Maximus Planudes (c.1260–c.1310) by Jean Lallot. Lallot isolates two factors in the progression from Apollonius to Priscian to Planudes. The first is Priscian’s adaptation of Apollonius to the facts of Latin and Planudes’s recasting of Priscian for Greek readers. Lallot aptly likens this double act of translation to the game of telephone in which a phrase is unwittingly distorted in its passage from player to player. He illustrates what happened to Apollonius and Priscian in a table: extracts from the original Apollonius are in the first column, Priscian’s version in the second, and the translation by Planudes in the third. He comments on passages in which Apollonius was not clear, on issues of ‘fidelity’, and on the inevitable problems caused by marked differences between Latin and Greek which inevitably caused interference on the line. To my mind the major factor in this enterprise is the societal bilingualism in Constantinople, and the example of translators between Greek and Latin in Classical times who were experts in harmonising freedom with accuracy. Both these factors facilitated translation between Greek and Latin in Constantinople, but the balance between the languages was not the same. Though Greek had been a social accomplishment of the upper classes in imperial Rome, the Greeks who had migrated to Rome had a mixed reputation as servile immigrants, as we see from Juvenal’s contempt for the Graeculus esuriens “the hungry little Greek” (Satire
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3.78 [early 2nd cent. A.D.]). In Constantinople, however, Greek was the majority language, and the bilingual balance was in their favour. Hence in this ambiance Priscian wrote a Latin grammar that bore the imprint of Greek, and Planudes produced a text with a close resemblance to that of Apollonius. Andreas Schmidhauser views Priscian as a creative thinker, not just a compiler or a grammarian endowed with some originality. Having started from the banal statement that Apollonius was Priscian’s source, his paper on De pronomine distinguishes between two senses of the word, ‘source’, which can mean either the verifiable origin of an idea, passage or text, or a conjecture resting on plausible evidence. On the evidence of some very close translations of Apollonius in Priscian’s section on pronouns which he prints in full, Schmidhauser is certain that Priscian worked with Apollonius on his desk, but points out these close translations coexist with careful handling of the differences between Greek and Latin pronoun systems and a radical reorganisation of Apollonius’s treatment of the six accidents of the pronoun along the lines set by Donatus. Schmidhauer remarks this was probably for teaching young beginners. As far as grammar was concerned, Priscian was a traditionalist who followed traditional Roman ideas on grammar and the ambiguities this entailed. Valeria Lomanto’s article revolves around his investigation of polished and unpolished Latin during the first century B.C. by delving into De lingua latina by Varro (116– 27 B.C.). Lomanto’s table of Priscian’s examples from Varro and her comments on its contents highlight his constructive interest in the past, as does her analysis of Priscian’s treatment of Varro himself. Priscian searched Varro for evidence supporting the common theory that Latin was derived from Aeolian Greek, and coupled his name with Didymus (late first cent. B.C.), a famous Alexandrian ‘philologist’ and with Marius Victorinus and Nigidius (ante 99–45 B.C.). There is a fascinating parallel here between the behaviour of the poet, the orator and the grammarian. Like the creative writer and the lawgiver, who were very sure of their Romanitas, the grammarian fell under the continuing influence of the traditional guides, natura et usus “nature and custom”, over Roman thought and exploited the scope they left for originality. Priscian’s sources probably include Compendiosa doctrina by the sixth-century grammarian, Nonius Marcellus. Feruccio Bertini sets his account of this relationship against a résumé of modern scholarship on Priscian’s life, career and influence. He begins by briefly summing up the contribution to Priscianic sholarship from a number of distinguished scholars including Richard Hunt (1908–1979), Keith Percival (b.1930), and several contributors to the colloquium. Though he knows he is on unsure ground, Bertini gives tables of statistics of Priscian’s certain and probable borrowings from Nonius’s Compendiosa doctrina. He finishes with a reference to
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Nonius’s chaotic De indiscretis adverbiis, which lists adverbs with two forms, for example severe/severiter, commenting on Priscian’s more organised approach. Nonius’s relatively uncritical list of adverbs is taken up by Madeleine Keller who sets about describing in some detail Priscian’s attitude to his lists of adverbs. This is yet another illustration of the Roman attitude to the classical tradition. Priscian condemns many adverb doublets like desertim for deserte as contrary to usus, the norms of usage established in Rome’s classical period. He often backs up his judgments by recourse to great authors like Terence, who seems to be a special favourite of his. Though his habitual approach was that of a philologist who was also a linguist, this question of adverbs shows that he could be deliberately even brutally prescriptive. Keller’s article finishes with a useful ‘schematic representation’ of Nonius’s adverbs which includes the names of the authors who used them, and marks those rejected by Priscian with an asterisk. Given the many points of contact between Priscian’s Ars Prisciani and Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (c.430 A.D.), Lucio Cristante sets out to establish whether Priscian and Martianus Capella drew on the same sources. The first part of the article describes the close resemblance between the regulae nominum “rules governing the noun” expounded by both authors, and refers to echoes of Pliny and the Low Latin grammarians. Cristante’s second section contains an annotated table of the most obvious parallels between the two texts. The annotations include the first-century grammarian, Memmius Palaemon, the late fourth-century grammarians, Marius Victorinus, Charisius and Consentius, and the sixth-century grammarian, Cassiodorus. But given the different natures of these grammars and the contrast between Martianus’s brevity and Priscian’s expansiveness, Cristante cautiously leaves the matter of common sources in doubt. As Priscian was writing for a Greek readership, his approach was different from that of a grammarian writing for Latin-speakers. This Robert Maltby demonstrates with the etymologies Priscian assigns to grammatical terms. In these etymologies Priscian exploits the tradition that Latin was derived from Greek in the belief that etymologies reflect the functions of the terms and their philosophical causes. Many of these etymologies call on Latin traditions. Priscian derives genetivus, from the Latin genus ‘race, family’ and then hedges his bets with generalis, because the genitive case, being ‘general’, is the root of almost all derivations made in Greek. By his comprehensive list of these derivations Maltby demonstrated the ancient belief that etymology demonstrated the word’s connection with the truth (etumon): the indicative, for instance, points out (indicare) what is being done, and the word, verbum, comes from verberatio, as a word ‘beats the air’. Etymology as the moderns know it, is fairly rare, and usually accidental. Maltby’s short but comprehensive summary of Priscian’s theory of etymology, though owing a considerable debt to Varro, is largely based on Greek linguistic theory. He closes
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with the remark that Priscian often improved on his Roman predecessors through his recourse to Greek scholarship. 5. The content of Ars Prisciani alias Institutiones Grammaticales The authors of this chapter take the word ‘content’ in a wide sense. Mario De Nonno introduces his discussion of the typology and composition of the Ars Prisciani through codicology: the influence of marginal notes and glosses, the cataloguing and dating of manuscripts, the relation of the finished work to its sources, and an examination of its cultural ambiance. First, he takes issue with the title under which Priscian’s grammar is known. He points out that practically all of the low Latin grammars were entitled Ars grammaticae: ars is an ordered collection of theory and practice which is not specifically directed at teaching. Manuscripts and early editions of Priscian’s grammar were entitled Ars Prisciani Grammatici Caesariensis. This title de Nonno contrasts with Quintilian’s Institutio oratoriae, Priscian’s own Institutio de nomine et pronomine et de verbo, and Cassiodorus’s Institutiones, all of them specifically directed towards education. Hence by publishing the Ars Prisciani under the title Institutiones grammaticales, in 1853 Martin Hertz (1818–1895) tied it to classroom use, which does not seem to have been Priscian’s intention. De Nonno is not satified with the state of the text. He notes that Priscian was suspicious of the competence of his scribes, and that the Hertz edition is based on a small number of the many extant manuscripts. This leads to a plea for a ‘textual reconstruction’ of Priscian, a proper evaluation of his cultural importance and a new critical edition of his works. Priscian was a skilled phonetician who saw the vox articulata, a sound which transmits a coherent meaning, as the basic unit of spoken language. His definition of the vox, as Frédérique Biville points out, covers both phonation and reception. The accidents he assigned to speech sounds would be recognised by any modern phonetician: quantitas “length”, cum/sine aspiratione “aspirated or unaspirated” and accentus “pitch”. It is not difficult to equate these accidents with the modern traits distinctifs, Prician describes their repercussions and hints at an undercurrent of interpretation. First, Priscian argued that elementum (the acoustics of a sound) and litera (its written representation) were not interchangeable owing to the variations in distinctive features caused by the position of a sound in a word. Second, he attempted relatively successfully to put speech sounds into a coherent articulatory pattern. And finally, he was aware that the pronunciation of Latin had evolved considerably. He notes the incipient decay of the case system as in verbu for verbum, the rise of diphthongisation on tonic syllables, and the gradual passage of the Greek aspirated phoneme, f, which he describes as an aspirated /p/, to /f/. The processes of phonetic change in the Latin of France and Spain that Roger Wright (1982) outlines had different results in Constantinople, as one would
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expect. Phonetic terminology did not catch up with phonetic change. By the fifth century the long and short vowels had diphthongised although the terms, ‘long’ and ‘short’ remained in use among teachers and those poets who stuck to classical metres (Wright 1982: 57). As Wright remarks, native speakers are not always conscious of the change. I once pointed out in a class populated with young French Canadians that in Quebec French the word bête was commonly pronounced like the English bite. I was immediately corrected by a student who told me that the sound /ai/ he produced was not a diphthong, but a long vowel. Priscian was very conscious of diphthongisation, and I am sure that, just as my French-Canadian students ‘corrected’ my perception of their diphongised vowels, his students objected to the remarks he made on their ‘long vowels’, and probably remarked on his own accent, which would certainly have been neither that of the classical period nor that of the eastern provinces. Priscian’s phonetics, like the rest of his grammar is carefully systematised by the balance he achieved between tradition and intuition, and to the modernity of his approach. The theme of Priscian’s ‘modernity’ shapes Cécile Conduché’s discussion of his treatment of the syllable. Given the distance between Classical Latin and Late Latin, he has the sense to make no attempt, as the great classical orators did, to lay down social norms on the ‘correct’ pronunciation. The first of his definitions of the syllable, drawn from the Latin tradition and sharpened by the Greek, defines it as a sound that can be written, and according to his second definition it is a combination of consonants and vowels produced by the mouth. There are three factors in Priscian’s view of word structure: the frontiers of the syllable, the modalities of word composition, and phonetic assimilation. In describing syllable boundaries he distinguishes between syllepsis, a group of consonants within a syllable, and diastasis, consonants separated by syllable boundaries. Second, he is aware of the phonetic accommodations entailed in compounding verbs with prepositions. And finally in treating phonetic assimilation, Priscian uses Greek sources to draw up rules covering the pronunciation accidents that affect spelling and meaning. There are two logics at the heart of Priscian’s treatment of the syllable. The first continuously adds elements: Priscian moves from letter to syllable to word. The other opposes two aspects of language: a single sound, /i/, for instance, can be a letter, a syllable, a word, or an utterance (‘Go!’). Priscian’s reformulation of the modal system is a fundamental break from the Latin tradition. Though Priscian adopts the Aristotelian view that modus is a sign of an inclinatio animi “inclination of the mind”, Gualtieri Caboli wonders whether he found it in Stoic sources, and compares his conception of the Latin moods with the speech acts of Austin and Searle, which have two parts, utterance and function. He surmises that Priscian adopted the Peripatetic view that the optative mood was composed of the indicative which acted as a base indicating the semantics of the
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word (Austin and Searle’s ‘utterance’) and an added element indicating wish (its function), and as usual he contrasts the Latin ‘optative’ with the Greek equivalent. Priscian illustrates the many uses of the subjunctive with examples taken mostly from Cicero’s Verrines, and compares these constructions with their Greek equivalents, which leads Caboli to conclude that Priscian privileged usus “usage” over ratio “principle”. However he is disappointed in Priscian’s treatment of these moods, and stigmatises his methodology as faulty because he had abandoned Aristotle. However Priscian had sought to sharpen his analysis of the modal system by following Apollonius’s method, so that it is the only procedure he uses to analyse one of the most complex areas of Latin grammar. At the head of his list of the eight accidents of the verb, Priscian placed significatio sive genus, “signification or voice”, because he regarded significatio agendi et patiendi “signification of acting or being acted on” as the most important task of the verb. The resulting relegation of tense to second place behind voice is a major departure from Aristotle for whom the expression of time was the distinctive feature of the verb. Priscian works within the traditional Latin framework of active, passive, deponent and neuter verbs. After taking the reader through a potted history of the Roman treatment of voice from Varro onwards, Pierre Flobert draws attention to the link Priscian forges between voice and syntax: by its significatio activa vel recta “active or direct signification” (originally a Stoic term) the action of a transitive verb ‘crosses over’ into the target of the act. The semantics of voice was also one of Priscian’s concerns: in his opinion active verbs like audire “hear” or metuere “fear” had a passive meaning because they signify acts of reception. But while Priscian drew on traditional grammar, his encounter with Apollonius prompted him to put the array of voices in the Latin verb on a formal footing. I would also remark that Priscian’s view of the verb as both signifying a process in real life and effecting a grammatical process laid the foundations for the Modistic vision of the verb as a movement (motus) or ‘crossing over’ (transitio) between subject and complement. Priscian’s most original contributions to the linguistics of the pronoun, are the prominence he gives to person, and his addition of species to the traditional list of the pronominal accidents. Pierre Swiggers and Alfons Wouters facilitate the reader’s assessment of Priscian’s sources and originality by providing tables of the accidents and the definitions given the pronoun by a good number of Low Latin grammarians. They see the hand of Apollonius behind Priscian’s definition of first, second and third persons as the person speaking about himself, the person spoken to and about, and the person spoken about but absent, and his linking person and number together through demonstratio and relatio. Priscian is the first grammarian to define the pronoun as the part of speech which replaces a nomen proprium “appropriate name” not “proper noun”, and to assign it the proprium “distinc-
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tive property” of signifying substance only. Given that the pronoun can replace a proper or a common noun, Swiggers and Wouters gloss the nomen proprium of Priscian’s definition as the “proper designation”, that is, a point of reference. After raising the question of the role of transitio in pronominal reference (i.e., reference to another point in the utterance), they enter into a thorough examination of the other accidents of the pronoun: person, gender, figure, number, and case. Among Priscian’s virtues they single out his deep knowledge and appreciation of Latin literature, his analytic skills, and his combination of interest in language as communication with a concern for grammatical form and systems. And finally, he brought to bear on language structures a positive approach which analysed the mechanics of the system, and a negative which sought its gaps and weaknesses. Priscian has three definitions of the conjunction, which Jonathan Barnes would prefer to call ‘connector’. In Book 2 Priscian defines the conjunction by its proprium, the joining of nouns and parts of speech with parts of speech that have cases, verbs and adverbs. Barnes wonders whether this is a definition or a ‘sketch’ of the connector, as ancient philosophers tended to regard the assignment of a proprium to an object as insufficient to constitute a definition. But, in spite of this hair-splitting, there were who, many like Priscian, defined an object by an essential property. At the beginning of Book 16, Priscian defines the conjunction as an indeclinable part of speech which connects other parts of speech, ‘consignifies’ with them, and sets out a meaning in coherent order. In Barnes’s opinion not one of the above phrases determines an ‘essential aspect’ of the connector. Finally, in the Partitiones Priscian states that the conjunction is a part of speech which connects and orders ideas. To Barnes, this definition looks at first glance as if it is at odds with the other two, which define the conjunction as linking words. But with almost 18th-century sleight of logic he solves the seeming difficulty by seeing the linkage of words and ideas as the same operation. He regards this definition as the only proper definition of the conjunction as it specifies genus “part of speech” and specific difference: it connects and orders elements in the utterance. Barnes sets a boundary between conjunctions and ‘rational linkages’, like itaque and ergo “therefore”, and nominal phrases like qua causa “because of this”, quam ob rem “for this reason”, etc. which connect sentences in a discourse. I am uneasy about his categorical statement that such rational linkages are not connectors. Given their discourse functions, the role of the clause and the sentence as transmitting complex ideas, and the multiplicity of grammatical forms of sentence linkages, I would equate ‘rational linkages’ with the multi-facetted charnière “linkage” which Vinay and Darbelnet discuss at some length in their Stylistique comparée (1958). For not only do charnières connect clauses, they also indicate the grammatical and logical relationships between the ideas in the clauses and sentences they connect. I would therefore prefer to take ‘connector’ as a functional
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term which covers the diverse functions of conjunctions and discourse linkages, and retain the word ‘conjunction’. Like the Greek grammarians, Priscian classed the interjection as a type of adverb, a position Mariarosaria Pugliarello discusses under the intriguing title, ‘Priscian and the Language of Emotion’. She focusses on the status of the interjection as a vox with its own characteristics whose significate is made up of the meaning of the word and affectivity (motus animi or affectus). She traces the terms, motus animi and affectus, through the Low Latin grammarians, remarking that Priscian boiled these motus down to joy, sorrow, fear, and admiration/astonishment. As for the oral aspect of the interjection, she places Priscian’s abscondita voce “with a distorted voice” alongside the traditional incondita voce “with a confused/uncouth voice” glossing them both as a voice that can not be understood. This led Priscian to class interjections as articulata, inarticulata (those interjections that vehicle a meaning and those that do not), and literata, illiterata (those that can be written and those that can not), and to take interiectiones, both inarticulatae et illiterate as primitives. After emphasising that Priscian was aware that the interjection was a marginal part of speech, and that it presented anomalies on the phonetic, morphological and syntactic levels, Pugliarello notes that this stance had repercussions among the medieval grammarians. 6. The ‘scripta minora’ The fifth chapter opens with Marcos Martinho’s examination of Priscian’s Praeexercitamina, an introduction to the craft of rhetoric translated from the Ps.Hermogenes Progymnasmata. The Greek author recognised four types of narration: mythikon “myth” or “fable”, plasmatikon “fiction”, historikon “knowledge, enquiry, or history”, and politikon “civic matters”. In his account of the Greek tradition and its diversity, and of the Latin authorities consulted by Priscian, Martinho recognises two types of difference between the translation and its original, grammatical and doctrinal, and examines four types of grammatical differences between the translation and its original: addition, subtraction, substitution and permutation. He is not certain whether these differences are due to the ‘curious’ manuscript tradition or to Priscian’s choice. I am not sure that one can take exception to Priscian ‘inconsistencies’, for competent translators do not always translate a word or phrase in exactly the same way, unless it is a technical term. In Priscian’s case, much depends on whether a strict translation from the Greek met his purpose adequately, and in any case the Greek text has an uncertain history. To exemplify the doctrinal differences between Priscian’s translation and the original, Martinho examines Priscian’s discussion of the fable and finds evidence that Priscian added material from classical and post-classical Greek and Latin authors, in particular Cicero. After a long analysis of the Greek original and Priscian’s
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handling of it, Martinho pays tribute to Priscian’s skill in setting up the norms of the fable, remarking that nobody, Greek or Latin, describes the fable with as much panache as Priscian. As the Ps.-Priscian De Accentibus has many parallels with Late Latin grammarians, Marina Passalacqua and Claudio Giammona take it to be what the late Vivien Law called a ‘regulae-type grammar’, and exhaustively list the authorities from Donatus to Pompeius (late 5th–early 6th century) from which it was compiled. They surmise it was composed in Visigothic Spain about a generation later than Priscian. I find it odd that in discussing the rules given in De Accentibus Passalacqua and Giammona do not advert to the fact that its compilers were following classical norms at a time when the pronunciation and the morphological systems of Latin were evolving in different ways in different parts of the Latin world, for this could explain why many of the manuscripts are corrupt. They also note that as early as Alexander Neckham (c.1157–1217) there were strong doubts over its authenticity. De Accentibus was a popular grammar, but as usual, the many extant manuscripts were copied between the 11th and the 16th centuries. The authors create a convincing stemma from the 124 manuscripts listed in the appendix. 7. Priscian’s influence I would think that most of us have defaced textbooks with marginal notes that the Carolingians might recognise as glosses. In developing a methodology of studying the glosses in Priscian manuscripts and the Carolingian glossae collectae (anthologies of glosses), Franck Cinato ascribes three functions to these anthologies: facilitating the making and utilisation of books, correcting the text, and adding information to the text. A comprehensive study of glosses examines the ‘formal aspect’, that is the codicological issues, their semantics, which are a guide to the interpretation of the text, and their functional aspect, which will throw light on the reasons for their composition. There are two types of gloss: original glosses and those copied from other manuscripts. The long history of many of the common glosses in the corpus reveals the relationship between manuscripts, the competence or incompetence of the scribes, their critical sense, and the extent of manuscript corruption. Given that Carolingian scribes treated glosses as common property and some of them as authoritative, their attribution must be treated with considerable caution. Though glosses are of their nature anonymous, scribes can at times be identified and dated through their handwriting. Because of the importance accorded the glossae collectae, the care taken in compiling them and their uncontrolled circulation, Cinato concludes that they were teaching aids and crutches for the inexperienced reader. His article makes a persuasive case for further editions of such texts.
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Although there are no commentaries on Priscian before the 9th century, there is evidence in Donatus commentaries that their authors had read Priscian and the Narbonne grammarian, Consentius (late 4th–early 5th century). Anne Grondeux examines their influence through the relationship of res proprie significatae “things signified as individuals” to proper and common nouns. The crux of the matter is Donatus’s definition of the noun: a declinable part of speech which signifies a body or a thing as either an individual or as an unspecified member of a class. Consentius adds abstract nouns to his list and replaces corpus and res by the more general corporalia and incorporalia, and Priscian followed his example. Grondeux credits Consentius with being the first to rethink Donatus’s definition of the noun according to the distinction between the corporeal and the incorporeal and to consolidate the logical basis of his grammar. It was further developed by Irish grammars like the Ars ambrosiana which postulated that certain incorporeal beings could be signified by a proper noun. This was picked up by the 8th-century Ars Tatuini which noted that the gods had proper names, and by the Anonymus ad Cuimnianum and the Ars Ambianensis which in good theological style cited the angels, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, as incorporeal beings blessed with proper names. The matter was taken up by Alcuin (c.735–803) who ignored Donatus and produced Excerptiones super Priscianum maiorem “Extracts from Priscianus maior”. Grondeux then sets out in informative detail the importance of the synthesis of Priscian and Consentius to the Carolingian grammarians, and shows convincingly that these developments were gradually changing the nature of grammar by pushing it toward logic and philosophy. During the eighth and ninth centuries Priscian’s influence spread to the south of Italy and created a unique tradition. One of its important results was the Adbreviatio artis grammaticae ex diversis doctoribus preserved in manuscript Casanatense 1086. Its author is Orso, whom Luigi Munzi identifies as the Bishop of Benevento, who died in 892. However, he is also identified as the Prince of Benevento. This dual identification is not implausible as many rulers of medieval city-states combined both roles. Munzi gives a comprehensive view of what such an Adbreviatio entailed, and copiously illustrates Orso’s procedures. He stripped all of Priscian’s examples out of the text, couched what was left in a sort of telegraphic Latin, and was not above adding his own. He created etymologies through the philosophical differentiae of words, and illustrated them with quotes from Caesar, Pliny, the Bible, and The Voyage of Saint Brendan, a poem describing the voyage of the legendary St Brendan and his monks from Ireland to the Isles of the Blessed. This last text, though anonymous, is a strong indication that Irish grammarians exerted considerable influence over the teaching of grammar in the area south of Monte Cassino. The difference between the grammatical tradition of the south and that of Monte Cassino raises the unanswerable question: what were the
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modalities of the transmission of Carolingian and Irish scholarship to the south of Italy? In 848 Ermenrich, a monk at Ellwangen, wrote to Grimald (800–872), Abbot of St-Gall, who had invited him to pursue his studies there, as his master, Walafrid Strabo (808/809–848), had recently died. He was almost certainly the Ermenrich (814–874) who later became Bishop of Passau. Monique Goullet’s article on this letter paints a picture of a bright and rather insufferable young man seeking to impress. Ermenrich shapes his letter around the definition of grammar by Rhabanus Maurus (c.776–856), one of the most prominent Carolingian grammarians: ‘Grammar is the science of interpreting poets and historians and of writing and speaking properly’, and parades his scholarship with copious quotations from classical, patristic and medieval authors and Priscian. Ermenrich had a taste for linguistic difficulties, like the wide deviations of contemporary pronunciation from that described by Priscian. Goullet also examines Ermenrich’s allegorisation of Priscian’s fusion of philosophy and grammar through the specifically spiritual concept of charity to one’s students. For Ermenrich places this ‘mother of all virtues’ within the function of grammar as an aid to spiritual reflection, as the key to the interpretation of Scripture, and as an instrument by which one arrives at the Truth and rises to spiritual things. Irène Rosier places the Glosulae super Priscianum, which probably dates from the late 11th century, squarely within two major intellectual developments which left their mark on medieval semantics. The first of them was the reshaping of grammar by dialectic, and the second, a new interplay between, grammar, dialectic and theology (Rosier 2005: 81–82). The dialectics of the time was based on careful reading of Porphyry (234–301/305 A.D.) and Boethius’s (475–524 A.D.) translations of Aristotle. Rosier builds her article around four propositions in which Boethius plays a major part. First, genera and species are substantially identical in each individual, and individuals differ according to their accidents. Viewed in this light, Priscian’s principle that the noun named substance and signified quality leads to the innovative distinction between signification and nomination. Second, genera and species which are universals can be conceived and signified as singulars: a common noun can become a proper noun when it designates a universal nature signified as singular. The third proposition is the Platonist theory that universals are ideas existing as templates in the divine mind. Rosier links this thesis to the realism of Guillaume de Champeaux (1080–1154) and the opinion of Abelard (1079–1142) that a universal thing can not exist except as a concept. The last proposition concerning formal identities revolves around the argument whether the vox was a substance as the Stoics maintained, or a quantity as Aristotle said. After listing the arguments over the material and formal identity of the vox which is produced in one place but present in several, Rosier sums up
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with two conclusions. First, the signification of the common noun was not merely an ontological question, but also, given Priscian’s contribution, a semantic affair. Second, the link between the nature of the vox as a category and the question of universals came through Boethius, whom the compilers of the Glosulae could have read alongside Priscian. For Julie Brumberg-Chaumont the analyses of substance by Priscian and Petrus Helias (fl.1130–1166) are a lesson in what happens when scholars interpret a six-hundred-year-old theory according to their own postulates. In discussing the role of substance and quality in the makeup of the noun and the pronoun, Apollonius and Priscian gave substance three related meanings: substance as the subject of quality, substance thought of as quality, and substance with indeterminate quality. The first two apply to the noun, the third to the pronoun. Being a well-trained scholastic, Petrus Helias envisaged Priscian in hylomorphic terms: the matter of substance came from its power to support something else (substare), and its form from the manner of its permanence (subsistere). On this basis Petrus places the common noun, the pronoun, and the proper noun in a system linked by substantia, and differentiates them through the differing roles quality plays in their makeup. In the noun quality acts as an identifier of the substance, in the pronoun the role of quality is demonstrating its referent as a substance of some sort. BrumbergChaumont sums up her article in three points: the medievals put the accent on the capacity of the proper noun to identify an individual; they developed their theory of grammatical function through their definitions of the parts of speech; and, in adopting this approach, Petrus Helias explained philosophy through grammar. What is left of the Greek grammar by the Franciscan Doctor mirabilis, Roger Bacon (c.1214–1292/94), survives in one manuscript at Oxford, a simplified version in Cambridge, and in the 1902 edition by Edmond Nolan and Samuel A. Hirsch. Only the parts on writing and pronunciation, on figura and species of the noun, and on pronouns and verbs are still extant. Louis Basset begins his article with a potted biography of Bacon, whose wide scientific interests led to accusations of witchcraft and imprisonment. He is one of the few 13th-century authorities who attempted to write a practical, descriptive grammar. Early in the grammar he sets out the principle that was accepted by 13th-century grammarians in general: “grammar is one and the same according to substance in all languages, although it varies in its accidents” (Hovdhaugen 1990: 117–118). However Bacon was not a modista, despite having some similarities with them. For where they created their grammatica speculativa by working from scientific principle, Bacon, a pioneer philologist, worked from careful observation of language phenomena. As Bacon saw Greek as useful in philosophical and Biblical studies, administration and commerce, he wanted to give the Latin world access to Aristotle and the Bible in the original. Hence he draws attention to aspects of language that were
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‘untouched’ (Hovdhaugen 1990: 121). After defining an idiom as proprietas linguae determinata, qua una gens utitur iuxta suam consuetudinem “a property of a specific language which a people uses according to its own customs”, he reminds the reader that Greek and French are individual languages divided into dialects, which he defines as diversitas idiomatis “a diversity in idiom” (ibid. 122–123). In Bacon’s opinion there are three levels of skill in a language: at its lowest, the ability to understand the technical terms in the Greek snippets in Latin texts; next, the ability to translate Greek philosophical, religious and scientific works into Latin, and third, the ability to speak Modern Greek fluently. He aims his grammar at the first level of competence. After giving a full description of the manuscripts, and their lacunae, Basset has a revealing discussion of Bacon’s sources. While Bacon’s long list of authorities is headed by Bede, Priscian, Donatus and Servius (fl. c.400 A.D.), it contains no Greek documents, although he has one reference to the second-century Greek grammarian, Herodian. Presumably this list was supplemented with a number of Byzantine grammars of Greek. While Basset remarks that Bacon was constantly comparing Latin and Greek, Hovdhaugen goes further claiming that his Greek grammar is an exercise in contrastive linguistics. Basset is certain that Bacon saw Priscian as a compiler rather than an author and quotes several places where he disagrees with him. For instance, Bacon rejects Priscian’s definition of vox articulata as a sound which conveys a meaning in favour of the view put forward by Boethius that it is a word that could be written. Bacon followed Priscian rather than contemporary Byzantine grammars, particularly in the section on declensions, but in the part on phonetics Basset keeps an eye to contemporary Greek usage tempering it with Priscian. It is worth remarking that in medieval usage viewed from the 20th century the word grammatica is equivocal: depending on the context, it means either grammar or linguistics. It is clear that Bacon constantly slips between the two meanings. Carmen Codoñer embarks on Joannes de Balbi’s (d.1286) treatment of the species of the noun by placing his Catholicon within the normative orientation of the late 13th century. Joannes de Balbi, however, puts his own slant on the concept of species. Where Priscian had written ‘There are two species of both proper and common nouns, principal and derivative’, Joannes de Balbi has ‘Species is the original disposition of a word through which a distinction is made between primitive and derivative’ (Species est originalis dispositio nominis per quam fit primitivi vel derivativi discretio). On the strength of these definitions Codoñer diagrams Priscian’s view of species as a tree in which primitive and derivative species are subclasses of appellative (common) and proper nouns, and represents Joannes de Balbi’s list of nominal species as a straight line which presents them as of equal rank: ‘Some nouns are primitive, some derivative, some proper, some appellative’. The medievals classed the adjective as a type of noun, and that many adjectives were derived
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from nouns, as montanus “pertaining to mountains” from mons “mountain”, and that adjectives, unlike common and proper nouns, were subject to comparison by suffixation. One gathers from Codoñer’s analysis of Joannes de Balbi’s lists of subtypes of proper and common nouns that he had the medieval taste for splitting hairs and the sense to drop Priscian’s typology of Roman names as culturally peculiar to ancient Rome. The key point in this discussion of ‘primitive’ and ‘derivative’ is the need to distinguish between species and figura. Joannes de Balbi argued that figura looks to quantity, as in the simple arma “weapons” and armiger “the man who bears them” (composed from arma and gero “I carry”, while species denotes quality and is bounded by the form of the word, as in albus, albeo, albedo “white [adjective]”, “I whiten”, “white [noun]”. On this evidence Joannes de Balbi considered derivative species to be the tool by which word-families were created. In comparing the influence of Donatus and Priscian on the verse grammars of the early 13th century, Elsa Marguin-Hamon casts a justly critical eye on these grammarians’ metrics, as they attempted to write quantitative verse at a time when accentual verse was the norm. Alexandre de Villedieu (c.1170–c.1250) wrote his Doctrinale, and Evrard de Béthune (d. c.1212) his Graecismus between 1200 and 1219. The Commoda grammaticae by Henri d’Avranche (d. c.1260), who is better known as a poet, and the Compendium grammaticae, Clavis compendii and Ars lectoria ecclesiae by John of Garland (c.1195–1272) were written between 1232 and 1239. The Doctrinale is solidly based on Donatus, Ars maior and Ars minor. Marguin-Hamon sees it as a ‘complement’ to Donatus, and remarks that Alexander does not refer to Priscian. As Evrard de Béthune designed the Graecismus for youngsters, he follows Donatus’s plan and amplifies him with some references to Priscian. But given the rhythmic shape of the name, Priscianus, he has problems fitting him into the metre and at times cheats: inde Xerelophon Priscucianus ait (Graecismus VIII.336)
Marguin-Hamon supposes that the later verse grammars are based on Priscian because they were written for more advanced classes, and most of them acknowledge him, if rather casually. Henri d’Avranche does not mention Priscian by name probably because of the difficulty of fitting his name into the classical hexameter, or because he considered him to be a mere translator. On the other hand, John of Garland is the first to rank him with Donatus. Marguin-Hamon gives an excellent account of the influence Petrus Helias and Peter of Spain (c.1210–1276), who later became Pope John XXI, had on all of these grammarians, and of the increasing importance of Priscian in the school classroom. She surmises that verse grammars probably fell out of favour because the more visible presence of Priscian brought about tension between the needs of the classroom and the wish to further develop grammatical theory.
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The final section of this chapter begins with a glance at the Renaissance and finishes with French classicism. The Renaissance is a period when grammar is at the service of discourse. Pierre Lardet chronicles how this relationship between the two language disciplines enabled Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558) to revisit the grammatical tradition in order to reshape grammar as a philosophical science and upstage the medieval speculative grammarians. His De causis linguae latinae is the first Latin grammar since the Middle Ages to seek the ‘causes’ of language through the principles of Aristotelian philosophy. Like the medieval speculative grammarians Scaliger operated within the hylomorphic framework of substance and accidents and sought Aristotle’s four causes: material (the underlying matter), formal (the form imposed on the matter), efficient (the agent imposing the form) and final (the purpose of the object). This entailed regarding grammar not as an art, but as a science derived from examining usage: scientia loquendi ex usu (Padley 1976: 62). Scaliger is the first to insist that the spoken language take priority over the written, and he sees the word as a sign of both thing and mental image. His reliance on hylomorphic models makes me suspect that he used causa in the scholastic sense of a thing without which something else would not exist. The only ancient grammarian to secure his approval is Varro, whom however he found wanting. He mentions Priscian once, placing him in the company of grammarians who discussed pronunciation. In his examination of the passages in Scaliger where he deals with contemporary citations of Priscian, Lardet notes that he avoids mentioning Priscian by name while either attacking him indirectly, or passing over him. A committed humanist, Scaliger sees grammar as the doorway to literature rather than to logic. While noting that ‘Greek authority is the mistress of grammar’, he takes special exception to the idea that Roman grammarians followed the Greeks closely, and draws attention to their freedom in using the Greek legacy. His list of authorities shows quite clearly that the Renaissance was not a break with the Middle Ages but a major change in direction. Even so, De causis follows the classical order of grammars from sound to syntax. Although Scaliger mentions Priscian by name only once, Lardet shows how his ideas slipped into De causis on the backs of other humanist grammarians, and closes with a detailed and perceptive account of the influence of De causis on grammarians of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. There are two important stages in the development of the semantics of the noun in French grammars. During the years between Louis Meigret (c.1510– c.1558) and Denis Vairasse d’Allais (c.1630–1682) Priscian’s grammar of the noun was adapted to handle the necessity of constructing it with the article, and grammaire générale focussed semantic theory on the opposition between proper and common nouns. Between Ramus’s French grammars of 1562 and 1572 and the Port-Royal grammar of 1660 there is very little development of theory, and
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definitions taken from Priscian, such as those used by Meigret, are patched into what are essentially teaching grammars (Padley 1988: 436). Jean-Marie Fournier and Valérie Raby put these developments down to two interlocking systems of semantics in Priscian: the first is body/thing, proper/common or appellative, generic/specific, and the second, general, common, specific, and individual. They draw a meticulous description of how the syntax of the article was handled from a respectable list of 16th- and 17th-century grammars, and it would be an unwise reader who did not read the footnotes. In spelling out the radical reorganisation of Priscian’s nominal systems in the grammaire générale, they emphasise the ‘genetic’ link the 17th century postulated between words and ideas, and note the importance given at the time to the distinction between proper and common nouns. In conclusion, they remark that Meigret is the only grammarian of the period to mention Priscian by name. However they see his ghost lurking under the adaptation of the ancient Roman tradition to the French of the classical period. Even though Du Marsais (1676–1758) and Beauzée (1717–1789) frequently referred to ancient grammarians and had mixed feelings about Priscian, Bernard Colombat demonstrates that they did their best to keep their articles on grammar in the Encyclopédie within ancient traditions. By the 18th century the Renaissance balance between grammar and rhetoric had reversed: grammar was now dominant and rhetoric danced to its tune. Les philosophes transformed French prose by disciplining the freely creative prose of the Renaissance and creating a style controlled by logic, a legacy which has lasted until the present day in spite of the ferocious arguments that their stance sparked at the time. In France, Priscian was competing with the ‘rational theories’ of the Port-Royal Grammar, which influenced Beauzée and Du Marsais. In discussing the relationship between the Port-Royal grammar and Noam Chomsky’s ‘Cartesian’ linguistics, Rieux & Rollin (1975: 24) point out that, despite many assertions to the contrary by transformationalist grammarians, the Port-Royal grammar did not lie dormant during the 17th and 18th centuries, but was republished many times and spawned manuals such as Éléments de grammaire générale appliqués à la langue française (1807) by l’abbé Roch-AmbroiseCucurron de Sicard (1742–1822) and Éléments de grammaire générale (1838) by P. Adolphe Mazure (1799–1870). While they often refer to Priscian and couple him with other ancient grammarians, among whom they include the rhetorician, Quintilian(!), Beauzée and Du Marsais give him a mixed press, and in the manner of writers who have problems thinking themselves into other ages they treat him as a man of their own time. While Du Marsais looks on Priscian as an almost infallible authority, Beauzée takes him to task over differences from general grammar, in particular his taking the participle as a separate part of speech. Colombat does not say whether Beauzée was aware that this classification is usual in classical and medieval grammars or
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not, but I suspect that he could have been. Colombat sums up his article with three remarks: while Du Marsais regards Priscian as an unassailable authority, Beauzée mixes respect with criticism particularly of his analysis of the noun and verbal categories. Second, the Encyclopédistes treat Priscian as a contemporary in the belief that grammar had shown no progress between Priscian and themselves. Finally, they underline the ‘emblematic status’ of Priscian and hold him responsible for what his predecessors said because, being the most prominent of Roman grammarians, he was well aware of the Roman past. I have my doubts whether Priscian would have taken pleasure from the way Du Marsais and Beauzée treated him. The article terminates with a table listing the direct references to Priscian in the Encyclopédie. The conclusion by Paolo de Paolis publicises a cataloguing project in the Department of Philology and History in the Università de Cassino, and describes problems the cataloguers meet, particularly with manuscripts that contain several grammars. The aim of the project is cataloguing all the extant grammatical manuscripts of late antiquity and the Middle Ages by genre according to title, provenance and other grammars in the manuscript. The final aim is creating a printed catalogue of manuscripts together with a Clavis to facilitate consultation. The enquiries will contain the full title of the work and its incipit, the title under which it appears in existing catalogues, an indication of its type in Latin, for instance, a commentary on an author, a grammar composed after the classical period, etc., and finally an indication of its type in Italian. Information about the work already completed is available on the university server (http//www.unicas.it). Users, once registered, have access through a password. 8. Priscian and his legacy These proceedings cast Priscian as a Roman gentleman whose personal culture was rooted in late Republican and Augustan Rome. As such, he fitted the ancient definition of the orator by Marcus Porcius Cato “the Censor” (234–149 B.C.): orator est vir bonus peritus dicendi “the orator is a good man skilled in speaking” (Libri ad filium 14)). As oratory played such an important part in the government of Rome, it was taken for granted that such men would undertake social and political obligations: hence Priscian’s Panegyric to the Emperor, Anastasius. And they also had wide interests and immense self confidence. As Cicero wrote to his friend, Titus Pomponius Atticus, neque orator fuit qui quemquam meliorem quam se arbitraretur “There has not been an orator who thought somebody else better that himself ” (Cicero Ad Atticum 14.20.3). We have seen that Priscian was an enthusiastic geographer. He was also not above writing about weights and measures. However his Carmen de Ponderibus et Mensuris “Poem about Weights and Measures” does not figure in the proceedings in spite of its philosophical opening,
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which sees weight as a force holding the world and its contents in the proper place. The body of the poem sets out the various systems of weights and measures in the ancient world. Priscian’s Institutiones Grammaticales could only have been written by a philologist with a strong sense of the Roman mos maiorum and its expression in Classical literature. I would think that it was his reverence for tradition, as well as the soundness of its analysis, that sent him to Varro’s grammar. It would seem that he does not treat later grammars with the same reverence. It is no surprise then that he ignores every literary or religious text after the Augustan age. Priscian is only one illustration of the power of the Classical canon over the literary culture of the late Empire — for instance, St Ambrose (d.397), the governor of Liguria and Aemilia, who was named Bishop of Milan, was a skilled orator, made little if any direct use of classical literature, but applied classical critical techniques to exegesis of the Greek Fathers. St Augustine, who was baptised by Ambrose, is another good example. He too had been a noted rhetor before his conversion. His polemics of The City of God and the exegesis of his Enarrationes in psalmos “Commentaries on the Psalms” for instance, could only have been written by a skilled rhetorician. He writes in his Confessiones I.19 that as a dissolute young man, he had been more careful to avoid barbarisms in his speech than sinful behaviour. We see some traces of this attitude in Priscian’s occasional bouts of purism. But Priscian’s prowess in grammar overshadowed his skills in rhetoric, and he knew the value of his accomplishments and how to exploit them. He was a skilled contrastive linguist: he coupled a good knowledge of Greek with strong analytic skills sharpened by the average Roman gentleman’s grasp of philosophy. Though there is little innovation in Priscianus maior, its strength lies in his skilled analysis. Priscian’s phonetics and phonology could only have come from someone with a good ear, even though his judgment of the diphthongs he heard is distorted by his reliance on the classical distinction between long and short vowels. However his analysis of the syllable does foreshadow some of the modern ideas on juncture. Though his descriptions of the parts of speech and their accidents fit the classical language and almost entirely ignore the Vulgar Latin around him, he sensed that Latin was evolving, and that the gap between the spoken and the written languages was widening. Priscian’s most important innovation is the full treatment of syntax in Books 17 and 18. Earlier grammars seemed to leave syntax to the rhetorician for whom grammar is the raw material of discourse. Quintilian, for instance, defines grammar quite early in his monumental work on Roman oratory, dividing it into two parts: the science of speaking and writing correctly, and the analysis of poets (Institutiones oratoriae 1.4.1). This dichotomy worked well in the classical period, but long before Priscian, a sixth-century teacher as well as a grammarian, the two
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parts had been separated. By his time grammar had become a strictly linguistic discipline, and the analysis of literature had drifted into rhetoric and as we have seen in the case of St Ambrose of Milan and St Augustine of Hippo its norms fuelled early Christian exegesis of the Bible and Patristic writings. The contrastive linguistics in the Institutiones grammaticales, while clearly a teaching tool, is certainly only one aim of his book. On the evidence of his Institutio de nomine, pronomine et verbo, he had a good sense of what went on in the classroom. I would think he had an easier time of it than many modern language teachers. At times, the participants in the colloquium betray an ambivalent attitude towards Priscian’s sources. I would not take his reliance on secondary sources as a fault, but rather as an exploitation of tradition and an academic shortcut which I think that most of us will have indulged in at one time or another. In any case Priscian was “not inclined to bind himself to the dictates of any master” (Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri [Horace, I Epistles I.14]), not even Apollonius whose description of Greek he carefully modified to fit Latin. Yet it is clear that he followed Apollonius and Varro closely when it suited his book. Like Horace, Priscian had the classical author’s gift of combining respect for literary precedent with originality. We have seen that the most important of Priscian’s innovations is devoting the last two books of his Institutiones to syntax, and making them as substantial as the first sixteen. I do not think that this was for scientific reasons only. The fight to preserve classical Romanitas in a world whose day-to-day Latin had evolved away from the Latin of Cicero and Vergil demanded careful revamping of the teaching of grammar, and the strict application of the principle that the environment and purpose of an utterance or a document determined the choice of register. One has only to read Augustine’s sermons, which were delivered before both the educated and the uneducated, to sense that they are in a very different stylistic world from his professional works like De Trinitate. Despite mild disagreement between certain of the contributors over whether Priscian fully understood his philosophical sources or not, there is plenty of evidence that, despite occasional lapses, Priscian was more of a philosopher than it seems. By placing the word, philosophi, at the head of his Institutiones, Priscian firmly linked grammar to neo-Platonist philosophy, while preserving its status as an ‘art’ in the ancient sense. Several contributors raised the question of Priscian’s purpose in writing his Institutiones grammaticales, the suggestion being that he did not intend it to be used by beginners. However we have seen that it was, and that its philosophical approach entailed the eclipse of Donatus. What do these proceedings say about Priscian’s legacy? There are two mysteries concerning his influence which this colloquium could not solve: the copying, preservation, and transmission of manuscripts of his works between his death and
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the eighth century, and the manner and time of the entry of his works into Ireland. These proceedings show that by putting Latin grammar on a philosophical footing, he opened the way for the great medieval grammarians, left to medieval theologians a tool essential to both theological and Biblical exegesis, and provided Humanist grammarians with the means to overhaul the teaching of Latin as a dayto-day language of communication. Grammar remained a discipline tinged by Neo-Platonism until the advent of the Arabic Aristotle in the 12th century and their Greek translations. The way in which grammarians and philosophers drew on the Platonist past was strongly affected by the 12th-century introduction of Latin versions of these translations into the Schools, and their turbulent replacement by Latin translations taken straight from the Greek. It seems to be about this time that grammar took on the trappings of speculative science in order to satisfy the demands of the theologians for a rigorous tool of analysis. Thomas Aquinas (d.1274) defined theology as a scientia argumentativa (science depending on argument) (Summa Theologica I.i.8). As a science made up of statements and conclusions drawn from them, theology needed a language science fit to analyse it. Medieval theologians were skilled grammarians, who were interested in grammar as a series of processes by which the mind derived meaning from divine and human reality (Kelly 2002: 214). To take a common example, commentators on the Sentences by Peter Lombard (d.1160), treated grammar as a tool of theological exegesis: for instance, they analysed the accidents of the noun to elucidate the attributes of God and the accidents of the verb to elucidate the nature of time and eternity. It is unfortunate that the colloquium passed over the modistae in silence. For in exploiting the principle that the verb signified movement and transition between subject and object, they analysed the sentence as a process of creating meaning. Radulphus Brito (1270/75–1320), for example, quotes Priscianus minor on this point quite freely, and Priscianus maior fairly sparingly. Priscian hovers in the background of most of these grammars, including that of Radulphus Brito and when he does appear in text he is often brazenly conscripted to justify basic modistic concepts like modes of signifying, the principle of movement, which are actually due to a biased appropriation of himself and his classical forebears. Scholars do run the risk of finding predecessors when there are none at all, and the modistae transformed this risk into a skill with some panache. The preface to the 1554 edition of Priscian’s works sums up the issues treated in this section of the colloquium as the 16th-century Humanists saw them. After quoting Quintillian’s affirmation of the traditional stance that grammar was the foundation of all the arts, the anonymous editor compares Priscian to an architect who designs a building with a firm foundation, contrasting them with the grammarians who followed Gorgias (c.483–375 B.C.) and under his influence pro-
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duced the chaotic grammars that were stigmatised by Aristotle. The editor compares the advent of Humanism with the rise of the great classical grammarians. For while Humanists saw themselves as saving the 16th century from medieval barbarism and were sure of their legacy, they credited Priscian with codifying Latin once and for all. The writer finishes with fulsome praise of Priscian who saved Latin from corruption by going back to the great classical sources. Priscian, I think, would have approved of Scaliger’s combination of theory and practicality and the balance he struck between grammar and rhetoric. He probably would have been intrigued by the beginnings of la grammaire générale, and perhaps a little wary of its approach. However, I am sure he would not have approved of the rationalist language theories of Port-Royal and their development of a language model that looked solely at language structure to the detriment of language in use. This was certainly not the way he practised grammar himself. Though this colloquium has given a comprehensive account of Priscian himself, the sketchy account of his influence on later generations of grammarians is just a taste of the richness of his legacy. This is certainly not a problem of the colloquium’s making — each of the chapters in this volume could have been the subject of a separate colloquium. As it is, the participants have raised many useful questions about Priscian and his legacy that still have to be answered.
References Baratin, Marc. 1984. “Grammaticalité et intelligibilité chez Priscien”. Matériaux pour une histoire des théories linguistiques éd. par Sylvain Auroux, Michel Glatigny et al., 155–162. Lille: Université de Lille III. Baratin, Marc, Bernard Colombat & Louis Holtz. 2009. Priscien Transmission et Refondation de la Grammaire de l’Antiquité aux Modernes. (= Studia Artistarum, 21.) Turnhout: Brepols. Chauvot, Alain. 1986. Procope de Gaza, Priscien de Césarée, Panégyriques de l’empéreur Anastase 1er. Bonn: Dr Rudolf Habelt. Coyne, Patricia, ed. 1991. De Laude Anastasii Imperatoris. (= Studies in Classics, 1.) Lewiston– Queenston–Lampeter: Edwin Mellon Press. Hofman, Rijcklof. 1990. “The Priscian Text Used in Three Ninth-Century Irish Donatus Commentaries”. Diversions of Galway: Papers on the History of Linguistics from ICHoLS V, Galway, Ireland. 1–6 September 1990 ed. by Anders Ahlqvist (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 68), 7–15. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Hovdhaugen, Even. 1990. “Una et eadem: Some observations on Roger Bacon’s Greek Grammar”. De ortu grammaticae: Studies in medieval grammar and linguistic theory in memory of Jan Pinborg ed. by G. L. Bursill-Hall, Sten Ebbesen & Konrad Koerner (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 43), 117–131. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Joannes de Balbi, 1971. Catholicon. Facsimile of Mainz edition, 1460. Farnborough: Gregg International Publishers. Kelly, L. G. 2002. The Mirror of Grammar: Theology, Philosophy and the Modistae. (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 101.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
156 L. G. Kelly Kelly, L. G. 2005. “Adverbs, Definitions and Reality”. Flores Grammaticae: Essays in memory of Vivien Law ed. by Nicola McLelland & Andrew R. Linn (= The Henry Sweet Society Studies in the History of Linguistics, 10.) Münster: Nodus. Kneepkens, C. H. 1995. “The Priscianic Tradition”. Sprachtheorien in Spätantike und Mittelalter ed. by Sten Ebbesen, 239–264. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Law, Vivien. 1992. “Carolingian Grammarians and Theoretical Innovation”. Diversions of Galway: Papers on the History of Linguistics from ICHoLS V, Galway, Ireland. 1–6 September 1990 ed. by Anders Ahlqvist (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 68), 31–37. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Law, Vivien. 1997. Grammar and Grammarians in the Early Middle Ages. London & New York: Longmans. Luhtala, Anneli. 2005. Grammar and Philosophy in Late Antiquity. (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 107.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Padley, G[eorge] A[rthur]. 1976. Grammatical Theory in Western Europe 1500–1700: The Latin tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Padley, G. A. 1988. Grammatical Theory in Western Europe 1500–1700: Trends in vernacular grammar II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Percival, W[alter] Keith. 1987. “On Priscian’s Syntactic Theory: The medieval perspective”. Papers in the History of Linguistics: Proceedings of the Third International Conference of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS III) ed. by Hans Aarsleff, Louis G. Kelly & Hans-Josef Niederehe (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 38), 65–76. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Petrus Helias. c.1150? Summa super Priscianum. Ed. by Leo Reilly, CSB. (= Studies and Texts, 111 & 113). Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1993. Priscian. 1476. Opera omnia. Venice: Johañes de Colonia & Mañthen de Gherretzen. Prisciani Grammatici Caesariensis Libri Omnes. 1528. Cologne: Eucharius Cervicornus. Prisciani Grammatici Caesariensis Libri Omnes. 1554. Basileae: apud Nicolaum Bryling. Priscian. 1832. “De Ponderibus et mensuris”. Ed. by Wilhelm Ernst Weber, Corpus Poetarum Romanorum, 1371–1372. Frankfurt-am-Main: Ludwig Broenner. Priscian. 1859. Ôpera omnia. (= Grammatici latini ed. by Heinrich Keil, vols. II–III). Leipzig: B. G. Teubner. (Repr., Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1961.) Rieux, Jacques & Bernard E. Rollin, eds. 1975. The Port-Royal Grammar. (= Janua linguarum, Series minor, 208.) The Hague: Mouton. Roger Bacon. 1250? Summa grammaticae. (= Rogeri Bacon Opera hactenus inedita I ed. by Robert Steele). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940. Roger Bacon. 1250? Greek Grammar of Roger Bacon and a fragment of his Hebrew Grammar. Ed. by Edmund Nolan & S[amuel] A. Hirsch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902. Roger Bacon. c.1292. Compendium Studii Philosophiae. Ed. by J. S. Brewer. (= Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera quaedam hactenus inedita, 1; Rolls Series, 15), 391–519. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1859. Rosier-Catach, Irène. 2005. ‘The Glosulae in Priscianum and its Tradition’. Flores grammaticae: Essays in Memory of Vivien Law ed. by Nicola McLelland & Andrew R. Linn (= The Henry Sweet Society Studies in the History of Linguistics, 10), 81–100. Münster: Nodus. Sedulius Scotus. 9th century. In Priscianum. Ed. by Bengt Löfstedt. (= Corpus Christianorum Continuatio medievalis, XLC.) Turnhout: Brepols, 1957.
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van de Woestijne, Paul, ed. 1953. La Périégèse de Priscien. (= Rijksuniversiteit te Gent. Werken, 116.) Brugge: De Tempel. Wright, Roger. 1982. Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France. Liverpool: Francis Cairns.
Author’s address: L. G. Kelly 306 Cherry Hinton Road Cambridge CB1 7AU Eng l and e-mail: [email protected]
The “Geneva School” A view from Russia* Gisela Bruche-Schulz
Hong Kong Baptist University
1. Introductory remarks This book is written as a view of the ‘Saussurean paradigm’ (Part I), and its branching out into present-day structuralist-functionalist and hermeneutical-discursive spheres (Part II). Most, or all, of the topics covered have already received monograph-length treatments in one place or another, written mostly in French or English, but also in Spanish. Still, Kuznecov’s book is extremely interesting to the Western reader, since it provides a perspective on a time-space warp in Russian linguistics which appears to have had consequences for both the kind of renewed reception Saussurean linguistics is having in present-day Russia, and a ‘climate of opinion’1 in which former Marrist-Stalinist perspectives of how history moves are being addressed as not being quite right, but may still linger on as part of the underbrush of a worldview, or ‘thought style’. This situation can be described in terms of the “complex process of social consolidation” described by Ludwik Fleck (1896–1961) as he struggled with the question of how “the conceptual creations of science, like other works of the mind, become accepted as a fact” (Trenn & Merton, Preface to Fleck 1976 [1935], p. xiii). Fleck exemplifies this process by describing how the concept of the disease ‘syphilis’ has moved from an “ethical-mystical”, then to an “empirical-therapeutical”, and lastly to an “empirical-pathological” concept (Fleck 1976: 8) which, according to the prevalence of the one or the other component, has determined the Denkstil, i.e. ‘thought style’, of a ‘thought collective’. The latter notion is inevitably a corollary of the former, since a thought style “is inextricably bound to a thought collective” * On the occasion of: Naučnoe nasledie Ženevskoj lingvističeskoj školy [The scientific heritage of the Geneva linguistic school]. By V[alerij] G[eorgievič] Kuznecov. (= Studia Philologica, [unnumbered].) Moscow: Znak, 2010, 366 pp. ISBN 978-5-9551-0407-2. RUB 465 [= ca. € 11 / US$ 15] (HB). 1. Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) appears to have coined this term (cf. Koerner 1976b: 184). Historiographia Linguistica XXXVIII:1/2 (2011), 159–177. doi 10.1075/hl.38.1/2.06bru issn 0302–5160 / e-issn 1569–9781 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
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who will attempt “to legitimize a particular approach as the correct one” (p. 35). Fleck’s ideas are related to Thomas Kuhn’s use of the notion of ‘paradigm’ — which has become the standard term for the description of any ‘school’, ‘movement’, or ‘current of thought’.2 I myself will use the term ‘paradigm’ in the sense suggested by Koerner (1976b: 27), namely, as “a particular frame of reference put forward by a theorist in the discipline which has led not only to new insight but a reconsideration of previously cherished views in general”. But I will also use Fleck’s further internal distinctions within the notion of ‘thought collective’. There are ‘experts’ who publish their work in journals, and experts who advance the ‘journal’ knowledge to a respected ‘vademecum science’.3 There is then ‘popular science’ which is characterized by the textbooks in which vademecum-science knowledge is presented as ‘true facts’ (1976 [1935]: 111–113). As for journal science and vademecum science, they have arrived at a stage when knowledge is first tentatively established, and then about to be consolidated, the former still moving along uncertainties and even errors (Fleck 1976 [1935]: 112 et passim; cf. Kuhn in Foreword to Fleck 1976: x). Equipped with these notions, I hope to be able do justice to Kuznecov’s book, highlight its merits, and, at the same time, put into perspective its characteristics as a work that seems to be written with the experience of the Stalinist past closer to home than one might expect. As mentioned at the outset, the book is divided in two parts. Part I summarizes the development of Saussurean thought by students of the first generation (Bally, Karcevskij, Sechehaye) and their successors up to the present. Part II offers Kuznecov’s account of currents of linguistic thinking which — borrowing from Saussure — have at the same time incorporated ideas from other frameworks (e.g., cultural theory, semantic-syntactic functionalist interests). 2. Approaching the subject matter Kuznecov’s book has two potential readerships. On the one hand, it is obviously addressed to Russian readers who might want to know what the Geneva School is all about. In particular, the first six chapters of Part I may be read as a vademecum-like text or even as a textbook. Part II offers the author’s view on 2. Kuhn, in his foreword to Fleck has observed (1976: ix) that he had read Fleck’s work before he published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962, but only selectively, preoccupied by the problems of his own study, and that “Rereading the book now […] I find many insights that I might fruitfully have worked into my viewpoint.” 3. “Fleck is concerned with […] the personal, tentative, and incoherent character of journal science together with the essential and creative act of the individuals who add order and authority by selective systematization within a vademecum” (Kuhn in Fleck 1976: ix).
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positions and approaches that appear to him in various ways related to, or even originating from, Saussure’s (1857–1913) teaching. This part is thus both an account of factual events and disciplinary developments, but also a subjective account, the perspective of which may not be shared by everyone, especially by Western readers. On the other hand, the book offers Western readers a presentday academic version of the history of Saussure’s reception in a country that had been in contact with Saussurean thought as early as 1917, when Sergej Iosifovič Karcevskij (1884–1955; later called Serge Karcevski) returned to Moscow from Geneva. Interested Western readers may well be familiar with other respects in which the Saussurean ‘paradigm’ has been foundational, but not with its particular reflection in Russian scholarship. It should be borne in mind that Karcevskij did not arrive from Geneva bringing with him wisdom completely unheard of in early Soviet Russia. In Russia there was, to be sure, no well-rounded theory of the sign. But scholars had approached problems from vantage points similar to the theorems and conceptualizations in Saussure’s (and his students’) thinking — for instance, in literary theory and linguistics, Aleksandr A. Potebnja (1835–1891), and, in general linguistics, Jan N. Baudouin de Courtenay (1845–1929). Potebnja assumed the word to have an external form, a meaning, and an internal form — the latter having the potential of reflecting/embodying conscious experience. He was also looking for the psychological basis of the meaning of a phonetic unit (cf. Fizer 1986 passim). Baudouin de Courtenay had stipulated a ‘collective-individual factor’ that was operative in the generation of language in general and in communication (1963 [1910]: 199). He and his students had started the formation of an incipient school of thought — or, in Fleck’s words, a ‘thought collective’ — that had insisted on the individuality of speech as socially conditioned and moulded. This was a mindset that did mesh well, at times, with Saussurean schemes of thinking, but was not identical to it. (I leave aside especially E. D. Polivanov (1891–1938), who insisted on recovering the ‘empirical’ fact before considering the activity of a collective-individual psyche.) Baudouin and his students were later labeled the ‘Petersburg linguists’, or even the ‘Petersburg School’. In a similar vein, Filipp Fedorovič Fortunatov (1848–1914) had attracted gifted and passionate students who formed the Moscow Linguistic Circle, which would later develop similarly oriented formalist methods in the exploration of language activity. In both ‘schools’, the publication of the Cours attracted much attention. Reznik (2008: 4) mentions that, by contrast to the initial, not so favourable reactions of European linguists to the book, for the majority of Russian scholars, Saussure’s theory appeared to be a systematic and concise formulation of those sociological ideas on language which had been
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central to the work of the Moscow and St Petersburg linguistic schools for the previous two decades, and which were particularly characteristic of Baudouin de Courtenay’s linguistic conception.
What would have come out of this contact of ‘thought styles’ cannot be known, since it was interrupted by the interference of Marrist linguistics which, with official approval, propagated a so-called sociological view that promoted a strict one-to-one relation between the development of languages and the stage-by-stage progress of economic (and social) history — helped on by political action. In two infamous discussions at the Communist Academy in Moscow, in December 1928 and February 1929, also sometimes called the ‘Polivanov discussions’, each and every work on previous sociological ideas was dismissed (Bruche-Schulz 1984, Alpatov 1991). This dismissal was so radical that only fear and forced re-interpretations remained. Rozalija Osipovna Šor (1894–1939) who, in a book of 1926, had still celebrated all inspiring approaches to linguistic questions of the time, including de Saussure’s Cours, had to confess publicly in 1931 that she had erred. Others had to follow suit. Such events are not elaborated in Kuznecov’s account of the Geneva School. To be fair, he seems to want to write about the reception of the Geneva School in present-day Russia in the main, and not to commit himself to elaborate its early reception very much. He does touch on a few points, such as the early attempts at a translation of Saussure’s Cours but, on the whole, his remarks on the Soviet past remain cursory. The guiding perspective of his book is that of a contemporary Russian scholar who recovers what had been long suppressed in the Stalinist ‘climate of opinion’, but — using Fleckian terms — says very little about the ‘journal-science’ and ‘vademecum-science’ stages of pre-Soviet linguistics which are characteristic of the Russian contact with Saussurean thought in the 1920s and ’30s. The latter is referred to only by way of (very) brief factual information on those scholars who, after Karcevskij had arrived in Moscow late in 1917, absorbed and developed Saussurean ideas (31–33). 3. The expression ‘Geneva school’ Although it is true that the expression ‘école de Genève’ was used in an address by Michel Bréal (1832–1915) at the Congress of Orientalists held in Geneva in September 1894, and later on some other informal occasions, a ‘Geneva School’ has never been formally instituted.4 In the first issue of Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure, published in 1941 by the Société Genevoise de Linguistique, we find in the second line of the section ‘Origins’ the expression ‘l’école genevoise’ in quotation marks 4. It is obviously customary to talk about a ‘school’ when a ‘thought collective’ approaches the state in which it receives the popular respect given to a ‘textbook science’.
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(p. 9). The idea of forming a scholarly association had been brought up in spring 1940 by Serge Karcevski, who had made Geneva his permanent home in the early 1920s, and received his doctorate at the university there in 1927.5 It seems, however, that the Genevans never themselves used the term ‘school’, though Robert Godel’s (1902–1984) 1969 selection of studies by scholars who had played an active role in the meetings of the Société Genevoise imprinted this expression on the minds of many of us. Neither of the editors of the posthumous Cours de linguistique générale, Charles Bally (1865–1947) and Albert Sechehaye (1870–1946), had followed Saussure’s famous lectures of 1907–1911; they had taken their doctorates from the universities of Berlin in 1889 (Bally) and Göttingen in 1902 (Sechehaye), respectively, and pursued linguistic interests quite independent of Saussure’s teachings. This is similarly true of Henri Frei (1899–1980), Karcevski, and Godel, though the latter became famous through his Geneva thesis on the sources of the Cours (Godel 1957). The author of the book under review seems to use ‘Geneva School’ as a cover term for linguists who in some way or other were associated with the university there and could be seen as having espoused ideas laid down in the Cours of 1916. As far as I know, the present book appears to be the first that gives this “school” monograph treatment. The author, as both the bibliography (345–346) and the blurb on the back cover suggest, has worked on the subjects treated here for quite some time. In 2003, he published a book entitled The Geneva Linguistic School: From Saussure to Functionalism, which is reworked in the present book.6 In 2008 Kuznecov edited a volume (and contributed two papers himself) which resulted from a conference celebrating the 150th anniversary of Saussure’s birth and the 100th anniversary of the beginning of his lectures on general linguistics in 1907. 4. The book’s organization Following an introduction (9–20), Part One deals with the ‘Development of F. de Saussure’s foundational principles’ (21–207),7 and Part Two offers an account of ‘Further developments: From Saussure to functionalism’ (209–324). A conclusion, ‘The place of the Geneva school in the history of linguistics: Its significance for contemporary linguistics’ (325–340) rounds out the book. (There is no index.) 5. He had first arrived there in 1907 to study linguistics with Bally and Sechehaye, but, apparently, not formally with Saussure. After the October Revolution, he returned to Russia, spending the years 1917–1919 in Moscow where he is reported to have lectured on the ideas of the Cours. During the early 1920s, he taught both in Strasbourg and also Prague — hence his association with the Cercle linguistique de Prague to whose Travaux he contributed. 6. Reviewed by Alpatov (2004), who already earlier had stressed the need of recovering the intellectual past of the 1920s (Alpatov 1991). 7. I translate all headings into English, putting them within single quotation marks.
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The Introduction sets the stage for different views of the development of science. That the history of science looks not only to the past, but also to the future is seen as commonly agreed (p. 9). However, Western linguists’ attention will turn to the assertion that the historical quest involves ‘the revealing of […] the succession and inner logic of their transition from particular historical stages (“stadii”) to the next’ (13–14), and might then be struck by the mention of “qualitative leaps” (“skačestvennye skački”) in the development of linguistics that are said to originate, ‘e.g., under the influence of Saussure’s work’ (“naprimer, pod vozdejstviejem teorii Sossjura …” [p. 15]). It will be noted again that Kuznecov hastens to stress, with reference to the geochemist V. I. Vernadskij (1863–1945), that such leaps happen ‘without a break with earlier traditions’ (p 15).8 He thus distances himself from the canonical Stalinist view of the ‘law’ of history that, based on the forward-moving of the stages of production — according to Stalin —, applies itself to all manifestations of economic and social life, finding its expression in the form of stages that would indeed break with the past — out of political, revolutionary necessity (Stalin 1938).9 At the same time, however, history means ‘progress’ (Kuznecov, p. 13). As a result, the reader is left wondering as to how exactly the historical process is to be understood.10 Kuznecov, when looking for key notions for the description of the history of Saussurean ideas, takes issue with the Kuhnian term ‘paradigm’. Feeling that this term serves the Stalinist task (Kuhnian revolutions supposedly do away radically with the past), he finally discards the notion of ‘paradigm’ for his purposes, arguing with reference to Romaško (1985: 25) that the concepts of ‘schools, currents, tendencies, and traditions’ already cover what the term ‘paradigm’ was supposed to express (see however Koerner 1976b), but keeps the notion of ‘scientific community’ as allowing for a useful perspective (16–17). He adds that, ‘as Romaško had rightfully remarked’, these ‘schools, currents, tendencies, and traditions’ are supposed to have been researched ‘extremely little’ (Romaško, p. 25). From here on, Kuznecov begins a description and analysis of the 8. The citation to Vernadskij (1981: 232) seems not to be precise, but probably refers to “O nekotoryx osnovyx problema biogeoxemii”, in Izvestija Akad. Nauk SSSR, ser geo. 18:1.19–34 (1938), to be found reprinted in Vernadskij (1981). 9. Stalin had introduced an ontological version of Marxian dialectics by stipulating as a ‘law’ of history the progress of the stages of production — pushed forward by revolutionary, political action (1938). Each stage would generate a new quality, leaving the old one behind. Such a stageby-stage progression forward into the future had also become the basis of thinking emanating from the Marrist principle of stadial’nost’ — which became the all-pervasive tenet against which the Petersburg and Moscow linguists of the 1930s were measured. 10. The usual meaning of the Russian word ‘progress’ is ‘making progress towards a goal’.
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succession of different currents and movements of the Geneva School. He finds helpful Saussure’s conception of three phases (16–17): “a grammatical phase when attention was given to the description of normative phenomena; a philological phase which involved the interpretation of and commentary on texts; a comparative-historical phase’. (No reference is supplied). He opines that one should ‘obviously’ add structuralism and functionalism to these three phases (p. 17). 5. Discussion of individual chapters Chapter 1 is devoted to the origins of the ‘Geneva School’. Its first section, ‘A short historiography of the Geneva School and the origins of their set of scientific problems: Relations with Russia’ (21–34, offers an array of names both of Saussure’s students who became scholars in their own right and of those who worked in similar mindsets, developing and specifying the scope of Saussurean ideas. According to Kuznecov, the term ‘Geneva School’ was first used by Michel Bréal in September 1894, ‘when giving due respect to the work of Saussure’ (p. 21). Bally repeated the term, on 14 July 1908, as an offical reference to Saussure and his followers when presenting Saussure with a Festschrift. (Bally’s address was printed in Le Journal de Genève four days later under the title ‘The teacher and his students’.) That the School existed expressis verbis since 1908 also is supposed to have been suggested by Sechehaye and Godel.11 He continues (p. 22), ‘The Geneva School obtained official status in December 1940, when — upon Karcevskij’s initiative — the Geneva Linguistic Society12 was founded […] with Bally and Sechehaye as presidents, and Karcevskij as vice president.’ He finds, then, that the ‘School’, in spite of never having been established under the name Geneva School, did exist as a phenomenon which rightfully belonged to the ‘scientific community’ (Kuhn) or, in Fleck’s terminology, to the ‘thought collective’ that had been nourished by Saussurean ideas. The second section of the same chapter (34–40), entitled Theoretical Principles’, introduces the notions of ‘langue / parole’, ‘synchrony / diachrony’, and of the concept of ‘system’ arising from the coordinates of ‘social/individual — potential/real’. With an eye on Russian linguistics in Soviet times and the ‘debates’ that led to the ousting of those who insisted on the importance of the description of the ‘synchronic’ actual-empirical fact, Kuznecov stresses that Saussure had always put the ‘synchronic’ at the foreground of attention. He also points out that the linguists under the umbrella of the ‘Geneva School’ had involved themselves in work 11. Kuznecov adduces Engler (1968: 158) as the source of that information, but the reference is not precise, since the bibliography lists three works of that date by Engler, namely, 1968a, b, and c. It is probably 1968b which is meant here. 12. The French title is ‘Société Genevoise de Linguistique’; there is certainly no hint at a school.
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on communication, which of necessity also had to consider aspects of synchrony. The third subsection (40–47) reports on the part played by Bally and Sechehaye as the compilers of Saussure’s Cours, although they did not, in actual fact, attend the lectures in which Saussure presented the material that would become the crucial ingrediants of his seminal work. The fourth section (47–68) reports on the discussion of the question whether it might not have been Sechehaye who was the actual teacher in the relation between Saussure and his students (Wunderli 1976), a suggestion Koerner (1976a) strongly opposed. Kuznecov takes as the point of departure for this suggestion the book written by Sechehaye in 1908 (‘Programme et méthodes de la linguistique théorique’), i.e., eight years before the publication of Saussure’s Cours. He presents Sechehaye’s conception of a psychologically framed ‘grammar’ whose structural, ‘organized’, constitution is both motivated by synchronic and the diachronic processes of the collective activity at length (p. 54). Sechehaye puts forward a communicatively motivated ‘system of theoretical linguistics’ (p. 63) within which ‘the listener played a primordial role’ (p. 62). Kuznecov mentions Saussure’s ‘unfinished review’ of Sechehaye’s book (p. 50; cf. Godel 1957: 51–52), and in this connection we learn about the scholars who are deemed to have paved the way for Sechehaye’s thinking — among others Baudouin de Courtenay and Mikołaj Kruszewski (1851–1887). So, he does indeed mention the Russian connection (although both Baudouin and Kruszewski were native Poles). He even argues that ‘Sechehaye, together with Baudouin de Courtenay, played the main part in establishing modern phonology’ (p. 67). It might have been appropriate to elaborate also at least a few of Baudouin’s thoughts on the subject matter, since his writing, at least since 1889, had a lot to say about the intertwined nature of the synchrony and diachrony in regard to the activity of the individual psyche within the social activity of the members of a collective (see Bruche-Schulz 1984: 28–30). Chapter 2 (69–124) is devoted to the typical Saussurean dichotomy of ‘langue’ and ‘parole’, and the system-oriented approaches resulting from the former concept. It begins with the delineation of synchrony and diachrony (67–81), presenting the core concepts which are taken to be shared by Saussure and his students. The point is made that the dichotomy inherent in the langue/parole pair was not of a methodological, but of a gnoseological nature. The next section, ‘A. Sechehaye and the interrelation of language and speech in its limitation of synchrony and diachrony: System-oriented speech’ (81–94), first reports on studies of the 1960s and 1970s that present Saussurean thought to Russian readers (Sljusareva, e.g., 1975; Zvegincev 1963, 1968), then stresses Sechehaye’s tenet of speech as a systematically organized activity, including speaker and
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hearer, which, if preserved in time, would yield organized text.13 In the next section, ‘Text-centric approach: The theory of actualization of linguistic signs by Bally and Karcevskij’, Kuznecov first clarifies the term ‘actualization’ (used by Bally) as an ‘existing potential imprint in every speaker’s brain’ (p. 95). Potentially existing notions, the author holds, may become manifest and real in a given situation of speech when quantified, thus identified and individualized. When connected in a clause, ‘modality’, i.e., a meaning entity, comes about by being shaped by affect (and emotion), and has thus been generated by a psychological operation. The most general categories of actualizations of modalities in space and time are the ‘actualizators’ of things and processes (96–97). As means for such actualization Karcevskij adduces, besides quantifiers, and pronouns, the verb ‘to be’ (p. 102, citing Karcevskij 1928a, b). In the structural organization of language Karcevskij finds at work a ‘semiological mechanism’ (103–105), whereby a phrase is an ‘actualizing unit’ different from the clause (p. 106). Present-day linguists identified as continuing Karcevskij’s work include Gak (1967), and Xovanskaja (1984). The fourth section is devoted to the linguists of the ‘Geneva School’ as ‘founding fathers of the study of discourse’ (115–124). The credit goes to Bally and Sechehaye. We learn that the two used the notion of parole interchangeably with that of discours, that other linguists after them have done the same, and that ‘discours is not limited to schemes and models’, but is a ‘process in which communicative situations, prototypical cognitive models [sic]), pragmatic factors, and paralinguistic means’ play their part (p. 119). Kuznecov quotes from Sechehaye (2003)14 to the effect that it would be a mistake to ascribe to the phenomenon of ‘text’ too great a significance, since it was ‘context’ which make us understand everything else (p. 121). Reading all this, the present reviewer feels overwhelmed. The understanding of such terms as ‘discourse’ and ‘cognition’ appears to be taken as universally fixed; no definition is attempted. Kuznecov is apparently trying to argue for some affinity, even kinship, between the work of Sechehaye and modern semantics and pragmatics. That Sechehaye and Bally played a significant role as precursors to an incipient pragmatics has also been argued for in Nerlich & Clarke (1996: 424–425). So he surely has a point — but this reviewer finds it hard to determine which one exactly it is. Chapter 3 (125–167) is devoted to the perennial discussion of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign. In Section 1 Kuznecov reports that the old controversy of 13. There are hardly any references to related approaches in Russian linguistics. In addition, if Western authors are mentioned, e.g., Alan H. Gardiner (1879–1963), who are said to have worked on similar issues, no reference is provided and no further information as to why he appears in this context. 14. My guess is that this text, in Russian, is a translation of Sechehaye’s book of 1908. The exact location of the words quoted is not indicated.
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whether the linguistic sign was given by nature (physei), or by convention (thesei) had arisen anew for Saussure in relation to William Dwight Whitney’s (1827– 1894) thesis that what mattered was the intention to communicate, not the intention of someone to change the language. Saussure, whose ‘focus of interest was linguistic rather than semiological’ (p. 125), decided, differently from Whitney, on the arbitrariness of the sign as its major quality. This assumption was first presented ‘in 1894 in a presentation or paper on Whitney’ (p. 125, quoting Saussure 1990: 85–105). In Section 2 Bally and Karcevskij are cited as laying emphasis on the motivation of the linguistic sign. Kuznecov (p. 138) quotes Bally as suggesting that ‘positing that the sign can be motivated by its own signifying, completes the theory of the sign’ (Bally 1955 [1932]: 146), and its actual meaning is only accomplished in speech. In a latent, i.e. non-speech, situation, the same sign may evoke a host of mnemonic associations because it has the potential of meaning [značimost’] (p. 139). Karcevskij’s thinking followed along similar lines. He turned to the question of how the actual meaning is fixed in speech and selected especially interjections as a category of utterances whose meaning was motivated (p. 143). Thus a tradition was established within which linguists were constantly searching to delineate the meaning of ‘arbitrary’ and ‘motivated’ signs, a tradition which would later also inspire Russian linguists, such as V. V. Levickij (1969) and Ju. A. Levickij (1970), Slusareva (1975), and Kubrjakova (2000, 2004). The third section deals with the development of the principle of arbitrariness in the work of Henri Frei, Robert Godel, Rudolf Engler, and René Amacker. The opinions and suggestions of this younger generation of Saussureans are presented, their overall tenor being, in line with Koerner, that ‘it all needs further attempts at precision’ (1973: 349–350). Next comes Karcevskij’s theory of the ‘asymmetric dualism of the linguistic sign’ which is generalized in the notion of ‘transposition’ and exemplified (1965 [1929]) by the meaning of ‘pošli!’. Its literal meaning is “they went/ have gone”, but it is regularly used with the ‘transposed’ meaning “Let’s go!”. As this example shows, Kuznecov explains, functional values in the grammar are not limited or fixed, but are transposed and may express new functions which are generated by new psychological relations (p. 159). He goes on to comment that ‘Karcevskij’s ideas about language as an “arena” of inter-relations and contradictory forces brings us back to Humboldt’s dialectics of language’ (162–163). The complementary concept to that of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, namely its linearity, is the subject of Chapter 4. Kuznecov notes that the latter is not necessarily involved in other semiological instruments and did not cause much debate (168–169). It was simply understood as the basis for the organization of discourse in time. He reports that disruptions of the order of sequentiality have
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been discussed under various headings (p. 173),15 and that the significance of the ‘zero sign’ in particular positions of a word became a focus of attention (177–178). Russian scholars have attended to such questions in the past (e.g., Šaxmatov 1925– 1927), and in present-time linguistics (e.g., Kubrjakova 2004). Much of Chapter 4 is taken up by reporting on Western work based on this notion. Since the latter is well known to Western readers I will mention only an assertion which seems curious to me. Kuznecov, when dealing with the kind of meaning conveyed by a syntagm, invokes the name of Chomsky, who supposedly had such kind of concept in mind when referring to speakers’ ‘competence’. (No reference to any of Chomsky’s works is supplied.) From this point onwards, such non-referenced (!) appeals to Chomsky’s authority will be found a few times more. Chapter 4 ends by referring to the double-sidedness of meaning that results from ‘two abstractions’ (p. 192), the first derived from the use of a (word) sign, the second realized by the meaning inherent in syntagmatic signs (Amacker 1975: 145). Chapter 5 (194–207) addresses the question of what ‘external linguistics’ is about. Saussurean linguistics is seen as providing the ‘internal’ orientation of the study of language in which linguistic signs work like a ‘pair of glasses’ that allows the eye to see (p. 195). Kuznecov reports that the late N. A. Sljusareva (1918–2000) found this remark especially befitting the issue at hand, and that — according to her — this comparison ‘should have its proper place in the science of language’ (Sljusareva 1969: 318–319). He ends these reflections by musing about the multidisciplinary approaches necessary for grasping the phenomenon of language (p. 200). Toward the end of the chapter, he points out the merits of the Prague School in regard to the description of functional social styles, and mentions (approvingly) the active role of the Czech bourgeoisie in changing the lexicon of the Czech language. He also approves of Bally’s position that ‘all civilized languages should strive towards their unification, i.e., by discarding norms’. He closes his narrative by touching upon the problem of language norm in the former Soviet Union (p. 207). With Chapter 6 ends Part I of the book, and we move to Part II, which consists of four chapters and a conclusion. 6. From Saussureanism to miscellaneous lines of development The second part of the book delineates the route, as Kuznecov sees it, from Saussurean ideas to functionalism, while recognizing independent developments that cannot be assimilated to ‘Geneva School’ thinking. In the first chapter of Part II (pp. 209–233) the author conveys textbook knowledge about the currents of thinking that embody an incipient pragmatics (cf. Nerlich & Clarke 1996, for a
15. Jurij D. Apresjan and Gak are mentioned as sources, but no exact references are supplied.
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detailed overview). I find Part II difficult to report on because it seems that the line of tradition which it describes could have been described in a different way. It is true that Karcevkij had posited the affective element as a formative element in the process of what he called ‘transposition’. Kuznecov now warns the reader that this argument has already ceased to adhere strictly to Saussurean thinking, that the relation between the intellectual and the affective cannot be properly be related to the Saussurean tradition. I understand this point. But to place Lev Semenovič Vygotskij (1896–1934) and his well-known book Myšlenije i reč (1934) in any relation to the Saussurean tradition, as Kuznecov does,would need some historical or other link which I think is missing. It may also be the case that I simply have misunderstood the role of this chapter. Is it written with the aim of pointing out work containing key notions that may have some affinity with those in the Saussurean tradition or with the aim of emphasizing the merits of independent work, occurring historically in tandem with the Saussurean tradition? Or, in Fleck’s words, is it the case that similar ‘thought styles’ in different ‘thought collectives’ are supposed to be involved? Chapter 2 (234–276) presents textbook knowledge of the theorizing about ‘clause’, ‘phrase’, ‘syntagm’ and other related key notions by the older and younger members of the ‘Geneva School’. Thus we learn (p. 250) that ‘thinking’ is, according to Bally, a form of ‘reacting to a conception, stating its existence, and evaluating or desiring it’ (1955 [1932]: 43), possessing an active and a passive element. Kuznecov suggests that this might probably correspond to John R. Searle’s assumption of an utterance having a form and an the ‘illocutionary force’ (p. 251), but no expatiation or reference is offered. We are also told that Bally’s differentiation between modus and dictum — the utterance having both a modal and a formal, outward, quality — probably has an echo in Chomsky’s work! Here, Kuznecov discovers Chomsky’s belief (no support is supplied) that linguistics after Humboldt had only analyzed surface structure (p. 253). Then a further claim is made without a proper argument, namely, that Bally’s analysis of the adjective is probably close to that by J. L. Austin. Since only a name is invoked, the reader is left in the dark as to how exactly that should be the case. The last paragraph of this chapter discusses the malleability of the linguistic sign in the light of the key notion of ‘transposition’ as having, without acknowledgment of course, played a role in Chomskyan generative grammar. At this point, an issue appears to be waiting to be brought into the open. However, we are being told (p. 276) that it was the theory of transposition which had been ‘fleshed out in Europe, first of all in Geneva, then “discovered” in the United States where it was renamed ‘generative grammar’, as Henri Frei (1978: 56) is supposed to have noted. Chapter 3 (277–300) introduces the notion of ‘noology’, i.e., Luis Prieto’s understanding of it and his elaboration of a linguistic scheme of explanation. It
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remains unclear how this chapter relates to Saussurean thought and its reception in present-day Russia. Kuznecov does not elaborate on this. Instead, he explains the relevance of relating Prieto’s central terms to Chomsky’s concept of ‘clause’. Prieto’s sema is supposed to correspond to Chomsky’s grammatical clause — equaling an utterance — equaling Prieto’s sematic act (p. 291). Again, no bibliographical reference to Chomsky’s work is given. In Chapter 4, ‘Language — Man — Society’ (301–324), the author tries to draw all threads together by establishing the foundation of the subject in general statements of a philosophical nature. We learn about an intellectual-informative function that interacts with a pragmatic one, i.e., a tendency of informative economy being the counterpart of the tendency towards an excess of information (p. 314). We also learn about how to understand properly the antinomy of absolute and relative progress in language. With reference to Vendryes (1937: 321), relative progress is seen when a language adjusts to the best possible instrumentality for given purposes. Absolute progress is observed in the enlargement of the vocabulary (314–315).16 As for the relation of language and culture, Kuznecov highlights the problem of a common language which needs to be watched and cultured, if necessary, helped on by political action (kultura reči, Sprachpflege). A practical problem here is, obviously, for instance the question of a common norm of orthography (317– 318). He ends this chapter by pointing out the general interrelatedness of implicit and explicit expressions of meaning, the role played by the context and the situation for speakers and language users in a society. We now come to the conclusion, in which the place of the ‘Geneva School’ in the history of linguistics and its current relevance is put forward (325–340). Kuznecov summarizes the main tenets of Saussure’s teaching. He agrees (p. 325) with Koerner’s (1973: 336) observation that Saussure’s “many suggestions […] still await a re-evaluation […], exploitation and further development”. Among Russian linguists who have supported some of Saussure’s ideas, Kuznecov mentions Karcevskij first. After all, he was the first to publicize the Cours in Russia. Polivanov (1891–1938), Ščerba (1880–1944), and G. O. Vinokur (1896–1947) are mentioned as those linguists who assumed the synchronic state of language to be simultaneously also dynamic (p. 328).17 As other linguists who also took part in developing 16. I have been asking myself whether this remark is helpful in knowing better what the author has in mind in regard to the notion of ‘progress’ in history. However, I am not able to find a good argument here. 17. That Polivanov was not ‘just’ a linguist, but one who had to suffer the ultimate price for his views is never mentioned throughout Kuznecov’s book, although, by contrast, he applauds (p. 25) Sechehaye for having shown ‘civil courage’ when supporting the resistance to the Franco
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Saussurean ideas, Xovanskaja (1984) and Gak (see References) are mentioned as having attempted an elaboration of the phenomenon of ‘actualization’. Further work on the ‘asymmetric dualism of the linguistic sign’ was undertaken by Jakobson (1932), the Czech linguist Skalička (1974), and Gak (1974). Mistakenly — it seems — Kuznecov states that contemporary cognitive linguistics takes inspiration from Prieto’s understanding of noology, feeding into a ‘sign theory of discourse’ (p. 337). Present reviewer finds this remark confusing and would have preferred a clarification of the key terms. As for the notion of ‘function’, it is true that each ‘school of thought’ understands the meaning of the term ‘function’ in their own way. Kuznecov opines that the Prague School understood ‘function’ to be the factor that was determined by a goal, or a purpose. On the other hand, the Geneva School has put functionalism — according to Kuznecov — in the context of the use of language, i.e., its semiotic systems, and has thus placed it in the social practices of human communication (p. 338). 7. Concluding observations Kuznecov’s book makes it clear, quite forcefully, that the perspectives on the Saussurean conceptualization of language as developed in the Russia of the 1920s and ’30s were destroyed, and that the new Russia had to build up its own. Only since around the 1960s, the situation seems to have become somewhat more favourable to reconnecting with the past, albeit on the terms of the present. Saussure’s renewed reception is found in the work of Sljusareva (1968, 1975, 1998). The many writings by Kubrjakova (1968, 1999a,b, 2000, 2004) and Gak (1967, 1974, 1998, 2003) appear to have made relevant contributions to semantics and functionalist views on the grammar. Kubrjakova in particular seems to link up Saussurean thought with current paradigms relating to cognitive semantics. To learn more about the perspectives used and developed in this work would certainly be of great interest to Western readers. Fleck has stressed that a ‘thought style’, supported by its ‘thought collective’, would not only give shape to the flow of thought, but also shape “a readiness for selective feeling and for correspondingly directed action” (1976 [1935]: 99). Kuhn elaborates this idea in his postscript of 1969 to the second edition of his 1962 book. Comparing experts and laypersons, he mentions that experts acquire the ability to receive certain stimuli through being exposed to the exemplars of a paradigm. They will learn to have “systematically different stimuli” (Kuhn 1970 [1962]: 193) when compared to laypersons. His example: Take a layperson and a scientist who regime; ‘concerning his civil courage’, it actually is given the epithet ‘enormous’ (“o vysokom graždanskom mužestvom”).
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both see the vapor of their breath on a cold winter afternoon. The scientist’s “sensation may be the same as that of a layman, but viewing a cloud chamber he sees (here literally) not droplets but the tracks of electrons, alpha particles, and so on” (Kuhn, p. 197). The two of them, expert and layperson, “in some sense live in different worlds” (p. 193). The book under review is written in a different world from that of Stalinist Russia. Its significance lies in the way it conveys, explicitly and implicitly, how life goes on by creating new accounts and new paradigms that look forward into the future — in spite of the political climate in early Soviet Russia which forced onto linguistic thought a “particularly acute inflection” (Brandist 2006: 261) towards a, at that time, distorted preeminence of social factors. The value of the book under review, to me, lies undoubtedly in its role as a ‘looking glass’ that it may offer to the Western reader who would like to get to know more about the new perspectives in present-day Russia and the ways in which their shaping has developed. Even if one may not agree with the one or the other statement by the author, the present reviewer regards this book as a fascinating introduction into research areas in Russia of which one would want to learn more.
References* Alpatov, V[ladimir] M[ixajlovič]. 1991. Istoria odnogo mifa: Marr i marrizm [The history of a myth: Marr and Marrism]. Moscow: “Nauka”. Alpatov, V. M. 2004. Review of V. G. Kuznecov, Ženevskaja lingvestičeskaja škola: Ot Sossjura k funkcionalizmu [The Geneva School: From Saussure to functionalism] (Moscow: URSS, 2003). Izvestija Akademii Nauk: Serija literatury i jazyka 63:4.69–72. Amacker, René. 1975. Linguistique saussurienne. Geneva: Droz. Bally, Charles. 1955 [1932]. Obščaja lingvistika i voprosy francuzskogo jazyka. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo inostrannoj literatury. [Linguistique générale et linguistique française (Paris: Klincksieck, 1932); 4th ed., Bern: Francke, 1965.] Boduèn de Kurtenè, I. A. [= Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan]. 1910. “Fonetičeskie zakony” [Phonetic Laws]. Izbrannye trudy po obščemu jazykoznaniju [Selected works on general linguistics] ed. by V[iktor] P[etrovič] Grigor’ev & A[leksej] A[lekseevič] Leont’ev, vol. II, 189–208. Moskva: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR. Brandist, Craig. 2006. “The Rise of Soviet Sociolinguistics from the Ashes of Völkerpsychologie”. Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences 42:3.261–277.
* The editor would like to thank several colleagues in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in particular Dr Vladimir Mažuga of the Academy of Sciences in the latter city, for their unstinting help in completing a number of bibliographical entries which the author of the book under review had left incomplete or had failed to include in his bibliography (340–366), especially in the Russian part (340–350).
174 Gisela Bruche-Schulz Bruche-Schulz, Gisela. 1984. Russische Sprachwissenschaft: Wissenschaft im historisch-politischen Prozeß des vorsowjetischen und sowjetischen Rußland. (= Linguistische Arbeiten, 151.) Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Bruche-Schulz, Gisela. 1993. “Marr, Marx, and Linguistics in the Soviet Union”. Historiographia Linguistica 29:2/3.455–472. Engler, Rudolf. 1968. “Saussure et la scuola di Gineva”. Lingua e linguaggi [= Ulisse No. 63] 9.158–164 Fizer, John. 1986. Alexander A. Potebnja’s Psycholinguistic Theory of Literature: A metacritical inquiry. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Fleck, Ludwik. 1976 [1935]. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Transl. by Fred Bradley & J. Thaddeus Trenn, and ed. by Trenn & Robert K. Merton. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Frei, Henri. 1978. “The Segmented Sentence: Bally’s theory reconsidered”. Linguistic and Literary Studies in Honor of Archibald A. Hill ed. by Mohammad Ali Jazayery et al., 139–144. The Hague: Mouton. Gak, V[ladimir] G[rigorievič]. 1967. Problemy leksiko-grammatičeskoj organizacii vyskazyvanija [The problem of the lexical-grammatical organization of the utterance]. Doctoral dissertation. Moscow: Institut Jazykoznanija Akademii Nauk SSSR. Gak, V. G. 1974. Essai de grammaire fonctionelle du français. Moskva: Éditions de Moscou. Gak, V. G. 1998. Jazykovye preobrazovanija [Linguistic transmutations]. Moscow: “Jazyki slavjanskoj kultury”. Gak, V. G. 2003. O knige Šarla Balli “Jazyk i žizn” [On Charles Bally’s book ‘Le langage et la vie’]. Bally III, 7–19. Moscow: Editorial URSS. Godel, Robert. 1957. Les sources manuscrites du Cours de linguistique générale de F. de Saussure. Geneva: Droz. Godel, Robert, ed. 1969. A Geneva School Reader in Linguistics. Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press. [Note: Despite its English title, all text selections are in the original French.] Jakobson, Roman. 1932. “Zur Struktur des russischen Verbums”. Charisteria Gvilelmo Mathesio quinquagenario a discipulis et Circuli Linguistici Pragensis sodalibus oblata, 74–84. Prague: Cercle Linguistique de Prague. Karcevskij, S[ergej] I[osifovič]. 1928a. Povtoritel’nyj kurs russkogo jazyka [Refresher course of the Russian language]. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoje Izdatel’stvo. Karcevskij, S. I. 1928b. Ješčë k voprosu ob učenikax A. M. Peškovskogo [Again on the question of A. M. Peškovskij’s students]. Rodnoj jazyk i literatura v trudovoj škole No.1.24–45. Karcevski, Serge. 1937. “Phrase et proposition”. Mélanges de linguistique et de philologie offerts à Jac[ques] van Ginneken à l’occasion du soixantième anniversaire de sa naissance, 58–66. Paris: C. Klincksieck. Karcevskij, S. I. 1965 [1929]. “Ob asimmetričnom dualisme linguističeskom znaka [About the asymmetrical dualism of the linguistic sign]”. Istorija jazykoznanija XIX–XX vekov ed. by V[ladimir] A[ndreevič] Zvegincev, vol. II, 85–90. Moscow: Prosveščenie. [“Du dualisme asymétrique du signe linguistique”, Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 1.33–38 (1929).] Koerner, E.F.K. 1973. Ferdinand de Saussure: Origin and Development of His Linguistic Thought in Western Studies of Language. A contribution to the history and theory of linguistics. (= Schriften zur Linguistik, 7.) Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn.
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Koerner, E.F.K. 1976a. “Saussure and the French Linguistic Tradition: A few critical comments”. In Memoriam Friedrich Diez: Akten des Kolloquiums zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Romanistik (Trier, 2.–4. Okt. 1975) ed. by Hans-J. Niederehe et al., 405–417. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Koerner, E.F.K. 1976b. “Towards a Historiography of Linguistics: 19th and 20th century paradigms”. History of Linguistic Thought and Contemporary Linguistics ed. by Herman Parret, 685–718. Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter. (Repr. in Koerner, Toward a Historiography of Linguistics, Foreword by R. H. Robins, 21–54. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1978.) Kubrjakova, E[lena] S[amojlovna]. 1968. “O ponjatijax sinxronii i diaxronii [About the notions of synchrony and diachrony]”. Voprosy jazykoznanija 1968/3.112–123 Kubrjakova, E. S. 2000. “O ponjatijax diskursa i diskursivnogo analiza v sovremennoj lingvistike [On the understanding of discourse and discourse analysis in contemporary linguistics]”. Diskurs, reč, rečevaja dejatel’nost’: Sbornik obzorov [Discourse, speech, and speech activity: Selected writings], 7–25. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kultury. Kubrjakova, E. S. 2004. Jazyk i znanie [Language and knowledge]. Moscow: “Jazyki slavjanskoj kultury”. Kuhn, Thomas S[amuel]. 1970 [1962]. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd, corrected ed. with a postscript. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kuhn, Thomas S. 1976. “Foreword”. Fleck 1976 [1935], vii–xi. Kuznecov, V[alerij] G[eorgievič], ed. 2008. Ferdinand de Sossjur i sovremennoe naučnoe znanie [Ferdinand de Saussure and present-day human knowledge]. Moscow: Institut naučnoj informacii po obščestvennym naukam Rossijskoj akademii nauk. Levickij, J[urij] A[natol’evič]. 1970. Nekotorye voprosy teorii aktualizašii. [New studies of the theory of actualization]. Dissertation, Moscow State University. Levickij, V[iktor] V[asil’evič]. 1969. “Vidy motivirovannost’i slova, ix vzaimodeistvie i rol’ v leksiko-semantičeskich izmenenijax [Aspects of the motivation of the word, its interrelation and role in lexico-semantic changes]”. Materialy seminara po probleme motivirovannost’i jazykovogo znaka [Materials from a seminar on the motivation of the linguistic sign], 21– 26. Leningrad: “Nauka”. Nerlich, Brigitte & David D. Clarke. 1996. Language, Action and Context: The early history of pragmatics in Europe and America 1780–1930. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Polivanov, E[vgenij] D[imitrievič]. 1968. Stat’i po obščemu jazykoznaniju. Izbrannye raboty [Papers on general linguistics: Selected works]. Moscow: “Nauka”. Polivanov, E. D. 1974. Selected Works: Articles on general linguistics. Compiled by A[leksej] A[lekse’evič] Leont’ev. The Hague: Mouton. Reznik, Vladislava. 2008. “A long rendezvous: Aleksandr [Il’ič] Romm’s [(1898–1943)] Unpublished Works on Ferdinand de Saussure”. The Slavonic and East European Review 86:1.1–25. Romaško, S[ergej] A[leksandrovič]. 1985. Metodologija izučenija istorii jazykoznanija: Naučnoanalitičeskii obzor [Methodological investigations of the history of linguistics: Scientificanalytical outline]. Moscow: INION RAN (Institut naučnoj informacii po obščestvennym naukam, Rossijskoj akademii nauk). Sossjur, Ferdinand de [= Saussure, Ferdinand de]. 1933 [1916]. Kurs obščej lingvistiki. Transl. into Russian by Aleksej Mixajlovič Suxotin (1888–1942), revised and annotated by Rozalija Osipovna Šor (1894–1939), with an introduction by Dmitrij Nikolaevič Vvedenskij (1890– 1968). Moscow: Social’no-ekonomičeskoe gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 272 pp.
176 Gisela Bruche-Schulz Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1977. Trudy po jazykoznaniju [Works in linguistics]. Ed. by Aleksandr Aleksandrovič Xolodovič (1906–1977). Moscow: “Progress”, 695 pp. [Reprints, inter alia, Suxotin’s translation of the Cours ed., with an introduction (9–29) by A. A. Xolodovič (31–273).] Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1990. Zametki po obščej lingvistike [Sketches of general linguistics]. Transl. by Boris P. Narumov; introd. and commentary by N. A. Sljusareva. Moscow: Progress. [Compare F. de Saussure, Écrits de linguistique générale ed. by Simon Bouquet & Rudolf Engler (Paris: Gallimard, 2002).] Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1998. Kurs obščej lingvistiki. [Course in general linguistics]. A new transl. with annotations by N[atalija] A[leksandrovna] Sljusareva. Moscow: Logos. Šaxmatov, A[leksej] A[leksandrovič]. 1925, 1927. Syntaxis russkogo jazyka [The syntax of the Russian]. Part 1 and 2. Leningrad: Akademia Nauk SSSR. Ščerba, L[ev] V[ladimirovič]. 1912. Russkie glasnye v kačestvennom i količestvennom otnošenii [Russian vowels and their qualitative-quantitative relation]. S.-Peterburg: Jurij N. Erlix. Ščerba, L. V. 1947. “Trojakij aspekt jazykovych javlenij i metodičeskie vyvody otsjuda [The threefold aspect of linguistic phenomena and methodological consequences]”. Prepodavanie inostrannych jazykov v škole [Teaching the foreign languages at school], 60–75. Moscow & Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii pedagogičeskix nauk RSFSR. Sechehaye, Albert. 1908. Programme et méthodes de la linguistique théorique: Psychologie du langage. Paris: Honoré Champion; Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz: Geneva: A. Eggimann & Co. Seuren, Pieter A. M. 1998. Western Linguistics: An historical introduction. Oxford & Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. Simone, Raffaele. 1975. “Théorie et histoire de la linguistique”. Historiographia Linguistica 2:3.353–378. Skalička, Vladimir. 1967. “Asimmetričnyj dualism jazykovyx edinic [The asymmetric dualism of language units]”. Pražskij linvističeskij kružok, 119–127. Moscow: “Progress”. Sljusareva, N[atalija] [Aleksandrovna]. 1963. “Quelques considérations des linguistes soviétiques à propos des idées de F. de Saussure”. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 20.23–46. Sljusareva, Natalija Aleksandrovna. 1969. Kritičeskij analis problem vnutrennej linguistiki v koncepcii F. de Sosjura [Critical analysis of the problems of internal linguistics in the thinking of F. de Sausssure]. Doctoral dissertation, Moscow: MGPIIJa [= Moscow Pedagogical State Institute of Foreign Languages]. Sljusareva, N. A. 1975. Teorija F. de Sossjura v svete sovremennoj lingvistiki. [F. de Saussure’s theory in the light of contemporary linguistics]. Moscow: “Nauka”. Sljusareva, N. A., ed. 1998. F. de Sossjur, Kurs obščej lingvistiki. [F. de Saussure, Course in general linguistics]. Moscow: Logos. Šor, R[ozalija] O[sipovna]. 1926. Jazyk i obščestvo [Language and society]. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo ‘Rabotnik Prosveščenija’. Šor, R. O. 1931. Na putjax k marksistskoj lingvistike [Towards a Marxist linguistics]. Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe učebno-pedagogičeskoe izdatel’stvo. Stalin, J[osif] V[issarionovič]. 1938. “O dialektičeskom i istoričeskom materializme [On dialectic and historical materialism]”. Istorija Kommunističeskoj Partii Sovetskogo Sojuza: Kratkij Kurs, Chapter 4, Part 2. Moscow: Institut Marksizma-Leninizma. Vandries, Žozef [= Joseph Vendryes]. 1937 [1922]. Jazyk: Lingvističeskoe vvedenie v istoriju [Language: Linguistic introduction to history]. Ed. and prefaced by P[etr] S[avvič] Kuznecov (1899–1968), with comments by R. O. Šor. Translator not identified. Moscow: Socekgiz.
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Vernadskij, V[ladimir] I[vanovič]. 1981. Izbrannye trudy po istorii nauki [Collected writings on the history of science]. Moscow: “Nauka”. Vygotskij, L[ev] S[emenovič]. 1934. Myšlenije i reč [Thought and speech]. Moscow & Leningrad: Socekgiz. Wunderli, Peter. 1976. “Saussure als Schüler Sechehays?”. In Memoriam Friedrich Diez: Akten des Kolloquiums zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Romanistik (Trier, 2.–4. Okt. 1975) ed. by Hans-J. Niederehe et al., 419–474. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Xovanskaja, Z[oya] I[l’inična]. 1984. Stilistika francuzskogo jazyka [Stylistics of the French language]. Moscow: Vysšaya škola. Zvegincev, V[ladimir] A[ndreevič]. 1963. “Teoretičeskie aspekty pricinosti jazykovyx izmenenij [Theoretical aspects of the origins of linguistic change]”. Novoe v lingvistike [News in linguistics] ed., transl. & introd. by V. A. Zvegincev, Vol. III, 289–301. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo inostrannoj literatury. Zvegincev, V. A. 1968. Teoretičeskaja i prikladnaja lingvistika. [Theoretical and applied linguistics]. Moscow: Prosveščenie.
Author’s address: Gisela Bruche-Schulz Müggelstr 21A D-10247 Berlin G e r many e-mail: [email protected]
Reviews / Comptes rendus / Besprechungen Signs of Light: French and British theories of linguistic communication, 1648–1789. By Matthew Lauzon. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 2010. Pp. x, 256. 978-0-0184-4847-8, $55, £36.50 (HB). Reviewed by John E. Joseph (University of Edinburgh) Signs of light, indeed. Written with marvellous clarity, this book wears its erudition lightly. A pleasure to read, it casts much needed light onto the history of linguistic ideas between 1648, when decades of warfare ended on the continent just as civil war was reaching its peak in England, and 1789, when the French Revolution signalled the end of the early modern era. Lauzon challenges the received narrative of the history of linguistic ideas in this period, centred as it is on Locke and Condillac, by expanding his scope well beyond their concerns with, first, representation of the world in signs, and secondly, communication and its intellectual consequences. Lauzon gives equal attention to expression, a function of language that was no Romantic late-comer but an ancient heritage, and emotion, which, like expression, was downgraded by late 19th- and 20th-century philosophers to a minor problem for their single-minded focus on rationality. Lauzon’s welcome expansion of focus is in line with developments across the humanities and social sciences in the last two decades. The book consists of two chapters each on “Animal Communication”, “Savage Eloquence” and “Civilized Tongues”, plus an introduction and a coda that briefly extends the scope into the 19th century. The opening chapter, “Bestial Banter”, examines “the idea that animals might communicate more effectively than people”, which Lauzon says “has received no attention” (p. 16). Most of the figures whom he groups together as representatives of this idea bear names less widely known than those of Locke, Condillac, Monboddo and others who maintained, like Aristotle before them and Chomsky after, that only humans could be said to possess language at all. Marin Cureau de la Chambre (1596–1669) is remembered almost solely for work on physiognomy, Urbain-René-Thomas LeBouvyer-Desmortiers (1737–1827) for work on the use of sign language by the deaf, and Jacob Böhme (1575–1624) for his mystical writings. Although John Webster (1611–1682) is better remembered, it is not for the section of his Academiarum Examen (1654) which is based on Böhme, in which Webster declares that “every creature understands and speaks the language of nature” — the same language spoken in the Garden of Eden — “but sinfull man who hath now lost, defac’t and forgotten it”
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180 John E. Joseph: Review of Lauzon (2010)
(Webster 1654: 27, cited by Lauzon, p. 26). This language Webster took to be ‘real’ in the sense of semiologically perfect, with signs representing things in the world truly and unambiguously. Others of Lauzon’s animal-language champions are more famous than understood. He asserts that philosophers and historians of language have missed the point of Thomas Hobbes’ (1588–1679) remarks in Leviathan (1651) about how bees and ants communicate and live sociably, whereas human beings seem inevitably to come into conflict with one another. “For Hobbes”, Lauzon writes, “this crucial difference between animal and human minds depended ultimately on the fact that human languages had abstract terms”, while “animals represented and communicated only particular things” (p. 31), linking this discourse with a mistrust of abstractions that has persisted into recent times. A similar spirit lies behind JeanJacques Rousseau’s (1712–1788) comment in the Essai sur l’origine des langues that “Conventional language belongs to man alone. That is why man makes progress in good as well as in evil, and why animals do not” (Rousseau 1990 [1755/1781]: 244, cited by Lauzon, p. 35). Lauzon gives considerable thought to the different contexts in which Hobbes, Webster and Rousseau wrote, so that, while for all of them “the example of an unambiguous animal language was intended to be redemptive” (p. 37), the redemption would take the form of a ‘retrospective restoration’ for those focussed on paradise lost, and a ‘prospective reformation’ for those more concerned with remedying the defects found in abstract terms. Chapter Two, “Homo risus: Making light of animal language”, centres on Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), especially Book Four of Gulliver’s Travels (1726), with its depiction of the Houyhnhnms, rational horses whose level of civilisation contrasts starkly with that of the human-like but savage Yahoos. Lauzon enters into the continuing debate over whether Swift intended the Houyhnhnm language, with its lack of words for “Power, government, war, law, punishment, and a thousand other things” (Swift 1967 [1726]: 291, cited by Lauzon, p. 46), including lies, as a model of what language should be or a pre-Orwellian satire of contemporary schemes for improving language. Lauzon thus contributes to removing yet another selfimposed ideological blinder of the history of linguistics: its primal fear of evidence drawn from any work that might be classed as (Heaven forfend!) literary. His attention is drawn as well by the verse fable The Grumbling Hive: Or, knaves turn’d honest (1705) by the Anglo-Dutch Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733), in which, says Lauzon, “a thriving colony of lying and cheating bees […] declines because of their virtuous decision to replace their equivocal and deceptive speech with clear communication” (p. 41). Those from across the Channel considered in this chapter include the Jesuit Guillaume-Hyacinthe Bougeant (1690–1743), the master of raillerie, a manner of writing which Jesuits appropriated from and turned against their Jansenist
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opponents. Over several very interesting pages Lauzon leads us through the difficulties of knowing whether Bougeant is being sincere or ironic in his accounts of why animal languages are superior to human ones. Part of the ambiguity is shared with Swift, and has to do with the fact that irony, the most complex and subtle of verbal modes, functions by hiding beneath the surface, and is detectable only through fine indices that are historically volatile and laid down in no grammar. Added to this in Bougeant’s case are hidden codings relating to the Jesuit–Jansenist polemic, no doubt including many that continue to defy detection. Lauzon’s conclusion does not fail to convince: it is that Swift, Mandeville and Bougeant “not only accepted the ambiguities in human languages but believed that such ambiguities served crucial purposes in helping to focus the human mind’s attention on novel phenomena and in making humans peaceably and amusingly sociable” (p. 66). Chapter Three, “Warming Savage Hearts and Heating Eloquent Tongues”, shifts the spotlight to North America, to “explore the emergence of the idea of the supremely eloquent Indian orator within the context of Christian missionizing” (p. 71). The ‘British’ writers examined are colonials such as John Eliot (1604–1690) and Roger Williams (c.1603–1683), both English-born, but also Cotton Mather (1612–1727), a native of Massachusetts — still British in his lifetime, of course — but all these men are part of ‘American’ linguistic history according to Andresen (1990), a work whose absence from Lauzon’s bibliography is striking. It is however compensated for by a highly original analysis based on the rhetorical styles and genres in which the British-American commentators frame the reported discourse of the Native Americans. One of these genres was the “dying speech”, which Lauzon says was “frequently either wholly fictional or highly edited”, and used by Puritan orators and writers “to demonstrate the effectiveness of grace in regenerating even the most fallen of people or to provide models of excellent lives” (p. 88). Counterposed to the Puritans are the French Jesuit missionaries, whose accounts of the Indians have traditionally been credited with generating the myth of the ‘noble savage’. Focussing on the Relations des Jésuites, submitted starting in 1611 and published annually from 1632 to the end of the 18th century, Lauzon shows that, contrary to expectations and to what historians have long maintained, the similarities between Puritan and Jesuit assessments of Native American speech far outweigh the differences. Long-time readers of HL will recall Lauzon’s fine article of 1996, most of which is reused here in Chapter Four, “From Savage Orators to Savage Languages”. Here the themes of the preceding chapter are integrated with those of Part One, as Lauzon shows how a wide range of British and French philosophers, including Thomas Reid (1710–1796) and Rousseau (a Genevese whom Lauzon bungs in with the French, though he is scrupulous about distinguishing Scots from Englishmen) along with a host of lesser-known figures, created an “alternative to the
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Lockean theory of primitive speech, one that emphasized the sincerity of an energetic communication of emotion over the introspective representation of clear ideas” (p. 128), attributing such communication not just to Native Americans but to South Pacific Islanders. Many of the same thinkers who idealised animal languages for their perfect semiotic clarity would idealise these ‘savage’ languages for an energy, a ‘warmth’ which ensured that one said what one truly felt. Chapter Five, “French Levity”, maintains that “the idea of linguistic lightness, levity, or légèreté, like the idea of linguistic warmth or energy, has largely been ignored by historians of this period” (p. 146), an exception being Bell (2001), which has provided much of the inspiration for this chapter by demonstrating how légèreté was treated as an essential characteristic of French national identity. At the centre of this perception is the figure of the bel esprit, the “wit”, as the embodiment of linguistic lightness, and Lauzon traces how being a bel esprit went from being a positive quality to an ambivalent or out-and-out negative one. His enquiry culminates in a highly insightful re-reading of Antoine de Rivarol (1753–1801), which ends quite brilliantly with an analysis of the metaphorical significance of the closing comment in De l’universalité de la langue française (1784) on the French invention of the manned balloon — the very embodiment of French ‘lightness’. Chapter Six, “English Energy”, is set primarily in Edinburgh, a town that is today no closer to reconciling itself to its Englishness (as perceived by other Scots) than it was in the 18th century. Lauzon’s attention is focussed on a name that generally appears only as a footnote in histories of linguistic thought: William Smellie (1740–1795), founder of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1st ed., 1768–1771) and author of its articles on “Language” and on “English”. It is enlightening to read Smellie side-by-side with Rivarol: their arguments are nearly identical, their conclusions nearly opposite. Smellie demonstrates the perfection of English and the particular deficiencies of French, and Rivarol the reverse. Both “presented their respective languages as the vehicles of enlightenment par excellence”, Lauzon concludes, but for Rivarol the language of enlightenment had to be “clear but also not be too grave, serious, or pedantic”, so as to “promote social levity as it amusingly refined its speakers’ minds” (p. 215). For Smellie, on the other hand, that French légèreté was a sign of a lack of the warmth and energy that English retained, and that, as with the ‘savage’ languages, was a guarantor against “the kinds of socially corrosive dissimulation that he and many others in Great Britain associated with the false politeness promoted by French” (ibid.). The chapters are linked together by the recurrence of key intellectual figures and themes, forestalling any lack of coherence. Lauzon has a rare ability to pierce through complex strands of historical thought and reach their essential centre, without resorting to oversimplifications. He asserts nothing more than his evidence will support, yet creates the sort of intellectually exciting tableau that usu-
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ally, in less capable hands, depends on reductionism of one kind or another. From time to time one wishes he had engaged with other recent rethinkers of the period, including Bruno Latour, whose questioning of the separation between political and natural science that began in the 17th century would seem to offer a natural optic for Lauzon to examine his own material through. But it is only the best books that make you yearn for more. Signs of Light opens up new perspectives for specialists while enlightening a general audience of historians about the full centrality of language, including its expressive and emotional dimensions, in the modern invention of what it means to be human.
References Andresen, Julie Tetel. 1990. Linguistics in America, 1769–1924: A critical history. London & New York: Routledge. Bell, David A. 2001. The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing nationalism, 1680–1800. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno. 1991. Nous n’avons jamais été modernes: Essai d’anthropologie symétrique. Paris: Éditions la Découverte. [English transl., We Have Never Been Modern, by Catherine Porter, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993.] Lauzon, Matthew. 1996. “Savage Eloquence in America and the Linguistic Construction of a British Identity in the 18th Century”. Historiographia Linguistica 23:1/2.123–158. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1990 [written 1755, first publ. 1781]. “Essay on the Origin of Languages, in which something is said about melody”. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The First and Second Discourses together with the Replies to Critics and Essay on the Origin of Languages ed. and transl. by Victor Gourevitch, 239–295. New York: Harper TorchBooks. Swift, Jonathan. 1967 [1726]. Gulliver’s Travels. Ed. by Peter Dixon & John Chalker. London: Penguin. Webster, John. 1654. Academiarum examen, or the Examination of Academies, wherein is discussed and examined the Matter, Method and Customes of Academick and Scholastick Learning, and the insufficiency thereof discovered and laid open; As also some Expedients proposed for the Reforming of Schools, and the perfecting and promoting of all kind of Science, Offered to the judgements of all those that love the proficiencie of Arts and Sciences, and the advancement of Learning. London: Printed for Giles Calvert.
Reviewer’s address: John E. Joseph Linguistics & English Language School of Philosophy, Psychology & Language Sciences University of Edinburgh Dugald Stewart Building Edinburgh EH8 9AD Un ite d Ki ngd om e-mail: [email protected]
Lexikon sprachtheoretischer Grundbegriffe des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Edited by Gerda Hassler and Cordula Neis. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009. Pp. ix, 1879 in two volumes. ISBN 978-3-11-017925-5. € 249 [US $ 349] (HB) Reviewed by David Cram (Jesus College, Oxford) This Lexicon of Basic Concepts in the Theory of Language from the 17th and 18th Centuries (hereafter: Lexikon) is a very welcome addition to the reference works available for the study of the period. As the preface indicates, it is aimed at university students specializing in this area and also the informed general public, and the clarity and ‘user-friendliness’ of the presentation is in line with this purpose. But browsing in the contents in sample areas immediately persuaded the present reviewer that it will also be of use and benefit to those engaged in more advanced research. It has been compiled by two established experts in the history of linguistic ideas and builds on their complementary areas of research and publication. It is a substantial work in two volumes, comprising 1879 pages in all, and will occupy a goodly palm-breadth on your bookshelf — although at the announced purchase price it is more likely that your bookshelf will mean the one in your library rather than in your home or office. The term ‘lexicon’, as used in the title, might raise false expectations and deserves clarification on two central points. For one thing, the work is arranged not alphabetically but thematically, and belongs in the lexicological tradition of Peter Mark Roget’s (1779–1869) Thesaurus (1852) rather than Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755 (or Dornseiff rather than Grimm, if you prefer). The overall arrangement is a hierarchical and taxonomic one, and the authors are to be congratulated in devising a format which achieves an optimal balance between sound lexicological principles and the practical needs of the average user. The Lexikon is divided into eight broad sections, a number which corresponds to the limit of the short-term memory (assumed to be seven plus or minus two) and thus provides a navigational map which is easy to hold in the mind (unlike Roget’s). The first four of these sections deal in turn with the study of language with respect to (1) its ontological nature, (2) its origin and development, (3) its unity and diversity, and (4) its usage; subsequent sections cover the description of language at the levels of (5) grammar, (6) lexicon and (7) phonetics, with a final section (8) dealing with writing. Each of these broader rubrics has a number of subsections, amounting
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to about 70 primary entries for the work overall. (A good half of these are names of linguistic elements and functions; representative examples of the more general terms will be illustrated in due course.) This means that in following up one of these primary entries, such as ‘etymology’ or ‘universal language’ (of which more later), the reader will find it sitting side-by-side related terms which are relevant to its meaning and usage. In this way, the basic organisation of the work is informed by the notion of the word field whereby the meaning of a term is defined in part by its relation to others in the immediate conceptual area (Vorwort, p. v). There is however a second way in which the present Lexikon differs from other conceptual dictionaries (whether arranged thematically or alphabetically) that explain a given term by means of the modern author’s discursive definition and discussion. In the Hassler & Neis Lexikon there are indeed such encyclopedic mini-articles, which serve the purpose of relating terms one to another, and of tracing their ancestry where they have radically changed or diversified their meanings. But these do not constitute the bulk of the text. What the work sets out to do is present contemporary usage of terms ‘from the horse’s mouth’ by assembling an anthology of examples from a variety of historical authors, carefully selected so as to give representative and contrastive coverage. These excerpts from contemporary texts are on average a couple of paragraphs long, and where appropriate up to several pages in length. Broad-brush, it is fair to say that the Lexikon is more of a source book than an encyclopedia. The scope and style which make the Lexikon quite distinctive in this regard can best be illustrated by looking in more detail at the two sample entries mentioned above: ‘etymology’ (compiled by Gerda Hassler) and ‘universal language’ (compiled by Cordula Neis). The entry for ‘etymology’ forms part of the overarching sections dealing with various aspects of the origin and development of language. The article is primarily concerned with matters of a philological and philosophical nature, as one might expect, but the thematic structure of the Lexikon juxtaposes this entry with related ones dealing with the confusion of languages, language corruption, language purism and language standardization. Ideas about etymology are thus presented in a manner which positions the more narrowly philological questions (of the perennial sort) in a larger context which points up the distinctiveness of 17th- and 18th-century perspectives on them. The article itself occupies some 33 pages of double-column text (625–658), of which approximately two thirds are devoted to verbatim excerpts from contemporary discussions of etymology (626–645), and one third to encyclopedic discussion and analysis (645–657). What is immediately striking about the contemporary excerpts is the spread of languages represented, including the Latin of Franciscus Sanctius, the French of Gilles Ménage, the Italian of Giambattista Vico, the Spanish of Manuel Dendo y Ávila, and Russian of the Grammatica Latina (attributed to Christian Friedrich
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Matthey, 1782). The length of quotations ranges from briefer definitions of etymology culled from dictionaries such as that by John Minsheu (1560–1627) to the extensive article by Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727–1781), from the Encyclopédie, reprinted in only slightly shortened form (628–637). The accompanying encyclopedic discussion (645–657) traces the origins of the study of etymology in Greek and Roman antiquity, positions such discussion as a topos in both philological and philosophical tracts, and then goes on to outline the differing treatments of the subject in the context of both learned and lay usage. Turgot’s article is singled out for detailed analysis as a convenient point of reference, and the article ends with a brief glance at the subsequent history of these ideas in the 19th- and 20th-centuries. The article is followed by a select bibliography for further reading. The ratio of source materials to critical commentary and discussion in the ‘etymology’ article is broadly representative of the work as a whole. However, the article on ‘universal language’, to which I now turn, has a slightly different balance, devoting more space to commentary than sources, as the topic by its nature demands. The range of source authors cited is nevertheless impressive. There are extensive quotations from the all major thinkers dealing with philosophical language, notably Francis Bacon, John Wilkins, George Dalgarno, Jan Amos Comenius and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, together with shorter excerpts from a wide range of others from both the 17th and the 18th centuries. Although Hassler and Neis apologize to their readers in the preface that they may well find their favorite authors missing from the examples selected, the coverage in this article (as indeed in others I have sampled) has appeared to me to be as careful and comprehensive as a work of this size would allow. The encyclopedic discussion in the ‘universal language’ article likewise struck me as exemplary, sketching out a general typology of the schemes that were proposed, and covering a select number of the individual schemes in sufficient detail to highlight the formal differences between them. As with the ‘etymology’ article, this one too is juxtaposed, under the rubric of the larger section on unity and diversity of languages, with related articles on aspects of contemporary thought that connect directly with the theoretical underpinnings of universal language projects: viz. contemporary approaches to language comparison and language typology; the doctrine of the ‘genius’ of particular languages and of their ‘excellencies’ (clarity, copiousness, harmony, etc.), and so on. The article concludes with a 4-page bibliography, and is followed by two pages of pictorial illustrations from three universal schemes which use non-alphabetical sign systems. It is of course not feasible in a short review to write anything like an adequate critical assessment of a reference work of this scope. Others will in due course have their say on the coverage in their areas of specialisation, in particular the treatment of grammar, lexicology, and phonetics. But having used the sample articles
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as a means of giving a partial close-up look at the work, I should like in conclusion to stand back from it and assess its position with respect to other reference books available for the study of the history of the language sciences. At the outset of this review I indicated that the Hassler and Neis Lexikon belongs in the tradition of the thematic dictionary as far as its organisational structure is concerned — the tradition analyzed in Werner Hüllen’s monograph on the topic (Hüllen 1999). It is this feature that differentiates it both from conceptual dictionaries which are alphabetically rather than thematically organised, of which there are several which cover the history of grammar, rhetoric and logic, and also those that are organised on a biographical basis, such as the Lexicon Grammaticorum (Stammerjohann 2009). But placing the Lexikon in the thematic tradition is only half the story, since what makes the work distinctive from both a theoretical and a pedagogical point of view is, as I have emphasized, its function as a source book of quotations ‘from the horse’s mouth’. From this perspective, there is another tradition within which it is instructive to place the Hassler and Neis Lexikon, namely that of the commonplace book. By this I do not mean a ‘reader’ in the history of linguistic thought, such as those by Lehmann (1967), Hayden, Alworth & Tate (1968), Harris & Taylor (1997) which simply reprint several large and self-contained tracts within a single set of covers, but something from an altogether older tradition. A commonplace book is a means for recording memorable snippets from one’s reading, arranged under thematic headings, subsequently to be digested and cross-referenced by the construction of alphabetical indexes (Beal 1987). In modern times the commonplace book has fallen out of fashion and the very notion of a ‘commonplace’, originally indicating (in this context) one of the thematic headings, has become almost a pejorative term. But throughout the classical and medieval periods this was both a standard pedagogical tool, and also one used for digesting and systematizing knowledge for theological and scientific purposes (Carruthers 1990, Lechner 1962). It survived as such throughout the 17th century and well into the 18th. A contemporary guide to commonplacing as a teaching aid can be found in the treatise by (or at least attributed to) John Locke, based on his linguistic and pedagogical views (Locke 1706, cf. Walker 1673: 129–130). An example of a more ambitious scientific application was the project, launched around the same time as the publication of Locke’s treatise, to compile a thematic analysis of all the books in the Bodleian library, using the set of commonplace headings provided by John Wilkins’s philosophical language (Wilkins 1668; cf. Clapinson 1991). By characterizing the Hassler and Neis Lexikon as (amongst other things) a commonplace book, I do so in the precise and laudatory 17th-century sense. They have been like bees bringing back nectar for us to the hive (to use the stock 17thcentury metaphor), and the result is indeed sweet and intellectually nutritious. It provides a model for the modern student of how to set about historiographical
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study, involving close reading of original texts, the careful comparison and contrast of differing approaches, and the gaining of theoretical perspectives on ideas by placing them in the larger network of contemporary thought. I am confident that students who have grown up in the post-Google era will find the networking principle of the commonplacing tradition has an up-to-date feel to it. In short, I welcome and commend this new publication warmly and wholeheartedly, both as a pedagogical tool and as a resource for more advanced research. The only critical observation I have concerns the indexes. The work contains a comprehensive bibliography and an alphabetical list of authors, complete with life-dates. But the latter does not include page references, and the only method for navigating around the work is by means of the thematically-arranged table of contents and the alphabetical list of the 70 or so basic concepts, reproduced at the head of both volumes. A more elaborate subject index — in the tradition of the commonplace book — would have greatly increased the value of the work. However, given the scope of the work, this index would in itself have been an enormous undertaking and might well have cluttered the final product in such a way as to make it appear less accessible to the student, and less inviting as a place to browse. In the longer run, it may be that the authors have plans for a website, either directly linked to this publication or constructed on the basis of it. If so, the benefits of their labours in producing this excellent volume would be handsomely extended.
References Beal, Peter. 1987. Notions in Garrison: The seventeenth-century commonplace book. [Chicago]: [Renaissance English Text Society]. Carruthers, Mary. 1990. The Book of Memory: A study of memory in medieval culture. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Clapinson, Mary. 1991. “Seventeenth-Century Attempts at Bodleian Subject-Cataloguing”. Bodleian Library Record 13.511–513. Dornseiff, Franz. 1933–1940. Der deutsche Wortschatz nach Sachgruppen. Berlin & Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter Harris, Roy & Talbot J. Taylor, eds. 1997. Landmarks in Linguistic Thought: The Western tradition from Socrates to Saussure. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Hayden, Donald E., Paul Alworth & Gary Tate, eds. 1968. Classics in Linguistics. London: Peter Owen. Hüllen, Werner. 1999. English Dictionaries 800–1700: The topical tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lechner, Joan Marie. 1962. Renaissance Concepts of the Commonplaces. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Lehmann, Winfred P., ed. & transl. 1967. A Reader in Nineteenth-Century
Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press. Locke, John. 1706. A New Method of Making Common-place-books. London: Printed for J. Greenwood.
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Roget, Peter Mark. 1852. Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, Classified so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas. London: Longmans, Brown, Green & Longmans. Stammerjohann, Harro, gen. ed. 2009 [11996]. Lexicon Grammaticorum: A bio-bibliographical companion to the history of linguistics. 2nd extended ed. 2 vols. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Walker, Obadiah. 1673. Of Education. Oxford: At the Theatre. Wilkins, John. 1668. An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language. London: Samuel Gellibrand & John Martyn.
Reviewer’s address: David Cram Jesus College Turl Street Oxford OX1 3DW Un ite d Ki ngd om e-mail: [email protected]
Geschichte und Aktualität der deutschsprachigen Guaraní-Philologie: Akten der Guaraní-Tagung in Kiel und Berlin 25.–27. Mai 2000. Edited by Wolf Dietrich and Haralambos Symeonidis. (= Regionalwissenschaft Lateinamerika, 12.) Berlin–Hamburg –Münster, [etc.]: LIT Verlag, 2008. Pp. 280. ISBN 978-3-8258-9239-5. € 39.90 (PB). Reviewed by Willem F. H. Adelaar (Leiden University) The book under review contains the proceedings of a symposium on the Guaraní language organised in 2000 in Kiel and Berlin (Germany). It offers an interesting overview of a surprisingly rich variety of publications on the Guaraní language and its neighbours of the Tupi-Guaraní language family produced by authors from German-speaking countries. Apart from two (Spanish) exceptions, all articles included in these proceedings are in German. As the title suggests, the book consists of two parts, “History” (Geschichte) and “Actuality” (Aktualität), which are not equal in size and homogeneity. The ‘History’ part contains seven papers that constitute a thematic unity with a logical chronological organisation. Together they read as an informative and insightful historical overview of Guaraní linguistic evolution, documentation and studies, highlighting the role of Germanspeaking authors. The three articles that make up the ‘Actuality’ part are miscellaneous contributions that have little to link them, except that they deal with Guaraní and a Guaraní-related ethnic group and language (Izoceño). Their focus is not primarily historical. Following a preface by the editors, the History part begins with an article by Franz Obermeier entitled “Zur Typologie der frühen Dokumente in südamerikanischen Indianersprachen [On the typology of early documents in South American indigenous languages]”. The documents referred to belong to the 16th and 17th century, and the linguistic information they contain mainly pertains to Guaraní and its close relative Tupinambá. The sources of these documents are not exclusively German, although much attention is given to the observations of the explorers Ulrich Schmidel (c.1510–1580) and Hans Staden (c.1525–1579), who were in close contact with Guaraní and Tupi peoples around the middle of the 16th century. In contrast with French and Portuguese sources of the same period, the contribution of the German explorers is mainly ethnographic and of limited interest from a linguistic point of view. On a critical note, we may observe that the word patates (“potato”) is mistakenly interpreted by Obermeier as a loan from
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Quechua (p. 33). In fact, it was borrowed into Spanish from a native language of the Antilles, presumably Taíno. The period of Jesuit missionary activity among the Guaraní in Paraguay in the 17th and 18th century is represented in an article by Fred Boller† entitled “Die Kartographie der deutschsprachigen Missionare als Quelle der guaranitischen Onomastik [The cartography of German-speaking missionaries as a source for Guaraní names]”. The focus is on geographic names referring to places, mountains, rivers and ethnic groups. Boller inventorises and discusses the geographic names contained in four 18th-century maps drawn by Jesuit missionaries of German extraction. Wolf Dietrich’s article “Der Beitrag der deutschsprachigen Missionare zur Beschreibung der Guaraní-Sprachen [The contribution of German-speaking missionaries to the description of Guaraní languages]” is particularly useful because it draws attention to little known but significant linguistic work on the Tupi-Guaraní languages of Eastern Bolivia. After a brief mention of German-speaking Jesuits such as Anton Sepp (1655–1733) from South Tyrol, Dietrich discusses the work of two Austrian missionaries, Alfred Höller (1898–1941) and Anselm Schermair (1902–1993), who were active in Bolivia in the first half of the 20th century. The former is known for his work on Guarayo, a conservative language of the Guaraní branch of Tupi-Guaraní, the latter for his work on Siriono, which occupies a divergent place within the Tupi-Guaraní family due to unusual phonological innovations. Dietrich presents the main characteristics of both languages and the way in which they were treated by the two missionaries. Although still attached to Latin as a descriptive model, Höller, who was not a linguist by training, succeeded in highlighting the particularities of the Guarayo language. His grammar of Guarayo and his 356-page Guarayo–German dictionary are among the richest sources extant on any Tupi-Guaraní language (Höller 1932a, b). The significance of Schermair’s work may even be greater. Although traditional in conception, his grammar, dictionary and collection of texts for the little-known Siriono language (Schermair 1949, 1957, 1962, 1963) are unsurpassed by any more recent work, and his grammar has turned out to be essential for a proper understanding of the position of the Siriono language within the Tupi-Guaraní family. Dietrich makes it clear that, impenetrable as they may appear to many contemporary linguists, there can be no excuse for bypassing these key sources, even if one does not read German. In his article “Wege des Guaraní in die europäische Sprachforschung im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert [How Guaraní found its way into European language studies in the 17th and 18th centuries]”, Manfred Ringmacher describes how knowledge of the Guaraní language was carried across the Atlantic Ocean and how it eventually penetrated the domain of European philology. He identifies the actors who were part of this process. Pioneering work by the Jesuit missionary and scholar
192 Willem F. H. Adelaar: Review of Dietrich and Symeonidis (2008)
Antonio Ruiz de Montoya (1585–1652) laid the basis for our knowledge of the Guaraní language in its early colonial form. Ruiz de Montoya’s work, including a grammar (Arte) and a Spanish–Guaraní dictionary (Ruiz 1640), as well as a highly valued Guaraní-Spanish dictionary referred to as a ‘thesaurus’ (Tesoro, Ruiz 1639), made it clear that native American languages such as Guaraní constituted an object worthy of scientific scrutiny and that they did not lag behind European languages in richness, complexity and expressivity. Ringmacher’s article gives ample attention to the structure and terminology of Ruiz de Montoya’s Guaraní Arte and to later grammars that were inspired by it, namely, Restivo (1890 [1718], 1892 [1724]), Aragona (1617–1629; cf. Meliá 1979) and Francisco Legal (ms.). After the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish and Portuguese domains, Filippo Salvatore Gilij (1721–1789) and Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro (1735–1809) contributed greatly to the dissemination in Europe of the rich information on South American Indian languages that had been collected by the Jesuit missionaries (Gilij 1780– 1784; Hervás 1778–1787, 1800). The grammatical approaches underlying Gilij’s and Hervás’s representations of these languages are also analysed in Ringmacher’s article. Hervás composed several grammatical sketches of New World languages, including a handwritten study on the Guaraní language entitled Elementi grammaticali della lingua Guaranì (“Grammatical elements of the Guaraní language”) with additions by Francisco Legal. It was one of the manuscripts he handed over in Rome to the Prussian resident at the Holy See, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767– 1835). Humboldt was to become a founding father of modern language studies, and his fascination for the characteristics of American Indian languages is well known. Hervás’s manuscript also formed the basis for an unpublished essay on Guaraní grammar by Johann Severin Vater (1772–1826). The Hispanicisation of the Guaraní language as practiced and developed by the Jesuits is the subject of an article written in Spanish by Harald Thun, “La hispanización del guaraní jesuítico en ‘lo espiritual’ y en ‘lo temporal’ [The Hispanicisation of Jesuit Guaraní in the religious and in the worldly sphere]”. Rather oddly, Thun’s article, dedicated to procedures of Hispanicisation, is presented as the second part in an ongoing series of three parts. (The book under review appears to lack any indication of how and where to consult the first part of this study, and there are no bibliographical references attached to the article that might answer that question, a notable shortcoming of this otherwise interesting contribution.) The author shows that the Jesuit fathers attached a far greater importance to the creation of neologisms in the spiritual sphere than to the introduction of terms for material concepts. Apart from direct loans such as purgatorio (“purgatory”), calques of different types were frequent in the spiritual sphere, for instance, tupão (“church” = “house of god”). Semantic calques imply a change, an expansion or a reduction of meaning, for instance, tupã (“Christian god”) from the name of
Reviews / Comptes rendus / Besprechungen 193
a native god of rain and thunder; yvaga (originally “sky” but now amplified to “paradise”); paje (“maleficent witch”, as a reduction from “native priest or healer”). By contrast, the Hispanicisation of Guaraní in the worldly domain was a dynamic process reflecting the interaction between the Guaraní inside the Jesuit missions and external groups (criollos, Indians not living in the missions, etc.). The techniques for the introduction of loans, calques and neologisms in the worldly sphere (animals, plants, tools and measures, musical instruments, materials) were similar to those applied in the religious sphere, but the Jesuit fathers were hardly able to control the process, which resulted in a great supply of competing options, as illustrated in Paulo Restivo’s (1658–1741) additions to the Lexicon hispano-guaranicum (Restivo 1893 [1722]), such as harpa (“harp”) and mbaracaguaçu (“harp”= “big guitar”). Restivo refers directly to linguistic forms created by Indians. Sometimes, the Indian in question is identified by name, as in the case of Nicolás Yapuguay, a contemporary (18th-century) author who wrote in Guaraní. Thun also mentions the semantic expansion of the Guaraní term ita (“stone”) to “metal” or “iron”, as attested by Jean de Léry (1534–1611) in 1578. A short article by Aryon Dall’Igna Rodrigues (b.1925) is dedicated to the contribution of Curt Nimuendajú (1883–1945) to Guaraní language studies and is entitled “Nimuendajú, ein ausgezeichneter Erforscher der Guaraní-Sprache [Nimuendajú, an outstanding researcher of the Guaraní language]”. Nimuendajú, born in Germany in 1883 as Curt Unkel, left his native country at the age of 20 in order to study Brazilian Indians. He was to become one of the most remarkable and productive researchers in the history of Brazilian anthropology. Nimuendajú established friendly relations with the Apapokúva, a group of Guaraní speakers residing in the state of São Paulo, who adopted him. His first publication on Apapokúva religion (Nimuendajú 1914) became a major contribution to the study of South American Indians. Rodrigues shows that Nimuendajú’s linguistic work on Nhandéva, the Guaraní dialect used by the Apapokúva, was also exceptionally accurate. He made significant contributions to historical linguistics by identifying the changes relating a modern Guaraní language to 16th-century Guaraní as described by Ruiz de Montoya (see above). Wolf Lustig is the author of the last article in the ‘History’ part of the book under review, “Re’ñe’ẽkuaápa guarani ñe’ẽme? 110 Jahre Guarani-Sprach- und Reisehandbücher für Deutsche in Paraguay [Do you know how to speak Guaraní? 110 years of Guaraní language and travel guides for Germans in Paraguay]”. This entertaining contribution deals with another episode of German-Guaraní contact, the migration of German settlers to Paraguay, which began at the end of the 19th century and lasted well into the 20th century. Since Guaraní, rather than Spanish, was the most widely spoken language in the Paraguayan countryside, some of the early settlers saw fit to publish Guaraní language guides for the benefit of
194 Willem F. H. Adelaar: Review of Dietrich and Symeonidis (2008)
newly arrived fellow countrymen, founding a tradition that was to last until today, even though the audience of these publications has changed from settlers to tourists and other visitors. Lustig analyses and compares the merits of five language guides published between 1890 and 1999, including his own (Lustig 1996). He vividly describes the difficulties faced by the authors in establishing a consistent orthography and in deciding on the level of Hispanicisation acceptable in a handbook on the Guaraní language. A careful comparison of the linguistic information contained in the language guides shows that more recent guides are not necessarily any more consistent than earlier ones, which were developed by enthusiastic amateurs with an excellent feeling for local relations. Lustig also examines and compares the contents of the language guides, showing that the earlier ones reflect the social conditions that the first settlers encountered in their new country. Thus, a dialogue between a German and a Guaraní speaker was often represented as an exchange between a leading citizen and his servant. In the ‘Actuality’ part of the book, the first contribution, by Jürgen Riester, is entitled “Yembosingaru Guasu: Das Große Rauchen [The Great Smoking]”. This article deals with the principles underlying the author’s five-volume collection of oral literature relating to a ceremony performed by the Guaraní-speaking people of the Izozog wetlands in south-eastern Bolivia. Riester explains that the Izoceño Indians were originally Arawakan-speaking people subjugated and assimilated by Guaraní tribes. The Great Smoking ceremony is performed in times of drought and natural disaster and is placed in the context of the contradiction between benevolent and maleficent shamans. The oral literature of the Izoceño Guaraní, as presented in Riester’s work, is divided into holy and profane texts. Sebastian Drude’s article, “Die Personenpräfixe des Guaraní und ihre lexikographische Behandlung [The Guaraní personal prefixes and their lexicographic treatment]”, contains a rather technical analysis of the use and meaning of personal reference markers in Paraguayan Guaraní in the framework of Integrative Linguistics. A principle of this theoretical framework is that a dictionary should include affixes as well as words as lexicographic entries. The author provides a careful analysis of the semantic features of personal pronouns, personal affixes, reflexive and reciprocal markers, as well as some modal elements. These are discussed against the background of the traditional subdivision of Guaraní verbs into conjugational categories defined by the shape of the prefixes indicating first and second person singular (verbos areales with the person markers a-, re- and verbos chendales with the person markers che-, nde-, respectively) and the less traditional sub-categorisation into transitive and intransitive verbs. Drude’s analysis remains limited to Paraguayan Guaraní and does not encompass the Tupi-Guaraní languages as a whole. A sub-categorisation of verbs according to the lines of a StativeActive system, as proposed in Seki (1990) for Kamayurá, is not envisaged.
Reviews / Comptes rendus / Besprechungen 195
The last article in the volume, by María Gloria Pereira Jaquet, is in Spanish: “La lengua guaraní ante los desafíos como lengua de enseñanza [The Guaraní language facing the challenges of becoming a language of education]”. It focuses on the lexicological adaptations imposed on the Guaraní language when it is to serve as a language of instruction in schools. Some neologisms are essential, but long lists of new terminology to be memorised may have a discouraging effect on both the instructor and the instructed. A full development of the native lexicological potential of the Guaraní language may well be in conflict with everyday usage in which loan words from Spanish are dominant. The author does not refer to any published literature, so that we may infer that she bases her conclusions on her personal experience and observations. All in all, the book under review gives a good overview of work on Guaraní and Guaraní-related languages produced by speakers of German, both past and present. (The only article that does not have any connection with the work of German-speaking authors is the last one.) Despite a few editorial shortcomings (a certain lack of thematic unity, absence of some essential bibliographic references), it constitutes rewarding reading material and certainly serves the purpose of showing how important the contribution of German-speaking authors to the study of Guaraní has been and continues to be.
References Gilij, Filippo Salvatore. 1780–1784. Saggio di storia americana o sia Storia naturale, civile e sacra dei regni, e delle provincie Spagnuole de Terra-Ferma nell’America meridionale. 4 vols. Roma: Luigi Perego Erede Salvioni. Hervás y Panduro, Lorenzo. 1778–1787. Idea dell’universo: che contiene la storia della vita dell’uomo, elementi cosmografici, viaggio estatico al mondo planetario, e storia della terra, e delle lingue. 21 vols. Cesena: Biasini. Hervás y Panduro, Lorenzo. 1800. Catálogo de las lenguas de las naciones conocidas, y numeración, división, y clases de estas según la diversidad de sus idiomas y dialectos. Vol. I: Lenguas y naciones americanas. Madrid: Imprenta de la Administración del Real Arbitrio de Beneficiencia. (Facs.-repr., Madrid: Editorial Atlas, 1979.) Höller, Fray Alfredo, O.F.M. 1932a. Grammatik der Guarayo-Sprache. Hall (Tyrol): Missions prokura der P.P. Franziskaner. Höller, Fray Alfredo. 1932b. Guarayo-Deutsches Wörterbuch. Hall (Tyrol): Missionsprokura der P.P. Franziskaner. Legal, P. Francisco. Breve noticia del arte y artificio de la lengua Guarani. Manuscript in Nationalbibliothek, Berlin [Copy in Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Kraków]. Léry, Jean de. 1578. Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil, autrement dite Amérique, le tout recueilli sur les lieux par Jean de Léry. La Rochelle & Geneva: Antoine Chuppin. Lustig, Wolf. 1996. Guarani für Paraguay: Wort für Wort. Bielefeld: Peter Rump. Meliá, P. Bartomeu. 1979. “Breve introducción para aprender la lengua guaraní por el P. Alonso de Aragona”. Amerindia 4.23–61.
196 Willem F. H. Adelaar: Review of Dietrich and Symeonidis (2008) Nimuendajú, Curt. 1914. “Die Sagen von der Erschaffung und Vernichtung der Welt als Grundlagen der Religion der Apapokuva-Guaraní”. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 46.284–403. Restivo, Paulo. 1890 [1718]. Brevis Linguae Guarani Grammatica Hispanice a Reverendo Patre Jesuita Paulo Restivo secundum libros Antonii Ruiz de Montoya et Simonis Bandini in Paraquaria anno MDCCXVIII composita et “Breve Noticia de la Lengua Guarani” inscripta ed. by Christian Friedrich Seybold. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer. Restivo, Paulo. 1892 [1724]. Linguae Guarani Grammatica Hispanice a Reverendo Patre Jesuita Paulo Restivo secundum libros Antonii Ruiz de Montoya, Simonis Bandini aliorumque adjecto Particularum lexico anno MDCCXXIV in Civitate Sanctae Mariae Majoris edita et “Arte de la Lengua Guarani” inscripta ed. by Christian Friedrich Seybold. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer. Restivo, Paulo. 1893 [1722]. Lexicon Hispano-Guaranicum “Vocabulario de la lengua Guarani” inscripto a Paulo Restivo secundum Vocabularium Antonii Ruiz de Montoya anno MDCCXXII in Civitate Sanctae Mariae Majoris edita denuo editum et adauctum. Ed. by Christian Friedrich Seybold. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer. Ruiz de Montoya, Antonio. 1639. Tesoro de la lengua guaraní. Madrid: Juan Sánchez. Ruiz de Montoya, Antonio. 1640. Arte y Bocabulario de la lengua guaraní. Madrid: Juan Sánchez. Schermair, P. Fr. Anselmo E. 1949. Gramática de la lengua sirionó. La Paz: Gráfica de A. Gamarra. Schermair, P. Fr. Anselmo E. 1957. Vocabulario sirionó-castellano (= Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, special issue Nr. 5.) Innsbruck: Sprachwissenschaftliches Institut der Leopold-Franzens-Universität. Schermair, P. Fr. Anselmo E. 1962. Vocabulario castellano-sirionó (=Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, special issue Nr. 11.) Innsbruck: Sprachwissenschaftliches Institut der Leopold-Franzens-Universität. Schermair, P. Fr. Anselmo E. 1963. Sirionó-Texte (= Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, special issue Nr. 15.) Innsbruck: Sprachwissenschaftliches Institut der Leopold-FranzensUniversität. Seki, Lucy. 1990. “Kamaiurá (Tupi-Guaraní) as an Active-Stative Language”. Amazonian Linguistics: Studies in Lowland South American Languages ed. by Doris L. Payne, 367–391. Austin: University of Texas Press. Vater, Johann Severin. Grammatik der Guarani-Sprache aus dem Italienischen der von Lorenzo Hervas mitgetheilten handschriftlichen Anweisung übersetzt oder ausgezogen von Johann Severin Vater mit Eintragungen einiger Berichtigungen und Zusätze des P. Francisco Legal. Manuscript in Nationalbibliothek, Berlin.
Reviewer’s address: Willem F. H. Adelaar Centre for Linguistics Leiden University P.O. Box 9515, NL-2300 RA Leiden The Ne t he rl ands e-mail: [email protected]
Politics and the Theory of Language in the USSR 1917–1938 : The birth of sociological linguistics. Ed. by Craig Brandist & Katya Chown. (= Anthem Series on Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, [aucun numéro].) London–New York–Delhi : Anthem Press, 2010. Pp. 199. ISBN : 978 1 84331 840 8 (relié). ISBN : 978 0 85728 948 3 (version électronique). £ 60. Compte rendu de Roger Comtet (Université de Toulouse II) Les éditeurs de ce recueil appartiennent tous les deux à l’Université de Sheffield et sont connus pour leurs publications consacrées à la linguistique et la théorie littéraire dans l’Union soviétique des années 1920–1930, plus particulièrement le courant de Bakhtin (v. Brandist 1996, 2002) puisque Craig Brandist dirige dans son université un Bakhtin Centre. Le titre de ce nouveau recueil, bien qu’un peu ambigu, laisse penser qu’il s’agit ici de revisiter l’histoire de la linguistique soviétique pour la période envisagée du point de vue de la sociolinguistique. Les matériaux rassemblés reprennent les communications délivrées lors du colloque intitulé “Sociological Theories of Language in the USSR 1917–1938” et tenu à Sheffield en septembre 2006. Les contributeurs, outre Craig Brandist, sont issus de différents horizons culturels qui contribuent à la richesse du recueil par leurs points de vue croisés. Relevons ici pour la Russie Vladimir Alpatov, Kapitolina Fedorova et Viktoria Gulik ; pour les États-Unis, Michael G. Smith et Michael S. Gorham ; pour la Finlande, Mika Lähteenmäki ; on notera enfin que Vladislava Reznik est rattachée à l’Université de Durham en Grande-Bretagne. L’architecture de l’ouvrage suit un plan à la fois logique et chronologique, en suivant l’axe du temps et du général au particulier. Nous allons en suivre le cheminement. Craig Brandist présente d’abord son recueil et en précise les enjeux dans une introduction (1–16). Suit une magistrale synthèse parfaitement documentée de Vladimir Mixajlovič Alpatov (né en 1945), “Soviet Linguistics of the 1920s and 1930s and the Scholarly Heritage” (17–34); on nous montre ici les différentes tendances antagonistes à l’œuvre en ces années : une arrière-garde universitaire entièrement dévouée à la tradition d’étude philologique des textes anciens et à l’héritage des Néo-grammairiens et des courants nouveaux comme celui des marristes pour qui l’indo-européanisme était l’ennemi ; tout cela laissait cependant des ouvertures possibles pour des compromis entre l’Ancien et le Nouveau, entre le marxisme et une solide tradition comparatiste de rigueur scientifique, comme chez Evgenij Dmitrievič Polivanov (1891–1938) pour qui Alpatov exprime une
Historiographia Linguistica XXXVIII:1/2 (2011), 197–204. doi 10.1075/hl.38.1/2.10com issn 0302–5160 / e-issn 1569–9781 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
198 Roger Comtet: Review of Brandist & Chown (2010)
fois de plus, comme dans maintes autres publications (voir, par exemple, Alpatov 2005) sa profonde admiration (“the greatest scholar of the time” [p. 23], “the greatest of the Soviet linguists” [p. 31]). Et déjà le néo-humboldtisme tellement à l’honneur dans la Russie post-moderne est annoncé (p. 28) chez des linguistes comme Vasilij Ivanovič Abaev (1900–2001), cependant que le rôle d’éveilleur de Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845–1929) qui a eu pour élèves Polivanov (son plus fidèle disciple, p. 33), Lev Petrovič Jakubinskij (1892–1945), Lev Vladimirovič Ščerba (1880–1944) et Boris Aleksandrovič Larin (1893–1964) est une nouvelle fois souligné, et cela d’autant plus que Baudouin posait déjà les questions fondamentales de la sociolinguistique (voir par exemple Mugdan 1984 : 125–130). Le décor général étant ainsi planté, Mikä Lähteemäki entre dans le vif du sujet avec un texte dense intitulé “ ‘Sociology’ in Soviet Linguistics of the 1920–30s : Shor, Polivanov and Voloshinov”1 (35–51); l’auteur fait une mise au point judicieuse sur le rapport entre sociologie et marxisme à la soviétique en mettant en avant l’œuvre de Nikolaj Ivanovič Buxarin (1888–1938), lui-même influencé (p. 38) par Ludwig Noiré (1829–1889), œuvre qui stimulera ensuite la réflexion de Gramsci et Lukács. L’œuvre de Rozalija Osipovna Šor (1894–1939) est ensuite évaluée à partir du prisme de l’École de Genève (Saussure, Charles Bally) et de la linguistique française d’alors représentée par l’incontournable Antoine Meillet (1866–1936). On envisage ensuite Polivanov qui était partisan d’une synthèse entre la méthode scientifique académique qui avait fait ses preuves et le marxisme, entre une conception de la langue ‘naturelle et historique’ et une conception ‘historique et socio-économique’ (p. 45). Le texte se termine par un rappel des conceptions de Valentin Nikolaevič Vološinov (1895–1936) qui, sans trop argumenter sa position, identifiait sociologie et marxisme. La conclusion est que, par opposition à la vision psychologisante de la linguistique qui régnait jusqu’alors, les linguistes russes commencent à cette époque à envisager leur discipline à travers le prisme de la sociologie. Dans la contribution suivante de Viktoria Gulida intitulée “Theoretical Insights and Ideological Pressures in Early Soviet Linguistics : The case of Lev Iakubinskii and Boris Larin” (53–68), on retrouve encore des disciples de Baudouin de Courtenay qui développent les intuitions du maître. Est d’abord analysée la vision de Jakubinskij sur la nature dialogique de l’échange verbal ; quant à Larin dont l’œuvre est moins bien connue, on rappelle son rôle de pionnier dans l’étude des parlers urbains (alors que jusqu’alors c’étaient les dialectes ruraux qui occupaient le devant de la scène), y compris dans leur dimension diachronique (voir tout le 1. À l’exception de la citation des titres et de certains mots trouvés dans le présent volume, où on respecte la transcription à l’anglaise des noms russes telle qu’elle est adoptée par le recueil, nous suivons les conventions de transcription de HL.
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parti qu’il tire d’observateurs étrangers de la langue russe au XVIIe siècle comme Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf (1655–1712 ; v. Larin 1937), le navigateur dieppois Jean Sauvage (Larin 1948) ou Richard James (1592–1638 ; v. Larin 1959); il a surtout montré la coexistence chez les locuteurs, si humbles qu’ils soient, de plusieurs codes linguistiques utilisés en fonction des contextes, et cela en dépit de la pression de l’idéologie officielle. On trouve ensuite un texte écrit à quatre mains par Craig Brandist et Mikä Lähteemäki qui tente de préciser les relations entre les essais sur le roman de Mixail Baxtin datés des années 1930 et la linguistique soviétique d’alors : “Early Soviet Linguistics and Mikhail Bakhtin’s Essays on the Novel of the 1930s” (69– 88). La conception du langage selon Baxtin à cette époque est ainsi confrontée à celle de Jakubinskij qui occupe ici le devant de la scène ; cela permet de relier la fameuse théorie des genres à celle de la différenciation stylistique du langage, quand celle-ci intègre celle de la parole (raznojazyčie “hétéroglossie, multilinguisme” vs. raznorečie “hétérologie., diversité de discours”). C’est ensuite Kapitolina Fedorova qui étudie l’intervention de la problématique de la lutte de classe dans le débat linguistique à l’époque du premier plan quinquennal (1928–1932), symptomatique de ce que l’on a appelé ‘le grand tournant’ avec sa révolution culturelle : “Language as a Battlefield — the Rhetoric of Class Struggle in Linguistic Debates of the First Five-Year Plan Period : The case of E. D. Polivanov vs. G. K. Danilov” (89–104). L’auteur se propose de démontrer que l’opposition interne à la linguistique soviétique d’alors, loin d’être binaire (indo-européanisme vs. théorie japhétique de Marr [p. 88]), était en fait des plus complexe. C’est ce qu’illustre l’œuvre de Polivanov où celui-ci a élaboré sa propre conception de la linguistique marxiste, encore empreinte de la tradition académique du ‘fait’ avéré, en opposition au “Front linguistique” (jazykfront) de Georgij Konstantinovič Danilov (1896–1937); l’auteur développe cette opposition en se fondant sur un abondant appareil de citations des deux linguistes (en russe, avec traductions anglaises) qu’elle soumet à une analyse sémiologique et statistique tout à fait convaincante. Michael Smith nous invite ensuite à examiner les rapports entre langue et nation chez Stalin dans “The Tenacity of Forms : Language, Nation, Stalin” (105– 122). L’auteur nous rappelle la formation aux humanités classiques du futur dictateur au séminaire de Tiflis et le rôle que le platonisme a joué dans sa pensée jusqu’à la célèbre intervention dans le débat linguistique de 1950. Mais, très tôt, dès 1913, Stalin a dû théoriser la question nationale à la lumière du marxisme en se positionnant par rapport à l’austro-marxisme. Il a été ainsi amené à identifier langue et nation, tout en en faisant des catégories ontologiques inhérentes à la condition humaine. Cette contribution, qui n’est pas la moins originale du recueil, nous révèle ainsi une pensée plus complexe et subtile qu’on ne le suppose d’habitude.
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Vladislava Reznik s’intéresse ensuite à un concept qui a fait couler beaucoup d’encre, celui de ‘culture de la langue’ chez Grigorij Osipovič Vinokur (1896–1947): “The Word as Culture : Grigorii Vinokur’s applied language science” (123–135), puisque c’est ainsi que ce dernier avait appelé son célèbre ouvrage paru en 1925 avant d’être remanié en 1929. Dans les faits, c’est à une sorte de ‘philologie’ des textes écrits, quels qu’ils soient, que s’intéresse Vinokur, à leur stylistique, leur degré de développement, à une sorte de ‘technologie’ de la langue (p. 134) qui laisse entrevoir la future ‘politique de la langue’ de l’Union soviétique quand les linguistes seront assimilés à des sortes d’ingénieurs en linguistique. C’est précisément le devenir de cette conception qui est ensuite examiné par Michael S. Gorham dans “Language Ideology and the Evolution of Kul’tura iazyka (‘Speech Culture’) in Soviet Russia” (137–149). L’exposé nous mène jusqu’aux années de l’après-guerre et nous permet de mieux comprendre les accès de purisme et de codification dans la langue, typiques de la remise en ordre générale qui s’est effectuée à l’époque du stalinisme et que symbolise entre autres l’entreprise du dictionnaire dit de Dmitrij Nikolaevič Ušakov (1873–1942) qui prétendait mettre un point final à tous les changements linguistiques auxquels on avait assisté depuis la révolution. Nous trouvons ensuite un article de Craig Brandist, qui s’est décidément beaucoup investi dans le recueil, consacré au célèbre manuel d’Isaak Špil’rein La langue du soldat de l’Armée rouge (Jazyk krasnoarmejca) qui, suite à une commande des services de l’agitation révolutionnaire de l’armée, prétendait analyser la langue de tous ces troupiers issus des masses populaires afin de faciliter leur éducation politique ; le titre de cette contribution est “Psychology, Linguistics and the Rise of Applied Social Science in the USSR : Isaak Shpil’rein’s Language of the Red Army Soldier” (151–167). Elle se révèle absolument passionnante en montrant qu’elle se situe au confluent des acquis de l’époque en matière de psychologie et d’analyse linguistique, en intégrant l’héritage théorique de la Psychotechnik germanique de Hugo Münsterberg (1863–1916) et de William Stern (1871–1938) ainsi que les apports de Lev Semenovič Vygotskij (1896–1934); en même temps, c’est une photographie irremplaçable du parler populaire de la troupe et de son univers mental à l’époque en question. Craig Brandist a eu la bonne idée de clore son recueil par les thèses d’Ivan Ivanovič Meščaninov (1883–1967) sur la japhétologie de 1929 en les préfaçant et les traduisant en anglais (“Introduction to Japhetidology : Theses” [169–179]); on a là l’entrée en scène du marrisme triomphant qui va finir par l’emporter dans les années 1930 mais que Craig Brandist se garde bien de caricaturer puisqu’il en fait un objet d’étude comme un autre. Nous espérons que cette présentation aura donné une image aussi fidèle que possible d’un recueil extrêmement riche et passionnant sur l’histoire de la
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première phase de la linguistique soviétique, quand les théoriciens jouissaient encore d’une relative liberté ; le panorama nous paraît assez complet, représentant toutes les tendances d’alors. Il est absolument merveilleux que sur des sujets aussi proches il n’y ait pratiquement pas de recoupement entre les différentes contributions, si ce n’est peut-être pour Polivanov dont la stature domine de fait la linguistique d’alors. Ajoutons que le recueil est pourvu d’un index des noms de personnes (197–199) qui en facilitera l’utilisation et que chaque contribution est suivie d’une très riche bibliographie qui ne va pas cependant au-delà de 2007, ignorant ainsi l’actualité bibliographique récente. Et une fois de plus on est conduit à prendre conscience de l’extrême importance des transferts culturels germanorusses, ne serait-ce qu’en consultant l’index des noms. On a donc là un nouvel instrument de travail, une somme d’informations et de réflexions sur l’histoire de la linguistique soviétique qui sera très utile et qui explore des pistes nouvelles, en particulier la mise en parallèle des sociolinguistes russes des années 1920 avec les théoriciens d’aujourd’hui, essentiellement américains. Nous nous contenterons cependant d’ajouter que l’enracinement de toutes ces recherches d’avant-garde se situe en fait dans l’immédiate avant-guerre avec une fermentation intellectuelle et artistique qui a enrichi de fait la culture universelle (les différentes écoles artistiques, poétique, les recherches en théorie littéraire comme celles des “formalistes” etc. ce à quoi il faudrait ajouter les voies nouvelles ouvertes par Baudouin de Courtenay en linguistique). Cette mise en perspective manque un peu dans l’ouvrage. Par ailleurs, sans vouloir trop mettre en avant un auteur auquel nous avons déjà consacré une dizaine de publications, le rôle de Viktor Maksimovič Žirmunskij (1891–1971) dont on dit toujours que l’ouvrage La langue nationale et les dialectes sociaux de 1936 aurait fondé la sociolinguistique russe est peu mis en valeur. Peut-être aurait-il fallu aussi commencer par une définition de la ‘sociolinguistique’ pour mieux cerner les limites et les enjeux de la recherche, le terme étant, semble-t-il, encore inconnu en russe à l’époque considérée (on notera que certains auteurs du recueil, tel Mika Lähteenmäki, l’utilisent prudemment avec des guillemets). Il est certain que cette discipline a eu du mal à s’imposer en URSS, tant était grande la pression du marxisme qui a phagocyté la sociologie, et il faudra attendre les années 1950 pour que les grands précurseurs des années 1920 auxquels est consacré le recueil soient tirés de l’oubli. On peut enfin se demander si le développement de la sociolinguistique dans une société qui se présentait a priori comme ayant aboli les classes sociales n’était pas une gageure impossible à tenir ; ce n’est certainement pas un hasard si Larin a orienté ses recherches sur le passé russe, et si Žirmunskij envisage avant tout la formation des langues nationales dans des sociétés autres dites ‘bourgeoises’. On sait aussi que les condamnations du ‘sociologisme vulgaire’ ont perduré jusqu’à la fin du
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communisme.2 On note cependant dans les années 1960–70 une renaissance de la sociolinguistique en URSS qui renouait ainsi avec les grands précurseurs évoqués dans ce recueil, et en se référant une fois de plus à Meillet ; en témoignent les 4 volumes de La langue russe et la société soviétique édités par Mixail Viktorovič Panov (1920–2001) en 1968 (Panov 1968) qui se limitent cependant prudemment aux variables professionnelles, régionales et générationnelles, tout comme les autres ouvrages publiés à la même époque (voir, entre autres, Avrorin 1975, Nikol’skij 1976, Dešeriev 1977, Švejcer & Nikol’skij 1978). Il reste pourtant un domaine de la sociolinguistique qui est tout juste effleuré dans le recueil avec la contribution consacrée à Staline, c’est celui des politiques linguistiques menées alors en URSS vis-à-vis des langues autres que le russe : litération avec l’élaboration de nouveaux alphabets, définition d’une norme comme pour l’ouzbek sur lequel a travaillé Polivanov, problèmes de bilinguisme ou de multilinguisme, place de la langue dominante etc. C’est toute une problématique qui annonce les recherches contemporaines, par exemple celles d’Einar Haugen (1906–1994). D’un point de vue formel, il paraît dommage cependant que quelques erreurs factuelles se soient glissées dans le courant du texte, surtout dans l’appareil critique, erreurs qu’une relecture attentive aurait certainement permis d’éliminer ; ces erreurs jurent avec la qualité de l’édition (typographie, reliure …). Citons ici le pauvre Meillet dont le nom est orthographié à deux reprises “Miellet” (164, 184); ce n’est d’ailleurs pas le seul problème de reproduction des noms français, ce qui semble être le propre des éditions anglo-saxonnes (voir par exemple p. 191, n.6 “Sainean” pour “Sainéan”, ou p. 190, ch. 3, n.4 pour l’usage des accents typographiques); le russe peut être mal transcrit, comme dans “obschenarodnyi” pour “obshchenarodnyi”, ou “ustanaia” pour “ustnaia” (p. 191, ch. 4, n.1). On trouve en appendice (181–186) une liste alphabétique des principaux noms de personne avec de courtes notices biographiques, ce qui est une excellente initiative ; on se doit cependant de relever une graphie fautive (“Kraeplin” pour [Emil] “Kraepelin” [(1856–1926)], p. 183); par ailleurs, Charles Bally (1865–1947) n’était pas français mais suisse (p. 181) et Nikolaj Nikolaevič Poppe (1897–1991) n’était pas spécialiste des langues turques mais des langues altaïques (p. 184); on se demande enfin pourquoi, dans cette liste, les patronymes (russe otčestva) n’ont pas tous été notés sous leur forme pleine, ce qui fait, par exemple, qu’à “Trubetskoi, Nikolai Sergeevich” succède “Tynianov, Iurii N.” (p. 186). On notera encore que l’index des noms de personnes (196–199) n’est pas complet et que, faute de préciser le chapitre concerné, il peut conduire le lecteur à hésiter quand le renvoi concerne 2. C’est à cause de cela que l‘encyclopédie littéraire qui paraissait dans les années 1929–1939 sous la direction de Vladimir Maksimovič Friče (1870–1929) n’a pu être publiée en totalité (il manque toujours les tomes 10 et 12), voir Murav’ev (1975 : 906).
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les notes (comme pour Polivanov, renvoyé à p. 190 n.6 : or il y a deux notes 6 sur cette page …). Regrettons enfin l’organisation de l’appareil de notes rejeté à la fin de l’ouvrage (alors que les bibliographies particulières suivent chaque chapitre), ce qui nous paraît particulièrement peu heureux, obligeant le lecteur à un grand écart constant et fastidieux entre le texte et les notes afférentes. Toutes ces remarques de détail n’enlèvent bien sûr rien à la qualité de l’ouvrage, somme scientifique qui nous introduit à un chapitre peu connu de l’histoire de la linguistique et qui mérite d’être considéré comme une étude capitale et fondatrice.
Références bibliographiques Alpatov, V[ladimir] M[ixajlovič]. 2005. Vološinov, Baxtin i lingvistika [Vološinov, Baxtin et la linguistique]. Moskva : Jazyki slavjanskix kul’tur. Avrorin, V[alerij] A[leksandrovič]. 1975. Problemy izučenija funkcional’noj storony jazyka (k voprosu o predmete sociolingvistiki) [Problèmes de l’étude de la partie fonctionnelle du langage (sur le problème de l’objet de la sociolinguistique)]. Leningrad : “Nauka”. Brandist, Craig. 1996. Carnival Culture and the Soviet Modernist Novel. Houndmills : Macmillan. Brandist, Craig. 2002. The Bakhtin Circle : Philosophy, culture and politics. London : Pluto Press. Dešeriev, Ju[nus] D[ešerievič]. 1977. Social’naja lingvistika : K osnovam obščej teorii [Linguistique sociale : A propos des fondements d’une théorie générale]. Moskva : “Nauka”. Larin, B[oris] A[leksandrovič], éd. 1937. Genrix Vil’gel’m Ludolf, Russkaja grammatika. Oksford, 1696 [Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf, Grammaire russe. Oxford, 1696]. (= Materialy i issledovanija po istorii russkogo jazyka, 1.) Leningrad : Leningradskij Naučno-issledovatel’skij institut jazykoznanija pri LIFLI. Larin, B. A., éd. 1948. Parižskij slovar’ moskovitov [Le dictionnaire parisien des Moscovites]. Riga : Latvijskij gosudarstvennyj universitet. Larin, B. A., éd. 1959. Russko-anglijskij slovar’–dnevnik Ričarda Džemsa (1618–1619 gg.) [Le dictionnaire russe–anglais de Richard James (1618–1619)]. Leningrad : Leningradskij universitet. Mugdan, Joachim. 1984. Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845–1929): Leben und Werk. München : Wilhelm Fink. Murav’ev, V[adimir] S[ergeevič] 1975. “Ènciklopedii literatury [Les encyclopédies littéraires]”. Kratkaja literaturnaja ènciklopedija [Petite encyclopédie de la littérature] éd. par A[leksej] A[leksandrovič] Surkov, vol. VIII, 903–909. Moskva : “Sovetskaja ènciklopedija”. Nikol’skij, L[eonid] B[orisovič]. 1976. Sinxronnaja sociolingvistika (Teorija i problemy) [Sociolinguistique synchronique (Théorie et problèmes)]. Moskva : “Nauka”. Panov, M[ixail] V[iktorovič], éd. 1968. Russkij jazyk i sovetskoe obščestvo : Sociologo-lingvističeskoe issledovanie [La langue russe et la société soviétique : Études de sociologie linguistique]. 4 vols. Moskva : “Nauka”. Švejcer, A[leksandr] D[avidovič] & L[eonid] B[orisovič] Nikol’skij. 1978. Vvedenie v sociolingvistiku [Introduction à la sociolinguistique]. Moskva : “Nauka”.
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Adresse de l’auteur du compte rendu : Roger Comtet Département de slavistique Université de Toulouse II 5, allées Antonio Machado F-31058 TOULOUSE CEDEX 9 Fr anc e e-mail : [email protected]
Die Sprachwissenschaft des 20. Jahrhunderts : Versuch einer Bilanz. Par Wolfgang Wildgen. Berlin : Walter de Gruyter, 2010, ix, 221 pp. ISBN : 978-3-11-022850-2. € 69,95 (relié). Compte rendu de Stijn Verleyen (Fonds de la recherche scientifique — Flandre [FWO], Bruxelles) L’ouvrage dont nous rendons compte ici se qualifie fort modestement de ‘tentative’ d’un bilan de la linguistique du XXe siècle. À juste titre, puisque s’il est une période de l’histoire de la linguistique difficile à synthétiser, c’est bien le XXe siècle. Siècle marqué par l’institutionnalisation et la professionnalisation progressives de la discipline, et, partant, la croissance exponentielle du volume des recherches. En plus, celles-ci s’inscrivent dans des perspectives théoriques extrêmement variées, quoique souvent enchevêtrées les unes dans les autres. Si on peut encore dire avec une certaine légitimité que le XIXe siècle est celui du comparatisme, aucune affirmation semblable ne marcherait pour le XXe. Comment rendre justice à cette diversité, tout en évitant de perdre de vue les grandes lignes et les évolutions sur la longue durée ? Voilà le défi qui se pose à l’historien de la linguistique du XXe siècle. C’est un défi que Wolfgang Wildgen (désormais WW) relève résolument. Dans son introduction, l’auteur évoque la question longuement débattue entre historiens de la linguistique et linguistes tout court, de savoir quelle serait l’utilité de ce genre d’exercice, et de l’histoire de la linguistique en général. WW argumente que, contrairement aux sciences exactes, la linguistique ne fonctionne pas en termes de paradigmes nettement délimités, et évincés à chaque fois par de nouveaux paradigmes plus adéquats. Au contraire, on pourrait dire, avec Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), qu’il n’y a ‘rien de nouveau sous le soleil’ dans l’histoire de la linguistique, et que l’on reprend souvent des problèmes et des solutions déjà avancés auparavant. Si cette thèse n’a rien de très controversé, on sera moins d’accord avec le choix de l’auteur de mettre l’accent sur les thèmes et les modèles qui ont encore une certaine plus-value pour les débats actuels en linguistique. C’est un choix qui se défend d’un point de vue stratégique (mise en vedette de la valeur d’actualité du livre), mais pas forcément d’un point de vue proprement historiographique. En effet, on risque ainsi de voir le passé à travers les lunettes du présent. L’auteur s’en rend heureusement compte, lorsqu’il affirme, par exemple (pp. 23–24), que
Historiographia Linguistica XXXVIII:1/2 (2011), 205–211. doi 10.1075/hl.38.1/2.11ver issn 0302–5160 / e-issn 1569–9781 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
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le terme de ‘psychologie’ représente chez Hermann Paul (1846–1921) une réalité bien différente de celle des cognitivistes. Après l’introduction, l’auteur passe en revue, en l’espace de quelques pages seulement, l’ensemble de l’histoire de la linguistique jusqu’au début du XXe siècle, passage qui est interrompu brièvement pour un excursus sur les frères Grimm (dans la suite du livre, on retrouve régulièrement de tels interludes sur la linguistique allemande). WW entre un peu plus dans le détail quand il s’agit des développements du XIXe siècle, vu l’importance fondamentale du comparatisme pour l’avènement de la linguistique moderne. Il prête particulièrement attention au rapprochement entre la linguistique et les sciences naturelles, passant toutefois sous silence un important courant de pensée qui se distancie des conceptions mécaniques et positivistes des néogrammairiens : on ne trouve aucun renvoi à Michel Bréal (1832–1915), par exemple, et la définition que propose William Dwight Whitney (1827–1894) de la langue comme ‘institution’ n’est pas relevée. Par contre, la tendance ‘psychologisante’ constatée chez H. Paul est explicitement mentionnée. WW considère dès lors que Paul a préparé la voie à une théorie psychologique (‘appelée aujourd’hui cognitive’, p. 23) du langage, même si, comme nous l’avons dit, il voit d’importantes différences entre la théorie de Paul et le cognitivisme moderne, entre autres en ce qui concerne la possibilité de validation empirique de l’intuition psychologique. Quand on parle de Hermann Paul, Ferdinand de Saussure n’est en général pas très éloigné (cf. Koerner 1988 : 17–50). C’est au maître genevois qu’est consacré le chapitre suivant, intitulé ‘Ferdinand de Saussure et les débuts du structuralisme européen’. Ici apparaissent d’emblée deux éléments problématiques : celui de ‘structuralisme’, et l’épithète ‘européen’ qu’on lui associe. En effet, comme il a été montré a maintes reprises, Saussure ne saurait être considéré simplement comme le ‘père du structuralisme’. Et le structuralisme ‘européen’ (souvent opposé à son corollaire ‘américain’, qualification tout aussi problématique d’ailleurs), n’est pas si européen qu’on ne le penserait (Sériot 1999): la théorie pragoise est à bien des égards radicalement différente de la pensée saussurienne, et l’on sait que Roman Jakobson (1896–1982), représentant éminent de l’école de Prague, n’a cessé de remettre en cause les dichotomies et les thèses saussuriennes — à commencer par synchronie-diachronie, dès le manifeste de l’école, mais plus tard aussi langue vs. parole, et le caractère linéaire du signifiant (mise en doute par la théorie des traits distinctifs). N’empêche que l’analyse des textes saussuriens (y compris les manuscrits) fournie par WW est bien informée et de bonne qualité. La partie consacrée au Cercle de Prague focalise logiquement sur les deux figures de proue que sont R. Jakobson et Nikolaj S. Troubetzkoy (1890–1938), sans toutefois mentionner l’opposition foncière entre le binarisme strict de Jakobson (qui marquera plus tard de son empreinte la phonologie générative naissante) et
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le cadre théorique plus souple de Troubetzkoy, clivage auquel André Martinet (1908–1999) — voir son Économie des changements phonétiques (Martinet 1955) — fera écho en rejetant catégoriquement l’approche binaire. Une bonne partie de ce chapitre est consacrée à l’application à la morphosyntaxe ; cette partie est richement illustrée par des exemples concrets, qui ont l’avantage d’alléger l’exposé tout en montrant la mise en œuvre concrète de la théorie dans la pratique descriptive. WW s’attarde aussi brièvement au rôle qu’a joué Jakobson en sémiotique et en théorie littéraire (pp. 44–46). Après l’école de Prague, l’auteur entame celle de Copenhague, l’autre ‘école’ du structuralisme européen couramment cité dans ce genre de synthèses — soit dit en passant que l’on ne retrouve pas de discussion sur le concept d’‘école’ et sa délimitation. Il y ajoute en plus une partie sur ‘l’introduction de méthodes structuralistes dans la grammaire de l’allemand’. Pour ce qui est de Copenhague, Otto Jespersen (1860–1943) est cité comme précurseur avec sa syntaxe formelle, après quoi l’auteur passe en revue les différentes ‘phases’, si l’on peut dire, de la théorie de Louis Hjelmslev (1899–1965), focalisant sur La catégorie des cas (1935–1937) et bien sûr aussi les Prolégomènes à une théorie du langage (1943). Le chapitre suivant est consacré à la ‘grammaire de la valence’. Deux auteurs en particulier sont cités ici : Lucien Tesnière (1893–1954) — il néglige par ailleurs de mentionner les liens que celui-ci entretenait avec le Cercle de Prague (cf. Chevalier 1997) et Charles Peirce (1839–1914). (On a du mal à suivre WW sur ce point, mais il motive son choix en renvoyant aux travaux de Peirce sur la notion de prédicat, et en citant un passage où Peirce évoque la notion de valence telle qu’elle est utilisée en chimie). De nombreux autres précurseurs sont cités, allant de l’antiquité jusqu’au concept de ‘Konnotation’ de Karl Bühler (1879–1963). Le chapitre termine sur une discussion succincte de la pertinence des grammaires de valence et de dépendance pour des développements ultérieurs, parmi lesquels une partie de la linguistique générative. WW fait ainsi une transition naturelle vers l’histoire de la linguistique de l’autre côté de l’Atlantique, qu’il fait débuter chez Edward Sapir (1887–1939), là encore un choix traditionnel, mais qui est à peine motivé explicitement. Après une présentation sommaire de quelques éléments de biographie, l’auteur discute l’ouvrage sans doute le plus important de Sapir, Language (1921). Il attire l’attention sur quelques parallélismes avec Saussure (distinction entre ‘signifiant’ et ‘signifié’), tout en soulignant l’irréductible originalité de Sapir. Il est quelque peu surprenant que Sapir ne soit pas associé au ‘structuralisme américain’, mais plutôt à l’‘ethnolinguistique’. WW souligne ainsi une filière en linguistique américaine qui se situe en dehors du mainstream de la linguistique descriptive, et avec laquelle renoueront les différentes approches sociolinguistiques (au sens large du terme) des années ’60 et ’70 (v. infra).
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On n’est guère surpris, en revanche, en voyant le nom figurant en tête du chapitre suivant, qui est évidemment celui de Leonard Bloomfield (1884–1949). Auteur d’une monographie du même titre que celle de Sapir (mais publiée 12 ans plus tard), Bloomfield est d’une importance capitale pour le développement ultérieur de la linguistique américaine, et ne saurait évidemment être passé sous silence dans cet aperçu. Les thèmes traités par WW sont familiers : l’influence de la psychologie béhavioriste (qu’il relativise à juste titre en minimisant son impact sur la pratique descriptive concrète) et l’accent mis sur les aspects formels et distributionnels. Sur ce dernier point, WW adopte essentiellement le point de vue classique des historiographes de la linguistique, à savoir que Bloomfield a complètement laissé de côté l’analyse du sens, parce que celui-ci ne serait pas analysable d’un point de vue strictement linguistique. Il ne cite pas d’autres travaux (Hymes & Fought 1981, Murray 1994) qui montrent qu’en dépit de son positionnement théorique explicite, Bloomfield invoque bel et bien l’aspect sémantique dans ses analyses, et n’est finalement pas si radical sur ce point. La radicalisation se situe plutôt auprès de ses disciples, appelés en général ‘neobloomfieldiens’. Ceux-ci sont toutefois à peine mentionnés. WW consacre une section assez importante à Zellig Harris (1909–1992), qui est présenté comme celui qui a préparé la voie à la grammaire transformationnelle, avec sa visée mathématique et, plus spécifiquement, sa notion de ‘transformation’. L’auteur esquisse les rapports qui lient Harris à Noam Chomsky, et mentionne aussi l’important travail de maîtrise de Chomsky, The Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew (1951 ; édition revisé publié en 1979), qui jette les bases de ce que sera la ‘phonologie générative’ (Noam Chomsky & Morris Halle, The Sound Pattern of English, 1968). Celle-ci n’est toutefois plus reprise, ce qu’on peut regretter, tout comme le fait que la prétendue ‘révolution générative’, et le côté institutionnel et sociologique de l’histoire, soient laissés de côté. Ainsi, on ne trouve rien sur les tentatives entreprises par Chomsky et les siens pour minimiser ou parfois même ridiculiser l’héritage structuraliste (cf. Murray 1994), ni sur la réception initialement positive de Chomsky (1957) par les structuralistes. Vient ensuite un aperçu du développement du modèle syntaxique, suivi d’une discussion de la dimension politique de l’œuvre de Chomsky. WW cherche le lien entre l’engagement politique à l’entreprise linguistique de Chomsky, et le trouve dans la ‘dimension rationnelle’ sous-jacente à toute l’œuvre de l’intellectuel américain. En même temps, l’auteur nous met en garde contre la ‘mythologie’ que Chomsky a créée autour de cette thèse, notamment avec Cartesian Linguistics (1966), ouvrage extrêmement controversé comme on le sait (Aarsleff 1970). Le chapitre 10 porte sur un courant qui est à maints égards aux antipodes de la grammaire générative : celui de la sociolinguistique et de la linguistique de
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contact. Pour ce qui est de ‘la’ sociolinguistique, c’est évidemment le modèle corrélationnel de William Labov (né en 1927), reliant la variation linguistique à la variation sociale, qui occupe une place de choix. On aurait peut-être souhaité trouver ici quelques paragraphes sur la genèse de la sociolinguistique au sens plus large, sur les lignes de développement qui y convergent (ethnolinguistique, linguistique de contact, …), et sur l’opposition contre l’approche homogénéisante totale du chomskisme, exprimée le plus clairement dans les pages initiales de Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965), où il est question d’un locuteur-auditeur idéal dans une communauté linguistique complètement homogène (Chomsky 1965 : 3). WW passe en revue les caractéristiques essentielles du modèle labovien, allant de l’article pionnier de 1963 jusqu’aux volumes de synthèse plus récents (1994, 2001), et il traite aussi brièvement les études sur les réseaux sociaux (James Milroy [né en 1933]). Ceux-ci sont en effet complémentaires aux travaux de Labov, qui a clairement focalisé sur le macro-niveau des systèmes linguistique et social, négligeant quelque peu le micro-niveau des individus. Cet aspect individuel est pris en compte aussi par l’analyse de la conversation, entreprise par des linguistes comme Basil Bernstein (1924–2000), et par des approches comme l’ethnographie de la communication représenté par Dell Hymes (1927–2009) (p. 131). Le onzième chapitre réunit les deux noms célèbres que sont Algirdas J. Greimas (1917–1992) et Michael A. K. Halliday (né en 1925). Rapprochement qui pourrait surprendre, mais que WW motive en renvoyant aux fondements sémiotiques sur lesquels se basent les deux linguistes. L’auteur discute successivement la sémantique structurale de Greimas, retraçant son origine à la théorie de la valence (Tesnière, cf. supra), l’analyse morphologique du conte (Vladimir Propp) et l’analyse en termes de ‘sèmes’ (Bernard Pottier [né en 1924]), et la grammaire systémique fonctionnelle de Halliday, influencée selon WW par la grammaire stratificationnelle de Sydney Lamb (né en 1929) et le modèle hjelmslévien. Le douzième et avant-dernier chapitre porte sur les approches cognitives du langage qui ont vu le jour au cours des dernières décennies. Comment synthétiser en quelques pages une matière à laquelle a récemment été consacrée un Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics de plusieurs centaines de pages ? WW commence par esquisser les origines anti-générativistes du cognitivisme, et passe ensuite en revue un certain nombre de chefs de file tels que George Lakoff (né en 1941), Ronald Langacker (né en 1942), Charles Fillmore (né en 1929), Leonard Talmy (né en 1940 ?) et d’autres. Par contre, la grammaticalisation en tant que concept et cadre théorique fait cruellement défaut ici (le terme n’apparaît qu’une seule fois dans l’index), ce qui semble à peine justifiable vu le volume considérable de publications réalisées dans ce domaine. De même, il est inconcevable que la diachronie soit quasi absente de ce livre. Si on peut encore comprendre ce choix pour la période antérieure, où la diachronie passe clairement à l’arrière-plan (les
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néobloomfieldiens, par exemple, sont des anti-historicistes convaincus), la diachronie fait décidément sa rentrée à partir des années ’70, et la distinction stricte entre synchronie et diachronie s’estompe manifestement dans la plupart des modèles cognitifs (cf. les théories dites usage-based). Le dernier chapitre ouvre quelques perspectives sur le XXIe siècle : la neurolinguistique, la biolinguistique, le retour de la question de l’origine du langage, et — plus généralement — les rapports entre la linguistique et des disciplines connexes. Enfin, l’épilogue porte sur les tendances à la mathématisation dans la linguistique du XXe siècle. WW rappelle les éléments qui vont dans cette direction dans les chapitres antérieurs (le modèle mathématisant de Hjelmslev, l’approche axiomatique de Bloomfield, les opérations définies par Harris, etc.), montrant que la tendance est effectivement réelle, mais pas aussi fondamentale qu’elle ne l’a été pour les sciences de la nature. En conclusion, on peut dire que le livre de Wildgen offre une bonne synthèse de la linguistique du XXe siècle, même s’il présente d’inévitables lacunes. Lorsqu’on ne dispose que de quelque 200 pages pour couvrir une période de production scientifique prodigieuse, on doit faire des choix. Ceux-ci ne sont pas toujours bien argumentés, il est vrai. Le traitement des théories et des approches discutées est généralement d’un très bon niveau, et souvent illustré d’exemples concrets, qui contribuent à la lisibilité du livre. D’autre part, on aurait aimé une approche un tant soit peu plus ‘sociale’ de l’histoire de la linguistique. Une discipline scientifique ne se développe pas de façon isolée, mais dans un contexte institutionnel et social qui conditionne en partie les débats théoriques. Certes, l’aspect sociologique gagne en importance à mesure que l’on s’approche de la période la plus récente, mais il fait en général défaut quand on remonte plus loin dans l’histoire. De façon plus générale, il serait indiqué d’intégrer davantage la littérature secondaire sur l’histoire et l’historiographie de la linguistique, qui est très riche pour la période concernée. Il nous semble que, vu l’espace limité dont disposait l’auteur, une méthode plus indiquée aurait été de prendre quelques grands axes thématiques transversaux, et de les élaborer à l’aide de modèles particuliers. On pense à synchronie vs. diachronie, homogénéité et hétérogénéité de la communauté linguistique, le rôle du cognitif/psychologique, etc. De cette façon, le lecteur ne s’attendrait pas à un aperçu exhaustif de courants et de linguistes, et la quasi-absence d’une approche sociologique aurait moins gêné, puisqu’on serait alors plutôt dans une logique épistémologique, centrée par définition sur le contenu conceptuel des théories linguistiques.
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Références bibliographiques Aarsleff, Hans. 1970. “The History of Linguistics and Professor Chomsky”. Language 46.570–585. Chevalier, Jean-Claude. 1997. “Trubetzkoy, Jakobson et la France, 1919–1939”. Cahiers de l’Institut de linguistique et des sciences du langage 9.33–46. Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague : Mouton. Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Hymes, Dell & John Fought. 1981. American Structuralism. The Hague : Mouton. Koerner, [E. F.] Konrad. 1988. Saussurean Studies / Études saussuriennes. Avant-propos de Rudolf Engler. Genève : Slatkine. Labov, William. 1963. “The Social Motivation of a Sound Change”. Word 19.273–309. Labov, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change. Vol. I : Internal Factors. Oxford : Blackwell. Labov, William. 2001. Principles of Linguistic Change. Vol. II : Social Factors. Oxford : Blackwell. Martinet, André. 1955. Économie des changements phonétiques : Traité de phonologie diachronique. Berne : A. Francke. Murray, Stephen O. 1994. Theory Groups and the Study of Language in North America : A social history. (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 69.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia : John Benjamins. Sériot, Patrick. 1999. Structure et totalité : Les origines intellectuelles du structuralisme en Europe centrale et orientale. Paris : Presses Universitaires de France.
Adresse de l’auteur du compte rendu : Stijn Verleyen Hippodroomstraat 161 B-8790 Waregem B el g i qu e e-mail : [email protected]
Lexicon Grammaticorum: A bio-bibliographical companion to the history of linguistics. Ed. by Harro Stammerjohann [and others], with Lois Grossmann and Mark DeVoto as English-language editors. 2nd ed., revised and enlarged, 2 vols. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2009. xxxvi, 1602 pp. ISBN 978-3-484-73068-7. ca. € 400.00 / US$ 630.00 (HB). Reviewed by E.F.K. Koerner (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprach wissenschaft, Berlin) 1. Introductory remarks Let it be said right from the start: these two volumes are a major achievement. The editors, the contributors and, last but not least, the publisher deserve our thanks and admiration, the contributors for their good work and the publisher for the courage to invest in this venture at a time when more and more reference works are expected to be available on the internet — and free of charge. I doubt that a work of the present kind will be undertaken ever again by any publisher, and so one can only hope that libraries will purchase this important reference work. Those who found the subtitle of the first edition a bit too “flashy” (and somewhat misleading because it might have given the impression that at least some important living linguists might have been included as well1) will approve of the new one which describes exactly what the user will get, namely, pertinent information of past linguists.2 The coverage is generally excellent; relatively few entries may be undeserving (they may remain nameless3); some scholars, regrettably, have not been included like the anthropologist Adolf Bastian (1826–1905), who, among other works, produced Spachvergleichende Studien (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1870); no lesser scholar than Franz Boas (1858–1942) was a student 1. Indeed, instead of ‘Who’s Who’ the expression ‘Who Was Who’ (such biographical dictionaries do exist!) ought to have been used appropriately. 2. For information on living linguists people during the 1990s could turn to, e.g., Kürschner’s two-volume Handbuch. For more recent entries, the researcher may consult the 14-volume Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (Oxford: Elsevier, 2006). Brekle et al. (1992–2005) and König (2003) deal with past scholars exclusively. (The last three reference works are listed as EncLL, BBHS and IGL, respectively in the front matter.) 3. Still, I wonder why the entry on a certain Windsor Pratt Dagget (p. 346) was retained from the first edition, when not a single primary or secondary source is offered. Is it sheer coincidence that biographer and biographee share the same middle name? Historiographia Linguistica XXXVIII:1/2 (2011), 212–220. doi 10.1075/hl.38.1/2.12koe issn 0302–5160 / e-issn 1569–9781 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
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of his. Although he was not a linguist by any stretch of the term, it might also have been argued that Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) deserved an entry,4 given his influence on many scholars in the language sciences from Wilhelm von Humboldt to Karl Bühler, who rightfully are included in the Lexicon Grammaticorum. Of course, some may be disappointed not to see his or her “pet linguist” (Frederick Newmeyer’s term) included. I, for one, miss entries on Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte (1813–1891), whose analysis of Basque was far superior to Humboldt’s (see Koerner 1972: 222–223), on Ludwig Tobler (1827–1895), famous for his incisive review of Hermann Paul’s Principien (1880), among other writings (ibid., p. 305) — his younger brother Adolf has an entry (pp. 1491–1492), on the Göttingen Indo-Europeanist August (Friedrich Konrad) Fick (1833–1916; see Koerner 1972: 264), on the great Celtologist Kuno Meyer (1858–1919), and on the even greater Semitic scholar Theodor Nöldeke (1836–1930), to name only a few.5 But then I recall Dr Samuel Johnson’s plea in the preface to his famous Dictionary of 1755 that instead of complaining about what has been omitted, the reader should enjoy what has in fact been included. For instance, I noted with great satisfaction that the Africanists Wilhelm Bleek and Carl Meinhof, the decipherer of Hittite Bedřich Hrozný, the Romance linguist Mario Pei, and last but not least A. W. Schlegel have now been accorded their rightful place in the history of linguistics. 2. Specific comments Since this important reference work will be consulted with great profit by many for years to come, the present review will offer in what follows a series of perhaps minor, but still largely relevant — or so I hope — corrections and additions. They may take the following form: Addition/completion of middle or second names of authors (2.1); addition or corrections of life-dates (2.2), and references to further secondary sources (2.3). 4. Some may argue that, e.g., Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), who has been given an extremely long entry (1571–1578), was neither a grammarian nor a linguist, either. A similarly generous treatment (6 columns) is given to the Italian (political) writer Alessandro Manzoni (1785–1873). 5. To these may be added the comparative philologist Archibald Henry Sayce (1845–1933), the classicist Franz Skutsch (1865–1912), or the Icelander Guðbrandur Vigfússon (1827–1889), Reader of Scandinavian languages at Oxford, and Sir Thomas Wade (1818–1895) and Herbert Allen Giles (1845–1935); incidentally both British diplomats and sinologists, who later became the first and second Professor of Chinese at Oxford, respectively. Given that a number of lesser known phoneticians (not to mention literati) have been included, one may note with surprise the absence of an entry on H[ermann] L[udwig] F[erdinand] von Helmholtz (1821–1894), a “towering figure […] at a time when the phonetic sciences came into being” (Bronstein et al. 1977: 88; cf. also Koerner 1972: 349).
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2.1 Addition of middle and other first names Since in a number of entries the middle names, patronymics, and other baptismal names have been added6 — see, e.g., Agard, Frederick B[rowning] (p. 15) —, I offer in what follows a number of further completions, most of which could be gleaned from my (perhaps not so) Universal Index (Koerner 2008). The family name is followed by the middle or other first name(s).7 Middle or second names: Beschi: Giuseppe; Brown: William; Chrétien: Douglas; Delattre: Charles; Di Prieto: Joseph; Eliason: Ellsworth; Ferguson: Albert; Gedney: John; Gelb: Jay; Gray: Henry; Haas: Rosamond; (Zellig) Harris: Sabbettai; Hemachandra: Sūri, Jain; Hjelmslev: Trolle; Hopkins: Edward; Householder: Walter; Larsen: Bredesen; Leopold: Friedrich; (Leo) Meyer: Karl Heinrich; Naylor: Edwin; Reed: Edward; Suarez: Alberto; (Waldo) Sweet: Earle; Ṭahtậwî: Râfi Bek; Tegnér: Henrik Vilhelm; Tesnière: Valérius; Thomsen: Ludvig Peter; Tsuzaki: Manoryu; Ułaszyn: Kazimierz; Lenneberg: Heinz; (Alvin) Liberman: Meyer; Maurer: Warren; Morris: William;8 Noreen: Gotthard; Papias: (his cognomem) Vocabulista; (Hermann) Paul: Otto Theodor; Ventris: George Francis; Vinson: Élie Honoré;9 Wonderly: Lower. 6. In the present volumes, entries can take the following form — leaving aside the many instances of Latin(ized) and regular names: a) Amara (one name only); b) Adam, Quirin François Lucien (although the first two names were never used by the author — cf. also the entries on Ahlqvist, Andersen, etc.); c) Allen, Harold Byron (where the author used a middle initial only); d) Atwood, E[lmer] Bagby (which would be the preferable technique in this case); e) Austin, John Langshaw (who went by two initials only); f) Meyer, Marie-Paul-Hyacinthe (who was only known as Paul Meyer), and g) Anagnostopoulos, Georgios P. (where the middle name was not supplied by the author of the entry). Apparently, authors were given no guidance from the editors as to what rules to follow. 7. Humboldt had altogether five baptismal names: (Friedrich) Wilhelm (Christian Karl Ferdinand); we also should give him his aristocratic title ‘Freiherr’ back. In the case of Volney, the situation is much more complex and should probably read: Volney, Constantin François (Chasseboeuf, comte de Boisgirais, dit). 8. Not to be confused with Charles Morris (1833–1922), the author of The Aryan Race: Its origins and achievements (Chicago: S. Griggs, 1888). 9. Henri Weil’s first name was originally ‘Heinrich’ as duly noted in the case of Henry M[ax] Hoenigswald (originally: Hönigswald, like his father, the philosopher Richard Hönigswald [(1875–1947)], for instance. The author of the entry on Ernst Cassirer mixed up the two (p. 267). In the case of the Berlin-born Kahane, whose adopted nomen academicum should have been given as ‘Henry’, the first name was Heinrich; his other name ‘Romanos’ appears to be — pace Steven Dworkin — Kahane’s own invention. He never used a middle initial as we may gather from the Bibliographie linguistique (1939–) and other sources, including his autobiography (Kahane 1991).
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Various names are incomplete, wrongly entered or could have been extended, e.g., Aarhus was a cognomen of Madsen (cf. his correct place in Stammerjohann, ed. 1996: 599); Brøndal, Viggo (alias Rasmus Hansen); Lowie (alias Löwe); Hiob Ludolf (alias Job Leutholf); John of Garland (alias Johannes de Garlandia);10 Perizonius (alias Jacobus Voorbroek); Philo Alexandrinus also known as Philo Judaeus; Porthan should have his original Finnish surname Purtanen listed, too; Şăineanu, who published in French under the name of Lazare Sainéan, was originally named Eliezer Schein; J. C. Scaliger’s real name was Giulio Bordone; Albert Sechehaye also used his second first name Charles before 1916; Abbé Sicard’s pseudonym Dracis has been left out; Georges Straka’s original first name was Jiří; Terracini’s first name was Aron(ne). Stephen A. Wurm (alias Stefan Adolf Wurm). Everyone with specialist knowledge on certain authors will find similar omissions, but in general entries based on individual research are rather solid.11 2.2 Completion or correction of life dates The great majority of entries supply the best possible dates of authors. Everyone knows that before the arrival of printing in Europe many life dates are approximations, although we have good records on many Roman authors, quite unlike the medieval period, not to mention non-Western, e.g., Indian, traditions. (All that we know of the identity of Pāṇini, for instance, is that he must have lived in the “mid-4th c. B.C. at the latest” (p. 1116). Instead of a ‘life-and-work’ entry, we get a 7-column exposé of his system of grammar and its ensuing discussion of concepts associated with it, plus a one-column list of secondary sources.) Regarding authors of the Middle Ages, I could offer few additions or corrections; William of Champeaux (c.1070–c.1121) is one of those I noted. Also Walter Burley could surely not have died “after 1244”, if he was said to have been born “ca. 1275”. (A medievalist could no doubt have found more errors.) Still, a number of post-Renaissance authors’ biographical dates are difficult to ascertain; e.g., Avendaño, Joaquín de (1812–post 1871); Cawdrey, Robert (c.1537/38–1604); Estienne, Henri (b.1531); Frangk, Fabian (c.1450–post 1538); 10. It would be difficult to believe that he could have lectured “at Oxford University ca. 1210 to 1213” had he been born “ca. 1195” (p. 755). 11. For instance, Peider Lansel (1863–1943), chief reviver of Rhaeto-Romansh, might have been added. Also the classical philologist Constantine Lascaris (1433–1501); on him, see Eckstein (1966 [1871]: 321). Historians of sociolinguistics may regret that the otherwise informative entry on Eduard Hermann (1869–1950) by the late Günter Neumann (p. 645) does not also list his 1929 revisit of the location which Louis Gauchat (1866–1942) had based his famous 1905 article on (see p. 515). It’s ironic that an author by the name of Jürgen Klausenburger (b.1942 in Romania) should omit the fact that the original German name for today’s Cluj was Klausenburg (p. 592).
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Kühner (b.180212); La Touche, Pierre (also: Nicolas, b. c.1660); Martinez López, Pedro (1797–1867); Maupas, Charles, if Charles Cauchon de Maupas, baron du Tour is meant (1566–1629); Molina, Alonso de (1514–1585); Mulcaster, Richard (b.1532); Luis de Pastrana (d. post-1583); Riederer, Friedrich (b. c.1450); Robinson, Robert (c.1580–post 1617); Villar, Juan (b.1596). The most egregious oversight concerns John Bulwer’s life-dates given as “unknown” (p. 228), when the late reviser of the entry, at the time a member of the HL Board, lists an article by Jeffrey Wollock of 1996, in whose very title the dates “(1606–1656)” appear (p. 230). 2.3 Other secondary sources of biographical information When in Spring 1970 I started working on what became Koerner (1972), I consulted, among other sources, the large Library of Congress volumes, early editions of which supplied life dates and full names that could not be found elsewhere. For North American linguists the various editions of the Directory of American Scholars, volume III: Foreign Languages, Linguistics and Philology (New York: R. R. Bowker) is useful. For instance, Eliason’s year of birth (1907) could have been found in both the 41964 and the 71978 editions that I happen to own, and most of the middle names, too.13 Brekle et al. (1992–2005) and Bronstein et al. (1977) are listed in the sources as BBHS and BDPS, respectively, whereas others by the author’s (e.g., Bursill-Hall) or first editor’s name (which victimizes the poor ‘et al.’s who frequently did most of the work). Of course, conventional encyclopedias have at times been consulted, though these more often than not include better known figures only. I must mention the 2-volume Chambers Biographical Dictionary (Edinburgh, 1974), however. More important omissions are Eckstein’s (1810– 1885) Nomenclator Philologorum (1966 [1871]) and Pökel’s (1819–before 1902) Philologisches Schriftsteller-Lexikon (1974 [1882]), to mention just two useful biobibliographical sources that happen to be on my shelf. By now, even Kürschner’s two-volume Linguisten-Handbuch of 1994, which, by the way, includes a telling entry on the General editor (pp. 904–905), could serve as such a reference tool.
12. According to Eckstein (1966 [1871]: 309), he was a student in Göttingen in 1821; so he couldn’t have been born in 1822. 13. In these, Dwight Bolinger’s middle name is given as ‘LeMerton’, not ‘Lemerton’ as on p. 183. However, I must concede that I could not find Theodore M. Lightner (p. 910) anywhere. In this case it is particularly curious as the author of his entry was a former wife of his, but then she herself did not divulge what her middle initial ‘S.’ stood for either.
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3. Concluding remarks There may, finally, be the question of editorial control. It appears that the General Editor saw his main task as dividing up the work among his ‘co-editors’ (28 in number14), who either wrote entries themselves or in their turn invited others to do them. Among the former belongs first and foremost Kees Versteegh (b.1947), who provided scores of carefully crafted and well-informed biographical pieces on Arab linguists,15 and in second place Andrzej M[aria] Lewicki (b.1934), who saw to it that a great number of Slavic linguists were not overlooked. (There is not a single Russian scholar among these sub-editors.16) Among the latter, I’d count Tullio De Mauro (b.1932), although he has several entries to his credit — entries on Ugo Angelo Canello, Giacinto Carena, and Luigi Ceci, none of particular consequence outside of particular Italian circles. Italian scholars are, it may be noted, over-represented in this biographical work; much of the imbalance was caused right from the start by the appointment of two Italian scholars as co-editors, but, for instance, only one Germanist to take care of all German-speaking countries. The space given to them is sometimes remarkable: why does an Italian writer like Alessandro Manzoni get 6 columns, but an internationally influential linguist like Martinet a bit more than 3 columns? The Italian poet Leopardi gets 7 columns; the great Slavist and Indo-Europeanist Leskien only 3. While 9 columns are devoted to Dante, only 1½ are given to Delbrück! Compare the 4½ pages (9+ columns!) granted to the important 19thcentury linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli (1829–1907) to the barely 18 lines given to the Latvian-German grammarian August(s) Bi(e)lenstein(s) (1826–1907). It is not only Italians who benefit from such disproportions. Bopp and Brugmann, for instance, each received 2½ columns only, whereas Henry Sweet has 7 columns. This list could be extended without any problem.17 In some cases, individual contribu14. Among these, one looks in vain for someone working in fields like (the history of) psycholinguistics or any interdisciplinary research areas. This explains the absence of pioneers in their respective fields like Adolf Kussmaul (1822–1902) in speech pathology or William Preyer (1841–1897) in child language acquisition, to mention just two examples (cf. Koerner 1972: 338 and 342, for references). 15. Still, it is strange that the influential Arab grammarian al-Khalîl ibn Aḥmad al-Farâhîdî (8th cent. A.D.) — I don’t supply his full name — appears to have been left out (see Ryding, ed. 1998). 16. Actually, the bulk of the entries on Russian scholars were written by Roman Lewicki (b.1953). Lest I forget to mention it, according to the “Preface to the Second Edition” (p. v), two more scholars were assigned to cover “South Slavic countries”: Robert Hammel (Berlin) and Jolanta Mindak (Warsaw). 17. A modest 19th-century phonetician receives 16 lines (p. 498) — a reference to Bronstein et al. (1977: 65) could have supplied even more information — whereas the pioneer in Native
218 E.F.K. Koerner: Review of Stammerjohann [and others] (2009)
tors are consistently brief or otherwise.18 So there is an obvious lack of balance throughout these volumes, and here one misses the hand of an editor who knows the subject and can judge the relative importance of the scholars treated. In the Preface to the first edition reproduced in the second (vii–viii), the General Editor gave the following explanation of how the original 1,047-page volume came together (and this procedure was obviously extended to the enlarged edition): The original plan agreed upon with the publisher provided for 1,000 large-size, double-column pages corresponding to 1,000 entries; the average length of an entry was to be one page. Of these 1,000 pages, each co-editor was allocated space roughly proportionate to the area of his or her responsibility. Within their allocated space, the co-editors suggested the entries to be included, and once the list was agreed upon, the entries were prepared. As is so often the case, however, more entries were written than originally planned and many turned out longer than expected. In consequence the total number of entries rose to over 1,500. I therefore beg the reader’s indulgence for the unseemly number of abbreviations needed to save space.19
The list of abbreviations for “Periodicals, Reference Works, and Institutions” is indeed huge (xvi–xxxiii), but the bulk are largely identical to the sigla found in the annual volumes of the Bibliographie linguistique, and so the user would not be too irritated by these, except that reference works such as Brekle et al. (1992–2005) and others listed in the References below should have been classified separately. The real problem with the Lexicon Grammaticorum is that the General Editor does not appear to have made any effort to ask for cut-backs or revisions of the various over-long entries especially for authors that are hard to identify as linguists or philologists (see some of the examples mentioned above), let alone the deletion of American ethnolinguistics Albert Gallatin (1761–1849) barely receives three lines more, etc. 18. A famous master of brevity — or should we say: succinctness? — has been Eric P[ratt] Hamp (b.1920); see, e.g., his 14-line entry on Roger Williams (c.1604–1683) or his 16-line piece on a certain Nathaniel Storrs (1764–1851), whose only claim to fame was his subsidy to an American pronouncing dictionary (1855). His entry on the much better known experimental phonetician Edward Wheeler Scripture (1864–1945) didn’t receive a line more. When phonetics is involved, Hamp gleaned most of the information from Bronstein et al. (1977). Barely 6 lines were accorded to ‘biolinguist’ John Henry Muyskens (1887–1957). But then a little known experimental phonetician receives a full column (527–528), even a few lines more than in Bronstein et al. (1977: 68). In several of these ‘reduction’ exercises, e.g., on printer and publisher Elias Longley (1822–c.1890) on p. 927, one wonders what use has been served here. 19. Even this attempt at economy of space has at times been counteracted when, for instance, a 20th-century Polonist, about whom bio-bibliographical information is easy to come by, receives an almost full-page bibliography (851–852).
Reviews / Comptes rendus / Besprechungen 219
those entries that really don’t belong into an enterprise of the present kind. Quite a number of entries, more often than not dealing with lesser figures in the history of linguistics, are so short that one looks in vain for what is described as the typical format: In general, each entry consists of three sections: biography; analysis of the work and its importance for the history of linguistics, and bibliography, the latter necessarily limited for reasons of space. Entries approved by the co-editor were then passed to the General Editor; both read the proofs. (“Preface”, p. vii)
Apart from the fact that a number of entries do not satisfy the above description, it is obvious that at the proof stage it is a bit late to perform the task that one expects of an editor, namely, to edit. Inconsistencies of another kind could be noted. For instance, when in most instances A.D. and B.C. are used, why do we find that Servius lived “end of the 4th c. CE [= ‘Common Era’]” (p. 1380)?20 Demetrius’ supposed teacher (p. 367) is said to have lived “sometime between 1st c. B.C. and 1st c. C.E.”. Since there has been in recent years a growing interest in ‘Missionary Linguistics’, one would have liked to see religious affiliations, notably Jesuits but by no means exclusively, to be added to, e.g., Juan Villar, or an O.F.M. after the name of the Franciscan missionary Alonso de Molina. Exceptionally, in the case of Beschi, a “(S.J.)” was added. (See Koerner 2008: xii–xiv, for an argument and a reference to recent conference volumes devoted to the subject, p. xvi. Cf. also the double issue of HL 36/2009 and the extensive list of primary and secondary sources in Zwartjes 2010.) All these “beefs” aside, the majority of the co-editors have done such a good job that, all told, the Lexicon Grammaticorum will serve the field for a long time to come. Many scholars world-wide will have profited from the information provided in the first edition, and they will profit even more from the second, considerably extended edition. Myself not the least. In my Universal Index of 2008, I marked each entry where a biographical entry can be found in the 1996 Lexicon Grammaticorum, and in my preparation of the electronic edition that will become available to everyone on the internet, I shall be happy to refer the user to the many new entries.
References Brekle, Herbert E., Edeltraud Dobnig-Jülch, Hans Jürgen Höller & Helmut Weiß, eds. 1992– 2005. Bio-bibliographisches Handbuch zur Sprachwissenschaft des 18. Jahrhunderts: Die
20. Another — curious — example: Yang Xiong was born “53 B.C.”, but died “18 C.E.” (p. 1667).
220 E.F.K. Koerner: Review of Stammerjohann [and others] (2009) Grammatiker, Lexikographen und Sprachtheoretiker des deutschsprachigen Raums mit Beschreibung ihrer Werke. 8 vols. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Bronstein, Arthur J., Lawrence J. Raphael & Cj [sic] Stevens, eds. 1977. A Biographical Dictionary of the Phonetic Sciences. New York: The Press of Lehman College. Eckstein, Friedrich August. 1871. Nomenclator Philologorum. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner. (Repr., Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966.) Hermann, Eduard. 1929. “Lautveränderungen in der Individualsprache einer Mundart”. Nachrichten der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen 9.195–214. Jungraithmayr, Herrmann & Wilhelm J. G. Möhlig, eds. 1983. Lexikon der Afrikanistik: Afrikanische Sprachen und ihre Erforschung. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. Kahane, Henry. 1991. “A Linguist’s Vita as Historiography”. First Person Singular II: Autobiographies by North American scholars in the language sciences ed. by [E. F.] Konrad Koerner, 187–204. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. König, Christoph, ed. 2003. Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950. 3 vols. Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter. Koerner, E.F.K. 1972. “Background Sources of F. de Saussure’s Linguistic Theory, 1816–1916”. Bibliographia Saussureana 1870–1970: An annotated, classified bibliography on the background, development and actual relevance of Ferdinand de Saussure’s general theory of language by Koerner, 215–351. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press. Koerner, E.F.K. 2008. Universal Index of Biographical Names in the Language Sciences. (= Studies in the History of in the Language Sciences, 113.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kürschner, Wilfried, ed. 1994. Linguisten-Handbuch: Biographische und bibliographische Daten deutschsprachiger Sprachwissenschaftlerinnen und Sprachwissenschaftler der Gegenwart. 2 vols. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Pökel, Wilhelm. 1882. Philologisches Schriftsteller-Lexikon. Leipzig: Krüger. (Repr., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1974). Ryding, Karin C[hristine], ed. Early Medieval Arabic: Studies on al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad. Washington. D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Stammerjohann, Harro, gen. ed. 1996. Lexicon Grammaticorum: Who’s who in the history of world linguistics. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Wollock, Jeffrey. “John Bulwer’s (1606–1656) Place in the History of the Deaf ”. Historiographia Linguistica 23:1/2.1–46 (1996). Zwartjes, Otto. Forthcoming. Revitalizing Linguistic Documentation: Portuguese missionary grammars, mid-16th to late 18th centuries. (= Studies in the History of in the Language Sciences) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Reviewer’s address: E.F.K. Koerner Cantianstr. 11 D-10437 Berlin G e r many
Saussure: A Guide for the Perplexed. By Paul Bouissac. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010. v, 152 pp. ISBN: 9781-4411-8601-0. $24.95 (PB). Reviewed by W. Terrence Gordon (Dalhousie University, Halifax) Until 2008, a search for a biography of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) yielded only Douglas W. Freshfield’s (1845–1934) The Life of Horace Benedict de Saussure (great-grandfather of Ferdinand). But since the Saussure centenary launched in Geneva in 2001, a steady stream of publications has included newly discovered writings of Ferdinand de Saussure himself, translations of these, new commentaries, the first volume (2008) of a projected three-volume biography by Claudia Mejía Quijano, and now, Paul Bouissac’s masterly and stimulating guide to the thought and legacy of le maître genevois. The book is organized into nine principal chapters and two appendices. Bouissac begins in medias res with Saussure’s last lectures on general linguistics — the middle, in this case, being the oral delivery of the course, situated between the scholar’s formative years and the period during which his ideas, wearing what Bouissac will later call “the mortuary mask” (p. 140) of the Course in General Linguistics (henceforth CGL), migrated from linguistics to other disciplines. Chapters 2 to 4 are biographical, drawing on Mejía Quijano and Tullio De Mauro’s (b. 1932) notes to the Cours de linguistique générale (henceforth CLG), dubbed by De Mauro himself “le texte vulgate” (1972: xvii). Chapters 5 to 7 are given to Saussure’s foundational concepts as articulated in his manuscripts. Chapter 8 ranges briefly over the CLG as edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye and the English translations of Wade Baskin (1959) and Roy Harris (1983). Chapter 9 is titled “Saussure’s Double Legacy and Beyond.” Bouissac makes his position clear from the outset: “The purpose of this book is not to take sides in […] mostly sterile confrontations, but to lead to a clear understanding of the problems that Saussure confronted in his relentless quest to come to grips with the puzzle of natural language” (p. 2). Later, readers might be tempted to think that Bouissac has relented from this avowed neutrality. Introducing Chapter 7, he touches on criticism directed at Saussure for ignoring “the dynamic of time” (p. 104) — perhaps a reference to the work of Gustave Guillaume (1883– 1960) — stating: “Nothing could be farther from the truth” (ibid.). Presumably skirmishes along the road to clear understanding do not constitute engagement in sterile confrontations. Bouissac is not so much cheering for Saussure as raising his Historiographia Linguistica XXXVIII:1/2 (2011), 221–226. doi 10.1075/hl.38.1/2.13gor issn 0302–5160 / e-issn 1569–9781 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
222 W. Terrence Gordon: Review of Bouissac (2010)
voice enough to get the attention of those who have been deafened by print — the arbitrary and linear version of Saussure fashioned by his posthumous editors. Another dimension of Bouissac’s stance is also articulated in his Introduction: “[T]he goal of this book is neither to preach Saussurism [defined explicitly at page 132] nor to engage in a critical deconstruction of the virtual theory that can be extrapolated from his teaching” (p. 5). This is, of course, an oblique reference to Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), who is mentioned once at page 133, where Bouissac’s admirable restraint permits him to say only that Derrida had a superficial knowledge of linguistics. Elsewhere (p. 92), Bouissac discusses how the association between the two sides of the linguistic sign differs for Saussure from traditional philosophical views without mentioning that the distinction absolves Saussure from Derrida’s charge that he viewed language as a vehicle for the expression of pre-existing ideas. In the same introductory pages, Bouissac sets out his method alongside his objectives: “[W]e will rely on Saussure’s own writings as they have been compiled and edited to date rather than on the posthumous book” (p. 4). The parole of Saussure, as it were, rather than the Saussurean langue (system) inferred from it by Bally and Sechehaye. Throughout the book, Bouissac focuses on the terminological snares that come with the territory that Saussure staked out (cf. Gordon 1997). Given this emphasis, it is interesting to note that the first mention of Saussure’s key terms is couched as follows: “[W]e will endeavor to clarify the stock of concepts that have become associated with his intellectual legacy in the form of a set of oppositions such as langue/parole, signifiant/signifié, synchrony/diachrony, and other terms associated with these basic dichotomies” (p. 4). Bouissac continues for the most part to use oppositions, dichotomies, dualities in contrast, for example, to Thibault (1997), who takes every opportunity to remind readers that the so-called oppositions are self-transcending by referring to them as complementarities. It is only at page 87 that we find in Bouissac “necessary complementariness”. Bouissac’s flair for the dramatic serves him well in his first principal chapter, evoking the atmosphere of the lecture hall where Saussure delivered the third and final version of his course on general linguistics between October 1910 and July 1911: “The stakes are quite high. These introductory remarks amount to promising the students a sort of intellectual grail: the truth about language that only a scientific method can deliver. And this is to happen here and now” (p. 9). As the course progresses, the reader is taken from an atmosphere of tranquility to one of foreboding: “It is a beautiful spring day, sunny and breezy. The windows are wide open. Monsieur de Saussure is a few minutes late. He prefers to have the windows closed. He looks tired, slightly out of breath. He coughs. He seems to have a cold. He may have lost some weight lately” (p. 17).
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Many of the key notions that will be revisited in greater detail later appear in Chapter 1, delivered by Saussure himself as bold assertions: “It [linguistic value] is all a matter of relations among relations” (p. 34); “Language as a whole cannot be the object of a scientific inquiry” (p. 18), and as arresting similes and metaphors: “Our vocal organs are like an instrument that we can play, but we need a score (a language), so that we can play something. Then, the next question that arises is: what is the nature of the score in the case of linguistics?” (p. 13). Other notions are shored up in concise and elegant fashion by Bouissac: “[H]e will call langue the system that makes possible all languages” (p. 12); “What counts is to understand that langue is a necessary tool for the faculty of language [langage] to operate” (p. 20). The three biographical chapters are by no means limited to life data. The discussion of Saussure’s Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes of 1878 is substantial in itself, characterizing the work as quasimathematical and anticipating thereby later discussion of Saussure’s prospective solution to the intractable puzzle of language through mathematics (inter alia pp. 80, 100, 103, 113). With respect to the puzzle, Bouissac begins his section entitled “Where is langue located?” thus: “The difficulty is compounded when the question of the embodiment of language as a system is raised” (p. 80). One might ask: why raise it? If langue is purely relational, as Saussure asserts, then there is no non-metaphorical sense in which it has an embodiment; relation as a mode of reality being separate from its cause or ground of existence. The answer is: because “Saussure repeatedly asserted that language is ‘concrete’ ” (p. 81). In addition to the discussion of the Mémoire, Bouissac’s biographical chapters range over the inaugural lectures that Saussure delivered upon his return to Geneva in 1891, the scholarly support he gave to Theodore Flournoy (1854–1920) in the latter’s investigation of an allegedly Sanskrit-speaking spirit medium (Saussure dubbed her speech “Sanskritoid” [p. 64]), his extensive study of symbols in myths and legends, and, inevitably, the research on anagrams that grew out of his inquiry into Saturnian verse. Given that Saussure saw clearly how misguided the Junggrammatiker were in their Ausnahmslosigkeit hypothesis, it is curious that he devoted so much time to the tentative formulation of laws of composition governing the use of anagrams. It is perhaps no less curious that this work coincides almost exactly with the period during which he prepared the lectures for his three courses in general linguistics. Scant attention has been paid to the question of whether the linguistic edifice for which Saussure sought to provide the foundation could include room for anagrams. (cf. Gordon & Schogt 1999). What is perfectly clear, however, is succinctly summed up by Bouissac as “his willingness to explore the language phenomenon in any form in which it could be scientifically observed” (p. 64).
224 W. Terrence Gordon: Review of Bouissac (2010)
In spite of its relative brevity, Saussure: A Guide for the Perplexed consistently provides rich and balanced treatment of the most important topics for both uninitiated readers and seasoned scholars. Beginning in Chapter 5, “Linguistics as a Science: Saussure’s distinction between langue (language as system) and parole (language in use)”, Bouissac works his way through the expression in primary sources, including The Twofold Essence of Language of all the ideas that eventually found their way into the CLG/CGL. Much earlier (p. 12) he noted that Saussure’s similes and metaphors function to call attention to the specialized meanings he assigns to everyday terms. Nowhere is this more so than in the case of langue, which Saussure characterizes as a tool (p. 82). This would have pleased Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980), who did not discover Saussure till the mid-1970s, but used the same metaphor a decade earlier, calling language mankind’s first tool for letting go of the environment in order to grasp it in new ways (Gordon 2010: 20). It is interesting to speculate as to whether the close reading of all the primary sources so carefully set out by Bouissac might have avoided some of the interpretive shipwrecks caused by the shoals of the Cours. He speaks plainly about a passage in translation missing the point and generating misunderstanding (p. 78), but the Cours was misread in the original French by its most formidable critics, Charles Kay Ogden (1889–1957) and Ivor Armstrong Richards (1893–1979), as the first edition of The Meaning of Meaning (1923) indicates. De Mauro comments on their harsh judgment (Saussure 1972: 372) and its effect (“a limité la présence de Saussure dans les pays anglo-saxons”) but without explicitly stating that the critique is grounded in an erroneous reading. It would be no exaggeration to say that Ogden and Richards’s negative views instilled an anti-Saussurean bias in British linguistics for two generations (Gordon 1994). They could have profited from reading Bouissac: “[Saussure] provocatively asserts that words stand in the way of the true science of words” (p. 60). When Bouissac turns his attention to the ‘vulgate’, he gives it a scant four and a half pages. The presentation makes no explicit confrontation between the Bally and Sechehaye text and unearthed manuscripts from Saussure’s pen, nor between the editors’ production and the notebooks of Émile Constantin (1888–1953), for example. The extensive and valuable exposition of Saussure from primary sources in Bouissac’s earlier chapters was not intended as a lead-in to such confrontation. Recall the comment on “sterile confrontations” (p. 2). Bouissac’s goal, like Saussure’s, is purely heuristic and epistemological in thrust. Many key passages in Bally and Sechehaye’s rendering of Saussure’s ideas, in fact, correspond very closely to passages from Saussure’s original notes and manuscripts. This brings credit to the two frequently maligned editors and, far from making the elaboration of latter-day discoveries redundant, enriches the understanding of linguistics in a manner that resonates fully with Saussure’s own pedagogical style.
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In his closing pages, Bouissac notes how “Saussure’s name was ritualistically invoked” (p. 132) among the third generation of scholars to be touched by his ideas. One is reminded of the cartoon adorning the cover of Louis-Jean Calvet’s Pour et contre Saussure, alluding to the events of May 1968. It shows a street thronged with demonstrators, two of whom brandish signs: one reading “Vive Saussure”, another emblazoned “A bas Saussure”. Elsewhere in his closing section, Bouissac refers to Roy Harris’s Saussure and his Interpreters: “Harris’s timely book […] could have been aptly entitled Saussure and his Misinterpreters” (p. 134). The discussion fairly cries for some mention of Raymond Tallis’s Not Saussure (1995). It would have been intriguing, in particular, to have Bouissac’s comment on Harris’s one brief and implicitly dismissive comment on Tallis (Harris 2001: 11). It would be difficult, in the allotted space remaining, to discuss all the illuminating passages to be found in Bouissac’s treatment. A brief and partial enumeration must suffice: 1. In spite of the vast literature surrounding Saussure, Bouissac brings insights not to be found elsewhere: “What is capital for Saussure is that the relationship of idea to form is not identical to the relationship of form to idea” (p. 102); 2. An explanation is offered for why Saussure had to be more definite in his lectures than he was in his own mind about the incontrovertibility of the principles he was developing (inter alia pp. 8 and 83); 3. Formulations of key ideas consistently respect and underscore the cohesiveness that Saussure intended to give them: “[A] sign exists only by virtue of its signification; a signification exists only by virtue of its sign; and signs and significations exist only by virtue of the differences between signs” (p. 101); 4. A clear, concise, and comprehensive summary of the diffusion of Saussure’s ideas among three successive generations of scholars is given (pp. 126–140); 5. The complete documentation of Saussure’s Nachlass is provided. All this is quite remarkable and unblemished by the apparently total lack of editorial attention given to the text: inter alia, Roger for Robert [Godel] (p. 58), linguistics signs (p. 105), principle of lesser [recte: least] effort (p. 112), the mass of speaking subject (p. 119). But this may be of importance in the post-literate age to few persons other than a reviewer keen to document the scrupulous attention he has lavished on the text.
References Baskin, Wade, transl. 1959. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics. New York: Philosophical Library. Calvet, Louis-Jean. 1975. Pour et contre Saussure: Vers une linguistique sociale. Paris: Payot. Freshfield, Douglas W. 1920. The Life of Horace Benedict de Saussure. London: Edward Arnold.
226 W. Terrence Gordon: Review of Bouissac (2010) Gordon, W. Terrence. 1994. “Bridging Saussurean Structuralism and British Linguistic Thought”. Historiographia Linguistica 21:1/2.123–136. Gordon, W. Terrence. 1997. “Saussure as Terminologist”. Mélanges de linguistique offerts à Rostislav Kocourek ed. by Lise Lapierre et al., 263–269. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Dalhousie University. Gordon, W. Terrence. 2010. McLuhan: A guide for the perplexed. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Gordon, W. Terrence & Henry G. Schogt. 1999. “Ferdinand de Saussure: The anagrams and the Cours”. The Emergence of the Modern Language Sciences: Studies in the transition from historical-comparative to structural linguistics ed. by Sheila Embleton, John E. Joseph & HansJosef Niederehe, vol. I: Historiographical Perspectives, 139–149. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Harris, Roy, transl. 1983. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics. London: Duckworth. Harris, Roy. 2001. Saussure and His Interpreters. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Mejía Quijano, Claudia. 2008. Le Cours d’une vie: Portrait diachronique de Ferdinand de Saussure. Nantes: Éditions Cécile Defaut. Ogden, Charles Kay & Ivor Armstrong Richards. 1994 [1923]. The Meaning of Meaning. Ed. by W. Terrence Gordon. London: Thoemmes/Routledge. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1972 [1916]. Cours de linguistique générale. Édition critique préparée par Tullio de Mauro. Paris: Payot. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 2006. “The Two-Fold Essence of Language”. Writings in General Linguistics ed. and transl. by Carol Sanders and Matthew Pires with the assistance of Peter Figueroa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tallis, Raymond. 1995. Not Sausure. London: Macmillan. Thibault, Paul J. 1997. Re-Reading Saussure. London: Routledge.
Reviewer’s address: W. Terrence Gordon Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia C ana d a B3H 3J5 e-mail: [email protected]
De la grammaire à l’inconscient. Dans les traces de Damourette et Pichon. Textes réunis par Michel Arrivé, Valelia Muni Toke et Claudine Normand. Limoges : Lambert-Lucas, 2010, 309 pp. ISBN : 978-2-35935022-7 (France). € 35 (broché). Compte rendu de Peter Lauwers (Université de Gand & Université de Leuven) 1. Introduction Ce recueil réunit les actes du colloque éponyme qui a eu lieu à Cerisy-la-Salle du 1er au 11 août 2009, presque un siècle après que, en 1911, les deux illustres grammairiens se sont attelés à leur monumental Essai de grammaire de la langue française (désormais l’Essai) et presque 30 ans après le premier colloque consacré à cet ouvrage (Travaux de Linguistique 9/10, 1982/83). Avec ses 7 tomes (les deux derniers ayant été achevés après le décès des auteurs), cet ouvrage reste à ce jour la grammaire la plus volumineuse du français et, sans aucun doute, l’une des plus originales, mais aussi des plus controversées. Les 31 contributions, précédées d’une introduction qui rappelle les principaux jalons biographiques, sont réparties en 4 sections thématiques, représentant autant d’étapes dans le ‘cheminement’ proposé par les coordonnateurs du recueil, cheminement ontologique, des mots à la pensée, cette pensée nationale inconsciente cristallisée dans les structures langagières du français, cette innere Sprachform qui ne se laisse saisir qu’au prix d’une analyse minutieuse des formes : 1) la pertinence actuelle des analyses linguistiques de Jacques Damourette (1873–1943) et Édouard Pichon (1890–1940) — désormais D&P ; 2) le nationalisme dans la réflexion linguistique de D&P ; 3) l’importance du locuteur et 4) les rapports entre linguistique et psychanalyse. La structure du recueil est limpide, mais certains choix ne laissent pas de surprendre : pourquoi avoir dissocié les deux articles sur le métalangage (Dan Savatovsky et Michel Arrivé), en insérant le premier dans la section sur le nationalisme, le second dans la quatrième section, en les reliant par un simple renvoi interne ? De même, pourquoi avoir préféré l’ordre purement alphabétique à l’intérieur de chacune des quatre parties ? On aurait pu réunir, par exemple, les contributions de Christian Surcouf, d’Adeline Patard et de Rose-Marie Gerbe qui toutes portent sur le système des temps. Ou encore, celles de Josette Larue-Tondeur et de Jesús Vázquez Molina sur le ne explétif. La nature du recueil se laisse difficilement caractériser : il relève autant de l’histoire et de l’épistémologie de la linguistique — conçue à travers ses rapports Historiographia Linguistica XXXVIII:1/2 (2011), 227–234. doi 10.1075/hl.38.1/2.15lau issn 0302–5160 / e-issn 1569–9781 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
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avec la psychanalyse — que de la linguistique descriptive. Les études historiographiques et/ou épistémologiques offrent tantôt une analyse ‘interne’ de l’ouvrage, qui ne donne jamais dans la paraphrase (ou presque jamais, l’étude de Maribel Peñalver-Vicea étant peut-être une exception), tantôt une analyse qui cherche à le contextualiser, en en explorant les sources ou, plus souvent, en confrontant les vues de D&P à celles de certains linguistes et courants idéologiques contemporains, pour détecter d’éventuelles influences ou analogies. Parmi les études qui abordent les analyses de D&P du point de vue de la linguistique descriptive moderne, on peut distinguer deux groupes : celles qui cherchent à évaluer les propositions de D&P à la lumière des résultats de la linguistique contemporaine (David Gaatone, Cécile Barbet & Yves Le Bozec, André Valli, Adeline Patard) et celles qui s’y appuient seulement pour proposer leur propre théorie (par ex., Christian Surcouf, María Dolores Vivero Garcia), au risque de reléguer quelque peu à l’arrière-plan l’héritage de D&P (Rose-Marie Gerbe). Dans ce qui suit, nous allons présenter brièvement les contributions de chacun de ces deux axes, en suivant un ordre thématique légèrement différent que celui proposé par les coordonnateurs du volume. 2. Pertinence pour la linguistique moderne Comme bon nombre des contributions émanent donc de linguistes qui n’ont pas pour but premier de situer le travail de D&P dans l’histoire de la linguistique, le choix des thèmes abordés reflète assez bien en quoi leur œuvre reste pertinente de nos jours. Ainsi, plusieurs contributions gravitent autour des mêmes concepts : la théorie énonciative de D&P, la théorie des temps (notamment de l’imparfait), le problème du figement (appelé coalescence), en partie en rapport, mais pas exclusivement, avec le problème de l’auxiliarisation (auxiliaires, verbes supports), et, enfin le problème de la catégorisation (le système taxiématique, c’est-à-dire la grille de morphèmes grammaticaux, spécifique au français). S’y ajoutent les multiples renvois à d’autres savants — linguistes et autres — de renom, avec lesquels l’œuvre de D&P a pu être mis en rapport et qui en soulignent la pertinence théorique (Karl Bühler, Jacques Lacan, Sigmund Freud, Ferdinand de Saussure, Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, etc.). A ce propos, on regrette un peu que le recueil n’ait pas été assorti d’un index (nominum), qui aurait davantage mis en valeur l’effort de contextualisation des contributeurs. Parmi les contributions s’inscrivant dans ce premier axe, on retiendra celle de Cecile Barbet et Yves Le Bozec sur le concept d’auxiliarité. Les auteurs montrent que des concepts tels que ‘amenuisement’ et ‘sublimation’ du sens lexical, d’une part, mais aussi l’idée de ‘spiritualisation’, c’est-à-dire l’apparition d’une ‘acception égocentrique’ ou d’une ‘subjectivation nynégocentrique’ (du grec nun “maintenant” et du latin ego “je”), préfigurent sans ambiguïté les concepts modernes de désémantisation
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et, surtout, de subjectification, tels que proposés notamment par Elizabeth Traugott. Jusqu’à l’idée de l’effacement du sujet syntaxique en faveur du point de vue du locuteur se trouve thématisée chez D&P, qui, certes, se contredisent, sur certains points. On le comprend, la question qui brûle sur toutes les lèvres est celle de la position de D&P par rapport à la linguistique cognitive actuelle. Henri Portine s’y attaque avec les précautions épistémologiques qui s’imposent. Après avoir rappelé les traits fondamentaux de toute linguistique à orientation cognitive, il examine la ‘teneur cognitiviste’ de l’entreprise de D&P, à partir de trois concepts centraux (taxième, nynégocentrisme et pseudo-répartitoire de temps). Il en conclut entre autres que la recherche du subconscient dans l’œuvre de D&P se démarque clairement du courant cognitiviste actuel, davantage orienté sur la connaissance consciente, mais qu’on trouve cependant des ‘lignes de croisement avec les questions cognitives’. Comme nous l’avons signalé, les temps verbaux reviennent à plusieurs reprises. Ainsi, Adeline Patard part de l’analyse de l’imparfait comme temps non actuel (toncal, dans la terminologie de D&P, lié au repère tunc “alors”) pour aboutir à un état de la question qui présente les diverses réinterprétations de la notion ainsi que les analyses concurrentes (aspectuo-temporelles et anaphoriques méronymiques). La démarche de Rose-Marie Gerbe est légèrement différente dans la mesure où l’analyse de l’indicatif présent comme temps non marqué chez D&P se voit prolongée par une réflexion personnelle originale. Enfin, le présent et l’imparfait se trouvent réunis dans la contribution de Christian Surcouf, qui se penche sur l’emploi épistémique de l’imparfait, référant à un état de chose qui n’est plus pertinent, effet de sens obtenu à travers un contraste avec le présent. Deux contributeurs ont rappelé toute la pertinence, mais aussi les défauts, de l’analyse des verbes supports et des locutions verbales chez D&P. Ainsi, Marc Tsirlin, après avoir fait l’apologie des savants russes, critiqués à tort pour avoir ignoré le travail de D&P, souligne la pertinence des analyses de D&P en ce qui concerne le rôle du déterminant et son omission dans les locutions verbales et dans le groupe nominal en général. Tel est aussi l’objectif d’André Valli, qui se montre cependant plus critique à l’égard de la notion de détermination zéro. Ce concept central chez D&P ne saurait être maintenu comme critère du figement, comme le suggère déjà l’embarras de D&P face à des exemples anciens de coalescence datant d’une époque où l’article n’était pas encore obligatoire. L’auteur le plus sévère à l’égard de l’entreprise de D&P est sans aucun doute David Gaatone (b.1932). Il s’attaque notamment à cette volonté de chercher partout un esprit cognitif français derrière les formes, ce qui ne peut que conduire à des impasses (cf. aussi leur analyse du ne explétif, critiquée par le même auteur dès 1971). Certes, le sujet — les conjugaisons — n’aurait pas pu être mieux choisi pour battre en brèche le credo de D&P, mais il faut convenir avec Gaatone que la description de D&P recèle nombre de contradictions.
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Enfin, Elizaveta Khachaturyan offre une analyse du traitement des marqueurs discursifs à la lumière de la théorie des plans énonciatifs (que l’on retrouve aussi chez les Culioliens). Elle rappelle que les marqueurs discursifs — redoutables faux amis — confirment la singularité de la forme intérieure de chaque langue et donc l’arbitraire du signe. 3. Analyses historiographiques et épistémologiques Les analyses historiographiques sont axées tantôt sur l’analyse interne de l’ouvrage, tantôt sur la confrontation avec des courants de pensée contemporains de D&P, linguistiques et autres. Seul l’article de Bérengère Bouard adopte une perspective résolument rétrospective, retraçant les sources de deux îlots conservateurs dans l’œuvre de D&P, à savoir la décomposition du contenu prédicatif (je dors = je suis dormant) et certains aspects de la théorie des compléments. Du côté de l’analyse interne de la production grammaticale de D&P, deux thématiques reviennent à plusieurs reprises : la terminologie et le locuteur. L’article de Michel Favriaud, qui fait un peu bande à part, examine le Traité moderne de ponctuation (1939) de Jacques Damourette. La terminologie ésotérique des auteurs fait l’objet de deux réflexions épistémologiques originales. Après avoir confronté la terminologie de D&P à l’aune de leur propre théorie de la dérivation (savante), Dan Savatovsky met en lumière l’originalité de la terminologie à base autonymique (par exemple, le saviez) et donc sémantiquement neutre des temps (‘tiroirs’). Celle-ci est sous-tendue par l’idée que la puissance nodale (c’est-à-dire le pouvoir constructeur) du verbe est un taxième (disons un morphème grammatical) et donc que le sens lexical du verbe savoir n’est pas concerné par le terme le saviez ; il représente tout simplement la puissance nodale. Si pour Savatovsky la terminologie autonymique peut encore apparaître comme la seule adéquate dans l’esprit de D&P, Michel Arrivé, pour sa part, va plus loin en y voyant un indice de l’inexistence théorique d’un métalangage pour ce qui est des taxièmes, entités inconscientes (à la différence des sémièmes, les morphèmes lexicaux, qui, eux, sont conscients), le métalangage devant disposer d’une structure isomorphe pour définir de façon adéquate le langage-objet (un adjectif devrait être défini au moyen d’un adjectif, etc.). C’est pourquoi les tentatives de définir les classes de mots, prises comme elles sont entre le statut de sémième et de taxième, donnent lieu à des contradictions que D&P accueillent avec une certaine désinvolture, qu’il faut interpréter, selon Michel Arrivé, comme une invitation à s’accommoder d’un métadiscours à défaut de métalangage. Plusieurs contributions gravitent autour du concept de locuteur, assez souvent à travers une confrontation avec d’autres linguistes. Deux contributions concernent les pronoms personnels (Janeta Maspero, María Dolores Vivero Garcia). Il en ressort que les distinctions conceptuelles de D&P étaient parfois plus fines
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que celles d’Emile Benveniste (Vivero Garcia). Ce dernier partage, par ailleurs, certains présupposés sur l’inconscient dans le langage (Chloé Laplantine). Cette même théorie énonciative a inspiré à Janeta Maspero une réflexion originale sur l’opposition je/moi/me. André Rousseau, quant à lui, mesure la théorie de D&P à l’aune de la théorie de l’énonciation de Karl Bühler, et aboutit à des conclusions très nuancées quant à une possible influence. Enfin, le locuteur se trouve également au centre de l’intérêt dans la contribution de Larue-Tondeur qui revient sur la valeur ambivalente du ne explétif chez D&P ; cet article est assez complémentaire avec celui de Jesús Vázquez-Molina consacré au même sujet. Parmi les articles qui cherchent à contextualiser les idées et la démarche de D&P, on peut distinguer deux sous-ensembles, selon qu’ils s’attachent à contextualiser les présupposés idéologiques des auteurs ou les rapports entre linguistique et psychanalyse. Les rapports entre nationalisme et linguistique s’ouvrent sur une analyse, certes un peu schématique, mais fort instructive, de la position de D&P à l’égard d’un certain nombre de -ismes (naturalisme, mentalisme, biologisme, psychanalysisme (l’inconscient), nationalisme et racisme). Sungdo Kim y focalise surtout le racisme linguistique des auteurs et sa place dans l’histoire du nationalisme et du racisme. Le nationalisme est également à l’honneur dans la contribution de Sébastien Moret, qui montre que les conceptions linguistiques de Meillet — thème plus ou moins hors sujet — relatives à l’unité slave sont en partie tributaires du contexte politique de l’époque, notamment des sentiments anti-allemands et du sentiment nationaliste qui en découlait. Avec l’article de Annick Ohayon, on passe de l’histoire des idées à l’histoire des sciences, notamment de la psychanalyse et au rôle que Pichon a joué dans son implantation (institutionnelle) en France (nomenclature française, etc.), ainsi qu’à ses rapports complexes avec Sigmund Freud et les représentants français de ce dernier. Maribel Peñalver-Vicea, de son côté, offre une analyse du thème de l’affectivité à partir d’une analyse textuelle de L’Essai, qui, à notre sens, ne conçoit pas toujours bien les différentes strates liées à ce concept (la motivation affective des faits de langue, le lien affectif entre le locuteur et sa langue, etc.) et les rapports avec le concept de subjectivité. Enfin, plusieurs contributions traitent des rapports entre linguistique et psychanalyse. Ainsi, Sylvie Ferrando discute les rapports entre langage (langue) et pensée et confronte les vues de D&P à certaines conceptions modernes issues des neurosciences. Dans un article de haut vol, Michel Grollier approfondit la conception de la pensée chez Édouard Pichon, en la confrontant à celle de ses contemporains (Sigmund Freud, Alfred Binet, Jacques Lacan, Jean Piaget, etc.), en insistant notamment sur les rapports entre pensée et langage, impliquant un inconscient primaire non verbal. Cécile Mathieu y ajoute la perspective (phylo-/onto-) génétique, en s’intéressant à la façon dont D&P concevaient l’origine du langage.
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L’article de Ann-Gaël Moulinier, qui, certes, porte essentiellement sur le statut de l’énonciation dans la psychopathologie chez Lacan, est cependant à sa place dans ce recueil dans la mesure où il montre comment certains concepts grammaticaux de D&P lui ont servi de source d’inspiration. La question de l’influence qu’aurait eue Édouard Pichon sur Lacan est traitée à fond dans la contribution de François Sauvagnat, qui en fournit une excellente synthèse. Dans une analyse fort intéressante, Valelia Muni Toke examine la méthode de l’introspection à la fois dans la praxis linguistique et psychopathologique d’Édouard Pichon. Elle s’intéresse notamment à la façon dont il se décrit lui-même dans sa thèse de doctorat, qui était consacrée à sa propre maladie (le rhumatisme cardiaque évolutif). Pierre Bonny et François Sauvagnat, de leur côté, mettent en perspective la théorie de la sexuisemblance, qui considère le genre comme une sorte de ‘sexe fictif ’ attribué aux noms d’objets, montrant que la motivation du genre est purement affective, fictive ou métaphorique. Ils situent cette théorie dans le cadre des conceptions de la sexuation psychique au sein des courants analytiques. Enfin, Suzanne Yang examine le point de vue de Pichon par rapport à la question de la responsabilité dans l’acte criminel et notamment au rôle que l’analyse des rêves pourrait jouer. Yang en arrive à la conclusion que l’acte criminel est une forme extrême d’énonciation qui marque la faillite de la signification et de l’expression verbale. On remarquera au passage que Pichon défend la peine de mort comme solution au conflit entre la société et les psychismes exceptionnels. 4. Pour conclure On l’aura compris, l’intérêt du panorama qui se dévoile devant le lecteur se trouve singulièrement renforcé par les conceptions idéologiques des auteurs et par la profession de Pichon. Ce panorama dépasse le strict cadre de la linguistique et inscrit l’œuvre de D&P dans l’histoire des idées et dans l’histoire (sociale) des sciences du comportement. On ne peut que saluer le fait que les éditeurs aient aussi donné la parole à des non-linguistes. Cet élargissement d’horizon, qui fait de ce volume un témoignage de la scène intellectuelle française de l’époque, frôle cependant quelquefois la dérive, comme par exemple dans l’article de Bonny et Sauvagnat. Partant de la théorie de la sexuisemblance de D&P, ils en arrivent à faire l’histoire des ‘Gender studies’ et des rapports que celles-ci entretenaient avec les mouvances féministe et homosexuelle, pour terminer par le problème de la ‘réassignation de genre’, que le lecteur intéressé par les conceptions d’Édouard Pichon aurait préféré prendre dans un sens purement linguistique. En somme, ce volume, qui est loin d’une hagiographie — et on s’en félicite —, offre un regard multiple, objectif et nuancé sur une œuvre qui reste sous-estimée et qui le restera sans doute, comme le montrent les chiffres fournis par Marc Tsirlin concernant le nombre de citations de D&P dans un certain nombre de colloques
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récents. Ce regard nuancé, on le doit en grande partie à l’effort de contextualisation au niveau de l’histoire des théories linguistiques et des idées en général, ce qui manquait quelquefois dans les textes réunis en 1982 (cf. le compte rendu d’Odile Halmøy 1986). Il s’ensuit aussi un regard plus indulgent qu’il y a trente ans, qui s’explique aussi, sans doute, par l’émergence de paradigmes nouveaux (la linguistique cognitive ; la théorie de la grammaticalisation), plus favorables à une entreprise telle que celle de D&P. Ce regard plus indulgent nous semble pleinement mérité, car, si l’on compare le travail de D&P avec les grammaires de référence de la même période, force est de constater que sur de nombreux points il est marqué du sceau de l’originalité (voir Lauwers 2004). Ainsi, pour n’en donner qu’un exemple, on relira encore avec profit l’analyse très fine des fonctions syntaxiques (enfouie, certes, sous une terminologie rébarbative), qui, malgré les aspirations sémantico-cognitives des auteurs, a entrevu très tôt la valeur heuristique des tests distributionnels, appelés “critères grammaticaux” (Essai, Tome I, p. 626) ou “artifice(s) de conversion” (ibid., p. 18 ; cf. Lauwers 2002). Dans cette démarche transparaît une fois de plus la sensibilité immanentiste — en partie dans le sillage du courant néohumboldtien des années vingt — du courant psychologisant qui a animé la linguistique française de la première moitié du XXe siècle (D&P, Albert Sechehaye, Gustave Guillaume, Cornelis de Boer, Moritz Regula, Georges Galichet, etc. voir Lauwers 2004 pour une analyse). Bref, on en conviendra, l’Essai ne devrait manquer dans aucun état de la question, ne fût-ce que pour la richesse des données accumulées et l’originalité des vues. Pour s’en convaincre, il suffit de prendre en main ce recueil, qui a été fait avec soin, comme en témoigne aussi la présentation matérielle de l’ouvrage.
Références bibliographiques Damourette, Jacques. 1939. Traité moderne de ponctuation. Paris : Larousse. Damourette, Jacques & Édouard Pichon. 1930–1949 [1911–1940]. Des Mots à la Pensée : Essai de grammaire de la langue française. Paris : d’Artrey. [+ Glossaire des termes spéciaux ou de sens spécial employés dans la Grammaire établi par Henri Yvon (1873–1963), ibid., 1950, 16 pp.; Table analytique, ibid., 1952, 77 pp.; Liste des auteurs cités dans l’ouvrage ; Liste des témoins oraux (fascicule établi par Mme E. Pichon), ibid., 1952.] Halmøy, Odile. 1986. Compte rendu de Tradition grammaticale et linguistique : L’Essai de Grammaire de la Langue Française de Jacques Damourette et Edouard Pichón [sic] (= Travaux de linguistique 9/10 [1982/83]). Revue Romane 21.144–147. Lauwers, Peter. 2002. “La notion de ‘test syntaxique’ dans les grammaires de la première moitié du 20e siècle”. Lingvisticae Investigationes 25:1.49–70. Lauwers, Peter. 2004. La description du français entre la tradition grammaticale et la modernité linguistique : Étude historiographique et épistémologique de la grammaire française entre 1907 et 1948. Leuven : Peeters.
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Adresse de l’auteur du compte rendu : Peter Lauwers Blandijnberg 2 B-9000 Gent B el g i qu e e-mail : [email protected]
Farb-Systeme 1611–2007: Farb-Dokumente in der Sammlung Werner Spillmann. Einführung von Karl Gerstner. Texte von Verena M. Schindler, Stefanie Wettstein, Isabel Haupt, Lino Sibillano und Werner Spillmann. Hrsg. Werner Spillmann. Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2009; 2nd ed., 2010. Pp. 283. ISBN-978-3-7965-2517-9. € 68,50 (HB). Reviewed by William Jervis Jones (Royal Holloway University of London) In European languages since the Renaissance, an exponential rise in the number of colour terms has been accompanied by unending attempts to systematise them. The proposed structures vary in form, from classified lists and scales, to circles, hierarchies, grids, three-dimensional arrays, spheres, cubes, single or double cones, and other more complex solids. This variety is partly explained by developments in the theory of colour and colour perception, and partly by extraneous needs. Thinkers from the Enlightenment onwards were naturally drawn to the idea of a universal colour system transcending national linguistic boundaries, and statable in objective, scientific terms. Alongside its philosophical appeal, a standardised system for colour designation was to acquire ever greater practical importance in natural science, technology and many other fields. Most systems prior to the mid 19th century used natural-language labelling and so are of value to historical lexicologists as primary source material. There was formerly also appreciable debate on principles of colour naming: reference to natural colour exemplars, use of ‘compass-rose’ systems (noir-noir-gris-noir), and so on. Noticeable after about 1850 — in the scientific and technical spheres, though not in their interface with everyday usage — has been a flight from language into alphanumerically notated systems. This is itself a product of many factors (for example, increasing refinement in colour gradations, a clearer understanding of the parameters of colour, advances in colorimetry and the reprographic arts). But then in the 20th century colour systems of unprecedented sophistication and highly abstract notation were mobilised in the field of colour linguistics, as an apparently precise and objective basis for empirically determining and comparing semantic references and structures — even though exactitude of colour reference is not usually the prime concern in everyday language. The present volume comprises over 80 different colour systems, each judged to have opened up new perspectives in their time, with commentaries by various
Historiographia Linguistica XXXVIII:1/2 (2011), 235–240. doi 10.1075/hl.38.1/2.16jon issn 0302–5160 / e-issn 1569–9781 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
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hands and copious, high-quality illustrations from original works mainly in the personal library of Professor Werner Spillmann (b.1933). Some items are of great rarity: Spillmann owns, for example, one of only four copies worldwide of Moses Harris’s Natural System (details below). Though remarkable, the collection makes no claim to uniqueness: extensive too, for example, are the Friedrich Schmuck collection (Fachhochschule Köln) and the Sammlung Farbenlehre (Technische Universität, Dresden). Such is the centrality of colour that Farb-Systeme is likely to appeal across many disciplines, but substantial parts of this important work will be valued by colour linguists as they interpret older scholarship in this field or themselves pursue fresh research. The commentaries are mainly descriptive — appropriately in this context — but fuller reference to controversial aspects and to relevant secondary literature would at times have been welcome. Cohesion is provided by Karl Gerstner’s concise and lucid introduction, and by Spillmann’s ‘Nachwort’, a slightly revised version of an article published in 1991, characterising a handful of systems as ‘landmarks’. The earliest system presented is that of Sigfrid Aron Forsius (1550–1624), from whose pen we have a pair of diagrams (1611) giving interestingly structured views of, respectively, 16 and 27 Swedish colour names. Among older graphic representations we might also have hoped to see the overlapping arcs visualised in 1613 by the Flemish Jesuit Franciscus Aguilonius (François d’Aguilon) (1566/67– 1617) — probably the oldest printed colour system, in the tradition of Aristotelian optics, and several times reproduced over the next hundred years. Absent too is the first known chromatic circle to appear in print (ca.1630), that of Robert Fludd (1547–1637; cf. Gage 1993: 171 and 229). The 18th century saw considerable advances in this field. Promoting clarity, precision and rationality of meaning, the Enlightenment favoured systematic description and the rational differentiation of concepts and of lexical meanings. Meaning emerged as something abstract, transcending the individual context. As in the natural world, concepts needed to be placed within hierarchical or at least linear structures. Exemplified in this collection are the mathematically-based trichromatic system of Johann Tobias Mayer (1723–1762), the colour pyramid of Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777), the Natural System (ca.1770) of the English entomologist Moses Harris (1731–1785), and the remarkable work of the Viennese lepidopterist Johann Ignaz Schiffermüller (1727–1806), with its tabular classification of German, Latin and French terms denoting blue tones, and its continuous circle of twelve hues inspired by Father Castel (Louis Bertrand Castel, 1688–1757) — whose highly important work (L’Optique des couleurs, 1740) receives only a passing mention in this volume, presumably because it eschewed graphics.
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Less understandable is the omission of Christian Friedrich Prange (1756– 1836), whose Farbenlexicon (1782) contains 4,608 hand-coloured samples, arranged in 48 charts, each showing 96 tones. In an accompanying key, for every tone in his charts, Prange provided a number reference, a unique German name, and the composition of that tone using standard pigments. This work is, not least, a unique lexical resource: compounding 280 generic colour names with up to 17 prefixoids (Dunkel-, Hoch-, Mittel- etc.), Prange found it possible to create over 4,000 motivated colour names. Innovative colour lexicography of such character and ambition is hard to match, until we reach A Dictionary of Color by John Aloys Maerz and Morris Rea Paul (1930) (here presented on pp. 136–137), the 1950 edition of which contained 8,064 colour samples keyed to commoner English names. Leafing through Farb-Systeme, we encounter other systems of unexpected lexicological interest, for example the Nomenclature (1886) of the American ornithologist Robert Ridgway (1850–1929), with its octolingual lexicon of well over 300 colour names (Farb-Systeme, pp. 84–87). But Farb-Systeme makes no claim to completeness, and in all periods further addenda could be proposed, in the 19th century for example Patrick Syme’s (1774–1845) extension of work done by the mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749–1817), entitled Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, with Additions (1814), and constructing with ten primaries and five modifiers (pale, deep, dark, bright, dull) a nomenclature which in Syme’s estimate could potentially multiply into tens of thousands of colour descriptors. From the 20th century the colour lexicon of Kornerup & Wanscher (1963 — with further editions in Danish, Italian and English) might also have been included, similarly the highly adaptable Universal Color Language conceived by Kelly & Judd (1976). Of numerous systems devised since 1900, two are of special relevance to linguists. Promoted in a series of publications from 1916 onwards, the three-dimensional model of Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932; see Farb-Systeme, pp. 114–125) consisted of a regular double cone with a vertical white-grey-black axis, and 24 hues positioned radially. Colour samples based on this aesthetically perfect system were widely used in European science and industry from the 1920s, despite Ostwald’s rather opaque notation. Though daring in his puristic coinage of basic colour names (Kreß “orange”, Veil “violet”), Ostwald himself made minimal use of colour lexis in natural language, but elsewhere we find repeated attempts to lexicalise his scheme. Its importance was acknowledged for decades by European linguists. In pioneering work on German colour identification and naming, Jenny König showed awareness of the Ostwald system, though in interviews conducted in 1925–1926 she used colour samples selected from the somewhat older system of Paul Baumann and Otto Prase (see Farb-Systeme, pp. 110–113). The fullest German colour dictionary to date, the Farbnamenlexikon (1955) of Georg Seufert, as well
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as supplying verbal descriptions of colours, made regular reference to three notational systems: a version of Ostwald, the Baumann & Prase system, and the 400 named colours of the Schweizerische Standard-Farbenkarte (1945). Into the 1960s we find the strongly relativist Leo Weisgerber (1899–1985) sometimes visualising the colour field linearly as in the spectrum, but preferring as a model the Ostwald double cone, which allowed for white/black content as well as hue (Weisgerber 1962 II, 287–288). The colour tree of the American artist Albert Henry Munsell (1858–1918) was published in his Atlas of the Munsell Color System (1915), of which a posthumous and significantly modified edition appeared in 1929 as the Munsell Book of Color. With some further changes it was to dominate American colour linguistics and related fields as an apparently objective standard. Munsell’s irregular colour solid differs interestingly from Ostwald’s. It was designed to accommodate the fact that we perceive different hues, even in their purest forms, as having different degrees of brightness: yellow appears brighter than violet, for example. Another distinctive feature was the extensible parameter for chroma, allowing the structure to grow laterally as pigments of higher chroma became available. Munsell avoided the problem inherent in many colour systems (for example, Ostwald and the Natural Color System (NCS)), that if the hue circle is arranged with respect to opponent colour theory, and blue is placed directly opposite yellow (and green opposite red), the reds and yellows will seem tonally much further apart than the blues and greens. In graphic terms, the two-dimensional Munsell card layout facilitated the visual mapping of range and focus, and would conveniently have served the requirements of European word-field theory, though it was not directly mobilised by that theory’s exponents from the 1930s through to the 1950s, and only came into play with German scholars’ reception of American and British synchronic linguistics in the 1960s and early 1970s. American linguists, on the other hand, were using Munsell-type cards in colour codability tests well before the influential monograph of Berlin & Kay in 1969. The weaknesses of that investigation have many times been probed (see for example Lucy 1997). Not least among them was the inappropriateness of using Munsell-type colour chips — not only in cultures where colour-naming is strongly object-specific (‘There’s no such beast!’), but also more generally, because our interpretations of colour names are constrained by the vectors themselves (red hair, etc.), by the immediate context, and by the cultural matrix as a whole. Problematic too, as Spillmann’s Farb-Systeme makes clear, are some fundamentals of the system itself:
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– Munsell’s atheoretical basis for assuming and locating his five major hues (5B, for example, is far from being a unique or focal blue); – his reliance on apparent brightness (‘value’), which led him to place yellows and reds higher in the tree than blues and greens; – insufficiently fine gradation in the high-value ranges (pastel shades), a weakness made good in more recent publications (Nearly Neutrals Collection, ca.1990) (Farb-Systeme, pp. 236–239); – the rather cumbrous notation. Munsell has not always been applied with due regard to these and other theoretical deficiencies. Occasionally we find alternative systems used by linguists — Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage (CIE), Deutsche Industrie-Norm (DIN) 6174, Optical Society of America (OSA), and the above-mentioned NCS — in part as a control on findings derived from the Berlin & Kay tradition. But Munsell has largely remained the system of choice for colour linguists: notable, for example, was Yanqian Fan’s use of it in her important comparison of German and Chinese colour lexis (1996). Perusing this elegant volume, the reader may feel that, whatever the value of colour systems in the universalist-relativist debate, we must resign ourselves as colour linguists to a strong relativity in the field of colour classification itself. There are no universals. Sobering, too, is Stefanie Wettstein’s concluding remark (p. 248), that even the most advanced systems will be defeated by the multiplicity of colour itself.
References Berlin, Brent & Paul Kay. 1969. Basic Color Terms: Their universality and evolution. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. (2nd ed., with a new bibliography, 1991; 3rd ed., Stanford: CSLI Publications, 1999.) Fan, Yanqian. 1996. Farbnomenklatur im Deutschen und im Chinesischen: Eine kontrastive Analyse unter psycholinguistischen, semantischen und kulturellen Aspekten. Frankfurt am Main [etc.]: Peter Lang. Gage, John. 1993. Colour and Culture: Practice and meaning from Antiquity to abstraction. London: Thames & Hudson. Kelly, Kenneth L. & Deane B. Judd. 1976. Color: Universal language and dictionary of names. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. König, Jenny. 1927. “Die Bezeichnung der Farben: Umfang, Konsequenz und Übereinstimmung der Farbenbenennung, philologisch-historisch betrachtet, sowie experimentell-psychologisch untersucht”. Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 60.129–204. Kornerup, Andreas & Johan Hendrik Wanscher. 1963. Taschenlexikon der Farben. 1440 Farbnuancen und 600 Farbnamen. Göttingen & Zürich: Musterschmidt. Lucy, John A. 1997. “The Linguistics of ‘color’ ”. Color Categories in Thought and Language ed. by Clyde L. Hardin & Luisa Maffi, 320–346. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
240 William Jervis Jones: Review of Spillmann (2009) Maerz, John Aloys & Morris Rea Paul. 1930. A Dictionary of Color. New York & London: McGraw Hill. Prange, Christian Friedrich. 1782. Farbenlexicon, worinn die möglichsten Farben der Natur nicht nur nach ihren Eigenschaften, Benennungen, Verhältnissen und Zusammensetzungen, sondern auch durch die würkliche Ausmalung enthalten sind. Zum Gebrauch für Naturforscher, Maler, Fabrikanten, Künstler und übrigen Handwerkern, welche mit Farben umgehen, nebst 48 illuminirten Kupfertafeln und einer großen Landschaft. Halle: Johann Christian Hendel. Ridgway, Robert. 1886. A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists, and Compendium of Useful Knowledge for Ornithologists. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. Seufert, Georg. 1955. Farbnamenlexikon von A–Z. Göttingen & Zürich: Musterschmidt. Syme, Patrick. 1814. Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, with Additions, arranged so as to render it highly useful to the Arts and Sciences, particularly Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Morbid Anatomy. Annexed to which are Examples selected from well-known Objects in the Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral Kingdoms. Edinburgh: James Ballantyne. Weisgerber, Leo. 1962. Von den Kräften der deutschen Sprache. 3rd ed. Düsseldorf: Schwann.
Reviewer’s address: William J. Jones 21 Wansford Way Bognor Regis West Sussex PO22 7NL Un ite d Ki ngd om e-mail: [email protected]
Notes / Notizen — Documents / Dokumente When Quotation Marks Matter Rhellicanus and Boxhornius on the differences between the lingua Gallica and lingua Germanica* Toon Van Hal
Research Foundation Flanders — Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Up until fairly recently, nearly all introductory chapters to textbooks on (IndoEuropean) historical and comparative linguistics considered Sir William Jones’s (1746–1794) famous Discourse on the Hindoos the first landmark in the field, thus worthy of explicit mention. A couple of present-day textbooks still continue to promote his 1786 speech as completely innovative and a turning point which led to the discipline’s eventual institutionalization (Fortson 2010: 9; Colvin 2007: 1; cf. in this connection Koerner 1999: 6). Most recent textbooks, however, tend to acknowledge that the discipline’s roots can be traced back to the Renaissance, possibly thanks to recent developments in the historiography of linguistics.1 They discuss the achievements of some 16th- through 18th-century ‘precomparative’ linguists, albeit often too sketchy still or merely for anecdotal purposes. One of the names sometimes featured in such recent introductory chapters is that of Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn (1612–1653), who was a little too zealously proclaimed the ‘first historical linguist’ by Jack Fellman (1974). The (North) Brabant-born Boxhornius (as he was called by his Latinized name) was appointed professor at the University of Leiden at the age of 21,2 and about seven years before his untimely * While preparing a paper on Gaulish word lists compiled by Early Modern authors, I felt compelled to write the present note based on the results of my research before publishing the article itself (Van Hal forthcoming). I am indebted to Lambert Isebaert, Maarten Jansen, Erich Poppe, and Pierre Swiggers for their help and suggestions. In addition, I would like to thank two anonymous readers and the Editor for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this note. 1. Pace Szemerényi (1980), Jones’s importance has been put into perspective by most recent historiographers (cf., e.g., Hoenigswald 1974, Campbell 2006; Rietbergen 2007: 140–142). 2. Nieuwstraten (forthcoming) offers a detailed account of Boxhorn’s life and works. As for his linguistic ideas, cf. Fellman (1974; 1975; 1976); Morgan (1973–1974); Droixhe (1978; 1989); Historiographia Linguistica XXXVIII:1/2 (2011), 241–252. doi 10.1075/hl.38.1/2.17van issn 0302–5160 / e-issn 1569–9781 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
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death he developed his controversial ideas on the ‘Scythian’ origin of a number of European and Eastern languages (viz. Welsh, Lithuanian, Russian, Bohemian, Swedish, Danish, Croatian, Greek, Latin, the Germanic languages, Persian, and also Turkish), thus elaborating on the views originally developed by Johannes Elichmann (1601/1602–1639) and succinctly presented in Claude de Saumaise’s (1588–1653) De lingua Hellenistica commentarius of 1643 (Van Hal 2010, Considine 2010). After having set out his linguistic views in a study dealing with a then recently discovered votive inscription mentioning the mysterious goddess Nehalennia (Boxhorn 1647a), he was challenged by the writer of an anonymous pamphlet (Anon. 1647) to further elaborate his claims regarding the common ‘Scythian’ origin of Latin, Greek and Germanic (Boxhorn 1647b). From then onwards, Boxhorn tirelessly continued his Scythian explorations (cf. Boxhorn 1650, 1654), but his death prevented him from publishing the intended magnum opus on his theory, which in more than one respect adumbrated the later concept of a Proto-IndoEuropean language. The reception of his views was quite mixed: his Scythian theory met with criticism and disdainful rejection, although his work proved to be influential in the long term. His ideas gained Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz’s (1646–1716) appreciation and were still referred to at the end of the 18th century (cf. Bonfante 1953/1954: 696). Boxhornius’s importance lies in his rather systematic approach to the explanation of linguistic similarity. In the absence of historical proof for contact between peoples and languages, similarities between languages should be explained through common descent, provided that there is a sufficiently large set of shared lexical items. Boxhornius, however, also stressed the qualitative aspect of lexical comparison (similarities in the ‘core vocabulary’), and developed a small overview of grammatical correspondence between the languages compared. Furthermore, he was innovative in the sense that he also considered intermediary linguistic forms. Finally, he has been credited with having clearly separated the ancient Gaulish language from the Germanic language(s). This last claim, however, appears to be based on erroneous assumptions and needs to be reconsidered. Boxhorn is said to have made the distinction between the ancient Gaulish language and the Germanic language(s) in his 1654 Originum Gallicarum liber (“Book on Gaulish origins”), the genesis and publication process of which are rather complicated and unclear. From 1648 onwards, Boxhorn announced that his book on the Gauls, which he seemed to regard as a mere offshoot of the larger Hofman (1998); Dekker (1999: 208–218); C. Davies (2000); Van Driem (2001: 1040–1045); Van Hal (2008: 338–369). Most of Boxhorn’s relevant writings can be found at the Wiki ‘Hortus linguarum’ (cf. Isebaert, Rogiest, Swiggers & Van Hal 2009).
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framework that was his Scythian theory, was already in press.3 Still, it would take until 1654, one year after Boxhorn’s death, before the opusculum was eventually published, albeit as an unfinished product. It seems that Boxhorn had withdrawn his book from publication at the very last moment (Hofman 1998: 159–160), possibly because he could not agree with the ‘light version’ the printer was apparently advocating. Some endlessly repetitive passages and the book’s abrupt ending demonstrate that the Originum Gallicarum liber should not be regarded as the final version of the study which the author intended to make available without any further alterations. At Boxhorn’s children’s request (Boxhorn 1654: dedicatio), the Leiden-based geographer Georg Hornius (1620–1670; cf. Grafton & Shelford & Siraisi 1992: 234–237) made Boxhorn’s draft ready for publication, adding an extensive introduction. Considering its complex background, it is clear that historiographers should approach this work with much caution. The core of Boxhorn’s Originum Gallicarum liber is a dissertation on the origin of the Celts, accompanied by two appendices, one of which is a revised selection from John Davies’s (c.1567–1644) Welsh–Latin dictionary (1632). Boxhorn aimed to correct the erroneous ideas on the language of the Gauls put forward by diverse authors such as Samuel Bochart (1599–1667; cf. Hofman 1998, for a comprehensive overview of the book’s contents). On the one hand, Boxhorn strongly 3. On 1 May 1648 Boxhorn writes to Hornius: “liber Originum Gallicarum, quo Boscarti et aliorum de prisca Gallorum lingua sententia expenditur, sub praelo est. Ante ferias caniculares, nisi fallor, lucem videbit. Non minorem in eo modestiae rationem habeo, quam veritatis. Plura iam vellem, sed plura scripta scripturienti Typographus inicit sufflamen [The book on the Gaulish origins, in which Bochardus’ and others’ opinion on the oldest Gaulish language is assessed, is in press. If I am not wrong, it will be brought out before canicular days’ holiday. In this book, I do not take modesty less into account than the truth. I would like to write even more, but the printer renders it difficult for those willing to write more]” (Baselius edition of Boxhornius 1679 [= 1662]: 218). In a letter to Huygens, dated 22 November 1652, Boxhorn writes the following: “sub proelo iam est opusculum Originum Gallicarum [the booklet ‘Gaulish origins’ is already in press]” (ibid., p. 234). On the limited ambitions of his opusculum in comparison with his other plans regarding the Scythian theory: “igitur ex haud multum diverso Gallorum Britannorumque sermone, communem utriusque gentis originem auctor gravissimus [sc. Tacitus] arguit. Nobis, ut spero, venia erit, si eadem, quae in tanta vetustissimorum et a memoria omni remotissimorum temporum caligine solam nunc se praebet, ad eruendas nobilissimarum gentium origines via grassemur. Neque omnium nunc meminisse animus est. De Gallis solis omnis hic iam sermo instituitur; … [So, relying on the hardly divergent Gaulish and British languages, the very distinguished author states that both peoples have a common origin. In order to reveal the noblest nations’ origins, I hope it will be granted to me to follow the same course, which now turns out to be the only option, given that the oldest times are shrouded in thick mist, and are deprived of all memory. But for now I do not intend to refer to all nations. Henceforth, this whole discourse will discuss the Gauls only; …]” (Boxhorn 1654: 4; italics mine: TVH). Cf. also Boxhorn (1654: 51, 86).
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advocates the relation between the language of the Gauls and the Welsh; on the other, he states the following at the onset of his work: Galli veteres et Germani, ut pleraque alia omnia, ita linguam imprimis, communia et eadem habuere. Eadem ergo utrique genti origo, neque aliud huius operis argumentum est. (Boxhorn 1654: 5) [Not unlike most other things, the ancient Gauls and Germans primarily shared a common and identical language. Hence, both nations have the same origin. This and nothing else is the argument of this work.]
In other words, Boxhorn unambiguously stated that his main objective was to uncover the affinity between both nations and their historical similarities. This is explicitly repeated in later passages in the book, which makes it perfectly consistent with the ideas put forward in his earlier work.4
Figure 1: Boxhorn (1654: 111)
Boxhorn devoted his ninth chapter, which turned out to be the last one in this posthumous edition, to a refutation of the ideas proposed by the Swiss humanist scholar Joannes Rhellicanus (1478/1488–1542). The chapter, entitled “Ioannis Rhellicani, Tigurini, de veterum Gallorum sermone dubia sententia. Ea varie 4. Cf. “Supersunt etiam hodie nobiles populi, pars olim Gallorum, qui maiorum linguam in hunc usque diem constanter retinuere, ut Belgarum plerique, Helvetii, et alii. Britannis quoque […] illa mansit in ea, quae Antiqua lingua Britannorum, vulgo Cambro-Britannica, a suis Cymraeca vel Cambrica, ab aliis Wallica hodie appellatur [Today, there still remain noble peoples, once part of the Gauls, which continuously conserved their forebears’ language up to the present, such as most of the Belgians, the Swiss, and others. Also among the British […], it is preserved in the language that is today called ‘Old language of the British’, colloquially ‘CambroBritish’, ‘Cymraic’ or ‘Cambric’ by its own speakers, ‘Welsh’ by others]” (Boxhorn 1654: 49); see also Boxhorn (1654: 102; 1647b: 34, 90).
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expenditur et refellitur [The doubtful opinion of Johannes Rhellicanus from Zürich on the language of the old Gauls, which is in various ways assessed and rejected]”, opens as follows: “Restat ut reliquorum quoque hac de re sententiam audiamus. Et Ioannis Rhellicani, Helvetii, anceps & dubia nunc nobis offertur [let us finally also hear the opinion advanced by the rest. And now the Swiss Johannes Rhellicanus’s uncertain and doubtful opinion is brought forward to us]” (Boxhorn 1654: 111, cf. Figure 1). But after a quotation of Rhellicanus’s words (covering about two full pages), Boxhorn suddenly states the following: Cuius sane sententia mihi plus arridet quam eorum qui putant Gallorum et Germanorum eandem olim linguam. (Boxhorn 1654: 111 [bis]; cf. Figure 2) [Whose opinion in any case pleases me more than the one of men thinking of the language of the Gauls and Germans as being the same in earlier times.]
Figure 2: Boxhorn (1654: 111 [bis])
Much to the appreciation of historiographers (cf., e.g., Chotzen 1931: 37), the historical link between Gaulish and Germanic is now suddenly denied, the subsequent pages offering a lengthy argumentation in support of this claim. Droixhe (1978: 128) states that “[l]e livre de Boxhornius aurait pu, en séparant celtique et germanique, promouvoir à la fois une celtistique plus saine et une conception plus abstraite du prototype scythique”. According to Hofman (1998: 166), this drastic conceptual break was not accompanied by any change in style, although this judgment is open to some debate. For example, strangely enough, Boxhorn repeatedly makes use of the term ‘Germanismus’ in this final chapter, instead of the label lin gua Germanica applied in the rest of the book (cf. for instance Boxhorn 1654: 112 [bis]).5 This particular way of referring to languages (with the -ismus suffix) seemed to also be favoured by, among others, Josephus Justus Scaliger (1540–1609), who preferably adopted the terms Hebraeismus, Germanismus, among others (see 5. Coincidentally or not, something went wrong with the page numbering, the order of which is 110 [beginning of Chapter 9] -111-112-111 [bis]-112 [bis]-113- […].
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Botley & Van Miert forthcoming). Hitherto, all historiographers supposed that Boxhorn had changed his mind at the very last moment, and that his untimely death prevented him from adapting the views developed in the preceding chapters, where he defended the thesis that Germanic and Gaulish were identical. Surprisingly though, philological scrutiny shows that the above-mentioned quotation (“Whose opinion pleases me …”) is not to be attributed to Boxhorn, but to Rhellicanus (Rhellicanus 1543: 70). The now widespread misunderstanding results from a mistake made by the Humanist printer, who erroneously left out the quotation marks before the quotation itself came to an end (see Figure 2). At the beginning of Chapter 9, the printer had introduced marginal quotation marks to indicate Rhellicanus’s words (see Figure 1, line 6). Within this quotation, however, another quotation was introduced by Rhellicanus himself, which he finished on p. 111 [bis] with the words “haec ille” (‘this is what he [sc. Tacitus] said’; see Figure 2, line 4). The printer must have been misled by this embedded quotation, interpreting “haec ille” as Boxhorn’s words to end his quotation of Rhellicanus (= “ille”), although it was, in fact, Rhellicanus putting an end to the passage of Tacitus (= “ille”). Since the marginal quotation marks had been introduced to indicate Rhellicanus’s words on p. 111, all 20th-century readers supposed that it is once again Boxhorn addressing the reader from the fifth line of p. 111 [bis] onwards. However, the entire ninth chapter is actually one lengthy quotation from Joannes Rhellicanus’s commentary on Caesar. Had he lived longer, Boxhorn would have went on to completely refute Rhellicanus’s claims. The mistake could also be ascribed to Hornius, the editor of the volume, but this is far less probable since he concludes the book after the real end of Rhellicanus’s words by stating: Quae cum sibi Clarissimus harum Originum author refellenda proposuisset et examinanda, morbo letali et diuturna infirmitate oppressus, in medio opere, magno rei literariae detrimento, defecit (1654: 116) [The illustrious author of these [Gaulish] Origins, who planned to counter and assess these views [sc. Rhellicanus’s ones], was struck by a deadly disease and a chronic infirmity, and passed away in the middle of his work to the great detriment of the literary world.]
In sum, the printer’s unfortunate inaccuracy and absent-mindedness have led to the bizarre situation that today Boxhorn is erroneously credited with having formulated an innovative idea which in fact was already more than one hundred years old and which Boxhorn himself always vigourously attempted to refute. This surprising conclusion calls for some methodological considerations. Yet, first, it might be appropriate to briefly introduce the rather unknown scholar Johannes Müller (1478/1488–1542), named Rhellikan after his birthplace Rhellikon near Zürich. After his studies in Wittenberg R[h]ellicanus worked as a teacher,
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first in Zürich and then in Bern. From 1541 onwards he worked as a Lutheran preacher in Biel until his death in 1542. A supporter of the Protestant leader Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531), he was a highly esteemed Hebraist (cf. Ludwig 1983, Margolin 1985: 192–193; Siebert 1995: 136–137). During his lifetime, Rhellicanus published a letter and several epigrams “in quibus ratio studii literarii Bernensis indicatur [revealing the Bern approach to literary study]” (1533), and a Latin translation of Plutarch’s treatise Homer’s Life (1537). His commentary on Caesar (Rhellicanus 1543), and a poem describing the Swiss mountain Stockhornus (1555) were published posthumously, the latter in an anthology edited by Konrad Gesner (1516–1565). Although the relevance of Rhellicanus’s works to the history of linguistics is rather limited, his ideas regarding the differences between Germanic and Gaulish developed in the Caesar commentary certainly merit some closer consideration (cf. Van Hal forthcoming). Broadly speaking, Rhellicanus’s claim rests on two arguments. On the one hand, testimonies by some classical authors imply that Gaulish and Germanic are to be regarded as two different languages. On the other hand, the scarce Gaulish words provided by the classical authors could not be equated with Germanic equivalents in a convincing way, the differences in form and meaning being all too great. From a more general methodological perspective, this case study stresses once again the problematic status of posthumous writings (see, for instance, Droixhe, Müller & Swiggers [1989: 347] and Linn 2005). In addition, it clearly demonstrates that Early Modern policies on quotation differed considerably from our modern standards.6 Although both these pitfalls are widely known among historiographers of linguistics (in spite of uncertainty on how to deal with them), a fairly new lesson can be drawn from this case as well. It seems likely that the apocryphal status of this ‘Boxhornian’ chapter remained uncovered for so long because the source text was an Early Modern commentary. As a matter of fact, one might argue that Renaissance commentaries on the texts of classical authors are nowadays all too often neglected in the history of scholarship and science in general, whereas these commentaries (many of which contain original views) enjoyed considerable popularity during the Renaissance (cf. Céard 1981).7 It is quite plausible that the 6. Cf. Peters (1974: 53) on Konrad Gesner’s Mithridates (1555): “Wie bei den meisten Gelehrten seiner Zeit weiß man auch bei Gessner nicht immer, ob er die Meinung eines anderen anführt oder eine persönliche Hypothese aufstellt”. Cf. also Poppe (1986); Colombat (2007); Colombat & Peters (2009). 7. Rhellicanus’s text is reproduced in at least two later Caesar compilations (1606, 1669); parts of his commentary are incorporated in countless later editions. Contemporary research on Early Modern commentaries is mainly limited to case studies (e.g., Most 1999; Pade 2005), although a general research project, entitled “The New Management of Knowledge in the Early Modern
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immediate successors to Boxhornius’s generation, despite the unfortunate typographic mistake, still understood that this entire chapter actually stemmed from Rhellicanus’s commentary, precisely because they were still acquainted with the genre. It seems that Leibniz, who was a moderate advocate of the relation between Germanic and Celtic as well, believed that Boxhorn too saw a very close connection between both language groups (even though this is not explicitly stated in Leibniz 1717: [Celtica] 81 and 147, where Boxhorn’s Gallicarum originum liber is mentioned, albeit mainly in connection with the appendix covering John Davies’s 1632 Welsh dictionary). From a note on a paper slip found in Leibniz’ manuscript heritage, it can be inferred that Leibniz probably understood that the entire Chapter 9 in Boxhorn’s book should be attributed to Rhellicanus (slip 11, G. W. Leibniz Bibliothek Hannover, Ms. IV, 470; see Considine 2011: 219–220, for information on Leibniz’s slip-collection and further references). In this particular note, Leibniz briefly referred to Rhellicanus’s view that the “Gaulish language was different from the Germanic language” [“linguam Gallicam a Germanica fuisse diversam”]. Leibniz did not fail to mention the source of his information (viz. “lib. 1 Caes. de bello Gall. apud Boxhorn. cap. 9. orig. Gall.”). This note thus suggests that Leibniz knew that Rhellicanus was quoted throughout the entire ninth chapter of Boxhorn’s book. In addition, the 19th-century linguist Adolf Holtzmann (1810–1870), a firm champion of the Germano-Celtic hypothesis, made the following remark relating to Boxhorn’s origines: “Wenn daher gegen das Ende der Schrift behauptet wird, die altgallische Sprache sei die kymrische, und nach der Stelle Caesars von der germanischen ganz verschieden, so scheint hier nicht mehr Boxhorn, sondern der Herausgeber der Schrift zu sprechen” (Holtzmann 1855: 3). Although Holtzmann did not manage to find out who the real author of Boxhorn’s Chapter 9 was, he realized that it was highly improbable that it had been authored by Boxhorn. Elsewhere, I also tried to show that the influential Persian–Germanic hypothesis partly owes its success to a short statement made by Justus Lipsius (1547– 1606) in his commentary on Tacitus (1589: ‘Ad Cor[neli] Taciti Germaniam’, lii). Although this commentary had gained a wide general readership, it remained overlooked in the historiography of linguistics up until quite recently (Deneire & Van Hal 2006; Van Hal 2008: 156). In sum, the Boxhorn / Rhellicanus case demonstrates that Early Modern commentaries merit closer attention by scholars working in the history of (precomparative) linguistics.
Period: The Transmission of Classical Latin Literature via Neo-Latin Commentaries”, is currently underway at Leiden University (see http://www.nwo.nl/projecten.nsf/pages/2300140441).
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References Anon. 1647. Vraagen voorghestelt over de Bediedinge van de tot noch toe onbekende afgodinne Nehalennia. Leyden: Van der Boxe. Bonfante, Giuliano. 1953/1954. “Ideas on the Kinship of the European Languages from 1200 to 1800”. Cahiers d’Histoire Mondiale 1.679–699. Botley, Paul & Dirk van Miert. Forthcoming. The Complete Correspondence of Joseph Scaliger. Boxhorn[ius], Marcus Zuerius. 1647a. Bediedinge van de tot noch toe onbekende afgodinne Nehalennia, over de dusent ende ettelicke hondert jaren onder het sandt begraven, dan on lancx ontdeckt op het strandt van Walcheren in Zeelandt. Leyden: Van der Boxe. Boxhorn[ius], Marcus Zuerius. 1647b. Antwoord van Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn, gegeven op de Vraaghen, hem voorgestelt over de Bediedinge van de afgodinne Nehalennia, onlancx uyt ghegeven, in welcke de ghemeine herkomste van der Griecken, Romeinen ende Duytschen Tale uyt den Scythen duydelijck bewesen, ende verscheiden Oudheden van dese Volckeren grondelijck ontdekt ende verklaert worden. Leyden: Van der Boxe. Boxhorn[ius], Marcus Zuerius. 1650. De Graecorum, Romanorum et Germanorum linguis earumque symphonia dissertatio. Lugduni Batavorum: ex officina Guilielmi Christiani. Boxhorn[ius], Marcus Zuerius. 1654. Originum Gallicarum liber. In quo veteris et nobilissimae Gallorum gentis origines, antiquitates, mores, lingua et alia eruuntur et illustrantur. Cui acce dit antiquae linguae Britannicae lexicon Britannico-Latinum, cum adiectis et insertis eiusdem authoris Adagiis Britannicis sapientiae veterum Druidum reliquiis et aliis antiquitatis Britan nicae Gallicaeque nonnullis monumentis. Amstelodami: apud Ioannem Ianssonium. Boxhorn[ius], Marcus Zuerius. 1679 [1662]. Epistolae et poemata. Ed. by Jacobus Baselius & Jacobus Thomasius. Francofurti: apud Johannem Theodorum. (First edition by Jacobus Baselius, Amstelodami: ex off. C. Commelini, 1662.) Campbell, Lyle. 2006. “Why Sir William Jones Got It All Wrong, or Jones’ role in how to establish language families”. Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca Julio de Urquijo: Interna tional Journal of Basque Linguistics and Philology 40:1/2.245–264. Céard, Jean. 1981. “Les transformations du genre du commentaire”. L’automne de la Renaissance, 1580–1630 ed. by Jean Lafond & André Stegmann, 101–115. Paris: J. Vrin. Chotzen, Theodor Max. 1931. Primitieve keltistiek in de Nederlanden. Openbare les gehouden bij de opening van zijn colleges als privaat-docent in de Keltische philologie aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op 9 october 1931. Den Haag: Martin Niehoff. Colombat, Bernard. 2007. “L’horizon de retrospection du Mithridate de Conrad Gessner (1555)”. History of Linguistics 2005: Selected Papers from the Tenth International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS X), 1–5 September 2005, Urbana-Champaign, Il linois ed. by Douglas A Kibbee, 89=102. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Colombat, Bernard & Martin Peters. 2009. Konrad Gesner: Mithridate = Mithridates (1555). (= Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 452.) Genève: Droz. Colvin, Stephen. 2007. A Historical Greek Reader: Mycenaean to the Koine. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Considine, John. 2010. “Why was Claude de Saumaise (1588–1653) interested in the Scythian hypothesis?”. Language & History 53:2. 81–96. Considine, John. 2011. “Leibniz as Lexicographer?”. History of Linguistics 2008: Selected papers from the Eleventh International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS XI), Potsdam, 28th August — 2nd September 2008 ed. by Gerda Hassler & Gesina Volkmann, 217–224. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
250 Miscellanea: Notes / Notizen — Documents / Dokumente Davies, Caryl. 2000. Adfeilion Babel: Agweddau ar syniadaeth ieithyddol y ddeunawfed ganrif. Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru. Davies, John. Antiquae linguae Britannicae, nunc vulgo dictae Cambro-Britannicae, a suis Cym raecae vel Cambricae, ab aliis Wallicae, et linguae Latinae dictionarium duplex. Londini: in aedibus R. Young for Davies. Dekker, Kees. 1999. The Origins of Old Germanic Studies in the Low Countries. (= Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 92.) Leiden: Brill. Deneire, Tom & Toon Van Hal. 2006. Lipsius tegen Becanus: Over het Nederlands als oertaal. Editie, vertaling en interpretatie van zijn brief aan Hendrik Schotti (19 december 1598). Amersfoort: Florivallis. Droixhe, Daniel. 1978. La linguistique et l’appel de l’histoire (1600–1800): Rationalisme et révo lutions positivistes. (= Langues & Cultures, 10.) Genève: Droz. Droixhe, Daniel. 1989. “Boxhorn’s Bad Reputation: A chapter in academic linguistics”. Speculum historiographiae linguisticae. Kurzbeiträge der IV. Internationalen Konferenz zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaften ed. by Klaus D. Dutz, 359–384. Münster: Nodus. Droixhe, Daniel, Jean-Claude Muller & Pierre Swiggers. 1989. “Les correspondances de linguistes: Projet d’inventaire systématique”. Speculum historiographiae linguisticae. Kurzbei träge der IV. Internationalen Konferenz zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaften ed. by Klaus D. Dutz, 347–357. Münster: Nodus. Fellman, Jack. 1974. “The First Historical Linguist”. Linguistics No. 137.31–33. Fellman, Jack. 1975. “On Sir William Jones and the Scythian Language”. Language Sciences 34.37–38. Fellman, Jack. 1976. “Further Remarks on the Scythian Language”. Language Sciences 41.19. Fortson, Benjamin. 2010 [2004]. Indo-European Language and Culture: an Introduction. (= Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics, 19.) 2nd ed. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. Grafton, Anthony T., April Shelford & Nancy Siraisi. 1992. New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The power of tradition and the shock of discovery. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Hoenigswald, Henry M. 1974. “Fallacies in the History of Linguistics: Notes on the appraisal of the nineteenth century”. Studies in the History of Linguistics: Tradition and paradigms ed. by Dell Hymes, 346–358. Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press. Hofman, Rijcklof H. F. 1998. “Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn (1612–1653)”. Kelten en de Nederlanden van prehistorie tot heden ed. by Lauran Toorians, 149–167. Leuven & Paris: Peeters. Holtzmann, Adolf. 1855. Kelten und Germanen: Eine historische Untersuchung. Stuttgart: A. Krabbe. Isebaert, Lambert, Peter Rogiest, Pierre Swiggers & Toon Van Hal. 2009. “Hortus Linguarum, the ‘Garden of languages’: Tuin der talen. Description and presentation of a digitalisation project”. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft 19:2.305–308. Koerner, E.F.K. 1999. “The Concept of ‘Revolution’ in Linguistics: Historical, methodological and philosophical considerations”. History of Linguistics 1996: Selected Papers from the Sev enth International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS VII) ed. by David Cram et al., vol. I: Traditions of Linguistics Worldwide, 3–14. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 1717. Collectanea etymologica illustrationi linguarum, veteris Celti cae, Germanicae, Gallicae, aliarumque inservientia, cum praefatione Johannis Georgii Ec cardi. Hanoverae: sumptibus Nicolai Foersteri.
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Linn, Andrew. 2005. “Research Ethics in Book-Based, Historical Research”. Flores Grammaticæ: Essays in Memory of Vivien Law ed. by Nicola McLelland & Andrew Linn, 21–32. Münster: Nodus. Lipsius, Justus. 1589. C. Cornelii Taciti Opera quae exstant. Lugduni Batavorum: ex officina Plantiniana, apud Franciscum Raphelengium. Ludwig, Walther. 1983. “Die Stockhornias des Joannes Rhellicanus”. Humanistica Lovaniensia 32.218–224. Margolin, Jean-Claude. 1985. “Glaréan, commentateur du ‘de bello Gallico’ ”. Présence de César. Actes du Colloque des 9–11 décembre 1983 ed. by Raymond Chevalier, 183–212. Paris: Édition “Les Belles Lettres”. Morgan, Prys. 1973–1974. “Boxhorn, Leibniz, and the Welsh”. Studia Celtica 8/9.220–228. Most, Glenn. 1999. Commentaries = Kommentare. (= Aporemata, 4.) Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Nieuwstraten, Jaap. Forthcoming. Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn (1612–53). Pade, Marianne. 2005. On Renaissance Commentaries. (= Noctes neolatinae, 4.) Hildesheim: Georg Olms. Peters, Manfred. 1974. Konrad Gesner: Mithridates. De differentiis linguarum tum veterum tum quae hodie apud diversas nationes in toto orbe terrarum in usu sunt. Aalen: Scientia. Poppe, Erich. 1986. Multiplex sane linguarum ac dialectorum varietas. Zur Quellenrekonstrukti on im ‘Mithridates’ (1555) des Konrad Gessner am Beispiel des Keltischen. (= Arbeitsberichte Universität Münster; Institut für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, 6.) Münster: Institut für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft. Rhellicanus, Joannes. 1543. In C. Iulii Caesaris dictatoris viri disertissimi, et Auli Hirtii, seu Oppij, commentaria de Bello Gallico, Civili Pompeiano, Alexandrino, Africano, et Hispaniensi an notationes. Basileae: [per Hieronymum Curionem]. Rietbergen, Peter J. A. N. 2007. Europa’s India: Fascinatie en cultureel imperialisme, circa 1750– circa 2000. Nijmegen: Vantilt. Siebert, Susanne. 1995. “Rhellikan, Johannes (Müller, Rhellicanus)”. Biographisch-Bibliographi sches Kirchenlexikon ed. by Friedrich-Wilhelm Bautz & Traugott Bautz, vol. VIII.136–137. Herzberg: Bautz. http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/r/rhellikan_j.shtml. Szemerényi, Oswald. 1980. “About Unrewriting the History of Linguistics”. Wege zur Universali enforschung. Sprachwissenschaftlichte Beiträge zum 60. Geburtstag von Hansjakob Seiler ed. by Gunter Brettschneider & Christian Lehmann, 151–162. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Van Driem, George. 2001. Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region Containing an Introduction to the Symbiotic Theory of Language. Leiden: Brill. Van Hal, Toon. 2008. ‘Moedertalen en taalmoeders’: Methodologie, epistemologie en ideologie van het taalvergelijkend onderzoek in de renaissance, met bijzondere aandacht voor de bijdrage van de humanisten uit de Lage Landen. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Leuven. Van Hal, Toon. 2010. “On ‘the Scythian theory’: Reconstructing the outlines of Johannes Elichmann’s (1601/1602–1639) planned Archaeologia harmonica”. Language & History 53:2. 70–80. Van Hal, Toon. Forthcoming. “From Alauda to Zythus: Collecting and discussing Old-Gaulish words in Early Modern Europe”.
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Author’s address: Toon Van Hal Faculteit Letteren Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Blijde Inkomststraat 21 — bus 3318 B-3000 Leuven B el g iu m e-mail: [email protected]
Reassessing the Contribution of Franz Boas (1858–1941) Conference report Regna Darnell
University of Western Ontario
An interdisciplinary conference on “Franz Boas: Ethnographer Theorist, Activist, Public Intellectual” was held in London, Ontario, Canada 2–5 December 2010, organized by Regna Darnell, Michelle Hamilton and Joshua Smith (Western Ontario) together with Robert Hancock (Victoria) and sponsored by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Boas’ Americanist anthropology crossed the academic disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, folklore, American Indian Studies, education and many others. Twenty-three papers reassessed his contributions in these and other disciplines and highlighted his political and social activist commitments in both North America and Europe. Papers crossed the social sciences and humanities fields and ranged from literary studies to philosophy. Boas’s ethnographic work in British Columbia was an important focus for many scholars who emphasized the textual tradition in linguistics and anthropology as well as the collaborations that Boas and his students forged with Native American consultants and communities. Papers of particular interest to readers of Historiographia Linguistica include: Michael Silverstein (Chicago), “From Baffin Island to Boasian Induction: How anthropology and linguistics got into their interlinear groove”; Sean O’Neill (Oklahoma), “The Boasian Legacy in Ethnomusicology: Cultural relativism, narrative texts, linguistic structures and the role of classification in linguistic theory”; Tim Powell (American Philosophical Society), “Building a Digital Archive of Endangered Language Material at the American Philosophical Society”; David Dinwiddie (New Mexico), “Boasian Ethnography: Reflecting on its contemporary value in view of its place in Pacific Northwest history”; Marianne Nicolson & Ryan Nicolson (Kwakwaka’wakw Musgamakw Dzawada’inuxw, Kingcome Inlet, B.C.), “Contemporary Revitalization Using Boasian Texts”; and discussions of Boas’s long-term collaborations with James A. Teit (1864–1922) by Andrea Laforet (Canadian Museum of Civilization, Ottawa) and Historiographia Linguistica XXXVIII:1/2 (2011), 253–254. doi 10.1075/hl.38.1/2.18dar issn 0302–5160 / e-issn 1569–9781 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
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with George Hunt (1854–1933) by Isaiah Wilner (Yale) & Judith Berman (Independent Scholar).1 The Conference is one of a number of events commemorating the centennial of the publication of The Mind of Primitive Man in 1911 (New York: Macmillan; 2nd rev. ed., 1938). The University of Nebraska Press has undertaken a collaboration with the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia to prepare a critical edition of Boas’ professional and personal papers that are held in their collections. Regna Darnell (Western Ontario) is assembling an editorial team and advisory board with the advice of the Conference participants and other colleagues.* Reporter’s address: Regna Darnell Department of Anthropology Faculty of Social Science University of Western Ontario London, Ont. N6A 5C2 C ana d a e-mail:
1. A volume based on this colloquium is forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press. * [As editor I’d like to refer the reader — with the author’s permission — to her 1998 book, And Along Came Boas: Continuity and revolution in the emergence of Boasian anthropology in America (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins), xviii, 331 pp., 11 illustr.]