Now that I've wiped the slobber off my teeth, I'd like to forward the following citation to the group: ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: Dorothy Disterheft <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] The _History of Linguistics_, published in five volumes, aims to provide the reader with an authoritative and comprehensive account of the attitudes to language prevailing in different civilizations and in different periods by examining the very varied development of linguistic thought in the specific social, cultural and religious contexts involved. Issues discussed include the place of language in education, variation and prestige, and approaches to lexical and grammatical description. The authors of the individual chapters are specialists who have analysed the primary sources and produced original syntheses by exploring the linguistic interests and assumptions of particular cultures in their own terms, without seeking to reinterpret them as contributions towards the development of contemporary western conceptions of linguistic science. _History of Linguistics_ will be of particular interest to students of language and linguistics. It will also appeal to the general reader who is interested in language and the history of ideas. _History of Linguistics III: Renaissance and Early Modern Linguistics_ Longman Linguistics Library Edited by Giulio Lepschy, Professor in the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Reading and a Fellow of the British Academy. The third volume of the History of Linguistics covers the Renaissance and the Early Modern Period. The chapter on the Renaissance (15th and 16th centuries) by Mirko Tavoni, examines the study of Latin in both the new Humanist and rationalist traditions, along with the foundations of vernacular grammar in the study of Romance, Germanic and Slavic (with sections by Maria Delfina Gandolfo and Silvia Toscano). The chapter on the Early Modern Period (17th and 18th centuries) by Raffaele Simone, presents the study of language in its philosophical context (Bacon, Port-Royal, Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz, the Enlightenment), as well as the accumulation of data which led to the foundation of Comparative Philology in the 19th century. Paperback 0 582 09493 3 Cased 0 582 09492 5 288 pages Published November 1997 _History of Linguistics, Volume IV: Nineteenth-Century Linguistics_ Longman Linguistics Library Edited by Giulio Lepschy, Professor in the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Reading and a Fellow of the British Academy and Anna Morpurgo Davies, Professor of Comparative Philology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy In Volume IV: Nineteenth-Century Linguistics, Anna Morpurgo Davies shows how linguistics came into its own as an independent discipline separated from philosophical and literary studies and enjoyed a unique intellectual and institutional success tied to the research ethos of the new universities, until it became a model for other humanistic subjects which aimed at 'scientific status'. The linguistics of the nineteenth century abandons earlier theoretical discussions in favour of a more empirical and historical approach using new methods to compare languages and to investigate their history. The great achievement of this period is the demonstration that languages such as Sanskrit, Latin and English are related and derive from a parent language which is not attested but can be reconstructed. This book discusses in detail the theories developed and the individual findings obtained. In contrast with earlier historiographical trends it denies that the new approach originated entirely from German Romanticism, and highlights a form of continuity with the eighteenth century, while stressing that a deliberate break took place round the 1830s. By the end of the century the results of comparative and historical linguistics had been generally accepted, but it soon became clear that a historical approach could not by itself solve all questions that it raised. At this point the new interest in description and theory which characterizes the twentieth century began to gain prominence. Paperback 0 582 29478 9 Cased 0 582 29477 0 464 pages Published January 1998 For more information on these titles and other linguistics titles, please visit our web site: http://www.awl-he.com/linguistics Sincerely, Robert Einarsson please visit my web site at www.artsci.gmcc.ab.ca/people/einarssonb/