- History of linguistics 1996: Selected papers from the Seventh International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHOLS VII) Oxford, 12–17 September 1996 Vol. 1: Traditions in linguistics worldwide; Vol. 2: From classical to contemporary linguistics. ed. by David Cram, Andrew Linn, Elke Nowak
These two volumes contain a selection of the papers presented at ICHOLS VII in 1996. The 64 articles are divided into two volumes, the first concentrating on non-European linguistics, including Celtic linguistics and works produced by Europeans discussing non-European languages, divided regionally, and the second, the history of European linguistics, divided chronologically. Both volumes contain articles on a wide range of topics that are relatively independent of each other.
Vol. 1 is divided into ten sections: ‘Generalia’, ‘Missionary linguistics’, ‘The Celtic tradition’, ‘The Chinese tradition’, ‘The Georgian tradition’, ‘The Hebrew tradition’, ‘The Japanese tradition’, ‘The Persian tradition’, ‘The Russian tradition’, and ‘The Tamil tradition’. Of these the first three are the longest, with four, eleven, and four articles, respectively. The contributions discuss methodological issues, the history of linguistics in various countries, and individual grammars and grammarians. The section on missionary linguistics is especially noteworthy, with articles concentrating on early contacts between Europeans and non-European languages.
Vol. 2 begins with a report on a roundtable discussion on problems of translating ancient grammatical texts. After this the sections are arranged chronologically: ‘Classical and medieval’, ‘Seventeenth century’, ‘Eighteenth century’, ‘Nineteenth century’, ‘Twentieth century’. The topics of the articles within each section vary considerably.
In the foreword (ix–x in both volumes) the editors note that they chose to aim at a representative coverage of the topics discussed at the conference instead of picking out the best papers. The wide range of themes in this collection shows that they have succeeded in this, but this approach inevitably results in the book being broadly-based rather than specific. As such, it will be helpful for a reader who wants to gain a comprehensive view of the study of the history of linguistics today, but for most readers, especially those who already have a clear area of interest within the field, several of the articles may be of little interest. The broadly-based approach makes this book a more sensible acquisition for libraries than for individuals.