Phrygisch und Griechisch By Gunter Neumann (review)

BOOK NOTICES 413 tional, and dialogic theory of language-change, which incorporated Whitney's pragmatic and evolutionary semiotics and paralleled Bréal's psychological account ofthe evolution ofsyntax and semantics. Finally, he put forward a sound conception oflanguage acquisition and language use that was in full accord with the new theory oflanguage-change' (192). If such an assessment is on the mark, then it is time that we attend more to this neglected scholar of historical linguistics . Wegener's major book appeared in 1885. Any number of worthy contributions to historical linguistics published around then could have been drowned out in the din of the Neogrammarians. A major issue on language change that concerned these three linguists toward the latter part ofthe 19th century was the excessive extent to which language was seen as a biological organism . Obviously there are useful parallels that can be drawn between languages and species, as explored in the recent book edited jointly by a linguist (Henry Hoenigswald) and a biologist (Linda Wiener), Biological metaphor and cladistic classification (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987). But these parallels can be grossly exaggerated, and August Schleicher and Max Müller were especially guilty of doing just that. The effort to correct these excesses, according to N is the theme which unites these three linguists in their study of the problem of language change (xi): 'Despite their different intellectual and vocational backgrounds, and the different countries in which they worked (the United States, France, and Germany), Whitney, Bréal and Wegener converge upon a single point in their respective solutions to that problem: it can only be solved if linguists stop regarding language as an autonomous entity, or, in the fashion of that time, an organism that lives and dies independently of the users of the languages, and instead start to focus on the actions, as advocated by Whitney, and the mind of the language users, as stressed by Bréal, together with the situation in which they use it, as recommended by Wegener." There were moments when they dealt unfairly with their adversaries, as when Whitney disparaged Muller's effort in 1864 to apply the doctrine of uniformitarianism in linguistics (40). In fact, another such effort was made much more recently, by William Labov in 1972 (see p. 274 of his Sociolinguistic Patterns. University of Pennsylvania Press). By providing such controversies with both the personal background and the professional setting, N has given us a vivid account of some of the outstanding issues of our field a century ago. Frequently, she enhances the volume with useful analyses, such as the seven distinct meanings of 'evolution' that she identified among the linguists of that time (56). All in all, it is a book that is at once instructive and delightful, one that would appeal to any linguist with a sense of history. I hope that many such books will be forthcoming, not only on the history of linguistics in the Indo-European tradition , but on the other major traditions as well, such as the Chinese and the Semitic, which have remained largely unexplored. In reading these pages, I was reminded of a criticism that Edward O. Wilson raised in his book Sociobiology, where some linguists were likened to 'poet naturalists', who 'celebrate idiosyncratic personal visions' (559). Indeed, one can detect that flavor in these three 19thcentury students of historical linguistics. However , the encouraging sign is that our field is moving further and further away from 'personal visions', and that there is a steady increase of research that is collaborative (often interdisciplinary ) as well as quantitative, especially in the area of language change. [William S-Y. Wang. University of California at Berkeley.) Phrygisch und Griechisch. By Gunter Neumann. (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch -historische Klasse, Sitzungsberichte, 499. Band.) Wien: Verlag der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1988. Pp. 27. ÖS 70/DM 10.00. Phrygian is an Indo-European (IE) language attested primarily through several hundred inscriptions in Asia Minor dating from the eighth through fourth centuries B.C.E. ('Old Phrygian ') and the second and third centuries CE. CNeo-Phrygian'); it is attested secondarily through proper names in Greek sources. Phrygisch und Griechisch presents a brief account, by a leading...