- Email: [email protected]
Linguistica generale, filologia romanza, etimologia
REVIEWS
- COMPTES-RENDUS
293
surely must), then the conclusion that conversation is a single variety is inconsistent with this definition. Ultimately, it can only be decided which texts constitute a single variety by applying statistical significance tests to a large body of descriptive results. Of this the authors are aware, although their attempt to justify using quantifiers such as ‘rarely’ and ‘often’ as an informal ‘alternative method’ (22) smacks of sleight of hand. It is therefore unfortunate that they succumb to the familiar temptation to prematurely ossify large areas of the language by attaching variety labels to them without sufficient caution. Nor it is clear how conversation can be described as a province. If advertising, science and law are also provinces (71), how would the authors describe a conversation between two scientists about their own subject? In this case one could equally well argue that conversation is a modality in that it represents a choice, as against writing a paper for example, which is determined by the ‘specific purpose of an utterance’ (to sound out a colleague on one’s ideas, say) independently of ‘the kind of occupational or professional activity being engaged in’. The dimensions of situational constraint are not defined explicitly enough to be applied with confidence. Although much of this review has been used for pointing to weaknesses in certain parts of the book, I hope that it has been made clear that Crystal and Davy have produced a work which is an invaluable source of material and information for scholars and students with an in?erest in stylistics. English
Defiarlmertt
,
N. Z. FAIRCLOUGH
University of Larncaster, Bailrigg, Lancaster,, England. Linguistica generde, filologia romanza, etimologia. Manuali di Filologia e Storia. Sansoni Editore, Florence 1970. xxiv, 308 pp. With a preface by I3. Migliorini. The story of Yakov Malkiel’s scholar:‘,y development and his influence on Romance linguistic studies requires a chronicler of as . wide interests, as insatiable curiosity and as unquenchable enthusiasm as himself. The intellectual climate in which he grew up Yakov
MALKIEL,
294
HEVIEWS - COMP'i'ES-RENDUS
that of bet\veen-wars Central Europe, described in his fine penportrait of his elder colleague, Kantorowicz, in Evans 1970 insisted on rnf+ticulous documentation and thorough and microscopic justificntion for any opinion advanced, and valued the qualities of the myopic, unworidly scholar far above those of the far-sighted practical man or the stirring teacher. Pitched into the alien atmosanti-egghead, pragmatic North America phere of isolationist, (nevertheless a welcome refuge from the horrors of Nazism) older scholars of undoubted distinction sometimes seemed to weave themselves a protective cocoon of incomprehension to cushion themselves against the onslaughts CJfthe American way of life. Bv? those who, like ;Llalkiel, had not yet reached their prime could more easily have camouflaged themselves and adopted current fashionable orthodoxies in their JvAlosen disciplines. In linguistics, the era was marked by pugnacious descriptivism - ‘post-Bloomfieldian taxonomics’ as it 1s sometimes sneeringly called today. Xts behaviourist, mechanistic, anti-historical, non-European language bias must have made adjustment particularly difficult for those schooled in the Central European philological tradition. In Malkiel’s case, imperfect mastery of the English language in his early years in America supplemented the cultural shock of change of environ:.aent, ~!nd for some years his work continued in the older tradition. This collection of essays. dating from 1954 to 1962, covers a different era in both linguistics and 3falkiel’s career. In his preface he refers to a disgelo - a ‘thaw’, to use the term used of the deStatinisation (and post-XzCarthyist) era. The stranglehold of newBloomfieldian theory on American linguistics was beginning to be loosened, and other voices could make themselves heard (before the clamp-down by a new Chomskyist orthodoxy?). 3Ialkiel ventured to raise his voice, adding to his extensive repertoire of thorough ?,esearch monographs more essayistic writings brilliantly conveying to the non-specialist the wisdom he had derived from his less acce$lsible scholarly activities. At this time he became the advocate for Romance linguistics and its special position within general linguistics, for of t-derided etymological studies and historical lin(guistics in general, and for the recognition of a linearity, a continuity, in language studies, sometimes ignored by those who see each step forward as a revolutivilary overthrow of their predecessors. After 1962, as he himself !.ells us, Malkiel’s still-prolific
REVIEWS
-
C 0 RI I? T E S-R E N D U S
295
writmgs have been written ‘in maniera piil dirctta, piii personale C, direi, piti vigorosa’, less dtlfen&e, perhaps, and certainly displaying great originality in method and treatment of, often, traditional theme+. On another tack, his vast bibliographical knowledge, combir*Dd with his capacity to handle enormous amounts of material wrthout being submt rged, has made him a historian of linguistic scienct! to be reckoned with. unruffled by recent An It alian-speaking audience, virtually upheavals in American linguistics, will, at its first encotmter here with Malkiel’s work, probably be more impressed by his innovations, in such fields as etymology, than by his defence of tradition. Thus, in comparison with a similar collection for English speakers planned at the same time but escaping the accidents that delayed this one (Malkiel 1968), this volume contains a higher proportion of pieces on Ytymology and less on more general linguistic themes. The choice, one gathers, was made by Giacotno Devote, whose wife Olga translated the essays, presumably with Italian readers’ interests in mind. The title, in giving first mention to general linguistics, is descriptive less of the scope of individual essays than of Nalkiel’s view that general principles should be illustrated from the author’s specialist field - in the event Romance linguistics. Well-chosen, delightful and erudite illustrations we have in abundance, yet not, here, paraded before us for our amusement, bu.t fitted in t.J a framework of methodological enquiry. Five of the present essays have already appeared, in the revised English version, in Malkiel 1968. Three are on etymological method. His masterly ‘typological’ classificaiion of etymological studies -pss-classifies well over a hundred of quch studies in terms (1 O-38) c-v of three Yistinctive features’ (c~iteri firilzcr@li) - their form, their material, and their complexity. ‘Etimologia a Linguistica Generale’ (39-66) ci’efines the position of etymological studies within linguistics, while ‘%icit& e complessit& delle soluzioni etimologichc’ (99-133) amply illustrates the pitfalls of etymological studies and formulates guidelines for overcoming them. Of tht* other t~vo, ‘Tratti caratteristici della linguistica romanica’ ( 146-169) is a brilliant account of the methods and assumptions of Komance linguistics, while ‘Studi sui binomi lessicali irreversibili’ (240-288) is a pyrotechnical examination of the two-element set phrases (+‘:I< a& S/XZVZ etc.) found ir: a wide range of languages, here supple-
REVIEWS - COMPTES-RENDUS
296
mented with Italian examples. Four essays did not find their place in Malkiel 1968, though are certainly worthy of republication. The first, ‘Tre definizioni della linguistica romanza’ (l-9), suitably sets the tone of the book with its succinct analysis of different approaches to the scope and material of Romance linguistics. Two are again on etymological method, emphasising the position of etymology within historical linguistics (67-98) and within lexicology (132-145). Tlhe most substantial piece of the collection ‘Fenomeni di ipercaratterizzazione diacronica nelle lingue. romanze’ ( 170-239) is most welcomely reprinted here, In it some of Malkiel’s most personal qualities as a scholar are exemplified: taking a very large number of what might appear to be haphazard features in a wide range of languages, he ferrets out the hidden pattern and so adds a new concept - that of diachronic hypercharacterisation - to our battery of tools for cracking the problems of language change. As always, Malkiel shows that the simplistic, monolithic model fails in explanatory power, and that the complexity of language necessitates the unravelling of an intricately interwoven set of variables. Faced with the embarras de richesso:of Malkiel’s writings, selectiorl must have been ciifficult. I mysei!, might have added to those reprinted here some more general work on methodology in historical iinguistics or on the history of the science, But possibly, for the Italian reader, insulated to a great. extent from the methodological battles of linguistics of the last thirty years, this selection gives a better sense of innovation vlithout loss of continuity, of r,ethinking without rejection of the achievements of the past, of a more precise formulation of the im!Aicit assumptions of traditional linguistics. For these y;easons he m.ust welcome this volume. De*t
of
Langzlage,
Rebecca POSNER
N&+@O~,
Yovk, Eq$and.
KEFERENCES A. R. Jr. ed., 1970. 0~8 four modmt hmanists: Hofmannsthal, GSndoZf,Cutiius, Kantmowicz. Princeton University Press. MALKIEL, Y., 1960. Essays en linguisticthemes. Oxford, Blackwell.
E;VANS,
- COMPTES-RENDUS
293
surely must), then the conclusion that conversation is a single variety is inconsistent with this definition. Ultimately, it can only be decided which texts constitute a single variety by applying statistical significance tests to a large body of descriptive results. Of this the authors are aware, although their attempt to justify using quantifiers such as ‘rarely’ and ‘often’ as an informal ‘alternative method’ (22) smacks of sleight of hand. It is therefore unfortunate that they succumb to the familiar temptation to prematurely ossify large areas of the language by attaching variety labels to them without sufficient caution. Nor it is clear how conversation can be described as a province. If advertising, science and law are also provinces (71), how would the authors describe a conversation between two scientists about their own subject? In this case one could equally well argue that conversation is a modality in that it represents a choice, as against writing a paper for example, which is determined by the ‘specific purpose of an utterance’ (to sound out a colleague on one’s ideas, say) independently of ‘the kind of occupational or professional activity being engaged in’. The dimensions of situational constraint are not defined explicitly enough to be applied with confidence. Although much of this review has been used for pointing to weaknesses in certain parts of the book, I hope that it has been made clear that Crystal and Davy have produced a work which is an invaluable source of material and information for scholars and students with an in?erest in stylistics. English
Defiarlmertt
,
N. Z. FAIRCLOUGH
University of Larncaster, Bailrigg, Lancaster,, England. Linguistica generde, filologia romanza, etimologia. Manuali di Filologia e Storia. Sansoni Editore, Florence 1970. xxiv, 308 pp. With a preface by I3. Migliorini. The story of Yakov Malkiel’s scholar:‘,y development and his influence on Romance linguistic studies requires a chronicler of as . wide interests, as insatiable curiosity and as unquenchable enthusiasm as himself. The intellectual climate in which he grew up Yakov
MALKIEL,
294
HEVIEWS - COMP'i'ES-RENDUS
that of bet\veen-wars Central Europe, described in his fine penportrait of his elder colleague, Kantorowicz, in Evans 1970 insisted on rnf+ticulous documentation and thorough and microscopic justificntion for any opinion advanced, and valued the qualities of the myopic, unworidly scholar far above those of the far-sighted practical man or the stirring teacher. Pitched into the alien atmosanti-egghead, pragmatic North America phere of isolationist, (nevertheless a welcome refuge from the horrors of Nazism) older scholars of undoubted distinction sometimes seemed to weave themselves a protective cocoon of incomprehension to cushion themselves against the onslaughts CJfthe American way of life. Bv? those who, like ;Llalkiel, had not yet reached their prime could more easily have camouflaged themselves and adopted current fashionable orthodoxies in their JvAlosen disciplines. In linguistics, the era was marked by pugnacious descriptivism - ‘post-Bloomfieldian taxonomics’ as it 1s sometimes sneeringly called today. Xts behaviourist, mechanistic, anti-historical, non-European language bias must have made adjustment particularly difficult for those schooled in the Central European philological tradition. In Malkiel’s case, imperfect mastery of the English language in his early years in America supplemented the cultural shock of change of environ:.aent, ~!nd for some years his work continued in the older tradition. This collection of essays. dating from 1954 to 1962, covers a different era in both linguistics and 3falkiel’s career. In his preface he refers to a disgelo - a ‘thaw’, to use the term used of the deStatinisation (and post-XzCarthyist) era. The stranglehold of newBloomfieldian theory on American linguistics was beginning to be loosened, and other voices could make themselves heard (before the clamp-down by a new Chomskyist orthodoxy?). 3Ialkiel ventured to raise his voice, adding to his extensive repertoire of thorough ?,esearch monographs more essayistic writings brilliantly conveying to the non-specialist the wisdom he had derived from his less acce$lsible scholarly activities. At this time he became the advocate for Romance linguistics and its special position within general linguistics, for of t-derided etymological studies and historical lin(guistics in general, and for the recognition of a linearity, a continuity, in language studies, sometimes ignored by those who see each step forward as a revolutivilary overthrow of their predecessors. After 1962, as he himself !.ells us, Malkiel’s still-prolific
REVIEWS
-
C 0 RI I? T E S-R E N D U S
295
writmgs have been written ‘in maniera piil dirctta, piii personale C, direi, piti vigorosa’, less dtlfen&e, perhaps, and certainly displaying great originality in method and treatment of, often, traditional theme+. On another tack, his vast bibliographical knowledge, combir*Dd with his capacity to handle enormous amounts of material wrthout being submt rged, has made him a historian of linguistic scienct! to be reckoned with. unruffled by recent An It alian-speaking audience, virtually upheavals in American linguistics, will, at its first encotmter here with Malkiel’s work, probably be more impressed by his innovations, in such fields as etymology, than by his defence of tradition. Thus, in comparison with a similar collection for English speakers planned at the same time but escaping the accidents that delayed this one (Malkiel 1968), this volume contains a higher proportion of pieces on Ytymology and less on more general linguistic themes. The choice, one gathers, was made by Giacotno Devote, whose wife Olga translated the essays, presumably with Italian readers’ interests in mind. The title, in giving first mention to general linguistics, is descriptive less of the scope of individual essays than of Nalkiel’s view that general principles should be illustrated from the author’s specialist field - in the event Romance linguistics. Well-chosen, delightful and erudite illustrations we have in abundance, yet not, here, paraded before us for our amusement, bu.t fitted in t.J a framework of methodological enquiry. Five of the present essays have already appeared, in the revised English version, in Malkiel 1968. Three are on etymological method. His masterly ‘typological’ classificaiion of etymological studies -pss-classifies well over a hundred of quch studies in terms (1 O-38) c-v of three Yistinctive features’ (c~iteri firilzcr@li) - their form, their material, and their complexity. ‘Etimologia a Linguistica Generale’ (39-66) ci’efines the position of etymological studies within linguistics, while ‘%icit& e complessit& delle soluzioni etimologichc’ (99-133) amply illustrates the pitfalls of etymological studies and formulates guidelines for overcoming them. Of tht* other t~vo, ‘Tratti caratteristici della linguistica romanica’ ( 146-169) is a brilliant account of the methods and assumptions of Komance linguistics, while ‘Studi sui binomi lessicali irreversibili’ (240-288) is a pyrotechnical examination of the two-element set phrases (+‘:I< a& S/XZVZ etc.) found ir: a wide range of languages, here supple-
REVIEWS - COMPTES-RENDUS
296
mented with Italian examples. Four essays did not find their place in Malkiel 1968, though are certainly worthy of republication. The first, ‘Tre definizioni della linguistica romanza’ (l-9), suitably sets the tone of the book with its succinct analysis of different approaches to the scope and material of Romance linguistics. Two are again on etymological method, emphasising the position of etymology within historical linguistics (67-98) and within lexicology (132-145). Tlhe most substantial piece of the collection ‘Fenomeni di ipercaratterizzazione diacronica nelle lingue. romanze’ ( 170-239) is most welcomely reprinted here, In it some of Malkiel’s most personal qualities as a scholar are exemplified: taking a very large number of what might appear to be haphazard features in a wide range of languages, he ferrets out the hidden pattern and so adds a new concept - that of diachronic hypercharacterisation - to our battery of tools for cracking the problems of language change. As always, Malkiel shows that the simplistic, monolithic model fails in explanatory power, and that the complexity of language necessitates the unravelling of an intricately interwoven set of variables. Faced with the embarras de richesso:of Malkiel’s writings, selectiorl must have been ciifficult. I mysei!, might have added to those reprinted here some more general work on methodology in historical iinguistics or on the history of the science, But possibly, for the Italian reader, insulated to a great. extent from the methodological battles of linguistics of the last thirty years, this selection gives a better sense of innovation vlithout loss of continuity, of r,ethinking without rejection of the achievements of the past, of a more precise formulation of the im!Aicit assumptions of traditional linguistics. For these y;easons he m.ust welcome this volume. De*t
of
Langzlage,
Rebecca POSNER
N&+@O~,
Yovk, Eq$and.
KEFERENCES A. R. Jr. ed., 1970. 0~8 four modmt hmanists: Hofmannsthal, GSndoZf,Cutiius, Kantmowicz. Princeton University Press. MALKIEL, Y., 1960. Essays en linguisticthemes. Oxford, Blackwell.
E;VANS,