W. Nelson Francis

Reviews : History of Linguistics. 2 vols. Edited by Giulio Lepschy. London: Longman, 1994

These are the first two volumes of a projected four-volume history. Originally published in Italy in 1990, they are here translated where necessary. The authors of various sections of all four volumes are listed; they make up a roster of specialists, mostly European. In the Introduction, which is printed in both volumes, Lepschy makes clear that it is not the purpose of the book to deal with the progress of linguistic methodology but rather to present &dquo;the prevailing attitudes toward language : its social, cultural, religious, and liturgical functions, the prestige attached to different varieties, the cultivation of a standard, the place of language in education, the elaboration of lexical and grammatical descriptions, the knowledge of foreign idioms, the status of interpreters and translators, and so on&dquo; (vii). Volume 1 deals with the Eastern traditions of linguistics in five chapters: &dquo;Chinese Linguistics&dquo; by G6ran Malmqvist; &dquo;Indian Linguistics&dquo; by George Cardona ; &dquo;Linguistics in the Ancient Near East&dquo; by Erica Reiner, Janet H. Johnson, and Miguel Civil; &dquo;Hebrew Linguistics&dquo; by Raphael Loewe; and &dquo;Arabic Linguistics&dquo; by Henri Fleisch. Each covers the history of language study and theory in its area, in some cases, such as Hebrew, extending to the present. In spite of the claim on the jacket that the book will appeal to the general reader who is interested in language and the history of ideas, the detail about linguistic texts is more likely to interest specialists. Certainly much of Cardona’s treatment of Indian linguistics, especially Panini, will be largely incomprehensible to those without some knowledge of Sanskrit. In most cases the authors supply translations of their quotations from languages other than English, but the going is still heavy in many places. Volume 2 contains two long chapters: &dquo;Greek and Latin Linguistics&dquo; by Peter Matthews and &dquo;Medieval Linguistics&dquo; by Edoardo Vineis, which includes a short section on &dquo;The Philosophy of Language&dquo; by Alfonso Maieru. Matthews gives a thorough review of Greek and Roman grammarians: there are thirty-seven separate authors of the period in his bibliography, dating from Plato and Aristotle in the fourth century B c to Priscian in the fifth to sixth century A D The accomplishments of this period were the establishment of grammar as one of the seven liberal arts, the identification of the eight parts of speech still basic in our grammar, and the inclusion of syntax as an essential part of grammar. Matthews gives major attention