Auroux S. et al. (eds.) History of the Language Sciences. Volume 1 - An International Handbook on the Evolution of the Study of Language from the Beginnings to the Present

Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2000. — LX, 1094 p.Collected papers in English, German, or French.The book is a convincing collection in linguistics of papers of high quality, impeccably edited and printed, and a pleasure to read.Writing in English, German, or French, more than 300 authors provide a historical description of the beginnings and of the early and subsequent development of thinking about language and languages within the relevant historical context. The gradually emerging institutions concerned with the study, organisation, documentation, and distribution are considered as well as those dealing with the utilisation of language related knowledge. Special emphasis has been placed on related disciplines, such as rhetoric, the philosophy of language, cognitive psychology, logic and neurological science.For "classic" linguistics there appears to be a need for a review of the state of the art which will provide a reference base for the rapid advances in research undertaken from a variety of theoretical standpoints, while in the more recent branches of communication science the handbooks will give researchers both an overview and orientation.In this Handbook the term ‘history of the language sciences’ will be used to denote the development of linguistic theories (ideas, proposals of analysis, explanations, methodological frameworks) as well as the organizational structures of their implementation, dissemination and teaching throughout the documented history of humankind. The regular use of the term ‘linguistics’ in this Handbook should not be taken as in any way implying a strict definition of the field. In a strict sense the term might be taken to be applicable only to the modern period in which linguistics was recognized as a separate discipline with its own well-defined principles of research and professional organization. However, in many linguistic traditions a special place was assigned within the general scheme of knowledge to the science that dealt with language. Even though the delimitation of this science with respect to topics and methods may differ between traditions, in a general sense these traditions are all related in that they regard language as a subject to be studied in its own right. ‘Linguistics’ will therefore be used as a general term for everything connected with the study of human speech. Obviously, the circumscription of the field itself is one of the topics to be dealt with in the analysis of its history, as will the subdivision of the field into various branches as well as its connection with other disciplines.Fundamentally, the aim of the historiography of linguistics differs from that of linguistics in that the historiographer does not aim at the elucidation of linguistic facts, but rather, at the elucidation of how scholars in different traditions approached the problems of language structure and language use. This also means that for the historiographer all approaches are equally relevant: there is no value scale in these approaches, let alone a cumulative development of the discipline up till the present time. For the historiographer, the past of the discipline cannot serve as the legitimation of its present state.