Recent publications in the history and philosophy of the language sciences – Novembre 2021

De Troia Paolo & Otto Zwartjes. 2021. Missionary Linguistics VI. Missionary Linguistics in Asia. Selected papers from the Tenth International Conference on Missionary Linguistics, Rome, 21–24 March 2018. Amsterdam : Benjamins. Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 130. xii, 296 p. ISBN : 9789027210043 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.1075/sihols.130
Publisher’s website

This is the sixth volume to be dedicated to the pioneering linguistic work produced by missionaries in Asia. This volume presents research into the documentation, study and description of Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Tamil. It provides a selection of papers which primarily concentrate on the Society of Jesus and their linguistic production, but also covers linguistic works written by Franciscans, the Order of Discalced Carmelites and works of other religious institutions, such as the Propaganda Fide and the Missions Étrangères de Paris. New insights are provided regarding these works and their reception among European scholars interested in these ‘exotic’ languages and cultures. Each text is placed in its historical context and various approaches to some of the most important descriptive problems faced by these linguists avant la lettre are analyzed, such as the establishment of an adequate romanization system, the description of typological features of these Asian languages, such as tonality and aspiration in Chinese and Vietnamese, agglutination and derivational morphology in Japanese and Tamil, and, pragmatics, in particular politeness in Japanese. This volume not only looks at methodology and descriptive techniques, but also comments on missionary linguistic policies in Asia and offers articles of interest to historiographers of linguistics, historians, typologists, descriptive linguists and those interested in translation studies.

Riemer, Nick. 2021. L”emprise de la grammaire. Propositions épistémologiques pour une linguistique mineure. Lyon : ENS Editions. Langages. 174 p. ISBN : 979-10-362-0408-1
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Comment penser l’épistémologie de la linguistique en prenant comme point de départ le pluralisme théorique réel de cette discipline ? Par quels critères la recherche grammaticale se jauge-t-elle si on abandonne une conception concurrentielle de la démarche théorique ? En examinant divers domaines de la théorie linguistique, cet ouvrage tente de mettre au jour certaines propriétés herméneutiques, mal comprises et parfois même non encore repérées, de la théorisation linguistique. À ces investigations, s’ajoute l’étude de certaines questions soulevées par la critique « idéologique » de la linguistique contemporaine, ce qui permet d’étudier l’activité théorique menée au sein de la discipline à l’aune des réalités socio-idéologiques dont elle est tributaire, parfois à son insu. En réunissant ainsi deux manières souvent disjointes d’aborder la linguistique, Nick Riemer ouvre la voie à une compréhension nouvelle de la complexité des objets textuels que sont les théories grammaticales.

The book is available online : https://books.openedition.org/enseditions/38952

Ebbesen, Sten & Irène Rosier-Catach, eds. 2021. Boethii Daci aliorumque sophismata. Copenhague : Det danske sprog- og litteraturselskab – University Press of Southern Denmark. Corpus philosophorum danicorum medii aevi, IX. 624 p. ISBN : 978-87-7533-053-9
Publisher’s website

This volume contains the so-called Sophismata Florentino-Brugensia, i.e. the sophismata contained in two overlapping collections, that of ms F= Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana 12 sin., 3 and that of ms B = Brugge, Stedelijke Openbare Bibliotheek 509. A few of those sophismata are also transmitted by other mss, which have duly been taken into account in our edition. The Florence and Bruges collections include two important sophismata by the famous Danish philosopher Boethius of Dacia (fl. ca. 1270/75), ten by Peter of Auvergne (probably from the 1270s), and one by an otherwise unknown Nicholas of Nor-mandy, who must have been active at approximately the same time as Boethius and Peter. The remaining items are anonymous.

This is expected to be the last volume of Corpus Philosophorum Danicorum Medii Aevi (“CPhD”), founded in 1946, with the first volume appearing in 1955. For this reason a list of corrigenda to previous volumes has been appended (pp. 561-578).