Velmezova, Ekaterina, ed. 2024. Tartu in the History of Slavic Philology, vol. 2 : Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845-1929). Tartu: University of Tartu Press (Acta Slavica Estonica, 18). 160 p. ISBN 978-9916-27-795-9
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Значение Тарту в истории филологии переоценить трудно. На протяжении долгого времени этот город находился — как находится и сегодня — на пересечении разных культурных и академических традиций, что во многом и обусловило как его богатейшую интеллектуальную историю, так и сегодняшнюю репутацию одного из важнейших университетских центров северной Европы. Несомненно значение академического Тарту и для истории славянской филологии — этой теме уже посвящались и многочисленные работы, и академические конференции. Научное сообщество продолжает размышлять над ней и сегодня. Тарту в истории славянской филологии посвящен и этот сборник, в котором приняли участие ученые, работающие в рамках разных академических дисциплин и научных традиций в нескольких странах; среди них — и лингвисты, и литературоведы, и историки науки. Продолжение работы над этой интереснейшей темой последует.
Kull, Kalevi & Ekaterina Velmezova. 2025. Sphere of Understanding. Tartu Dialogues with Semioticians. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter Mouton (Semiotics, Communication and Cognition, 23). 416 p. ISBN 9783111435909
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The book presents dialogues with fourteen highly influential semioticians: Juri Lotman, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Boris Uspenskij, Umberto Eco, Paolo Fabbri, Myrdene Anderson, Winfried Nöth, Gunther Kress, Roland Posner, Stuart Kauffman, Jesper Hoffmeyer, Terrence Deacon, Paul Cobley, and Jaan Valsiner. They have all made a remarkable impact on contemporary research in the Tartu centre of semiotics. As well as these remarkable dialogues, the first part of the volume features an illuminating sequence of chapters on topics including the importance of dialogues, the historical roots and context of semiotics in Tartu since the 19th century, plus the main principles formulated in Jakob von Uexküll’s and Juri Lotman’s works.
Zalbide, Mikel & Lionel Joly. 2024. Taxonomy proposal for the (historical) sociology of language research: a Basque contribution. Francfort & Madrid: Iberoamericana Vervuert. 257 p. ISBN 978-84-9192-453-1
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This book aims to offer a new perspective and a new methodology which provide a tool for all researchers in historical sociology of language, but also social history, cultural history, historical sociolinguistics and the fields of research that link language and society, in a diachronic perspective but also in a synchronic perspective. The original point of view from which this methodology arises is Basque studies, but it can almost completely be applied to any international linguistic context, with some little changes.
This work is the result of a long methodological reflection that has been developed in different publications. This book is a presentation of the taxonomy and the methodology proposal that our team has created to help sociology of language and sociolinguistics researchers in their work.
The taxonomy was created to analyse and classify the sociolinguistic information taking into account the most usual variables that arise in the international bibliography linked to the sociology of language.
To create that methodology, we have examined methodological findings since the foundation of sociolinguistics and the tools it has developed, as well as its main theoretical concepts and, bearing our task in mind, we have tried to put together a wide-ranging, flexible and detailed methodology.
Vezin, Benoit. 2025. L’élaboration des catégories aspectuelles dans les grammaires romanes (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles). Münster: Nodus. (Studium Sprachwissenschaft. Beihefte, 46). 459 p. ISBN 978-3-89323-146-1
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Avant propos
1. Introduction
2. Cadre théorique: la sémantique temporelle et aspectuelle
3. L’aspect dans les langues indo-européennes: la grammaticalisation des formes composées dans les langues romanes
4. Représentation des valeurs des tiroirs verbaux dans les grammaires antiques grecques et latines
5. Description des temps verbaux dans les grammaires espagnoles et portugaises aux XVe et XVIe s.
6. Les grammaires françaises au XVIe s.
7. Les temps verbaux dans les grammaires italiennes du XVIe s.
8. XVIIe-XVIIIe s. — Grammaires françaises de Masset (1606) à Irson (1662)
9. Grammaires françaises de Port-Royal (1660) à Açard (1760)
10. Grammaires espagnoles aux XVIIe et XVIIIe s.
11. Grammaires italiennes aux XVIIe et XVIIIe s.
12. Grammaires du portugais des XVIIe et XVIIIe s.
13. De Harris (1751) à Loneux (1799)
14. Conclusion
— Annexe (Abréviations et conventions graphiques / Tables des figures et illustrations)
— Bibliographie (Sources primaires: Grammaires de l’espagnol / Grammaires du français/ Grammaires de l’italien / Grammaires du portugais / Autres ouvrages — Sources secondaires)
Dumoulin, Hugo & Hervé Adam, dir. 2025. Approches matérialistes du langage. La pensée 421. ISSN 0031-4773
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Approches matérialistes du langage
Diversité d’une linguistique matérialiste – Présentation
Hugo Dumoulin et Hervé Adami
Point de vue matérialiste sur le langage et les langues
Josiane Boutet
Approche matérialiste et sociolinguistique des interactions verbales
Virginie André
Réalités matérielles des langues et des pratiques langagières
Hervé Adami
Enjeux d’une approche matérialiste du langage en analyse du discours
Frédérique Sitri
Le CERM, lieu et moment de rencontre entre linguistique et politique
Entretien avec Jacqueline Authier-Revuz, réalisé par Hugo Dumoulin
Documents
Présentation des documents du CERM linguistique
Hugo Dumoulin
Sur la crise de la linguistique (1977)
Françoise Gadet et Michel Pêcheux
Sur le texte Gadet-Pêcheux
Louis Guespin
Gaskin, Richard, ed. 2025. The Question of Linguistic Idealism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 336 p. ISBN 9780192872654
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The chapters in this volume address the question to what extent the doctrine of linguistic idealism is coherent and plausible. Linguistic idealism, as defined here, holds that both the existence and the (very general) structure of the world are in some sense dependent on the existence and the structure of language. The interest of the thesis is that, since human language is an evolved, empirical phenomenon, it would be surprising and significant if the world, which existed long before human beings came into being and is in many respects quite obviously independent of them, were somehow beholden to the fact that human beings can talk about it. That, nevertheless, is the claim. Much of the discussion of linguistic idealism revolves around making the definition of it both precise and interesting, whether for purposes of attack or defence.
The Question of Linguistic Idealism opens with an introduction that presents a general argument for linguistic idealism and examines the way in which that position figures in the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Elizabeth Anscombe. The authors in this collection cover a wide range of possible approaches to linguistic idealism. Some support the position in one version or another; others are hostile. All the contributions are both historically aware and engaged with systematic considerations, but in some the emphasis is placed on historical aspects of the problem-here the focus is particularly on the writings of Kant and Wittgenstein-whereas others adopt a more systematic approach. Each philosopher addresses their chosen aspect of the general topic in (broadly speaking) metaphysical terms, but the bearing of modern linguistic theory on the thesis of linguistic idealism, as well as its connections with mathematical results and practice, play a role in some of the contributions as well.
Taylor, Hilary. 2024. Language and Social Relations in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 272 p. ISBN9780198917663
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What was the interrelation between language, power, and socio-economic inequality in England, c. 1550-1750? Early modern England was a hierarchical society that placed considerable emphasis on order; language was bound up with the various structures of authority that made up the polity. Members of the labouring population were expected to accept their place, defer to their superiors, and refrain from ‘murmuring’ about a host of issues. While some early modern labouring people fulfilled these expectations, others did not; because of their defiance, the latter were more likely to make their way into the historical record, and historians have previously used the evidence that they generated to reconstruct various forms of resistance and negotiation involved in everyday social relations.
Hillary Taylor instead considers the limits that class power placed on popular expression, and with what implications. Using a wide variety of sources, Taylor examines how members of the early modern English labouring population could be made to speak in ways that reflected and even seemed to justify their subordinated positions—both in their eyes and those of their social superiors. By reconstructing how class power structured and limited popular expression, this study not only presents a new interpretation of how inequality was normalized over the course of the period, but also sheds new light on the constraints that labouring people overcame when they engaged in individual or collective acts of defiance against their ‘betters.’ It revives domination and subordination as objects of inquiry and demonstrates the ways in which language—at the levels of ideology and social practice—reflected, reproduced, and naturalized inequality over the course of the early modern period.
Ferrara, Silvia , Barbara Montecchi & Miguel Valeri, ed. 2025. Writing from Invention to Decipherment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 352 p. ISBN 9780198908746
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Book in open access
Writing from Invention to Decipherment contains a wealth of global scholarship on ancient writing systems from China, Mesopotamia, Central America, and the Mediterranean, to more recent newly created scripts such as the Rongorongo from Easter Island, the Caroline Island scripts, as well as the alphabet. The aim is to dig into the foundations of writing, showcasing the complexities and varieties of scripts, from their invention to the potential decipherment of poorly understood scripts.
The volume offers state-of-the-art research on undeciphered scripts from the Aegean (as for example, Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear A) or not completely deciphered (as for example Maya) scripts. From a methodological perspective, these contributions lay out how and why writing was invented, who used it, and to what ends. Here writing is presented as a multi-modal cultural phenomenon, that intersects and transcends neat discipline boundaries, within an inclusive approach bridging archaeology, linguistics, epigraphy, and cognitive studies.
History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences 
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