<div dir="ltr">Orthographies in Early Modern Europe<br>
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Book announced at <a href="http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-3266.html" target="_blank">http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-3266.html</a><br>
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EDITOR: Susan Baddeley<br>
EDITOR: Anja Voeste<br>
TITLE: Orthographies in Early Modern Europe<br>
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton<br>
YEAR: 2012<br>
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REVIEWER: Sarah Hart, University at Buffalo<br>
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SUMMARY<br><br>‘Orthographies in Early Modern Europe’ is a comparative
view of Early Modern orthography in eleven European languages spanning
four language families: Romance, Germanic, Slavic and Finno-Ugrian. Each
paper discusses not only the orthography of a language but also the
socio-historical situation of the area during the Early Modern period.
Each paper has a different author, two of which edited the volume and
wrote an introduction as well.<br><br>Susan Baddeley and Anja Voeste, “Orthographies in Early Modern Europe: A Comparative View” (p. 1-14)<br><br>This
introductory paper explains the layout of the chapters, which are
grouped according to language family. The editors discuss the surprising
parallelism between the orthographic systems of all eleven languages,
despite spanning four language families and thousands of miles. These
parallelisms include: the importance of religion and translating the
Bible to orthography; the desire for one-to-one correspondences between
letters and sounds; and oscillation between innovative and etymological
orthography. <br><br>Elena Llamas Pombo, “Variation and Standardization in the History of Spanish Spelling” (p. 16-62) <br><br>This
paper focuses on several distinct types of variation within Spanish
orthography during Early Modern times. Pombo mentions not only
diachronic variation, as is expected in such a long time period, but
also ‘diastratic’ and ‘diaphasic’ variation, where the former refers to
variation among distinct styles or registers of writing, and the latter
refers to variation within a single text. She also provides explanations
of extralinguistic factors affecting orthography such as the
‘Reconquista’ and the great standardizing king, Alfonso X the Wise.
Throughout the chapter, the author reminds the readers of Spanish
orthography’s strong correspondences between letters and sounds.
However, at the end, she lists the several exceptions to this pattern
and an explanation for why these certain graphemes survived in Modern
Spanish.<br><br>Andreas Michel, “Italian Orthographies in Early Modern Times” (p. 63-96)<br><br>This
paper offers a chronological review of Italian orthography. The author
first mentions the historic-cultural factors affecting language and
writing during Early Modern times such as the popularity of regional
dialects and lack of a standard Italian language until the 20th century.
Michel then demonstrates developments in Italian orthography through
the use of images of texts; these images are beneficial, as they show
the language as it was truly written. Finally, Michel offers a
discussion of orthographic problems faced in Italy, especially those
faced by the Accademia della Crusca, as both conservative and innovative
trends in spelling reform appeared.<br><br>Susan Baddeley, “French Orthography in the 16th Century” (p. 97-126)<br><br>This
paper is a mixture of linguistic and historical description, for
example, Baddeley explains how the printing press and the Protestant
Reformation affected French orthography. This article also offers a very
in-depth description of the orthographic system of the 16th century,
including the use of <&> to mean “and” and a mute ‘s’ to
denote long vowels. Baddeley also examines something that many other
articles ignore: the introduction and use of accent marks, beginning
with the use of an acute accent mark to differentiate masculine
<e> from mute <e> (/ə/). The author then offers an analysis
of traditional and innovative forces in orthographic reform, including a
section on several key members of the movement such as Sylvius and
Meigret. <br><br>Terttu Nevalainen, “Variable Focusing in English Spelling between 1400 and 1600” (p. 127-166)<br><br>The
author of this paper considers the level of tolerance speakers have for
variation in the spelling of English and the process of codifying it
during the Middle Ages. Following Auer’s (2005) model of
standardization, the author shows that English was an indigenous
language which had been replaced in many contexts by French and Latin.
She describes the role of English, French and Latin within the
linguistic system of England from 1400-1600, especially in relation to
the Norman Invasion of 1066 and the use of English in royal offices
after Henry V. The author then describes the codification of English as
it progressed from a mainly spoken language to a written language. <br><br>Anja Voeste, “The Emergence of Suprasegmental Spellings in German” (p. 167-192)<br><br>This
paper considers various changes in German spelling, especially in the
16th century. Specifically, this paper describes the establishment of
spelling principles which turn away from segmental phonographic practice
and lead to a suprasegmental approach. That is to say that features
other than the realized phonemes became important to the spelling of
words. For example, etymological spelling became important so that the
roots and relatedness of words remained clear. In addition, certain
practices came about to increase syllabic spelling, for example, adding
“h” to show a lengthened syllable. These factors differentiate German
from those languages that have a preference toward one-to-one
correspondences between letters and sounds. Finally, the author mentions
socio-historical constraints that helped to bring about the current
mixture of phonographic, graphotactic, etymological and syllabic
systems.<br><br>Alexander Zheltukhin, “Variable Norms in the 16th-Century Swedish Orthography” (p. 193-218)<br><br>The
author of this paper critically examines the variation of certain
spelling sequences in 16th century Swedish, for example, the variation
between th/dh/d and the sequences V/VV/Vh/hV, where ‘V’ stands for any
vowel and ‘h’ only means the letter h. In his analysis, Zheltukhin
separates the corpus into two categories: Chanceries and printed
literature. Within those two groups, he further separates each into four
subgroups: for the Chanceries, the four subgroups are called Royal
Chancery from 1521-1588, Royal Chancery from 1588-1599, Duke Charles
from 1571-1588 and Duke Charles from 1588-1599; for printed literature,
the four subgroups are called religious from 1541-1588, religious from
1588-1599, secular from 1541-1588 and secular from 1588-1599. The author
mentions several socio-historical factors which affected orthography in
the 16th century, including the Civil War between King Sigismund and
Duke Charles , as well as the fact that education increased contact with
German and Dutch. <br><br>Daniel Bunčić, “The Standardization of Polish Orthography in the 16th Century” (p. 219-254)<br><br>The
author of this paper takes readers through a history of Polish
orthography changes which occurred mainly in the 16th century. This time
period was extremely important, as it was the end of Old Polish and the
beginning of Middle Polish and a literary tradition. The Latin alphabet
was adapted for writing Polish, but it was not sufficient to represent
its 35 consonants and 10 vowels. In particular for consonants, there was
no way to make the three way distinction between dental, postalveolar
and palatal affricates and sibilants. This paper traces the changes made
to the writing system in order to better represent the complex phonemic
inventory of Polish. A previous system included many graphemes which
correlated to more than one sound sequence. Thus, in an effort toward
“single representations”, writers began using dots (single and double)
above letters, before subsequently transitioning to further diacritics
such as acute accent marks. The author finishes with a brief discussion
of post-16th century changes to orthography and extralinguistic factors
affecting them. <br><br>Tilman Berger, “Religion and Diacritics: The Case of Czech Orthography” (p. 255-268)<br><br>This
paper outlines the history of how Modern Czech came to have the
extensive system of diacritics that is has today. Like other Slavic
languages, Czech’s complex phonemic inventory proved difficult to
represent with the Latin alphabet. Berger takes us through several
stages of orthographic reforms. The first reforms introduced digraphs to
express sounds which did not exist in Latin; they also showed
palatalized consonants by following them with an ‘i’ and used geminate
vowels to show length. The next reform brought Czech much closer to its
modern form. A treatise attributed to Jan Hus introduced the use of
diacritics in lieu of digraphs. This proved to be a more desirable
system; even as the printing press came to the area, many of Hus’
innovations survived. This paper concludes with a note about how Hus’
habit of delivering sermons in the vernacular aided in the orthographic
reform which brought about Modern Czech orthography. <br><br>Roland Marti, “On the Creation of Croatian: The Development of Croatian Latin Orthography in the 16th Century” (p. 269-320)<br><br>This
paper outlines the situation of Croatian orthography mainly in the 16th
century. Croatian is unique in this volume, as it is the only language
which has not always used a Latin alphabet. Marti describes two other
alphabets used in the area we now call Croatia (i.e. Cyrillic and
Glagolitic) but notes that neither affected Latin orthography. Like
other Slavic languages, Croatian has a colorful inventory of fricatives
and affricates. While pre-16th century Croatian used a system in which
one grapheme could represent many phonemes and one phoneme could be
represented by many graphemes, 16th century Croatian reduced the number
of representations through the use of digraphs and several diacritics. <br><br>During
this time period, 4 distinct orthographic traditions existed: two
similar to Italian and two similar to Hungarian. Croatian orthography
was not standardized until the 19th century, which is late compared to
other European languages.<br><br>Klára Korompay, “16th-Century Hungarian Orthography” (pg. 321-350)<br><br>The
main focus of this paper is the complex system of orthography in 16th
century Hungarian. Various systems existed, all of which attempted to
effectively represent Old Hungarian’s 35 sounds. While Chancery
orthography used a system without a one-to-one correspondence between
graphemes and phonemes, Hussite orthography used diacritics to eliminate
digraphs and ensure a one-to-one correspondence. Thus, while in
Chancery orthography <z> represented both /s/ and /z/, Hussite
orthography used <z> and <ź>. Later, a third system emerged
which reintroduced digraphs but maintained diacritics. Each of the three
systems existed in the 16th century and were used at the discretion of
each scribe. Eventually, Hungarian was standardized to reach the
one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes that it
contains today.<br><br>Taru Nordlund, “Standardization of Finnish Orthography: From Reformists to National Awakeners ” (p. 351-372)<br><br>This
paper explores variation and standardization of Finnish orthography in
both the 16th and 19th centuries. Finnish was not a written language
until the 16th century, when its closest models were Swedish, Latin and
German, none of which are closely related to Finnish. The task of
molding an alphabet to Finnish without nearby models proved difficult,
and as such, the first system of orthography showed extensive variation.
However much of this was eradicated in the first translation of the
Bible. Later, in the 19th century, Finnish was further standardized and
“purified”, as Swedish loanwords and grammatical constructions were
removed. The modern system of Finnish orthography shows a nearly
one-to-one correlation between graphemes and phonemes. <br><br>EVALUATION<br><br>This
volume explores orthographic variation and standardization in Early
Modern Europe. Many of the papers analyze the 16th century, while others
consider a longer time period ranging from as early as 1400 to as late
as the 19th century. Certainly, each language is unique and has its own
pivotal time period for orthography. <br><br>This volume is aimed toward
Indo-European linguists; indeed, all of the articles require a fairly
in depth knowledge of phonology and historical and comparative
linguistics, especially in regard to Indo-European languages. Each paper
makes reference to certain socio-historical factors that affected
languages, for example, the Reconquista in Spain, the Cinquecento in
Italy, the Protestant reformation across Europe and the Hussite movement
in Bohemia. Any reader without a fairly clear understanding of these
events will not understand their importance to orthography. Some papers
give a brief explanation of events of this type for the benefit of the
reader, while others assume that the reader has prior knowledge. It is
my belief that this volume could reach a much wider audience if each
paper contained a more detailed description of the socio-historical
situation during the Early Modern period.<br><br>The organization of the
papers in this volume is very deliberate. The eleven papers are
arranged by language family: three Romance languages are followed by
three Germanic languages, then three Slavic languages, and finally, two
Finno-Ugrian languages. I am not sure how the editors decided the order
of the language families, although it appears they come in order from
westernmost to easternmost. Each of these languages currently uses the
Latin alphabet, which is why other major European languages, such as
Russian and Greek, are not included in this volume. One comment I will
make on the organization is that many papers mention the influence of
Jan Hus, a reformer who introduced diacritics to Czech, although Tilman
Berger’s paper on Czech does so with the most detail. Placing this paper
before Daniel Bunčić’s paper, which mentions the influence of Hus on
Polish orthography, would make the latter more comprehensible. <br><br>I
appreciate the neutral (and sometimes even positive tone) toward
variation in this volume. While many authors have called orthography in
Early Modern times “erratic”, “arbitrary” and even “chaotic”, none of
the authors in this volume have such a negative view of variation. I
also appreciate the inclusion of pictures of original text of the time
in many papers. It is beneficial to see what the characters actually
looked like in order to fully understand what complications they might
have caused. <br><br>While I believe the volume reached what I perceived
to be its goal, to give an overview of various phases and developments
in Early Modern orthography, I found that the papers ranged greatly in
character. Some were very short (13 pages), while others were extremely
long (51 pages). I found some papers to be easily comprehensible without
much prior knowledge of the orthography of that language, while others
required quite a bit of research on my part. I specifically found the
chapter titled “Italian Orthographies in Early Modern Times” difficult
to read. I feel that this paper is more suited for Italian linguists.
One paper that I found particularly well written was that on French, by
Susan Baddeley. Baddeley’s description of the chronology of French
orthography was very clearly written and easy to follow. She also
provides a very detailed and comprehensive description of the
orthographic system of the 16th century: not only of the phonemic
inventory, but also of specific uses of letters, for example, using the
mute ‘s’ to show long vowels. This paper was both very detailed, yet
very clear and coherent. <br><br>Finally, I did encounter one typo. The
name of the author of the paper titled “Variation and Standardization in
the History of Spanish Spelling” was written once as Elena Lamas Pombo
(in the table of contents) and once as Elena Llamas Pombo (on the first
page of her paper).<br><br>REFERENCES<br><br>Auer, Peter. 2005. Europe’s
Sociolinguistic Unity, or: A Typology of European Dialect/Standard
Constellations. In Perspectives on Variation, Nicole Delbecque, Johan
van der Auwera, and Dirk Geeraerts (eds.), 7-42. (Trends in Linguistics
163.) Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter<br><br>
<br>
ABOUT THE REVIEWER<br>
<br>
Sarah Hart is a PhD student in Spanish linguistics at the State
University of New York at Buffalo. Her research interests include
comparative and historical Romance linguistics, especially concerning
Spanish of the 13th century. She is currently working on her
dissertation on the loss of the Old Spanish –udo participle in addition
to teaching Spanish language courses.<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br>
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