New Books from John Benjamins Publishing

[Andrew Gallinger]

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John Benjamins Publishing would like to call your attention to the
following new title in the field of Historical Linguistics:

COLLOCATIONAL AND IDIOMATIC ASPECTS OF COMPOSITE PREDICATES IN THE HISTORY
OF ENGLISH
Laurel J. BRINTON and Minoji AKIMOTO (eds.)
1999 x, 280 pp. Studies in Language Companion Series, 47
US/Canada: Cloth:  1 55619 933 3 Price: USD 89.00
Rest of the World: Cloth: 90 272 3050 1 Price: NLG 178.00

The focus of this carefully selected volume concerns the existence,
frequency, and form of
composite/complex predicates (the "take a look" construction) in earlier
periods of the English language, an area of scholarship which has been
virtually neglected. The various contributions seek to understand the
collocational and idiomatic aspects of these structures, as well as of
related structures such as complex prepositions (e.g., "on account of") and
phrasal verbs (e.g., "look up"), in their earliest manifestations.
Moreover, study of these constructions at the individual stages of English
leads to diachronic questions concerning their development, raising issues
pertaining to grammaticalization, lexicalization, and
idiomaticization-processes which are not always clearly differentiated nor
fully understood.
Contributions by: Laurel J. Brinton and Minoji Akimoto; Meiko Matsumoto;
Risto Hiltunen; Merja Kytø; Elizabeth Closs Traugott.


IMAGES OF LANGUAGE: Six essays on German attitudes to European languages
from 1500 to 1800.
William Jervis JONES
1999 x, 299 pp. Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 89
US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 633 4 Price: USD 75.00
Rest of the World: Cloth: 90 272 4577 0 Price: NLG 150.00

This volume consists of six essays on interrelated themes, focusing on key
aspects of language
reflection during the period 1500-1800, with particular emphasis on the
seventeenth century.
German speakers are seen attempting to discover and define the nature of
adjacent languages,
whilst also shaping and demarcating the identity and image of their native
tongue. The first essay outlines and illustrates what European linguists
believed, in an age before the advent of comparative philology, about the
historical-genetic position of German within the circle of Classical and
modern European languages. Three further essays explore the surprisingly
rich diversity of approach and method in earlier foreign-word purism, the
puristic use of lexis and metaphor (with special reference to
gender-specific imagery), and prominent reaction to the intrusive foreign
word in German military usage. The last two essays span a wide range of
attitudes and reaction to the French language among German speakers, and
early German perceptions of that marginal (and in the popular view
excessively contaminated) language, English. The work makes frequent
reference to contemporary views of other languages, including Hebrew, Greek
Latin, Italian and Spanish. Documented with much new material from about
300 original sources, these essays bring to light the ideas aired by many
hitherto neglected personalities, whilst also deepening our understanding
of better-known figures and their work.



BIBLIOGRAFIA NEBRISENSE.  Las obras completas del humanista Antonio de
Nebrija desde 1481 hasta nuestros días.
Miguel Angel ESPARZA TORRES, Hans-Josef NIEDEREHE
1999 374 pp. Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 90
US/Canada1 55619 634 2 Price: USD 95.00
Rest of the World: Cloth: 90 272 4578 9 Price: NLG 190.00

The Spanish humanist Antonio de Nebrija (1444-1522) is the author of an
impressive body of
scientific work which comprises a broad spectrum of humanistic knowledge.
While the languages dealt with by Nebrija include not only Latin and
Spanish, but the most prominent Romance languages, his grammatical work
focuses on Latin, Castillian, Greek and even Hebrew. Moreover, his
(bilingual) lexicographical studies combine Spanish, Latin, French, Catalan
and Italian. In addition, there are medical dictionaries, dictionnaries of
law, works on the Holy Bible, geographical research, treatises on rhethoric
and history as well as on many other areas of contemporary knowledge. Most
of these works have been published for allmost five centuries, thus
inspiring European and missionary linguistics as well as Western
philological traditions. They have served as models and sources for a great
number and range of studies conducted and published not only in Spain, but
nearly all over the world. Apart from the original version of Nebrija's
works, numerous copies, also continuously produced during the past
centuries, are accessible in international libraries. Many of these copies
possess a great bibliographical value. The Bibliografía Nebrisense is a
catalogue, listing the different editions of Nebrija's highly diversified
œuvre. It provides information on the technical caracteristics of the
individual editions and their respective locations. A complete
bio-bibliographical study is added together with an exhaustive listing of
secondary sources.

 
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