27.1199, Review: Historical Ling; History of Ling: Murray, Auer (2015)

Mon Mar 7 22:11:19 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-1199. Mon Mar 07 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.1199, Review: Historical Ling; History of Ling: Murray, Auer (2015)

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Date: Mon, 07 Mar 2016 17:10:57
From: David Gay [dafyddgay at gmail.com]
Subject: Hermann Paul's 'Principles of Language History' Revisited

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-3467.html

EDITOR: Peter  Auer
EDITOR: Robert W. Murray
TITLE: Hermann Paul's 'Principles of Language History' Revisited
SUBTITLE: Translations and Reflections
SERIES TITLE: De Gruyter linguae & litterae 51
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: David Elton Gay, (personal interest - not currently working at a university)

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

INTRODUCTION

Hermann Paul’s ‘Principles of Language History’ Revisited: Translations and
Reflections is an anthology of newly-translated sections from various chapters
of the 5th edition of Hermann Paul’s Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte (1920),
along with interpretive and explanatory essays on Paul’s work. Paul’s great
work has only been available to the English-language reader in Herbert A.
Strong’s 1891 translation of the second edition, Principles of the History of
Language. Strong’s translation has long been known to be inadequate; for
example, as the appendix to this book notes, Strong at times mixes together
concepts, such as Lautwandel and Lautveränderung, which “leads to an
awkwardness and, in turn, an implied vagueness of thinking that is not present
in Paul’s text.” (p. 289)

 The authors of this book want to show that Paul’s ideas remain relevant to
linguistics, and not only to historical linguistics. As Auer and Murray write
in their introduction, “the authors of this volume decided that the time was
ripe to shine the spotlight once more on aspects of Hermann Paul’s Principles,
especially those we thought might be of most interest to readers.” The authors
also hope to “revise some of the stereotypical portrayals of the neogrammarian
movement as they can be found here and there in the literature….” (p. 9)

SUMMARY

The book opens with an introduction by the editors, Peter Auer and Robert W.
Murray, that gives a brief biography of Paul and his scholarly work, a
description of the ‘Principles’, and a description of the contents of this
book.

Next is the original table of contents for Paul’s book. The chapter
descriptions offered here are detailed enough that they act as a summary of
Paul’s book. 

After this the book is divided into two parts.

Part 1: Translations. 

The authors have not translated full chapters from the Principles; rather,
they have selected portions of chapters that best illustrate central aspects
of Paul’s thinking about language and “that are essential to [their]
contributions” to Part 2. The translations “were done in such a way as to
adjust Paul’s text to a moderately modern academic writing style without
distorting its meaning.” But, Auer and Murray write further, “[w]e have not
replaced Paul’s terminology with a modern one.” (p. 10) 

Peter Auer offers two translations here. The first is of sections 1-10 of the
introduction to the ‘Principles’; and the second is sections 11-21 of Paul’s
chapter 1, “On the General Nature of Language Development.”

Robert W. Murray then translates sections 32-50 from the third chapter of the
‘Principles’, “Phonetic changes.”

David Fertig then translates sections 7-84 from the fifth chapter of the
Principles, “Analogy.”

Paul J. Hopper closes out the translation section with his translation of
sections 85-102 from Chapter six of the Principles, “Basic Syntactic
Relations,” and sections 196-213 from Chapter 16, “Syntactic Rebracketing.”

Part 2: Reflections. 

In these essays each of the translators explains the background and
significance of Paul’s ideas about language and language change in the chapter
sections they translated.

Peter Auer opens this section with his essay “Reflections on Hermann Paul as a
Usage-Based Grammarian.” Contrary to the image that linguists often have of
Paul as a Neogrammarian, Paul’s ideas about language are not grounded in
abstract rules and structures, but rather in usage, along with other
cognitive-psychological parameters. As Auer writes, “Hermann Paul is
surprisingly modern today. His views are easily compatible with those of
modern cognitive grammar, particularly with usage-based approaches to grammar
and its representations in the mind.” (p. 204)

David Fertig then examines the centrality of analogy to Paul’s thinking about
language and language change in his essay “Two Conceptions of Analogical
Innovation/Change.” As Fertig writes, “Paul is more unequivocal than any other
linguist before or since in his insistence on a lexical-replacive and his
rejection of any assimilatory understanding of analogy.” Fertig’s goal is to
“explore the reasons for and implications of Paul’s uncompromising stance on
this issue.” (p. 209)

Paul J. Hopper then writes about “Hermann Paul’s Emergent Grammar.” As Hopper
shows, Paul’s vision of linguistics as a historical science was determined by
the fact that “Paul was a historical thinker who viewed all linguistic (and in
fact all cultural) phenomena as sub specie temporalitatis.” Contrary to what
is often claimed, Paul “does not claim…that historical-comparative philology
is the only valid form that the study of language should take.”  Rather, “Paul
assumes that even descriptive linguistics is historical.” (p. 237) Hopper in
fact sees a particular connection between Paul’s conception of linguistics and
the kind of emergent grammar that he and others have proposed. 

Robert W. Murray’s “In the Beginning was the Sound Image: Paul’s Theory of
Sound Change” closes Part 2. Murray’s essay both explains Paul’s ideas about
sound change and examines his influence on later linguists. As Murray shows,
Paul’s thinking about sound change influenced Leonard Bloomfield’s 1933
Language and, perhaps more surprisingly, Charles Hockett’s 1958 A Course in
Modern Linguistics. Indeed, as Murray notes, “we find in Hockett (1958) a
rather unexpected intellectual bridge between Paul and recent
exemplar-theoretic approaches to phonetics and phonology….” (p. 267)

EVALUATION

Hermann Paul is not an easy writer to read in German or English; and the
inadequacy of the only available English translation meant that Paul’s ideas
were not readily apparent to readers of the translation. Paul’s terminology is
also often difficult, and this, combined with the difficulties of style, makes
it easy to misunderstand just what Paul is getting at in any given passage.
For these reasons alone Hermann Paul’s ‘Principles of Language History’
Revisited would be a welcome book. 

But, in addition, the contributors to this volume show that Paul’s ideas
remain a fruitful source of ideas and inspiration for linguists. Hermann Paul
was not a stereotypical Neogrammarian, and the translations and essays in this
volume are an excellent guide into the intricacies of Paul’s thinking
concerning the nature of language.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

My primary language interests are the Indo-European languages (currently
mostly in Germanic, Baltic, Latin, and Romance); the Finno-Ugrian languages
(especially Finnish and Estonian); and the Semitic languages. My linguistic
interests are in historical linguistics, dialectology, the role of editing in
historical linguistics, and folklore.

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