27.2004, Review: Historical Ling; Morphology; Phonology; Syntax; Typology: Haug, Kristjánsson (eds.)

Mon May 2 15:53:44 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-2004. Mon May 02 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.2004, Review: Historical Ling; Morphology; Phonology; Syntax; Typology: Haug, Kristjánsson (eds.)

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Date: Mon, 02 May 2016 11:53:11
From: Matteo Tarsi [matteo.tarsi88 at gmail.com]
Subject: Historical Linguistics 2013

Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-5248.html

EDITOR: Dag T.T.  Haug
EDITOR: Eiríkur  Kristjánsson
TITLE: Historical Linguistics 2013
SUBTITLE: Selected papers from the 21st International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Oslo, 5-9 August 2013
SERIES TITLE: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 334
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Matteo Tarsi, University of Iceland

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

“Historical Linguistics 2013”, edited by Dag T.T. Haug (Oslo), assembles a
selection papers from the 21st International Conference on Historical
Linguistics (ICHL21), held in Oslo 5th–9th August 2013. The volume comprises
papers from the various fields of linguistic scholarship represented at the
conference, and has as its main aim that of giving a good overview, albeit by
no means exhaustive, of the contents of the conference. The book is divided
into four sections (1–4), each of which is devoted to a different research
field. Section 1 (pp. 3–85) is given over to phonology, and contains five
articles. Section 2 (pp. 89–132) hosts two papers on diachronic typology.
Section 3 (pp. 135–176) focuses on morphology, and consists of two articles.
Finally, Section 4 (pp. 179–324) concentrates on morphosyntax. This last
section is the widest-ranging, with seven articles. The editor expresses his
view that, despite a poor response to the call for papers relative to the
number of scholars in attendance at the conference, the selection of papers
published in the volume accurately represents one of the main trends of the
conference, namely that new approaches to linguistic analysis are now becoming
more and more accepted and used by the research community. Indeed, the book is
mainly intended for those interested in using these new methods in their
research. The papers, which for space reasons are short, give a snapshot of
the direction the research has taken and are therefore also a good way to keep
up with the most recent (or not so recent) trends in historical linguistic
scholarship.

As the book is a selection of papers, the subjects of which are disparate in
nature, it is impossible here to give a detailed overview of each single
contribution. However, some main tendencies can be highlighted: with regard to
the languages which are represented in the book, what is most striking is the
high percentage of studies focusing on the Germanic language family, both from
a synchronic and a diachronic point of view. The following authors, here
listed under the name of the book section their article appears in, deal with
aspects concerning the aforementioned language family: Phonology:  R. Hotta
(Modern English); S.S. Johnsen (Old English); G.F. Stenbrenden (Middle
English); A. Wetterlin and A. Lahiri (North Germanic); Morphology: S. Hartmann
(German); Morphosyntax: I. Berg (Norwegian); K. Killie (English). Other
languages to which a substantial number of articles in the book is devoted
comprise: Romance languages such as Spanish and Portuguese (A. Zampaulo,
Phonology), French and Occitan (X. Bach and L. Esher, Morphology) and,
finally, Medieval Sardinian (S. Wolfe, Morphosyntax). Another
fairly-represented group of languages is Austronesian (Koch, Diachronic
typology; M. Ross, Morphosyntax), together with Japanese (B. Frellesvig, S.W.
Horn and Y. Yanagida, and K. L. Russell and P. Sells, both dealing with
morphosyntax). Finally, two articles stand out of the above-given picture
somewhat, namely J. Gvozdanović’s article on prehistoric and early historic
linguistic contact (Diachronic typology), and S. Luraghi and E. Sausa’s paper
on the construal of emotions in Homeric Greek (Morphosyntax).

EVALUATION

All in all, the book contains a good selection of papers which give a broad
view of the main paths that contemporary historical linguistic scholarship is
following. However, the high specificity of the articles combined with their
brevity make it quite a challenge in some cases to fit in the argumentation.
Of course, this is neither the editor’s nor the authors’ fault, rather just
the natural consequence of limited space. What it is nevertheless remarkable
is how the editor, almost trying to squeeze a camel through the eye of a
needle, managed to blend the articles into a well-mixed cocktail of academic
papers in the field of historical linguistics.

As previously suggested, the major shortcoming of a publication like this one
is the gap between the actual conference and its proceedings. In other words,
space limitations, together with a poor response to the call for papers, make
it difficult for the conference itself to be mirrored in the proceedings.

This aside, it should be noted that there is quite a difference in the number
of articles contained within each section. Either the number of the articles
sent for peer-review is proportionally represented in the four sections, or it
has been an editorial choice, namely that of giving more space to some fields
than to others. If the latter is the case, one may ask: why? The editor’s
words in the introduction leave the impression that the structure of the book
does not necessarily mirror that of the conference. In fact, the editor says
(I loosely paraphrase) that despite there having been no specific workshop on
phonology, a high proportion of papers delivered at the conference dealt with
this subfield of linguistics. Therefore, it was decided to dedicate a section
of the book especially to phonology. The same holds, mutatis mutandis, for
corpus linguistics. In fact, no separate section has been dedicated to it,
even though several articles invariably show a corpus-based approach (Johnsen
(Old English, Phonology), Hartmann (German, Morphology), Luraghi and Sausa
(Homeric Greek, Morphosyntax)). It should also be said that behind this latter
decision lies the assumption that corpus-based analysis should not be used as
a substitute for linguistic theory, but rather as a tool to test
previously-theorised hypotheses. This holds true for science in general. 

As previously mentioned, the book follows a conscious intent, namely that of
giving the broadest overview of the contents and spirit of the conference. It
must be said that the editor has managed to achieve a satisfying balance
between quality and quantity. The book should, however, be taken for what it
is: a selection of articles which can be useful to the advanced researcher
either as a starting point for further research or, more likely, as an
in-depth update.

It is impossible to give a detailed analysis of each article here. However, it
seems to me that their quality is not lacking. Among them, one is of
particular relevance, as it shows an interesting line of research which, if
further pursued, would undoubtedly yield interesting results. The article in
question is J. Gvozdanović’s “Evaluating prehistoric and early historic
linguistic contact”. Gvozdanović’s argument focuses on both Slavic and Celtic,
whereas the methodology used combines the main tenets of contact linguistics
and typology to analyse data for which there is scant or no written evidence. 

In conclusion, my evaluation of “Historical Linguistics 2013” is very
positive. In the book, the interested reader would surely find
intelligently-combined morsels of historical linguistics which would hopefully
guide him to further research in one or more of the various fields of
linguistic scholarship.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

I am a Ph.D-student in Icelandic Linguistics at the University of Iceland,
Reykjavík. My research focuses on how loanwords and native words were used in
Old and Middle Icelandic.

Among my other research interests are: history of linguistics (especially in
the 18th century), etymology, loanword studies and language planning and
policy studies.

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