Book reviewItinerari ottocenteschi: Tra linguistica storico-comparativa e linguistica generale . Roma: Il Calamo, 2016. 222 pp. ISBN 978-88-98640-11-9 Euro 30,00
Table of contents
This new book by Maria Patrizia Bologna (chair of “Glottologia” at the University of Milan “Statale”) effectively brings together fourteen articles dating from 1981 to 2010 that until now were scattered over specialized journals and collective volumes which were not easily accessible. The papers have been organised into four sections. The first one (“Presupposti teorici e consapevolezze metodologiche”) includes chapters on Franz Bopp’s (1791–1867) “dualism” (pp. 13–30), comparativism and reconstruction (31–67), the use of geological metaphors in 19th-century critical metalanguage (69–79), the return to history (“Rethinking Linguistics Historically”) that characterized different moments of both historical linguistics at the end of the 19th century and diachronic orientations of the late 20th century (81–92). The second section (“Le origini ottocentesche della linguistica americana”) is dedicated to the leading figure of William Dwight Whitney (1827–1894) to whom two chapters are devoted; these two chapters focus on the relationship between general linguistics and Sanskrit studies (95–108) and on Whitney’s concept of interference (109–121), respectively. The third section (“Percorsi etimologici e semantici”) delves into the multifaceted connections between the etymological research – a classical cornerstone of comparativism – and the birth of semantics, mainly due to Michel Bréal’s (1832–1915) scientific work resulting in his 1897 Essai de sémantique. Under this heading, three main chapters are included and focus, respectively, on etymology and semantics (125–144), Bréal’s 1883 article “Les lois intellectuelles du langage” (145–159) and, in conclusion, etymology and cultural reconstruction (161–183).