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The article focuses on Wendy Ayres-Bennett's critical edition of Claude Favre de Vaugelas' "Remarques de la langue françoise," a significant linguistic and cultural text from the 17th century. Topics include Vaugelas' influential role among 17th-century French language commentators, the publication history and significance of "Remarques," and Ayres-Bennett's commentary and critical edition.

En 1876, Léon Clédat (1851–1930), archiviste-paléographe frais émoulu, est nommé à l’Université de Lyon ; il y restera toute sa vie. Chargé d’un enseignement « philologique », Clédat s’affirme d’abord comme historien de la langue et de la littérature françaises. En 1877, il fonde la Revue des patois, périodique dialectologique s’intéressant principalement aux domaines francoprovençal et occitan. Clédat, chargé de la préparation à l’agrégation, s’orientera progressivement vers l’étude du français moderne et s’érigera en « grammairien (du) français », par la publication de manuels grammaticaux, et en défenseur de la réforme de l’orthographe (en rapport étroit avec une réforme de l’enseignement grammatical, surtout de la syntaxe). Sa Revue – qui est rebaptisée en Revue de philologie (française et provençale // française et de littérature) – devient le forum des débats sur l’orthographe, mais, surtout à partir des années 1910, le lieu des interventions de Clédat en « grammaire synchronique ». Dans ses contributions, Clédat se manifeste comme un grammairien sémasiologue, qui veut comprendre (et faire comprendre) les formes et les structures de la langue. Sa démarche, entièrement axée sur l’analyse immanente de la langue maternelle, se caractérise par le recours constant à des reformulations, des paraphrases, des mises en contexte, des élargissements de phrases ou de formes relevées. Elle s’oppose – et conduit Clédat à s’opposer – à celle de Brunot dans La Pensée et la Langue : confrontation qui s’exprime dans une longue série d’articles « En marge des grammaires » (1923–1928). Au-delà de l’histoire personnelle de ce grammairien, de sa revue, de son enseignement, de son attachement à Lyon, il convient de récupérer les enjeux de ses combats : ▪ l’utilité/la nécessité/la réalisation pratique d’une réforme de l’orthographe ; ▪ le sort historique et le statut synchronique des formes en -rais ; ▪ le rapport entre langage et pensée.

This article offers an outline of a metatheory of linguistic historiography, focusing on the object and the organization of linguistic historiographical research, and on decisions to be taken by the historiographer. It is argued that linguistic historiography should be viewed as complying with the principles of grounded theory in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: In 1538 the Flemish humanist language scholar Nicolaus Clenardus (1493–1542) published a grammar of Latin in Braga (Portugal), the Institutiones grammaticae Latinae. The grammar, the fruit of his public teaching in Braga, was the third in a series of grammars written by Clenardus: while active in Louvain (until 1531) he had published grammars of Hebrew (1529) and of Greek (1530). Clenardus’ Latin grammar is basically a didactic grammar, closely linked to his teaching in Portugal, for which he introduced an innovative methodology. It essentially consists of a morphological and syntactic part, followed by a series of mostly syntactic remarks and by a survey of principles of prosody and versification. Clenardus’ exposition is marked by a strong focus on formal markings (lists of nominal and verbal endings), and by the extensive integration of lexical information into the grammatical frame. Clenardus generally refrains from giving definitions of terms and concepts, and theoretical explanations are eschewed in favour of empirical exemplification. The Institutiones grammaticae Latinae provides its users with a large amount of examples, the majority of which stem from colloquial humanist Latin usage, but there are also various examples taken from classical Latin authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La Sémantique structurale (1966) de Greimas constitue une étape cruciale dans le cheminement scientifique de l'auteur. L'ouvrage marque la transition entre une première période d'activité lexicologique et lexicographique et une seconde période d'élaboration d'une sémiotique générale. Dans son ouvrage de 1966, Greimas construit un modèle de «sémantique structurale» qui vise à décrire la structure de textes, d'après une démarche méthodologique conforme à la théorisation hjelmslévienne, et à conférer à la sémantique une place centrale à l'intérieur des sciences humaines. Une étude serrée (et «immanente») de cet ouvrage fondateur montre comment la rigueur méthodologique et le souci épistémologique dans la construction du modèle analytique doivent garantir une approche objective de la structure de textes (mythiques, littéraires et autres) comme articulant une vision du monde. Greimas' Sémantique structurale (1966) marks a crucial stage in the author's scientific career. The work forms the transition between the initial period of lexicological and lexicographical activity and the subsequent period during which the author elaborated a theory of general semiotics. In his Sémantique structurale Greimas develops a model of 'structural semantics' which aims at describing the structure of texts, in line with a methodological approach based on Hjelmslev's theorization, and which is intended to provide a central place for semantics within the human sciences. A close (and 'immanent') study of this foundational work shows how the methodological rigor and the epistemological concern underlying the construction of the analytical model have to ensure an objective approach of the structure of texts (mythical, literary, and other types of texts) as a way of articulating a world view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article starts from a typology of sign models and sign functions in order to assess Saussure's classification of linguistics as a branch of semiology. Saussure's definition of the linguistic sign raises the issue of a possible semiotic approach of the morpheme (unit of expression and content). In Saussure, and even more so in American structural linguistics, the approach of morphology is characterized by low 'semiotic investment'; rarely, if at all, is the notion of 'linguistic sign' made operational within their conception of morphological analysis, in spite of interesting opportunities for its use. In poststructuralist work (natural morphology; linguistic functionalism), the perspectives for a semiotic approach of morphology are promising. The final part of the paper formulates some requirements for a rigid approach of the morpheme as a linguistic sign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an outline of a research project relating to the writings of early Christian Latin authors spanning from the third century to the eighth century. The outline provides information on three key aspects of the research project, which include a survey of the text corpus, a review of the methodological approach and the three primary case studies. The authors name the cases of fourth century philologist Saint Jerome, the translation work of Saint Hilary of Poitiers and the primeval language of Saint Isidore of Seville, Spain, and focus on topics including language origins, language diversity, and language classification.

The article discusses, briefly, the object of study and the methodological aspects of Linguistic Historiography as a scientific field of descriptive and analytical observation of the linguistic knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes an analysis of the linguistic work of the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger (1721–1808), and more particularly of his grammar of the Delaware language (= [Lenni-]Lenape), which was published in 1827 in an English translation by Peter S. Du Ponceau (1760–1844), on the basis of the author’s German manuscript. A life-sketch and a short presentation of Zeisberger’s missionary work are intended to place the Delaware grammar in the context of his scholarly output, thus allowing the reader to adequately appreciate the practical orientation of the work. The analysis of the grammar, which is essentially a description of Delaware verb morphology, focuses on the parts-of-speech model, and on the treatment of the various word classes, with special attention being paid to the verb. The article offers a detailed study of the organization of the verb paradigms, of the division into conjugations and into ‘forms’ (positive, negative, etc.), and of the description of verbal ‘transitions’. The practical and analytical outlook of Zeisberger is confirmed by the lexicographically oriented treatment of the undeclinable parts of speech: the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction and the interjection. The conclusion insists on the fact that Zeisberger’s grammar was an important source for 19th-century linguists interested in language typology and more particularly in the structure of polysynthetic languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses Chinese phonemics, in which the approach being adopted is an inductive one, proceeding in a constructivist way. As a starting point, the authors use the inventory of Chinese syllables in a narrow phonetic transcription. Their analysis is confined to segmental phonetics/phonology, leaving aside the possible interference between tones and phonetic variation of a syllable type. Furthermore, the distributional characteristics of these segments are listed, which enabled the authors to make their first phonemic reductions based on complementary distribution. In addition, there is an investigation of resegmentation possibilities for segments that did not have the appearance of complex phones, but were registered at first as phonetically simple segments.