History of Linguistics 1996 : Selected Papers From the Seventh International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHOLS VII) Oxford, 12-17 September 1996: Vol. 1, Traditions in Linguistics Worldwide

'The papers of this interdisciplinary volume contribute to charting the developing field by presenting a survey of recent research from the different traditions of English, German and Romance language studies.Both the introductory paper by the editors and the individual papers deal with fundamental theoretical questions, e.g. the question of types of historical developments in dialogue forms, and methodological problems, e.g. the finding and interpretation of relevant data. The fifteen case studies presented in this volume provide a wide range of new data. The range of topics includes the pragmatic form of 16th century religious controversies in Germany, forms of polite answers in Early Modern German conversation culture, forms of dialogue in Early Modern English medical writing, learning English through dialogues in the 16th century, structures of bargaining dialogues in Late Medieval French, and reflections of spontaneous dialogue in Early Romance texts.''''The papers in this volume present a colourful picture of the range of research currently being undertaken in the field of the history of linguistics, with contribution both from established scholars and from younger researchers. The volume is organised on a geographical basis, with sections devoted to a number of different traditions in linguistics world-wide.The opening section is concerned with a number of general and methodological topics — ranging from the notion of ‘revolution'in linguistic historiography to the history of the study of ape language. The second section is devoted to ‘missionary linguistics', an umbrella category for the early contacts of Europeans with non-European languages. Subsequent sections address individual traditions in linguistics: III. The Celtic Tradition; IV. The Chinese Tradition; V. The Georgian Tradition; VI. The Hebrew Tradition; VII. The Japanese Tradition; VIII. The Persian Tradition; IX. The Russian Tradition; X. The Tamil Tradition.''