An den Quellen der Romanischen Sprachen. Vermischte Beitrage zur Romanischen Sprachgeschichte und Volkskunde (mit 9 Kartenskizzen im Text)

Abstract

Sprachgeschichte und Volkskunde (mit 9 Kartenskizzen im Text). By GERHARD ROHLFS. Halle: Max Niemeyer. 1952. xi+286 pp. M. 19.50. One realizes at first with surprise that the birthday of Professor Rohlfs which this volume commemorates is only his sixtieth, for so long has he stood in the forefront of contemporary linguists. And then, recalling his stalwart presence-we first came upon him by a Pyrenean wayside, note-book in hand, eliciting from a native the name of the wagtail-one finds one's wonder propelled in an inverse direction by the thought that he is already sixty. It is very fitting that the volume should consist of a selection of his own writings. The works of philologists tend all too often to become lost in reviews and miscellanies for which, after the passage of years, one seeks with difficulty if not in vain. Besides, such a presentation gives more authenticity to the portrait of a scholar than does any editor's comment, however well-conceived. The figure which emerges from these studies is that of the linguistic explorer par excellence, indefatigable in the pursuit of his own raw material, treating with circumspection any information that comes to him from second-hand. His practical, positivist approach to linguistic problems is implicit in the very titles of his twenty essays: only in the first, Sprachwissenschaft und Volkskunde, is there any suggestion of generalization, and turning to its matter one soon finds the author getting down to earth. This does not mean that Professor Rohlfs is in any way forgetful of those major considerations which provide motive for our research. On the contrary, his guiding star is revealed as an intense preoccupation with the thoughts and utterance of those shadowy pre-Romance creatures whose resurrection would be the philologist's Faustian plea. Hence An den Quellen...; hence again his titles: 7. Vorlateinische Einfiisse in den Mundarten des heutigen Italiens ?; 8. Colonizzazione gallo-italica nel Mezzogiorno d'Italia; 10. Das Griechentum Unteritaliens; 11. Vorbyzantinische Elemente in der unteritalienischen Grdizitdt; 15. Problemes de philologie basco-romane, etc. The imaginative leap from modern dialect to pre-Romance seems also to have determined in some measure his choice of field, for he is known in particular as the specialist of two areas, southern Italy and the Pyrenees, in both of which the persistence of pre-Romance speeches offers unusual scope for the investigation of their possible underlying influence in the evolution of neighbouring idioms.