Penser l’histoire des savoirs linguistiques: hommage à Sylvain Auroux par Sylvie Archaimbault et al

Abstract

Linguistics edited by Stacey Katz Bourns Archaimbault, Sylvie, Jean-Marie Fournier, et Valérie Raby, éd. Penser l’histoire des savoirs linguistiques: hommage à Sylvain Auroux. Lyon: ENS, 2014. ISBN 9782 -84788-417-3. Pp. 716. 29 a. The considerable diversity of the topics covered in the fifty chapters of this lengthy homage to the eminent French scholar Auroux testifies to the influence of his work across multiple fields, including linguistic historiography, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, and the philosophy of language. Given this panoply of contributions, this review necessarily remains descriptive, with emphasis given to chapters most likely to interest scholars of the history of the French language. The volume is homogeneous only in that the contributors share a connection to Auroux. Although not exhaustive, the following sampling gives a sense of the breadth of the scholarship represented: chapters on the history of the grammatical tradition in Arabic; reflections on the value of studying history and the humanities; the nature of epilinguistic and metalinguistic knowledge, illustrated via a walk-through of Wittgenstein’s“builder’s language game”; several contributions on the role of the hearer in how language is shaped; the history of how African languages are classified; views on Chinese texts in the European Enlightenment; glosses in OldYiddish; an analysis of an enigmatic passage in Saussure; historical treatments of word order in Brazilian Portuguese; and numerous biographies and appreciations of linguists from earlier times, including Michel Bréal, Antoine Meillet, Roman Jakobson, Mikhail Lomonosov, and Louise Kaiser. Adding to the diversity, the chapters are written in French, Spanish, English, and Portuguese. The chapters most relevant for scholars of the French language are the following: MerlinKajman discusses attempts to standardize and shape the grammar and spelling of French in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Kibbee’s chapter synthesizes debates among French grammarians (including Vaugelas) in the seventeenth century, when for example je vais still found itself in competition with je va. Ayres-Bennett analyzes references to Latin in works of early French grammarians, focusing on Vaugelas and the comparisons and contrasts he draws between Latin and French.Mazière’s collection of comments on efforts to develop and standardize French appears in the form of a glossary, with particular attention to Richelieu. Bouard surveys how several early grammars of French divided and organized concepts such as grammar and the lexicon. Delesalle situates Claude Buffier’s early-eighteenth-century Grammaire générale et raisonnée with respect to two contemporary works, highlighting Buffier’s attention to the interactional aspects of language. Finally, Klippi’s chapter contributes to the history of dialectology, including the monumentally ambitious and still valuable Atlas linguistique de la France compiled by Gilliéron and Edmont at the dawn of the 282 FRENCH REVIEW 89.3 Reviews 283 twentieth century. The volume is well produced and carefully edited, and benefits from an extensive index. Overall, it is most suitable for scholars of the history of linguistics and especially for university library collections. Readers will likely be drawn more to specific chapters than to the volume in its entirety. University of California, Santa Cruz Bryan Donaldson Brigout, Bernadette, éd. La friquassée crotestyllonnée: rimes et jeux d’enfants d’autrefois. Paris: Silène, 2013. ISBN 978-2-9139-4709-2. Pp. 155. 18 a. Voici une nouvelle édition d’un texte rare paru à Rouen en 1601 et dont la préface datée de 1557 est signée d’un certain Abbé Raillard. Ce recueil, dont une seule édition survécut, a la forme d’un long poème de 707 vers composé d’une avalanche de formulettes, comptines, berceuses, proverbes ou devinettes qui appartiennent au patrimoine oral de l’enfance,“celui des cours d’école, des places, des ruelles, celui des jeux de billes et des cordes à sauter” (9). Par sa truculence et son étourdissante invention verbale, ce texte aurait plu à Rabelais. Brigout a choisi de joindre au texte les commentaires aussi savants que savoureux d’un critique littéraire érudit du nom de Prosper Blanchemain (1816–1879) qui entretient une complicité facétieuse avec l’heureux compère, Maître Épiphane Sidredoulx, Président de l’Académie de Sottevillel ès-Rouen,“correspondant de toutes les...