Studies in Formal Historical Linguistics

✍ Scribed by Henry M. Hoenigswald (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1973
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 74
• Series: Formal Linguistics Series 3
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

These separate but related essays owe their existence to a combined concern for the workings of text criticism and historical linguistics and for the history of scholarship in these fields. On earlier occasions I have suggested certain views on the development of the so-called comparative method. Few things are more rewarding than to bring implicit preconceptions of the past and present out into the open, as I aimed to do then and as I aim to do now. This time existing tradition is treated as a body - without, I hope, being seriously distorting - and one small portion of its working assumptions is examined. My thanks go to the colleagues and students with whom I have had fruitful discussion, but especially to Zellig S. Harris, and to Henry Hiz who expended much more than just his excellent editorial care on these efforts. I only hope that I have learned as much from him as he has patiently tried to teach me. Lloyd W. Daly has kindly read parts of an earlier version and has contri­ buted valuable suggestions.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages I-XIII
On the Notion of an Intermediate Stage in Traditional Historical Linguistics....Pages 1-24
The Three-Witness Problem....Pages 25-45
Notes on Glottochronological Trees....Pages 46-54
Back Matter....Pages 55-64

✦ Subjects

Historical Linguistics