Hoenigswald H., Longacre R. (eds.) Diachronic, Areal and Typological Linguistics

Paris: Mouton de Gruyter, The Hague, 1973. — XII, 604 p. — Reprint 2019 edition. — (Current Trends in Linguistics Series, Volume 11).The Editorial Board of Vol. 11 ingeniously conceived of Diachronic, Areal, and Typological Linguistics as consisting of a series of chapters devoted to a variety of methodological explorations, each to be followed by a case study exemplifying the particular mode of inquiry described. Accordingly, except for the introductory chapter by Robins, meant to provide a historical setting, this book is divided into two successive sections. These can be read in several ways: for instance, sequentially, through the nine methodological chapters, constituting Part Two, or crosswise, flipping from any methodological chapter directly to one or more of the ten corresponding case studies, which make up Part Three.The three methods of language classification comprised in the title of this volume, diachronic, areal, and typological, are recognized by modern scholarship as three legitimate and fruitful approaches to the comparative study of languages. It would be a source of satisfaction to be able to say that linguists have now overcome the confusions that have in the past beset comparative work.Modern linguists are more explicit about the three separate systems they use, but it becomes quickly apparent that the same three have in one way or another controlled and characterized language classification from its earliest European days. Progress in scholarship, in this field as in others, has in great part lain in clarifying concepts and in sharpening the distinctions between theoretically separate but factually related methods, rather than in inventing entirely new modes of approach.