Raphael Salkie, University of Brighton
Since David Crystal's admirable
Encyclopedia of Language showed the way, several other large reference works on language have appeared. This one is by far the most comprehensive yet, and in some ways the most successful... This is not a repository of superficial information about language but a substantial resource that will amply repay the effort anyone invests in consulting it. This is largely due to the size of the entries, which are long enough to do more than scrape the surface without being so long that they become wearisome. The editors deserve praise for the good judgement that they have displayed in this respect, for it has enabled the contributors to present scholarly inquiry into language in an elegant way... The skill of the contributors is remarkable... There is no doubt in my mind that much of the content will be superb teaching material... The editors have clearly made a genuine effort to include not only the core areas of linguistics, but also interdisciplinary fields such as the sociology of language and linguistic computing...the
Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics remains a magnificent achievement. Ronald Asher and Seumas Simpson have given us an outstanding work of reference and a superb portrayal of the vast scholarly endeavour to understand human language. All of us in the field are in their debt.
The Times Higher Education Supplement
J.R. Luttell, Princeton University
The editors intend their work simply to be the most authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive, international reference source in the field. There can be little doubt of its having achieved that goal. It owes its authority to its distinguished editorial boards and the 1,000 specialists who contributed articles. That it is as current as possible in a rapidly changing field is due in part to a policy of recruiting specialists "working at the frontiers of their particular discipline." Although comprehensiveness is difficult to achieve in a field as fundamental as language, the editors have succeeded not only in treating thoroughly the standard "core" areas of linguistics (e.g., morphology, phonology, semantics) but in attempting to include more "peripheral" areas as well (e.g., speech pathology, speech technology). A distinguishing feature of the work is its interdisciplinary nature; significant space is devoted to aspects of anthropology, psychology, sociology, and philosophy that impinge on language. The encyclopedia reveals its international character both in its attempt to cover the contributions of all civilizations (though with a pronounced emphasis on the West) and in the fact that the authors come from 75 countries. The intended audience is academic and professional, though the style is accessible to general readers. Articles range in length from a few sentences to a dozen double-columned pages and cover academic fields, linguistic topics, languages, countries, and individual scholars. Examples and illustrations are numerous, there are cross-references, and each article concludes with a short bibliography. A superb subject index is accompanied by a name index, glossary, list of the world's languages, and many other useful lists and appendixes. Although there is substantial overlap with
International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, ed. by William Bright (Ch, Sep'92), this monumental reference work is noticeably broader in scope. Enthusiastically recommended for academic and larger public libraries.
Choice
This does exactly what a specialized encyclopedia should—it takes the knowledge of a discipline and presents it in such a way that outsiders and new-comers can comprehend that knowledge and use it to explore the field in greater depth on their own or through directed study. Readable, comprehensive, and current,
The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics will be the field's standard reference for a generation.
Wilson Library Bulletin
William Bright
This is now the definitive and indispensable scholarly reference publication, on all branches of linguistics for any library where linguistics is taken seriously.
Journal of Linguistics
Bernard Comrie
Overall, my assessment is definitely positive... I should emphasize that I find myself continually referring to its pages as a source of information and interest. I have learned a lot from it, and will continue to do so.
Language
... an ambitious and much-needed work, surpassing in its extent as well as in quality all previous encyclopedias... makes its treatmentof language and linguistics complete par excellence, and interdisciplinary to an extent which has never been achieved before.
Journal of Pragmatics
Dick Hudson
I have been asked to review just the coverage of sociolinguistics in ELL, so the first question is, how much of these ten volumes is given over to our subject? It actually gets a very fair share... There are some really excellent articles, which combine scholarship and clarity of thought with clarity of expression. I should like to pick out a few examples that struck me during my travels through ELL (in which I should repeat that I still haven't visited all the sociolinguistics articls): 'Socialization', 'Code-switching and mixing', 'Diglossia', 'Gender and language' (and 'Sex differences'), 'Code sociolinguistic', 'Mutual intelligibility', 'Sociology of language', 'Pidgins, creoles and change', 'Borrowing', 'Areal linguistics', 'Kinship terminology', 'Taboo words' and 'Primate communication'. Any of these can be read with both pleasure and interest, and could safely be put into the hands of students... This review has praised the index (which is probably the most important part of any encyclopedia) and many of the articles...will become a standard reference both in scholarship and in student essays.
Language in Society
...the history of linguistics is well represented in this most recent and so far largest encyclopedia of the sciences of language.
Historiographia Linguistica
...the coverage of the field is impressive, especially if compared to similar recent encyclopedic works of so-called "state-of-the-art" surveys of linguistic science.
Diachronica
Edward Erazo
...the most comprehensive and ambitious work of its kind ever produced.... ELL succeeds in covering every imaginable topic in linguistics and related subject areas. It also succeeds in meeting its aim of being authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive, and international in scope.... This work will become the reference of choice for meeting the needs of a wide range of users, including specialized researchers and instructors as well as students of language studies and linguistics. This magnificent set fills a long-standing void in reference collections. Enthusiastically recommended.
Excerpta Medica
Graeme Hirst, University of Toronto
Since it arrived, it has been used as an oracle whenever a linguistic question arose that I couldn't answer from my own knowledge.... Everyone who is a linguist of any flavor at all should have a copy of this encyclopedia...completely eclipses its main rival, Oxford University Press's
International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (Bright 1992).
Computational Linguistics, Vol 21, No 2
The want of a proper encyclopedia of language studies has been felt for many years. It need be felt no longer. The lacuna has now been filled by these ten volumes from Pergamon Press, and - it must be said straight away - filled more solidly and satisfactorily than one had any right to expect. Every serious university library should have a copy, or else its students have a reasonable case for saying that the librarian and library committee ought to be sacked
en masse Although beyond the pocket of most individual scholars, it is a bar
