Short, punchy, and highly illustrated, this brilliant historical survey of the development of language in the West is a classic reference. When did Europeans stop speaking Latin? How did the actions of society or religion influence vocabulary? What affect did the conquest of the Anglo-Saxon countries by William the Conquerer and his French-speaking knights have on language? Surveying the linguistic scene from Cicero to Gutenberg, this landmark study illuminates not only language, but the entire development of the West.
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Editorial Reviews
Language Notes
Text: English, French (translation)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Philippe Wolff was a Prix Ponchard-winning author and a Professor at Toulouse University.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Certainly worth taking a look at, but I've got my complaints,
WESTERN LANGUAGES: AD 100-1500 is an English translation by Frances Partridge of Philippe Wolff's original book published in French in 1971. Wolff, a professor of medieval history at the University of Toulouse, believed that understanding language change amongst the societies of Western Europe is a crucial part of understanding the history of the region. Wolff felt that historians would be scared away by the considerable theoretical apparatus of other introductions to historical linguistics, and wrote this book as a more gentle presentation of the field. Wolff's attention is on the Romance and Germanic languages, with occasional reference to Slavic and Greek, though in practice Germanic gets much less attention.
The introduction discusses the basics of linguistics, namely grammar and sounds, and how languages change over name. Here Wolff quotes often from Ferdinand De Saussure, whom one might fairly call the founder of modern linguistics. I was unhappy with one part, when Wolff claims that the assignment of gender to non-animate nouns (rivers, the Earth, etc.) was based on animism. In the earliest stages of European languages it seems that what eventually became the "feminine" gender was only a collective suffix that had nothing to do with sex. Nonetheless, considering that the book first appeared in the early 1970s, Wolff might not have had access to what was then a fairly recent discovery. The following chapter, entitled "Remote Origins", starts at the very beginning with Latin on the one hand and the earliest Germanic dialects on the other. Wolff makes it clear that the Latin of classical literature was an artificial standard quite different from how the masses really spoke, and consequently not the true ancestor of later languages like French and Italian. Wolff makes some pronouncements on Latin pronunciations that are actually matters of debate, and the reason with some Latin experience already may want to supplement Wolff's coverage with W. Sidney Allen's Vox Latina: A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin. The remainder of the book is much more specific. Wolff charts the fragmentation of Latin into myriad small dialects, and then the gradual "crystallization" of these dialects into standard national languages. Here he lays out the sound changes and differences in word endings that distinguish modern French, Italian, Spanish etc. for their Vulgar Latin ancestor. The figures behind the development of standard languages, like Dante in Italy and Caxton in England, are sketched. It is a pity that Wolff's book is so old, though this printing is recent, for recent research and the debunking of various myths could have been taken into account. The writing style and translation are adequate, though often quite clunky ("How can retrospective diachrony reconstitute these developments?"), and I find it vaguely objectionable that Wolff wrote much of the book as blockquotes from other authors instead of his own personal wording on the subject. Nonetheless, if you are a historian wanting to know more about language change and the rise of the modern European languages without getting a heady introduction for future linguists, this is a decent book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Certainly worth taking a look at, but I've got my complaints,
This review is from: Western Languages: AD 100 - 1500 (Phoenix Press) (Paperback)
WESTERN LANGUAGES: AD 100-1500 is an English translation by Frances Partridge of Philippe Wolff's original book published in French in 1971. Wolff, a professor of medieval history at the University of Toulouse, believed that understanding language change amongst the societies of Western Europe is a crucial part of understanding the history of the region. Wolff felt that historians would be scared away by the considerable theoretical apparatus of other introductions to historical linguistics, and wrote this book as a more gentle presentation of the field. Wolff's attention is on the Romance and Germanic languages, with occasional reference to Slavic and Greek, though in practice Germanic gets much less attention.
The introduction discusses the basics of linguistics, namely grammar and sounds, and how languages change over name. Here Wolff quotes often from Ferdinand De Saussure, whom one might fairly call the founder of modern linguistics. I was unhappy with one part, when Wolff claims that the assignment of gender to non-animate nouns (rivers, the Earth, etc.) was based on animism. In the earliest stages of European languages it seems that what eventually became the "feminine" gender was only a collective suffix that had nothing to do with sex. Nonetheless, considering that the book first appeared in the early 1970s, Wolff might not have had access to what was then a fairly recent discovery. The following chapter, entitled "Remote Origins", starts at the very beginning with Latin on the one hand and the earliest Germanic dialects on the other. Wolff makes it clear that the Latin of classical literature was an artificial standard quite different from how the masses really spoke, and consequently not the true ancestor of later languages like French and Italian. Wolff makes some pronouncements on Latin pronunciations that are actually matters of debate, and the reason with some Latin experience already may want to supplement Wolff's coverage with W. Sidney Allen's Vox Latina: A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin. The remainder of the book is much more specific. Wolff charts the fragmentation of Latin into myriad small dialects, and then the gradual "crystallization" of these dialects into standard national languages. Here he lays out the sound changes and differences in word endings that distinguish modern French, Italian, Spanish etc. for their Vulgar Latin ancestor. The figures behind the development of standard languages, like Dante in Italy and Caxton in England, are sketched. It is a pity that Wolff's book is so old, though this printing is recent, for recent research and the debunking of various myths could have been taken into account. The writing style and translation are adequate, though often quite clunky ("How can retrospective diachrony reconstitute these developments?"), and I find it vaguely objectionable that Wolff wrote much of the book as blockquotes from other authors instead of his own personal wording on the subject. Nonetheless, if you are a historian wanting to know more about language change and the rise of the modern European languages without getting a heady introduction for future linguists, this is a decent book.
3.0 out of 5 stars
A nice book, but outdated,
This review is from: Western Languages: AD 100 - 1500 (Phoenix Press) (Paperback)
This is just to concur with what Christopher Culver noted already. Wolff's book must have been a nice introduction to the languages of medieval Europe when it was written, but, despite the 2003 printing date, it is definitely showing its age. In a way, it's unfortunate that Wolff focuses so much on the Romance languages, because our understanding of the early history of the Romance languages has changed dramatically in the last few decades (particularly with the scholarship of Michel Banniard and Roger Wright). Wolff's book, forward-looking though it might have been at the time, gives an outdated version of the history of the Romance languages.
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