Book Reviews

apologetics and linearity: arguments from the past

are far too often selectively cited to serve in presentday controversies; and far too often, too, the men of
the past are judged by the answer to the question:
what did they know or fail to know that we now hold
to be true. There is always the peril of missing inconspicuous but centrally important shifts in terminology and of imputing irrelevant preconceptions to
our predecessors. The continuity of our discipline is
indeed a fact, but an exceedingly subtle one.
The somewhat overwhelming truth is still that in
order to understand the history of a field of learning
one must understand the subject matter as well as
the wider intellectual history of the time. One of the
many necessary approaches to this difficult goal is
neglected at the moment: intellectual biography of
the type that steers clear of anecdote and human
interest in the journalistic sense but instead goes
into matters of outlook and training and also, insofar
as possible, into the matter of personality in a more
sophisticated sense. For this reason the two handsome volumes under review are a perfect godsend.
Seventy-four scholars of the past, from Jones (d.
1794) to Edgerton (d. 1963) are represented, some
with more than one piece. Many selections are
obituaries written under the fresh impact of the
subjects death. Others are more properly historical
in their claim to detachment, written as they are
from a later vantage point, if usually also in a commemorative context.
Though imbued with the flavor of the graveyard (I, p. xii), the obituaries written by contemporaries are the more valuable. Many of the authors
are indeed distinguished men. Their judgments can
be most interesting, especially when the essay departs from the merely laudatory. [It may be apropos
to note that nine names appear both as subjects and
as authors. Another bit of idle statistics: in about the
same space, the first volume accommodates 36 essays, the second, 54.Obituaries have become shorter
and perhaps also less informative.] Mostly, however,
one reads them for academic-biographic information: to learn (or be reminded) who attended the
university with whom, who sided against whom in
controversies too ephemeral to survive in print or
sufficiently unpleasant to be repressed or distorted in
self-testimony, but remembered and offered as background for some part of the record by a sensitive and
usually sympathetic comrade-in-arms. Next to correspondence (of which there is, unfortunately, no
overabundance) these sketches are our best source of
information. Johannes Schmidts biographical paper
on August Schleicher (I, pp. 37439.5)illustrates the
value of such information as an antidote to the inescapable deceptiveness of autobiography, especially in the case of a highly creative personality like
Schleichers. The strong influence on Schleicher of
the classicist Ritschl continued beyond his student
years. How plausible it is, therefore, to see in some of
Schleichers ideas the reflex of early training in

423

formal manuscript work. Schleichers interpretation

of his own thinking was quite different, and he did
himself the most formidable injustice by insisting,
for all posterity as it were, on the importance of his
quasi-Darwinistic outlook. For reasons of this kind
the reader feels a little pang of disappointment a t not
finding Hermann G. Grassmann, the mathematician,
Sanskritist, and linguist, among the subjects, although a biographical appendix of sorts is published
in his collected works. This is not to say, however,
that it would be anything but foolish to find fault
with Sebeoks selection, which is a masterpiece of
both service and good taste.
Anthropologists will be particularly interested in
the items on Humboldt (two, by very eminent men,
Alfred Dove and Heymann Steinthal), Bohtlingk
(by Berthold Delbrtick), Reguly (by Josef PApay,
rescued from a rather hard to get publication),
Meinhof (one by Clement M. Doke, and another by
Doke and G r a r d Paul Estrade), Boas (one by
Murray B. Emeneau and one by Roman Jakobson),
Uhlenbeck (by J. P. B. de Josselin de Jong), Finck
(by Ernst Lewy), P. Wilhelm Schmidt (by Arnold
Burgmann), Kroeber (by Dell Hymes), Sapir (by
Carl F. Voegelin), and Whorf (by John B. Carroll).
The printing is accurate and beautiful to the point
of lavishness. The works usefulness, as proclaimed
in the subtitle, a biographical source book for the
history of western linguistics, 1746-1963, is as great
as its attractiveness, even where we do not admire
the necrologists judgment unreservedly. It is a very
bright feather, indeed, in the cap of the editor, the
editorial committee of the Studies, and the Indiana
Press.

The Linguistic School of Prague: An Introduction to

its Theory and Practice. JOSEF VACHEK.
(Indiana
University Studies in the History and Theory of
Linguistics.) Bloomington & London: Indiana
University Press, 1966. 184 pp., 3 appendices,
selected bibliography, index of names, index of
subjects, notes. $6.00, 38s.
Reviewed by E D WSTANKIEWICZ
~
University of Chicago
The book under review is the third in a series of
works written by Professor Vachek intended to present to a wider public the achievements of the
Prague School of linguistics. The Sturm und Drang
period of that school fell within the years 1926-1939,
and its most important contributions are contained
in the eight volumes of the Trauaux du Cerde LinguistiquedcPrague(1929-1939). As these volumes are
not easily accessible and many of its articles were
written in Slavic languages, the fame of that school
has often rested more on secondhand information
than on an intimate knowledge of its tenets and of its
formulations of linguistic problems. Professor
Vacheks former works, the Dictionnaire de 1 h ~
guistique de 1Ecolc de Prague (1960)and the Prague

424

American Anlhropologisl

School Reader in Lingziisfics (1964), have made

available to the Western reader the terminology and
the main body of Prague linguistic writings; this
book is an attempt a t a synthesis and a critical
evaluation.
The book contains eight chapters, three appendices, a bibliography of the pertinent literature, and
an index of names and subjects. The eight chapters
present the various aspects of Prague linguistic
theory that have determined the particular brand of
structuralism that sets it apart from other structuralist schools, such as American descriptivism and
Copenhagen glossematics. The longest and best
chapter of the book is, predictably, the one devoted
to phonology, which constituted the main contribution of the Prague School to modern linguistics. The
other chapters include historical background, problems of morphonology and morphology, syntax, the
Standard language and orthography, esthetics, and
future prospectives.
Professor Vachek traces the development of the
concept of the phoneme from its early stage, when it
was interpreted as a psychological entity, until the
late 1930s when it was redefined by Jakobson as a
bundle of distinctive features. He also shows how
the many-sided study of phonology has led to an
exploration of the various functions and styles of
language. He particularly emphasizes the great
contribution of Prague linguistics to questions of
diachronic processes, which were misunderstood and
largely neglected by Western structuralists (beginning with de Saussure). Vacheks comments on the
whence and whither of historical change recapitulate the older Prague views, with the addition
of some sociological interpretations of recent Prague
vintage. On the whole, the discussion leaves some
major issues unsolved. An excellent supplement to it
is the reprinted article by B. Trnka (Appendix 111),
one of the finest thinkers of the Prague Circle.
Trnkas article contributes also to our better understanding of the intellectual climate that gave rise to
the new developments in linguistics. The chapters on
morphology and syntax are more modest in scope,
reflecting in part the lesser interest of the Circle in
the semantic levels of language. The narrowing of
outlook is, however, also due in part to the authors
lack of discrimination between the more important
and seminal works, and the works that tried mechanically to transplant the notions of phonology to
that of the higher, more complex levels. Thus there is
no doubt that the morphological studies of Karcevski (on derivation and on the adverb) and of
Jakobson (on the Russian verb and case-system),
which are mentioned in passing, have contributed
far more to a broadening of the structuralist horizon
than the studies on semes and morphemes that the
author discusses in detail. There can likewise he
little doubt that the work of the Prague School on
poetics and versilication was of greater import than
its contributions to questions of Standard language
and orthography, though the elaboration of the

[70,19681

latter testifies, as well, to the scope and breadth of

the linguistic interests of the Circle.
What is most disappointing about Professor
Vacheks book, however, is the tacit assumption
that the so-called Prague