The Modern Language Review, Vol. 12

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Excerpt from The Modern Language Review, Vol. 12: A Quarterly Journal Devoted to the Study of Medieval and Modern Literature and Philology There have been many signs of recent years that philologists have begun to doubt, and even seriously to question, the validity of the traditional and accepted theories of linguistic science. The classical and mediaeval grammarians, whose ideals were utilitarian rather than scientific, naturally regarded language merely as an instrument of communication. Their methods of investigation and analysis were largely determined by this purely practical conception of language. To them it was living speech, and the study of language implied little more than an acquisition of a knowledge of its spoken and written forms. Hence the dissection of the forms of speech into syllables and sounds, into roots, stems, inflections, suffixes, prefixes, etc. Hence, too, for the purpose of instruction in the spoken language, the careful classification of the sounds of speech and the system of learning a language by beginning with the pronunciation of the individual sound. This traditional array of the material of language - made with a purely utilitarian object - is still the commonest in modern grammars of foreign tongues, and the majority of teachers of foreign languages retain it, either from mere conservatism or from reasoned conviction of its value, as the basis of their instruction. But what is more noteworthy is that the modern philologist, who approaches the material of language with entirely different ideals and in an entirely different spirit, retains it also. Modem philology, especially modern comparative philology, was founded almost entirely on a minute and careful comparison of words and of the separate sounds of words. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.