Gabriele Stein, Word Studies in the Renaissance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Full text
GABRIELE STEIN, WORD STUDIES IN THE RENAISSANCE Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. x + 246 pages. ISBN 978-0-19-880737-7 hardback. The author’s interest in early English dictionaries goes along way back to the mid1980s when she wrote on the English dictionary before Cawdrey (1985) or the sixteenth-century English-vernacular dictionaries (1986), then followed by many more studies devoted to this period, including amonograph on John Palsgrave (1997) and Thomas Elyot (2014). In the latter two she advocates aholistic approach to the lexicographer and his work, focusing both on his person and outlook and the way his dictionary reflects the society and its cultural, political and linguistic setting. She applies this method even to the present monograph. Her choice of the book’s title is not accidental: “The title ‘word studies’ is meant to give the early lexicographers’ pioneering linguistic achievement the prominence they deserve.” In the introduction, the eight studies which constitute the book are divided by the author herself into two parts. The first four are primarily concerned with aspects of lexicography, while the remaining four focus on linguistic and lexicological matters. However, all the chapters are interrelated in away that makes the book form acohesive whole. The first chapter, “Typography in sixteenth-century English dictionaries,” which surveys English dictionaries from the first printed in 1499 to those appearing by the end of the 16th century, provides aframe of reference for the other studies, and therefore is dealt with here in somewhat more detail. It will be followed by brief notes on the remaining chapters. In Chapter 1, “Typography in sixteenth-century English dictionaries,” Stein introduces the topic of early English lexicographical typography as virtually an undiscovered territory— previous research is either very brief or, as in Paul Luna’s (2004) case, generally uninformed. Unlike her predecessors, she shows that the large number of sixteenth century English dictionaries certainly warrants acloser study. She divides the field into three phases: the first one (1499–1530), which she aptly calls “The one-font phase”, is characterized by the usage of black-letter font and only modest typographical features (mostly punctuation and spacing). The second phase (1530–1570) called “The experimental phase” is characterized by the introduction of anumber of typographical innovations, chief among them is the use of other fonts (roman and italic), to differentiate between languages (English, Latin and other vernaculars) and of different font sizes to stress important elements like headwords. The structure of entries at the time was becoming more complex and that called for the introduction of not only mere spacing (i.e. indentation), but also of braces, asterisks and other special symbols. The name of the phase suggests that anumber of the features introduced at that time did not survive to modern days (like the “ornamental space-fillers”) and that the level of consistency in the use of those features was also lower than in the following third phase (1570–1600). This one Stein calls “The professional phase” and, in addition to the almost universal abandonment of black-letter, it is characterized by the growing professionalization of dictionarymaking, which was clearly mirrored in typography. Not only was asystem-wide uniOndřej Tichý
120 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 1/2018 formity taking over (also due to “industrial espionage”, which may seem fascinating to amodern reader), but also internal consistency was increasing although it obviously did not reach our modern standards. The complexity that had started in the microstructure of the entries was then evident in the macrostructure as well: some dictionaries provided an index or numbering of headwords in an attempt to compete for both sides of bilingual markets. Steinʼs overview is quite fascinating, it clearly shows not only the early modern advances in typography and book-making, but in lexicography in general. She finishes the chapter by pointing out that the leaders of this development have always been the bilingual and multilingual dictionaries. The first English monolingual “hardword” dictionaries that appear only shortly after the third phase are, compared to the best contemporary bilingual dictionaries, relatively “shoddy affairs”, re-introducing black-letter and making little use of the many devices developed by the multilingual lexicographers and typographers of the time. In Chapter 2, “Claudius Hollyband: The author behind the lexicographer,” Stein starts by making acase for alexicographer being more than amere compiler and argues for him to be recognized as an author and his dictionary to be assessed as atext in its own right (she refers to Ian Lancashire’s term ‘lexicature’ as acounterpart to literature). The French Huguenot Hollyband came to England in 1564–1565 and from then on began to teach French there and publish textbooks, agrammar book and ultimately ADictionarie French and English (1593; of some 20,000 entries). Stein subjects the dictionary to scrutiny to show Hollyband’s distinctive authorial stamp. First she explores his main source, Robert Etienne’s French-Latin dictionary, and his presentation practice (such as gender attribution, entry ordering or translation equivalents), then proceeds to autobiographical indicators revealed by the choice of headwords, their explanations or translations, and hidden in illustrative sentences, giving glimpses of Hollyband’s personality. The range of facets identified by Stein as permeating his work directly or indirectly includes his personal circumstances (financial situation, health problems, etc.), France-England comparison, life and state-of-the-world reflections, personal opinions, attitudes, and other features of his character, such as his concern for reputation, etc. (“one cannot stop the mouth of euvill speakers”), his perspective on women, love, sex (“there is neuer aman which may satisfie, or fill the fleshly lust of an vnchaste woman”), and religion. In fact, what Stein achieves is not unlike psychological profiling and it is surprising how much one can learn about the dictionary compiler on close reading of his entries. In Chapter 3, “On the sources of Huloets Dictionarie (1572),” Stein looks at John Higgins’ English-French-Latin Huloets Dictionarie, resulting from his revision and expansion of Richard Huloet’s Abecedarium Anglico-Latinum (1552), but first contrasts it with its rival, another trilingual dictionary of that time, John Baret’s An Alvearie or Triple Dictionarie, in English Latin and French (1573). Then she goes on to examine Higgins’ indebtedness to various sources, both acknowledged scholars and lexicographers (such as Stephanus-Thierry’s Dictionarie) and unacknowledged sources of Latin and French translation equivalents. Stein traces the source attributions given only in the entries (such as Cal., standing for Calepino, or Pals. for Palsgrave), but not listed in Higgins’ address To the Reader, focusing especially on Palsgrave’s influence. In addition to veri-
ONDřEJ TICHý 121 fying his attributions, she finds that through Higgins’ use of Palsgrave there could be amediated influence of Palsgrave on other lexicographers who relied on Higgins. In Chapter 4, “Early polyglot word lists: Investigating their relationship,” the author first distinguishes two types of polyglot word lists: practical pocket-sized ones intended for travellers, tradesmen and court officials for oral communication (with languages displayed in vertical columns and with one-word equivalents), and lexicographically more sophisticated and bigger multilingual dictionaries meant for reading texts. The aim of the chapter is to contribute to the identification of interdependencies and textual relations between polyglot word lists and other works in the absence of authorial indicators such as supplied by Higgins’ revision of Huloets Dictionarie. Specifically, Stein focuses on the dating of Philipp Ulhart’s undated edition of Sex Linguarum, Latinae, Gallicae, Hispanicae. Italicase, Anglicae & Teutonicae, taking into account such factors as the languages included, their number and order and English translation equivalents, and compares Ulhart’s edition with other authors’ dated editions including English of that time (Steels, 1534, Renys, 1537, and Crinitus, 1540). In the last stage, she examines the use of aprinter’s signet as an indication helping her to put the latest probable dates of Ulhart’s editions at 1541. Chapter 5, “Hadrianus Junius’ Nomenclator reconsidered,” deals with arepresentative of amultilingual dictionary which differs from the polyglot word-list type discussed in the previous chapter. The difference is in size (the quarto format in one or two volumes), content, presentation (blocks of entries with languages following each other) and purpose, intended as it was for educated users to study texts. Hadrianus Junius’ Nomenclator (1567) is atypical example of such amultilingual dictionary and the chapter offers adetailed description of Junius’ life and his Nomenclator, outlining its history and content, but above all concentrates on the subsequent re-editions and adaptations of the Nomenclator, especially on Higgins’ adaptation for English (N., or Remembrancer, 1585), its subject-field structure and translation equivalents. Chapter 6, “John Palsgrave as asixteenth-century contrastive linguist,” is ashort but revealing account of John Palsgrave, the first English lexicographer known by his name, and his Lesclarcissement de la langue francoyse (1530), which he wrote when appointed French tutor to Henry VIII’s sister Mary, who was to marry the French king Louis. It is aset of three books covering pronunciation, grammar and an EnglishFrench dictionary (arranged grammatically in word-class sections, tables of nouns, adjectives, etc.) and regarded as the first description of French grammar and the first bilingual dictionary of the two vernaculars. Stein argues that Palsgraveʼs discussion of phonetic, grammatical and lexical differences between French and English shows his “remarkable linguistic insights”, and may be seen as aprecursor of contrastive linguistic description. Stein points out that he was the first to use anumber of grammatical terms, half acentury before the traditionally recognized beginning of English grammatical writing. Chapter 7, “John Palsgrave’s description of French word-formation,” is acontinuation of the previous chapter and, having demarcated the scope of word-formation (in Marchand’s terms as the study of “the patterns on which alanguage forms new lexical units”), Stein claims that in Books II (grammar) and especially Book III (EnglishFrench dictionary) of his Lesclarcissement, Palsgrave makes the “step from implicit to
122 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 1/2018 explicit word-formation”. He asserts that, by means of the rules he gives, it is possible for the learner to create new words which cannot always be included in adictionary. Stein then systematically describes Palsgraves’ rules for the formation of French nouns, adjectives and verbs (from different parts of speech both by derivation and composition, including exceptions), but also prepositions and adverbs. In conclusion, she argues for Palsgrave’s recognition as the first vernacular word-formationalist. Chapter 8, “Peter Levins’ description of word-formation (1570),” introduces the author and places his English-Latin Manipulus vocabulorum (1570), the first attempt at arhyming dictionary in English, within the context of the five strands of 16th century lexicographic work (polyglot word lists, Latin-English dictionaries, English-Latin dictionaries, multilingual scholarly dictionaries and English-vernacular diction - aries). Before tackling word-formation in the Manipulus vocabulorum in detail, Stein reviews word-formation in dictionaries involving English and Latin before 1570. Among Levins’ achievements she mentions his list of inflectional morphemes and their functions, the first in an English dictionary, and his extension of technical metalinguistic terminology. Although he was not the first to approach word-formation (derivation and compounding) from both English and Latin orientation, he surpassed, as Stein points out, his predecessors in the scope and detail of treatment and was the first to make it a“substantial and integral part of his dictionary”. From this brief overview of the chapters it should be clear that Stein’s carefully researched book offers acoherent and comprehensive picture of 16th-century dictionaries and their lexicographers, and adds anumber of new facts and suggestions correcting the prevailing views and assessments of these authors and their achievements. Her studies, drawing on her long-standing interest in the subject, often read like detective work, and provide aknowledgeable and fascinating insight into dictionary-making at atime when the lexicographer not only could, but actually had to, project his personality, private views, and biases into his work, as for the most part he had only his discretion, ingenuity and discrimination to rely on. In this respect, the position of the Renaissance lexicographer-author starkly contrasts with the ever diminishing scope for personal input in contemporary lexicography in which the selection of entries is all but automated, depending on frequency lists based on corpora, with the presentation regimented by dedicated tools such as DWSs (dictionary writing systems) and CQPs (corpus query packages), including special applications gleaning ideal example sentences from corpus data. What Gabriele Stein describes in her studies, with atinge of nostalgia perhaps, is the beginning of the golden era of English lexicography when compiling adictionary was an art, while today we are quite likely witnessing its not-too-distant end. The purpose of translation diction - aries is to aid translation; however, with the emergence of applications such as Google Translate and the Google Translator Toolkit, the users may find it easier to upload atext and have it instantly translated without referring to adictionary at all. Stein’s book is avaluable reminder of how much ingenuity, skill and originality went into making adictionary; in fact, the endeavours of the lexicographers-authors she describes have helped to shape the electronic dictionaries of today and, ultimately, even the online translators of the future.
ONDřEJ TICHý 123 REFERENCES Luna, P. (2004) Not just apretty face: the contribution of typography to lexicography. In: Proceedings of the 11th EURALEX International Congress, 847–58. Lorient. Stein, G. (1985) The English Dictionary before Cawdrey. Lexicographica. Series Maior 9. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Stein, G. (1986) Sixteenth-Century EnglishVernacular Dictionaries. In: Hartmann, R.R.K(ed.) The History of Lexicography, 219–27. Amsterdam— Philadelphia: Benjamins. Stein, G. (1997) John Palsgrave as Renaissance Linguist. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Stein, G. (2014) Sir Thomas Elyot as Lexicographer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund-Project “Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World” (No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0 /16_019/0000734) Ondřej Tichý Department of English Language and ELT Methodology Faculty of Arts, Charles University nám. J.Palacha 2, 116 38 Praha 1, Czech Republic [email protected]