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RR 2012/168 The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences Edited by Patrick Colm Hogan Cambridge University Press Cambridge 2011 xxiii + 1021 pp. ISBN 978 0 521 86689 7 £150 $225
Keywords Encyclopedias, Language
Review DOI 10.1108/09504121211233754
"First, what is a science? Second, what is language? Finally, what is a language science?" And like jesting Pilate the editor then declines to answer his own question, before actually taking three pages to give an answer, at least in relation to the volume he is presenting. Linguistics has come a long way since a compulsory first-year course as part of my Classics degree: for one thing, the textbook we used was barely 50 pages long, unlike this thousand-page quarto volume aimed, of course, at a quite different market. However the publishers dress it up, mis is a very technical encyclopedia aimed at fellow academic specialists, in related or parallel fields of study.
It opens with seven introductory essays, ranging from "Language structure in its human context to...