Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

by means of a summer session or by advising candidates for higher degrees to spend a term or more at another institution in this country or abroad.

But after all reservations are made our tables reveal several extraordinary lacunae. Most startling of all, perhaps, is the discovery that American English seems to receive little particular attention in the graduate schools. Courses on the History of the English Language or on Modern English are given in twenty universities, and five of these-all but one in the Mississippi Valley-are reported to include in these courses some consideration of American speech, though this is not stated in the published announcements; but we suspect that apart from these five such consideration does not go beyond the occasional use of an American illustration. Yet in some ways the best basis for linguistic training is the student's native idiom; and in this country we have ready at hand abundant material, some of it almost unique, for the study of linguistic development.

Almost equally serious is the lack of attention to Experimental Phonetics. Only four universities in our list-all in the Mississippi Valleyinclude this fundamental subject. It is gratifying to note that several American universities not here considered maintain phonetic laboratories. It is a truism that no man can be really competent as a teacher of language or as an investigator of linguistic phenomena unless he has been trained in linguistic science as it applies to the particular language or languages with which he is concerned. It is therefore distressing to observe that ten of the institutions in our list provide no linguistic training in Ancient Greek, and that eight neglect Latin in a similar way. For another generation at least we fear that America will be troubled by occasional classical "scholars" who do not know what a language is.

Linguistic courses are practically universal in the large modern language departments. There is room for improvement in the scope and character of the courses offered, but our tables do not disclose many serious gaps. As to the oriental languages we have no means of determining how much attention is paid to grammatical studies. Even Sanskrit may be so taught that practically no linguistic enlightenment results; and such teaching of some other oriental languages is said to be more or less common. A statement on this point from a grammarian interested in Semitic or other oriental languages would be of great interest.

1 In arriving at these figures we have combined the first three columns of the Table II for Greek, and the first, sixth, and seventh for Latin.

In spite of the peculiar duties and advantages which our country has for the study of the American Indian languages, only five of our universities offer facilities for training in them. It is perhaps natural that museums and other non-teaching institutions should take the lead in gathering and interpreting the records of these rapidly disappearing idioms; but the American universities must train scholars to perform the task.

Many readers will see at once that some of our most serious shortcomings cannot be discovered by the means employed in the compilation of this Survey. In not a few institutions, courses which we have counted as linguistic are conducted by scholars who have little interest in language as such; not seldom, doubtless, such courses have been undertaken with reluctance, in a desire to present a well-balanced curriculum. It is better, we confess, that scientific grammar should be taught by a student of literature than that it should not be taught at all; but linguistics is an exacting science, which can be effectively handled only by a trained specialist. The Tables which we have presented give merely a quantitative measure of our linguistic studies; perhaps in a later Survey, a qualitative evaluation may be given by listing the real contributions to grammatical knowledge made by the scholars of the several universities, and by their students.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

A Catalogue of Doctors of Philosophy and Doctors of Science of Harvard University, 1873-1926, is now ready. This gives the authors and titles of over 1500 doctoral theses, including a great number on linguistic and philological topics, with data as to publication. Price, in paper covers, fifty cents; in cloth, one dollar. Copies may be obtained from the Harvard University Press, Department P, Randall Hall, Cambridge, Mass.

A Bibliography of Writings on the English Language from the Beginning of Printing to the End of 1922 By ARTHUR G. KENNEDY, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English Philology in Stanford University. Quarto. Cloth. Ready shortly.

By the chronological arrangement of titles and the inclusion of all important reviews and notices of books, the author has provided the student of the history of English philology with a detailed index to investigations in the English language as a whole or in any part of the field. He has given much attention to the various editions and reprints of books, especially those of an earlier period. He has included all phases of the scientific study of the English language, with chapters not only on Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, and Modern English, but also on the relations of English with other tongues, English paleography, recent tendencies, the history of the study of English, and the theory and method of the study and teaching of the language. Extensive bibliographies will be found on phonetics, runic writing, place-names, slang, dialects, American English, and the like. The book has been planned not only for those who are seeking the latest and best works on any special topics of English, but for those who are attempting to build up working collections of English linguistic studies, both the earlier and the later publications.

Published by the Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

GRADUATE SCHOOL

The Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania offers a wide variety of courses in linguistic subjects covering

AMERICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES

ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

GERMANIC LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
GREEK AND THE ANCIENT GREEK DIALECTS
INDO-EUROPEAN PHILOLOGY AND SANSKRIT

LATIN AND THE ITALIC DIALECTS

ROMANIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES
SEMITIC LANGUAGES AND ARCHAEOLOGY

The University Library affords especially good facilities for linguistic study. The University Museum possesses valuable archaeological collections covering several of the above subjects.

The registration of graduate students in the academic year 1925-26 was 1621; in the Summer School of 1926 it was 456.

A Bulletin containing the list of those who have received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with their present addresses and the titles of their doctoral dissertations, will be available shortly. For this, and other Bulletins of the Graduate School, or additional information in regard to the linguistic or other fields of graduate work, address Dean Herman V. Ames, Graduate School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

5

87

Supplement to LANGUAGE, Journal of the Linguistic Society of

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
« ZurückWeiter »