Editorial Comment: Dubious Names of Languages (Costano-an, Occitan-Ian)

Author(s): Y.M.
Source: Romance Philology, Vol. 25, No. 4 (May 1972), p. 420
Published by: Brepols; University of California Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44941423
Accessed: 08-12-2019 21:18 UTC

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420 Romance Philology, Yol. XXY, No. 4, May 1972
S.-C. and H. are more valuable than the theories they advance. As they gu
the reader through their logical steps, showing why this was rejected and w
that is necessarily tentative, the reader relives the discovery process a
forced either to agree or to advance his own superior, better motivated, or
[Oliver T. Myers, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee ]
elegant proof.14

14 H. has continued a noble tradition exemplified in recent decades only by a few sc

such as W. E. Bull and D. L. Bolinger, which stipulates that introductory pedagogical gr
should be prepared by grammarians who have made original contributions to linguistic
The publication of Spanish: Listening, Speaking , Reading , Writing by G. Segreda and H
court, Brace & World) is a welcome addition to the small stock. H.'s share cannot be sing
and the treatment obviously owes little to generative phonology, but we suspect that the s
cation tempered by common sense apparent throughout Spanish Phonology may well have
a rôle in steering this textbook safely between the unwieldy abstract circumlocutions that m
discussions of grammar in Modern Spanish (even in its 2d ed.) and the naïve inaccurac
render most other elementary texts ludicrous if not dangerous.

Editorial Comment:
Dubious Names of Languages (Costano-an, Occitan-ian)
Like other parts of scholarly terminology, the tags attached to languages and dialects are
subject to periodic revision. Early Indo-Europeanists spoke of Zend where nowadays
Avestan seems more appropriate ; Diez's references to "Wallachisch" and "Churwalsch"
sound archaic. As late as 1933 L. Bloomfield used Albanese for 'Albanian' and Bohemian for
'Czech'. In other cases a label suggestive of a theoretical construct once taken for granted
has become controversial. Not every present-day comparatist believes in a "Balto-Slavic"
stage, or in an "Italo-Celtic" phase, which Meillet still upheld. In yet other instances the
appropriateness of a name has been questioned (as is true of Tocharian) or its geographic
range has been thoroughly reexamined (Ascoli operated only with [Eastern] Franco-Pro-
vençal, but today's dialectologists have pieced together a Western Franco -Provençal near
the Atlantic Coast as well).
Let me draw the readers' attention to two possible nomenclatural improvements. As long
as our students of Amerindian languages readily accept Diegueño , Luiseño, etc. (from San
Diego , San Luis,...), there seems to be little point in using ponderous Costanoan for authen-
tic and elegantly concise Costano, from costa 'coast'. Also, Granville Price is, I think, correct
in preferring in his latest book (just off the press), The French Language, spare "Occitan" to
[Y.M.]
overrichly endowed "Occitanian".

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