Reviewed by Maria del Puy Ciriza, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This book is a historical itinerary of Western philosophies of language that begins with the work accomplished by the Greek philosophers and continues through the current cognitive debates on the innateness of language. In the forward, Lia Formigari asserts the impossibility of representing a single perspective on the study of language. For this reason, this volume focuses on two approaches: the study of language as (i) a cognitive tool and (ii) a compilation of phylogenetic components.

In Ch. 1, F reviews the disciplines that deal with language, synthesizing their various methods, designs, goals, and adaptations. Ch. 2 explores the putative founding texts of Western language philosophies (i.e. Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine); particular emphasis is given to their linguistic writings that grappled with the arbitrary and natural relationship between language and being. Ch. 3 covers the same historical ground as the previous chapter; however, F’s focus here is on the question asked by the naturalist paradigm: ‘is language connatural to humankind or acquired through the humanization of the species?’ (39).

In Ch. 4, F continues with a study of scholarship in the Middle Ages: she examines the intersection of theology and language sciences in the field of hermeneutics. F discusses how the first biblical analyses helped to expand the idea of semantic categories and semantic universals. Furthermore, she expands on the medieval ideas about the universality of grammar held by Boethius of Denmark (among others) and discusses William of Ockham’s nominalism as a precedent to John Locke’s theory of language, which was to become the starting point of modern language theories in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Ch. 5 focuses on the Renaissance and the Enlightenment: F investigates the creation of the first language typologies, the notion of the vernacular, and the ultimate search for a unitary universal grammar. Here, F continues the discussion of Locke’s ideas about the genesis of words and the first iconic links between things, ideas, and names. F further discusses the transition from Locke’s semantics of ideas to the late-eighteenth-century theories on the semantics of usage.

In Ch. 6, F deals with the emergence of national languages in the nineteenth century, the first ideas of a shared linguistic community, and the concept of language as a cultural expression with a common worldview. She also examines the first studies on historical comparativism. Ch. 7 focuses on the turn of the nineteenth century and the emergence of two contrasting paradigms: linguistic idealism (i.e. the rejection of scientific theories of language) and psychologism (i.e. the study of language with research on its mental preconditions).

In Ch. 8, F surveys current debates on language as an instrument of cognitive interaction and the impact of evolutionary theories on the innate conception of language.

This book provides a rich collection of references that will help readers orient themselves to the seminal works of each historical period. One of the volume’s strengths is F’s ability to demonstrate how different language philosophies are both interconnected throughout history and relevant for today’s linguistic scholarship.