‎Langage‎

‎CECI, Battista‎

‎Compendio d'avvertimenti di ben parlare volgare‎

‎In -4°, pp. (22), 221, legatura in pergamena molle, titolo manoscritto al dorso. Prima edizione di questo manuale sulla lingua volgare, scritta e parlata: rivolto al sovrano (e ai suoi collaboratori), l’autore non si limita a suggerimenti linguistici, ma nell’ultima parte il trattato sconfina nella politica e nella diplomazia. L’autore (1574-1630), priore di Urbino e accademico della Crusca.‎

‎FOURMONT, Etienne‎

‎Meditationes sinicae, in quibus I . Consideratur Linguae Philosophicae atque Universalis Natura quails esse, aut debeat, aut possit. II . Lingua Sinarum Mandarinica, tum in Hieroglyphis, tum in Monosyllabis suis, eâ mente inventa ac talis esse ostenditur. III . Datur eorumdem Hieroglyphorum, ac Monosyllaborum, atque inde, Characterum Linguae Sinicae omnium, quamvis innumerabilium, & lectio, & intellectio, seu Ars legendi & intelligendi tota, qualis Pekimi ab ipsis Doctoribus Sinis traditur. IV . Idque omne, progressu à Libris mere Europaeis (de Sinâ tamen) ad Libros mere Sinicos, facto.‎

‎In-folio, pp. [8], xxvi, [4], 152, con numerosi caratteri cinesi xilografati nel testo, e una grande tavola pieghevole; con l’aggiunta di una seconda carta T1 (pagg. 71-72) con una coppia di caratteri cinesi corretti al recto, rilegata dopo l'errata a p. 140; due vecchi timbri al titolo; leggermente imbrunito, leggermente più imbrunito alle ultime carte; ottimo esemplare in vitello screziato francese coevo, dorso dorato; lievi abrasioni ai piatti; parte inferiore del dorso un po' usurata. RARA PRIMA EDIZIONE DI UNA DELLE PRINCIPALI OPERE SULLA LINGUA CINESE DEL PIONIERE STUDIOSO ORIENTALE FRANCESE E SECONDA GRAMMATICA SULLA LINGUA DA PUBBLICARE IN EUROPA. 'Fourmont è stato uno dei primi studiosi occidentali a tentare di comprendere il più accuratamente possibile il sistema dei dizionari cinesi e il pensiero che una volta che uno studioso avesse compreso i vari sistemi, sarebbe stato in grado di lavorare da solo. In effetti, a quel tempo gli europei non avevano altro modo per imparare il cinese se non consultare i dizionari e lavorare dal noto all'ignoto. Sfortunatamente, i dizionari di Fourmont non furono mai stampati, e non si trovano nemmeno in forma manoscritta, ad eccezione di un dizionario storico e geografico... 'Le Meditationes possono essere considerate un manuale da usare insieme ai dizionari che Fourmont intendeva pubblicare, ed è solo nella prospettiva di questo progetto più ampio che si può giudicare la sua parola. L'assenza dei dizionari spiega perché è difficile usare il libro di testo. Abel Rémusat, nel diciannovesimo secolo, avrebbe qualificato questo lavoro come accademico ma oscuro, e i suoi avversari sostenevano che Fourmont avesse scritto qualcosa di non veramente utile.' Fourmont attribuiva così tanta importanza alla lettura dei dizionari da criticare la grammatica cinese di Prémare, la Notitia Linguae Sinicae, ricevuta alla Bibliothèque du Roi il 12 maggio 1730, perché non insegnava al lettore come identificare i caratteri o come usare i dizionari cinesi. Era sbalordito dal fatto che un'autorità in cinese come Prémare non prestasse attenzione alle radici cinesi nella sua grammatica e non poté perdonare l'omissione. D'altra parte, secondo Lundbaek, la Notitia Linguae Sinicae di padre de Prémare era troppo avanzata per essere compresa da uno studioso relativamente inesperto. In effetti, padre de Prémare aveva una conoscenza della pedagogia della lingua cinese migliore di Fourmont. La sua opera è composta da frasi scelte dai Classici, che lo studente doveva imparare per familiarizzare con i personaggi e il loro uso. Inoltre, Prémare, per quanto riguarda l'ideologia, era molto più attratto dal metodo di classificazione radicale esposto da Mei Yingzuo. Ogni studioso proiettava la propria preoccupazione nella lingua straniera, e ognuno aveva la sua mistica. “Tuttavia, la familiarità con le radici aiuta a comprendere il significato dei caratteri, e un metodo di classificazione per l'enorme numero di caratteri è considerato di grande utilità. In tal senso Fourmont promuoveva un mezzo pratico di accesso al cinese per il lettore europeo» (Cécile Leung, Etienne Fourmont. (1683-1745), Oriental and Chinese Languages in Eighteenth Century France, pp. 203-204). Fourmont divenne professore di arabo al Collège de France nel 1715. Nel 1713 fu eletto membro dell'Accademia delle iscrizioni, nel 1738 membro della Royal Society di Londra e nel 1742 membro di quella di Berlino. Morì a Parigi l'8 dicembre 1745. In-folio, pp. [8], xxvi, [4], 152, with numerous Chinese characters in woodcut in the text, and one large folding table; an additional cancel of leaf T1 (pages 71-72) with a couple of Chinese characters corrected on recto, bound in after the errata on p. 140; two old stamps to title; a little light browning, slightly heavier to the last leaves; a very good copy in contemporary French mottled calf, spine gilt; minor abrasions to covers; tail of spine a little worn. SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF ONE OF THE MAJOR WORKS ON THE CHINESE LANGUAGE BY THE PIONEERING FRENCH ORIENTAL SCHOLAR, AND THE SECOND GRAMMAR ON THE LANGUAGE TO BE PUBLISHED IN EUROPE. ‘Fourmont was one of the first Western scholars to attempt to understand as accurately as possible the system of Chinese dictionaries, and the thought that once a scholar understood the various systems, he would be able to work by himself. In fact, there was no other way for Europeans to learn Chinese at this time besides consulting the dictionaries and working from the known to the unknown. Unfortunately, Fourmont’s dictionaries were never printed, and are not even to be found in manuscript form, except of a historical and geographical dictionary … ‘The Meditationes can be considered a handbook to be used in conjunction with the dictionaries that Fourmont intended to publish, and it is only in the perspective of this larger project that his word can be judged. The absence of the dictionaries explains why it is difficult to use the text-book. Abel Rémusat would, in the nineteenth century, qualify this work as scholarly but obscure, and his adversaries contended that Fourmont wrote something not really useful. ‘ Fourmont placed so much importance on reading dictionaries that he criticized Prémare’s Chinese grammar, the Notitia Linguae Sinicae, which was received at the Bibliothèque du Roi on May 12, 1730, on the ground that it did not teach the reader how to identify characters or how to use Chinese dictionaries. He was shocked that such an authority on Chinese as Prémare did not pay attention to Chinese radicals in his grammar, and could not forgive the omission. On the other hand, according to Lundbaek, Father de Prémare’s Notitia Linguae Sinicae was far too advanced for the relatively young scholar to understand. As a matter of fact, Father de Prémare had a better grasp of Chinese language pedagogy than Fourmont. His work is made up of sentences chosen from the Classics, which the student was supposed to learn in order to familiarize himself with the characters and their usage. Moreover, Prémare, as far as ideology was concerned, was much more attracted to the method of radical classification as set out by Mei Yingzuo. Each scholar was projecting his own preoccupation into the foreign language, and each had his own mystique. ‘Nevertheless, familiarity with the radicals helps to understand the meaning of the characters, and a method of classification for the enormous number of characters is considered to be of greatest utility. To that extent Fourmont was promoting a practical means of access to Chinese for the European reader’ (Cécile Leung, Etienne Fourmont. (1683-1745), Oriental and Chinese Languages in Eighteenth Century France, pp. 203-204). Fourmont became professor of Arabic in the Collège de France in 1715. In 1713 he was elected a member of the Academy of Inscriptions, in 1738 a member of the Royal Society of London, and in 1742 a member of that of Berlin. He died at Paris on 8 December 1745.‎

‎GALIANI, Ferdinando‎

‎Del dialetto napoletano‎

‎In -8°, pp. 184, 18 cc. di note manoscritte; cartonato. È la prima, rara, edizione di questo lavoro in cui l’abate Galiani, economista e poligrafo illuminista, difende il dialetto napoletano dalle influenze toscane. Venti carte anticamente manoscritte con le aggiunte che compaiono nella seconda edizione. It’s the first, rare edition of this work in which Galiani, an illuminist economist and poligraphist, means to defend the Neapolitan dialect against Tuscany influences and “corruptions”. At the end of the book, twenty manuscript leaves report the additions that appears, printed, in the second edition.‎

‎Sacks, Oliver‎

‎Seeing Voices: A Journey Into the World of the Deaf‎

‎180 p. Hardcover Very good condition good‎

‎Curts, Paul Holroyd‎

‎Readings in Scientific and Technical German: An Introduction to General Science in German‎

‎284 p. Preface, introduction, & index text in English Hardcover Very good condition‎

‎Perry, Frances M‎

‎A Punctuation Primer, with Notes on the Preparation of Manuscript‎

‎103p. Hardcover Very good condition‎

‎Browne, William Hand & Haldeman, S. S.‎

‎The Clarendon Dictionary: A Concise Handbook of the English Language, in Orthography, Pronunciation and Definition‎

‎365p. Hardcover Good condition‎

‎Southworth, Gordon A. & Goddard, F. B.‎

‎Elements of Composition and Grammar‎

‎300p. Hardcover Good condition‎

‎Carroll, John B.‎

‎The Study of Language: A Survey of Linguistics and Related Disciplines in America‎

‎289p. Hardcover Very good condition good‎

‎Lewis, Morris Michael‎

‎Language in Society: The Linguistic Revolution and Social Change‎

‎248p. Hardcover Good condition‎

‎Lipton, James‎

‎An Exaltation of Home and Family‎

‎15 cm. Hardcover Very good condition good‎

‎Perrin, Porter Gale‎

‎Writer's guide and index to English [by] Porter G. Perrin‎

‎xiv, 912 p. 23 cm. Hardcover Very good condition‎

‎Howard, V. A. (Vernon Alfred) & Barton, J. H.‎

‎Thinking on paper‎

‎156pp. 22 cm. Hardcover Very good condition good‎

‎Savaiano, Eugene‎

‎Spanish idioms‎

‎379pp. 16 cm. Paperback Good condition‎

‎Colcord, Joanna Carver‎

‎Sea Language Comes Ashore‎

‎213 p. Hardcover Good condition; spine darkened‎

‎Bernstein, Theodore M.‎

‎More Language That Needs Watching: Second aid for writers and editors, emanating from the News Room of the The New York Times‎

‎108 p. Hardcover Very good condition good‎

‎Flexner, Stuart Berg‎

‎I Hear America Talking: An Illustrated Treasury of American Words and Phrases‎

‎Oversize. 505 p., illus. Hardcover Very good condition good‎

‎Laing, Alexander‎

‎Wine and physic; a poem and six essays on the fate of our language, by Alexander Laing; with decorations by Isabel Lattimore.‎

‎xii, 157 p. illus. 22 cm. Hardcover Very good condition good Signed by the author for Charlie Stone‎

‎Potter, Simeon‎

‎Language in the Modern World‎

‎221p. PAPERBACK Very good condition‎

‎Lansky, Aaron‎

‎Outwitting history : the amazing adventures of a man who rescued a million Yiddish books‎

‎316pp. 24 cm. Hardcover Very good condition good‎

‎Howe, Irving‎

‎World of our fathers [by] Irving Howe, with the assistance of Kenneth Libo‎

‎714p Paperback Very good condition‎

‎Schiller:‎

‎SCHILLERS POETISCHE MEISTERWERKE GEDICHTE UND DRAMEN‎

‎VG (very good very sound attractive copy with red cloth boards with very bright ornate black/gilt decoration, boards in very good condition with just small chip to cloth at one bottom corner, all page edges marbled blue, binding very tight and pages clean and bright, a very good copy indeed with light browning to endpapers and pencil ownership inscription front free endpaper) 12mo 980pp. Text in German throughout printed in Gothic typeface. Frontis portrait with light even browning.‎

‎Renira Huxley and Elizxabeth Ingram editors:‎

‎LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Models and Methods‎

‎Vg (clean green cloth with bright gilt titles on spine,blank library plate and small pocket front endpapers and usual library markings, pages clean and bright and binding firm) octavo 311pp. Proceedings of a CASDS study group on Mechanisms of Language Development held jointly with the Ciba Foundation 1968.‎

‎Tina Bennett-Kastor:‎

‎ANALYZING CHILDREN'S LANGUAGE‎

‎Near fine (no dj, yellow card covers with just a hint of fading top of front cover and one small pencil mark front cover, a very tight bright crisp copy with no marks or inscriptions, possibly unread) octavo 149pp. First edition.Applied Language Studies series.‎

‎J Michelet:‎

‎PRECIS DE L'HISTOIRE MODERNE‎

‎G (no dj, green marbled boards quarter-bound with brown leather spine, impressed bands on spine and gilt titles, leather rubbed and worn edges and spine joints, boards rubbed all edges and corners all rubbed and bumped, fairly heavy browning to edges of prelims and fly leaves and foxing gutter of half-title page, text block binding tight and pages clean, light age browning page edges) 12mo 442pp. Ouvrage adopte par Le Conseil de L'Universite et prescrit pour l'enseignement de l'histoire moderne dans les colleges et dans tous les etablissments d'instruction publique. Neuvieme edition. Text in French language throughout.‎