New Publications

I. Planned Languages: From Concept to Reality

Schubert, Klaus, ed. 2000. Planned Languages: From Concept to Reality. Part I. Vol. 15 No. 1 of Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics (Brussels: Hogeschool voor Wetenschap en Kunst).

This first part of the volume includes a biographical essay on Edward Symoens (W.M.A. De Smet, Kalmthout BE), a discussion of the balance between planning and language in a planned language (Klaus Schubert, Flensburg DE), the role of literary language in Esperanto (Humphrey Tonkin, West Hartford US), the development of a planned language (Detlev Blanke, Berlin DE), lexicographic problems of Esperanto (Michel Duc Goninaz, Aix-en-Provence FR), and the automatic processing of Esperanto speech (Ilona Koutny, Poznan PL).

Schubert, Klaus, ed. 2001. Planned Languages: From Concept to Reality. Part II. Vol. 15 No. 2 of Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics (Brussels: Hogeschool voor Wetenschap en Kunst).

The second part of the volume includes a paper on creoles, pidgins and planned languages (Liu Haitao, Xining CN), an examination of the question of whether a “clear” structure is instructional (Renato Corsetti & Mauro La Torre, IT), sssss.

II. Language Planning and Lexicography

Kiselman, Christer and Geraldo Mattos, eds. 2001. Lingva Planado kaj Leksikologio; Kontribuaĵoj al internacia simpozio. Zagrebo 2001 07 28-30 / Language Planning and Lexicology; Proceedings of an international symposium. Zagreb 2001 07 28-30. Chapeco-SC: Fonto, 286 pp.

This volume presents the proceedings of a symposium held July 29-30, 2001 in Zagreb, Croatia, under the auspices of the Academy of Esperanto and the Croatian Academy of Sciences. The latter also served as host of the symposium.

The volume includes the following papers in English: “Language Planning, Flexibility in Lexical Usage and the Status of English in Cameroon” by Isaiah Munang Ayafor (Freiburg im Breisgau, DE), “Language Planning and Planned International Languages” by Julius Balbin (New York NY/US), “Lexical differences in Chinese across the Taiwan Strait” by Fu Kin-hung (Hong Kong CN), “Ukrainian: Undoing Previous Corpus and Status Planning” by Alexander Krouglov (London UK), and “Schizoglossia, Turkish Language Reform, and Dictionaries” by Petek Kurtböke (Milano, IT).

Papers in Esperanto include a discussion of the Esperanto lexicon from the viewpoint of communication theory (Vilmos Benczik, Budapest HU), a typological comparison of the lexicons of several planned languages (Detlev Blanke, Berlin DE), phraseology in Esperanto (Sabine Fiedler, Gordemitz DE), verb transitivity in Esperanto (Grant Goodall, El Paso US), attempts to modernize the alphabet of Esperanto (Ottó Haszpra, Budapest HU), notional systems in railway terminology (Heinz Hoffmann, Radebeul DE), the creation of mathematical terms (Christer Kiselman, Uppsala SE), Esperanto terminology (Ilona Koutny, Poznań PL), the analysis and criticism of dictionary definitions (Geraldo Mattos, Curitiba PR/BR), the function of Romance prefixes in Esperanto and Italian (Salomonné Csíszár Pálma, Budapest HU), internationality and ease in the Esperanto vocabulary (Wen Jingen, Beijing CN) and the renewal of the Esperanto lexicon in the social and political sciences (Walter Żelazny, Metz FR & Rzeszów-Tyczyn PL).

III. Studoj pri Interlingvistiko / Studien zur Interlinguistik (Studies in Interlinguistics)

Fiedler, Sabine and Liu Haitao, eds. 2001. Studoj pri Interlingvistiko / Studien zur Interlinguistik; Festlibro omaĝe al la 60-jariĝo de Detlev Blanke / Festschrift für Detlef Blanke zum 60. Geburtstag. Dobřichovice (Praha): KAVA-PECH, 736 pp., ISBN 80-85853-53-1.

The summer of 2001 saw the launch of one of the most extensive collections of articles in interlinguistics published in recent years. Studoj pri Interlingvistiko / Studien zur Interlinguistik is a festschrift compiled in celebration of the 60^th birthday of the German interlinguist Detlev Blanke. A multinational effort, it was edited by Sabine Fiedler (Germany) and Liu Haitao (China) and published by KAVA-PECH (Czech Republic) with financial assistance from the ESF (USA) and the FAME Foundation (Germany).

In addition to a photograph of the celebrant, an introduction presenting the celebrant and the festschrift, a list of congratulants, information about the contributors, a bibliography of Blanke’s publications and an index, all articles, each accompanied by a summary in English, as well as one in either Esperanto or German, may be found on the ESF web site at http://esperantic.org/librejo/dbstudoj/index.htm.

The volume divides the articles into four topic groups. In the first group, devoted to Language Planning and Language Politics, Kimura Goro (Tokyo, JP) discusses conscious intervention in language use in general terms, while Ignat Bociort (Timişoara, RO & Berlin, DE), Johannes Irmscher (Berlin, DE) and Christer Kiselman (Uppsala, SE) each discuss the planned modification of a particular language, namely Romanian, Greek and Swedish respectively. Werner Bormann (Hamburg, DE) and Hans Erasmus (Voorburg, NL) then discuss the political implications of language planning, in general and in the European Union. The latter paper naturally leads into one by Max Hans-Jürgen Mattusch (Düsseldorf, DE) on foreign language training in European and how it is affected by globalization. The section concludes with a paper by Renato Corsetti (Palestrina, IT) on linguistic human rights and Esperanto.

The second section, concentrating on Theoretical, Historical and Applied Aspects of Interlinguistics, is introduced by Aleksandr Duličenko (Tartu, EE) with a deliberation on the position of planned languages between engineered and ethnic languages. In the following articles, Sergej Kuznecov (Moscow, RU) attempts to locate interlinguistics within the larger discourse of thought about cosmic intercourse and universal language, while Liu Haitao (Xining, CN) examines interlinguistics from the perspective of information science. Klaus Schubert (Flensburg, DE) continues this line of thought, examining the potential contribution of interlinguistics to research on man-machine interfacing, while Probal Dasgupto (Hyderabad, IN) discusses what tools interlinguistics can offer to literary research. Mark Fettes (Vancouver, BC/CA) then provides the fulcrum for this section with his centennial retrospective on the Zamenhof’s 1900 essay “Essence and future of the international language idea”. Articles with a purely historical theme are those by Věra Barandovská-Frank (Paderborn, DE) on Václav Plocek, a little-known Czech Volapukist, by Árpád Rátkai (Szeged, HU) on the history of Ido in Hungary, and by Ulrich Lins (Cologne, DE) on Oka Asajirô, a Japanese cosmopolitan. The section concludes with three articles of an applied nature: Ulrich Becker (New York, NY/US) shows how the Internet can be used to further interlinguistic research, Katalin Smidéliusz (Szombathely, HU) reports on an exercise in which university students were encouraged to develop planned language projects, and Cornelia Mannewitz (Rostock, DE) describes how linguistic invention has played a role in Russian science fiction.

The third section of Studoj is devoted to Esperanto Studies. The topic is introduced by Humphrey Tonkin (West Hartford, CT/US) who discusses the development of research in this area from both within and without the Esperanto language community. This is followed by a phonological study of nasals in Esperanto (Daniele Vitali, Luxembourg LU), and statistical studies of the frequency of phonemes (Constantin Dominte, Bucharest RO) and letters (Ottó Haszpra, Budapest HU) in Esperanto. Geraldo Mattos (Rio de Janeiro, BR) and Otto Prytz (Oslo, NO) present studies of the use of case in Esperanto and of the Esperanto infinitive. Two lexical studies follow, on Asian loan words in Esperanto (Erich-Dieter Krause, Leipzig DE) and on ethnonyms and the designation of a state’s citizens (Ronald Lotzsch, Berlin DE). Esperanto has not only received material from other languages but has also been a donor, as Otto Back (Vienna, AT) shows in his study of Esperanto traces in Occidental. Problems of finding appropriate translation equivalents in a planned language such as Esperanto are examined by Heidemarie Salevsky (Berlin, DE) and Gerrit Berveling (Zwolle, NL). The next five articles take a historical perspective, Hans-Burkhard Dietterle (Schönow, DE) writing on the organizer Johannes Dietterle, Fritz Wollenberg (Berlin, DE) on the Esperanto movement in Berlin, Zbigniew Galor (Poznań, PL) on the changing structure of the Esperanto language community, and Andy Künzli (Bern, CH) and Balázs Wacha (Budapest, HU) on René de Saussure, whose many contributions to the development of Esperanto were influential but not always appreciated. The section closes with papers on the question of political topicality in Esperanto textbooks by East German authors (Till-Dietrich Dahlenburg, Brüel DE), word-play in Esperanto (Sabine Fiedler, Leipzig DE) and the aesthetic/ emotive function in Esperanto (Aleksandr Melnikov, Rostov-na-Donu RU).

The concluding section of Studoj deals with Terminological and Lexicographic Aspects of Interlinguistics. After an opening article by Heinz Hoffmann (Radebeul, DE) dealing with railway terminology in Esperanto, Boris Marinov (BG) et al present a discussion of international language communication in the field of forestry, and Ulrich Fellman (Frankfurt a.M., DE) discusses the expression of “big numbers” in Esperanto. Ilona Koutny (Poznań, PL) finally completes the selection with an analysis of the challenges of modern lexicography to Esperanto.

IV. Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto (Complete Illustrated Dictionary of Esperanto)

Waringhien, Gaston & Michel Duc Goninaz, eds. 2002. Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto, 2^nd revised edition. Paris: Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, 150 x 255 mm, 1265 pp., price: € 70 plus postage.

First published under the editorship of Gaston Waringhien in 1971 and reprinted several times since, the Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto, PIV for short, is the most comprehensive monolingual dictionary of Esperanto and is considered by many to be the definitive source of information on this language’s lexicon. Nonetheless, even from the start it was recognized that further expansion was needed to properly document the lexicon of Esperanto. For this reason, Prof. Michel Duc Goninaz and a large team of volunteer assistants have been hard at work the past fifteen years on a revised version. Finally, the fruit of their labors is now available in printed form, receiving its first public presentation earlier this summer during the annual congress of the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda (World Non-nationalist Association) in Alicante, Spain. Changes include not only the addition of a thousand pages of new terms and explanations but also the incorporation of the illustrations, located in an appendix of the first edition, into the text itself.

More information is available from:

Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, 67, avenue Gambetta, FR-75020 Paris, Francio.

<satesper@noos.fr> <http://www.sat-esperanto.org/>

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