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To recap, my previous step was to focus on the literature of
interlinguistics in English and Esperanto, for the time being excluding
French, German, Russian, and other languages. Furthermore, I sought to
single out the broadest possible coverage of the subject, and the most
important and recent books apropos to it. My rough-and-ready
classification of the subject matter can for practical purposes to be
reduced to three categories: (1) "philosophical" languages,
which begin with theology and mysticism, and later become an integral
project of the scientific revolution and early modern philosophy, and
continuing into the Enlightenment, (2) languages or projects that
function like "natural" languages and intended for serious
international use, (3) languages designed for literary, recreational, or
experimental purposes (including the contemporary conlanger
phenomenon).<br><br>
The Internet has changed the landscape radically, but I've started out
with books published in the traditional printed form. Also, the
basic, introductory reading list would expand considerably if I relaxed
my criteria in two directions. (1) There are a sizable number of
scholarly books, even of recent vintage, that cover the development of
the philosophical languages in intellectual context. (I mentioned Rossi a
good "in" to the subject.) (2) There are several books that
focus on the strictly linguistic aspects of constructed languages,
comparing and contrasting. In this respect, I would go to Schubert (1989)
and move backward in time to others. But I'm interested in a
coverage of the total context of the language projects and not just into
their linguistic aspects, at least to begin with. <br><br>
And, since not all the books cover these three broad categories evenly
and in the same detail, I had to choose a set which would as a whole
cover the field. Hence I came up with Eco, Large, Okrent as my first
three choices.<br><br>
Now I think I would add Mario Pei's <i>One Language for the World</i>
(1958) as a fourth. Its publication is now past the half century mark. As
I recall, though, it was the most comprehensive general book on the
subject in English since the 1920s and until the 1980s. Furthermore, its
organization, its bibliography and samples of artificial languages, its
exploration of the different types of solutions to the language problem
and the arguments pro and con for each of them (natural languages,
revival of ancient languages, reform or simplification of existing
languages, blends of two or three languages, the three major types of
constructed languages) and for the language problem in general is still
useful, though his prospectives were too optimistic. <br><br>
You can get all of Pei's book online if you have a subscription to
Questia, and you can get bits of it on google books. You can find parts 1
and 3, which are about the language problem and prospects for a solution,
here:<br><br>
<a href="http://miresperanto.narod.ru/biblioteko/pei.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://miresperanto.narod.ru/biblioteko/pei.htm</a><br><br>
This selection guts all of the history, which is located in part 2, as
well as the appendices and bibliography.<br><br>
The previous classic study in English was Albert Léon Guérard's
<a href="http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/guerard1.html"><i>A Short
History of the International Language Movement</a></i> (1922), which you
can get from my web site if you feel the need to search for details from
an earlier era that may have slipped through the cracks of later works.
In any case, my bibliographies and web guides cover the range of the
field decently, and the other web sites linked to will get you as are
into this subject matter as far as you can stand.<br><br>
Moving on to the literature in Esperanto, which includes original and
translated works: it is huge. Now you can find whole books or parts of
books on the web, and those in printed format, while you'll find few if
any in major research libraries in the USA, are numerous. I'm way out of
date with respect to general coverage of the field. I found, for example,
an Esperanto translation of sections of Aleksandr Dulic^enko's
<a href="http://www.esperanto.org/Ondo/Novaj/Nov06-18.htm"><i>En la
Serc^ado de la Mondolingvo, au Interlingvistiko por c^iuj</a></i>.
(2006). But I haven't yet determined the best, most comprehensive, and
up-to-date survey of the subject.<br><br>
I begin, though, with an irreplaceable volume, <i>Historio de la
Mondolingvo</i> by Ernest K. Drezen. I have the 3rd edition (Oosaka:
Pirato, 1967), which is a reprint of the 2nd edition of 1931. There is a
4th edition (Progreso, 1991), which I've not seen, but which comprises
453 pp., while my edition only has 242. What accounts for the
discrepancy, I don't know.<br><br>
Drezen piggybacks off of Petro E. Stojan's comprehensive 1929
<i>Bibliografio de Internacia Lingvo</i>. Drezen mentions in the 2nd
edition (same as the 3rd) that he had to excise treatment of some of the
trivial projects mentioned in the 1st, but there is so much excruciating
minutiae covered in the newer edition, it would suffice for most people
to get a picture of the history of language invention up to 1930 (with
the possible exception of the history of purely literary language
inventions, presumably covered by Yaguello, 1991). <br><br>
(to be continued)<br>
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