William Colenso’s Māori-English Lexicon

<p>William Colenso, one of Victorian New Zealand’s most accomplished polymaths, is remembered best as a printer, a defrocked missionary, botanist, and politician. Up till now, his role as a lexicographer has been largely neglected. His major biographies touch only briefly on his attempt to compile a Māori-English dictionary while Colenso himself spent 30 years on this project. His Lexicon, published the year before his death, is only the incomplete letter A of Māori to English and a handful of pages of English to Māori. The neglect by Colenso’s biographers is a surprising omission given the length of time Colenso spent on his Lexicon, the amount of extant material that relates to it, and the richness of the Lexicon itself as a resource. This thesis asks what William Colenso’s Maori-English Lexicon contribute to our understanding of Colenso’s life, and about the history of language in New Zealand? In chapter one, a brief outline of Colenso’s roles as a missionary, a botanist, a school inspector and a politician establish important biographical context for considering his attempt to compile a Lexicon. The main resource drawn upon is the 30 years’ worth of correspondence between Colenso and the New Zealand government relating to the Lexicon, which affords an overview of the project. The Lexicon itself is a rich resource. In chapter two, I have drawn on a methodology suggested by Ogilvie and Coleman in their paper Forensic Lexicography in order to interrogate the Lexicon. Lastly, in chapter three, themes and discourses found in the archive are considered. Examining the Lexicon demonstrates how rich of a resource it is. The findings establish the wealth of information that the Lexicon can contribute to historical lexicography, and the history of linguistics in New Zealand. Colenso is revealed a ‘splitter’ in his lexicography, just as he was in his botany. He overwhelmingly drew on printed sources as citations when compiling his Lexicon, which raises questions about what ‘authority’ means when recording a language with an oral tradition. Te reo Māori was a means for Colenso to access many aspects of te ao Māori. The Lexicon also reveals Colenso as a life-long language learner. The archive reveals Colenso as man deeply anxious about his professional standing. His insistence on what he referred to as fair and reasonable remuneration is an insistence on the worth of his knowledge. This thesis argues that Colenso’s Lexicon is a product of language contact and cultural exchange. And it is a window into Colenso’s life as a man who learnt another language.</p>

William Colenso’s Māori-English Lexicon

<p>William Colenso, one of Victorian New Zealand’s most accomplished polymaths, is remembered best as a printer, a defrocked missionary, botanist, and politician. Up till now, his role as a lexicographer has been largely neglected. His major biographies touch only briefly on his attempt to compile a Māori-English dictionary while Colenso himself spent 30 years on this project. His Lexicon, published the year before his death, is only the incomplete letter A of Māori to English and a handful of pages of English to Māori. The neglect by Colenso’s biographers is a surprising omission given the length of time Colenso spent on his Lexicon, the amount of extant material that relates to it, and the richness of the Lexicon itself as a resource. This thesis asks what William Colenso’s Maori-English Lexicon contribute to our understanding of Colenso’s life, and about the history of language in New Zealand? In chapter one, a brief outline of Colenso’s roles as a missionary, a botanist, a school inspector and a politician establish important biographical context for considering his attempt to compile a Lexicon. The main resource drawn upon is the 30 years’ worth of correspondence between Colenso and the New Zealand government relating to the Lexicon, which affords an overview of the project. The Lexicon itself is a rich resource. In chapter two, I have drawn on a methodology suggested by Ogilvie and Coleman in their paper Forensic Lexicography in order to interrogate the Lexicon. Lastly, in chapter three, themes and discourses found in the archive are considered. Examining the Lexicon demonstrates how rich of a resource it is. The findings establish the wealth of information that the Lexicon can contribute to historical lexicography, and the history of linguistics in New Zealand. Colenso is revealed a ‘splitter’ in his lexicography, just as he was in his botany. He overwhelmingly drew on printed sources as citations when compiling his Lexicon, which raises questions about what ‘authority’ means when recording a language with an oral tradition. Te reo Māori was a means for Colenso to access many aspects of te ao Māori. The Lexicon also reveals Colenso as a life-long language learner. The archive reveals Colenso as man deeply anxious about his professional standing. His insistence on what he referred to as fair and reasonable remuneration is an insistence on the worth of his knowledge. This thesis argues that Colenso’s Lexicon is a product of language contact and cultural exchange. And it is a window into Colenso’s life as a man who learnt another language.</p>

Introduction: Where is Medieval Pragmatics?

This book recovers pragmatics within the history of medieval linguistics. The introduction outlines the study of pragmatics from a critical history of linguistics perspective, situating language study in a complex social field and comparing medieval pragmatic ideas and metapragmatics with assumptions in contemporary pragmatic theory. Pragmatics embraces communication, expression, and understanding; it prioritizes meaning, context, affect, and speaking position over formal grammar. Relevant texts for late medieval pragmatics include grammatical and logical texts, especially those by Roger Bacon, Robert Kilwardby, and anonymous grammarians, and Peter (of) John Olivi. Other sources for medieval pragmatics include life narrative (Margery Kempe), poetry (Chaucer), and heresy records. Theoretical and everyday texts reveal provocative intersections of Latin and vernacular intellectual and religious cultures and different assumptions and ideologies concerning meaning, speech, and speakers. Across these heterogenous, sometimes antagonistic discursive fields, medieval intellectual history crosses paths with social history.

The Medieval Life of Language

The Medieval Life of Language: Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe explores the complex history of medieval pragmatic theory and ideas and metapragmatic awareness across social discourses. Pragmatic thinking about language and communication are revealed in grammar, semiotics, philosophy, and literature. Part historical reconstruction, part social history, part language theory, Amsler supplements the usual materials for the history of medieval linguistics and discusses the pragmatic implications of grammatical treatises on the interjection, Bacon's sign theory, logic texts, Chaucer's poetry, inquisitors' accounts of heretic speech, and life writing by William Thorpe and Margery Kempe. Medieval and contemporary pragmatic theory are contrasted in terms of their philosophical and linguistic orientations. Aspects of medieval pragmatic theory and practice, especially polysemy, equivocation, affective speech, and recontextualization, show how pragmatic discourse informed social controversies and attitudes toward sincere, vague, and heretical speech. Relying on Bakhtinian dialogism, critical discourse analysis, and conversation analysis, Amsler situates a key period in the history of linguistics within broader social and discursive fields of practice.

The Medieval Life of Language

The Medieval Life of Language: Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe explores the complex history of medieval pragmatic theory and ideas and metapragmatic awareness across social discourses. Pragmatic thinking about language and communication are revealed in grammar, semiotics, philosophy, and literature. Part historical reconstruction, part social history, part language theory, Amsler supplements the usual materials for the history of medieval linguistics and discusses the pragmatic implications of grammatical treatises on the interjection, Bacon's sign theory, logic texts, Chaucer's poetry, inquisitors' accounts of heretic speech, and life writing by William Thorpe and Margery Kempe. Medieval and contemporary pragmatic theory are contrasted in terms of their philosophical and linguistic orientations. Aspects of medieval pragmatic theory and practice, especially polysemy, equivocation, affective speech, and recontextualization, show how pragmatic discourse informed social controversies and attitudes toward sincere, vague, and heretical speech. Relying on Bakhtinian dialogism, critical discourse analysis, and conversation analysis, Amsler situates a key period in the history of linguistics within broader social and discursive fields of practice.

Overview on Functional Syntax in World Linguistics

This article reflects the innovations in the functional syntax of scholars who have contributed to the history of linguistics around the world. Noam Chomsky’s philosophical and psychological views on the innate nature of language in the human mind are included in the article. The various primitive ideas of the ancient Greeks about the origin of speech were the basis of logical, morphological, and lexical approaches in modern linguistics. According to book Syntax of the Russian Language by A. Shakhmatov, people first created sentences and then determined their composition. The research of ancient Arabic linguists played an important role in the development of such modem languages. The original research brought to the structural syntax by a number of Azerbaijani linguists are of great importance in the linguistics of the Turkic-speaking peoples. From the data obtained, it can be concluded that syntax is the most interesting and complex discussion of linguistics.