Full Description
In Volume I, the series editor, Joan Leopold, introduces the founder of the prize, Constantin-Francois Chasseboeuf, Count Volney, and incorporates the history of the Prix Volney into the history of academies and scholarly institutions, linguistics and the social sciences in the nineteenth century. Jean Leclant, Permanent Secretary of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, which now awards the Prix Volney, and Professor of Egyptology at the College de France, summarizes the historical and contemporary role of the Academie, including its organization of prize competitions. Alan Kemp of the University of Edinburgh treats the first, and initially central, subject of the competition: the transcription of Oriental and other languages using modified forms of the Roman alphabet. His essay "Transcription, Transliteration and the Idea of a Universal Alphabet" is followed by two previously unpublished prize-winning Volney essays (1822, 1823) on this subject by Josef Scherer and a reprint of the prize-winning "Essai sur l'analyse physique des langues ou de la formation et de l'usage d'un alphabet methodique" (1837) by Paul Ackermann.The study of French linguistics, which was officially excluded from the competition, but which formed the basis of many entries and numerous winners, is then treated by Jacques Bourquin, for French studies in general, and by Jacques-Philippe Saint-Gerand, for French dialects in particular. The volume concludes with Gaston Bordet's and Jacques Bourquin's introductions and Jacques Bourquin's edition of the Prix Volney manuscript by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, "Recherches sur les categories grammaticales, et sur quelques origines de la langue francaise" (1839). This is a manuscript of the only known linguistic work by the famous French social thinker.
Contents
Volume Iits Prizes; J. Leclant. Nineteenth-Century Linguistic and Social Science: Their Reflection in the Prix Volney Competition; J. Leopold. Transcription, Transliteration and the Idea of a Universal Alphabet; A. Kemp. Josef Scherer: Prizewinning Essay of 1822; A. Kemp (ed.). Josef Scherer: Prizewinning Essay of 1823; A. Kemp (ed.). Paul Ackermann: 'Essai sur l'analyse physique des langues ou de la formation et de l'usage d'un alphabet methodique' (1838); A. Kemp (ed.). The Prix Volney and French Studies; J. Bourquin. Studies in Dialectology for the Prix Volney; J.-P. Saint-Gerand. Life of Joseph Proudhon; G. Bordet. Proudhon's 'Recherches sur les categories grammaticales'; J. Bourquin. Pierre Joseph Proudhon: 'Recherches sur les categories grammaticales' (1839); J. Bourquin (ed.). Index.
