Overview

"This series reproduces essays submitted for the linguistic prize, awarded since 1822 by the Institut de France to recognize work in general and comparative linguistics. Volume I 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, 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 His essay ""Transcription, Transliteration and the Idea of a Universal Alphabet"" is followed by two previously unpublished prize-winning Volney essays on this subject by Josef Scherer and a reprint of the prize-winning Essai sur l'analyse physique des langues ou de la formation et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 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."" This is a manuscript of a linguistic work by the famous French social thinker. In Volume II, the focus is on the authors who competed for the prize of 1835, the only year in which the theme of the contest was restricted to Amerindian linguistics. The two competitors, Peter Stephen Du Ponceau and Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, both lived in the United States, but were of French and Swiss extraction and able to write their essays in French. R.H. Robins describes the life of Du Ponceau and his views on general linguistics and phonological theory as seen in his first Volney essay, for the competition of 1826, ""Essai de solution du probleme philologique propose en 1823 par la Commission ..."", which is published here. Pierre Swiggers introduces Du Ponceau's Amerindian researches and their relationship to contemporary scholarship. Then follows a reprint with annotations of Du Ponceau's famous ""Memoire sur le systeme grammatical des langues de quelques nations indiennes de l'Amerique du Nord"", published in 1838 and based upon his prizewinning 1835 Volney manuscript which is no longer extant. This volume shows the Prix Volney Commissioners reaching out to the Western hemisphere and selecting some of the best linguistic scholarship it could offer."

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