The History of Linguistics in the Classical Period

The study of Greek and Roman language science has figured prominently in the remarkable renascence of interest in the history of linguistics of the last twenty years. We know more now than we did several decades ago about what the Greeks and Romans were thinking, writing, and doing in matters grammatical, and the scholars who contribute to this volume are among the ones who are responsible for that happy circumstance. The contents of this book bear ample testimony to the enhanced and enlarged understanding and appreciation of ancient grammar that we now enjoy. Each article in this volume has something new to say about the history of linguistics in the classical period, and each author insists that we need to return to ancient texts time and time again and that we need to read them even more carefully. The rethinking so conspicuous in much of the recent scholarship in this field is pointing in the direction of a new historiographical model of Greek and Latin linguistic science. The text of this volume has also been published in Historiographia Linguistica XIII:2/3

L.J. Kelly , Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 35.1 (1990).:
The excellence of this book rises from a paradox: though it is an account of linguistic theory and practice, it is a fine piece of philology in the wide sense one finds in German writers. [...] While the authors of the articles have the philologist's knack of thinking in the ancient mould imposed by their matter, they are not averse to rereading the ancient paradigms in light of modern linguistics, to explaining the ancient context of grammar through sociolinguistics, or to applying some of the lessons of sister disciplines, like ancient history.