言語学史における新言語学派について，「#1069. フォスラー学派，新言語学派，柳田 --- 話者個人の心理を重んじる言語観」 ([2012-03-31-1])，「#2013. イタリア新言語学 (1)」 ([2014-10-31-1])，「#2014. イタリア新言語学 (2)」 ([2014-11-01-1])，「#2020. 新言語学派曰く，言語変化の源泉は "expressivity" である」 ([2014-11-07-1]) で取り上げてきた．言語学史を著わした Robins (214) が，新言語学派が言語学に与えた貢献と示した限界を非常に適切に評価しているので，紹介したい．以下の引用では，新言語学派へ連なる学派を "idealists" （観念論者）として言及している．

Language is primarily personal self-expression, the idealists maintained, and linguistic change is the conscious work of individuals perhaps also reflecting national feelings; aesthetic considerations are dominant in the stimulation of innovations. Certain individuals, through their social position or literary reputation, are better placed to initiate changes that others will take up and diffuse through a language, and the importance of great authors in the development of a language, like Dante in Italian, must not be underestimated. In this regard the idealists reproached the neogrammarians for their excessive concentration on the mechanical and pedestrian aspects of language, a charge that L. Spitzer himself very much in sympathy with Vossler, was later to make against the descriptive linguistics of the Bloomfieldian era. But the idealists in themselves concentrating on literate languages, overstressed the literary and aesthetic element in the development of languages, and the element of conscious choice in what is for most speakers most of the time simply unreflective social activity learned in childhood and subsequently taken for granted. And in no part of language is its structure and working taken more for granted than in its actual pronunciation, just that aspect on which the neogrammarians focused their attention. Nevertheless the idealistic school did well to remind us of the creative and conscious factors in some areas of linguistic change and of the part the individual can sometimes deliberately play therein.

　新言語学派は，青年文法学派 (neogrammarian) による音韻変化の機械的な説明を嫌ったが，嫌うあまり，音韻変化が多分に機械的であるらしいという事実を認めることすら避けてしまった．この点は失策だったろう．しかし，青年文法学派の機械的な言語観への反論として，言語変化における個人の影響力を言語論の場に連れ戻したことの功績は認められる．個人の影響力を認めることは，必然的にその個人の始めた言語革新がいかに社会へ拡散してゆくかへの関心を促し，地域言語学 (areal linguistics) や地理言語学 (geolinguistics) の発展を将来することになったからだ．ただし，新言語学派が影響力のある個性の力を過大評価しているきらいがあることは，念頭においておくほうがよいだろう（cf. 「#1412. 16世紀前半に語彙的貢献をした2人の Thomas」 ([2013-03-09-1])）．

　・ Robins, R. H. A Short History of Linguistics. 4th ed. Longman: London and New York, 1997.

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