In the study of modern languages at universities, philology understood in the narrower sense of textual criticism has become such a specialized activity that for a long time it generated only very few methodological impulses of broader relevance to the subjects and disciplines in which it was practised. This state of affairs changed dramatically with the advent of the so-called 'New Philology' in the early 90s, an approach relating textual criticism to text theory and text history. The volume assembles the findings of an international colloquium held at the University of Jena (19 Oct. to 21 Oct. 1995), at which linguists, literary scholars and specialists in Romance and German Studies subjected the theories of this 'New Philology' to a critical review, the overall objective being to revive the dialogue between the relevant disciplines and sub-disciplines.

Recent developments of linguistics have given innovative impulses to historical semantics. For the Romance study of words, the time has come to establish a dialogue between theorists and historians of language. As far as structural semantics are integrated into cognitive concepts of historical semantics, it remains attractive for the lexical analysis of older language levels and relevant for the linguistics of semantic change/change in meaning. Cognitive models are undergoing new accentuations towards a pragmatic historical semantics, which are open to/receptive to language-historical questions in particular.

This series of HANDBOOKS OF LINGUISTICS AND COMMUNICATION SCIENCE is designed to illuminate a field which not only includes general linguistics and the study of linguistics as applied to specific languages, but also covers those more recent areas which have developed from the increasing body of research into the manifold forms of communicative action and interaction. For "classic" linguistics there appears to be a need for a review of the state of the art which will provide a reference base for the rapid advances in research undertaken from a variety of theoretical standpoints, while in the more recent branches of communication science the handbooks will give researchers both an overview and orientation. To attain these objectives, the series aims for a standard comparable to that of the leading handbooks in other disciplines, and to this end strives for comprehensiveness, theoretical explicitness, reliable documentation of data and findings, and up-to-date methodology. The editors, both of the series and of the individual volumes, and the individual contributors, are committed to this aim. The language of publication is English. The main aim of the series is to provide an appropriate account of the state of the art in the various areas of linguistics and communication science covered by each of the various handbooks; however no inflexible pre-set limits will is imposed on the scope of each volume. The series is open-ended, and can thus take account of further developments in the field. This conception, coupled with the necessity of allowing adequate time for each volume to be prepared with the necessary care, means that there is no set time-table for the publication of the whole series. Each volume is a self-contained work, complete in itself. The order in which the handbooks are published does not imply any rank ordering, but is determined by the way in which the series is organized; the editors of the whole series enlist a competent editor for each individual volume. Once the principal editor for a volume has been found, he or she then has a completely free hand in the choice of co-editors and contributors. The editors plan each volume independently of the others, being governed only by general formal principles. The series editors only intervene where questions of delineation between individual volumes are concerned. It is felt that this (modus operandi) is best suited to achieving the objectives of the series, namely to give a competent account of the present state of knowledge and of the perception of the problems in the area covered by each volume. To discuss your handbook idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert.