Geschichte der Anwendung quantitativer Verfahren in der russischen Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft

Quantitative linguistics (QL) is a branch of linguistics but it is difficult to find QL-related topics in comprehensive books or works on linguistics and its history. History, theory and methodology can be considered as the three foundation stones of a science. If students and researchers who are interested in QL cannot easily find the needed QL materials it is very harmful to the development of the science. Compared with theory and methodology of QL, there is less material on QL history, but the situation is improving. For example, Glottometrics publishes some notes about QL history, and the first section of Köhler et al. (2005) also contains 10 articles on QL history. However, this is not enough to build a new science such as QL. We urgently need works that systematically treat the history of QL on an international and national scale. As Kelih’s book is one such work, it is a pleasure to introduce it to the readers of this journal. The goal of the work under review is the systematic research of the application of quantitative methods in Russian linguistics and literature science. It concerns a historical investigation of the past employment of quantitative means in these fields. The book consists of 10 chapters and a comprehensive list of references (pp. 283–338), which can be used as a guide for further research. Considering the difficulty to make a historical study of QL which is not a popular and systemized science, the author sets up the objectives and Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 2010, Volume 17, Number 4, pp. 365–370 DOI: 10.1080/09296174.2010.512171