A Linguistic Commentary on John Fearn's 'Anti-Tooke' (1824/27)

The work provides an interesting, thorough, & insightful analysis of John Fearn's thought, which anticipated several areas of modern linguistic theory. The work by Fearn is obscure & has not received the attention it warrants until recently. It is demonstrated that he anticipated such topics as, e.g., language as a system of signs, the purpose of language, the purpose of linguistic analysis, methodology, & the principle of relation. Flaws & obscurities are also pointed out, in the interest of a balanced portrait. Textually, Asbach-Schnitker's volume on Fearn is consistently accurate & the discussion of even obscure points in the original is lucid & informative. D. Leffler