[ Ranko Bugarski, Collected Works (vols. 1-6), Belgrade, Cigoja, 1996. ]

Ranko Bugarski is an Anglist who has published works in theoretical and applied linguistics, especially in sociolinguistics. We now have before us the first six volumes of his Collected Works, with an offprint volume of the authorís scholarly biography and bibliography.

Volume One is the book The Prepositions Over, Under, Above, Below and Beneath in Modern English - a monograph based on the authorís Ph.D. presented at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade in 1969. These prepositions are analysed from the grammatical, lexical and semantical standpoints (including metaphorical and idiomatic meanings). Speaking of the uses of the prepositions, Bugarski applies the descriptive method, and attempts to establish a link between theoretical and descriptive linguistics; more reason that this monograph should be of use to all who are engaged in study of contemporary English.

The remaining volumes, consisting of reissues of works from the 70s and 80s, basically deal with three areas of linguistics: history of linguistics, translation and sociolinguistics. The new editions have been changed primarily in the way of additional notes which elucidate the original text and supply bibliographical data.

The books Language and Linguistics and Linguistics about Man include study of varied areas of linguistics, and there are firm links between chapters of the two books.

In the first part of Language and Linguistics, the author provides an overview of linguistic study in the past, particularly stressing the influence of events in society. The development of the concept of language universals is treated in the same manner. Apart from language universals, precise definitions are also given for the concepts of linguistic typology and linguistic relativity, which belong to the domain of general linguistics. Typology is defined as one of three ways of comparative study and classification of language. The genetic type of study serves to compare those languages which are related by origin. The areal type has to do with space - it studies languages which are territorially close. Typological study includes investigation of structural characteristics of various languages regardless of their genetic and territorial proximity. The theory of linguistic relativity, which relates to the concept that language expresses our customs and that it is a reflection of objective reality, was propounded, among others, by Sapir, Humboldt and Whorf.

In the chapter entitled "Linguistics and Time", the nature of the relationship between linguistic phenomena and time is defined, and broken down into four components. The first deals with the relationship between linguistics and historiography. The second component is encapsulated in the statement that history consists of what is recorded in language. The author here brings us face to face with questions such as, "What is the relationship between the fall of the Roman Empire and the development of European states on the one side, and the fragmentation of Latin and the affirmation of national languages, on the other? To what extent were 17th-century religious wars - linguistic wars? Why is forcible purist linguistic reform of language and orthography always one of the first domestic moves of dictatorial, chauvinist and racist regimes?". The third component deals with the role of linguistic data in the study of history. The fourth component points to the relevance of historical data, from the point of view of linguistics, in the study of linguistic facts.

The chapter "Evaluation of Linguistic Systems" cites two aspects of the concept of value: one is the external, or sociological, the other internal or linguistic. Related to this chapter is that part of the book Linguistics about Man entitled "Popular Attitudes about Language". These can be aesthetic, pragmatic and moral. These two chapters, though in different books, both deal with linguistic norms and the question of the value of linguistic systems.

In the chapter "Systems of Writing and Linguistic Consciousness" of the book Language and Linguistics, and the chapter "On Language and Writing" in Linguistics about Man, the history of writing is presented, along with the relationships existing between writing and the consciousness of language.

One of the significant characteristics of language is creativity, which can be defined as the relationship between aesthetics and linguistics, or as the individualís ability to produce an unlimited number of sentences. In this connection, the author stresses the need to delimit creativity in language and creativity through language. The question of linguistic creativity is also discussed in the second and third books.

In Linguistic about Man the author also writes about certain schools in linguistics and their representatives: Ferdinand de Saussure and the development of structuralist theory; Leonard Bloomfield as a representative of distributionalism; Noam Chomsky, the founder of generative grammar; Charles Fillmore and deep case grammar. At the end of the book, we find the chapter "Notes on Translating Difficult Texts", dealing with problems in translation of both prose and poetry.

In the book Language in Society, the author highlights the social function of language and the relationship of language and changes in society. In this connection, he also puts several important questions: whether changes in language and society independent of one another; are all changes in language instigated by factors in society; which factors in society influence linguistic changes, do all levels of linguistic structure change at the same speed. The characteristics of the life of a society condition to a large degree the content of verbal information, as well as the manner of exchanging messages within it. A linguistic group is a group in society defined by the language it uses. It stands in certain correlations with other groups in society, which are defined in other ways: ethnically, politically, socially, professionally.

One of the significant contributions of Ranko Bugarski to sociolinguistics in these parts is the study of Serbo-Croatian from the sociolinguistic aspect. The binominal designation of our language (Serbo-Croatian) expresses the history of the peoples who speak it, as well as the political order of a country. The large number of illiterate speakers of Serbo-Croatian, together with a "noticeable percentage" of the semi-illiterate, negatively affect our linguistic culture. Bureaucratic language also communicates bureaucratic mentality; Bugarski thus points to the link between culture of speech and writing and culture of thinking.

In the "popular view", language and dialect stand in the relationship of norm and deviation. At the level of general linguistics, dialect is seen as a variety of a language, being linked to a group of speakers, and thus belonging to a certain language. In determining the relationship of language and nation and in the theoretical definition of linguistic standardisation, it is noticeable that linguistic standardisation is the companion of national affirmation.

At the end of this book, the author provides an overview of the origin and development of sociolinguistics, its subject, method and aims. He stresses that sociolinguistics deals with societally motivated variations and changes in language.

The first part of the book Linguistics in Application deals with translation, the second part with the teaching of language. Bugarski is particularly interested in the problems of contrastive analysis of terminology, which he defines as a group of terms belonging to a field of expertise; in principles of education; in use of terminological systems and in their scientific description. Examples are cited from linguistic terminology, as grammatical terms within the framework of a certain language are used inconsistently, which leads to difficulties in translation.

In an additional chapter which deals with contrastive linguistics, the definition is given, taking into account current research, that this branch of inquiry deals with synchronic study of similarities and differences in structure and usage between two or more language varieties, for both theoretical and practical purposes. The authors points out that scholarly terminology must be largely international, but that international terminology need not always be given precedence.

Language teaching - both teaching of first and foreign languages - is considered in the context of society. Bugarski considers that the aim of first language teaching is mastering that language after the standard of good writers, while the aim of foreign language teaching is acquisition of the accepted correct linguistic form, which is idealised and statically seen. Here also, the author refers to the problems of language norms. In every community there is a living, spontaneous and intuitive feeling for the linguistic norm, and the embodiment of this feeling can be called the implicit norm. The explicit norm exists in developed communities, of necessity in those which are literate, where the norm is built upon as an expertly formed and societally prescribed selection from the available linguistic means, intended primarily for the spheres of culture and education.

The book Introduction to General Linguistics is a textbook for students of the third and fourth year of high schools specialising in culture and language, and has been written in accordance with the curriculum of the eponymous course. The basic concepts of linguistics are defined precisely and clearly, and the textbook is well adapted to study of the high-school general linguistics curriculum. In this book, the author points to basic concepts of linguistics and to their interrelationships: language and speech; language and communication; language and mental processes. In clarifying the relationship between society and language, the notions of bilinguism and multilinguism, language planning and language norm are more precisely explained.

Defining translation as a form of communication wherein content expressed through the means of one language is transferred into another, Bugarski speaks of the difficulties inherent in both translating of texts and in theory of translation.

Language is nowadays a dynamic system of signs and of rules which limit the use and combination of linguistic signs. The linguistic sign is an amalgam of the signified and the signifier. This system operates at several levels: phonetic and phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, semantical and pragmatic.

The Collected Works of Ranko Bugarski show that the field of interest of our most important sociolinguist is exceptionally wide, as, besides sociolinguistics, he has also dealt with history of language and linguistics, translation and language teaching. Bugarskiís books are intended both for linguists, and for those who have an interest in the contemporary problems of our linguistic culture.

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