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SWADESH, M., The Origin and Diversification of Language. Edited by J. Sherzer. Foreword by D. Hymes. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1972. 1st ed. Cloth. Personal library mark and name on free endpaper. 'In this book Swadesh (…) turns to discovery of new 'reconstructive' methods based on world-wide parallels of form-meaning structure, with of without phonological correlations. What emerges is an inference of the probability of monogenesis because of the weight of evidence of structural similarities. Developmental inferences are postulated for successive evolutionary stages, called eoglottic, paleoglottic and neoglottic. (…) Apparently accepting the prevailing belief that the comparative method, the single unquestioned discovery procedure for penetrating the preliterate linguistic past, could not be hoped to furnish proof of relationship except at fairly shallow time depths, while language itself must have been in use for some hundreds of thousands of years, Swadesh turns to exploration of new resources for making genetic inferences.His proposals are consistently original and worthy of serious consideration.' (MARY LECRON FOSTER in Language in Society, 1972, p.292). From the library of the late Sir Kenneth James Dover. € 32.50 (Antiquarian)