Description

8vo (198x124 mm). [16], 445, [81] pp. Lacking the final blank. Fraktur and Cyrillic types. Woodcut vignette on the title page. Contemporary boards, lettering piece on spine (worn and rubbed). Bookplate Dr. Bertók Debregen on the back pastedown. Stamp on p. [3]. Some marginal staining, light foxing and browning throughout, hole repaired to pp. 12/12 with small loss of text.
First edition (a second appeared in 1810) of this important Romanian grammar for German speakers.
“Ioan Piuariu-Molnar's Deutsch-Walachische Sprachlehre, Vienna, 1788, is a complex grammar whereby the conception and arrangement of its content, and its purpose. The latter is as practical as it can be: to provide the society of various agents of German language (clerks, merchants and dealers, travelers, etc.) who were interacting with Romanians, with an instrument that would facilitate communication between the two linguistically diferent categories of people, and that could also function as a handbook for acquiring Romanian. And the goal itself imposed some elements of conception and structure upon the grammar. Tis is why Ioan Piuariu-Molnar's Deutsch-Walachische Sprachlehre is an explained grammar, and is completed by some sort of conversation and writing manual that would satisfy the needs of its main intended reader. First, there is the part dedicated to phonetics and orthography […] The grammatical component comprises a section of morphology, and one of syntax. Both explain the grammatical system of the Romanian language, and offer details about the usual grammatical classes and their categories […] In presenting the lexical-semantical level, the author applies the method of the lexical fields - an option justifed by the intention to ease the foreigner's effort of entering the lexical universe of the Romanian language. Although it is seldom and exceptionally used in the case of the Indo-European languages, this method is common in the case of other language (especially Asiatic, and from Middle East), and is quite fruitful [Finally] Deutsch-Walachische Sprachlehre is also a concretization of its author's struggle to standardize the Romanian language, to ft it up with means of expression proper to various and complex needs of communication” (F. Gafton-A. Chirilă, Ioan Piuariu-Molnar, Deutsch-Walachische Sprachlehre, Gramatică germano-română, Viena, 1788 […] Editura Universității “Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, Iași, 2018, in: “Diacronia”, V/2019, pp. 1-2).
VD18, 11559381-003; BRV, II, pp. 324-326, no. 521; Bodinger, III, no. 226.