Reviewed by Malcolm Ross, The Australian National University

This volume contains twenty-four articles in four parts. All but three concern Romance or Germanic languages. For reasons of space, the author(s) of each article and a brief indication of its content are given.

Part 1 deals with phonology. Ashley L. Burnett writes on vowel length in French loanwords in Middle English and Laura Catharine Smith on the distribution of allomorphs of the Dutch diminutive -(e)tje. Bridget Smith suggests that variation in the articulation of the dental fricative in American English sheds light on the reflexes of the Proto-Germanic dental fricative.

Part 2 contains twelve articles on morphology, syntax, and semantics. Cynthia L. Allen examines the Middle English demise of the ‘God’s love’ construction. Anne Breitbarth reanalyzes the development of bipartite negation in West Germanic. Mary T. Copple shows that in some Peninsular Spanish varieties the present perfect is being grammaticalized as a perfective. Viviane Déprez presents a minimalist analysis of grammaticalizations in the DPs of French-based creoles. Martin Maiden, Andrew Swearingen, and Paul O’Neill show how imperatives have played a special diachronic role in Romance verbal paradigms. Christiane Marchello-Nizia describes how cohesion between the French verb and the object NP has increased over time.

Chantal Melis and Marcela Flores describe the emergence of the Spanish ‘recipient passive’. Fuyo Osawa argues that English genitive -’s was reanalyzed as a clitic earlier than the loss of other inflectional cases. María Luisa Rivero and Constanta Rodica Diaconscu review the history of dative experiencer constructions in Spanish and Romanian. Ioanna Sitaridou and Marina Terkourafi examine the replacement of the genitive plural ending -ōn by accusative plural -ous in Cypriot Greek masculine nouns. Freek van de Velde looks at the increasing use of pre-determiner modifiers in Dutch and English. Dieter Wanner examines the ordering of infinitive and pronominal clitic in the history of Spanish.

Part 3 contains five articles on sociolinguistics and dialectology. Montserrat Adam-Aulinas examines a century of changes in Girona Catalan verbal morphology. Louise Beaulieu and Wladyslaw Cichocki analyze the distribution of Acadian French third-person plural verbal suffixes. Vicky Tzuyin Lai and Zygmunt Frajzyngier track changes in first-person pronouns from Classical Chinese to Mandarin. The two remaining articles are panel and trend studies of Vinderup Danish by Signe Weden Schøning and Inge Lise Pedersen and of Petrer Catalan by Orland Verdù.

Part 4, ‘Tools and methodology’, has four articles. Mahé Ben Hamed and Sébastien Flavier describe a pilot version of an online database of sound changes. Fernande Dupuis and Ludovic Lebart describe software tools designed to extract generalizations and measures of intra-textual variation from text corpora. Helge Sandoy correlates innovation with community type in Norwegian dialects. Valentyna Skybina and Iryna Galutskikh present a diachronic comparison of English and German lexicons

Many of the articles could have been improved by careful copyediting.

Reviewed by Kanavillil Rajagopalan, State University at Campinas, Brazil

A publisher’s note announces this book as a ‘fascinating account of the current state of the English language’ (xxi). The book is indeed entertaining. The overall tone is, however, one of lamentation at how things have come to pass and how the English language is being mauled and mistreated. The avowedly highbrow standpoint is evident in the opening sentence of the introductory chapter: ‘Sometimes, when listening to what people say on radio and television, I get the feeling that the Ministry of Bad Grammar and Pronunciation, courtesy of John Cleese, has taken charge’ (xv).

As a professional lexicographer and founder of the journal Verbatim, U is punctilious, often to the point of sounding nitpicky. The thirteen chapters that make up the book cover a wide range of topics, as their telltale headings reveal: ‘Language change’, ‘Word origins’, ‘Meaning’, ‘Words and expressions’, ‘Language and (sic) culture and language’, ‘Names’, ‘Feminist and politically correct language’, ‘Good English/bad English’, ‘Taboo, slang, informal, and colloquial language’, ‘Bad writing, taste, and discrimination’, ‘Spelling reform’, ‘Controversies and dictionaries’, ‘Computers’, and ‘Pronunciation’. The book is rounded off with an appendix (containing a verse called ‘The chaos’ about English spelling, from an old submission to Verbatim) and a useful index.

The book does not have any pretensions to being a scientifically oriented treatment of the topics it discusses, though in the foreword U laments (or so it would seem) that ‘[a]t present, only a handful of universities offer degrees in linguistics’ ( xi). With reference to the study of names or onomastics, U says that it is undertaken mostly by persons who do not ‘possess a formal education in linguistics’ (89). While discussing ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ in respect of English usage, U begins by referring to the familiar tug-of-war between linguists and the laypeople. Yet, despite all this, U’s own approach to usages such as between he and I (111) or phenomena such as dangling participle is flagrantly prescriptive. U does not resist a jibe at Robert Hall Jr. whose ‘attack on correctness and normative grammar’ was, in his view, ‘somewhat mitigated by his quickness to correct others’ errors’ (227). U does seem to have a bone to pick with professional linguists and their stance against dictating how others should behave linguistically.

The book is mostly anecdotal and, oftentimes, witty. It becomes somewhat tongue-in-cheek when U claims at the end of his introduction: ‘The unfortunate aspect of this book is that it is unlikely to be read by those for whom it might do the most good’ (xix). Such frivolities aside, the book is an enjoyable read, testifying to U’s years of scholarly work. It is replete with tidbits useful for livening up an after-dinner conversation.

Reviewed by Sam Zukoff, University of Georgia

This book chronicles some of the most vexed and interesting questions in the history of English, both in its origins in the British Isles and in its subsequent worldwide expansion in the Age of Colonization. Ch. 1 addresses the loss of Old English inflection into Middle English through the lens of language contact. T concludes that this simplification was due to contact with Brittonic (Celtic), not Old Norse as is commonly believed. T makes a brilliant distinction to unify the opposing views of historical linguistics and sociolinguistics, namely that contact-induced complexity is the result of child language-learning abilities, but contact-induced simplification is the result of adult imperfect learning (17–23).

Ch. 2 investigates the unique lack of third singular present -s­ marking in East Anglian English, tracking the complex situation of imperfect immigrant speech varieties with competing dialect feature diffusion. In Ch. 3 T makes use of numerous ‘lesser-known Englishes’ to shed light on the strange situation of apparent /v/ and /w/ merger in certain eighteenth-nineteenth century ‘English English’ dialects and subsequent ‘unmerger’, showing that, contrary to accepted opinion, ‘once a merger’ is not necessarily ‘always a merger’ (91). In Ch. 4 T uses the analysis of recordings of a very special informant from the English language community in the Bonin Islands to trace the origins of that speech variety back to eastern New England English, which is happily supported by the historical record.

In Ch. 5 T conducts a very strong historical syntactic analysis to examine the divergent usages of have in modern standard American and British English. He ascribes the lack of ‘dynamism’ of American have to ‘colonial lag’ and the influences of other immigrant languages in the Americas not present in Britain, i.e. language contact. Ch 6 shows how colonial language varieties tend to be more conservative than the mother tongue, due to the unique speech conditions of colonization, namely intense dialect contact.

Ch. 7 is an attempt to trace the origin of r-lessness in New Zealand English. T uses the Origins of New Zealand English (ONZE) recordings to prove that earlier stages of New Zealand English were in fact rhotic, making the importation of the modern feature from Britain distinctly impossible. This sheds light not only on the original rhoticity of New Zealand English, but also pushes back the date for complete non-rhoticity of English English. This chapter thus shows how detailed sociohistorical analysis can admit insights that are impossible from a strictly historical perspective. Ch. 8 makes further use of the ONZE corpus to attempt to trace the influence or lack of influence of Scots and Scottish English on the development of New Zealand English.

In the epilogue, T relates the general trends identified throughout the work with the biological notion of ‘interactional synchrony’, which states that humans instinctively adapt their behavior to that of their peers (189). T believes that this single idea sits as the underlying motivation of the wide-ranging types of contact-induced change outlined throughout the book.

This book creates a brilliant new paradigm for research in linguistics. Just as the name suggests, the book bridges the heretofore vast divide between sociolinguistic and historical linguistic approaches to language and language change, encapsulating the difference between macrodiachronic linguistics and microdiachronic linguistics. T skillfully navigates the formal and the informal, incorporating aspects of popular history with detailed insights on all levels of linguistic structure, making this a delightful read.

Reviewed by Kelly Dugan, University of Georgia

Globalization is a hot topic today. As the societies of the world continue to interact ever more frequently, effective communication between different cultures becomes increasingly important. The eleven articles in this book offer great insight into this reality, exploring the challenges and responsibilities of translators as well as the complex nature of translation. Included among the topics addressed are the history of translation, the need for translation in South Africa, interpreters in the courtroom, and sign language interpretation and translation. In the preface, the editors state that their intention is not to solve the problems faced by translators but to describe them and offer different points of view.

The introduction, ‘Between temples and templates: History’s claims on the translator’ by Probal Dasgupta, emphasizes the importance of progress in translation theory. Dasgupta investigates how historically significant actions, such as the selection of texts for translation in ancient times, relate to the current global relationship of language and the role of the translator. The following articles form ten chapters divided into three sections. These sections, as indicated in the preface by the editors, are intended to represent the responsibilities of a translator: translation and reconciliation, translation and negotiation, and translation and the interpretation of texts.

Ch. 1, ‘A conversation about politics, translation, and multilingualism in South Africa’, is a fascinating record of dialogue between Antjie Krog, Rosalind C. Morris, and Humphrey Tonkin that offers a worthwhile perspective on the state of translation today. The discussion focuses on the continued domination of English as the prestige language in postapartheid South Africa. Ch. 2, ‘Interpreting at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY): Linguistic and cultural challenges’ by Nancy Schweda Nicholson, offers intriguing insight into multiple issues including the difficulty of intense courtroom situations that cause enormous pressure and stress on translators.

Ch. 3, ‘Translating and interpreting sign language: Mediating the DEAF-WORLD’ by Timothy Reagan, emphasizes the DEAF-WORLD as a distinct culture with a strong identity where sign language interpreters are an integral part of the society. Ch. 4, ‘Translators in a global community’ by Jonathan Pool, offers an innovative suggestion about the direction of translation. He proposes that translators ought to incorporate multiphase translations that separate the cultural from the linguistic.

Ch. 5, ‘The treason translation? Bilingualism, linguistic borders and identity’ by John Edwards, boldly investigates the perplexing issue of translation and the invasion of privacy. Ch. 6, ‘The poetics of experience: Toward a pragmatic understanding of experience, practice, and translation’ by Vincent Colapietro, provides psychological intrigue by exploring the tension between human experience and expression. This is just a sampling of the captivating issues and the unique perspectives that are offered in the text.

Humphrey Tonkin states that ‘when we think of translation as a mode of mediation, we’re also thinking of translation as a means of preserving linguistic distinctiveness’ (33). This comment is echoed throughout all of the chapters. The result is a cohesive text full of insightful perspectives that express the importance of balancing the preservation of every language and culture with the need for effective global communication.

Reviewed by Ioana-Rucsandra Dascalu, University of Craiova

The book is composed of articles presented in Kraków, Poland, at the tenth International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, held from July 15th to July 20th, 2007, about thirty years after cognitive linguistics split as the study of the relation between body and mind. The event, organized by the Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association in cooperation with the Jagiellonian University of Kraków, aimed at reconciling theory and application. The opening chapters of this book are highly theoretical, while the others are concerned with applied information.

In Part 1, René Dirven and Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez present the primary directions of the cognitive movement, connected by the ‘cognitive commitment’ (14) that there be interaction between cognitive faculties: perception, attention, categorization, conceptualization, affect, memory, reasoning, and language. The authors first address the connection between grammar and cognition (15) and then the differences among cognitive grammar, construction grammar, and radical construction grammar.

Dirk Geeraerts describes the distinction between Saussurean linguistics, Chomskyan generative grammar, and cognitive theories. The author also explains four elements of context important for cognitive study: meaning, the lexicon, discourse and use, and social context (81). Evaluating cognitive linguistics from the point of view of its maturity, Geeraerts considers the discipline to have moved beyond the pioneering and building stages, having undergone a period of consolidation in textbooks and reference works (93). Laura Janda discusses in her contribution the application of modern linguistics (generative, cognitive) to the teaching of foreign languages.

Part 2 includes articles that apply prototypes to morphology and to the lexicon. Tore Nesset (123-44) studies the blocking of suffix shift in Russian verbs, while Esa Penttilä deals with idiomatic language. In Part 3, Ronald W. Langacker writes about the effects of the mind and body on language, distinguishing between mental activity and physical activity. Under the premise that physical activity results in effective relationships, while mental activity results in epistemic relationships, the author explores how this difference manifests itself in complementation.

Peter Willemse examines the discourse status of possessee referents, seen from the point of view of reference-point constructions (209-40). Jario Sivonen contributes a study of Finnish motion verbs, focusing on verbs that refer to ‘indirect’ paths (242). In ‘A cognitive approach to parenthetical speech’ (273–89), Jaakko Leino proposes that spoken language be investigated before written language as being naturally transmitted and includes parenthetical expressions as an element of spoken language.

Part 4 introduces pragmatic criteria: Kirsten Vis, Wilbert Spooren and José Sanders consider subjectivity in discourse in the concepts of rhetorical structure theory and in conversationalization. Luna Filipović shows ‘how different ways of describing motion events in English and Spanish affect information content in narratives of eyewitnesses and subjects’ (317).

The final part of the book contains studies about metaphor in cognitive linguistics. Diane Ponterotto’s contribution about conceptual metaphor theory looks at the way we can express the same idiomatic meaning in two different languages (English and Italian).  The following two articles focus on metaphors in theological discourse. Małgorzata Pasicka discusses the doctrine known as faith movement, and Aleksander Gomola explains the evolution from the traditional ‘God is a father’ metaphor, which can be qualified as patriarchal and antifeminist to ‘God is a friend’ metaphor.

This volume is highly recommended to all specialists in linguistics.

Reviewed by Dimitrios Ntelitheos, United Arab Emirates University

This book contains a comprehensive discussion of lexicographic theory and practice. It provides a systematic survey of lexicographic practices from a linguistic perspective and discusses extensively lexicographic methodology.

Ch. 1 is an introduction to the field of lexicography. The author situates lexicography within the broader field of linguistics, discussing its relation with other fields (such as lexicology), and listing the types of information that can occur in dictionary entries. Ch. 2 discusses the types of dictionaries that are available, distinguishing between them in terms of language use (e.g. native language describing terms in that language), time (e.g. synchronic versus diachronic dictionaries), specialization (e.g. general-purpose versus  specialized dictionaries), and size properties (e.g. pocket versus professional dictionaries). Ch. 3 examines methodological issues by discussing processes of data collection and selection. This includes primary sources such as corpora and the internet as well as secondary sources such as earlier dictionaries, grammars, and specialized studies. Data selection also involves processes of establishing authenticity of selected data, representativeness, and relevance to the needs of dictionary users.

Ch. 4 addresses the internal structure of dictionaries, describing the main components, including structure indicators and other devices of textual condensation. Ch. 5 concentrates on the ‘lemma’, which is the lexical item that forms the dictionary entry. Establishing lemmas involves taking into account such issues as lexical semantics, including homonymy and polysemy, multiword lexical items and idioms, and abbreviations and clippings. Additional issues arising from spelling and word division are considered in Ch. 6, while Ch. 7 turns to issues of pronunciation and its notational representation. Ch. 8 looks at morphological problems such as inflectional and derivational morphemes and how this information should be represented in each dictionary entry. The more serious issue of deciding part-of-speech membership for a lemma is introduced in Ch. 9. The three subsequent chapters are dedicated to specific constructions, collocations, and idioms and other fixed word combinations.

Ch. 13 discusses meaning descriptions in monolingual dictionaries, while Ch. 14 takes on equivalents in bilingual dictionaries. Ch. 15 introduces the notion of examples and how they are used to illustrate meaning. Chs. 16 and 17 examine the inclusion of encyclopedic information and illustration to further accommodate meaning. Ch. 18 discusses the marking of special meanings in a provided context, and Ch. 19 concentrates on etymological issues. Chs. 20, 21, 22, and 23 discuss microstructure (the structure of information in a lemma), macrostructure (the structure of lemma listing), megastructure (the relation between dictionary components), and crossreference structure (a guide to different places in the dictionary).

The final chapters of the book turn the discussion to practical issues. Ch. 24 describes the parameters involved in different dictionary projects; Ch. 25 lists the legal and ethical aspects involved in those projects; and Ch. 26 describes electronic dictionaries. Finally, Ch. 27 discusses dictionary use, and Ch. 28 provides a detailed discussion of criticism directed towards dictionaries, including the examination, analysis, and evaluation of existing dictionaries.

This handbook is written in short but comprehensive sections that cover most issues related directly or indirectly to the creation of a dictionary. Each chapter is accompanied by a literature section that provides references for further reading. The book is a valuable contribution to the field of lexicography and serves as an important reference point for professional and aspiring lexicographers, field-workers that collect lexicographic data, other dictionary workers, language and linguistics students and academics, translators, and anyone else interested in language.

Reviewed by Carolin Patzelt, University of Bochum

This book is the first monograph that discusses Haitian Creole in its linguistic, cultural, historical, and educational context. The book consists of a collection of contributions by various authors, which are grouped into three broad sections: following a general introduction to Haitian Creole by Arthur K. Spears, Part 1 comprises two chapters dealing with the history of Haitian Creole. Georges E. Fouron provides a well-structured, easy-to-follow overview of Haiti’s history, whereas Flore Zéphir presents the different languages of Haiti. In addition to discussing their origin and describing their use and functions, the author also includes the speakers’ attitudes towards French and Haitian Creole.

Part 2 consists of four chapters and focuses on the structure and use of Haitian Creole. It begins with an overview of Haitian Creole ortho­graphy by Nicholas Faraclas, Arthur K. Spears, Elizabeth Barrows, and Mayra Cortes Piñeiro. The chapter focuses on two topics: concrete efforts to establish an official orthography for Haitian Creole and general issues regarding writing systems for creole languages. Albert Valdman discusses regional and social varieties of Haitian Creole, followed by a contribution from Hugues St. Fort presenting types of Creole-English code-switching in New York City and reasons for its use. This section concludes with a contribution by Marie-José Nzengou-Tayo who focuses on the distribution of Creole and French in Haitian literature, showing that the use of Haitian Creole is rather frequent in poetry but that it is rarely used in novels and short stories.

Part 3 comprises six chapters that deal with various topics regarding the position of Haitian Creole in education. Uli Locher gives an overview of the most important issues in primary education since the great school reform of 1982. The central points in his chapter are the relation between socioeconomic status and school attendance, gender and school attendance, and the issue of over-aged children. In his chapter ‘Creole and Education in Haiti’, Yves Dejean discusses reasons for the widespread failure of general education in Haiti and also addresses the question of what Creole should be called (Creole or Haitian). Following these chapters is a case study on the use of Creole in education in Haiti presented by Jocelyne Trouillot-Lévy.

Carole M. Berotte Joseph then deals with Haitians in the United States. After providing an overview of their arrival and settlement, the author focuses mainly on Haitians in New York but also includes other parts of the United States. In the next chapter, Serge Madhere deals with the many challenges faced by educators in Haiti and focuses particularly on ways to improve literacy. The section on education concludes with ‘Orality, Literacy, and Technology’ by Jean Plaisir . The author’s basic hypothesis is that in the Information Age the study of folklore can arouse scholarly interest while also providing valuable insights on how information has been traditionally shared and stored.

Overall, this book provides a valuable introduction to Haitian Creole and is strongly recommended to anyone interested in the Caribbean and its creoles, as well as in creoles in general.

Reviewed by Theresa McGarry, East Tennessee State University

Yanan Song and Stephen Andrews address the topic of teachers’ use of the first language (L1) in the classroom by describing a case study of four tertiary-level teachers in China who share an L1 with their students. The authors’ stated aims are to ‘examine the use of the L1 in L2 teaching and learning from the perspective of the practitioner rather than the theorist, and to investigate the beliefs about L1 use that are associated with teachers’ practices’. They use questionnaires, interviews, observation, and stimulated recall to investigate teachers’ attitudes toward L1 use in teaching, their actual use in observed classes, and their perceptions of what influences their own beliefs and behaviors. Reports on student reactions to their teachers’ use of L1 based on interviews with some of each teacher’s students help round out the study.

The introductory chapter makes a case for the importance of language teachers’ beliefs in general, addressing the nature of their beliefs, their relation to teaching context, and the need for a better understanding of language-teacher cognition, particularly with regard to the role of the medium of instruction. The authors then describe the setting of the study and the instructors selected, whom they consider to be representative of teachers of English in China in that they are non-native speakers, and the series of research procedures in which they gather data over longer than one year. The second chapter theoretically situates the issue of teachers’ L1 use by summarizing views of and evidence for negative and positive influence of the L1 on L2 learning, the L1’s role in prevalent teaching approaches, relevant characteristics of methodology in China, theoretical conceptions of the relationship between mental representations of L1 and L2, and what is currently known about code-switching in classrooms.

The following four chapters each present the findings regarding one teacher’s attitudes and behavior and how they relate to specific aspects of that teacher’s situation. The final chapter summarizes the comparison among the teachers, addressing variance in the amounts of L1 used for specific purposes, views on its usefulness, amounts of influence on its use from various situational factors, and amounts of interest in the issue as well as important commonalities such as holding experience-based rather than theory-based views. The main implications offered are the needs for teacher education to raise teachers’ awareness of the issue and to emphasize teachers’ reflections on their own relevant behaviors.

The authors see their study as potentially useful in stimulating teachers’ thinking in this area and in contributing to a better theoretical understanding of teacher perception and cognition regarding the medium of instruction. Because of their success in connecting these teachers’ classroom objectives, conceptions of the relationship between L1 and L2, perceptions of and responses to situational factors such as time pressure and proficiency levels, and stated beliefs with their classroom practices, the book does make these two important contributions. It would have been helpful if their methodology had been described more completely. For example, they include their questionnaire in an appendix, but there is no evident indication of how the questions were derived; similarly, they interviewed teachers several times, but there is no evident description of the interview procedure. A more minor problem is also that, although the text is generally easy to read, it at times feels repetitive. However, the strengths far outweigh these considerations. The diversity of the methodology yields a full and interesting picture of the four teachers, explicitly connected to theories and to issues such as the monolingual principle and learning strategies. The importance of the topic and the contribution to its better understanding are clear and convincing.

Reviewed by David Elton Gay, Bloomington, IN

This book aims to present an anthology of Trobriand Islands narratives organized according to native Trobriand classifications. Gunter Senft builds here, as he himself notes, on a suggestion by Bronislaw Malinowski that the ‘goal [of the ethnographer] is…to grasp the native’s point of view…’ (ix).

S uses the first chapter to examine genre as a concept and places his own work within the ‘ethnography of speaking’ paradigm, and in the second chapter he considers the way that the Trobrianders classify narratives. The following chapter defines what S calls ‘the two “paramount” varieties’ of Trobriand narrative: ‘biga bwena’, ‘good speech’, and ‘biga gaga’, ‘bad speech’, which ‘refers primarily to swear words, obscene speech, and the verbal breaking of taboos’ (17). Most of the chapter is given over to a description of the latter category of speech.

Each chapter that follows is concerned with a specific Trobriand genre. The fourth chapter looks at songs that are associated with the dead and with the harvest; the fifth chapter describes Trobriand magical speech and formulae; and the sixth gives examples of Christian texts and church songs. The seventh chapter addresses greeting and parting formulae, and the eighth offers examples of ‘heavy speech/true speech’, which is the form of speech used for litigation and for narrating myths. In the ninth chapter S provides examples of ‘joking or lying speech’, and in the tenth he gives examples of forms of speech the Trobrianders do not clearly classify in a specific speech genre, which are used to tell stories, make personal speeches or admonish people, or make requests of people. The eleventh and final chapter offers some further remarks about the Trobriand typology of speech forms. Several appendices supplement the material in the chapters. The first is a list of Trobriand terms for speech genres, the second offers ‘an illustrative example of mother-child interaction’, and the third contains a brief outline of Kilivila grammar.

The texts are given with interlinear translations and in most cases with the Kilivila parsed. S sometimes provides summaries of stories or other speech forms following the transcription/interlinear translation, though these are not always necessary. Occasionally, supplementary information is lacking where a reader may need it: for example, S often notes that a text uses archaic forms, but he does not discuss what those forms are or what their meaning is in the context of Trobriand speech. The analysis and classification is thus, at times, in need of expansion.

Despite its minor problems, S’s book is a good beginning towards an anthology intent on describing Trobriand speech genres from an indigenous perspective.

Reviewed by Mikael Thompson, Bloomington, IN

Drawing on the author’s fieldwork, this book is the first full description in English of Crimean Tatar, a Kipchak Turkic language spoken primarily in Crimea and Uzbekistan. In 1944 Crimean Tatar speakers were forcibly removed from Crimea to several locations in Central Asia and Russia and only allowed to return in the 1990s; Kavitskaya devotes space to the sociolinguistic situation of the three contemporary dialects, which have been influenced by Russian and by other Turkic languages, primarily Uzbek.

The book is organized in the usual fashion, beginning with phonology (4–33, including sections on orthography and phonetics). Lengthy sections on morphology (33–84) and syntax (84–117) are followed by a short discussion of the lexicon primarily devoted to the sources of loanwords in the three dialects (117–19). Three texts (one in each of the dialects, 120–26) and a bibliography (127–29) round out the book. Examples are presented for all points of discussion with full glosses and translations.

On the whole, Crimean Tatar is a typical Turkic language. Like most other Turkic languages, Crimean Tatar has palatal vowel harmony with associated consonantal allophony (whose consistency is obscured somewhat by loanwords), and it has also developed rounding harmony. Notably, however, rounding harmony is restricted to the first two syllables of the word in the central and northern dialects, though preserved in the southern dialect (25–27). Also worthy of note is the development of palatalized consonants that appear to be marginally contrastive with their non-palatalized counterparts in the central and northern dialects, through secondary split caused by the backing of front rounded vowels in some words (14–17). Crimean Tatar morphology and syntax will hold few surprises for a reader who is already familiar with a Turkic language, and K’s exposition is clear and detailed.

There are some lapses on the editorial side. Most significantly, the text refers (3) to a map of the region where Crimean Tatar is spoken that is in fact omitted from the book. Also, two references cited in the text are missing from the bibliography, and conversely a number of works listed in the bibliography do not appear to be cited. There are occasional misspellings, of which inconsistent transcriptions of authors’ names in the bibliography and the text are the most important. However, the data fit in with this reviewer’s experience of other Turkic languages and no obvious errors were found. This book is recommended for all Turkologists and interested linguists.