Reviews for Slavic Prosody: Language Change and Phonological Theory

The average rating for Slavic Prosody: Language Change and Phonological Theory based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-03-22 00:00:00 Starr Williams III The Slavonic Languages, edited by Bernard Comrie and Greville G. Corbett, is one of the best installments in Routledge's Language Family Description series. Originally published in library binding in 1993, it is now available in significantly less expensive paperback, making it finally accessible to students of linguistics. Comrie and Corbett contribute an Introduction giving a synchronic sketch of some of the general features of the Slavonic languages, such as aspect, rich nominal and verbal morphology, and various oppositions of palatalization. Paul Cubberly has written a chapter on alphabets and transliteration that ranges from the polemic history of the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets up to modern literary reforms and 20th century Cyrillic-Latin conversion schema. A chapter on Proto-Slavonic appears from Alexander Schenker, esentially identical to the same chapter in his later book The Dawn of Slavic (Yale University Press, 1996), treating the evolution of Common Slavonic out of (late, NW) Proto-Indo-European. There's also a chapter on the Slavonic languages in emigration, continuing the trend in this series (as in The Germanic Languages) of considering contemporary developments. The Slavonic languages covered are Old Church Slavonic, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croat, Slovene, Czech, Slovak, Sorbian, Polish, Cassubian, Polabian, Russian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian. One regrets the lack of Rusyn, but students can rejoice that Polabian is covered in as exhaustive a depth as possible considering its limited attestation, and Cassubian is treated in its own right instead of just getting a brief mention as a "dialect" in the Polish chapter. The treatment of each language varies somewhat, but all include basically the same ordering of grammatical points, synchronically treated, and a section on lexicon. Substantial diachronic details enter only in the chapters on Old Church Slavonic and Polabian. Obviously these can only be sketches, but the bibliographies will send readers off to more detailed descriptions of each language. For Old Church Slavonic, one would do well to add the primers of Schmalstieg (Old Church Slavic) and Nandris (Handbook of Old Church Slavonic: I. Grammar) to the list David Huntley gives in his chapter. There's very little I could find fault with in this volume. Since the material is from 1993, one might want more timely information on languages in flux such as Ukrainian and Belorussian. Also, if the book were updated, it would certainly be enriched by information on the Slavonic language one spoken in Pannonia (see e.g. Ronald Richard's monograph The Pannonian Dialect of the Common Slavic Proto-Language: The View from Old Hungarian published by UCLA in 2002). Nonetheless, this is the best reference currently out to the Slavonic language family in general, and merits a place in the home library of any student whose interests include comparative Indo-European linguistics or historical Slavonic philology.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-09-02 00:00:00 Carole Thorpe While the "Serbo-Croatian language" seemed solid to outsiders during the long decades of Yugoslavia's existence, inside the country there was very little consensus at all between Serbs and Croats about language issues. With the fall of Yugoslavia there were not only drastic pushes for distinct Serbian and Croatian languages, but vocal advocates for independent Bosnian and Montenegrin standard languages appeared as well. These developments of the 1990s and very early millennium are the subject of Robert D. Greenberg's Language and Identity in the Balkans, which was published in 2004. To enjoy this book, one doesn't need a proficient command of "Serbo-Croatian" or the languages that appeared in its wake, as all quotations are given in English translation with the original below in a footnote, but you will need at least some knowledge of the language(s) and Slavic historical linguistics. Greenberg's book is very neatly broken down. First, we get an overview of 19th-century relations between Serbs and Croats aiming for a standard language in the age of nationalism. Then, he talks about the attempts in postwar Yugoslavia to either maintain a compromise Serbo-Croatian language or do away with it and assert a full-on Croatian standard. The bulk of the book consists of separate chapters for the debates over new Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian standard languages since 1990. Drawing on scholarly publications and the popular press, Greenberg describes the polemics of language advocates and the competing publications which aim to present new rules for word usage and orthography. Major personalities and their ties to state authorities (or lack thereof) are identified. There was hardly a page here where I didn't think that the former Yugoslavia is a real mess, and Greenberg deserves credit for untangling all these arguments and presenting them in a way accessible to outsiders. The great downside of the book is that no second edition has appeared to take into account more recent developments. Greenberg was writing as rump Yugoslavia was transforming into the country officially called "Serbia and Montenegro", but shortly after that Montenegro declared its independence, which brought new pressures in language policy (a new 2009 orthography, for instance). The reader will also wonder how further Croatian has gone in drawing on the Cakavian or Kajkavian lexicon to further distinguish standard Croatian from Serbian.