Reviews for Monday Morning Quarterback

The average rating for Monday Morning Quarterback based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-09-01 00:00:00 John Robinson I am always interested to read language introductions written from the perspective of modern linguistics. Such introductions are relatively rare, however, especially for "dead" languages, so it was a pleasure to find that this introduction to Old English is solidly founded in the contemporary approach to language. In my view it gains by this a surprising clarity and coverage for such a brief overview of Old English. Perhaps this is more helpful if you have a background in linguistics, as I do; but I am inclined to think it is more broadly useful. That the book covers syntax -- and means by that the structure and arrangement of words, phrases, and clauses, rather than simply accidence -- already puts it streets ahead of more philologically grounded overviews that I own. (I confess, though, that I do not own any of the more recent introductions to Old English that are showing up in the recommendations offered based on the book I'm currently reviewing, so I can't really compare them.) My only real quibble is that paradigms are not very clearly formatted. While I have some sympathy with the choice of lists over tables, I sometimes found that unnecessary effort was required to work out what was being displayed. But, really, a great book!

Review # 2 was written on 2012-09-20 00:00:00 Robert M Walter Good overview of the language and its connection with other germanic languages'especially Gothic, which is used for a lot of comparative examples. Very dense, and I plan on returning to parts to really study it. The selection of texts has good commentary, especially the parts about runes, which I had not seen before. But it is worth noting that this is not a textbook to learn the language'it does not fully cover morphology and syntax; however, it does provide the main characteristics of these two topics. It also has inspired me to pick up a full grammar to study, and return to the other books I have that have a fuller treatment of the grammar and longer selections of texts.