Reviews for A Bibliography of Philippine Linguistics & Minor Languages

The average rating for A Bibliography of Philippine Linguistics & Minor Languages based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-07-20 00:00:00 Tim Green THE MAJOR LANGUAGES OF EASTERN EUROPE, edited by Bernard Comrie and published in 1990, is a selection from THE WORLD'S MAJOR LANGUAGES, Routledge's 1987 general overview. Each language's phonology, morphology, and syntax is presented, along with occasional mention of the lexicon. This is a very idiosyncratic volume. Romanian, one of the most important languages of Eastern Europe in terms of number of speakers, is missing. It instead was placed in a volume on Western Europe simply because its Romance relatives are there. Turkish is included, in spite of the fact that it's barely in Europe, while neither Albanian nor Bulgarian get a mention. The book includes not only descriptions of individual languages, but also descriptions of language families. The first two chapters are an overview by Philip Baldi of the Indo-European languages (a very basic presentation most linguaphiles will already find familiar) and a thoroughly insubstantial description of the Slavonic languages by Bernard Comrie. The IE languages covered are Russian, Polish, Czech and Slovak, and Serbo-Croat. Two Uralic languages are covered, Finnish and Hungarian, so we are also treated to an admirable ten-page description of this language family by Robert Austerlitz. Finally Turkish and the Turkic family in general are covered in a single chapter. In the 1990s, Routledge began the Language Family Surveys series, which has more sensible organization and is more detailed. THE MAJOR LANGUAGES OF EASTERN EUROPE may have had some value as a reference work when first published, but it has long been surpassed.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-06-15 00:00:00 Niels Ringtved It's a cleverly-done pop-up book, and fun for that, but as a history of dress book it's terrible. There is a sadly common sort of fashion history where the author draws all the pictures, usually destroying any historical value in the process. That's what this is. The pop-ups make it a cute toy, but it is no more than that.