Korle meets the sea: A sociolinguistic history of Accra By M. E. Kropp Dakubu (review)

Abstract

158LANGUAGE, VOLUME 75, NUMBER 1 (1999) Lack of space to discuss other shortcomings may provide users with the pleasure ofdiscovering by themselves that sometimes even excellent Homer nods. The editors and their associates are to be congratulated for producing a highly useful work in relatively short time. REFERENCES Buck, Carl Darling. 1949. A dictionary of selected synonyms in the principal Indo-European languages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cavalli-Sforza, L. Luca; P. ?e?????; and A. Piazza. 1994. The history and geography of human genes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Delamarre, Xavier. 1991. Le vocabulaire indo-européen lexique étymologique thématique. Paris: Maisonneuve . Gamkrelidze, Tamas, and Vyacheslav Ivanov. 1995. Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans, trans, by Johanna Nichols. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Gimbutas, Marua. 1991. The civilization of the goddess. San Francisco: Harper Collins. Haarmann, H. 1996. Aspects of early Indo-European contacts with neighboring cultures. IF 101.1-14. Lehmann, Winfred P. 1993 Theoretical bases of Indo-European linguistics. London: Routledge. ------. 1997. Early Celtic among the Indo-European dialects. Zeitschrift fur celtische Philologie 49-50.440-54. ------. 1998. Explanation of syntactic changes in late Indo-European by use of universals. MfR CURAD Studies in honor of Calvert Watkins, ed. by Jay Jasanoff, H. Craig Melchert, and Lisi Olivier, 391-404. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck. Mallory, James P. 1989. In search of the Indo-Europeans. London: Thames and Hudson. Meillet, Antoine. 1967. The Indo-European dialects, trans, by Samuel N. Rosenberg. University, AL: Alabama University Press. Neu, Erich. 1976. Zur Rekonstruktion des indogermanischen Verbalsystems. Studies in Greek, Italic and Indo-European linguistics, offered to Leonard R. Palmer, ed. by Anna Mopurgo Davies and Wolfgang Meid, 239-54. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität. Pokorny, Julius. 1959-69/1989. Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, I and II. Bern: Francke. Polomé, Edgar. 1998. Review article of the encyclopedia. Journal of Indo-European Studies, to appear. Prokosch, Eduard. 1939. A comparative Germanic grammar. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Scharfe, Helmut. 1985. The Vedic word for 'King'. Journal of the American Oriental Society 105.543-48. Schrader, Otto. 1891. Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte. Jena: Costenoble. [Trans, of 2nd edn: Prehistoric antiquities of the Aryan peoples: A manual of comparative philology and the earliest cultures, by Frank B. Jevons. London: Griffin, 1890.] ------, and Alfons Nehring. 1917-29. Reallexicon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, 2 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter. Watkins, Calvert. 1985. The American heritage dictionary of Indo-European roots. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Linguistics Research Center The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX 78713-7247 [lehmann@mail.utexas.edu] Korle meets the sea: A sociolinguistic history of Accra. By M. E. Kropp Dakubu. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xviii, 216. Reviewed by Carol Myers-Scotton, University ofSouth Carolina The title of Kropp Dakubu's study is a metaphor for the idea that movement and intermingling of populations (especially involving interaction with the Ga people) have characterized the linguistic growth of Accra, the capital of Ghana. Korle is the inland lagoon near Accra, with its dimensions frequently changing. The intended audience remains a puzzle. Three maps (West Africa as a whole, Ghana, and Accra) precede Ch. 1 ; however, unless the reader is a (West) Africanist linguist or historian, the book is often opaque. One reason is that D offers the reader REVIEWS159 little help in working out the genetic relationships between the languages spoken by the groups discussed. Why not some simple family tree maps? In addition, why not some information—even approximations—on numbers of Ll and L2 speakers of the major languages discussed? Numbers are hard to come by in Africa, but they figure in the issue of who learns whose language in asymmetrical relations. Finally, more detail on the home areas of the linguistic groups, relative to Accra, would have helped. Another reason for suggesting the book is opaque is that when referring to a particular place in Ghana or the Accra area, D gives only the most limited situating detail, seemingly assuming that the reader 'knows' Ghana. The volume focuses on the history of group relations, especially as relevant to the Ga community ; Accra is located in an indigenous Ga area. As D herself describes her frame...