Sounds and Systems: Studies in Structure and Change: A Festschrift for Theo Vennemann (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Sounds and systems: Studies in structure and change: A festschrift for Theo Vennemann ed. by David Restle, Dietmar Zaefferer Andrea Pham Sounds and systems: Studies in structure and change: A festschrift for Theo Vennemann. Ed. by David Restle and Dietmar Zaefferer. (Trends in linguistics: Studies and monographs 141.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002. Pp. viii, 484. ISBN 311017569X. $108 (Hb). This handsomely produced volume consists of twenty-one papers published to honor Theo Venne-mann on the occasion of his 65th birthday. The wide range of Vennemann’s own interests is amply demonstrated in the list of his publications (459–74). Since the papers are so fittingly wide ranging in topic, the editors have chosen to present them under two general headings: ‘Historical studies in sounds, words, and systems’ (subdivided into papers on ‘Sound change’ and ‘Language change’) and ‘Synchronic studies on sounds, words, and uses’. Fifteen of the papers are in English and the remainder in German, with each of the latter prefaced by an abstract in English. This is a book with something for everyone. Several diachronic papers caught my attention. Henning Andersen’s ‘Preglottalization in English and a North Germanic bifurcation’ (15–34) provides evidence that this phenomenon is not spreading by means of language contact but is ‘developing in different places, apparently at different rates, but by and large following the same step-wise progression, evincing the same internal logic. This mode of development is probably the most usual one in internally motivated sound change’ (31). Such a view suggests the possibility that a sound change can originate in different places by polygenesis rather than in one place and then spread. Joan Bybee’s ‘Lexical diffusion in regular sound change’ (59–74) adds to the ongoing discussion concerning the relationship, if any, between regular, gradual sound change and change through lexical diffusion. Bybee says that both operated. ‘The discovery that sound change can be both phonetically gradual and lexically gradual forces a different view of the mental representation of the phonology of words... an accurate model of phonological representation must allow phonetic detail in the cognitive representation of words’ (68–69). Raymond Hickey’s ‘Language change in early Britain: The convergence account’ (185–203) discusses evidence for a multicausal account of language change that goes well beyond language contact alone: ‘Convergence scenarios in which both internal and external factors play a role provide credible models for language change in that they offer the possibility of multicausal accounts which, given our knowledge of situations in later attested languages, are definitely known to exist’ (197). Among the synchronic papers, ‘The meter of nursery rhymes: Universal versus language-specific patterns’ (241–67) by Patrizia Noel, Aziz Hanna, Katrin Lindner, and Andreas Dufter presents evidence from nursery rhymes in fifteen languages to show that the metrical patterns of these languages vary widely. However, ‘the manifestation of prosody in natural versification is always language specific’ (256), that is, ‘prosody shapes verse forms at least as far as autochthonous poetry is concerned’ (261). Space does not allow for highlighting other papers worthy of comment. Suffice it to say that there is something here for tastes as diverse as the history of English, problems of language contact, constraints in phonological structure, and lexical pragmatics. All in all, this book is a fine tribute to a highly regarded scholar. Andrea Pham University of Florida Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America