Tümpisa (Panamint) Shoshone grammar By Jon P. Dayley, and: Tümpisa (Panamint) Shoshone dictionary By Jon P. Dayley (review)

Abstract

394 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 67, NUMBER 2 (1991) tween European languages (especially German) and the Classical languages. The readership of an English-language book such as this is likely to be less familiar with the non-Indo-European languages to which seven chapters are devoted. Of these, Chaim Rabin's on Hebrew, Mohammed H. Ibrahim's on Arabic , David P. B. Massamba's on Kiswahili in Tanzania, and C. J. Daswani's on Indian languages are accessibly written and provide useful insights into the process by which the languages in question arrived at their current state, as well as into the problems still confronting their adoption for wider use. Made very clear by these four papers is the great advantage to language planners of working within a single polity. Arabic and Kiswahili are spoken in a variety of countries, and the need to coordinate planning efforts internationally is an everpresent complicating factor. In comparing the Indian and Israeli situations, we see the further benefit of religious and/or ethnic unity. Though the distance Hebrew has come, from liturgical language to everyday vernacular, is enormous, the focusing power of a single common religion and ultimately a single common nation-state has been a boon not to be undervalued. The problems faced by the Chinese and the Japanese in adapting their languages to presentday communicative needs are perhaps less immediately understandable to readers whose languages are alphabetic, since they almost inevitably involve the writing systems to some extent. However, the relative unfamiliarity of the problems makes the papers by Fritz Pasierbsky (Chinese), Makoto Takada (Japanese ), and Seiju Sugito (Japanese) that much more useful for readers ofother mother tongues. Uwe Porksen's and Konrad Ehlich's papers treat the relationship of German to the Classical languages from chronologically and linguistically opposite perspectives. The former looks at the shift from Latin as the language of scientific writing to German between the years 1500 and 1800, offering a balance sheet on the losses and gains to scientists. The latter looks at the way in which Greek and Latin are drawn on in word formation by the scientific German which successfully supplanted Latin 200 years ago. The papers by Peter Braun and Wolfgang Nedobity on internationally shared lexicon seem to suffer in terms of interest from the very commonality of the shared material: it is simply more interesting to read about unique features ofa particular language than about common features of many languages. Useful papers by the editor open and close the volume. The opening paper introduces the concept of language adaptation, defines the term, and ranges widely over a number of instances in which speakers found their own languages inadequate to meet new communicative demands, often because of circumstances created by external socioeconomic or political pressures. In his final paper, 'The crisis of normative linguistics', Coulmas confronts topics which have been subthemes elsewhere in the book, such as prescriptivism and purism. He finds puristic stances unrealistic and misguided, and urges linguists, on the basis of their knowledge of language structures and language histories , to abandon their excessively neutral roles and to enter into debates over terminologies , writing-system reforms, and the like. His sanguine view of linguists' capacity for dispassionate judgments is probably overoptimistic, but it is refreshingly generous to his professional colleagues. [Nancy C. Dorian, Bryn Mawr College.] Tümpisa (Panamint) Shoshone grammar . By Jon P. Dayley. (University of California publications in linguistics, 115.) Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989. Pp. xiv, 522. $54.00. Tümpisa (Panamint) Shoshone dictionary . By Jon P. Dayley. (University of California publications in linguistics , 116.) Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989. Pp. xxxviii, 516. $56.00. Most of the American Indian languages of the Great Basin constitute the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan family. Among these, the Central Numic branch includes three principal varieties: Comanche (now spoken in the southern Plains), Shoshone, and the language described in the present volumes, spoken near Death Valley on the Nevada-California border. As Dayley tells us, this language is usually known in the literature as Panamint or Koso; but these names are not used by the speakers of the language. They call themselves sosoni 'Shoshone', and their name for...