Workbook of cuneiform signs By Daniel C. Snell (review)

Abstract

226 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 57, NUMBER 1 (1981) non-palatalized labials before [j] (ob"ëm [bj] 'volume'), while only palatalized labials can be manifested before [j] in word-internal environments (b'ët [b'j] 'hit', 3sg. non-past). Except where unverifiable neutralization is involved, DN does not make a case for complicating the description of morphemes with archiphonemes , considering that the characterization of phonetic rules as neutralization rules or variation rules can accomplish the intended result and still preserve the integrity of the morpheme. [Michael S. Flier, UCLA.] Sprachwissenschaft und Sprachphilosophie im Zeitalter der Romantik: Ein Beitrag zur Historiographie der Linguistik. By Helmut Gipper and Peter Schmitter. (Tübinger Beitr äge zur Linguistik, 121.) Tübingen: Narr, 1979. Pp. 201. DM 48.00. This is another contribution to the historiography ofmodern linguistics, highlighting one of its more important, if frequently overlooked, phases. One ofthe authors, H. Gipper, is a wellknown linguist working in typology—with, among other things, an important work on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to his credit. In a way, this book can be compared to Chomsky's attempt to identify the rationalist antecedents (if not roots) of his own linguistic thought (Cartesian linguistics, 1966), and to R. RuZiCka's brief Historie und Historizität der Junggrammatiker (1977), in which the Leipzig linguist pointed to a number of original and innovative concepts first formulated by the Neogrammarians, whose doctrine (against which modern structuralism evolved) was later unfairly discredited for a purely mechanistic view of language. Though this book is incisive and well-written, so far as the individual sections are concerned, one major reservation concerns the broad interpretation of 'Romanticism' as providing the chronological framework and the geographic emphasisforthe personalities and works treated. G&S were obviously aware of this problem when discussing—not always persuasively— precisely these two aspects in their preliminary remarks (9-18). The book is divided into two major sections, on the foundation of historical comparative linguistics (18-59) and on the founders of general linguistics and modern language philosophy (60-155). In Section A, after a brief survey of the prehistory of comparative grammar, the focus is on such scholars as R. K. Rask, D. Wilkins, W. Jones, and H. T. Colbrooke as well as J. C. Adelung, the brothers Schlegel, F. Bopp, and J. Grimm. Section B discusses Hamann and Herder—writers who certainly cannot be accommodated easily under 'Romanticism'—before giving a thorough analysis of the language theory of W. v. Humboldt , with separate sections on the linguistic theory of the theologian Schleiermacher and on some new interpretations ofHumboldt's thought. The subsequent chapters, treating language philosophy and language aesthetics as well as the relationship of systematic philosophy and the philosophy of language, are more a contribution to on-going discussion than a mere survey ofgenerally accepted views. The section on the French thinkers of the 18th century, again, does not fit the claimed 'Romantic' framework of the book, but provides interesting insights into rationalist thought. The brief concluding section on the beginnings of semantics as a linguistic discipline, however, offers little more than a few superficial comments on some of the major names in the field. The comprehensive bibliography serves a useful purpose. [Henrik Birnbaum, UCLA.] Workbook of cuneiform signs. By Daniel C. Snell. (Aids and research tools in ancient Near Eastern Studies, 3.) Malibu: Undena, 1979. Pp. 140. $9.50. 'Cuneiform' here refers to the mixed logographic -syllabic writing system common to Sumerian , later Akkadian, and the Semitic language ofancient EbIa, and eventually to Hittite, Elamite, and Hurrian on the peripheries of Mesopotamia . Throughout most of its existence, it regularly employed some 500-600 signs, each with one or more Sumerian logographic values (several dozen of which could also function as unpronounced determinatives), and frequently with one or more derivative syllabic values—a relatively limited set of V, CV, and VC values for Sumerian, but expanded in Akkadian to include many CVC values and to render a larger phonemic inventory. This workbook introduces 1 10 Akkadian signs in their traditional Neo-Assyrian forms and in standard sign-list order. A simple programmed BOOK NOTICES 227 format requires the reproducing of each new sign some twenty times in isolation—often juxtaposed with another...