100 SEER, 8i, I, 2003 genre development without explicitly connecting them to formal linguistic features. Vintr does not opt for easy, oft-repeated formulae such as those about the humanisticapogee of Czech in the sixteenth centuryfollowed by its decline in the baroque period, but instead gives a balanced discussion of developments in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The book is rounded off by chapters on historicalphonology and morphology (historical syntaxand the development of the lexicon do not featureprominently). In summarizing a multitude of topics pithily, Vintr provides the detailoriented specialist with plenty of openings for criticism. For example, Vintr frequentlyintroducestables comparing Czech to German (pp. 17, 3I-32, 53 and elsewhere). These are easilyjustified in a book targeted at beginners or the casuallyinterestedcomparativist;however, most of the handbookassumes a fairlyfluent graspof Czech, in which case generalizingthat e.g., the present tense is as in German but the preteritetense is differentfrom German (p. I7) seems dangerously over-simplified. Likewise, a table of the phonological system makes the occasional concession to IPA notation, but elsewhere a traditionalCzech transcriptionis used. However, a book with this breadth of coverage will inevitably offer many hostages to fortune. Vintr's main achievement here is not the synchronic analysis of Czech phonology and grammar,which is often too compact for the specialistand too linguistically sophisticatedfor the novice. The concise and yet lucid presentationsof major features of Czech dialectology, the written language and the language's diachronic features,however, representa significantcontributionto the field and filla gap in the foreign-languagescholarlyliteratureon Czech. This book should find a home on the bookshelf of many a student preparing for qualifying exams and many an instructorlooking for a concise summary of issuesand mattersof interest. UniversityofSheffield NEIL BERMEL Gilbers,D.; Nerbonne, J. and Schaeken,J. (eds).Languages in Contact. Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics,28. Editions Rodopi, Amsterdamand Atlanta, GA, 2000. iv + 339 pp. Tables. Notes. Hfl I50.00: $64.00. THE title echoes Uriel Weinreich'swork of nearly half a century ago (1953). His subtitle 'findingsand problems' is stillrelevant and his seminalvolume is stilla source of informationand ideas. This latest, Languages in Contact, derives from a conference held in Groningen in I999. There are thirtypapers in all, sixteen involving Slavonic or Balkan,the rest takingus round the world. The editors have thoughtfully given us an overview and a useful map. The first paper is Ronelle Alexander's, fittingly devoted to the Balkan Sprachbund where the concept of 'languagesin contact' reallybegan in the late nineteenth centurywith Miklosic. She looks at the cliticswhich are still a happy hunting ground for post generativistsover a quarterof a century afterKayne's French Syntax(Cambridge, MA, 1975). She cautiously tries to disentangle Balkan Slavonic from Balkan, from Slavonic, from South Slav and is drawn into considering other characteristicsof the grammatical structures. She wisely concedes that there are as yet no sure answers as to exactly where and how REVIEWS IOI each member of the Sprachbund acquired and developed its idiosynchratic clitic order. Jouko Lindstedt asks the same questions on the sociolinguistic scene, tossing in suggested solutions but in the end he returns to Sandfeld's view (Paris, I930) that Greekhas been the strongestforce throughout.Within a more generalframework,Sarah Grey Thomason, writingof linguisticareas (herrathervague term for Sprachbund)and language history,is lookingfor a minimal number of featuresrequiredto justify calling a cluster of languages an 'area'. She cites the Balkans as her classic example but also refers to a modest threesome in the Sepik River basin in Papua New Guinea as well as the numerous Cushitic/Semitic/Afro/Asiatic groups in the highlands of Ethiopia (pp. 3I8-22). The hunt for minimal features is still on. In a quite different region, on the Northwest Pacific coast, stretching from Southern Alaska to California we find what David Beck calls 'the most extensive Sprachbund in the world' (p. 29). He focuses on Bella Coola and North Wakashan(pp. 38-53) and describesthe main featuresof their grammar.All the indications are that Bella Coola, originallya Salishanlanguage classified as VOS (verb-object-subject) has, over the years, been pushed towards becoming a strictly VSO (verb-subject-object)type like nearby Wakashan. Reasons suggested are that the Bella Coola have become geographicallycut offfrom...