Die spezifischen Neuerungen der sorbischen Dualflexion by Ronald LötzschReview by: Gerald StoneThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 45, No. 105 (Jul., 1967), pp. 542-543Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4205891 .

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542 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

possibly give some wrong answers. At least he has been courageous enough to frame the questions and to confront them.

If we are not convinced by the attempted explanations we should look for the reasons. One of these, possibly the most important deterrent to ex cathedra pronouncements on morphological developments, is that so many factors come into play that a single cause of change is not to be found. If Mahczak had been less keen to supply a single explanation for each change his work would have been free of those elements of dogma and revelation which are out of place in historical grammar, a field, one surmises, where even angels fear to tread.

London H. Leeming

Lotzsch, Ronald. Die spezifischen Neuerungen der sorbischen Dualflexion. Schriftenreihc des Instituts fur sorbische Volksforschung, No. 28. VEB Domowina-Verlag, Bautzen, 1965. 112 pages. Maps.

The author's first aim is to carry out an examination of the morpho? logy of the dual in Sorbian and to determine those innovations which are exclusively Sorbian, i.e. which separate Sorbian from the other Slavon? ic languages. Not since the appearance of E. P. Novikov's 0 vazhneyshikh osobennostyakh luzhitskikh narechii in Moscow in 1849 have the specific differences of Sorbian formed the subject of special examination, though the subject has been touched on from time to time in works dealing with the West Slavonic languages as a whole. The considerable attention given in recent years to dialectology has naturally led to an emphasis on features which separate the various Sorbian dialects rather than those which unite them and mark them as a group.

The main question to which an answer is sought here, however, has far wider implications. This question is whether the specific differences of the Sorbian dual represent a genetically unified development from Common Slavonic or whether they developed independently in Upper and Lower Sorbian. This inevitably involves reconsideration of the widely accepted thesis (first put forward by Z. Stieber in Stosunki pokrewienstwa jzzykow luzyckich, Cracow 1934) that Upper and Lower Sorbian were for centuries

separated from each other and only came into contact after the 14th cen?

tury. According to this view the so-called transitional dialects have come into being merely as a result of secondary reciprocal influences and can therefore always be definitely classified as either Upper or Lower Sorbian.

While accepting the view that the two tribes must have at one time been isolated from each other by a region of primaeval forest and swampland, Dr Lotzsch maintains that this area was settled earlier than has been hitherto supposed and that contact was sufficiently close for reciprocal in? fluences to affect not only transitional dialects but the entire Sorbian

speech area. The sources include the main old Sorbian texts (some still unpublished),

folk-songs and grammars. In addition, use has been made of unpublished material collected for the Sorbian dialect atlas.

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reviews 543

The main body of the work consists of a systematic analysis of the various morphemes used to express the dual in Sorbian and these are com?

pared with the corresponding morphemes recorded in other Slavonic lan?

guages, including those which have now lost this category. The other main

published studies of the dual in Slavonic are submitted to critical examina? tion and frequently challenged. Dr Lotzsch does not, for example, accept the conventional view that the Upper Sorbian gen. du. ending -ow (for earlier -owu) has evolved due to the influence of the genitive plural. He

convincingly argues that this has come about due to sound-change alone. The conclusion that the development of the dual in the various Sorbian

dialects must be regarded as one unified process naturally casts doubt on the procedure of classifying dialects as either Upper or Lower Sorbian. On the basis of his investigations Dr Lotzsch claims that there can be no

question of a clear line being drawn. The research behind this study has clearly been conducted with great

care and its results are well presented. There can be little doubt that this is a work which will stimulate further argument.

Nottingham Gerald Stone

Cyz, Jan. Jan Arnost Smoler. Wobrysjeho ziwjenja a skutkowanja. Part i. Leta

kublanja. Ludowe Nakiadnistwo Domowina, Budysin, 1966. 121

pages. Bibliography. The 150th anniversary of Jan Arnott Smoler's birth was celebrated by the Sorbs in 1966 and this book is published to mark the occasion. So far only this first volume has appeared, which takes us up to Smoler's move to

Leipzig in 1847. It is also the first of a new series of biographies entitled Wuznamni Serbscy Procowarjo.

Up to now the published information on Smoler was located piecemeal in various periodicals and books, including a short autobiographical sketch

published in the Casopis Macicy Serbskeje in 1917. Much of this material is now not easily accessible and Dr Cyz has performed the useful task of re?

counting in one work the main events of Smoler's life. His sources are

given in a small bibliography. The small group of intellectuals who were instrumental in developing

the national consciousness during the 19th century have since become

popular heroes and it is above all in the role of 'narodny procowar' that Smoler emerges in this book. The influences to which he was subjected in

boyhood and early manhood, particularly as a student in Breslau, seem to have made almost inevitable his subsequent determination to arouse a national awareness among his countrymen and to organise their activities.

The greater part of the present small volume is devoted to the decisive nine years spent in Breslau, though even earlier, while at school in Baut? zen, he had been prompted by his introduction to German folk-lore to em? bark on the collection of Sorbian folk-tales and songs.

The significance of his contacts with other Slavs such as L'udovit Stiir, F. L. Celakovsky, M. P. Pogodin and LL Sreznevsky is properly empha? sised, and Smoler's activities are seen here as part of a movement spreading

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