Kurzgefaßte Grammatik der sorben-wendischen Sprache nach dem Budissiner Dialekte byAndreas SeilerReview by: Gerald StoneThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Oct., 1979), pp. 628-629Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4207951 .

Accessed: 17/06/2014 10:02

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and EastEuropean Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavonic andEast European Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.60 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 10:02:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

628 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

SHORTER NOTICE

Magner, Thomas F. (ed.). Slavic Linguistics and Language Teaching: Selected Papers from the Banif 1974 International Conference. Slavica Publishers, Cambridge, Massachussetts, 1976. 309 pp.

THIS book is a collection of papers either delivered or scheduled to be delivered at the First International Slavic Conference held at Banif in Canada in I 974. The twenty-one articles presented here have been coerced, so to speak, into four groups entitled 'Accentology', 'Language Codification', 'Language Description: Selected Topics' and 'Pedagogy'. Seven of the articles are concerned with Russian and range from a pragmatic account of the distributive po in contemporary Russian to the pOst-I9I 7 'contacts' between Russian and the language of Asiatic Eskimos. Of the remaining articles, all but one are indeed concerned with Slavic linguistics but not with those areas of Slavic linguistics which intersect with the methodology of language teaching. The 'lone' article uncommen- ted on so far does indeed concern itself with language teaching - with computer-aided instruction, in fact - but it says nothing whatsoever, in the space of its thousand words, about Slavic linguistics! One cannot escape the feeling that this volume's title is really rather misleading - the 'and' in the title is perhaps to blame.

Notwithstanding the above, this book does contain some valuable material. Pavle Ivi6's synthesis of views on the nature of Serbo-Croatian accentuation highlights the contribution to the study of this phenomenon made by instrumental phonetics. He gives what might be called a 'factor analysis' of pitch, intensity and, last but by no means least, quantity and also correlates the instrumental work with the perceptual data.

Robert Rothstein contributes a well-documented article on the prob- lems of 'language culture' and their besetting, or even besotting influence in Poland, Czechoslovakia and the U.S.S.R. Lionel O'Toole's essay on the functions of language and the teaching of style is a persuasive apologia for using functional-systemic grammar as a vehicle for teaching the stylistics of register in non-literary genres of writing. The appendixes to his essay are also highly illuminating.

In conclusion, some of the papers are very fine, others very much less so. The volume's title lays claim to the cohesiveness of content which, in the reviewer's opinion, does not materialize. Birmingham F. KNOWLES

Seiler, Andreas. Kurzgefaflte Grammatik der sorben-wendischen Sprache nach dem Budissiner Dialekte. Reprint of the Budissin I830 edition, with a preface by H. FaBke. VEB Domowina-Verlag, Bautzen, I978. Xiv + 146 pp. M 42.

THE author of this Upper Sorbian grammar is better known as the poet Handrij Zejler (1804-72), who, in addition to his literary work, contributed

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.60 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 10:02:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS 629

to the study of his native language. He began by collecting material for a German-Upper Sorbian dictionary, but only a fragment (dated 1827)

has survived. At the age of twenty-six he saw his grammar published and later collaborated with Michal Hornik and Kfes&an Bohuwer Pful in the compilation of the latter's LuZiski serbski slownik (Bautzen, i866).

Zejler's grammar has tended to be overshadowed by the grammars of Jordan (I841), Smoler (i852) and Pful (I867), but it is in some respects more valuable than any of them, since it antedates the puristic trend in Sorbian philology. Zejler is thus more factual in his descriptions than several better-known grammarians. He records with equanimity a number of things which his successors either condemned or deliberately ignored, such as the use of the perfective infinitive in the compound future (e.g. ja njebudu pfestac 'ich werde nicht aufhoren', p. 143) and the pronoun wono in sentences of the type wono hrima 'es donnert' (p. I I4).

The original is now rare (though not very rare) and it is thus convenient to have this well-produced reprint. Oxford GERALD STONE

Isayev, M. I. National Languages in the USSR: Problems and Solutions. Translated by Paul Medov. Progress Publishers, Moscow, I977. 43' Pp. Bibliography. Appendixes. Map. $2.75.

THIS work in English by the Ossetian scholar M. I. Isayev is not an original contribution; as is pointed out in the Publishers' Note (p. 9), it is based on earlier works by the same author, and its main purpose is implicitly to counteract the 'false representations by bourgeois critics of the principles applied by the Soviet government in its language policy as well as of its concrete achievements' (p. 5).

The book begins with a chapter defining the most important terms to be used (there is also a brief glossary of terms at the end of the book). Then follows a long chapter giving general information about the written languages of the Soviet Union, taken mainly from the six-volume series Languages of the Peoples of the USSR (Moscow, I966-68). The account is of some value, however, in that the figures given are those of the most recent (1970) census.

Chapter Three deals with language as a factor in the theoretical defini- tion of nationhood, and with the significance of this for language planning: Chapter Four then gives an historical account of Soviet language policy, within the framework of the various alphabet reforms.

Chapter Five is an exposition of the Soviet view that the flourishing of individual nations and their rapprochement 'represent two mutually complementary aspects of a single process of national development' (p. 274). This theme is expanded upon in Chapter Six, by discussion of bilingualism, the role of Russian as an 'interlanguage' (p. 338), and the concept of the 'multinational Soviet people'. Finally, Chapter Seven deals briefly with the linguistic side of language planning, Western criticism of Soviet policy, and the question of a future world language.

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.60 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 10:02:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions