Studien zum slavischen und indoeuropäischen Langvokalismus by Terje MathiassenReview by: H. LeemingThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Oct., 1976), pp. 593-594Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4207336 .

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Reviews

Mathiassen, Terje. Studien zum slavischen und indoeuropdischen Langvokalis- mus. Universitetsforlaget, Oslo-Bergen-Troms0, 1974. xxiv+267 pp. Bibliography. Index. N.kr. 8o.oo.

DoCTOR Terje Mathiassen, a Norwegian Slavist, has published a number of articles on Slavonic, Baltic and Indo-European historical linguistics. The present publication constitutes an abridged and revised version of his doctoral dissertation. His theme is the identification, development and chronology of long vowels in Common Slavonic. By a comparative his- torical analysis of the relevant facts in Baltic, Slavonic, Latin and Ger- manic in particular, the author attempts to distinguish Balto-Slavonic and Slavonic innovations from the long vowels inherited from Indo-European.

The work consists of three main sections: an introduction which reviews earlier contributions to the field (pp. I-27); long vowels in the verbal system (pp. 29-I65); long vowels in the nominal system (pp. I67-249). At each stage the author considers the views of other scholars and presents his own with boldness, decision and clarity. An indication of the thoroughness of this survey is the bibliography of books and articles referred to in the text, which numbers more than two hundred and thirty items.

The section devoted to length in the verb falls into three parts in which the author considers the phenomenon in i. the present tense; 2. the aorist; 3. four verbal classes or sub-classes, namely nasal stems (gybneti), fourth- class verbs in -eti (kyp6ti); iteratives or secondary imperfectives (R. -brasyvat', Pol. -mawiac, etc.); fourth-class causatives, factitives, intensives and iteratives (-baviti, -staviti, grabiti, daviti, laziti, etc.). Mathiassen here includes a lengthy digression on long-vowel preterites in Baltic, Germanic, Latin, Celtic and Albanian. This leads him to conclude that there is no case for an earlier long-vowel asigmatic preterite in Slavonic although a couple of verbs (sesti, -resti) have aorists which suggest such reconstruc- tions.

The section devoted to the nominal system deals first with those nouns which have some etymological connection with a verb, and secondly with those which have no such connection. The latter group is particularly interesting, including as it does a number of difficult and unsolved prob- lems. Mathiassen's handling of these is discreet and sensible, although he does not shrink from giving his personal judgment. In the case of zelezo he is content to state without further elaboration that, while the etymology is obscure, it is virtually out of the question that 6 in this word goes back to an earlier diphthong. It was, no doubt, lack of space which prevented a full statement of the relevant arguments. Without seeing these the reviewer is inclined to maintain his earlier belief that the second syllable of zelezo does indeed contain an earlier diphthong, and hopes shortly to publish an article to substantiate this viewpoint.

The greatest problem in this discussion is the elimination of loanwords in which a, e, i, y do not represent Indo-European long vowels. K. H. Menges suggested an oriental derivation for gajb; no mention of this is

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594 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

made by Mathiassen, presumably because he was using the German edition of Vasmer. The Russian editors include a reference to Menges's article, but describe his suggestion as 'superfluous' (iWliine), the stock reaction to an awkward question. Incidentally, although Mathiassen follows Vasmer in assuming currency of gaj in Old Russian, the evidence of Sreznevsky points rather to a fourteenth-century Old Ukrainian bor- rowing from Polish. Other words one suspects include kat, kavyka, motyka (the last two presented as possible examples of long vowel in a suffix). Since tatb does not appear in the index and I could not locate it in the text, I presume that the author rejected this candidate, although Vasmer proposes long-vowel cognates in Celtic and Greek. In this case the possi- bility of borrowing from an oriental source should be considered: Mahmud of Kashgar's dictionary of Old Turkic, compiled in I072-4, attests tat with two meanings, 'foreigner' and 'derisive nickname for non-Islamic Ujghurs' (Drevne-tjurkskij slovar', Leningrad, I969, p. 541). The quotation from a folk poem which accompanies and illustrates the latter usage reads: 'Like birds we attacked the Tats in Ujghuria, those thieves, those loath- some dogs'. Could not tatb be a Slavonic collective noun based on the Turkic ethnic name?

After reading Mathiassen's work one is grateful for the vigorous and stimulating discussion of a whole series of problems which still await solution. Particularly valuable is the distinction he insists on between an active and a passive Sprachbund; within the framework of the latter the individual members (in this case Baltic and Slavonic) could continue independently to apply and develop inherited principles of word-forma- tion. London H. LEEMING

Weischedel, Roland. Eine Untersuchung ukrainischer Personennamen des XVII. Jahrhunderts: Kiever Regiment. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich, 1974. I90 pp. Bibliography. Notes. DM 28.

THIS is a contribution to the history of personal names in Ukrainian. Its subject matter is the muster-roll of the Kiev Regiment, which comprises one section of the register compiled in I 649-50 by Ivan Vyhovs'kyj, at the time clerk-general of the Zaporozhian forces and later Hetman of the Ukraine. Most of the 2,000 men are recorded with both baptismal and surnames; about 50 have only one name. There is therefore ample material for such a study.

After a short introduction which presents the historical background the author discusses baptismal names and surnames in two separate sections. The baptismal names are for the most part well-known and pose few problems of derivation. The author comments on their history in East Slavonic, on the formation of diminutives and certain orthographic peculiarities, presenting the material first according to relative frequency, starting with Ivan and derivatives, met 223 times, and ending with such singular examples as Sapon, Furs and Kalpar (which appears by some mis- chance as Kaspsr on pp. 86, 89 and I58). A second list presents the same

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