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  • A student grammar of Euskara by Jon D. Patrick, Ilari Zubiri Ibarrondo
  • Edward J. Vajda
A student grammar of Euskara. By Jon D. Patrick and Ilari Zubiri Ibarrondo. (LINCOM student grammars 1.) Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2001. Pp. xxiii, 435. ISBN 3895864447. $72.10.

Devotees of Basque (Euskara) have been enjoying a steady increase in the number of user-friendly introductions to the complexities of this fascinating language. There already exist beginner courses accompanied by cassette tapes (e.g. Alan R. King and Begotxu Olaizola Elordi, Colloquial Basque, London: Routledge, 1996), something that not long ago was mainly a luxury of the more frequently studied languages. This book adds the first full-length English-language description of Euskara grammar written for pedagogical purposes. Conceived as a practical handbook, it is intended for university students enrolled in an undergraduate program. The approach is somewhat prescriptive rather than purely descriptive in its focus on the so-called ‘Batua’, or Unified Euskara, rather than one of the traditionally spoken dialects. (Batua is an amalgam based on local spoken forms that began to take shape in 1968 under the guidance of the Academy of the Basque Language.) Consequently, the authors warn the user to be aware ‘that in Euskara there are some points that cannot be given a single rule’ (xx), though they do choose a single norm in most cases, usually favoring southern over northern Euskara varieties (xx).

Despite being a reference grammar of sorts, this book generally avoids complex grammatical descriptions, relying instead upon a wealth of clearly analyzed example sentences, so that it will serve either the absolute beginner or the more advanced student. Overall, there are more than 2,300 example sentences, each with an English translation that highlights the points under discussion through the use of bold type or other graphic devices that permit the omission of morpheme glosses. Individual chapters cover the main aspects of the phonology, morphology, and syntax in a clear, informative style. As expected, [End Page 632] much space is devoted to case suffixes (50–103) and postpositions (129–43). Attention is also paid to current orthographic tradition (3–12), a worthy topic since extant examples of written Basque actually date back more than a millennium, and the first book published in the language appeared in 1545. More vexed is the brief discussion of word accent (13–16), a feature that varies greatly among the dialects and has yet to be codified to any extent in Batua itself. There is a concise but informative discussion of focus and topic/comment structures (28–29), which appears in the morphology chapter directly after the discussion of demonstrative pronouns (used as focus markers) rather than as part of the explanation of word order (261–70), where it might have been placed. Somewhat unexpected but extremely useful is the chapter entitled ‘Notions and elements’ (331–94), which is divided into semantic subsections dealing with time, dates, weather, feelings and sensations, courtesy expressions, numbers, and measurements. Also of great value to the learner are several appendices (396–420) stocked with conjugation tables showing auxiliary verbs, imperative verbs, and synthetic verbs, as well as declensional paradigms and a list of compound verbs.

All in all, this timely book should enhance the study of Euskara by non-speakers, as well as contribute to the acceptance of Batua as a linguistic standard.

Edward J. Vajda
Western Washington University
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