Common and comparative Slavic: Phonology and inflection with special attention to Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian By Charles E. Townsend and Laura A. Janda (review)

BOOK NOTICES 225 function relations as well as lexical functions in the overall framework of meaning-text theory. The first article, 'Lexical functions: A tool for the description oflexical relations in a lexicon' (37-102) by Igor A. Mel'cuk, begins with the general concept of lexical function and then lists and discusses all the simple standard lexical functions known to date. Among the languages used to illustrate the rather technical discussion are Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hungarian, Persian, Polish , Russian, and Somali. Some of the remaining papers address theoretical issues; others are concerned with applied work. An example oftheoretical work is the paper 'Lexical functions and lexical inheritance for emotion lexemes in German' (209-78) by Mel'cuk and Wanner. The problem addressed is how to represent efficiently lexical function information in the lexicon. The data on which the authors chose to demonstrate their method are the semantic domain of 40 emotion lexemes in German, i.e. lexemes such as Angst 'fear', Freude 'joy', andHoffnung 'hope'. Having described these lexemes in terms of semantic dimensions such as permanence, self-control, polarity, and intensity, the authors then give an account of the collocational behavior of these lexemes with 25 verbs, such as empfinden 'to perceive', überkommen 'to overcome', and wecken 'to arouse'. The article 'RUSLO: An automatic system for derivation in Russian' (307-17) by Natal'ja Percova demonstrates how the derivational system RUSLO retrieves the derivatives for a given word, traces back the source ofa given derivative, provides a derivational meaning of a derivative, and generates for agiven word a derivative with a specific meaning. Toward the end of her paper, the author proposes to change the derivational model to account for the analysis of neologisms. Among the other topics included in this collection are lexical functions across languages, implications of aspectual polysemy for lexical functions, and procedural problems in the implementation of lexical functions for text generation. A bibliography and subject and name indexes conclude the volume. [Zdenek Salzmann, Northern Arizona University.] Common and comparative Slavic: Phonology and inflection with special attention to Russian, Polish, Czech, SerboCroatian , Bulgarian. By Charles E. Townsend and Laura A. Janda. Columbus , OH: Slavica, 1996. Pp. 310. The handbook has two general purposes: the first is to introduce the learner to the fundamentals and important details of Common Slavic phonology and inflectional morphology; the second is to familiarize the user with the most important aspects of phonology and inflection by providing copious material from modem Slavic languages, particularly the commonly taught Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croatian , and Bulgarian. Ch. 1 (21-35), a general introduction, explains Late Common Slavic; Chs. 2-6 (36-115) are devoted to phonological development (followed by a brief excursus on Late Common Slavic phonology and exercises, 116-32); Ch. 7 (133-44) is a brief survey ofSlavic grammar in general; Ch. 8 (145-97) and Ch. 9 (198-251) are devoted to morphology; Ch. 10 (252-98) includes a brief survey of each one of the five Slavic languages mentioned above. AU of us who teach courses in comparative and historical Slavic linguistics are faced with the problem of finding a textbook in English which is simple enough for the beginning student and at the same time does not distort the facts too much. This seems to bejust such a textbook. The fundamental material is explained in a simple yet comprehensive manner, and the book provides many tables and even some exercises in which the student is asked to explain some ablaut alternations and to reconstruct some Proto-Indo-European and Late Common Slavic forms. No book is perfect, however, and I do note at least one apparent misunderstanding on p. 47. Here the authors write: 'in Slavic ... long à > a and short à > o, whereas in Germanic and Baltic, normally, long à > o and short à > a.' The rule works for Germanic, but in Baltic the situation with the long vowels is more complex. In East Baltic, at least, Proto-IndoEuropean *ä and *o did not always merge, since we have, e.g. Lith. dúo-ti 'to give' ( -e. I have assumed elsewhere (Introduction to Old Church Slavic, Columbus , OH: Slavica, 1983, p. 100) that -e was merely one...