Greek forms of address from Herodotus to Lucian by Eleanor Dickey (review)

644LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 3 (1998) (1) No—speak—Spanish. Go—airport ...... airplanes—zoom-zoom-zoom. Quick. You—get—me—airport—me—pay—big bucks. Kapeesh? The radical grammatical simplification and lexical attrition typical of pidgins is described, as is the depidginization of creóles. The chapter concludes with an exemplification of the creóle features of African American Vernacular English. Ch. 15 (446-52) examines factors leading to language death and comments on measures that can be taken to aid in the preservation of endangered languages. Part VI, 'Language relationship', begins with Ch. 16 (455-84) on the comparative method. H & J emphasize the necessity ofestablishing systematic phonological correspondences, perhaps supplemented by shared morphological aberrancies, to demonstrate genetic relationship. They provide the salutary warning that a data sample of insufficient size, along with chance similarities and convergence effects, can markedly impact the accuracy of one's results and therefore must be carefully accounted for. Though most data are drawn from the Indo-European family in the volume, this chapter concludes with a consideration of the progress made in the historical and comparative linguistics of a number of other language families. Ch. 17 (485-506) considers long distance comparison and the significant danger presented by chance similarities and takes pains to explain the problems of mass comparison. Ch. 18 (507-35) reveals how historical linguistic evidence can be employed to cast light on problems of (pre)history by employing the example of the Tasaday of the Philippines. H & J provide a balanced account of the results of linguistic paleontology of proto-Indo-European and assess the realism of our reconstructions. Given the intended audience, H & J avoid notes of any kind but provide an annotated list of suggested readings (536-54) at the end of the volume along with extensive references (557-84) and indices oflanguages (585-92) and subjects and names (593-602). As a textbook, the volume would be ideal for a beginning class, especially one composed of a significant number of students not majoring in linguistics. The instructor, however, would have to supply his or her own exercises and a certain amount of supplementary material since depth of discussion is sometimes sacrificed for breadth of content (again, understandable given the intended readership). This is a volume of great merit. REFERENCES Durie, Mark, and Malcolm Ross (eds.) 1996. The comparative method reviewed: Regularity and irregularity in language change. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Klein, Jared S. 1992a. On the idiomatic nature of the Gothic New Testament: A comparative study of prepositional usage in Gothic and New Testament Greek. Transactions of the Philological Society 90.1-80. -----. 1992b. On the independence ofGothic syntax. I. Interrogativity, complex sentence types, tense, mood, and diathesis. Journal of Indo-European Studies 20.339-79. Labov, William. 1963. The social motivation of a sound change. Word 19.273-309. -----. 1994. Principles of linguistic change: Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell. Department of English Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA 24061-0112 [eska@vtaix.cc.vt.edu] Greek forms of address from Herodotus to Lucian. By Eleanor Dickey. (Oxford classical monographs.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Pp. xxi, 336. Cloth $75.00. Reviewed by Joshua T. Katz, Harvard University Eleanor Dickey's monograph is one of the most impressive books I have ever read. Though a detailed account of forms of address in Ancient Greek can hardly qualify as light reading, I found it impossible to put down and recommend it enthusiastically to Hellenists (the book's REVIEWS645 main audience) and even to linguists with little or no acquaintance with Greek. It is dangerous to predict such things, but I have little doubt that D's work, based on her University of Oxford doctoral dissertation, will become a classic in the field of classical studies. Less clear is whether it will have its just impact on linguistics; I hope with this review to encourage sociolinguists in particular to pay attention to D's exemplary method and interesting conclusions. While it is not really possible for someone unacquainted with Greek to read the book in its entirety, Chs. 1, 2, and 6 are largely free of Greek forms and will give browsers an idea of D's ambitious undertaking...