Studies in the semantic structure of Hindi: synonymous nouns and adjectives with karanä By Kali Charan Bahl (review)

716LANGUAGE, VOLUME 54, NUMBER 3 (1978) Part 5 need not concern us long. Three of the chapters—'Sociolinguistics', 'Language education', and 'Mass media and literacy in Ethiopia'—appeared in a previous collection (Bender et al. 1976); a fourth, containing both 'Languages of Northern Eritrea' and 'Languages of the Maji area' was omitted from that volume for reasons of economy. 'Hamer speech situations' alone is concerned solely with a non-Semitic language. It is interesting in its own right, but unrelated to the purely linguistic work in the rest of this volume. The great value of this book lies in the vast amount of material it contains, especially that which is new or virtually inaccessible. But why were previously published and easily accessible articles also included? If the intention was to provide representative coverage,then the obvious gaps(e.g. Somali)arereprehensible, and a real attempt should have been made to achieve some similarity and consistency in the presentation. Yet one should not be too critical. A 700-page volume on these languages is both unexpected and welcome. REFERENCES Bender, M. Lionel. 1971. The languages of Ethiopia: a new lexicostatistic classification and some problems of diffusion. AL 13.165-288. ------, et al. (eds.) 1976. Language in Ethiopia. London: Oxford University Press. Ehret, Christopher. 1971. Southern Nilotic history: linguistic approaches to the past. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. The Mogogodo: a forgotten Cushitic people. JAL 2.29^43. Heine, Bernd. 1975. Notes on the Yaaku language. Afrika und Übersee 58.27-61, 119-38. Moreno, M. M. 1940. Manuale di Sidamo. Milan: Mondadori. Palmer, F. R. 1970. Cushitic. Current trends in linguistics, 6: Linguistics in South West Asia and North Africa, ed. by T. A. Sebeok, 571-85. The Hague: Mouton. •-----. 1977. Review of Zaborski 1975. BSOAS 40.198-202. Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 1973. Bemerkungen zum Language Survey of Ethiopia. ZDMG 123.117-28. Tucker, A. N. 1967. Fringe Cushitic: an experiment in typological comparison. BSOAS 30.655-80. Zaborski, Andrzej. 1975. Studies in Hamito-Semitic, 1: the verb in Cushitic. (Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego, 397; Prace jçzykoznawcze, zeszyt 48.) Warszawa/Kraków : Uniwersytet Jagiellonski. [Received 21 July 1977.] Studies in the semantic structure of Hindi: synonymous nouns and adjectives with karanä. Volume 1. By Kali Charan Bahl. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1974. Pp. cxiv, 409. Rs. 100. Reviewed by Michael C. Shapiro, University of Washington The work here reviewed was clearly written with both lexicographic and theoretical goals in mind. It is intended, first of all, to serve as the initial installment of a reference dictionary of Hindi conjunct verbal constructions. This dictionary represents a considerable departure from Hindi lexicographic tradition, as it arranges items in ' synonymous ' groups and provides information on the semantic REVIEWS717 and syntactic properties of the forms listed. The work is also designed to provide a theoretical introduction to the study of Hindi conjunct verbs. This introduction consists of a critique of past approaches to the study of conjuncts, statements concerning Bahl's beliefs on the correct analysis of conjuncts, and expressions of his low opinion of the current state of Hindi lexicography. Hindi conjunct verbs are sequences consisting of either a nominal or adjectival element, followed immediately by a verb, frequently honä 'to be ' or kar(d)nä 'to do ', but often others.1 The nominal (N) or adjectival (A) constituent is sometimes linked by a postposition (PP) to other constituents of the sentence in which the conjunct is used. The substitution of one PP for another may be correlated with a semantic change. For example, the expression X ki carcä karnä ' to make mention of X', using the PP ki, can be distinguished from X se carcä karnä 'to mention to X', using se. Single N's or A's, as well as sequences of N -I- PP + A/N, can be followed by many different verbal elements. For example, N + par 'on, upon' + nazar 'vision, glance, line of sight' can occur with any of the verbs jänä, paRnä, dalnä, rahnä, dauRnä, rakhnä, jamänä, märnä, thaharnä, tiknä and honä; each sequence, according to B, has a distinct meaning. Many Hindi conjuncts are close paraphrases of non-conjunct expressions...