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REVIEWS725 A verb series unmentioned in NPP's book consists of a string of three verbs, the first being di 'to go' and the third vi 'to return'. This locution shows chronological order: when a person leaves his home to do something, then returns, the sequence is expressed thus : di hçc vi ' returns from school', di bo'i vi 'returns from a swimming lesson', di làm vi 'returns from work'. NPP's chapter on postverbs provides much insight into possible combinations and semantic ramifications: special postverbs, such as lorn, which occurs only after do 'red' and chua 'acid, tart' as an intensifier, and Vän-bqt, which occurs only following the verb run ' to shiver, tremble', are contrasted with general ones, which denote degree, aspect, frequency, attribution, result, direction etc. Although this book deals with only a fragment of Vietnamese grammar, its rigorous analysis, conducted in an eclectic mood, results in a rather comprehensive study of the verb phrase. NPP is to be congratulated for an admirable contribution to the growing literature of Vietnamese linguistics. REFERENCES Aubaret, G. 1867. Grammaire annamite suivie d'un vocabulaire français-annamite et annamite-français. Paris: Imprimerie Impériale. Cadière, Leopold. 1958. Syntaxe de la langue vietnamienne. Paris: École Française d'Extrême-Orient. Diguet, E. 1892. Éléments de grammaire annamite. Paris: Challamel. Durand, Maurice. 1961. Les impressifs en vietnamien: étude préliminaire. Bulletin de la Société des Études Indochinoises 36:1.7-50. Emeneau, M. B. 1951. Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. Grammont, E., and LE Quang-Trinh. 1911-12. Études sur la langue annamite. Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 17.201-41, 295-310. Honey, Patrick J. 1956. Word classes in Vietnamese. BSOAS 18.534-44. LE VAn-Ly. 1948. Le parler vietnamien (essai d'une grammaire vietnamienne). Paris: Hu'o'ng-Anh. Nguyen Dînh-Hoà. 1976. Ditransitive verbs in Vietnamese. Austroasiatic studies, ed. by Philip Jenner, Laurence Thompson, & Stanley Starosta, 919-49. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii. Nguyen Kim-Thân. 1963-64. Nghiên-cu'u vë ngü'-pháp tièng Viêt [Studies in Vietnamese grammar]. 2 vols. Hanoi: Khoa-hoc. Thomas, David D. 1962. On defining the 'word' in Vietnamese. Van-hoá nguyçt-san 11.519-23. Thompson, Laurence C. 1963. The problem of the word in Vietnamese. Word 19.39-52. •------. 1965. A Vietnamese grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Trän Trqng-Kim; Pham Duy-Khiêm; and Bùi Ky. 1943. Grammaire annamite. 2nd edition. Hanoi: Le Thäng. Tru'o'ng Vînh-Ky. 1867. Abrégé de grammaire annamite. Saigon: Imprimerie Impériale. [Received 10 June 1977] Papers of the First International Conference on Comparative Austronesian Linguistics , 1974—Oceanic. Edited by George W. Grace. (Oceanic linguistics, 12.) Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1973 [1976]. Pp. vi, 709. $5.00. Reviewed by Paul G. Chapín, National Science Foundation* This is a collection of nineteen papers originally prepared for the conference * The opinions expressed in this review are those of the author, and do not represent official positions of the National Science Foundation or the United States Government. 726LANGUAGE, VOLUME 54, NUMBER 3 (1978) referred to in the title, which was held in Honolulu in January 1974. Calling forth as it did the efforts of the majority of active Austronesian scholars from all over the world, and bringing them together into a single meeting for the first time, the conference was a landmark in Austronesian studies surpassed only by the publication of the great syntheses of Dempwolff 1934, 1937, 1938 and Dyen 1965. A total of 72 original papers were prepared for the conference, covering the entire range of Austronesian linguistics. The papers in this volume all deal with the Oceanic languages—a cover term for the Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian languages (whether this is a linguistically or simply a geographically defined group is a subject of some current debate, to which these papers make important contributions). A second volume (Oceanic linguistics 13, 1974 [1976]) contains conference papers on the Western Austronesian languages and on Proto-Austronesian . 1. ' Dating the dispersal ofthe Oceanic...

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