A Navajo lexicon By Harry Hoijer (review)

744LANGUAGE, VOLUME 54, NUMBER 3 (1978) A Navajo lexicon. By Harry Hoijer. (University of California publications in linguistics, 78.) Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974. Pp. ix, 314. Reviewed by James Kari, Alaska Native Language Center This is Hoijer's last major publication, and is without question a landmark in Athabaskan linguistics. This and his work on the Apachean verb (1945, 1946a,b, 1948, 1949) will stand as his most significant contributions to the field. NL complements the two other major Navajo dictionaries, Young & Morgan 1943, 1951, and Haile 1950-51. The Young & Morgan dictionaries, with their full paradigmatic detail, remain the most useful for the study of prefix phonology and inflectional morphology, and are a valuable record ofcolloquial Navajo. The Haile dictionaries still give the most extensive stem list, and are especially important for their ethnographic content. But NL is primarily a comparativist's reference work; it advances the format for an Athabaskan vocabulary, making a sizable portion of the Navajo stems and a large number of verb bases readily accessible. The verb bases are shown in an abstract form, with a minimum of phonetic data (the reader is referred to Sapir & Hoijer 1967 for background information). Certainly the dictionary would be more generally useful for the non-specialist (and at times for the specialist) if phonetic forms had been supplied. The work is based on Sapir's Navajo verb stem list, which was begun in the 1920's and continued until his death. The original Sapir manuscript, apparently with many barely legible pages, is on file at the American Philosophical Society. H has added considerable detail to the Sapir manuscript, supplying stems and verb bases from Sapir & Hoijer 1942, and from his other Navajo notes. The basic format of the Sapir stem list has been refined by the listing and translation of derivational and thematic prefixes for each base, and by the labeling of aspectual stem sets for many verb stems. Important notes by Sapir on the translations of certain prefix complexes, or on the affinities between stems, are occasionally noted. NL is not a competitive or exhaustive Navajo stem vocabulary. The Young & Morgan dictionaries are not even cited in the bibliography. Nevertheless, a good percentage of the Navajo verb stems are included, with many minor and archaic stems. The convenient format of the stem list makes NL a valuable tool for comparative work, which will stimulate thorough cross-checking of stem inventories in Athabaskan. Eventually, statistics on stem inventory will advance Athabaskan linguistic classification. ? One clarification should be made in the alphabetical listing of verb stems: *y merges with Navajo y before front vowels ; thus some stems alphabetized under y in NL should be grouped undery, e.g. stem 419 'grow' (where perfective vindicates the actual stem-initial y) and stems 418, 421, 444, 446, and 459. In some cases (e.g. 444 and 446), comparative evidence is needed to establish the stem-initial y. The book is divided into six sections. The largest, covering 251 pages, is the list of verb stems and verb bases. This is followed by lists of noun stems and noun bases, postpositions, verbal prefixes, enclitics, and particles. The most important contribu1 See Kari 1977 for some statistics on the distribution of verb stems between the contiguous Ahtna and Tanaina languages. REVIEWS745 tions of NL are the extensive listing of aspectual stem sets for many of the verb stems, and the detailed listing and analysis of verb prefixes. In Navajo, as in all Athabaskan languages, verb stems alter their shape according to mode. A listing of the modal stem allomorphs is a stem set. Navajo has five modes: imperfective, perfective, future, iterative (or customary), and optative. (The Alaskan languages have four modes; 'customary' is a compound aspect that can appear in all four.) In addition, a verb stem can often appear in two or more stem-set configurations. These additional configurations are what H has termed aspectival or aspectual stem sets. In Hoijer 1949 (and again in Sapir & Hoijer 1967:101-3), a system ofnine aspectual categories in the Navajo verb stem is outlined: momentaneous (the most frequent), continuative, repetitive, semelfactive, diversative, reversative, distributive, conative, and transitional. While these categories are...