The languages of native America: Historical and comparative assessment Ed. by Lyle Campbell and Marianne Mithun (review)

440LANGUAGE, VOLUME 58, NUMBER 2 (1982) the general reader. But lest this volume's slim size be taken as a measure of H's contribution, it is well to remember that he had to collect and analyse most of the basic language data himself. It is fortunate that someone of Heath's abilities has undertaken the long-term commitment which such a project requires . The result is a milestone in the study of diffusion, as well as a major contribution to Australian linguistics. REFERENCES Bendix, Edward H. 1974. Indo-Aryan and Tibeto-Burman contact as seen through Nepali and Newari verb tenses. International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics 3.42-59. Blake, Barry J. 1977. Case marking in Australian languages. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. ------. 1979. Australian case systems: Some typological and historical observations. Australian linguistic studies, ed. by Stephen A. Wurm, 323-94. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Dixon, Robert M. W. 1980. The languages of Australia. Cambridge: University Press. Gumperz, John J., and Robert Wilson. 1971. Convergence and creolization: A case from the Indo-Aryan/Dravidian border in India. Pidginization and creolization of languages, ed. by Dell Hymes, 151-67. Cambridge: University Press. Hale, Kenneth. 1976. The adjoined relative clause in Australia. Grammatical categories in Australian languages, ed. by Robert M. W. Dixon, 78-105. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. King, Robert D. 1969. Push-chains and drag-chains. Glossa 3.3-21. Smith, Ian. 1978a. Sri Lanka Creole Portuguese phonology. International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics 7.248-406. -----. 1978b. Realignment and other convergence phenomena. Working Papers in Linguistics , University of Melbourne, 4.67-76. ------. 1979. Convergence in South Asia: A creóle example. Lingua 48.193-222. Weinreich, Uriel. 1953. Languages in contact: Findings and problems. New York: Linguistic Circle of New York. [Reprinted, The Hague: Mouton, 1974.] [Received 3 July 1981.] The languages of native America: Historical and comparative assessment. Ed. by Lyle Campbell and Marianne Mithun. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979. Pp. 1034. $22.50. Reviewed by Allan R. Taylor, University of Colorado The present volume, known to insiders as 'The black book', contains 17 essays by 14 prominent Amerindianist scholars, all Americans. These are preceded by an informative introduction by the editors—giving a succinct history of the classifications of North American Indian languages, and describing past and present leitmotifs in historical work in the field—and followed by a provocative postlude by Eric Hamp, in which he comments on the contents of the volume and on their significance for the future. The original intent of this study, which grew out of a conference organized by Campbell at the LSA 1976 Summer Meeting (Oswego, NY), was to evaluate the present state of historical work in North American Indian linguistics. Though a specific format for the essays was not suggested, most authors began REVIEWS441 with a brief sketch of the entity under discussion (the languages treated and the nature of their relationship, if any, sometimes with illustrative linguistic data), then devoted the main body of the paper to a careful description and evaluation of historical work done so far, and suggestions for new lines of research—either to bring achievements up to a minimum of respectability, or to lead the field to new successes. The exceedingly sturdy book was produced by photo-offset from cameraready typescript, submitted by the individual authors. The print is clear and readable. I noted a few typos, but only one serious one, where the word 'restated' was replaced by 'related' (introduction, p. 29, in a quote from Sapir). A detailed review would require more space than is available here, as well as a reviewer who is a specialist in all the languages and their bibliographies. Hamp's concluding essay (pp. 1001-15) itself comes close to satisfying these requirements; I recommend it as the first stop, after the editors' introduction, for any potential reader. As to the present review, it will of course reflect my own idiosyncrasies. The subject matter of Amerindian linguistics is traditionally defined neither genetically nor typologically, but rather geographically, especially since it was formalized at the end of the past century. Following Powell (1891:28), it is also traditional to divide the Americas (and hence the...