Studies in Romance nouns extracted from past participles By Emanuel S. Georges. Revised by Jerry R. Craddock and Yakov Malkiel. (review)

740LANGUAGE, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 4 (1974) Data on dialects are lavishly provided by L. Those who believe that dialectal differences reside essentially in rule shufflings and generalization will find ample comfort: the [t] of [da:mótios] 'public' undergoes assibilation—but, in Attic, not the sibilant weakening which affects primary [s], thus [ds:mosios]; in contrast, Argive [da:moios] indicates transposition. Even the more doubtful concept (to me) of ' non-chronological ' ordering as a mechanism of change within a uniform isolated dialect appears to obtain some support. Older [basils :es] 'kings' (nom. pi.) contracts to [basite:s] in classical Attic. The 4th-century [basile:s] (255 fn.) implies the insertion of a rule for hiatus shortening ([e:es > ees > e:s]); at any rate, that is how we may reformulate L's reference to the analogy of genitive plural [basiléa:n]. With the incorporation of the Mycenean material, this work probably provides the most complete, readily accessible, and readable source of information on the phonology of ancient Greek. It will be particularly welcome to those of us who feel that the thorough investigation of well-known languages provides the most promising field for solid advance in phonological theory. Lejeune's exposition is a model of clarity and elegance. However, in an age when 'French-less linguist' is no longer a contradiction in terms, a competent English translation would be very welcome. Studies in Romance nouns extracted from past participles. By Emanuel S. Georges. Revised by Jerry R. Craddock and Yakov Malkiel. (University of California publications in linguistics, 63.) Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970. Pp. xvi, 180. Reviewed by Julius Purczinsky, Hunter College Since the author of this study died before it could be put into final form for publication, his work has been revised by Malkiel and Craddock. (For an obituary notice, see Romance Philology 21.365-7, 1968.) In the preface, the revisors indicate what part each played in preparing the monograph for publication: Malkiel has revised the section 'Past-participial nouns in Old Spanish,' which forms the main body of the work, while Craddock has combined numerous sections from Georges' dissertation into the introductory chapter, ? survey of past-participial nouns in the Romance languages'. The glossary of pertinent Old Spanish forms which completes the monograph has been published without change. The original dissertation, it should be mentioned, was much longer and included a chapter that the revisors decided to publish separately ('Past-participial nouns: their development from Latin to Romance', Romance Philology 21.368-91, 1968). A past-participial noun is defined for the purposes of this study as 'a substantive coinciding in form with the past participle of a verb' (p. 1). The systematic substantivization of the past participle as adjective is rightly excluded from direct consideration here, and the object of investigation is the rise of new nouns having the form of the past participle: 'The subject at hand is, rather, the formation of déverbal abstracts, or action nouns, lacking any necessary semantic ties to the preterite and passive functions of the p.-PTC suffix' (p. 2, emphasis added). Both a historical theory and a scheme of semantic typology are invoked to account for the proliferation and relative importance ofthe class ofpast-participial nouns in various Romance languages. Within this framework, it becomes possible REVIEWS741 to make causal statements about the different formal and semantic types of pastparticipial nouns and to explain their varying fortunes in terms of shifts and pressures within dialects—in short, to subject them to the type of genetic analysis introduced into historical linguistics by Malkiel. The authors ascribe the origin of the participial noun to the fusion of Latin «-stem masculines in -tus with the few Latin neuters of the second declension derived from past participles. The resulting type is established as a neuter o-stem on the basis of Rumanian (p. 4) and Provençal evidence (24). A dating of Third Century A.D. (as terminus ante quern) is asserted for this fusion on the basis of the comparative isolation, after that date, of the dialect from which Rumanian derives. The development of the participial noun is 'ideally' projected in four stages (p. 2): (1) the...