A descriptive analysis of Cypriot Maronite Arabic By Maria Tsiapera (review)

748LANGUAGE, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 4 (1974) REFERENCES Alston, R. C. 1965. A bibliography of the English language from the invention of printing to the year 1800. Leeds: E. J. Arnold & Son. ----- (ed.) 1967-68. English linguistics, 1500-1800. [A series of facsimile reprints of early works on the English language.] Menston, England: Scolar Press. Chomsky, Noam, and M. Halle. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row. Danielsson, Bror (ed.) 1955-1963. John Hart's works on English orthography and pronunciation, I—II. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Dobson, E. J. 1957. English pronunciation, 1500-1700. London: Oxford University Press. Ellis, A. J. 1867-89. On Early English pronunciation. (Early English Text Society Series, 2, 7, 14, 23, 25.) London: Trübner. Gabrielson, A. 1909. Rime as a criterion of the pronunciation of Spenser, Pope, Byron, and Swinburne. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell. ------. 1930. Edward Bysshe's dictionary of rhymes (1702) as a source of information on Early Modern English pronunciation. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell. Halle, M., and S. J. Keyser. 1967. Review of Danielsson 1963. Lg. 43.773-87. Hodges, Richard. 1643. A special help to orthography. (Reprinted by Alston, 1967-68.) Postal, P. M. 1968. Aspects of phonological theory. New York: Harper & Row. Viëtor, W. 1906. Shakespeare's pronunciation: a Shakespeare phonology. Marburg: Elwert. Wallis, John. 1653. Grammatica linguae Anglicanae. (Reprinted by Alston, 1967-68.) Wang, W. S-Y. 1969. Competing changes as a cause of residue. Lg. 45.9-25. Wolfe, Patricia M. 1972. Linguistic change and the great vowel shift in English. Berkeley & Los Angeles : University of California Press. Wright, J. 1896-1905. English dialect dictionary. Oxford: University Press. Wyld, H. C. 1923. Studies in English rhyme from Surrey to Pope. London: John Murray. Zachrisson, R. E. 1913. Pronunciation of English vowels, 1300-1700. (Göteborgs Kung. Vetenskaps- och Vitterhetssamhälles hanlingar, 4. fölkden, 14:2.) Göteborg: Zachrisson. ——. 1927. The English pronunciation at Shakespeare's time as taught by William Bullokar. Uppsala : Almqvist & Wiksell. A descriptive analysis of Cypriot Maronite Arabic. By Maria Tsiapera. (Janua linguarum, series practica, 66.) The Hague: Mouton, 1969. Pp. 69. /18.00. Reviewed by Peter A. Schreiber, University of Wisconsin As the title of this work may suggest, DACMA seems like a ghost out of the descriptivist past; this is in part because of its publication history—for, though published in 1969, it is Tsiapera's 1963 Texas dissertation. DACMA's general theoretical value is quite circumscribed, partly (though only partly) because of its period of original composition. It is a work that will currently be of direct significance mainly to Arabists, for it simply presents and taxonomically classifies certain phonological and morphological data of an isolated Arabic dialect. Without denying the fundamental importance of empirical data or of preliminary organizational classification, it must be clear that, in terms of contemporary linguistics, empirical data are interesting in direct proportion to the extent to which they can be evaluated as evidence for a particular theory (both of a language and of Language). In this respect, DACMA is quite meager; anyone interested in, say, the underlying REVIEWS749 principles of Cypriot Maronite Arabic (CMA) phonology, i.e. the principles that determine and govern the surface organizational facts, must ferret the information out for himself. Moreover, T adheres rigidly to a synchronic approach; her only concern is the description ofthe dialect itselfat a particular point in time, with only the most minimal general regard for its historical, dialectal, or sociolinguistic relations to other dialects and languages—in particular other Arabic dialects as well as Greek, the culturally dominant language of Cyprus. Though the introduction informs us that CMA is a Syrian Arabic dialect whose speakers have for six centuries been isolated from other Arabic speakers, virtually no explicit attention is subsequently paid to the potentially fascinating theoretical and empirical consequences of this linguistic isolation. Again, anyone interested in such questions must go outside the one-page thumbnail sketch given in the introduction. Essentially, all that can be found in DACMA is segmentation and classification ofthe phonological and morphological data. Aside from a brief introduction, T presents eight chapters that constitute the linguistic description: phonology (13-24), phonotactics (25-30), morphophonemics (31-3), the verb (34-47), nouns (48-56...