A sketch of diachronic English morphology By Alfred Bammesberger (review)

212 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 62, NUMBER 1 (1986) Jay Keyser & Wayne O'Neil, 'Exceptions to high vowel deletion in the Vespasian Psalter and their explanation', argue for a monophthongal interpretation of OE digraphs within a metrical account of syllable structure. Fran Colman & John Anderson, 'Front umlaut: A celebration of 2nd fronting, i'-umlaut, Ufe, food and sex', develop an account of Mercian fronting and iumlaut in terms of dependency grammar. Donka Minkova discusses 'Middle EngUsh final -e from a phonemic point of view'. Four contributions on socioünguistic topics are included: Gillis Kristensson. 'Dialectology and historical linguistics', discusses the Ught that dialect surveys have shed on the history of English. Jim Milroy, 'On the sociolinguistic history of /h/-dropping in English', applies the findings ofvariation studies, in particular of non-standard dialects, to the history of the loss of initial /h/ from stressed syllables. Raven I. McDavid, 'Sociolinguistics and historical Unguistics', disputes the 'artifact of "Black EngUsh" ', with pleas for input from the history of non-standard (white) English in England and elsewhere to the study ofBlack speech. Ann Stewart, 'The diachronic study of communicative competence', considers the OE riddles in the Ught ofGrice's cooperative principle. FinaUy, there are three papers on miscellaneous topics: Winfried Nöth, 'Systems-theoretical principles ofthe evolution ofthe English language and Uterature' (translated from German by N. R. Norrick), discusses examples of language change in terms of feedback control systems. Juliette de Caluwé-Dor, 'Etymological convergence in the Katherine group', considers convergent etymologies: words derived not from a single source but from several, as ME teuelin 'argue' from OE taefl(i)an, ON tefla, and OF tablesltaubles—where traditional etymology would insist that you must choose one. Frans Plank, 'Coming into being among the Anglo-Saxons', the longest paper in the volume , seeks a semantic basis for the distinction ofaccusative, dative, and genitive objects in Old EngUsh. The over-aU quality of the papers is quite good; there is sure to be something here to interest scholars of English, English linguistics, socioUnguistics, syntax, or phonology. The volume concludes with the program of the conference and Ust of delegates. Of course, there are always reasons why some papers cannot be included in the proceedings of a conference, but I regret not having seen the five papers Usted in the program but not appearing in the book: Elizabeth Traugott, 'On the renewal ofpragmatic markers: The case of the causal clause markers '; O. Fischer & F. van der Leek, 'The demise ofthe impersonal construction'; J. Kerling , 'When the cleaners come marchingin: Old English poets and the Old English language'; Robert Stockwell, 'The abortive verb-2nd constraint in the history ofOld EngUsh syntax'; and G. Nixon 'Attraction: The synchronic description ofa diachronic process'. [JohnT. Jensen , University of Ottawa.] A sketch of diachronic English morphology . By Alfred Bammesberger . (Eichstätter Materialien, Sprache und Literatur, 7.) Regensburg : Pustet, 1984. Pp. 94. DM 19.80. B notes (7) that previous books on historical EngUsh grammar suffer from one of two shortcomings : either 'they project the sounds and forms of EngUsh back to [Germanic and IndoEuropean ], which are largely beyond the ken of the student of EngUsh philology'; or else they deal with 'comparative Germanic and Indo-European grammar', giving English only a very minor role. B's intent is to provide an account ofEnglish diachronic morphology whichfills the resulting gap. It is amazing how close he has come to fulfilling this seemingly impossible task in a mere 75 pages of text, despite some shortcomings in other respects. The main part ofthe book is divided into four chapters, one each for nouns, adjectives, pronouns , and verbs. The chapter structure for each is identical: a briefsketch ofthe IE systerti, then a more detailed description and comment on the OE material, concluding with a short outline of the historical developments to Modern English. There is nothing factual to quarrel with, but certain minor aspects of the presentation could be improved. (Thus the paradigms on 14, 15, 17, 18 etc. would be more useful for reference purposes if specificaUy labeled for gender and case, as appropriate; sometimes Latin examples are cited where examples from some member of the Germanic famüy could also be cited; the 'Tudor Vowel Shift', p...