A Grammatical Sketch of Somali (review)

In this work Dubnov provides a brief study of So-mali grammar based on Northern or Northern-Central Somali, considered to be ‘standard’ and different from the Southern dialects (9). Speakers of Somali, a member of the Eastern group of the Cushitic languages, populate many countries in East Africa, spanning from Northeastern Kenya to Ogaden in Eastern Ethiopia and Eastern Djibouti (9).

The data in this work is based on (i) articles from the Somali Communist Party newspaper, Xiddigata Octoobar (1983) that is no longer published, (ii) folklore texts collected by two scholars of Somali in 1956 and 1996, and (iii) ‘field research among native-speaking Somalis’ from different regions in Somalia and Ogaden (11). It is not clear in regard to (iii) whether D actually conducted her research in these regions or among Somali speakers in the diaspora (as a result of the wars that have plagued the country in the past several years). In addition, D states that the main source of material in this monograph was Standard Somali based on the variety spoken in the North (11). Folklore materials in languages often deviate from the ‘standard’ variety, which makes it hard to reconcile D’s claim of using folk literature and at the same time adhering to the ‘standard’ variety.

The monograph is divided into the following major headings: ‘Phonetics and phonology’ (12–20), ‘Morphology’ (21–73), and ‘Syntax’ (73–96). In addition, there is an appendix comprising a text from the aforementioned defunct newspaper, a translation of this text, and ‘lexico-grammatical commentary’ (96–99). Each of the preceding major headings is further subdivided into subsections that provide brief discussions of relevant linguistic features. For example, under morphology, D discusses inflectional elements such as nouns and their derivations, pronouns and their types, numerals, verbs, and so on. Specific features of Somali that D points out are ‘Words of dual nature, known as attributive verbs’ and ‘the absence of prepositions, their [sic] functions are performed by pre-verbs’ (21). In a later section, however, D attempts to treat attributive verbs and mentions two different approaches to them, one of which she finds to be the most satisfying—an approach discussed in

R. Ajello and A. Puglielli’s 1988 article in Cushitic-Omotic: Papers from the International Symposium on Cushitic and Omotic Languages. D does not provide reasons for the adoption of this approach, nor does she explain why it is more satisfactory. The second approach is not discussed.

The bibliography suffers from errors. Incomplete citations or misspellings of authors’ names and/or their works are evident in many places. For example, D refers to B. W. Andrzejewski’s 1931 work (10), which is not included in the bibliography, and a 1978 conference resulting in a work by E. Cerulli is dated 1964 (10). This work could have used careful editing, both in expression and production. Misplaced punctuation marks (62, n. 27 and elsewhere) and footnotes (71, n. 31) often lead to infelicitous readings.