An innovative methodology for learning Polish inflection (review)

The title and the author’s brief description of this valuable book (4) notwithstanding, it has little, if anything, to do with methodology, innovative or otherwise. Nor, I think, will many agree that it is suitable for the learner—it could not, realistically, be used in beginning classrooms for purposes of instruction. It is not a textbook, or other instructional tool, but a reference that provides the inflectional paradigms attested by Polish substantives (i.e. nouns and adjectives) and adverbs. Focusing on substantives, it enumerates the features of inflectional morphology and morphophonemics that define them, and establishes the cooccurrence of these features. Each pattern of cooccurrence yields a paradigm type, which is exemplified with a list of lexical items at-testing it. The result is an exhaustive taxonomy of substantival inflection (Chs. 2–5), preceded by a brief summary of the bases of classification (Ch. 1) and followed by a taxonomy of adverbial inflection (Ch. 6).

McShane, although misleading in her characterization of the book as a methodology, summarizes the result accurately: ‘there is no guessing about which rules apply to what words’ (4). This is true because there is no attempt on M’s part to generate inflectional paradigms from citation forms or underlying representations. Nor was this her intent, which is clear from her statement with regard to existing sources that ‘there was still something lacking—an inventory of words for which all forms were spelled out’ (4). M fills the lacuna by providing such an inventory within the framework of a catalogue of fully specified paradigms, and that is the extent of her interaction with the corpus. In contrast, textbooks and linguistic descriptions typically do not offer a catalogue, but instead offer citation forms or underlying representations from which paradigm types are predictable via the application of rules that specify not only the features that distinguish the paradigms, but those that unite them as well. In pedagogical contexts, the choice of citation forms and the decisions made about the content and format of rules may legitimately be said to constitute a methodology. M is correct that such methodologies and the generalizations they reflect bring their own difficulties—they can be difficult to understand, they can have exceptions, and they may not accommodate the entire corpus (4–5). They are nevertheless considered valuable by pedagogues because they reflect, to varying degrees, a system, and thus make it unnecessary for students to learn patterns as if they had nothing in common.

Understood as a compendium and reference of paradigms types, this book becomes a contribution of significance. Sources of its scope and detail are few in number, if they exist at all, and those Slavicists whose interest is Polish inflectional morphology, as well as advanced students who wish to see the corpus of patterns that provided the point of departure for the generalizations in their textbooks, will welcome and appreciate it. There are minor difficulties, the most important and evident being the absence of a word index, which renders the book much less convenient for consultation than it would otherwise have been. The author would be well advised to add such an index should the book require a second printing. In addition, the list of references (125) is inadequate. Alexander Schenker’s book on Polish nominal declension (Polish declension, The Hague: Mouton, 1964) as well as the Polish orthographical dictionary (Słownik ortograficzny języka polskiego, Warsaw: PWN, 1976) and other relevant sources should have been included. Brief comparative discussion of their approaches, as opposed to the author’s approach, would have helped to make her goal clearer.