Old English legal language: The lexical field of theft By J. R. Schwyter (review)

BOOK NOTICES 223 Scotland, the Caribbean, Canada, and South Africa. As Schneider states in his overview of the field that introduces the volume (1 -1 2), the fifteen papers here are 'intended to mirror the breadth of research activities , [and] to provide a fair selection ofongoing highquality investigations in the analysis of American English' (1). The collection achieves its goal by presenting a wide variety oftheoretical and methodological approaches to an equally wide variety of topics. Historically, research in American English has been pursued rather differently within the two main traditions concerned with such work—dialect geography and sociolinguistics. While thelines separating these fields are becoming increasingly blurred, the traditional division is still apparent in many of the papers in this collection. Thus, Lee Pederson's description of 'Piney Woods Southern' (13-23) and Luanne von Schneidemesser's account of changes in the 'Terms used for children's games' (63-80) are clearly rooted in dialect geography. However, Timothy Frazer's review of research on "The dialects of the Middle West' (81-102) also discusses issues and works that are more sociolinguistic in orientation . Similarly, the dialectological roots are evident in the contributions by William Kretzschmar (25-50) who examines the role of focal areas in the diffusion of linguistic features and Lawrence Davis and Charles Houck (5 1 -62) who question the existence ofa separate Midland dialect, though both these papers expand the utility of traditional data sources (linguistic atlas records) through the application of statistical techniques. The sociolinguistic research tradition is represented in contributions by Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes (103-49) and Erik Thomas (149-68), who examine linguistic variation in previously isolated communities in coastal North Carolina and central Ohio respectively. Frank Maas's study of the plural marking in the English of Cuban exiles (195-210) continues the sociolinguistic tradition of investigating the language of ethnic minorities. Issues related to African American English are addressed by several papers including John Baugh's study of dialect perceptions (169-82) and Walter Edwards's investigation of sex-based variation in a Detroit community (183-94). Certain to be influential is Salikoko Mufwene's programmatic essay (231-64) stressing the need to consider both black and white vernaculars as products of language contact . Similar in spirit is the contribution by Michael Montgomery and Janet Fuller, who examine the status of verbal -s in nineteenth-century African American English through a comparative study of vernacular writings of blacks and whites (211-30). The final three papers in this collection are, for thematic and/or methodological reasons, less easily grouped with others. Barbara Fennell and Ronald Butters offer a thorough account of the 'Historical and contemporary distribution of double modals in English' (265-88) that includes inter alia the only syntactic trees in the volume. Connie Eble discusses 'American college slang' (289-96). Finally, Dennis Preston uses data from his studies in perceptual dialectology to assess folk linguistic beliefs about 'Where the worst English is spoken' (297-360). The one notable absence among the contributors to this collection is William Labov, whose recent work has explored the distribution of certain patterns of sound change across the US. Nevertheless, given the array of approaches represented and topics addressed , this volume certainly offers readers an interesting and useful sampling of current research trends in American English. [Matthew J. Gordon, University ofMichigan.] Old English legal language: The lexical field of theft. By J. R. Schwyter (NOWELE supplement vol. 15.) Odense: Odense University Press, 1996. Pp. 197. Dkr. 225. Schwyter sets out to examine the Old English words, including nouns and verbs, semantically related to the notion of theft. His corpus consists of the Old English law codes and 39 documents containing descriptions oflawsuits. The method proposed is lexical field theory complemented by an investigation of the syntactic and textual contexts in which the lexemes occur. The lexical field is determined by including all lexemes covering the concept of theft or robbery and sharing the sense-component of 'illegal taking'. All in all, 38 lexemes are found in the law codes and 20 in the documents These are presented and discussed as far as their frequency and textual distribution is concerned. A promising...