Semitic and Indo-European: The principal etymologies by Saul Levin (review)

656 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 3 (1998) also reiterates the danger of the American confusing the seemingly agreeable back-channels from the Japanese listener with actual agreement. Ch. 8, 'The truth about teasing, praising, and repeating' (105-19), offers needed information and advice about teasing and joking in both cultures that has been sorely lacking in the past. Y also warns about the pitfalls ofpraising any Japanese and the potential American misinterpretation of the notion of individualhonesty whenitis tied to the Japanese reluctance to praise himself. Ch. 9, 'Role models: Working man, nurturing mother' (121-37), examines the roles that men and women play in Japan and in the U.S. and how these roles can have an impact on conversational style in and out of business settings. Ch. 10, 'You are what you speak' (139-48), explains the role of language in the construction of national identity, emphasizing the role that the Japanese language plays in the notion of what it means to be Japanese. This chapter appears at first to be off topic, but the notion ofidentity is connected to xenophobia, which can have an adverse impact on cross-cultural negotiations between Japanese and Americans. The back matter of the book contains worthwhile notes, (149-55), over 80 references (157-61), and a useful index (163-66). This admirable book illuminates many of the details of both Japanese and American conversational styles and provides much useful advice for businessmen from both countries. With Y's book in hand, the American can learn to refrain from labeling Japanese as self-effacing and inscrutable, while the Japanese can learn to refrain from labeling Americans as selfish and overly assertive. [Don R. McCreary, University of Georgia.] Semitic and Indo-European: The principal etymologies. By Saul Levin. (Current issues in linguistic theory, 129.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins , 1995. Pp. xxii, 514. This book presents what the author calls 'SemitoIndo -European' etymologies, grouped under five chapters: nonverbal nouns and their inflections (13-130), verbal roots (131-296), pronouns (297-365), prepositions (366-400), and numerals (401-55). Leaving aside derived forms, it contains 13 pairs of nouns, 44 of verbs, 7 of pronouns, 7 of prepositions, and 12 of numerals. This work continues the author's The Indo-European and Semitic languages (1971. Albany: SUNY Press), which received Oswald Szemerényi's harsh criticisms; see General Linguistics 13.101-9; 15.206-13; and also Levin's reply in General Linguistics 15.197-205. The author chooses words for comparison from different Semitic and Indo-European languages just because of their alleged resemblance, such as Hebrew iayin and Old English eagan (gen. sg. ofeage), 'eye' (38-40). However he is not interested in dealing with IE *okw- and Semitic *fayn- (Akkadian tnu, Arabic iayn), their etyma, and even less in establishing a regular set of correspondences, the basis of the comparative method. The same can be said about his comparing Hebrew bai 'he went in, came' with Greek bâ '(s)he came' (156-61), from baino, which does not take into account IE *g"m- (Latin uenio, Sanskrit gácchati < *gwm-sk-) and Semitic Jbw? (see David Cohen. 1976. Dictionnaire des racines sémitiques, 2, The Hague: Mouton, 50), etc. Sometimes he even chooses a case from the declension because this seems to better serve his purposes, as the gen./dat.sg. of Old High German Ora, Oren (Gothic ausO, IE *h\eus), compared to Hebrew ?ozen 'ear' (35-38). Furthermore, some of these etymologies challenge notjust the basics ofhistorical linguistics but also semantics. The author talks about 'displaced numerals' (412-23)—i.e., they look alike but have different meanings—when connecting Indo-European 'three' (*treies) to Semitic 'two' (*pn or *c3n, Akkadian sina, Arabic itnäni—see Igor M. Diakonoff. 1991-92. 'Proto-Afrasian and Old Akkadian' , Journal ofAfroasiatic Languages 4: 17); Indo-European 'ten' (*dekmt) to Semitic 'nine' (*ft'if or *tisî, cf. Diakonoff, 14-15), etc.; again L does not deal with the reconstructed (or common) forms I provide here. Very few of the words L compares may actually be related, but they should be regarded as early loans or perhaps as Wanderwörter or Kulturwörter, such as the words for 'bull' (14-28), IE *teh2uros (Latin taurus) and Semitic *taur- (or *caur-f*cur-, Akkadian sum, Arabic taur); for 'horn' (29-34), IE *krn (Latin cornü) and Semitic *qarn- (Akkadian qamu, Arabic qarn-), etc.; see Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and Vjaieslav V. Ivanov. 1995. Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans, I. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 769-73; Igor M. Diakonoff. 1984. 'On the original home of the speakers of Indo-European', Soviet Anthropology andArcheology 23/2.35-53. In some instances the author has moderated his previous positions, as when his linking Hebrew male? 'full' to Greekpolú 'much' (179-87) is studied in the light of only a Nostratic reconstruction proposed by IllicSvityc (187). In a previous paper (1991. 'Full and other key words shared by Indo-European and Semitic ', Sprung from a common source, ed. by Sydney M. Lamb and E. Douglas Mitchell. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 170 n. 7), he had included also Tagálog, Malay, Turkish, and Zulu. It is obvious that L does know Latin, Greek, and Hebrew well. Moreover he is quite keen to display his erudition, especially by using original scripts (Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Devanägari, etc.). But ultimately, this book does not deal with etymologies at all but with look-alikes. From the very beginning, the author BOOK NOTICES 657 himself declares the kinship between his approach and Alfredo Trombetti's (viii). This book is, thus, a continuation of such a prescientific and merely intuitive way of searching for etymologies. With the same lack of methodological awareness, the author could have broadened his scope by comparing also Greek potamos with Potomac, Latin deus, and Náhuatl teotl, etc. [Gonzalo Rubio, The Johns Hopkins University .] Psychology of language: A critical introduction . By Michael Forrester. London : Sage, 1996. Pp. viii, 216. $22.95. This book centers on three forms of communication : self-communication or thinking, talk, and text. In focusing on these topics, the author hopes to outline a psychology of language with an emphasis on communication in a broad sense of the term. Meant as an introduction for the psychology student, this book is especially concerned with pointing out differences between language as a structure and the process of communication, the relationship between methodology and the study of language, and research in domains which border psychology, e.g. conversational analysis, social semiotics, deixis, power relations m talk, and narrative analysis. In addition, the author also points out how the many different areas of language study contribute to a psychology of language concerned with communication processes. The introduction provides a brief historical overview of some of the most influential theories bearing upon the contemporary study of the psychology of language and provides some background to what is to be accomplished in the following chapters. The topic of the first two chapters is the relationship between language and thinking. The importance of Chomsky's ideas for the birth of psycholinguistics is stressed, in particular his conception of the mind as a recursive engine. Next, the cognition-dominant and the language-dominant views of the study of language are discussed. The author emphasizes that the study of meaning in psychology and psycholinguistics may be better understood within the framework of pragmatics. Ch. 3, with its focus on deixis, provides a transition to the next form of communication, talking: here the author discusses the three types of deixis, how children acquire appropriate use of deictic terms, and how these terms are used in conversation . The second theme, talk, is the focus of the next four chapters. Here the work ofconversational analysis (CA) is important. The author provides a critical consideration of the contribution that CA has made to the psychology of language and indicates the differences between nonverbal behavior and nonverbal communication. The author demonstrates that the study of conversation provides unique insights into how people manage their interactions, conceive of their roles and relations with each other, and may contest and reconceptualize their identities: turn taking and significance of interruptions rely on key aspects of the local management system. The next two chapters turn to the study of reading and writing. These chapters introduce the reader to semiotics and to discourse analysis. The last chapter highlights previously discussed aspects which suggest the postmodernist turn within the study of language . In an attempt to draw together the three focal points ofthis book, the emergence ofdiscourse analysis in social psychology is considered in some detail . This book provides an adequate basis and a good structure for a graduate course offered by a psychology department. It introduces the student to a large amount ofresearch in the field of psychology oflanguage , although additional reading will definitely be necessary. [Colette M. van Kerckvoorde, Simon 's Rock College.] An historical study ofEnglish: Function, form and change. By Jeremy Smith. London New York: Routledge, 1996. Pp. xvii, 225. $18.95. In spite of the recent increase in scholarly effort devoted to the history of the English language, the number of students who voluntarily enroll in courses on this topic remains limited. The author speculates that the reputation of language history courses as difficult and dry may be responsible for this situation. All too often, courses with a focus on the history of the English language limit themselves to providing a chronicle, a list of facts and notations, without considering some of the broader questions of causation and explanation with which the subject confronts us. Rather than being a chronicler who describes linguistic change, the author wants to be a historian, to generalize , and to explain. The central theme of this textbook is that it is necessary to consider the extralinguistic context when accounting for linguistic change. The author strives to take into account the historical, geographical, and sociological context of linguistic change and argues that it is possible to offer plausible explanations for language change as a result of historical insight. This work draws on both philological and linguistic traditions of writing about the history of English, which, for students of the history of the language, should be complementary disciplines rather than competitive paradigms. The author convincingly argues that both approaches provide valuable insights to contribute to our greater understanding of human language and its history. Only in integrating these approaches will our understanding of the history of languages progress. ...