The Sanskritgerund: A synchronic, diachronic, and typological analysis By Bertil Tikkanen (review)

210 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 66, NUMBER 1 (1990) The fourth article, by Winfield S. Bennett & Jonathan Slocum, details the properties of the METAL system developed at the Linguistic Research Center (LRC) at the University of Texas at Austin. The authors consider the practical applications of the system, and append samples of German to English translations. 'The Japanese government project for machine translation' , by Makato Nagao et al. , describes a project whose purpose is to demonstrate the feasibility of machine translation of scientific abstracts between Japanese and English . Nagao et al. provide information on the overall project, the grammar-writing system, the Japanese analysis dictionary, Japanese sentence analysis, transfer and generation in English , evaluation methods applied to determine translation quality, and, in the appendices, sample output. The sixth article, by Muriel Vasconcellos & Marjorie Léon, is entitled 'SPANAM and ENGSPAN: Machine translation at the Pan American Health Organization.' These systems were developed for internal use by the Pan American Health Organization for translation from Spanish to English and from English to Spanish. The article describes the project's history and its current status, the application environment , the general translation approach, linguistic techniques, computational techniques , and practical experience with the system . The last article, by Pierre Isabelle & Laurent Bourbeau, is 'TAUM-AVIATION: Its technical features and some experimental results ' ; see my review ofLehrberger & Bourbeau elsewhere in this issue of Language for discussion of this project. The book concludes with ? machine(-aided) translation bibliography' compiled by Jonathan Slocum. This bibliography, which covers documents written in English, French, and German during the years 1973-1986, is an extremely valuable starting point for new researchers in the field of machine translation. [Jessie Pinkham, DePaul University, Chicago.] TheSanskritgerund: A synchronic, diachronic , and typological analysis. By Bertil Tikkanen. (Studia Orientalia , 62.) Helsinki: The Finnish Oriental Society, 1987. Pp. vi, 378. This book, the author's University ofHelsinki doctoral thesis, is a multifaceted study of a category of Sanskrit grammar which has often been commented upon but never investigated in detail . T sets for himself the monumental task of providing a synchronic study of the gerund (in a functional syntactic framework) within almost the entire range of Sanskrit literature, which necessarily, given the vast span ofthat literature (nearly 3,000 years), possesses also a diachronic dimension. However, even this daunting task does not exhaust T's goal, which includes typology , hence comparison—both with other Indo-European languages and with other language groups of South(east) and Central Asia. By the time we are done, we have what amounts almost to an encyclopedia of clause-linkage in much of Eurasia. T's methodology is thorough and commendable . He begins with a survey ofresearch on the gerund from Pânini up to the most recent work of F. B. J. Kuiper and Hans Hock (Ch. 1 :7-75). The bulk of this research is seen to focus on the morphology and etymology of the gerund. Without minimizing the importance of these matters, T pleads for the primacy of a synchronie-descriptive approach, arguing correctly that the (past) gerund has undergone extensive prehistoric reinterpretation and grammaticalization, so that its origin as an instrumental action-noun belonging to the same paradigm as the -turn infinitive is only marginally relevant to its synchronic function. The bulk ofthe book then goes on to study the gerund synchronically with regard to its lexical and aspectual distribution (Ch. 2:76-95), its function within the nonfinite system of the Sanskrit verb as well as its aspect and voice (Ch. 3:96-140), and its syntax and functions per se (Ch. 4:141-211). Also methodologically important is the discussion of competing and contrasting structures (Ch. 5:21246 ), which situates the gerund in relation to other exponents and types of clause-linkage in Sanskrit. A final chapter examines the etymology and development of the gerund, including both Indo-European and non-Indo-European formal and functional parallels. Because the Sanskrit gerund is shown to be distinguished from its Indo-European functional counterparts on all linguistic levels, while at the same time the (past) gerund appears fully established in both form and function already in the Rigveda, T looks for non-Indo-European influences within an areal linguistic...