Mother of Writing: The origin and development of a Hmong Messianic script By William A. Smalley, Chía Koua Vang, and Gnia Yee Yang, and: Hmong Njua: Syntaktische Analyse einer gesprochenen Sprache mithilfe datenverarbeitungstechnischer Mittel und sprachvergleichende Beschreibung des südostasiatischen Sprachraumes By Bettina Harriehausen (review)

REVIEWS165 Halle, Morris, and Michael Kenstowicz. 1989. On cyclic and noncyclic stress. Cambridge , MA: MIT, ms. Halle, Morris, and Jean-Roger Vergnaud. 1978. Metrical structures in phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT, ms. Hayes, Bruce. 1981. A metrical theory of stress rules. New York: Garland. [Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation, 1980.] ------. 1982. Extrametricality and English stress. Linguistic Inquiry 13.227-76. Kiparsky, Paul. 1973. 'Elsewhere' in phonology. A Festschrift for Morris Halle, ed. by Stephen R. Anderson and Paul Kiparsky, 93-106. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Levin, Juliette. 1988. Generating ternary feet. Texas Linguistic Forum 29.97-113. [University of Texas, ms, 1985.] Liberman, Mark, and Alan Prince. 1977. On stress and linguistic rhythm. Linguistic Inquiry 8.249-336. McCarthy, John J., and Alan Prince. 1986. Prosodie morphology. Brandeis University and University of Massachusetts, ms. ------, ------. 1988. Quantitative transfer in reduplicative and templatic morphology. Linguistics in the morning calm 2, ed. by Seuk-Dik Kim, 3-35 Seoul: The Linguistic Society of Korea. ------, ------. 1990. Foot and word in prosodie morphology: The Arabic broken plural. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8.209-84. Miner, Kenneth L. 1979. Dorsey's law in Winnebago-Chiwere and Winnebago accent. International Journal of American Linguistics 45.25-33. Prince, Alan. 1983. Relating to the grid. Linguistic Inquiry 14.19-100. Rappaport, Malka. 1984. Issues in the phonology of Tiberian Hebrew. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation. Department of Linguistics[Received 21 June 1991; 501 Calhoun Hallrevision received 24 September 1991.] The University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas 78712-1196 Mother of Writing: The origin and development of a Hmong Messianic script. By William A. Smalley, Chía Koua Vang, and Gnia Yee Yang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Pp. xii, 221. $15.95. Hmong Njua: Syntaktische Analyse einer gesprochenen Sprache mithilfe datenverarbeitungstechnischer Mittel und sprachvergleichende Beschreibung des südostasiatischen Sprachraumes. By Bettina Harriehausen. (Linguistische Arbeiten, 245.) Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1990. Pp. xxv, 307. DM 128.00. William Bright, University of Colorado* Among languages spoken by recent arrivals in the United States, one of the most interesting is Hmong—introduced by immigrants from Laos who fled their homeland, starting in 1975, because of the Indochina war. Varieties of this language (a member of the Hmong-Mien family) are spoken by perhaps as many * Thanks for my introduction to Hmong go to Ka Yang and to Annie Jaisser; and, for other help, to William Smalley and to Lise Menn. 166LANGUAGE, VOLUME 68, NUMBER 1 (1992) as six million people, centered in southern China and in adjacent areas of Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. The best known varieties in Laos and Thailand are Hmong Daw and Hmong Njua; these are, at least in part, mutually intelligible . Overseas populations now exist in France, French Guiana, and Australia ; and there are some 85,000 speakers in the US, especially in California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.1 The Hmong people have historically lived as minority populations in mountainous areas, practicing slash-and-burn agriculture and lacking any established writing system. It is remarkable that, since 1950, two successful writing systems have been created for Hmong, each with its community of literates. One of these, the so-called Romanized Popular Alphabet (RPA), was devised in 1951— 53 by a missionary group which included William Smalley, and is now widely used. The other, the unique 'Pahawh Hmong', is said to have been revealed in 1959 to a native religious leader, Shong Lue Yang—called by his disciples the 'Mother (i.e. source) of Writing'—and has continued to be taught since his assassination in 1971. Both writing systems have unusual characteristics, and the Pahawh Hmong presents phenomena perhaps unique in the history of written language; these are the topic of the book by Smalley et al. here under review (hereafter MW). The book by Harriehausen is a descriptive syntax of Hmong Njua as currently spoken in California (and will be abbreviated HN); I will discuss it more briefly.2 1. MW has the distinction of being written by Smalley (the missionary who was one of the inventors of the RPA) in collaboration with two Hmong men who are active in transmitting Shong Lue Yang's messianic message as well as his writing system. As Smalley tells us, since...