Samoan reference grammar By Ulrike Mosel and Even Hovdhaugen (review)

612 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 70, NUMBER 3 (1994) tion and expansion of Paul Joùon's 1923 Grammaire de l'hébreu biblique (2 vols.; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1991), which is cited throughout. The user, then, is urged to mine this work for the forms it cannot yet account for; to recast its system ofrules in more elegant guise; and above all to apply to its materials advances in phonological theory both already devised and yet to come. Like R. M. W. Dixon's Dyirbal grammar for an earlier generation, this book will be important both in theoretical phonology and in the philology of its field for years to come. [Peter T. Daniels, University of Chicago.] The Oxford companion to the English language. Ed. by Tom McArthur. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. xxix, 1184. Cloth $45.00. This volume is at the same time a reviewer's delight and despair: delight in that only rarely in their academic career will reviewers be given the opportunity to review so impressive a piece of scholarly work as this volume undoubtedly represents; despair in that the resulting Book Notice may read like the publisher's blurb. The volume includes about 3,500 alphabetically ordered entries, ofwhich more than a third are authored by Tom McArthur himself, with the rest contributed by some 90 (mostly British and American) scholars of English language and linguistics. There are three types of entries: essay -like, dictionary-like, and biographical entries . Major entries, e.g. on national varieties, are followed by brief bibliographies. All entries are interwoven with each other by means of a refined system of cross-references which time and again seduces the reader into endless browsing. The main body of the volume is followed by an index of persons mentioned in individual entries and/or bibliographies. The volume is organized into 22 large, partly overlapping topic areas, which can roughly be divided into two groups—a first group which is more narrowly concerned with language (grammar , language, name, speech, style, usage, variety , word, writing) and a second group consisting of the areas of biography, education, geography (plus the self-contained subthemes Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania), history, literature, media, and technology. Each of these themes has been given a separate entry which serves the reader as a very helpful table of contents. This Oxford companion contains everything the reader would have expected, and more. For example, there are detailed entries for each letter , giving information on, among other things, its sound value(s), the sound and letter combinations it enters into, and American/British differences in spelling and/or pronunciation. Or take the largest topic area of all, language and languages , which constitutes a dictionary of linguistics in its own right. Of course, as the editor had rightly foreseen (vii), one may not agree with the wording or the content of all entries; for instance, there is a rather idiosyncratic selection ofdates in the chronology of English and English-speaking nations (475-81). In addition, one may miss the odd entry: why, for example, is (conversational) implicature not included, given that speech act is? But ultimately any criticism of this sort cannot diminish this volume 's impressiveness in scope, detail, style, production quality, and overall readability. Calling the book an 'interim report', as McArthur does (xvii, xxiv), is more modesty than even the most critical reader will accept. It is more appropriate to say that the editor/author, and his wife as managing editor, have ventured the seemingly impossible and succeeded. The result is indeed a life's companion to anybody even only mildly interested in English language and linguistics. It is hard to imagine that it will ever be surpassed, except (perhaps) by the second edition already envisaged. [Bernd Kortmann, Freie Universität Berlin.] Samoan reference grammar. By Ulrike Mosel and Even Hovdhaugen . Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1992. Pp. xxii, 819. Cloth $65.00. Like most Austronesian languages, Samoan (Polynesian subbranch) is of great interest for language typology. It lacks inflection; its weak distinction between major word classes is syntactically based; and case marking is ergative, but there is neither a passive nor an antipassive, and are there no obligatory core...