The Editor's Department

THE EDITOR'S DEPARTMENT Correction. Joseph Salmons has sent the following correction to certain points in Steve Peter's review (Language 70:182-84, 1994) of his book Accentual change and language contact: Comparative survey and a case study of early Northern Europe; Steve Peter's review of my 1992 book Accentual change and language contact contains errors which could lead to major misunderstandings of the work. First, Peter claims that the book's 'major thesis' is 'that the initial stress of Celtic and Germanic, and perhaps Italic, stems from areal influence of Uralic languages' (182, similarly on 183). The actual thesis, stated on p. 1 of the book and elsewhere, is that accentual systems are prone to change in even moderate language contact settings and that an areal accentual pattern existed across early northwestern Europe. The putative thesis that Peter attributes to the book does arise, but is discussed quite speculatively, since Finno-Ugric-northwest Indo-European contacts are too obscure for serious historical accentology. Second , Peter fails to make clear that the volume is dedicated in substantial part to developing a specific theory of accentual change (pp. 17-76), including language -internal accentual change. He does not characterize this theory in any detail. Third, Peter fails to make it clear that the book's emphasis is on Germanic -Celtic contacts. Fourth, in saying that '[i]f one follows S, IE languages in contact with other languages tend for some unexplained reason to give up their accentual systems in favor of the non-Indo-European system' (182), Peter gives the erroneous impression that the book associates genetic affiliation with direction of accentual change. Fifth, Peter's statement that '[u]nfortunately for S, Balto-Slavic has anything but fixed initial stress' (183) suggests that this issue is not addressed in the book. In fact, it is discussed explicitly and in detail; Balto-Slavic is marginal to the northwestern Sprachbund in the relevant era. Sixth, Peter implies (183) that the book does not deal with the history of Uralic (or Finno-Ugric) accent, but in fact this is discussed, noting the general agreement among specialists that Proto-Finno-Ugric had initial stress accent. Seventh , Peter writes it 'seems' to him 'that the direction of change in the situations discussed by S is from morphological stress ... to fixed stress' (184). This view is actually explicitly argued in the book (using the term 'pitch accent' for many systems that Peter calls 'free stress' or 'morphological stress' systems). Eighth, Peter's comment that 'S seems to subscribe to the Leiden School of thought that IE was a tonal language' is in error; his reading is not the intended one, and the brief, speculative passage in question pertains to Pre-Indo-European, not Proto-Indo-European (as in the Leiden view). Finally, Peter suggests the volume 'would like to derive' Indo-European tone loss from language contact. This is not suggested. 624 ...