Soziologie und Politik der Sprachen Europas By Harald Haarmann (review)

REVIEWS477 more advanced phase of research, various systems with differing distinctive features could be set up for each level of speech. Nevertheless, choosing a dictionary as one's only source of lexical information is almost as arbitrary as trusting one's memory or that of a few speakers. This method has been applied here to a synchronic study of modern Italian, but it might equally successfully be applied to a comparative study. As A remarks, the use of a computer readily enables one to carry out a quantitative study of the same system in several languages— he has done this for the system of (dog sounds) in Italian, English, and Dutch (38-40)—to observe which has more lemmata and why. This might also be useful for a diachronic study of semantic structures—with which, however, A is not concerned here. Yet his historical concept of the genesis of the lexicon could be of great interest to such a study. In conclusion, then, Alinei's book marks an importantnew direction in semantics; it combines and, to a certain extent, goes beyond the theories hitherto put forward by both generativists and non-generativists on the possibilities of structuring the lexicon. However, further results of the application of this method in semantic studies will be needed before we can finally judge its validity. [Received 9 September 1976.] Soziologie und Politik der Sprachen Europas. By Harald Haarmann. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1975. Pp. 436. DM 12.80. Reviewed by Glenn G. Gilbert, Southern Illinois University This is a kind of Guinness book ofworld records pitting the languages of Europe against each other. But instead of naming the languages which are outstanding in various competitive categories, Haarmann inundates the reader with an enormous quantity of politico-linguistic data, cross-classified in myriad schemes, providing a relatively inexpensive data bank from which the researcher can draw his own conclusions. Data are supplied for sixty-four languages and five Kultur-dialects. Since the boundaries of the European continent make up the geographical framework of H's analysis, he includes such little-known languages as Votyak, Cheremis, and Vepsian (Uralic), and Bashkir, Karaim, and Kalmyk (Altaic). Excluded are the southeast border languages with most speakers outside Europe: Turkish, Kazakh, Armenian, and the Caucasian languages. Figures, tables, and descriptions are provided regarding number of speakers and geographic locations, increase or decrease in speakers in the 20th century, bilingualism and multilingualism, genetic groupings, sociolinguistic typology of European nations, language history, standardization , ausbau, and the lingua francas of Europe from antiquity to the present, with their subsequent extension outside Europe. Following this are 170 pages of 'language sketches' arranged in descending order bynumber ofspeakersin Europe.1 The valuable 16-page bibliography includes standard works as well as lesserknown titles in a colorful variety of languages. Although H provides a certain amount of cross-referencing, the lack of an index makes the book much less convenient for reference than it would otherwise have been. The book shows a mixture of strengths and weaknesses, with the former outweighing the latter. The following remarks are directed in a constructive spirit to 1 By this arrangement, the first ten are Russian, German, English, Italian, French, Ukrainian, Polish, Spanish, Dutch, and Rumanian. The last ten are Yurak Samoyed, Lapp, JudeoSpanish , Vepsian, Kashubian, Karaim, Ingrian, Livonian, Votic, and Manx Gaelic. 478LANGUAGE, VOLUME 53, NUMBER 2 (1977) those laymen and scholars who might want to use the book for informative or scholarly purposes. Although H's style is refreshingly clear, with short, unconvoluted sentences (welcome to those whose German is not especially fluent), the book is hardly meant to be read from cover to cover. Since much the same data are presented in different arrangements (tabular, prose etc.), there is excessive repetition. A good portion of the text appears to be constructed from card files; the horizontal continuity is not good (which does not diminish the book's value as a reference work, of course). A worse problem is the lack of even a single orientation map, in a book where geography plays such a prominent role. While reading through the long, tedious lists of place names, one is reminded of those linguistic atlases which display...