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  • A Grammar of Southern Pomo by Neil Alexander Walker
  • William Salmon (bio)
A Grammar of Southern Pomo by Neil Alexander Walker University of Nebraska Press, 2020

southern pomo is a Pomoan language of the Clear Lake and Russian River areas of Northern California. The last native speaker of this language, Mrs. Olive Fulwider, passed away in 2014. A Grammar of Southern Pomo is the most extensive treatment of the language to date and is a development of the author's 2013 doctoral dissertation. The book is also connected to a revitalization movement for Southern Pomo in which the author participated on Dry Creek Rancheria.

Before proceeding further, let us see the language, with an example of a switch-reference sentence, for which Pomoan languages are well known. In the sentence below, the suffix -phla indicates that the event described in the dependent clause must occur before that of the main clause (ex. 530): The morphology of Southern Pomo is very complex—quite different from European languages like English—and the reader can see in the example above that much of the grammatical work is achieved via a rich array of suffixes.

mič:aćyey mehšekh:eʔwa
2-mother's.father-GS-PL.AGT with.nose-smell-FUT=COP.EVID
'Your grandfathers will smell (it) if you wash them nearby.'
ʔa:maya hiʔta das:ephla
2PL.AGT nearby with.palm-wash-D.IRR

It is important for individual cultural groups to preserve and if possible revitalize languages such as Southern Pomo. On a larger level, it is incumbent upon us as students of humanity to study all such languages. "Language" in general is often taken as a crucial part of the answer to the question, What does it mean to be human? To answer this in a satisfactory way, we need to know the possibilities of human language. We need to know how English, Spanish, and Russian work, and we need to know how Ewe, Māori, Ojibwe, and Southern Pomo work. For example, English has morphological tense markers for the past (-ed) and present (-s), but it has no future tense [End Page 182] marker. English speakers who wish to talk about the future must use auxiliaries like will, shall, gonna, fixing to, and so on. Southern Pomo, on the other hand, has two future tense markers, -kh:e- and -ṱi-, but it has no tense marker for past or present. A Grammar of Southern Pomo thus contributes to the question of what a possible human language is and at the same time lays down a record for those who would revitalize language as a part of their own cultural history.

The book includes three main sections, focused on the history and cultural context of the language, the sound and word structure of the language, and phenomena beyond the word level. Two appendices contain photographs and documents of the author's visit with the last living speaker of Southern Pomo and sample texts, transcriptions, and notes.

A Grammar of Southern Pomo clearly shows that Walker is a teacher, which is reflected in what he chooses to write about and how he presents it. He writes as if he is not simply recording the grammar for posterity but instead taking his reader through a learning process. He teaches continually about Southern Pomo in the book but also about general linguistics: for example, the way clitics work and tests from the linguistics literature for identifying clitics on pages 63–78. He seems to be writing for linguists here, but he does not leave behind the nonspecialists. His work consistently engages with earlier treatments of Southern Pomo, for example, the work of Abraham Halpern (1960s–1980s) and Robert Oswalt (1930s–1980s). This engagement is important, because the earlier accounts often vary; Walker is careful to argue in favor of those he believes to be most accurate. His arguments can at times feel distracting in a descriptive grammar but are valuable to those who would continue their study beyond this book.

It is difficult to point out shortcomings in a book such as this, but it would be useful to see a...

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