Le système verbal dans les langues oubangiennes Ed. by Raymond Boyd (review)

BOOK NOTICES 889 pects of lexical phonology and morphology' (115-149), discuss phonology-morphology interaction and consider the relevance of lexical phonology for German. Ch. 6, 'Underspecification: An analysis of markedness and defaults' (150-77), proposes reducing representational redundancy for German by means of context-sensitive underspecification. Ch. 7, 'Phonological rules and alternations' (178-271), covers alternation and allophonic variation of consonants and vowels (e.g. umlaut, final devoicing) at the lexical level and beyond, phonotactic constraints, and the issue of phonetics vs. phonology. W discusses properties, patterns, and functions ofstress at various levels in Ch. 8, 'Word stress, compound stress, phrase stress' (272-311), while his 'Concluding remarks ' (Ch. 9:312-13) look ahead to implications of generative phonology for cognitive science and reiterate the need to reconsider the delineation between phonetics and phonology and the relationship between universal and language-specific phonology. The work ends with a word index (handy for phonologists who do not read German), references, and a brief subject index. Ws approach to phonology differs from traditional handbooks', especially in considering phonology in a larger sense, in relation more to morphology and prosody than to phonetics, and deserves a look if only for this reason. Yet because a number of Ws hypotheses are still at the developmental stage—which W acknowledges—the book is not truly a handbook in the sense of a Nachschlagewerk; rather it is, and should be billed as, an accessible introduction to issues of generative phonology of German. [Désirée Baron, University ofMichigan.] Cybele and the axe-goddess: Alliterative verse, Linear B relationships and cult ritual of the Phaistos disc. By Edgar Bowden. Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1992. Pp. xviii, 286. Bowden's book presents a new proposal of decipherment of the Phaistos disc, a circular clay disc discovered by Louis Pernier in 1908 (Ausonia 3. 255-302) in the Minoan palace at Phaistos in southern Crete, which can be dated to about 1700 b.ce. It is not possible to know if it was made in Crete or brought there from somewhere else. The disc has two faces on which 242 impressions were made by 45 different stamps (see The world's writing systems, ed. by Peter Daniels and William Bright, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. p. 133). The book consists of 15 chapters with 45 illustrations . Based on an alleged relationship between Linear B signs and the pictograms on the disc (47-58) and his understanding of p-alliterative aerophones (29-40), the author argues that the disc is a human sacrificial prayer to the Mother Goddess and to Cybele , written in Greek verses (93-107). He also interprets other undeciphered inscriptions from Crete, such as the Mallia stone (viii, 226) and the Arkalokhori double axe text (227-39), as written in Greek. It is impossible to enumerate all the problems this book presents, especially concerning the author's knowledge of Greek grammar and the Greek of his transliteration, in which, for instance, vowels are rather secondary (93). Moreover, the starting point, the relationship between Linear B and the Phaistos disc, isjust a matter ofB's imagination (using similar methodology, others have pointed to Luwian hieroglyphic , with the same lack of success). Regarding his pseudo-anthropological approach to sacrifice, his ignorance of such basic works as those of Marcel Détienne and Walter Burkert (see, for instance, Sacrificio e società nel mondo antico, ed. by Cristiano Grotanelli and Nicola Parise, Roma: Laterza, 1988) is striking. Many attempts to decipher the disc have been made, from the symbolic and astronomical approach of Leon Pomerance (The Phaistos disc. An interpretation ofastronomical symbols, Göteborg: Aströms, 1976—cf. Piero Meriggi, Oriens antiquus 17.73) to the Luwian hieroglyphic, proposed first by Jan Best (Supplementum epigraphicum mediterraneum, ??- ????? 13, Middelie: Studio Pieter Muher, 1982—cf. José Luis Melena, Aula Orientalis 2. 159-63; Stefan Hiller, Archiv fir Orientforschung 32.125-7), and then by Fred Woudhuizen and Jan Best (Ancient scriptsfrom Crete and Cyprus, Leiden: Brill, 1988; Lost languagesfrom the Mediterranean, Leiden: Brill, 1989), which has a precedent in the Hittite-like interpretation of Simon Davis (The decipherment of the Minoan Linear A and pictographic scripts, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1967). However...