Dictionnaire inverse de l'ancien français by Douglas C. Walker, and: An Introduction to Old French Morphophonology by Douglas C. Walker (review)

456 LETTERS IN CANADA 1982 enemy of lovers both because its chattering reveals their secret and because it heralds the dawn and their separation), the fountain (site of amorous encounter), shepherds and shepherdesses, and the malmariee. Despite the connection to the medieval lyric, Laforte generally stays clear of the question of origins although he does allow himself some speculation about the relative chronology of stanzaic patterns, and his contribution to the study of the aesthetic is solid. One does feel, however, the collector dominating the analyst in this study. The abundance of examples gives an excellent feel for the living reality of the genre, but it also interferes with the orderly presentation of the subject. The reader (and, one suspects, the author as well) loses sight of the argument which the examples are to illustrate. This reader feels somewhat uncomfortable with the bare scheme of oral, literary, and transitional texts: the question on pp 80-2 of whether the lines Par Dietl, fille, vous ,,'ires I Trop y a des bachelers in Van den Boogaard no 44 are refrain or laisse requires not only Laforte's principle that the refrain does not advance the action but also a close study of the play of narrative against refrain in the genre generally. Laforte's handling of dialectal and diachronic variation is somewhat shaky: on pp 40-1 his presentation of assonance involving the vowels lrel, lui, and 1 01 is not actually wrong, but it could lead to errors. At pp 223ft the words latin and jargon in the phrases en son latin, en son jargon regularly mean nothing more than 'language' (in these instances the bird's language and not necessarily Latin), so that, when texts begin to give readings like 'lIs parlent fran,ais et latin aussi: they reveal the persistence of the signifier through the force of tradition to a time when the original signified is no longer associated with it. Small points like these indicate both the strengths and weaknesses of the book. The extensive documentation raises many tantalizing points about the aesthetic and the history of the tradition and about diachronic and dialectal traits. The minor inaccuracies incite the reader to challenge Laforte and examine some very interesting questions. (EDWARD A . HEINEMANN) Douglas C. Walker. Dictionnaire inverse de l'nncien frall~ais Editions de l'Universite d'Ottawa. xxx, 832 Douglas C. Walker. All Introduction to Old French Morphophonology Didier 1981. xiv, 125 L'inverse est un genre dictionnairique mal connu du public et meconnu du monde de I'edition. Le classement alphabetique des mots en partant de la fin du mot au lieu du debut est depuis longtemps reconnu comme principe organisateur des listes fournies aux rimeurs et aux cruciverbistes . II pourrait egalement rendre de grands services II l'apprenant HUMANITIES 457 de la langue et au linguiste qui s'interessent au fonctionnement des morphemes ou graphemes finals. Lorsque j'ai explique II mes enfants Ie principe classificateur de !'inverse, ils m'ont tout de suite repondu, l'un (13 ans) qu'un tel repertoire du lexique anglais contemporain lui faciliterait la recherche, demandee par son professeur, de mots en - gh, l'autre (15 ans) que ce serait un bon moyen de depister les vocables anglais (mots en - cede, -ceed, -cess) derives du verbe latin cedo, autre exercice scolaire. L'inverse n'est rnalheureusement pas cons:u camme un lisuel. II existe un Petit Larousse inverse, mais qui s'intitule Dictionnaire des mots croises - titre plus commercial. Autre intitule trompeur: Ie Reverse Dictionary de T.M. Bernstein est en fait un recueil onomasiologique dans lequelles entrees sont des definitions suivies de leur denomination. Une compilation inverse effectuee nkemment apartir d'un autre dictionnaire frans:ais lisuel n/a pas trOllve d'editeur. Parmi les traits caracteristiques des inverses publies, il y a leur apparence savante et, dans beaucoup de cas, leur corpus specialise. Le Normal and Reverse English Word List en huit volumes de A.F. Brown lut prepare 'at the University of Pennsylvania under a contract with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.' Les unites retenues pour un classement de droite a gauche des mots dans Ie Dictionnaire inverse de la langue fram...