ASIAN LANGUAGES the community had heard or told any story in the new last four decades. Accompanied by maps, charts, photographs and vocabulary used in stories and LINCOM Studies songs. Vol. 08 in Chinese Linguistics ISBN 978 3 89586 007 2. Languages of the World/Text Collections 27. 75pp plus CD. USD 61.70 / EUR 50.20 / GBP 41.70. 2010/IV. Phonetic Ambiguity in the Chinese Script A Grammar of Classical A Palaeographical & Phonological Analysis Japanese CHRIS BUTTON NORIKO KATSUKI-PESTEMER SOAS, University of London University of Trier Rejections of ideographic 會意 Huiyi graphs, whose composition belies membership of the The book is intended both for learners of 形聲 Xingsheng category of phonetic compounds and the 象形 Xiangxing category of Classical Japanese and for linguists with or without knowledge of the Japanese language. pictographs that form their phonetic base, may be questioned on the basis that Xiangxing Systematic descriptions clarify the morphological and Huiyi cannot be clearly distinguished in the earliest inscriptions. However, once these agglutination of lexical items, which is one of the original Huiyi graphs have become firmly entrenched as Xiangxing graphs and viable salient features of Japanese. Grammatical entities for the production of Xingsheng graphs, it does seem unlikely that new graphs characteristics are explained with a wealth of would be created irrespective of their pronunciation. The reasonable premise, that Chinese examples from well-known works of the classical writing essentially consists of Xiangxing graphs with their Xingsheng derivatives, means Japanese literature. The monograph also that the issue is not whether Huiyi is a viable distinction but rather whether explanations via compares Classical Japanese to Modern Standard polyphony are viable alternatives. A role for polyphony in the Chinese script is without Japanese and shows diachronic changes which have taken place. It illuminates the adaptation doubt, yet any notion that polyphony was a fundamental driving force in the creation and process which takes place when foreign elements development of the script differs fundamentally from these sporadic cases of graphic are absorbed into Japanese: the way they are convergence or synonymic interchange. selected and filtered and the devices employed to More thorough palaeographical analyses, combined with more sophisticated incorporate them without destroying the reconstructions of Old Chinese, vindicate suggestions that Huiyi is an artificial distinction backbone, in other words the syntax, of the without requiring any recourse to polyphony. language. The volume is clearly structured and contains seven chapters: 1. Introduction; 2. ISBN 978 3 89586 632 6. LINCOM Studies in Chinese Linguistics 08. 111pp. USD 54.40 / EUR Phonetics and Phonology; 3. Morphosyntax; 4. Word Class Descriptions; 5. Honoratives; 6. 44.20 / GBP 37.60. 2010. Rhetoric; 7. Conclusions. Noriko Katsuki-Pestemer is Lecturer in language, some examples of the word-for-word Modern Japanese, Classical Japanese, and A Hmao (Hua Miao) translations which accompany each entry in the Japanese Linguistics at the University of Trier. original are given, and some samples of the She has published many books. Her latest Songs, Stories and special Pollard script invented for the language. publications are: Grundstudium Japanisch 1 This is a unique corpus of imaginative folklore (2004), 2nd new ed.; Grundstudium Japanisch 2 Legends from China and linguistic materials and marks a considerable (2005), 2nd new ed.; Kanji-Arbeitsheft 1 (2005), contribution towards world mythology. Kanji-Arbeitsheft 2 (2005); Kanji-Arbeitsheft 3 NICHOLAS TAPP & MARK PFEIFER (2006); Japanese Postpositions: Theory and (eds.) ISBN 978 3 929075 70 0 (Hardbound). Practice (2008), 2nd ed. LINCOM Text Collections 02. 600pp. USD Australian National University, Hmong 184.80 / EUR 150.20 / GBP 127.70. 2009. ISBN 978 3 929075 68 7. LINCOM Studies in Resource Center in Minnesota Japanese Linguistics 03. 312pp. USD 93.80 / EUR 76.20 / GBP 64.80. 2009. These wonderful materials come from the A An Island of Stories Hmao people of Southwest China, a Miao people related to the Hmong. Their language is a unique and Songs one and this book represents a fair selection of Classifying the their whole corpus of oral legends - songs and Folk Tales and Songs from the Austroasiatic folk tales about the origins of the world, their Great Andaman oppression by the Chinese, their flight and languages: history and exodus, their relations with landlords, together NVITA BBI with stories of their social customs, lovesongs A A state of the art and animal fables. Before the Chinese revolution Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi of 1949 the Parsons brothers, who collected and Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary PAUL SIDWELL translated these materials, worked with the A Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany Australian National University Hmao as Christian pastors. Before leaving China they had asked the A Hmao to write down their A rare book of folk tales and songs from the entire oral corpus in the special form of writing Great Andamanese language family which has no The Austroasiatic language phylum spans the invented by missionaries for their hitherto oral more than five speakers at present. This is the breadth of South and Southeast Asia, with more than 150 languages over a dozen branches. Some language. After China opened up in 1978 more of first time that a researcher has collected folk tales are spoken by villages of just a few dozen people, these materials were sent to the Parsons brothers, and songs from the fluent speakers of the for all through the years of socialism the A Hmao while others have millions of speakers such as the languages of this family. Most of the narrators national languages Cambodian and Vietnamese. had faithfully recorded their entire corpus. and singers who rendered the material for this There are four sections – the ‘Beginnings’, Historically much of the Austroasiatic region has dealing with Creation and the Flood, ‘History’, book are no longer alive. The tales are unique in been divided and overlain by unrelated language dealing with early leaders, clashes with the their content and style and present a world-view families, creating a vast zone of ethnolinguistic Chinese, and the loss of the homeland, ‘Social of one of the most ancient civilizations of the contact and diversity. This creates a special Life’, covering shamanism, marriage and other world. The accompanying CD-Rom contains imperative for us to turn to comparative customs, and ‘Narratives’ (fantastic stories about audio and video recordings of songs, including linguistics to solves great issues of regional orphans, tigers, and many animal fables). Each those from Boa Sr., the last speaker of the Bo (pre)history that other disciplines cannot address. legend has a brief introduction by the Parsons language. The English translation of songs is Yet, despite more than a century of brothers followed by their free translation. given in the book. The book also contains a long comparative Austroasiatic studies, scholars have yet to present an explicitly justified internal This selection has been put together from the chapter on the methodology and process used for entire mass of the collection by Nicholas Tapp, a genetic classification of the phylum upon which elicitation of stories. This will familiarize the specialists can agree. The text is divided into two Professor of Anthropology at the Australian readers with the environment, the context in National University, and Mark Pfeifer, former main parts; the first charts the emergence of the which the elicitation was done as well as with the Head of the Hmong Resource Center in Austroasiatic hypothesis and its various guises, Minnesota. To show the uniqueness of the frame of mind of the narrator. It was challenging and reviews much of the literature which has to elicit stories in a dying language as no one in addressed how constituent branches may (or may The LINCOM webshop: www.lincom-europa.com LINCOM EUROPA• project line 20 • 2010 ♦ 43 ASIAN LANGUAGES not) relate to each other, while the second part other language. It covers all major aspects of the 9 A Historical Corpus-Based Approach to looks at each branch in detail, examining the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the Korean Logophor Caki, Sun-Hee Lee and Yelee- history of scholarship and summarizing the state Central dialect of Crimean Tatar, and it also An of the art. Many relevant maps and diagrams are mentions the unique features of the Northern and 10 The Syntax of Inchoativity- -eci, event reproduced, including some colour plates. Southern dialects where possible. Three texts in structure, and scalarity, Dongsik Lim and Maria- Central, Northern, and Southern Crimean Tatar Luisa Zubizarreta ISBN 978 3 929075 67 0 (Hardbound). with interlinear glosses and English translation 11 Korean –cocha ‘even’ and Japanese –sae LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 76. are included. ‘even’, Eun-Hae Park 175pp. USD 151.20 / EUR 112.00 / GBP 12 Licensing Double Nominative Constructions 106.40. 2009. ISBN 978 3 89586 690 6. Languages of the in Korean, Jisung Sun World/Materials 477. 200pp. USD 70.50 / 13 Upstep and Constituent Length in Daegu EUR 57.30 / GBP 48.70. 2009. Korean: A Preliminary Report, Akira Utsugi and A Semiotactic Hyejin Jang 14 Constraints on Double-Accusative External Approach to Modern Possession Constructions in Korean: A Cognitive Kui approach, Jaehoon Yeon Japanese MIKHAIL S. ANDRONOV ISBN 978 3 89586 592 3 (Hardcover). HETTY GEERDINK-VERKOREN LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 77. Leiden University Kui is a nonliterary tribal language spoken by 300pp. USD 172.50 / EUR 140.20 / GBP more than six hundred thousand people in the 119.20. 2010. This book is a rewritten version of the PhD thesis valley of the river Mahanadi in the Indian state of with the same title, presented in May 2008 at Leiden University. In this work the syntax and Orissa and in some areas of the neighboring semantics of Modern Japanese are analyzed while Andhra Pradesh state.