26.3058, Review: Historical Ling; Phonology: Liesner (2014)

Fri Jun 26 18:56:13 UTC 2015

LINGUIST List: Vol-26-3058. Fri Jun 26 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.3058, Review: Historical Ling; Phonology: Liesner (2014)

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Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:55:56
From: Jean-François Mondon [jfmondon at gmail.com]
Subject: Latin Historical Phonology Workbook

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-4759.html

AUTHOR: Malte  Liesner
TITLE: Latin Historical Phonology Workbook
PUBLISHER: ISD, Distributor of Scholarly Books
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Jean-François R. Mondon, Minot State University

Review's Editors: Malgorzata Cavar and Ashley Parker

SUMMARY

“Latin Historical Phonology Workbook” is an English version of Malte Liesner’s
“Arbeitsbuch zur lateinischen historischen Phonologie,” translated by the
author himself.  Through 38 chapters, Liesner guides the reader through the
phonological development of Latin, starting predominantly from pre-Latin but
also occasionally from Proto-Italic and Proto-Indo-European (PIE).  The book
touches on every major sound change as well as multiple minor ones.  All but a
handful of chapters follow the same format: the left hand page discusses a
group of related sound changes and the right hand page consists of two or
three different types of exercises for the reader to test the information just
presented.  The exercises range from applying the various rules under
discussion in order to convert a reconstructed form into an attested Latin
form, to the reverse, undoing phonetic developments to ascertain an earlier
form.  

These 38 chapters themselves are subsumed into three larger parts. The first,
“Fundamental Concepts of Latin Historical Phonology,” comprises nine chapters
which assume little to no prior knowledge of language change or linguistics,
more generally.  Topics covered in this section include articulatory
phonetics, phonological features, syllabification, accentuation,
sociolinguistics, and language change.  

The next 12 chapters deal with the “Development of Latin Vowels.”  Each of
these chapters consists of changes which are related by their having similar
effects, such as vowel weakening and monophongizations, or by their affecting
the same sound(s), such as changes to the front vowels ‘e’ and ‘i’ or to the
back rounded vowel ‘o.’

The final part, “Developments of Latin Consonants”, comprises the remaining 17
sections.  Its format is identical to the section on the vowels, grouping
sound changes either by similar effects, such as assimilation, or by similar
inputs such as the fricative ‘s.’  Since sound change is anything but
consistently clean, Liesner prudently devotes one chapter in this section to
analogical change, discussing paradigmatic levelling and proportional analogy.
 Five of the final six chapters of the part trace the development of the PIE
consonant inventory into Latin, while the final chapter discusses some of the
major phonological differences between Latin and the closely-related Sabellic
languages.

The book concludes with an answer key and an ample 20+ page appendix on all
the changes covered in the book along with a chronology of the sound changes
and developments of the consonantal sound inventory from PIE to Latin in a
tabular form.

EVALUATION

The nine chapters of the first section do a good job at arming the reader with
the linguistic tools which will be needed to progress into the realm of Latin
sound changes.  Particularly important is Liesner’s stressing the priority of
pronunciation over orthography.  Early on, he shows the reader how to convert
Latin words from their standard written form into a pseudo-phonetic notation
which  reflects pronunciation more closely.  Some examples consist of writing
a macron over all long vowels, converting orthographic ‘q’ to ‘kw,’
differentiating ‘normal l’ from ‘dark l’ and marking geminate ‘jj’ in words
such as ‘cuius.’  Liesner’s section on placing Latin in a historical context
is succinct and clear.  His placing of Latin in a social context is also
clear, though his use of terms not regular from the perspective of
sociolinguistic works, e.g. diastratic and diaphasic used to describe
registers divided by social groups and formality, respectively, struck me as
odd.

In the two sections on the development of vowels and consonants, Liesner ably
makes the breadth of changes covered palatable.  On several occasions this is
done by  avoiding  debates on various changes and simply adopting one view
without comments, such as the existence and precise formulation of Lachmann’s
Law.  This is an obvious and wise decision in a pedagogical book of this
nature, which is not concerned with advancing  own theories by the author. 
For those readers interested in pursuing any topic further, Liesner’s short
bibliography does include the most important handbooks where further
references and views can be sought. 

Two drawbacks plague the book, neither of which should discourage anyone from
adopting it for a course, however.  Aside from a short appendix on relative
chronology, Liesner’s book does not explicitly highlight diachronic rule
ordering.  In most of the exercises, rules - both those which have already
been covered and those which have yet to be covered - are interspersed where
needed in order to produce the ultimate Latin forms.  These rule orderings are
not discussed but simply provided to complete the exercises.  It could prove
beneficial to highlight throughout the book the evolving Latin sound system
and how various changes in the sound inventory may have set the stage for
subsequent developments.  Perhaps it would have been better to break the
monotony of the few exercise types and have students determine relative
chronologies for themselves.

The second drawback is the book being littered with typos.  Many consist of
German words which were occasionally left untranslated in converting the book
into English, such as ‘und,’ ‘Horaz,’ ‘Englisch.’  Others consist of missing
functional words which can easily be inserted by the reader.  Very few consist
of phraseology which is odd-sounding in English.  Importantly, though, few to
no typos appear in the exercises.

This book is very successful at packing so much information into so few pages.
 The exercises and ample examples help keep the reader afloat and not
overwhelmed by the flood of information.  Some drawbacks do plague the book,
but not enough to dissuade it from being adopted in courses.  It fills a void
by uniquely making Latin phonological history comprehensible to the many
students who lack the requisite knowledge of linguistics assumed in the
standard Latin historical handbooks, and by making learning Latin phonology an
active process.  It could serve as one of the primary texts in an
undergraduate or graduate course on the historical development of Latin,
though it would need to be supplemented since understandably this book does
not delve into morphological or syntactic developments.  It could also
fruitfully be drawn on in a general historical linguistic course though since
the book deals with only one aspect of language change and only one language,
I would recommend against making it mandatory for such a course.  No prior
knowledge of Latin is necessary for the book.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Assistant Professor or Foreign Languages at Minot State University, whose
research deals with the writing of pedagogical material for various languages
(Classical Armenian, Latin) and fieldwork on Breton.

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