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Common and Comparative Slavic: Phonology and Inflection with Special Attention to Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian
Townsend and Janda's book provides a thorough description of the phonology and inflection of Late Common Slavic with copious background on its precursors and a detailed survey of its stages of development. The comparative approach is blended in from the beginning, with particular attention paid to Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian continuations in both phonology and inflection. Nine chapters cover the basic material of the book, which includes such phenomena as the ruki rule, the satem-centum distinction, rising sonority, syllabic synharmony, prosodic features, ablaut, declension, and conjugation. The tenth chapter consists of brief characterizations of the phonology of each of the five languages emphasized, complete with their phonological inventories and the most salient features of their inflectional patterns.
The book's orientation is structural and traditional, yet also modern and innovative in certain ways. One of its unique features is its analysis of phonological developments in terms of Jakobsonian distinctive features, which are introduced in detail in the first chapter and then used to explain sonority and tonality adjustments in the phonology. Also unique is the detailed breakdown of the development of Slavic declensions (nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and numerals) and verb classes, treated from both one-stem and traditional points of view. Common and Comparative Slavic will make a superb textbook for courses on the history of Slavic and the five languages it emphasizes, but there are also new formulations which should make the book of interest to the specialist as well as the teacher and graduate student.
Common and Comparative Slavic will be an excellent source for students of the Slavic languages who want to learn more about where the modern languages came from and how they differ from one another. It will be just as suitable for reading on one's own as it is for class work. Since it does not presume a deep knowledge of Slavic in advance, it will moreover serve students of general linguistics, Germanic, Romance, etc. who wish to look over the fence and see how another Indo-European language family evolved.
The book's orientation is structural and traditional, yet also modern and innovative in certain ways. One of its unique features is its analysis of phonological developments in terms of Jakobsonian distinctive features, which are introduced in detail in the first chapter and then used to explain sonority and tonality adjustments in the phonology. Also unique is the detailed breakdown of the development of Slavic declensions (nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and numerals) and verb classes, treated from both one-stem and traditional points of view. Common and Comparative Slavic will make a superb textbook for courses on the history of Slavic and the five languages it emphasizes, but there are also new formulations which should make the book of interest to the specialist as well as the teacher and graduate student.
Common and Comparative Slavic will be an excellent source for students of the Slavic languages who want to learn more about where the modern languages came from and how they differ from one another. It will be just as suitable for reading on one's own as it is for class work. Since it does not presume a deep knowledge of Slavic in advance, it will moreover serve students of general linguistics, Germanic, Romance, etc. who wish to look over the fence and see how another Indo-European language family evolved.
310 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 17, 2013
Townsend & Janda's Common and Comparative Slavic is an exhaustive presentation of the evolution of this branch of Indo-European, from Proto-Indo-European to five modern languages Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian. The book falls roughly into two halves, of which the first half covers historical phonology and the second half morphology. Such a presentation makes sense, because the restructuring of declension and conjugation in the various dialects of Late Common Slavonic was to a large extent driven by phonological mergers and loss.
I have read a large number of presentations of the history of the Slavonic languages, pretty much everything else that Slavica has put out and also Shevelov's book, but I was really impressed by Townsend & Janda's work and wish I had come across it years earlier. The strength of this book lies in its rooting in phonological theory: developments like the three palatalizations of velars and the fronting of /o/ after /j/ are described as motivated by larger processes in Common Slavonic, not as things that just happened in isolation as in other books on this subject. The authors seem to be fans of Roman Jakobson's work especially. The book also covers the evolution of the Slavonic tonal accent system, which is often glossed over.
Furthermore, Townsend & Janda's book contains enormous detail. I would actually warn neophytes away from this book until they have read a more basic introduction to the history of Slavonic and have some training in historical linguistics. But once you've got some basic facts under your belt, this book is relevatory.
Indeed, dipping into this book from time to time will clear up any questions that may arise as your experience with the Slavonic languages expands. For example, I've recently began to study Serbian after years of work with Russian and Bulgarian, and it turns out that Common and Comparative Slavic covers all of the strange developments in Serbian that had puzzled me.
I have read a large number of presentations of the history of the Slavonic languages, pretty much everything else that Slavica has put out and also Shevelov's book, but I was really impressed by Townsend & Janda's work and wish I had come across it years earlier. The strength of this book lies in its rooting in phonological theory: developments like the three palatalizations of velars and the fronting of /o/ after /j/ are described as motivated by larger processes in Common Slavonic, not as things that just happened in isolation as in other books on this subject. The authors seem to be fans of Roman Jakobson's work especially. The book also covers the evolution of the Slavonic tonal accent system, which is often glossed over.
Furthermore, Townsend & Janda's book contains enormous detail. I would actually warn neophytes away from this book until they have read a more basic introduction to the history of Slavonic and have some training in historical linguistics. But once you've got some basic facts under your belt, this book is relevatory.
Indeed, dipping into this book from time to time will clear up any questions that may arise as your experience with the Slavonic languages expands. For example, I've recently began to study Serbian after years of work with Russian and Bulgarian, and it turns out that Common and Comparative Slavic covers all of the strange developments in Serbian that had puzzled me.
November 2, 2018
Townsend and Janda provide a thorough, yet portable, introduction into comparative Slavic linguistics, including contrastive grammatical sketches of five languages. At times, their description is rather wordy, considering the limited scope of the book, especially due to their frequent unneccesary and misleading theoretical evaluations of causation in sound change and elsewhere. Indeed, this wordiness rather spoils much of the book for me and makes it taxing to read. Overall, more attention could have been paid to presentation.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews