Khasi, A Language of Assam by Lili RabelReview by: Henry M. HoenigswaldJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1963), p. 144Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/597790 .

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144 Journal of the American Oriental Society, 83.1 (1963)

Khasi, A language of Assam. By LILT RABEL.

(Louisiana State University Studies, Hu- manities Series, Number Ten). Pp. xv + 249. Baton Rouge: LOUISIANA STATE UNI-

VERSITY PRESS, 1961.

This University of California (Berkeley) dis- sertation is a description of the Cherrapunji dia- lect of Khasi based on primary material and very commendably published despite the persistence of what the author considers "a great many points of . . . morphology and syntax . . . unsolved." Although the language, which is spoken by almost 200,000 people in Assam, is one of the more ac- cessible and better-known forms of " Mon-Khmer," such a state of affairs is no surprise, and the pres- ent work is greatly welcome.

The 47 pages of phonology offer a clear enough picture of the sounds, giving only occasional rise to queries. The author lists four classes of con- sonants: stops, spirants, sonants, and semivowels. Sonants (liquids and nasals) are then declared to be of three, automatically distributed, hence non- distinctive types: consonantal, vocalic, and con- sonantal with a vocalic release into a following consonant or " heterophonic " sonant. Semivowels are said to have only vocalic allophones (5). All (?) these entities, however, contrast with a set of sepa- rate vowel phonemes (7 sqq.). Syllable initials are " consonants, sonants, semivowels, or clusters" (15); perhaps we should simply read "stops or spirants" for "consonants." Syllable shapes are described with great fullness. An interesting dis- tinction which goes to the very typological heart of the sound structure of Khasi is made, following E. Henderson, between major and minor syllables (17). The latter have a sonant as peak and occur only in combination with major syllables.

In the second chapter the nine word classes are cautiously discussed; "the phonological shape of

a word gives no clue as to its class membership" (48), an assertion which is given only very scant qualification later on. Some "nominals," in par- ticular "nouns," are mostly preceded by a gender article. On p. 48 it is implied that verbs, too, may be so preceded, but neither the section devoted to verbs nor the chapter on gender seem to illustrate this. What may be involved here are the "pro- nouns" for 'he, she, it, they' which are on p. 66 declared to be identical with the gender articles; 1 does this identity go beyond the mere homonymy at which the location of the reference in the plan of the book seems to hint? Or do we have a mis- printed numeral on p. 48, so that pronouns, rather than verbs (section 240 rather than 220) are originally intended? According to that section, so-called pronominal bases-elements meaning 'this, that, wh- '-are preceded by those very "third person personal pronouns." The chapter on gender (93 sqq.) is highly instructive and de- serves the special attention of any self-styled gen- eral grammarian (who should, however, note that the reference to a neuter on p. 94 is purely seman- tic and has no formal standing on a par with the other two). The fourth and fifth chapters, en- titled Morphology and Arrangement, outline the central problems of the grammatical build of Khasi. They serve to justify some of the pre- liminary decisions made earlier in the work and at the same time point clearly to the nature of the problems still to be solved. There follow five texts with translations.

As the author says (vii), and as her bibliog- raphy (viii-xii) shows, no recent comprehensive study of the language exists; we are fortunate now to have hers.

HENRY M. HOENIGSWALD

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

1 The footnote referred to on p. 67 should be no. 25.

East Asia: The Great Tradition. By EDWIN 0. REISCHAUER and JOHN K. FAIRBANK. Pp. xiii + 739. (A History of East Asian Civili- zation. Volume 1.) Boston: HOUGHTON

MIFFLIN COMPANY, 1960.

This volume is " concerned with the growth and development of East Asian civilization from its

beginnings in North China until the first half of the nineteenth century." It covers the history of China, Japan and Korea down to the modern period of relations with the West. Presumably Volume II will deal with the developments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The authors are both professors at Harvard, where Dr. Fairbank has been teaching since 1936

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