Comparative Semitic Linguistics: A Manual.

• Author: BODINE, WALTER R.
• Position: Review

Comparative Semitic Linguistics: A Manual. By PATRICK R. BENNETT. Winona Lake, Ind.: EISENBRAUNS, 1998. Pp. xii + 269, maps, illus. $29.50.

The author of this work has undertaken a worthy task. His subject is important, underworked, and demanding. As someone who has begun but not completed a similar project (though with a different format), the reviewer can empathize with the amount of work involved in assembling and making some sense of such a large amount of data.

Bennett writes for English readers, assumes only one year's study of a single Semitic language, and takes care to introduce terms and concepts for those with no background in general and historical or comparative linguistics. [1] Some may question whether a linguistic study of the Semitic family can be profitably undertaken with such a limited background, but the issue can be viewed positively. This book can serve those in the early stages of their study of Semitic as an enticement to go deeper; and it can challenge those with competence in several Semitic languages, but no introduction to historical and comparative linguistics, to expand their horizons. The twenty-five exercises and the data ready at hand for use with the exercises make it a useful teaching tool. The book will primarily serve as an introductory workbook in Semitic reconstruction that is widely accessible to students at all levels.

The author's linguistic approach is descriptive and data-oriented, and this reviewer is committed to the same ground as a starting point for analysis and as a touchstone to which all conclusions, reconstructions, and theoretical constructs must be brought for verification. Still, it is not quite fair to say that "[n]othing is real except the raw facts of the language, the words people say, the scratchings on the rock" (p. 67). If the systems of language function with an identifiable interdependency and if there are universals in the ways people acquire and use language, then these must be included among the real, even though they are more difficult to access and analyze. There is a place in general linguistics for both the empirical research of a data-oriented approach such as this book represents and the theoretical explorations of a cognitive approach that are dominant in many departments of linguistics. A major stride forward with benefits for everyone involved will have been taken when scholars on both s ides of this divide acknowledge the validity of those on the other side and...