Dialectologia Arabica: A Collection of Articles in Honour of the Sixtieth Birthday of Professor Heikki Palva.

• Author: Sawaie, Mohammed

Edited by the FINNISH ORIENTAL SOCIETY. Studia Orientalia, vol. 75. Helsinki: FINNISH ORIENTAL SOCIETY, 1995. Pp. 304.

This is the seventy-fifth volume in a series published by the journal Studia Orientalia, the organ of the Finnish Oriental Society. As is obvious from the title, this volume was designed as a Festschrift to honor Heikki Palva, the leading Finnish Arabist, on his sixtieth birthday. It consists of twenty-two articles, twelve of which are in English, six in French, and four in German. Appended is a list of Palva's prolific publications, spanning the years from 1961 until 1994. These include academic articles, books, book reviews, and articles on popular topics ranging from linguistic and literary themes (Jordanian and Palestinian dialects, Nagib Mahfouz, etc.) to political and cultural ones (Islam in politics, former Prime Minister Kassem of Iraq [killed in 1963], Khomeini [in Iran], etc.). Palva's productivity is impressive, and is indicative of his erudition in various fields of Middle Eastern studies and popular topics.

Like Palva's diverse output, this collection also presents a variegated array of diachronic and synchronic linguistic analyses of the Arabic language. The main thrust of these valuable contributions is their focus on dialectal varieties in various Arabic-speaking regions. Perhaps an exception to this monolithic thematic treatment is Andrzej Zaborski's article, which situates Arabic first person pronouns in the context of "Hamito-Semitic dialectology" (the language family name "Afro-Asiatic" is preferable to the outmoded "Hamito-Semitic"). Some articles draw on popular genres such as Arabic folk songs (for example, those by Farida Abu-Haidar and Olga B. Frolova), dialogue poems, muhawara (by Clive Holes), and word puzzles (by Arlette Roth). It is not possible to discuss here these twenty-two articles in detail. The following comments are of a general nature, and address themselves to the volume as a whole.

As these contributions are the brainchildren of twenty-two scholars hailing from various backgrounds and orientations, the reader can easily detect uneven styles in presentation. Such unevenness in exposition originates from the diversity of the native languages of the contributors and the absence of an editor. A guest editor with a sharp pen, (or perhaps three editors for the three...