Review

Author(s): Stanley Newman

Review by: Stanley Newman
Source: International Journal of American Linguistics, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Oct., 1973), pp. 261263
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1264831
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NO. 4

261

NOTES AND REVIEWS

Bodega Miwok
Pomo
Pomo
Phonology
Phonology
and Syntax
and by
Syntax
Julius Moby of
Julius
Mo- Dictionary. I cited Bodega
shinsky.
shinsky.
Jesse
Jesse
Sawyer
Sawyer
has published
has Englishpublished
Miwok
Englishkoncalaawa and compared Lake

Wappo
Wappo
Vocabulary4
Vocabulary4
and promises
and additional
promises
additional
Miwok
kon6alaawa and Western Wappo
under the impression that this
material
material
in the
in future.
the future.
The one major
The lacuna
one kaniala'wa?,
major lacuna
is Patwin. The Patwin were the center of the

was some sort of California Kulturwort.

Kuksu cult and were the source of consider-

Jesse Sawyer informs me that this is a loanable diffusion, both cultural and linguistic,word from Spanish canchalagua. This word
throughout central California. It is to beshould therefore be added to the list given
hoped that the Survey of California Indianin his article Wappo Words from Spanish.6
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Languages will give this important language
priority in the salvage work that has already
FINDING THE CENTER: NARRATIVE POproduced so much valuable material about
the languages formerly spoken along theETRY OF THE ZUNI INDIANS. Translated by
shores of Clear Lake.
Dennis Tedlock. New York: The Dial Press,
These references, as well as the material 1972. Pp. xxxv, 298. $2.95 (paperback),
available on comparative Miwok and com- $8.50 (hardcover).

parative Pomo,5 should enable us to de-

termine the various shared features of the

STANLEY NEWMAN

Clear Lake Sprachbund and to trace theirIn this book Tedlock presents Zuni folktales as performances. There is nothing new,
origins, a task with immense benefit for both
of course, in his recognition that story-telling
linguistics and anthropology.
The following addenda and corrigenda wereis a type of dramatic recitation; folklorists
supplied by the author: p. 5, line 8 of thehave discussed the performance features of
story-tellers and the reactions of audiences.
Grammatical Synopsis 'possessive pronomi-

nal prefixes' should read 'subjective pronomi-What is new is Tedlock's decision to do

something about having the English translanal prefixes'; p. 57, line 6 'kanfiwali' should
tion reflect the vocal characteristics of the
read kanfinwali'; p. 73, line 2 'lk6in' should
narrators whose stories in Zuni were reread' kuin'; p. 75, line 23' lattwi' should read
'lattiw'; p. 93, additional item: micpa N (1)corded on tape.
fog (2) mist; p. 94, line 29 'court' should read

For this purpose he uses a number of

visual devices in printed English to convey

'count'; p. 108, line 13 'pefteli' should read
the qualities of the spoken Zuni performance.
'pet6eli'; p. 109, line 24 'lokain' should read
'poksin'; p. 110, line 13 'popol' should readThree type sizes indicate degrees of loudness.

Changes in pitch are shown by printing

'polpol'; p. 128, line 21 'suuj' should read

'sukuj'; p. 185, line 36 '?aniko' should readwords or parts of words above or below the
'?amko'; p. 217, line 16 'h6m-' should readline. Repetition of consonants or dashes
following vowels signify a slowing of tempo.
'hema-'; p. 238, line 5 'lancing' should read
A verse-like arrangement of lines and spaces
'lancing rock'; p. 239, line 14 'cate' should
read 'cate'.
is used to suggest pauses. Stage directions,
printed in italics, are sprinkled liberally
I wish to make a correction to my review
throughout the stories to give instructions
4 University of California Publications in Linabout facial expression, gesture, tone of
guistics, volume 43 (Berkeley, 1965).
expressive sounds such as sighing or
5 The most recent publications are Catherine voice,
A.
laughing, and other special effects. So far
Callaghan, Proto-Miwok Phonology, General
Linguistics 12. 1-31 (1972), and Nancy M. Webb, as I am aware, these devices have not been

A Statement of Some Phonological Correspond- employed by folklorists to suggest the

ences among the Pomo Languages, Indiana Uni6 Studies in Californian Linguistics, edited by
versity Publications in Anthropology and LinWilliam Bright (Berkeley, 1964), 163-69.
guistics, volume 26 (1971).

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262

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS

VOL. XXXIX

prosodic features of a story-teller's

forrecitalinguists or folklorists. In the context of
tion. But they are reminiscent of the
devices
this
readership the visual devices are useful

used by E. E. Cummings and some

of the that in Zuni, as in most culas reminders
poets during World War I who published
in are speech events and that in
tures, stories

such revolutionary magazines asthe

BLASTmouths of some story-tellers they functhe title being printed in heavy black
capitals
tion
as a form of literary art. Tedlock into suggest its powerful impact. These
writers
cludes
the stories of only two narrators,
were experimenting with new typographical
Andrew Peynetsa and Walter Sanchez, who
as well as with new poetic forms. This
aretrend
presumably recognized as experienced
in poetry has had a somewhat pallid
andrevival
talented story-tellers. More imporrecently, perhaps as a literary response
to translations show that Tedlock
tantly, the
the pop-art fashion.
has selected English words carefully not
The importance of these printing
devices
only
for their denotative content but also
for their emotive connotations. He has
in Tedlock's translations can be overemphasized. The advance comments quoted
by the
worked
closely and intimately over several
publisher are rhapsodic, praising the
book
as the Zunis represented in this
years
with
an 'artistic breakthrough' in transmitting
collection, and he has evidently developed
'that marvelous body of poetry'. In
an ap- grasp of Zuni to have some feel for
sufficient
preciative preface Jerome Rothenberg,
a as well as to understand it. We
the language
poet, writes of Tedlock's 'revelation' in
can never know by any objective means how
rendering "as poetry what other men had faithful Tedlock's translations are to the
confused with prose" (xi), in translating "allspirit of the original, for translations of this
those qualities that lie outside the borders kind are essentially intuitive interpretations.
of translation... totally, I think, and per- My own feeling, as one who has collected
fectly" (xiv). These effusions do Tedlock ansome Zuni tales and tried to translate them,
injustice, it seems to me. Fieldworkers whois that this is an admirable example of interhave collected folktales are aware that
pretive translation. It is the product of a
narrative art is not actualized totally or
sensitive and knowledgeable linguist-folkperfectly, as a matter of course, by story- lorist working in conjunction with sensitive

tellers in any culture; although some are informants who have learned to communi-

gifted raconteurs, most are merely adequate cate with one another across formidable
in my experience, and a few are hopeless linguistic and cultural barriers.
duds. Those of us, furthermore, who have
In his preface Tedlock not only explains
wrestled with the problems of conveying the visual devices (also exemplified in a
into English some of the cultural overtones, 'Guide to Reading Aloud') but also proespecially some of the esthetic qualities, of vides a background of historical and cultural
the more skillfully told stories of American information useful for the general reader who
Indians recognize the humiliating limita- wishes to gain a fuller appreciation of the
tions of translation. There is considerable

stories. About two-thirds of the book con-

leakage of meaning in translating fromtains

any telapnaawe (fictional stories); the final
one language into any other. There is further
third is made up of chimiky'ana'kowa (true
lack of fit in transferring from the oral stories,
level
i.e., origin myths). One story, a
of speech to the visual level of print. telapnaawe,
Tedappears both in Zuni and
lock's sober preface indicates that he is fully
English; the remainder are presented only in

aware of the ambiguities and shortcomings

English. End-notes accompanying each story
are designed to give added dimension to the
This book, however, is obviously intended
story by, for example, briefly describing the
for a non-professional audience rather than
cultural setting for a narrative event or

of his textual devices.

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NO. 4

NOTES AND REVIEWS

263

gian Language
Language
in America,
America, which
which isis basically
basically
quoting
quoting
an informant's
an informant's
remarks remarks
about one ofabout
one ofin

a comprehensive
comprehensive account
account using
using first-hand
first-hand
present volume
volume is
is to
to be
be taken
taken
In contrast to most publications which indata, the present

the folktale characters.

the present book market purport to interpretrather as a useful review of what has been
the American Indian to the general public,done to date on American German. It de-

Tedlock's volume can be highly recom- votes a large place to phenomena of linguistic
mended as an authentic work. It is a

change which arise in situations of dialect

and language
contact, and in this field conthoughtful and sophisticated attempt
to
tains
original contributions. The reviewer
bring Zuni folktales to life for an
adult

audience of Western readers.

UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO

found the treatment of this aspect of the

subject especially interesting, in particular
the discussion concerning the dialect leveling

THE GERMAN LANGUAGE IN AMERICA: A

which is taking place within German, the

SYMPOSIUM. Edited, with an Introduction, progressive retreat of German before Engby Glenn G. Gilbert. Department of Ger- lish, and the socio-cultural conditions remanic Languages of the University of Texas sponsible for these developments.
at Austin, University of Texas Press, Austin Dialect leveling must be the determining
and London 1971. xiii, 217 pp. $7.50.
cause of the present relative uniformity of
LINGUISTIC ATLAS OF TEXAS GERMAN.
Pennsylvania German, the language still
(Deutscher Sprachatlas. Regionale Sprachwidely spoken by the descendants of eighatlanten [herausgegeben vom Forschungs-teenth century Palatinate, Swabian and
Alemannic settlers in Pennsylvania. In spite
institut fiir deutsche Sprache "Deutscher
of some differences, its greater closeness to
Sprachatlas"] Nr. 5) Glenn G. Gilbert, Unithe dialects of the Rhenish Palatinate rather
versity of Texas Press, Austin and London
than to those of any other region of the
1972. vii, 25 pp. and vl, 148 maps.
German speaking area is remarkable. This
THEODORA BYNON

fact was first revealed to the reviewer

The first of these volumes, which recordsthrough a delightful conversation with a

the deliberations of the Tenth Germanic

Pennsylvania clergyman one morning on

the top of a London bus, and the dialectoloLanguages Symposium held at the Univergist may easily verify it by comparing the
sity of Texas in 1968, gives a useful survey
of the main varieties of German spoken
isoglosses of the maps in Reed and Seifert's
Linguistic Atlas of Pennsylvania German
today in the United States, together with
with the corresponding ones in the Deutscher
their history, cultural setting and present
Sprachatlas. While in their Atlas the authors
state of investigation. The subject of American German is treated in a series of Forrestricted themselves to the phonological
schungsberichte which deal in turn with
and
itsmorphological variants of 144 lexical
items,
various sociolinguistic roles (H. Kloss),
its Seifert's present contribution deals

dialectology (C. E. Reed), and its history

with the corresponding lexical variation
and, by interpreting the distributional patand present situation in three States (Pennsylvania: W. J. Seifert; Wisconsin: J. terns
Eich- in the light of settlement history, athoff; Virginia: W. J. Pulte, Jr.); thesetempts
are a reconstruction of the leveling proc-

completed by a report on Pennsylvania

ess. Judging from the reaction to the authors'
German folklife research (D. Yoder).word
The list of a native of the Palatinate (admittedly
of urban upper middle class backpapers are followed by the transcripts
of
three discussion sessions, an extensive bibliground), who told the reviewer that she was
only able to supply the respective Standard
ography, and an index.
Compared with Einar Haugen's NorweGerman forms 'with a slightly Palatinate

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