BOOK REVIEWS
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that recording and analysis of the syntactic and semantic differences of Chinese dialects would indeed constitute a valuable and interesting field for additional research.
Sagart's bibliography must be supplemented with the more extensive listing found in Hashimoto plus a few more recent articles. Taken together Sagart and Hashimoto do a great deal toward furthering our knowledge of Hakka. Although I am generally quite positive toward these books, there are some parts of the format which I wish Sagart had not taken over in full. First, I see no reason for carrying the finer transcription in International Phonetic Alphabet throughout the work. This creates an unnecessary trouble and expense for later students without adding any real advantages. After the detailed transcription process has been used to establish clear phonetic values for the sound system, we would all profit from a switch to a phonemic transcription compatible with modern typewriter keyboards. All subsequent use and transmission of the materials would be simplified, and editing and printing costs would be considerably reduced.
Second, although the traditional categories of the Chinese lexicon have some good points, such a recording system should be supplemented or replaced by an alphabetized listing of Hakka words, ideally with an English cross-listing. Obviously, this is asking for a considerable amount of extra work and textual space; Hashimoto needed a second book to include such a lexicon. However, without it, each subsequent student of the dialect will simply find it necessary to do such lexical work for himself before starting any comparative or contrastive work with this material. The alternative is the intriguing but very time-consuming task of searching through pages of lexicon to find particular needed items. In this text of Sagart's, it entails additional work because one cannot be absolutely certain that all the examples used in the oral texts, the syllable study, and the phonology section are also included in the lexicon.
Sagart's lexicon was unnecessarily complicated by the need to put two columns of entries on each page. His present system is manageable when one figures it out, but the frequent and