BOOK REVIEWS
353
and learn more about them; equally, for those who know and love these vital and exciting rituals, the book will be certain to awaken nostalgia. If the book has the effect of drawing more people's attention to the traditional Chinese festivals and life still to be found all over Hong Kong, then it will have achieved Barbara Ward's aim; it is good to know that, in this her last book before her untimely death, her aim is so likely to be achieved.
P. H. HASE
Phonologie du Dialect Hakka de Sung Him Tong by Laurent Sagart [Editions Langages Croisés, published by l'Association des Recherches Interculturelles sur l'Expression Gestuelle et Orale]. Paris and Hong Kong 1982. pp.154.
This monograph is a study of the Hakka subdialect spoken in Sung Him Tong village in the New Territories of Hong Kong, and is Sagart's doctoral dissertation (thèse de 3ème cycle) done at the University of Paris under the direction of M. Alexis Rygaloff. This work presents in a manageable package most of the information about Sung Him Tong Hakka that one might want for an overview of this specific speech community.
The text includes a lexicon (listed by traditional categories such as natural phenomena, plants, animals, etc.); transcribed texts of oral materials; an exposition of syllable structure and types; a description of the phonology of the subdialect in both synchronic and diachronic frameworks; a comparative treatment of this subdialect with that of Meixian and other Hakka forms; and a bibliography of Hakka studies.
The format of Sagart's work is appropriately patterned after that of M. Hashimoto (The Hakka Dialect, Cambridge 1973) so that the two studies can combine to add a degree of uniformity to the published materials. This sort of systematization greatly simplifies the next stages of comparative work in Hakka research. If more field workers could generally agree on format and scope of dialect materials we could move with more confidence toward the goals of complete dialect surveys and more reliable reconstructions of the protodialects and proto-Chinese. Ultimately such materials will be necessary to give us the linguistic reconstructions to compare and contrast with the 'textual' reconstructions derived from the rime books and other written
Page 375
Page 376
BOOK REVIEWS
353
and learn more about them; equally, for those who know and love these vital and exciting rituals, the book will be certain to awaken nostalgia. If the book has the effect of drawing more people's attention to the traditional Chinese festivals and life still to be found all over Hong Kong, then it will have achieved Barbara Ward's aim; it is good to know that, in this her last book before her untimely death, her aim is so likely to be achieved.
P. H. HASE
Phonologie du Dialect Hakka de Sung Him Tong by Laurent Sagart [Editions Langages Croisés, published by l'Association des Recherches Interculturelles sur l'Expression Gestuelle et Orale]. Paris and Hong Kong 1982. pp.154.
This monograph is a study of the Hakka subdialect spoken in Sung Him Tong village in the New Territories of Hong Kong, and is Sagurt's doctoral dissertation (thèse de 3ème cycle) done at the University of Paris under the direction of M. Alexis Rygaloff. This work presents in a manageable package most of the information about Sung Him Tong Hakka that one might want for an overview of this specific speech community.
The text includes a lexicon (listed by traditional categories such as natural phenomena, plants, animals, etc.); transcribed texts of oral materials; an exposition of syllable structure and types; a description of the phonology of the subdialect in both synchronic and diachronic frameworks; a comparative treatment of this subdialect with that of Meixian and other Hakka forms; and a bibliography of Hakka studies.
The format of Sagart's work is appropriately patterned after that of M. Hashimoto (The Hakka Dialect, Cambridge 1973) so that the two studies can combine to add a degree of uniformity to the published materials. This sort of systematization greatly simplifies the next stages of comparative work in Hakka research. If more field workers could generally agree on format and scope of dialect materials we could move with more confidence toward the goals of complete dialect surveys and more reliable reconstructions of the protodialects and proto-Chinese. Ultimately such materials will be necessary to give us the linguistic' reconstructions to compare and contrast with the 'textual' reconstructions derived from the rime books and other written
Page 375Page 376
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