Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1979 (7. évfolyam, 19-22. szám)
1979 / 19-20. szám
HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER BOOKS Kerek, Andrew comp., BIBLIOGRAPHY OF HUNGARIAN LINGUISTIC RESEARCH IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. Hungarian Research Center, American Hungarian Foundation, P.O. Box 1084, New Brunswick, NJ 08903. 28 pages $2.75 paper. No. 5 in the HUNGARIAN REFERENCE SHELF SERIES. This volume brings together various publications “of what has been a widely scattered yet surprisingly prolific and surely significant research activity on the Hungarian language in North America to date.” Itsupplementsan earlier compilation by John Lotz (“Magyar nyelvészeti kutatások az Amerikai Egyesült Államokban” [Hungarian linguistic research in the U.S.A.] Nyelvtudományi Értekezések 58 (1967) pp. 32-37.) and covers nearly all relevant works of the past decade. Included are research reports, texts, teaching materials, but not word lists, dialogues, phrase books, readers, and dictionaries. The 255 entries represent works of American and Canadian linguists regardless of places of publication or dissemination. The bibliography originally appeared in Vol. 49 of the Ural-altaische Jahrbücher, and was considered sufficiently significant to Hungarianists to be reprinted in the HUNGARIAN REFERENCE SHELF series of the Hungarian Research Center of AHF. (For other publications in this series, see p. 16 of this issue.) The author is Assoc. Prof, of English at Miami U., Ohio. Gal, Susan, LANGUAGE SHIFT: Social Determinants of Linguistic Change in Bilingual Austria. Academic Press, 111 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003, 1979. 201 pages, maps, tables, diagrams, illus., biblio. $16.50 cloth. (In the series: Language, Thought, and Culture; Advances in the Study of Cognition. General ed. Eugene A. Hammel.) “The use of two or more languages within one community is the rule rather than the exception in the world today. While on every continent there are groups that have been bilingual for centuries and are remaining so, there are always others in transition: bilingual towns, villages, or neighborhoods in which the habitual use of one language is replaced by the habitual use of another. These communities are experiencing language shift.” The author based her study on a yearlong research in the field. It is about Felsőőr or Oberwart, a community of nearly 6,000 people in Burgenland, Austria. Here, after 400 years of Hungarian-German bilingualism, German is starting to replace Hungarian. “In 1920, Hungarian was spoken by three-fourth of the Oberwart population. By 1971, the town has grown substantially and only one-fourth, or less than 2000 inhabitants, could speak Hungarian.” One wonders if this process foreshadows similar developments in other Hungarjan settlements dispersed in the countries adjacent to Hungary. The sophisticated study describes the details of everyday verbal interaction during shift and specifies their relationship to the historical context, and to the large-scale social correlates of language shift. Economic and political changes are linked to changing ethnic identity. By projecting her findings against sociolinguistic theory of language change, the author provides a new model of languages shift while elaborating and expanding our understanding of the complex relationship between linguistic and social change. Every Hungarianist and sociolinguist will appreciate this volume. It should be appreciated yet for another reason: it is the second Hungarian-related volume in anthropology based on extensive fieldwork for the doctoral dissertation. (The first was Michael Sozan’s The History of Hungarian Ethnography, HSN no. 16, p. 4.) The author is Assist. Prof, of Anthropology at Rutgers U. Barley, M.W., ed., EUROPEAN TOWNS: Their Archaeology and Early History. Academic Press (for the Council for British Archaeology) 111 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003, 1977. 523 pages, maps, diagrams, tables, biblio. $46.90 cloth. This is a survey of the origins and early development of European towns. The element of continuity in towns of Roman origin is defined and the nature and chronology of new town development is described, perhaps for the first time. The book is divided into four parts: country surveys; origins of towns; the town as a political center; and the town as an ecclesiastic center. Chapter 25 is written by László' Gerevich on Hungary. He states, on the basis of new evidence, that settlements in the interior of the country developed along the Roman limes or at legionary forts of the border zone. “These settlements did not only develop because of geographical position, the usability of the former settlement and the importance of the road system but also because of traditional concepts held by the Hungarians concerning the basic facts of trade and the ideas of national institutions, as well as the importance of the river system for trade, defense, army economy and even the nomadic traditions. This means that the beginnings of the towns depended on the local (Slavonic) traditions, Roman remains and traditional settlement systems, and the geographic position of the road system and market-places.” The chapter is illustrated with maps on Hungary, Dömös, Óbuda, Pest, Győr, Esztergom, and Sze'kesfehérva'r. The editor is Emeritus Prof. of Archaeology at Nottingham U.
