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BUCHBESPRECHUNGEN/COMPTES RENDUES
1425
additional text edited for the first time by Balbir) beside viccāmelei which occurs only on p.438 (L. 44. 25). As already noted in the case of padau the connection between the translation and the glossary is not always perfect. Sometimes it is a matter of different interpretations. A case in point concerns the phrase thāiūņain vibhāe (p.332, L 26. 15), which Balbir translates with "en aparte ... en se couvrant (la bouche]" (i.e. thăiūnai from sthagayati), while Oberlies derives thāiūnain from sthālthăi (see p.81, s.v. thai): thāiūņain vibhāe (vgl. skt. vibhāgena "abgesondert") "an (jmds] Seite stehend". More problematic is the case of padiņiyayāe (p.338, L 27. 37 and p.342), which word Oberlies derives from prati-anika) "hostile" (p.105), but which Balbir translates, without any explanation as to its derivation, with "sollicité". At vara-dinna(ga) (p.144) a reference to saingara-dinnaya (p.156) might have been helpful. Note 180 on p.162, in which it has been suggested to derive säravei from säramaya had better be deleted as the supposed development of -m-to-- is generally conditioned by the presence of another nasal (see O. von Hinüber, Übersicht $$210-1 and in particular Brough GDhP 836 quoted there).
Herman Tieken
WALTER BISANG: Das Verb im Chinesischen, Hmong, Vietnamesischen, Thai und Khmer. Vergleichende Grammatik im Rahmen der Verbserialisierung, der Grammatikalisierung und der Attraktorpositionen. Language Universals Series. Edited by Hansjakob Seiler. Volume 7. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1992. x, 524 pp.
Linguistic research in East Asian languages is still a neglected field in German speaking countries, the scarcity of comparative studies on them is even more obvious. Against this background the voluminous work under discussion promises to be recognized sooner or later not only as a landmark for research in this area, but also as an important international contribution to better understanding of the structure and historical development of a wide tange of languages in East Asia, more or less related to the five languages analyzed here. This work might also promote the discussion of language universals in connection with verb serialization. In any case it is worthwhile and necessary to introduce it to a wider interested public within and also outside Europe, especially since it is written in German as it was accepted as a doctoral thesis at the University of Zürich in 1990/91.
The author has chosen these five languages because he has had the chance during his academic career to study and partly practise them and, at
