________________
Reviews
245
and a vocabulary. The treatment is more historical and comparative than descriptive. Hence, while stating the simple fact that in Pengo both -j- and -2- occur in the intervocalic position, e. g. bajek 'much' and mazi 'son', the authors add : "Such cases are probably due to differences in origin, e. g. -j- may represent earlier -jj-contrasting at some period with -j-" (p. 5). Or aguin, on p. 7, we read : “Pe. his un voiced, as to be expected since it has developed from earlier 8". A distinction is made throughout the description of the language between inherited and loan words.
The authors say that they found the language to be remarkably uniform and free from large scale dialectal variations. But they have themselves noticed some features characteristic of the eastern Pengo as opposed to the western Penyo. Moreover they state, on the authority of their principal informant, that there exists a section of Pengos called Mahan Parjas because they use & past tense form mahan for the standard Pengo form macun (p. viii).
The eastern Pengo is marked by the use of a single phoueme -- while the western Peago has two phonemes - ; - and -2- It is not clear why the uuthors describe this state of affairs as confusion' (p. vii and 5), instead of calling it'merger' of two phonemes.
The authors observe on p. 4 that although in some of the Oriya loan words they heard the open pronunciation ( - ), they have not accepted it in their normal method of transcription. It is to be doubted whether this is the correct procedure tu follow in the description of a lauguuge. On p. 13, the author's note examples of intervocalic - d in l'engo. This being contrary to their earlier statement of the developmeut of intervocalic - (-(---) to - 2-, and since the examples of the intervocalic - d - are numerous, the authors call this an alternative developenent'. This will hardly seem satisfactory to those who still cling to the hypothesis of the regularity of phonetic changes. On p. 48, the authors observe tbat in Pengo tue Dravidian numerals are only the first two. From three onwards, Pengo uses Indo-Aryan numerals. But on p. 50, they record the restricted use of Indo-Aryan numeral for one ek'as & suffix in korek'one score' and of two 'dui' in such expressions as dui kosi 'forty'.
The reviewer is not quite familiar with the Dravidian languages and bence it is not possible for him to go into the details of the obser. vations made by the authors regarding Pengo grammar.
M. A. Meheadale
Madhu Vidya/628
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
