Reviews Of Different Books

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66 REVIEWS L'Abhidharmakosa, III, Paris-Louvain, 1926, p. 179). Moreover tatksana seems to occur only in enumerations of measures of time. The Chinese Vinayas render tatksanika as 'a single meeting', 'a momentary one', etc. The text of the Sarvastivadavinaya (antatas tadksanam api) is probably corrupt. In this case the Mulasarvastivadavinaya has clearly preserved the true reading - (antatas tat)ksanikayam api. A last remark concerning dassanaya (von Hinuber, p. 224). According to von Hinuber a gen.obj. is used in the case of a pl., an acc. in the case of a sg. This rule is not confirmed by the texts, cf. DN II.140.12-13 te mayam labhama manobhavaniye bhikkhu dassanaya; AN III.317-319 cha samaya manobhavaniyassa bhikkhuno dassanaya upasamkamitum. It would be possible to consider that, in the first example, the acc. depends on labhama (cf. von Hinuber, p. 193), but it seems more probable to admit that the acc. depends on dassanaya as in other examples. Von Hinuber's book contains a wealth of information. The above remarks are only meant to show how it stimulates discussion with the author in the rare cases in which one cannot completely agree with him. It is to be hoped that von Hinuber will also undertake a study of the syntax of late Pali, the desirability of which is mentioned in his introduction. Australian National University J. W. de Jong Vladimir Miltner, Theory of Hindi Syntax. Descriptive, Generative, Transformational. The Hague-Paris, Mouton, 1970. As the title shows, this short monograph of only seventy-two pages attempts to present a new system of Hindi syntax, which, as one might expect, would aim to fulfill theoretical as well as practical requirements. Athough the present publication hardly can be considered to be more than a rough sketch drafted in a hurry, the author himself appears to be fully convinced that he has achieved a most extraordinary and revolutionary task. As a matter of fact, his theory of syntax was the product (or by-product, see p. 7) of merely three months of the hardships and pleasures which are unnecessarily depicted at large in the Preface. Here, and on numerous other places, the author exhibits a selfcomplacency which is both immature and painful. Miltner's system of Hindi syntax pivots on the -in structural linguistics - well-known concept of the tagmeme (or sentence part). Interpreted as the Cartesian product of tagmemic function (F) and tagmemic functor (f), the tagmeme may according to Miltner in theory be symbolized as Ff, in practice, however, by formulae like S 31, that is 31 = adjectival participle, intransitive or passive functioning as S = subject, or P 82, that is 82 = substitute, substantival-adjectival (i.e. demonstrative, interrogative or indefinite pronoun) functioning as P = predicate. Thus Miltner's symbols indicate not only the specific lexical class like noun, pronoun, adjective etc. used in a given context, but also its syntactic role as subject, predicate or object of a sentence or sentence-part. The author distinguishes altogether four tagmemic functions (F), namely P (predicate), S (subject), O (object) and M (modifier) - the last badly defined as "any other tagmemic function which is not identic with the functions just delimitated" - and nine classes (including many sub-classes) of tagmemic functors (f) expressed by figures as for example 2 = non-participial verbal tenses and imperative, 21 = intransitive and passive, 22 = transitive or 4 = other nominal forms of verbs, 41 = verbal substantives (gerundia), 411 = intransitive and passive, 412 = transitive, 42 = agent nouns, 421 = intransitive and passive, 422 = transitive. In order to facilitate understanding, it would have been commendable to, at least at a later stage, rewrite the symbol Ff as