________________ 234 REVIEWS servations are that all four languages have voiced h when medial, with some devoicing when initial. All four volumes claim that short and long vowels are in most cases) of identical quality; thus, for Kannada, we read that for [i] "the front of tongue is raised as high as possible", while for (ii), "the speech organs remain approximately in the same position as in the case of i" (1:9). Such a situation is surely rare in languages of the world, and cannot be confirmed for Dravidian: in all these languages long vowels are tenser (non-low vowels becoming higher, while low a becomes lower).? All four volumes also state (at various points) that, in the production of vowels, "the soft palate is raised so that no air comes through the nasal passage" (to quote Syamala Kumari, 2:5). In fact, however, vowels next to nasal consonants normally show some nasalization - as, again, in most languages of the world. In each volume, the phonetic descriptions are followed by a chapter of phonetic drills, presenting minimal (and near-minimal) pairs. These are very useful in general, though it is hard to imagine why anyone would need words contrasting i with a, or p with t, which are systematically provided. The Malayalam and Telugu volumes also provide long lists of words of different canonical shapes - perhaps of more academic than practical usefulness; the Tamil volume has lists illustrating various consonant clusters. More examples of contrast between single and geminate consonants would be welcome, especially for Malayalam and Tamil. Following the drills, each volume has a short section on phonemics, but only the Kannada volume gives any explanation as to what a phoneme might be. In all four volumes, this section is poorly integrated, in that'some data on allophonic alternation are given here, but other such data, for no obvious reason, are given earlier, as part of the phonetic descriptions. Thus the retroflex flap is described as a variant of d for Kannada (1:19); but in Telugu it is described separately, as [r] (4:46), and only linked with d in the phonemics section (4:70). Again, in Kannada, a nasalized flap is described only as a variant of n (1:27); but the dental nasal (n) and palatal [n] are given separate treatment (1:26) -- though they turn out to be simply allophones of n (1:48). A more useful procedure might be to list as separate phones just those sounds which will present difficulties to the Indo-Aryan speakers who are seen as the main audience for these books: on that principle, Kannada dental (n) would require little attention since IA speakers need learn no new habits in order to pronounce it in the correct environments. In each volume, the phonemics section takes note that, although there is clear contrast between short and long vowels in many positions, "all vowels have slightly long allophones when they occur in the word-final position" (to quote Upadhyaya, 1:47). In fact, the generalization can be made about these languages that the contrast between short and long vowels is suspended before pause; LONG vowels occur in monosyllables (e.g. Ka. huu 'flower') and under certain intonations (Ka. maguu child!' used as a vocative); elsewhere, we hear half-long vowels, which are further characterized by some of the same tenseness associated with long vowels. Thus an example like Ka. tisi 'know needs more explanation than Upadhyaya has given: the second i is likely to sound more like long ii than like the first i of the word. The final sections of these books deal with the four different writing systems of the languages concerned, and with phoneme-grapheme correspondences. None of the volumes provide complete or fully accurate descriptions of these matters, but they do 1 For Kannada, cf. M. S. Andronov, The Kannada language (Moscow, 1969), p. 19; for Malayalam, L. J. Frohnmeyer, A Progressive Grammar of the Malayalam Language (Mangalore, 1913), p. 1; for Tamil, A. H. Arden, A Progressive Grammar of Common Tamil, 5th ed. (Madras, 1942), pp. 35-38; and for Telugu, A. H. Arden, A Progressive Grammar of the Telugu Language, 4th ed. (Madras, 1937), pp. 18-19.
