van Driem, George

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Book ReviewSeino van Breughel. A grammar of Atong (Brill’s Studies in South andSouthwest Asian Languages 5). Leiden: Brill, 2014, 660 pp., ISBN9789004258921. €231,00 (Hb)Reviewed by George van Driem, Linguistics Institute, University of Bern, Länggassstrasse 49,Postfach 999, CH 3000 Bern 9, Switzerland, E-mail: vandriem@isw.unibe.chDOI 10.1515/jsall-2016-0012Atong is a language of the Bodo-Koch branch of the Trans-Himalayan, orTibeto-Burman, language family.1 Within Bodo-Koch, which is a relativelycohesive but still internally diverse subgroup of languages, Atong showsclose genetic affinity with Rabha. Atong is spoken by an uncounted numberof people, perhaps numbering in the several thousands, in the South Garo Hillsdistrict, in scattered settlements in the south-central Meghālaya north of thetown of Bāghmārā. The Atong speaking area is increasingly swamped by theGaro speaking majority, who dominate the western half of the Meghālaya. TheRabha inhabit the low hill tracts and plains abutting the Garo Hills in thenorth, whilst the Atong occupy a similar habitat to the south, but the inter-vening highlands are Garo speaking.The author writes simply under the unassuming pen name of Seino vanBreughel, although his complete surname is Clifford Kocq van Breugel, his givennames Egbert Joost Seino, and his noble title that of a Jonkheer. He conductedfield work in the Atong area for almost a year, from June 2005 to May 2006, thenagain for three months between early June and early September 2007, andfinally for a month at the end of 2012. The grammar is a comprehensive andholistic description of the language. Though arguably no language has beenexhaustively described, for all intents and purposes Seino van Breugel’s1 The world’s second most populous language family was originally known as Tibeto-Burman andis now called Trans-Himalayan. Proponents of a certain family tree model have for several decadesalso called the family ‘Sino-Tibetan’, but as of today no evidence has ever been adduced for thatparticular phylogenetic model. The new term Trans-Himalayan, with its agnostic phylogeny incor-porating only recognised and newly validated subgroups, has been adopted in Chinese as跨喜馬拉雅語系 Kuà xǐmǎlāyǎ yǔxì (George van Driem. 2014. ‘Trans-Himalayan’, pp. 11–40 in Nathan Hilland Thomas Owen-Smith, eds., Trans-Himalayan Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter; Wú Wǒ.2015. ‘Kuà xǐmǎlāyǎ yǔxì: Jiān lùn běn pǔxì shuō duì shǐqián rénqún qiānyí zhī qǐfā’ [“The Trans-Himalayan language family: A neutral name based on the geography of prehistoric migrations ofsubgroups”], Hàn Zàng Yǔ Xuébào, 8: 10–20).JSALL 2016; 3(2): 231–232Brought to you by | Universitaetsbibliothek BaselAuthenticatedDownload Date | 4/29/19 4:15 PMgrammar is quite a remarkably thorough account of a language which hadhitherto been completely undocumented.The grammar is tidily and logically organised, lucidly presented and wellwritten. Despite being so all-encompassing, the grammar is completely accessi-ble, and the presentation is user-friendly. The grammar is a veritable treasuretrove replete with language data. Analytically, the grammatical account is bothsophisticated and lucid throughout. The table of contents is well structured,complete and detailed, and reflects the outline of a well-organised languagedescription. The list of abbreviations is complete and consistent. The glosses andabbreviations are entirely transparent and well chosen.The cross-referencing is thorough, yet not overdone, so that the user canmake his way through the grammar, navigating back and forth to gain insightinto different aspects of related grammatical phenomena in the language. Theinterlinear glossing and translation are used properly and intelligently, max-imising the utility of the grammar. A highly respectable volume of lexicon ispresented on this previously entirely undocumented language. The corpus oftexts is sizable, and the meticulous morpheme-by-morpheme glosses andsavvy translations render the text corpus a major contribution of enduringvalue in and of itself.The introduction provides a succinct but rigorous overview of the languagecommunity, the relevant linguistic family and subgroup, and the geographyand ethnolinguistically pertinent history of the region. The discussion of thelinguistic literature and the intelligent listing of relevant sources throughoutthe main body of the grammar contextualises all facets of the presentationwithin the current linguistic state of the art without resorting to superfluousgobbledygook.This grammar of Atong is everything that a detailed and comprehensiveaccount of a hitherto completely undocumented language should be. The savvyand rigorous presentation takes the reader by the hand, captivates, instructs andenlightens. The description contains a wealth of data, and these data areinsightfully analysed, glossed and explained. The grammatical regularities ofthe language at all levels of description are analysed, explained and presentedin a sophisticated and insightful fashion. This grammar is truly a monument tothe author’s scholarship, an enduring contribution to linguistics and to theAtong language community, to whom the author has dedicated the book. Thiswork contributes not just to our understanding of the Atong language but also toour knowledge of the Trans-Himalayan language family as a whole.232 Book ReviewBrought to you by | Universitaetsbibliothek BaselAuthenticatedDownload Date | 4/29/19 4:15 PM

Seino van Breughel: A grammar of Atong

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Seino van Breughel: A grammar of Atong

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