Landick, Marie, Enquête sur la prononciation du français de référence: les voyelles moyennes et l'harmonie vocalique. Paris: Editions l'Harmattan, 2004, 182 pp. 2 7475 7000 2

Abstract

Fascicle 9 of the DAO covers items 1314-1456 of the Hallig-Wartburg Begriffsystem which is the matrix of the dictionary's onomasiological organization. For a small number of the entries (1314-1333), DAO Suppl. 8 provides the illustrative quotations; for the rest, readers will have to await DAO Suppl. 9. Essentially, DAO itself is the road map and DAO Suppl. the illustrated guidebook: so without the quotations, what is provided is an invariably interesting and well-documented, but tantalising, view of the onomasiological structures of the language. I have endeavoured on a previous occasion ( JFLS 11 (2001), 260-262) to show how valuable this view is; see now also Pfister, ZrP 121 (2005: 529-531). A feature which emerges clearly from the fascicle under review is the extent to which Occitan functioned with competing (or at any rate co-variant) terms for concepts where modern, standardized languages are content with one: so, for example, the alternation porc salvaje