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Abstract

BHS, LVII (1980) Brief Notices JAMES JOSEPH CHAMPION, The Periphrastic Futures formed ~y the Romance Reflexes of TlAD () (AD) plus infinitive. North Carolina Studies in the Rornance Languages and Literatures, Chapel Hill. 1978. 77 pp. $6.00. The emergence of VADO ( > voy) etc.) plus infinitive forms in Mediaeval Western Romance, in Catalonia with past meaning, elsewhere with occasional past but more commonly future meaning, from the infinitive of purpose after verbs of motion, is compared (31) with Latin and Romance uses of the present for both future and 'historic ~ present, normally without ambiguity. The fifteenth century saw it specialize as a future in non-Catalan Iberia, with an a in Castilian by the sixteenth, since when its spread has been accelerating: the increasing modern use, particularly in Hispano-Romance (and overwhehningly in Brazil), has hardly been recognized in modern grammars, prescriptive or transformational. 'This is a slight start on a huge subject. FRANCISCO MARCOS MARiN, Estudios sobre el pronombre. Gredos, Madrid. 1978. 332 pp. The pronoun studied by Professor Marcos is the third person atonic. He finds two systems currently in competition; the etymological, preserving le < ILLI for all singular indirect objects only, and that based on gender, with le for masculine people, lo for masculine things, and la for feminines, regardless of case. Leismo, the etymological system plus le for human masculine direct object, is common enough for it to be seen as a third system (283), but not so common as to deserve having been prescribed as 'correct'; as Marcos points out (46), the Academy's Esbo;o (1974) sees lo as the norm here and le as tolerable (3.l0.5c). So do Alcina Franch and Blecua in their Gramatica Espanola (4.1.2.2), which appeared too late for this study. The extensive historical survey covers many authors and texts (e.g. The Primera Cronica General, Arcipreste de Talavera, Bernal Diaz, El Buscon, the Moratines, La Fontana de Oro, Baroja, and the Madrid ABC in 1973-74), and shows the rise of leismo and the rise and fall of laismo (La for indirect feminine object) from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. There are brief sections on geographical variations and on se le, and a serious proposal that the source ofleisnlo Inay lie in Latin verbs that always took personal direct objects in the dative case, with other inherently unstable constructions, such as the double accusatives, being attracted to (in apparent alternative norm. Despite Professor Marcos' decision not to analyse any modern spoken language, this is a serious contribution to an intriguing problem, and will be of use to the many studies on this subject that are inevitably yet to appear. ROGER VVRIGHT Liverpool. B. MILLER, Mujeres en la literatura. Editora Fleischer, Mexico. 1978. 145 pp. This is a ramshackle assortment of biographical sketches, essays on the depiction of women in literature, interviews and translations of poems by American women poets. Despite the title, most of the essays are concerned with women and literature in Mexico but the volume as a whole lacks coherence and a clear sense of purpose. The rise of the Women's Liberation Movement has produced a growth industry in feminist literary criticism and although undoubtedly such an approach can provide fruitful insights and reassessments, it is doubtful whether these rather slight essays (most of which have already been published) make any 87 Copyright (c) 2004 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) Liverpool University Press