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Mark R. V. Southern, Contagious couplings: Transmission of expressives in Yiddish echo phrases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2008

Eirlys E. Davies
Eirlys E. Davies
Affiliation:
King Fahd School of Translation, Tangier, Morocco, eirlys_davies@hotmail.com, eirlysdavies@menara.ma
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Extract

Mark R. V. Southern, Contagious couplings: Transmission of expressives in Yiddish echo phrases. Westport, CT & London: Praeger, 2005. Pp. xx, 351. Hb $99.95.

Mark Southern's book deals in great depth and considerable detail with a question that is quite specific yet has wide ramifications as an example of language contact and change and offers many insights into the functioning of expressive forms. The book focuses on the origin of one particular type of expressive phrase – the highly productive Yiddish binomial dismissive pairs with the structure X – shmX (as in gelt-shmelt ‘money – who cares?’). The pattern has now spread beyond Yiddish into Hebrew, Russian, and of course English, where expressions like linguistics shminguistics, to cite just one of Southern's examples, are recognized as unmistakable Yiddishisms.

Type
BOOK NOTES
Information
Language in Society , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , February 2008 , pp. 150 - 151
Copyright
© 2008 Cambridge University Press

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