The last word in the subtitle of Neil G. Jacobs' Yiddish: A linguistic introduction is truly a misnomer! Rather than the “introduction” of the subtitle, this is indeed an encyclopedic work, which gives a comprehensive, detailed, and efficient picture of the current state of knowledge about the history and structure of Eastern Yiddish, although mention is made in passing of the no longer spoken Western Yiddish.

If the word introduction in the title is misleading, linguistic is not. As Jacobs puts it: “The Yiddish data are presented in a format compatible with general and theoretical linguistic discussion, accessible to linguists regardless of their particular theoretical bent;” the work “is aimed at general linguists, Germanic linguists, scholars in Yiddish and Ash-kenazic studies, and scholars in general Jewish studies” (p. 1), and should serve this audience well. The analyses presented in this book give eloquent testimony to the flowering of Yiddish linguistics in recent years. Jacobs' exhaustive list of references (pp. 307–323) gives further evidence of this and, by itself, constitutes an invaluable resource for the student of Yiddish linguistics.

The volume contains seven chapters. Following a brief introduction, Jacobs deals with history, dialectology, phonology, morphology, syntax, and sociolinguistics. A major strength of this book, to be found throughout all these chapters, is its reference to dialect data. Obviously, this aspect is central to the chapter on dialectology, but the dialects are not “ghettoized” to this one chapter; rather, dialect data are presented throughout the entire book. This is especially important given the existence of competing norms, the far-from-universal recognition of the so-called YIVO klal-shprakh, or standard language, and the fairly widespread use of dialectal phonology and, to a somewhat lesser extent, grammar, among educated speakers of Yiddish.

Throughout the volume, Jacobs uses a transliteration of Yiddish largely based on a modified IPA romanization (p. 2), which may at first appear somewhat strange to those used to the more common YIVO transliteration. Thus, a word appearing in the YIVO transcription as shoykhet “ritual slaughterer” would appear here as

.

In discussing the origin of Yiddish in chapter 2, Jacobs gives a clear presentation of the various competing theories without favoring any one over the others. This chapter contains a concise and thorough description of the original Yiddish vowel system and its reflexes in the various dialects, which will prove invaluable to anyone new to the history of Yiddish. There is a brief discussion of the first (Old) Yiddish written language, which was based on Western Yiddish. Thereafter, the book deals almost exclusively with Eastern Yiddish.

This chapter also deals with questions of the periodization of Yiddish, the role of Hebrew in the history of the language, and the history of the written language. Jacobs' approach to Yiddish dialectology properly rejects “the over-eagerness of some scholars to appeal to external causation as sufficient for explanation” (p. 82), favoring instead a view of the language as a système où tout se tient. This endocentric, structured view of Yiddish characterizes not only this chapter, but the entire work, and is one of its greatest strengths. Paradoxically, it is also the source of a possible weakness. Since the structured approach properly reflects the interconnectedness of the individual components of Yiddish, the reader who is relatively new to the language might require more effort to follow some of the argumentation in this work. Such difficulty would be less likely with a work that takes a more atomistic approach, but the results would be unquestionably inferior, so that this extra effort is more than worth it.

The chapter on phonology is a model of thoroughness, again combined with concision. Jacobs deals both with the paradigmatics and syntagmatics of the “standard” language, as well as with the dialects. In addition to the expected inventories of phonemes, there are complete listings of initial and final consonant clusters, an extensive discussion of syllable structure in the context of metrical phonology, a survey of cyclical and lexical phonology, followed by a discussion of stress and intonation. It should be noted that much of the material in this chapter is the fruit of Jacobs' own extensive research.

Unlike most traditional treatments of Yiddish dialectology, which are restricted almost exclusively to phonology, this work also devotes much attention to dialectal variation in morphology, syntax, and the lexicon. The chapter on morphology is based to a large extent on the data and examples of the Yiddish linguists Yudl Mark, Solomon Birnbaum, and Ayzik Zaretski (p. 154). The inclusion of Zaretski's analyses is particularly valuable, because, in Jacobs' words, “he provides the most insightful, thorough, and theoretically informed discussion to date of Yiddish morphology” (p. 154). His major works, dating from 1926–1931, are difficult to obtain and hence not very well known among linguists today. Attention is given here to both inflectional and derivational morphology, and, as in the other chapters, the discussion is marked by thoroughness and concision.

If the chapter on morphology to a large extent relies on research going back to the first half of the last century, the chapter on syntax represents the much more recent achievements resulting from strides in the study of syntax in the last half-century. To the best of my knowledge, this is the only survey of Yiddish syntax available in a single work, and as such is most welcome. The chapter is divided into sections dealing with clause types, constituent structures, subcategorization, grammatical functions, movements, transformations, and deletions.

There has been much sociolinguistic research done on Yiddish and many of the results are presented in Jacobs' final chapter. Here a plethora of topics is dealt with, including varieties of the spoken language, competing literary norms (both synchronic and diachronic), language contact, orthography, language ideologies, and—especially important for Yiddish—attitudes toward this highly politicized language. The chapter concludes with a provocative discussion of post-Yiddish Jewish ethnolects.

As mentioned above, this is a thorough linguistic analysis of Yiddish and not a reference grammar. Nevertheless, with certain caveats, it can also serve in lieu of a much needed, but still non-existent, reference grammar for those with some elementary background in linguistics. Although the work's effectiveness as such a reference is somewhat lessened by a rather cursory index (pp. 324–327), this weakness is offset by a fairly detailed table of contents.

One other weakness might be mentioned. Although there is a list of abbreviations of Yiddish dialects, other linguonyms, and some grammatical terms (pp. xvii–xviii), Jacobs uses many grammatical abbreviations not listed here that are explained only when first introduced. When these abbreviations recur in later chapters, it is often difficult to recall what they mean. Furthermore, these abbreviations are impossible to decipher if one reads a later chapter in which the abbreviation was introduced. One example is OVA (obstruent voicing assimilation), introduced on page 129. When it recurs on page 189 the reader may well have forgotten what the abbreviation represents. Another such abbreviation is JPA 1994 (= Jacobs, Prince, van der Auwera 1994 in the bibliography). A list of these abbreviations would have been most welcome. In a very few instances, terms specific to the study of Yiddish are introduced without definition. One example of this is the term daytshmerism, a “word borrowed from modern German and rejected by purists as an unnecessary foreignism in Yiddish” (p. 166).

Jacobs' approach to all his topics is at once thorough and judicious. He includes both historical and dialectal factors, and—perhaps most significantly—the endocentric approach developed throughout this volume is needed, welcome, and relatively new in Yiddish linguistics. Another strength is the regular mention of areas in need of research, or of further research. But perhaps its greatest strength lies in the breadth of its coverage. The reader will come away with a nearly total picture of the language—linguistic, cultural, and historical. This is a major and most welcome contribution to field of Yiddish linguistics, which will also prove invaluable to general linguists wishing to learn about the language.