Ronelle Alexander. Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian. A Grammar with Sociolinguistic Commentary. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. 464 pp. $39.95, paper.
Ronelle Alexander and Ellen Elias-Bursac. Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian. A Textbook with Exercises and Basic Grammar. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006 500 pp. $39.95, paper with DVD.
The work considered here consists of a combined textbook/workbook, a learner's grammar with sociolinguistic commentary, a supporting Web site (<http://www.bcsgrammarandtextbook.org>), and an audiovisual supplement in DVD format (This last item was not provided to the reviewer and so will not be addressed here.). The authors of these materials are well-established scholars. Ronelle Alexander of the University of California at Berkeley (sole author of the grammar and co-author of the textbook) is a highly respected East-South-Slavic dialectologist who is also known for her work in Bulgarian language pedagogy. Ellen Elias-Bursad (co-author of the textbook) is currently the most important translator of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (hereafter BCS) literature into English.
This work is pioneering in that it is the first since the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia to make academic course materials for BCS generally available to Englishspeaking learners. In the fifteen years since the country disintegrated, we have seen various instances of scholarly inexpertness in the discourse surrounding BCS (confusion of regional linguistic features with ethnic ones, oversimplification in the use of the scripts, uncritical acceptance of extreme ethnic nationalist views from the region, and so forth). The authors have thus entered a sensitive field that is prone to various distortions. With that in mind, I should emphasise at the outset that the present work remains impeccably free of any non-scholarly distortions. In every segment of both books, linguistic and cultural facts are presented with full scholarly integrity, in a balanced manner, without ethnic or political bias of any kind. The authors are to be applauded for such a general attitude, as they have navigated this dangerous zone masterfully.
The textbook includes twenty lessons, each consisting of lesson texts (whereby nonauthentic texts are provided in three of four variants: Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian Latin, and, initially, Serbian Cyrillic), basic grammatical and cultural explanations, and activities. The book is also equipped with appendices (additional texts, answer keys, grammatical tables, etc.) and two glossaries (BCS-English and English-BCS) with marked stress, inflectional information, and references to the lessons in which each lexical item is used.
The grammar in its first sixteen chapters follows the sequence of the structural content covered in the textbook and expands upon the basic textbook presentation. The subsequent four chapters cover successively: aspect, case usage, word formation, and accent. The remaining chapters (22-25) provide the author's sociolinguistic commentary. The first and last chapters are general, the remaining three being devoted, in turn, to Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia. The grammar is equipped with concepts and word indices.
The layout of the course materials is the next feature of the work for which the authors deserve praise. In the textbook, the students have all they need for in-class activities. Those who are interested in more elaborate coverage of the structures and the sociolinguistic situation can purchase the grammar separately; those who work on their own can purchase the recordings; and finally, all those who are looking for more general information can consult the Web site. The layout is student-friendly. The value of the course books for students is considerable, given the high degree of accuracy and clarity of the facts presented in both books. Providing the lesson texts in different ethnic variants goes a long way to accommodating the diverse needs of both professional and heritage learners.
Another strength of the course materials is the sequence in which BCS structural elements are introduced: they follow standard educational principles-from better-known to less-known, from simple to more complex. Thus, the authors first introduce the nominative case, then the accusative, followed by the genitive (these are familiar from English grammar); these cases are followed by the remaining case forms. As with the above-mentioned avoidance of any political distortions, here, too, the authors' educational expertise stands in positive contrast to some earlier Slavic-language textbooks which exhibit a dysfunctional sequencing of materials.
Like any pioneering work, these course materials leave some room for improvement, mostly in the textbook component. In what follows, I offer my wish-list for subsequent editions as an instructor who adheres to a proficiency/literacy teaching philosophy with an emphasis on immersion. This list might be shorter if it were compiled by an instructor who follows a text-and-grammar, philology-based approach.
In the early stages of foreign-language teaching, it is only natural to emphasise fluency first, then accuracy, with complexity coming at the very end. The textbook could be modified to accommodate this principle. The textbook might put less emphasis on such issues as word order, stress patterns, and archaic aorist and imperfect tense forms of verbs (their presentation could be restricted to the grammar). It might also replace literary and religious texts (of ILR 3 and higher complexity) with texts that are more appropriate to introductory language instruction.
Related to this is the matter of establishing proficiency goals and benchmarks. The book could establish its proficiency target (expressed on the ILR or ACTFL scale) and guide users towards developing particular communicative skills. The students could get more help in "doing things with words" (asking for directions, ordering, bargaining, retelling past events). Another matter is the need to introduce a more balanced ratio between popular contemporary and traditional high cultures: in its present version the textbook is biased towards high and traditional cultures.
The textbook could increase its naturalness and authenticity. Possible improvements range from correcting unnatural segments (for example, the sentence on p. 178-"Given that each student has about 15 textbooks, that means tiiat students keep approximately 20 textbooks in each room or about 4,500 books in each dormitory segment"-or the line on p. 197-"Would you be so kind [as] to come with me from the corridor to the room?"-where a natural way of speaking would omit mentioning the corridor) to introducing authentic texts other than literary and religious ones (actual menus, weather forecasts, road condition reports, news briefs). Photographs in the textbook could be more varied. Instead of fifteen street-name and -number signs in Lesson Four, two or three would suffice to convey the idea, and one could introduce other pictures related to the topic. In place of a Croatian banknote that was used for a short period fifteen years ago (p. 185 of the textbook), one could show current coins and banknotes.
The above-mentioned orientation towards high and traditional cultures has created certain problems with vocabulary selection. The BCS-English glossary at the end of the textbook (I have checked the version from the Web site, July 25, 2007) lacks numerous simple words like jeftin 'cheap', glup 'stupid', boca 'bottle', noi 'knife', hladnjak/frizider 'refrigerator', cigareta 'cigarette' (smoking is widespread in die region), crkva 'church', and ambasada/veleposlanstvo 'embassy' while containing low-frequency items Wkspuiina 'open seas', hrid 'cliff, unesreciti 'to make unhappy', zublja 'torch', and elektrifarka 'electrician (f.)'. Being a corollary of the previously mentioned matters of proficiency benchmarks and authenticity, this problem would take care of itself if the authors decided to make subsequent editions more proficiency-oriented and authentic.
Occasional factual errors should be corrected. For example, pa* 'rather, on the other hand' is not specific to Croatian (p. 67 of the textbook) but rather to the formal written style. The names Miroslav, Zarko, ieljko, and Sinisa are not exclusively Serbian or Croatian, as stated on p. 317 of the textbook: they can be either Serbian or Croatian. The Serbian/Montenegrin heraldic elements are ocila 'steel (for striking sparks)' not the Cyrillic letters 's' as claimed on p. 421 of the grammar.
My wish-list notwithstanding, the books reviewed here currently represent the best BCS course materials generally available to English-speaking learners.
[Author Affiliation]
Danko Sipka, Arizona State University
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