Extract

This new textbook lives up entirely to what one might expect from the first-named author, Ronelle Alexander, who was the author of Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian: A Grammar with Sociolinguistic Commentary, reviewed above. Here she is excellently accompanied by Ellen Elias-Bursać. In addition to the textbook, we have a short animated film on the accompanying DVD, to be used with Chapter 15. After several pages of guidance to the student and teacher, we have twenty lessons, offering a comprehensive and, dare one say it, “unifying” picture of the fragmentation which is still underway in the former Yugoslavia. The whole is completed by a list of abbreviations, ten indispensable appendices, two bilingual glossaries with guidance on how they are to be used, sources and an index. The book is seen as a volume to be used in conjunction with the aforementioned Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian: A Grammar with Sociolinguistic Commentary. The formatting and presentation are extremely clear, with total acknowledgment given to each of the three languages (and an awareness borne in mind of an emergence of Montenegrin). There are masses of examples, all fully glossed and explained, the whole both rigorously serious and pedagogically admirable. All prosodic information is consistently given – quite a novelty – such that we have here a new benchmark for descriptions of this language, or these languages.

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