Проф. Дж. Паултни
Из рецензии в журнале: American Journal of Philology. — 1968. — Vol. 89/2. — P. 209-215
«This book falls into three main divisions, of which all deal with word-formation, but the first treats it in connection with phonology, the second with morphology, and the third with lexicology, while the historical viewpoint is maintained in all three.
In other respects the material is somewhat diverse in content. Two of the nine chapters are devoted to Slavic problems, and several deal withIndo-European comparisons, but a sufficiently large portion is concerned with Latin to make the book of considerable interest to classicists, the more so because one at least of the problems treated has been a particularly troublesome one and because the author has treated it with exceptional competence and success».
«The ninth and last chapter is devoted to a problem of toponymy. The author argues that the name of lake Ilmen, near Novgorod, is not of Finnic origin, but is a Slavic word related to Russ. il „silt, slime" and illustrating a principle of word-formation which is widespread in Slavic place-names and known in other Indo-European languages as well (use of -wen-suffixes in river-names etc.). The chapter is interesting for a variety of reasons, including its presentation of an apparent survival of the very ancient Indo-Europe- an r/n-altemation — Птепъ has a by-form Іітегь for which Otkupscikov cites many parallel cases of alternation — and the suspicion that West Slavs participated in the colonization of Novgorod, place-names of the type in question being much more frequent in West Slavic than in East Slavic territory.
The two-page conclusion, while recognizing the great advances in Indo- European linguistics in the past, dissents from the pessimistic view that all that can be accomplished in etymological investigation has been accomplished, and pleads for further study, partly on the basis of principles which the foregoing chapters have sought to outline. There are a bibliography listing over four hundred titles, an index of words discussed, an index of ancient and modern authors cited, and a short list of misprints».
«The special merits of the book, which are many, include exceptional clarity of style and arrangement and careful attention of forms cited and to chronology of sound-changes. It must be considered an essential item of bibliography for further study on the grammatical problems and individual words with which it deals, and it is further evidence of the fact that the work of contemporary Russian scholars in Indo-European linguistics will more and more have to be taken into account».